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Rangefinder
Magazine
December 2002
SEEING THE LIGHT...
by Monte Zucker
Sooner or Later!
IT DOESN’T ALWAYS HAVE to be perfect when you first take the picture.
All you need to know is what you can do with it later.
 That’s
what I’ve been finding out these past few days, as I’ve been
reworking some of my recent images. After taking Eddie Tapp’s Photoshop
class for the third time, I’m beginning to catch on to the fact
that one is limited only by one’s imagination and technical know-how.
What you see isn’t necessarily what you CAN get in the end. With
just a few little tricks up one’s sleeve it’s possible to
completely change the mood of a picture in a matter of minutes.
Take, for instance, my latest image, “Never Again!” I actually
had tears in my eyes as I wandered through the Holocaust Memorial in Miami
Beach just a week ago. I had tears in my eyes again when I saw the image
that I had put together a few days later in my cabin aboard the Carnival
ship on which I was working.
The memorial takes your breath away. It evokes emotions that break your
heart. I wanted to capture that somehow with my camera. Strolling through
the grounds I photographed this central piece from several angles, all
against a bright blue sky with puffy white clouds. It was a beautiful
day, but it didn’t help me to convey what I was feeling at that
moment.
The very next day after I took the picture I was on a ship in the Caribbean.
I could tell that the sunset was going to be special. I went back to my
cabin and got my Canon D60. I was there as the sun began to get closer
to the horizon. I photographed the sunset from about 30 minutes beforehand
until it got completely dark. I knew that I might be able to use some
of these cloud formations in some of my old photographs. Eddie Tapp had
shown me how.
When I downloaded them into my computer I saw what I thought might create
an interesting background to the outstretched hand of the memorial.
Procedure
Here’s exacly what I did:
1) In Photoshop I selected the sky by Select>Color Range. I touched
the “picker” to various areas of the sky until I had the entire
sky selected.
2) I then took the image of the sky that I wanted and selected an area
of the sky that I wanted to use. I then copied it in memory.
3) Then, I used Edit>Paste Into and clicked on the original image of
the hand. Photoshop created an extra layer with the new sky replacing
the old.
4) I again selected the entire new sky, then went to Edit>Free Transform,
stretching the sky to fill the proper area.
5) Finally, I went to Image>Adjust>Levels. I brightened the light
tones, darkened the middle tones and the darker tones until I achieved
the dramatic sky you see here.
The original D60 image was in color. I wanted to see if the image would
be stronger in black and white.
1) In Channels I selected the green layer.
2) I went to Image>Mode>Grayscale to get rid of color.
3) I then flattened the image and went back to RGB color mode. That’s
all there is to it.
 I
was so stunned by the impact of that image I decided to try the same technique
with other pictures. The next image I chose to work on was a profile of
my friend, Karl Larson, as he was sitting and fishing during a camping
trip he led in the wilderness in Ely, Minnesota. The sky was a simple
grey. The original portrait looked almost as if he were posed in front
of a neutral grey background. The picture was nice, but it certainly wasn’t
special.
I took the same exact sky as I used in the Holocaust Memorial picture
and adapted it to his portrait, too. What I first had to do was to flip
the sky horizontally, because the light on the clouds and the light on
his face were coming from opposite directions.
I adjusted the tone of the sky in Levels again to achieve a totally different
look. The dramatic area of the sky ended up behind his head, so the end
results are entirely different, even though the same image of the sky
was used. It looked quiet and peaceful here, rather than the stormy, angry
sky in the picture of the outstretched hand.
 Still
excited and still the same night, I pulled out the picture of myself made
at the United Nations building right after I received my award there.
It was another clear day with a pale blue sky behind me. This time when
I selected the sky by the Color Range method, the computer also picked
up area of the picture where I didn’t want new sky. All I had to
do was to cut those parts, leaving only the sky.
It would have been impossible to select the intricate cutouts of the sky
in this and the other pictures had I tried anything other than Select>Color
Range. It amazed me how simple this procedure is.
For this sky I used another selection of sky from the same sunset as above.
This sky was photographed perhaps 15 minutes earlier than the first one—a
totally different sky with a completely different color and effect.
Finally, to complement the naturalness of the warm sky I created a clear
layer over the entire photo. I selected a tone from the bright area of
the new warm sky and selected the mode of the new blank layer to overlay.
I filled that layer with the color from the sky and brought it down to
about 10%. It put a warm filter over the entire photograph, so that everything
matched in color. Incredible!
As you can see from these three images, it’s possible to create
an entirely different image from what you see when you first take a picture.
All you need to do is see the potential and have a range of sky images
to choose from. I’m never without my camera any more. You never
know when another sky formation might loom up in front of you and be the
perfect setting for another picture. Modern technology has opened up my
eyes. My vision is unlimited now!
Internationally acclaimed wedding photographer Monte Zucker is a featured
speaker at WPPI 2003, to be held February 1–6 at BALLY’S
Las Vegas. Incidentally, Eddie Tapp, who is mentioned at the
beginning of this article, is also a featured speaker at WPPI 2003.
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