Other Info
Shifting Light Projects - [link]

Updates
Hello people sorry for not updating my page very much lately, I’ve just not got around to it yet. I hope you haven’t all grown board. I hope you find this bit below helpful and also an insight into how I’ve been doing things.

Also please view the features at the bottom of the page. I have been meaning to feature them for ages so here goes.


Panoramics and Tilt/Shift Photos – The technique

I have for a long time now been taking my photos with tilt and shift lenses and have found them wonderful to use. If you look up details of these lenses you’ll find that they are fixed lenses. In a way I prefer this as it forces to you think about composition in a new light and forces you to move yourself into position that is going to suit the photo. This, I find, makes me try to be more creative, not limiting as some might think. With a zoom lens it is all too easy to see something you like and stand in one position and just zoom in and out. While fixed lenses force you to move around the scene to get into the best position.

These are the lenses that I use [link] - I have been using the 24mm and the 45mm.

I think that tilt and shift lenses often get overlook by landscape photographers and people wanting to take landscape shots because many people believe them to be for architecture.
I have often found that when asked what lenses I use and I say tilt and shift lenses exclusively, the response is “Oh so you photograph buildings then…” No I don’t

Below I have mainly talked about the shift function of the lens, which is great, but the tilt function is just as great. When the lens is tilted towards an angled object the depth of field (or focus) is set along the angle/plain in relation the angle of tilt. So Here is a detailed explanation of tilting.



This is a demonstration of the tilt function of a tilt and shift lens and why it can be so useful.

Please note the bottom 2 images where taken on the same settings @ f/2.8 ISO 1600 1/60sec 45mm

The only difference is the tilted lens. On the images to the left are what a regular lens would see at those settings and on the right is what you would see if you tilted the lens towards the object.

What happens the focus plain tilts its angle away or towards the camera as you tilt the lens. A regular lens has the plain of focus parallel with the back of the camera so the only things in focus will be the objects that intersect with that parallel line of focus.

When the camera is left in the same place but the lens is tilted the plain of focus tilts on a logarithmic scale not a linear scale. This means that if you tilt the lens by say 1 degree the plain of focus may tilt by 4 degrees, if the lens is tilted by 2 degree the plain of focus is tilted by about 10 degrees. So the ratio of movement is not a linear one.

Now, you might ask why this is important, well to most people they may never use a tilt and shift lens, so it won't matter, but its always nice to learn and* might prompt you to go out and buy one if you feel you can justify the money.

2 things that benefit from this is that you can obtain deep depth of focus using an otherwise large aperture to use in low light, maybe hand held. In the test shot above I used an aperture of f/2.8 but if i was to use a normal lens and try and get the same shot as the right hand image I would have had to use f/13 - f/16 and that is a massive difference.

Now the second thing. In landscape photography if I have detail in the foreground and I want the focus to extend to the background then I would normally have to use f/22.
This aperture on a 45mm lens give me a focus depth of 1.5 meters to infinity. If I were to give maximum tilt toward the ground I could if I wanted to include detail that is only 40cm away from the camera to infinity and still be using only f/8 - f/11. This means that I can use either faster shutter speeds or lower ISO or use hand held when other wise it would be impossible. Also I get a wider focus range so I can include more and/or get closer to the ground and/or use sharper angles of view and still get maximum sharpness front to back.

Anyway I hope that explains it well. So if you hear me go on about such a thing in a photo of mine, you'll know what I'm on about




This is a test pano shot taken with the 24mm tilt and shift lens, used to demonstrate the technique used to create pano's without the distortion normally associated with creating pano's from stitching images from pivoting the camera on a tripod.

This is true pano image produced by a tilt/shift lens by shifting the lens left to right on the camera (without moving the camera). This create an undistorted angle of view which requires no adjustment in Photoshop or other programs to line up the 3 photos perfectly and thus create a true pano image. See my journal entries for the complete details.





This is traditionally the style of stitched photos by which you pivot the camera on the tripod to create a panoramic view.

The only problem with rotating the camera on the tripod is that the perspective changes and so to get an accurate pano stitch you need to deliberately re-distort the images so that the perspective lines up. This sample I used just 2 images and have kept the image lines to show the distortion required to get a normal eye view.

The middle is sectioned out to show how a tilt and shift lens would have see it all be it a bit better.

I have taken this photo to compare the differences between using a tilt and shift lens to produce pano's and rotation the camera (traditional).

Notice how much loss of image is required to get a good crop to create the pano. With a tilt and shift lens, this is not an issue. Also when "re-distorting" the image the computer has to "create" new pixels and "destroy" others to bend and skew the image into shape. This of course means a loss in quality. Not normally a problem when view on a computer screen, but try printing this 36 inches by 12inchs and you soon see that this is not practical.

You might ask why you would want to print that big. Well simply put most people don’t. However If you want to sell your photos either as prints or stock you need to be able to produce the highest quality you can and as quickly as you can.

A series of photos from a tilt and shift lens only takes about 10 mins to make a basic pano, a stitched photo from moving the camera takes about 30 mins to get "right" and an hour to get "great" and that’s just the stitching not even editing.

