A fear of white....

[szekiat]

I don't know if anyone else suffers from this but i have a profound and unfounded fear of white skies in my pictures. I always find myself tweaking levels and curves to bring out just that bit of detail in the sky, which is especially hard here in england where everyday is an overcast day. This often results in photos with very low contrast or overexposed shadow regions. I know filters are an option but its not always easy on a wideangle. I'm just about coping with it in B/W at the moment but have yet to see good examples of white skies in color shots.

Does anyone else share this fear and how do u overcome it?

 

[matko]

I do... Empty sky horrifies me.

 

[sebastel]

i do not share the fear, but i see what you mean. i do not like this either, but to a certain degree there is not a lot you can do about it.

so, these are my ideas to conquer the white sky:

- take pictures where the sky is not a dominating part
- if you want to take pictures of the sky, do it in colour, or wait for clouds
- if neither of these approaches helps, burning is the way to go (probably)
- if you fear white sky more than fake pictures - copy the sky from another shot into your picture (especially "easy" with digital image processing)

hope it helps ...

cheers
sebastian

 

[Spider67]

fear of emptiness= horror vacui does not help that much with the photos but at least the feeling has a name.
Intersting seems to have been a common phenomenon in the 30-50´s as many cameras I bought from that tim came with yellow filters

 

[sebastel]

sorry, but ... the term and the related philosophy is too interesting to leave this mistake uncorrected.

"horror vacui" refers to the (technical) problem to create really empty space. in the time the term was dropped, it was believed to be a nature's or divine law not allowing empty space ("god does not allow the void"), where it now appears to be a problem of technical nature (imperfect sealing) as well as a problem understanding what "vacuum" actually is. even today, the "absolute empty" is impossible to create, though you may count the remaining particles per cubic mile ...

"horror vacui" is/was the philosophical concept that lead to the idea that space, unless used by something else, is filled with the "divine ether".

at the same time, it's a very interesting point to compare the philosophical "horror vacui" to the aesthetical problem of empty skies in B&W photography.

regards,
sebastian

 

[Roger Hicks]

i do not share the fear, but i see what you mean. i do not like this either, but to a certain degree there is not a lot you can do about it.

so, these are my ideas to conquer the white sky:

- take pictures where the sky is not a dominating part
- if you want to take pictures of the sky, do it in colour, or wait for clouds
- if neither of these approaches helps, burning is the way to go (probably)
- if you fear white sky more than fake pictures - copy the sky from another shot into your picture (especially "easy" with digital image processing)

hope it helps ...

cheers
sebastian

Dear Sebastian,

A masterly summary, omitting only the point that leaving a mid-yellow filter on the lens at all times will often 'bring up' clouds that would require afterwork in an unfiltered shot.

I've also found that very heavy grain sometimes works well to break up what used to be called a 'bald' sky.

Cheers,

Roger

 

[sebastel]

oops ..

hi roger,
forgetting yellow or orange filters is a major mistake - especially since i'm an old-time B&W fan and well used to lugging filters around ...

🙂

sorry world, thank you roger.

cheers
s.

 

[ampguy]

this sky was white

this sky was white

used a bit of fill in picasa to keep the TA bldg white, with grad tint of light blue filter for some blue in the sky, photo was taken with an M6 with Fuji 400 film, and the lux 75/1.4.

I don't know if anyone else suffers from this but i have a profound and unfounded fear of white skies in my pictures. I always find myself tweaking levels and curves to bring out just that bit of detail in the sky, which is especially hard here in england where everyday is an overcast day. This often results in photos with very low contrast or overexposed shadow regions. I know filters are an option but its not always easy on a wideangle. I'm just about coping with it in B/W at the moment but have yet to see good examples of white skies in color shots.

Does anyone else share this fear and how do u overcome it?

 

[BillP]

I'm a yellow filter fan myself. I have enough for about half of my lenses, and swap them around as needed. Since my Barnacks are dedicated to b&w I have yet to have a colour film "oops" moment.

Here's a delicate eggshell-blue English sky "lifted" by a yellow filter:

...and here is a Portuguese Summer sky that needed no filtration:

The lens in the first was a 50mm DR Summicron, and in the second a VC 35mm Pancake I.

