Photography Bay » Zach

Always Get the Window Seat

Zach — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 10:00:53 +0000

The following post is by Atlanta based photographer and writer Zach Matthews, who explains why it’s worthwhile to photographers to get the window seat when flying. Learn more about him at the end of this post.

Back in 2006, I went on my first assignment as a magazine writer. The Cloudveil company had just come into the fly fishing market (my area of specialty) and American Angler wanted me to cover the event. As the proud owner of a (then) new Nikon D70, I took every opportunity to take pictures, including candids of myself in my new role as a fancy journalist.

As we gained altitude on the Salt Lake City to Jackson, Wyoming leg of our flight, I snapped a shot or two out of the airliner’s window. Your modern airliner, say a Boeing 767, has double-paned window glass. The exterior skin has a thick glass plate, while the interior is a thin piece of Plexiglas, with an inch or two of space between. Generally, the interior pane will be very scratched, possibly distorted by oilslick defects, and in some cases flaking to pieces. That doesn’t mean you can’t take a picture through it, though—just as when shooting through chain link fencing, if your point of focus is far enough out, the glass will blur to a misty gray fog.

Fast forward three years. I received an assignment for an article on Google Earth and how we fishermen can use it to locate remote creeks. The editor and I agreed that a spread intro of a real photo with Google Earth-like graphics would make a commanding opener. The only problem is, you need quite a lot of perspective to make a Google Earth map—even a fake one—make sense. I scrolled back through my archive and kicked up the shot I had made out the airliner window over Salt Lake City.

The shot was a six megapixel vertical image, as you can see. Those of you familiar with print media will know that most magazines are printed at 300dpi and are about seventeen inches across. A vertical six megapixel image can be stretched to cover one page, but not two. Still, I liked the image, so I came up with a solution: I would mirror it and then carve out a lot of white space.

As you can see, the mirrored image looked like a Rorschach ink blot, or maybe the world’s most extreme continental rift. A few swipes of the cloning brush later, with some healing around the edges, and I had a plausible, albeit unusual, landscape.

Next step: touch up the color scheme to remove the blue shift from the window pane. Voila, a halfway decent aerial shot of a mountain!

Now all I needed to do was copy the Google Earth graphical user interface. Google is kind enough to include its placemarks in the program as separate PNG files, so I was able to pull those out and simply enlarge them (PNG files are vector graphics which can be mathematically enlarged without loss). The navigational graphics, unfortunately, would have to be duplicated.

As you can see, while not perfect, they were at least close enough to escape any but close scrutiny; as my dad always used to say, “Good enough for government work.”

Finally, I needed to get back some white space and (and also hide my imperfect cloning). Some careful examination of the Macintosh environment and one pointer arrow later, and I had a workable graphic design.

The magazine’s photo editor wasn’t particularly thrilled with my first attempt, since I’d missed the margins he needed and miscalculated the exact size of the magazine (those guys measure down to at least a sixteenth of an inch). Fortunately, I’d drawn everything in Macromedia’s Fireworks program—the now-disfavored web design interface I was most familiar with. Everything was scalable, so a few simple math problems later, we had our design.

As you can see, it all turned out rather nice. The angry badger, incidentally, was the editor’s suggestion.

For a close up look, pick up a copy of the March/April edition of American Angler magazine, on newsstands now. For the record, I have now used this out-of-the-airliner technique to publish photos in national magazines at least three times, in places as far apart as the Bahamas and Brazil. While these images will never match the quality of a dedicated ultra-light flying photographer, aerial photos are rare enough that they nevertheless are still engaging, and very marketable. Next time you’re flying commercial, be sure to ask for the window seat!

An intro to Zach’s Googling the Backcountry article is found here on AmericanAngler.com.

See more articles from Zach here at Photography Bay:

10 Tips for Breaking into Commercial Magazine Photography

How To: Single-Image HDR

Zach Matthews is the editor of The Itinerant Angler, www.itinerantangler.com. He is a Contributing Writer with American Angler magazine, www.americanangler.com. Along with his wife, Lauren, he has published photos and writing in American Angler, Fly Fisherman, Backpacker, The Drake, and Fish and Fly. He lives and practices law in Atlanta, Georgia.