There are programs out there that can stitch photos for you. Some are incredibly good, but they still have to distort you originals and skew them to get them to line up and if they don’t the image looks a bit weird and not normal. Most programs that do all that still don’t get it right 100% and most of the time you have to do a bit of hands on work to get them to look right.

The other point is that the sharper the angle of view to the ground is the more pronounced the distortion will be. This can create a whole new set of problems which are very hard to over come in Photoshop. This is why most pano's are taken with the horizon bang center of the picture as this gives the least amount of distortion.

Most nature photographers like to include a good amount of foreground detail but to do this would require a low view point and/or a sharper angle of view to the ground.

Tilt and shift lenses completely get around this problem and they create awesome high res pano's.

The other way some people may create pano's, is to use a simple wide angle lens and one photo and then crop the image to a pano. As you would guess this looses a huge amount of photo information so a 12.8 mega pixel image would suddenly become a 6mp photo. Not great for enlargements and compare that to a 36 mega pixel image from using a tilt and shift lens. There really is no comparison and the prints are utterly impressive.

As a conclusion, I’d just like to say that which ever way you do things is fine if you’re happy doing them that way, and When you get good at something it doesn’t really matter how you do it but it is the end result that counts.
What I have tried to describe is why and how I do things but there is nothing wrong in doing things another way. The thing is to be happy with how you do it and to want to experiment and always want to improve.

Note me for any more info.



Features

I have had a fair few requests for information on my Shifting Light photos and so I have decided to put some info about them up here.

The subject matter for my shifting light project has been smoke a light.


Well to be honest, photographing smoke has been around for ages and has really been taken to the next level since digital took off.

What I think people try and do when they try their hand at it is to make it something new, to add a twist, be different and all that. Some people succeed at doing something new but others give up too early.

The only way really to try to do something new with smoke photography is to do the research on it to see what people have done before. I mean all you really have to do is type "smoke" in the search bar here on DA and you'll find hundreds of smoke photos of the sort of thing I have been doing.
All art is a continuation of what has gone before. The only thing you can do is to add your twist to it.

I have tried to do something new with the smoke photography but we all have to start somewhere.
Mine started with this one
I turned out loads of these photos that are similar to this one. But to be honest Ive seen loads of photos just like this done by other people, so nothing new. I'm the sort of person that likes a good challenge.

To produce a photograph like this, all you need a a source of smoke, most people (including me) use incense sticks. They make the house smell of odd stuff but they give the best form of smoke. A camera and a flash or a very powerful light source in a dark room or with a black cloth backdrop.

The light source is best coming from the side or from bottom rear or the smoke. If you use a flash on the hotshoe of the camera and point straight at the smoke all it will do is light up the background (even black cloth) and you wont get anywhere near a good smoke photo. If you can get an off camera flash cord, they are best.

The key to getting good smoke photos is contrast, that is contrast between the smoke and a black background. Beyond that its all a matter of experimentation, try different things. However if you want to get good crisp photos with sharp lines etc etc. Then there are a few things to look out for. Here's an example of crisp lines

You need to be able to freeze the movement of the smoke in some way. There are many ways of doing this. Graham Jeffery was a pioneer of this type of photography and many of the techniques people use are based on this chap. Graham Jeffery, in a commentary, states that he uses an off camera flash set to high speed sync and fast shutter speeds (1/2000 second). High speed sync flash is a setting on most higher end flash guns that enable the use of fast shutter speeds. You may have noticed that when you put a flash gun on your camera you can normally only get about 1/200 of a second (canon cameras) or 1/500 second (nikon).

This would easily be enough to freeze the smoke.

However I would like to offer a different way to look at freezing the smoke which does not require fast shutter speeds and also allows for more possibilities.
To put it simply all you need is a flash capable of a guide number of 42 or higher and a black cloth enclosure. It doesnt have to be special black cloth, I went a got some from a John Lewis shop and paid about £20. All you then need to do is hang it somewhere, Here's mine

All you need to do is set your flash to full power on manual point it at the smoke and take photos. The closer you have it to the smoke the brighter the smoke will be. Have you camera set to manual, ISO 100 and use a small aperture, the smallest you have, then set your shutter speed to whatever. If you are using digital then good because you can see the results straight away. If the smoke is too bright then increase your shutter speed and/or make you aperture smaller and/or move the flash further away from the smoke.

The is no right way to do anything so just mess about with it.
You do not need fast shutter speeds when using flash because the flash will freeze the smoke anyway.
You will only need fast shutter speeds if you are using a constant light, like a torch.

Depth of filed is important, the reason why I say to use small apertures is because smoke tends to drift towards/away from the camera and so focus with never be specific. It also means no auto focus because of lack of light.
You do not need a tripod but it helps.
This photo by my girlfriend, Abi was taken handheld using a black cloth background (no enclosure) and high speed sync. The photo was inverted in photoshop and the colours added using a colour grad in photoshop. (I held the flash for her!).

I wanted to do something different in all of this so I decided to go macro and focus of extremely small sections of smoke to try and make it not look like smoke, but instead to let the viewer's imagination imagine what it is.

