Shutter-life|Adaptive photography and more, by Henrik Johansson

House of Payne, originally uploaded by henrikj.

One of the things that I enjoy the most when I post-process images is that I’ll might not know what I’ll end up with. Of course, for most images, I know what I want to achieve but for some images I just like to play around in Lightroom. I got a quite large collection of presets and I just let the cursor move over them and while I look at the small preview window. For the vast majority of the presets, the result is awful but once in a while get some really interesting results that makes an excellent basis for further post-processing.

This is one of those images, an ordinary view from a hotel window in Atlanta that was transformed into something completely different.

Hard to reach, originally uploaded by henrikj.

My phone rang during dinner yesterday. As soon as I picked up the call, my friend, the professional architecture photographer said:

- I’m going out shooting. You want to join me?
- When, where? I’m having dinner right now.
- It’s a secret. I’m picking you up in half an hour.
- Ok.

Thirty minutes later, we’re heading out in his car. To be honest, I’m quite impressed with myself since I’ve both managed to gather all of my essential night shooting gear and to put on a couple of extra layers of clothing.

I’m expecting that we’re either heading out in the nature or to some for me unknown overlook. I’m completely wrong. We’re going to the new roundabout that the city just finished building.

I’ve passed the roundabout just a week before, but I only noticed a few stones. Now, the stones are lit by brightly colored lamps and there’s a fountain playing in the middle. And the moon is almost full.

In the photo below, I positioned the moon at the top of the fountain.

ISO100, 28 mm, f/10, 30s.

This May, I got the opportunity to visit Grand Teton National Park during a couple of days. The Teton Range is very impressive and I had really looked forward to photograph them. Unfortunately, we had bad luck with the weather. When it didn’t rain, the sky was usually covered with an uninspiring clouds.

We visited allthe usual places, including the Snake River Overlook made famous by Ansel Adams’ iconic shot “Tetons and the Snake River”. I made a number of shots at this classic location, but the bad light and the clouds resulted in a lot of rather photos.

Fast forward to the post-processing a few days ago. Although I thought it impossible to achieve something possible to show people,I opened up one of the shots and started playing in Lightroom. The light and the clouds made the choice to go black and white very easy. I more or less randomly started to change parameters since I didn’t know where to start working. Somehow I found that a very cold color temperature worked well for this shot, especially for the foreground. However, the clouds were to bright and contained very little detail. The same held true for the mountains. To remedy this, I used a graduated filter with a hefty negative exposure (1,5 steps) together with a reduction in the brightness. I also made general increase in the blackness and added some contrast. After these changes, a few areas lit by sunshine in mountains where to bright, making it necessary to use both the recovery slider and an adjustment brush to darken them. Finally, I added some fill light to bring out the details in the foreground and some clarity to give the whole image a bit more punch.

In my opinion, the resulting photo is quite good, especially when you consider the unprocessed RAW-file below.

I just want to be free, originally uploaded by henrikj.

The abandoned(?) train tunnel that leads to Point Richmond, opposite San Francisco. I turned this shot into sepia, added a bit of contrast and used fill light to make the initial part of the tunnel a bit lighter.

One minus two, originally uploaded by henrikj.

A biker on a quite steep bike lane. The long lens (approx 300 mm) compressed the scale and make the downhill look even steeper. Using the graduted filter in Lightrrom, I was able to darken the horizon while the exposure at the biker was unchanged.

Floating on rocks, originally uploaded by henrikj.

The Wave in the Vermillion Cliffs National Monument is an amazing area. Last year, we were very luck to win in lottery; each day, only twenty people, out of a couple of hundred, are allowed to visit The Wave.

We got an empire, originally uploaded by henrikj.

This shot is from the entrance to the Red Fort in Delhi, India. I’ve tried to post-process this photo several times without getting a satisfactory result. Today,I finally managed to convey the feeling that I’ve was looking for.

Looking for revenge, originally uploaded by henrikj.

Outside Apollo Bay on Great Ocean Road in Victoria, Australia. The photo is quite old, from 2007, when I bicycled the complete Great Ocean Road on my own.

I wished for something more, originally uploaded by henrikj.

This shot of an abandoned pump house (?) was made in the late afternoon. I used a preset in Lightroomin conjuction with some tweaking of the brightness and the contrast to create the look of a moonlit night shot.