How To: Single-Image HDR

Zach — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 05:58:20 +0000

The following post on HDR photography is by Atlanta based photographer Zach Matthews. Learn more about him at the end of this post.

Over on The Itinerant Angler forums, we’ve spent some time bad-mouthing HDR, and to some extent that is fair. When HDR is over done, it can result in a jacked up, unnatural image.

However, the fact remains that the human eye can see a lot broader dynamic range (meaning brights and darks) at the same time than a camera can. This is because the human eye can vary its “ISO” or exposure sensitivity locally in just one area rather than only across the whole image. This is what allows you to see the inside of a darkened room as well as the brightly lit world out the window at the same time. A camera could only see one or the other.

We have a number of situations in streamside photography (the area most of us work in – but don’t think this technique is limited to that) where we need a broader dynamic range than the equipment allows. The classic situation is one of side light, where light from beside the subject is lighting it (usually a person casting) beautifully, but the background is dark. At times, this can look unnatural.

Let’s take an example image:

Notice how, while the angler is brightly lit, the darks are all unnaturally dark? I could see into the water just fine as I took this image, of course, but the camera was forced to underexpose the dark areas to avoid blowing out the highlights.

What do we do?

Open the image in Photoshop (CS3 here, but most versions can handle this) and immediately grab the highlighted areas using Select Color Range. In this image, I maxed out the Select Color Range slider to 200 to get a broad array of bright pixels (just use the eyedropper to grab the brightest spot you can). I was careful to set my selection tool to 20px of feathering (top left of the workspace) before I opened Select Color Range so I didn’t get hard lines.

Once I had all the bright areas, I copied them (use Ctrl-C or, on a Mac, Command-C to copy), then I pasted them right back down as a new layer (Ctrl-V/Command-V).

Here’s what the new layer looks like with just a white background:

Weird, huh? What you may notice, though, is that the new layer naturally has a reduced opacity, meaning it is a little bit transparent. That means when you overlay it over the old image, you have a nice even transition between layers instead of hard lines.

Ok, so what if we did lay the new layer over the old? Nothing would be different yet; we haven’t DONE anything to the old layer.

BUT! What if we brightened up the old layer using the Exposure tool? The underlayer here has been brightened by two full stops! Look at the blown out areas!

Not so good, huh? But, that’s really about how bright the water looked to my eyes.

Yet, you’d only see this clipped-out image if you turned the top layer you made off (as I have done for this example). Because we have only brightened the BOTTOM layer using the exposure tool, the top layer has remained the exact same exposure the camera wanted to begin with: the brights aren’t brightened by what we did to the lowlights!

So, here’s what the two layers look like combined:

Now all that is left is to merge the two layers by going to Layer/Flatten Image. Once you have a single JPEG image again, you can do your normal Leveling or Curving to color-correct and sharpen, etc.

Thus, here’s the original image and the final image together:

Or, if you prefer a bigger view, the final image:

See how the process works? Here’s another before/after:

Why didn’t I just use Photoshop’s Merge HDR tool with two identical copies of this image? Because using that tool on a duplicate image seems to fake the program out; Merge HDR left me with an ugly oil slick effect over the subject’s shoulders, where the bright to dark transition was most severe. As an added impetus, the method above takes less than two minutes, while on my 2.2 GHz, 2GB RAM computer, the Merge HDR process was slower.

Thus, as you can see, there is certainly a place for High Dynamic Range techniques in ordinary photography. In both cases, the second images looked far closer to how I perceived the scene as I stood there than the images the camera spat out. This is a situation in which we can use the “magic tools” of Photoshop to re-attain reality when it is seemingly distorted beyond saving by our limited technology.