This photograph is a macro shot of a section of smoke only 3.5cm wide. The colours were not added in photoshop. Instead I used the flash so very close to the smoke that the colour temp shifted into the very hot blue area and this is what you get.

Because I was not using fast shutter speeds and just letting the flash freeze the smoke, I was able to focus on producing strobe effect photographs.
I used shutter speeds of 1 second in some cases and just let the flash strobe.

This photograph was a 1/10 second shot with a 4 flash strobe @ 50hz. No colours were added in photoshop.

I love the colours that the smoke produces naturaly, but of course when you invert the image, the colours are no longer the same, so to get back those colours again would require colour overlays in photoshop. This can be very time consuming. However they do look amazing and when viewed often look very simplistic and satisfying.

A note on colour shifts.

Colour shifts occur when there is a substantial light fall off from 1 or more different types of light source. This can happen when a flash unit is very close to the smoke and so light falls off in greater proportion because of the proximity of the flash.
If you combine this fall off of light from flash with a tungsten light source (torch or lamp) pointing at the smoke from the opposite direction then there is a clash of colour balance. This produces a blueish tone from the flash and an orangey tone from the tungsten source. (This is assuming the camera is set to 5700K-6700k daylight balance similar to film).

This is how I take my photo's Flash on the right and just beneath the camera, a desk lamp.

There are many tutorials out on the web about this type of photography, I only can offer an insight into the way I take my photographs. I hope this helps and has been informative.... that is if you have reached this far without falling to sleep (sorry) .

This is the final poll for the autumn contest! If you wish to support me and think my work is good enough then vote for my photo here [link] mine is number 51 !

I have entered a contest for autumn and submitted my photograph "Is Autumn Here?"
The voting ends tomorrow but I'd appreciate any help from people to vote for my photo.

Vote for it by clicking here [link]
Mine is number 51


HOWEVER! Only vote for my photo if you think it's worth voting for! Don't vote for it if you think its not good enough!

Vote for it by clicking here [link]
Mine is number 51

Again only vote if you think it's good enough. If you think someone else's is better then vote for theirs!
Thank you again if you do vote for me!

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Ok I will be editing each deviation at some point to include a link to be able to buy a print from me off my own website. I have ask DA if thats ok to do and it is. So it will mean if there is any print you would like to buy then you may do so through my website.
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I am currently doing a few projects at the moment. I will be uploading a few more nature photographs, both macro and wider(?)... well anyway, I'll be spending for more time on my photography than I have been doing.

I will be producing a few more abstract photographs as well. So something to keep everyone happy

Thank you to all who have showed their support to me over the past few months. It's been a hard and uncertain time for me. As some of you know I lost my job due to my place of work closing down. So I have focused my efforts on the photography recently and I am enjoying it but it does not produce a stable income.

Checkout our new website [link] Most of it is working some is not. But you can purchase any of my photographs from the site. If the photo you're looking for aint on there then check back again next week. I got loads to upload.

Expect to see some more photographs from my Shifting Light Project series over the next few weeks. Comments are always welcome.

A bit more about my work...

I use digital in all my photography now as it gives the best workflow and I shoot in RAW to produce the best quality 16bit tiffs. However I don't like extensive editing and non of my landscapes are done in HDR (merging of photogrpahs to produce a high dynamic range) I try to do it all in camera at the time of taking the photo. I use ND grad filters to bring the contrast from the sky and land down and I use a polarizer to deepen and saturate the colours. I always take my tripod with me where ever I go, even up mountains. Without it I wouldn't be able to use the tilt and shift lens I use nor get the long exposures that I have become used to using.

I really love technique done in camera out in the field. Im not someone who spends hours touching up photographs, however I do clone and stamp dust out of the images and I often increase the contrast and or brightness to just give me the result I want. Recently for my landscapes I have been using a tilt and shift lens exclusively because I am able to create true panaramic photographs and generally super high resolution images up to 30 mega pixels.

With tilt and shift lenses I am able to shift the lens from left to right in 3 stages to give me 3 different angles of view without moving the camera and without changing the perspective. This means that I can stitch them together perfectly without having to do any correction in photoshop and therefor giving me a complete, natural, panaramic image. The tilt function enable me to give an almost infinate depth of focusing by changing the plane of focus to a wedge shape getting larger as the distance increases from the camera. Normal lenses will have a parallel focus plane to the camera and therefor even at the smallest apature they wont give everything in focus. see Stormy Times Ahead as an example of a tilt focusing and a vertical shift stitch.

I am going to be entering a competition at some point in the next few weeks and I was wanting peoples views on which photo I should submit.

The competition is focusing of the best view that either best describes or shows off the lake district.

With this in mind I have created a poll for people to vote on what they think is their favourite photo that fits this description.

The photos I have chosen are as follows so please vote in the poll.

You can vote by going to this link [link]

Stormy Times Ahead
Ashness Bridge Down Stream
Walking in Pools of Light
Above the Force
Light in the Valley
Light of the World
Fell View - Borrowdale
When I Look Out to the Waters
Scales Force - Lower
The Newlands Valley

Vote by going to this link
[link]



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