Of course, it’s personal preferences and artist’s vision either to retain the most original colour, or to edit the colour, and we would say that should be depends on the individual photograph idea. Remember, there’s no rules but only principle in arts.

We are in a wonderful digital age, digital darkroom allowed us to explore beyond imagination from the past, take this advantage and break your vision boundary.

The photograph dance with its colour, paint it with jazz, blues, classical or even rock, metal… we give it life when dress it with the right tone, forget about the skin colour, white balance, blue sky. Our vision is far more important than make it realistic (unless we are taking a documentary footage, but even sometime, realistic is an impression that need an alteration to project to the audience).

Take the Shot

I was walking down the tunnel, and didn’t have much idea as I’ve been travel passed there hundreds of times. I had the camera with me and these two brother were running up and down with their little roller scooter. I put on the wide angle lens and stood at one end of the entrance, waiting for the right moment. I got this shot before both of them get bored of this place and the elder brother just call it off while the younger brother starring back. The younger brother later ride on the roller scooter and follow his brother.

Post Processing

It will be a boring shot if I would just bring out the real world colour. The zooming rings in the tunnel are just right for “futuristic” colour, pushing the colour with greenish tint visualise that atmosphere. It’s rather a bit extreme colouring in this image and the contrast has been enhanced to make the green more “crispy”.

Overall I’m happy with the output and I have gave it an unique life.

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Often, we look for the scene but instead of most the time we could wait for the scene. Wait for the moment when all the element come into the frame and we make the picture. If we ask any nature photographer they would tell it’s the patient that made their photograph.

It happen the same thing on street photography, we look at the corner that trigger our creativity and we wait for our moment to make it our own picture.

Take the Shot

It was a raining day when I walked on the 信義區 overhead bridge from 新光三越 to 誠品店, and when I looked down, the wet floor made the zebra crossing line contrast out, I know it’s something I would like to compose it in my picture. I also knew there’s a pedestrian traffic light right under where I stand, it means there will be people crossing and raining day means they will all carry umbrella. I had the vision.

I also wanted to show the motion of busy crossing people that contrast out with the static traffic line so I step down the shutter to 1/15, then I wait for the moment. I spend 15 minutes there, taking numerous shots of people crossing while the traffic light turns green, with different formation, color of umbrella, etc.

This was the closest to what I picture in my mind, though it’s not perfect but it’s closest (and I have to leave the place, my camera is now all wet and the rains is getting heavy).

Post Processing

I cropped the image to 16:9 ratio (one of my favourite) and edit the colour with Adobe Lightroom. I’ve turn down the saturation to give it moody raining day, however the red and green has been bring back up for the umbrella. A slight green/blue hue over the entire picture is just my own preferences.

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You could download this photo’s preset here.

The 2 long hair ladies on the different world, inside the train with warm lighting, moving and quiet (atmosphere) versus the cold, station and noisy on the platform. The contrast split the picture half in between.

Contrast is very much like a conversation in the picture, they respond to each other, back and forth, create flow and atmosphere. Once the contrast is in place, the composition need to take place for it to express. We could have the left-right, top-bottom, diagonal or outside-inside (within).

Take the Shot

I was in the train and camera is always ready. I was taking a few shots on the different train station along the train journey and my camera is on Aperture Priority mode. I left the camera on and the train stop by this station where there isn’t much people. From my viewfinder I first saw the outside lady sitting lonely and I want to take a shot of her. At the same time I saw another lady in the train on my left eye (my focus eye is always my right eye and I have a habit to occasionally open up both eye before I push the shutter button to see if I missed out anything, the habit pays off).

I quickly re-composed the picture to have both of them include in the frame, at the same time step down the aperture to f8. I’ve got my shot.

Post Processing

The lighting was rather flat straight out from the camera, I push the colour to make the contrast of cold/warm more obvious, other than that, it will be the color adjustment of my own preferences.

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We could use a ruler and a pencil to draw a nice architecture drawing or used the paint brush to paint the beauty of the dancer under the sunset. But we won’t use the ruler for sketching the dancer or use the paint brush to draw the architecture drawing, will we?

Of course I for one strongly believe in basic and foundation, that’s the knowledge for us to understand our tools and they are all correlated, especially photography where it’s a perfect mixture of science and art. So, once we understand all these, it will be time for us to explore the limitation, break the rules and create arts.

Too often, we get the comments from rules & technology guardian who concern only the exposure, sharpness, bokeh, depth-of-field, one-third rules, noise, composition, corrected color, etc. These rules guide us but shouldn’t rules us. But of course, there’s always the visual principal that we can’t break away from: Balance, Consistency, Hierarchy, Proportion, etc. And also the context of the message, the motive, the interaction, the vision. Thus the basic knowledge of the arts is far more important and it takes us forever to study, compare to the effortless guidelines (rules).

Shutter, one of the primary component of photograph taken, need our full attention to use it well. We know its function very clearly, it control the time of the image exposed on our censor/film, corresponded with the aperture to capture the amount of light for the exposure we wanted. And the faster shutter, the better it freeze the moment.

Thus, rules guardian start creates guides, sport > fast action > high speed > sharper image, then dark time > need more light > slow shutter > tripod, then water/light trail > continuous flow > slow speed > tripod, the list goes on. These are not wrong, in fact they are all good guide, only when it fall into our vision.

The more you understand what shutter can do to the image, then you can control your image.

