Tag Archives: Giverny

After-Before Friday Forum Week 22

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Robin Kent Before Week 22 Giverny

Original Raw Image

Stacy Fischer’s blog VisualVenturing hosts the weekly After-Before Friday Forum that provides a unique opportunity for photographers to exchange ideas about post-processing their images.  There is always something new to learn from this exchange. This week’s Forum will be up later this morning and can be found here.

My submission for this week’s Forum was taken a few years ago in Claude Monet’s gardens in Giverny, France.  It was a cloudy day which can be really helpful for photographing flowers. But, as usual, the gardens were crowded with visitors so the best strategy was to search for individual blooms.  This little fellow was seemingly calling out for a portrait so I gave it a try.  The “Before” image above is the original RAW file with no adjustments.

A quick inspection indicates that, unless some special effects are being considered, the image does not seem to require any heroic measures.  The standard workflow began with the Adobe Camera Raw dialog window.     It seemed that the image needed to be a little darker overall to capture the mood of the cloudy day and also could use some added contrast.  The contrast slider by itself was too harsh, so after experimenting with a combination of the Whites, Blacks, Shadows, Highlights, and Contrast controls the most appealing combination resulted in the settings shown in the screen capture below.

Robin Kent Before 02A Week 22 Giverny

Adjustments in Adobe Camera Raw

 The changes were as follows:  Exposure decreased to – 0.40;  Contrast increased to +35;  Highlights decreased to -28;  Shadows decreased to -3;  Whites decreased to -15;          Blacks increased to +11;  Clarity increased to +24;  Vibrance increased to +27.  The resulting image is shown below.

 Robin Kent Before 02 Week 22 GivernyImage After Adobe Raw Adjustments

The image was then opened in Photoshop.  The only step remaining was to create a vignette to help bring the viewer’s attention to the central subject and give the image a little more depth (3-D effect?) to separate the subject from the background.  There are many ways to create a vignette and these were the steps I followed (see image below).

Robin Kent Before 03 Week 22 Giverny

I used the Elliptical Marquee tool to select an oval shape around the central flower, making sure the “Feather” was set for a high number (usually above 50 pixels).  But since the area to be darkened is everything outside the oval selection, the next step was to click on SelectàInverse.  (See yellow arrow) I next opened a Curves Adjustment Layer, set the Blend Mode to Multiply and the Opacity to 50%, and changed the layer name to “Vignette.”  (See red arrows).  The curves histogram was not changed from the default setting.  Depending on the effect you are looking for, there is a lot of flexibility by using the controls for feather in the selection and the amount of opacity in the layer.

The final result is shown in the image below.  As you can see, the difference with the vignette is quite subtle.  Thoughts from readers would be welcome.

Robin Kent After Week 22 Giverny

Final Image with Vignette Added

Once again thanks to Stacy Fisher for keeping the Forum on track.  The other submissions can be found at her Visual Venturing post here.  Please check them out.  And don’t miss this Forum next week; there will be a “twist” to the proceedings.   Stacy has sworn us all to secrecy, but it should be fun.

Giverny: Monet’s Gardens

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My painter friends may chastise me for this skimpy report on a subject dear to their hearts, but time is fleeting and promises to do more sometime soon will have to suffice for now.

Although I have visited these gardens on two previous trips to France, I had not been here in June or July, which is the time that the water lilies bloom. It was our hope that they might be out this time, so off we went on Tuesday to see what might be in store this time.   It turned out that we were in luck.

I calculated in advance how best to minimize (at least in my photographs) the excessive crowds that almost certainly would be there. Here are three images that show the results and the several tricks that I used are listed afterwards. (I should confess that none of these maneuvers are surprisingly new, but might be helpful to photographers at least. I envy painters who, blessed with skills I can barely comprehend, merely leave out those pesky details.

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Approaching Storm, Monet’s Giveny Gardens

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Water Lilies, Monet’s Gradens

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Monet’s Garden, Giverny

 Here are my 4 techniques to minimizing the crowds at Giverny and similar places:

1. Pick a day when rain is forecast and likely, but the outlook should be for showers rather than a sustained deluge. The prospects for rain discourages some, but not all. Moreover, overcast skies contribute to higher quality images when photographing flowers.

2. Find a position that where plants (which you want) help block out many of the tourists (which you don’t want) as they pass through the scene, but also provides a good composition.

3. Break up the scene into a number of images using a longer lens, picking off sections that have few or no persons in the scene. Then use photomerge in the photo post processing software of your choice.

4. Move in close for a tightly framed image where those pesky people can’t trespass.

5. Still, there are some folks who will successfully thwart your best efforts in any number of images. Don’t curse them; Delete them! The clone tool and the Edit-> Fill-> Content Aware procedure are your best friends here.