People often ask me what goes into making my photographs.  Okay, nobody asks me that.  But, sometimes, I really want to tell somebody!  So, I’m starting a series of articles called “Making Pictures” to explain some of it.  Each article will cover one picture and will explain everything relevant from researching the location to the final processing.

This is the first such article called “Making Pictures – Ganivelles.”  According to my exhaustive research on the internet, ganivelle is a local French word for wooden posts in the sand that are placed to prevent erosion.  This particular beach outside of Calais, France has miles and miles of them, but most of them are looking pretty decrepit like these.  That’s perfect for a picture.

My wife actually found this nice location.  We took a family trip there one weekend, but I didn't get a chance to shoot these posts.  So, I took my friend back there for a day trip a couple of months later. 

I was actually on my way back to the car, frustrated at losing the golden hour to a cloud front, when the clouds broke and some afterglow poked through.  I started searching among the posts for something interesting.  I noticed this series and the broken repetition in the posts, the nice texture of the sand, and the color in the sky and started looking for a good way to capture it.  Silhouette with the colored sky in the background is a clear option.  First shot was at 28mm (just barely short of standard on an APS-C camera).

Decent, but the rocks on the bottom left don’t add anything, so they need to go.  I have some nice orange in the sky, but it would be more impressive if I could contrast it against a deep blue.  Also, I can make the posts more dramatic by getting closer and going with an ultra-wide angle – altering the perspective of the shot and emphasizing the recession of the posts into the background.  That idea gives the following – all shot at with my 11-18mm:

On the last one, I was putting the first post on the left third of the frame.  Placing significant elements on the 1/3 lines is always a good thing to try, but this picture shows that sometimes the “rules” need to be broken or bent.  Or, probably more accurately, one rule trumps another.  In this case, it left too much dead space at the left of the picture.

The other two a pretty similar to each other, but the second has a couple of minor advantages.  There is the boat (that you may not have noticed until now) on the horizon at the end of the row of posts.  Nice little interesting detail that could keep somebody interested in the picture a bit longer.  Also, the clouds are more interesting.  You’d be surprised at how many pictures are kept or discarded because of clouds.

So, that picture is the starting point for the editing job.  You are probably unimpressed because the colors and the contrast are pretty weak.  Are you disappointed?  When you compare the final product with the "original" picture, are you tempted to call me a cheater, or a fake?  Well, you should know that I do almost no pre-shot editing.  I rarely use any filter other than a polarizer and I don’t adjust the color temperature, contrast, or saturation for each shot.  Some people say you should try to get your pictures as close to a finished product as possible in the camera.  I disagree.  I delay every decision I possibly can until the post-production phase.  I shoot in RAW so that I am afforded that luxury.  I could have had the initial capture much more respectable by fiddling with the in-camera settings and adding a filter or two.  But, I’m terrible at snap decisions, so I leave those adjustments for later.

If I was going for a final product in-camera, here’s what I would have done:

- Color temperature adjustment (or warming filter) to compensate for blue sky-light and to punch up the sunset.

- High contrast and saturation setting (or slide film)

- 1 or 2-stop colored split neutral-density graduated filter to darken the sky and warm up the beach even more.

This is what that would have yielded:

But, because we have such nice digital cameras, and we can do most of the manipulation in Photoshop, we can do better than that.

The first thing I do when I get to the computer is to break the picture down into zones that will require distinct treatment.  If there are more than 3 or 4 zones, it usually means the picture is too cluttered.  In this case, there are three zones: the sky, the posts, and the beach.

Pick a zone and start working.  I toyed with the idea of bringing out detail in the posts, but it didn’t add anything to the picture, and I run the risk of it looking unnatural because this is such an obvious silhouette shot.  So, I’ll start with the sky.

In my raw editing software, I reduce the exposure (the sky is a bit overexposed) by about a half stop, increase saturation, increase contrast, and adjust the color temperature to a warmer hue.  That gives the following:

Notice that the sky just above the horizon is orange, the clouds streaking away from it are orange-pink, and the rest is blue.  In this picture, you need to pay close attention to your color temperature before the raw conversion.  It would be easy to lose that balance.

It still needs more work – more contrast and more saturation.  A great way to achieve that in Photoshop is with layer blends.  I duplicate the same image on a new layer and scroll through the blending options to see what I get.  “Multiply” usually works great for the sky because it increases contrast and saturation and darkens the mid-tones all at the same time.  With just the two layers and the blend mode set to “Multiply,” this is what I get:

This is good, but the method still usually requires tweaking, and there are several ways you can do that.  In this case though, I like the effect in the darker areas, but find it a bit too strong in the light areas.  So, I adjust the curves of the top layer – bringing the brighter areas up, and keeping the dark areas down.

I could have accomplished something similar with even more local control making a mask on the upper layer and selectively eliminating or toning down the effect in some areas.  Or, if the effect is generally too strong, it can be reduced by bringing down the opacity of the top layer.

I would like just a bit more saturation in the orange, but to leave the blues where they are.  This is done, again, with layers.  Copy the image, adjust the saturation up on the top layer, and then mask out the blue sky and clouds too keep them from going too far.

Now to the ground.  In the raw editing program, adjust to an even warmer color temperature, increase the exposure by about a half stop over nominal (full stop over the exposure for the sky), and bring the contrast and saturation way up.

Again, in Photoshop, use a duplicate layer and a different blend mode to increase the contrast and saturation even more.  The “Soft light” blending mode lightens the lights and darkens the darks.  We’ll give that one a try.

Pretty good, but too dark.  So, I use a curves adjustment to lighten the top layer up before flattening.  Then, increase the saturation and the ground is ready:

Finally, merge the sky and the ground using…you guessed it…layers and a mask, apply some sharpening, and voila!

I think I covered the concepts pretty well, but I glossed over the technical details.  If you have any questions or comments, send me an email.

For a larger version if this picture, and other photos from the same area, visit my "Calais" gallery.