Take the Shot

I wanted an image with dynamic motion of pedestrian, to show the fast pace of city (it works well to delivery the sense of movement to the audience). The swinging direction give it more interesting visual movement so the visual track of the viewer will go back and forth within the frame.

I used a shutter priority mode and 1/15 speed was chosen, it’s slow enough for me to move my camera around while the shutter is open. To give a nice “blur”, swing the camera before pressing the shutter release and continue swinging after the shutter close.

Total of 3 shot was taken and this is the closest to what I visualised in my mind.

Post Processing

I used Adobe Lightroom for the post processing, colour has been enhanced and I pushed the contrast to a higher level to give a more “graphical” look.

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I love natural light, especially in the late morning or early evening, while the sun light’s travel through the atmosphere at the angle that the colour temperature are slight warmer but not too warm. The direct light washout most part of your picture, the contrast are filter off from the light mist, it gave me the different visual harmony that light is almost comes to life within the frame.

Of course, it does the same to the generated light source, creative is on me.

Take the Shot

Thanks to the amazing improvement on digital censor, we wouldn’t able to do this 3 years ago when the problem of fringe is everywhere, and also the increasingly improvement of the dynamic range allow the tone of light expand to its maximum.

I would use wider aperture to avoid possible of capture the light ray, that’s not something I want but it’s your own preferences. In order for optimising the capability of the censor of your camera, RAW is the only format that you should be considered. Manual mode will work better for these work as the light is changing fast but you don’t want to be distracted. I would also tune the exposure +1EV~+2EV to make sure I had all the latitude of the details as I know the camera metering would be fooled by the light source. (Why should you over exposed in digital photography)

Get the best filter you can afford, if you are using one. In my own experience, only the best would avoid any reflection when in this extreme light condition (Hoya is consider bad, whatever cheaper than it or at it’s price range, don’t use). If that’s what you have, just take off the filter.

I would also carefully find the right angle while composing the frame, I would decide how much light I want it to fall. The front object is the key to bring out the best of characteristic. It works best on model portrait too.

I may need fill in flash or reflector for the front object, depending on the situation.

Post Processing

Post processing is as important as taking the shot (another topic to be discussed). I used Adobe Lightroom for all my digital work. For this, I fine tune the colour temperature, further adjust the exposure and brightness, define the colour mode of my liking via Split Toning.

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You could download this photo’s preset here.

Impression of Hokkaido

Impression of Hokkaido I, 1500mm x 500mm, Limited Print Edition 1/5

The theme of my exhibit work is Impression of Hokkaido, which is showcasing the montages work of Hokkaido. The inspiration came from the Chinese painting where the scene is the result of artist’s impression with personal interpret of feeling. It allowed me to show how I see the place. I always wanted to work on body of work that move beyond the border of camera frame, it has to be presented to viewer with the vision. This give me a great opportunity to explore the alternative way of how we could see the photography work (whether or not you accept it as one). To push it further, the body of work is printed on Hahnemühle Fine Art Rice Paper to enhanced its characteristic.

I must thank the gallery for accepting the controversial work (in fact it’s Gwen of the gallery that encourage me to have this done). The concept has been well received during the exhibition.

Sakura Triptych

Sakura Triptych I / II / III, 350mm x 700mm, Limited Print Edition 1/5

If you are interested on the print work, click here.

And living truly is showing the respect.
不需喧哗，坦诚活着就是。

I always wanted to improve the very raw version of 0.1 but not until recently. So now I give you the ALPreset ver 1.0. The version fine-tuned to make better natural color, especially better control of the highlight and shadow clipping. If you happens to own a copy of ver 0.1, do consider “upgrade” to this version (replace).

I also added a new B&W preset that carry warm tone which I used it most of the time. I hope you will enjoy this version and helps you of the post-processing.

Original photo:

With ALPreset:

BW #1	Cross Processing: Argentina
Cross Processing: Ocean	Cross Processing: Papaya
Soft: Dreamy	Soft: Romance

Download ALPreset 1.0

TIPS: You should compensate the exposure and brightness value according to the condition of the photo

There’s a trick that I’ve learned sometime back on the internet (can’t recall the website) show how the Color Match in Photoshop can be useful to tweak your photo to match with famous art work. I have trial and find it really useful. It really change the photo characteristic and sometime it spike my creativity and bring the photo back to life or give it another level of altitude.

What it does is to bring the color theme from the art painting and match with your photo, that change the mood of the photo dramatically. For example:

The original photo:

Color match with painting of Eugène Delacroix – La liberté guidant le peuple

Color match with painting of Leonardo da Vinci – Mona Lisa

Color match with painting of Hokusai – The Great Wave off Kanagawa

As you can see, the photo has show it’s potential at a different level, I could of course using the photoshop to achieve this result via many steps, but the main idea is to take on what the artist has been working hard in their life time on the colour study, and perhaps, from this practice we could learned more from the artist view point of color.

To do this, you first collect a set of art work from various artist that you like, and here is the Photoshop steps:

1. Open the both photos (yours and the art work) in photoshop
2. On your photos, select Image > Adjustments > Match Color
3. In the dialogue box, select the art work from the pull down menu under Source (near the bottom area), and tweak the 3 option in the Image Option, my choice is always start from Luminance: 200%, Color Intensity: 200%, Fade: 25%. You may have your own preferences, which ever that work for you.
4. Click “OK” once you are happy with the result

That all. Simple and yet effective. Of course not every painting sample works fine for every photos, it’s really try and error and open mind for the possibility.