The real trick to making this technique work effectively is to AVOID OVERDOING IT. The tendency with this degree of control is to try to wring every drop of light out of an image. Shadows are your friends; as the highly-regarded Australian photographer David Anderson says, they give an image depth. So, use the technology, but don’t overspend it on your images.

10 Tips for Breaking into Commercial Magazine Photography

Zach — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 02:11:44 +0000

The following post on commercial magazine photography is by Atlanta based photographer Zach Matthews. Learn more about him at the end of this post.

Every amateur photographer who’s ever flipped through a magazine has shared the same fleeting thought: I could do this. I am this good. And who’s to say that’s wrong? With the advent of digital image-making, cameras have become not just tools to record and describe, but tools that teach. The mean of photographic quality has skyrocketed in recent years, as a casual perusal of Flickr or a photography hobbyists’ board will immediately illustrate. What, then, is holding amateur photographers back? Why aren’t they selling images to magazines and commercial clients? Why aren’t you?

The difference between a working professional and a dedicated amateur is fairly minimal these days, and it has a lot more to do with business decision-making than talent or equipment. A number of important differences jump immediately to mind, however. The way I see it, there are two types of professionals: full time, and everyone else (and by that, I mean you, too). The full-time professional starves his way to the top. Typically a full-time pro goes to photography school, where he learns darkroom techniques, film chemistry, light physics, and the hard, cold reality of living paycheck to paycheck for decades. Most full-time pro photographers share one thing in common: they’re broke. But not all. A sizable population of working professionals make a living at photography, and they do it with the same business acumen necessary to operate as any entrepreneur. They set up a shop, build a client list, hire employees, and above all, they shoot their tails off.

Full-time pros of my acquaintance in the outdoor photography world spend as much as 40 weeks a year in the field. In my business, that’s in far-flung locations, involving international travel, injections, passports, broken gear, and hard deadlines. It isn’t an easy job, and it’s a long climb to the top, but eventually these pros tend to top out and make a respectable living.

There’s only one problem: chances are, this isn’t you. Full-time professional photographers won’t be reading this article; they know the route to success, they are logging their hours as we speak, and they’re aware of the rules of the game. But here’s the question: would you really want to be a full-time pro? What if you could have all the benefits, including international travel (for money), access to the best locations (for money) and the respect and praise of your peers, sometimes even for money, all while keeping your day job? It’s not a bad option, is it?

Breaking into commercial magazine photography is becoming easier every day. The main reason is magazine contraction: as profits are drained inevitably into the swamp of the internet, magazines have had to scramble to cut corners and restrict costs. The primary way they do this is by paying less for the same product, just as in any business. You can take advantage of this. The following are ten not-necessarily-exclusive tips to help you break the ice:

1) Become an expert on something.

My expertise is fly fishing. It’s paid off handsomely. I didn’t get my start in professional photography by taking pictures; I got it by writing articles, on the internet, about fly fishing, my passion. One of the symptoms of magazine contraction is that many small-market players now search for contributors who can both take pictures and write. That way, the magazine only cuts one paycheck (and we do twice the work). My writing editor was the first person to suggest that I ought to purchase a digital SLR camera, which were just then overtaking the photo sections of every major outdoor magazine (with the exception of specialty outfits like Arizona Highways). And that leads to the second point:

2) Learn to express yourself, preferably in writing.

If you can’t do writing, however, then learn to express yourself visually. There are only two roads to getting that editor’s attention the very first time: you either impress him with the practicality of hiring you to perform a given task, or you blow him away with your sheer talent. Some amateurs are good enough to stun even a seasoned photo editor. But the first question the editor will ask himself is: can he or she do this on a deadline, for what I’m willing to pay?

3) Be willing to sacrifice artistic integrity to get the image that will work now.

Many amateurs are unused to the pressures of needing an image by tomorrow. Commercial magazine photography isn’t the daily news, but cycles are still fast. When a photo call goes out, the editor isn’t going to be sympathetic to the photographer who snaps off a quick email promising to get to it by next week. By then, that door of opportunity will have closed.

4) Begin building an archive.

The best and easiest way to satisfy a photo editor and get your first publication is to be able to immediately provide him with a host of on-topic choices. Don’t waste the editor’s time with images that don’t meet the call guidelines. Don’t try to impress him with how good you are at something other than what he needs. Give him the goods, and step back. If he doesn’t bite on the first call, wait for the next one, and keep building that archive.

5) Know what the editor will want before he does.

Magazines are cyclical. Every magazine has a flavor of image that it runs over and over. Sometimes the flavor has to do with composition (in fishing, the technique du jour is always the “grip and grin”). Sometimes it’s lighting, or creative use of flash, or time-delays, or, as one of my commercial clients always reiterates, “beautiful people doing beautiful things.” So study the magazine; look at the archives online or in your local library. Know your prey.

6) Get noticed.

The best way to make an editor come calling is to participate in the things the editors participate in. In small-market work, be it fishing or kayaking, home repair or gardening, kite-flying, mailbox painting, whatever, the editor of the magazine is always an enthusiastic participant. He or she didn’t get to their current exalted status without putting in the time to learn their area of presumed expertise. So put your work out there in the community you’ve chosen. Build a beautiful website. Participate in online forums, and post your work. Write legibly, even on the internet, even in email. Remember that the internet is nothing more than a giant archive, which your potential clients will use to evaluate you. Submit to photo contests, by all means, but don’t put too much reliance in them. Photo contests reward one superb image. Photo editors reward consistently acceptable images.

7) Be acceptable.

Images in magazines are frequently unspectacular. But they are very rarely over- or under-exposed, out of focus, grainy, noisy, poorly composed, or shot no more recently than 1972. All of your images may eventually find a home in someone’s publication, so take the time to make each one count. The difference between a throwaway snapshot and a publishable image is usually exactly two seconds of reflection prior to depressing the trigger.

8) Use realistic equipment.

You don’t need a $5,000 warhorse to build an image archive you might use to sell 10 photos a year. But you do need a bare minimum. Most magazines publish in 270 dpi (300 dpi for artistic or glossy publications). At 270 dpi, a ten megapixel camera can make an acceptable two page (or “double-truck”) image in horizontal orientation. A six megapixel camera can handle one full page vertically. Those are the baselines. If you can afford ten megapixels, get them. If you can’t, don’t sweat it; they’ll be affordable any day now. Do not waste editors’ time with images made on a two megapixel point and shoot camera (publication of images like that effectively ceased three years ago). Don’t waste their time with ancient slides, unless you were especially good at slide photography.

9) Be professional.

When you do get that first email or phone call, avoid trying to act like a big shot. You’re a rookie. The editor knows that. He knows you’d probably work for free this time. But he’s going to pay you anyway, just to keep you interested. Don’t demand to know how much you’ll get paid. Publication is what you want; payment is irrelevant for now. Don’t hassle him about when you’ll get paid, either. Don’t request any form of editorial control whatsoever (this rule goes out the window if either you or your spouse will be taking any clothes off in the image in question, in which case, I can no longer help you). Be flexible, non-histrionic, reasonable, and reliable.

10) Never miss a deadline.

Missing deadlines causes editors to have to go pay other photographers a premium for things you were supposed to cover under the budget they already laid out. By missing a deadline, you are screwing up your editor’s entire world. He will get yelled at by his boss. The magazine will lose money. The publication will have to rush and settle for second best. You will never be hired again.

Commercial magazine photography isn’t an arcane club requiring secret handshakes and credentials from high-end art schools. Mostly, it’s a you-scratch-my-back, I’ll-scratch-yours kind of arrangement, with working pros helping each other out and giving boosts when the opportunity arises. Having a good professional reputation in a narrowly-targeted field is the quickest way to publication and pro status. That, and getting your work in front of the people who will eventually be buying it. And when that day comes, you’ll know that you, in fact, with your kids and your day job and your hobbyist’s keen interest, were the one who did it right.