Regards,

Bill

 

[Chris101]

A 25 or 29 filter will banish bald skies forever, and I like the look of that.

But I love white in paintings and in photographs. So much so, that I will put it there, evenif the subject matter did not bring it for itself.

 

[williams473]

I don't know if you are working in a darkroom or not, but if so, look in to "flashing" your paper. This is a neat little trick to bring a little detail or the slightest hint of tone into a plain sky. Look at the negative, too - if you didn't shoot a fairly featureless sky with a filter, there may not be anything to bring in, but you can still get your sky to be slightly darker than paper white by flashing.

If you want unnaturally dark skies, go all the way and shoot with a red filter.

 

[gns]

Isn't this a problem of the past with the old Ortho (blue sensitive) films?
Some learned to embrace it. Others tried to avoid it by burning in clouds or whatever from another image.
At any rate, it's just an aesthetic choice. No rules or right/wrong.

Here's an Atget...

 

[charjohncarter]

I don't like overcast skies either. We don't have many here in this part of California, but then again we don't have clouds either which is pretty boring. John Sexton, who lives in the Monterey-Carmel area, where they have plenty of overcast especially during the best shooting times, just doesn't include sky. I don't know if he does this on purpose, but that is one way of avoiding the problem. There are two on his newsletter.

http://www.johnsexton.com/sextonnewsletter.html

 

[Nh3]

You need matrix metering. 😉

 

[hlockwood]

I'm a yellow filter fan myself. I have enough for about half of my lenses, and swap them around as needed. Since my Barnacks are dedicated to b&w I have yet to have a colour film "oops" moment.

Here's a delicate eggshell-blue English sky "lifted" by a yellow filter:



...and here is a Portuguese Summer sky that needed no filtration:



The lens in the first was a 50mm DR Summicron, and in the second a VC 35mm Pancake I.

Regards,

Bill

Absolutely gorgeous shots, Biil.

Harry

 

[hlockwood]

I don't know if you are working in a darkroom or not, but if so, look in to "flashing" your paper. This is a neat little trick to bring a little detail or the slightest hint of tone into a plain sky. Look at the negative, too - if you didn't shoot a fairly featureless sky with a filter, there may not be anything to bring in, but you can still get your sky to be slightly darker than paper white by flashing.

If you want unnaturally dark skies, go all the way and shoot with a red filter.

I've done the digital darkroom equivalent. For a "paper white" sky one can add, in PS, a difference layer after selecting the sky. At 100% blend, the sky will be black. Backing off to about 1% brings the sky just a shade up from white. Cheating? Yes. But I'm not an absolute purist.

Harry

 

[williams473]

That's not cheating Harry - that sounds like a good method! I might give that a try this weekend. I'm much better in the darkroom than on Photoshop, but it seems to me the way to get scanned film to approach the quality of a conventional print is usually associated with utlizing layers in some way. Thanks.

 

[JoeV]

Paper Negative Image from Pinhole Camera

Paper Negative Image from Pinhole Camera

I not only shoot SLRs and rangefinders, but spend a lot of my photographic time with paper negatives (i.e. orthochromatic, or even actinic - blue only) in pinhole cameras. I post a lot to F295. Just this last Sunday I took a daytrip to the Sandstone Overlook in the El Malpais National Monument of western New Mexico. All of the images that included sky had that washed out, ortho look, but I'm okay with it, as it reminds me of the early photography work done in the American west by folks like Carlton Watkins. The visitor center at the Ranger's Station in the El Malpais has a display of reproductions from 19th century ortho plate photographs of the area; all of these landscape images have that ortho, washed out sky appearance. And the brown skin tones of the indigenous peoples appear even darker as a result of the ortho tonal response.

The box camera used to make this image is of a wide angle variety, giving some light falloff in the corners of what would otherwise be a very nondescript sky. And because it's such a short projection length, I try to have something in the immediate foreground be a dominant part of the composition; thus, the sky becomes secondary to the overall image.

Here's an example:
F275, 7.5"x9.5" format preflashed grade 2 paper negative, exposure around 25 seconds.

Joe

PS: Here's the link to the thread on F295 that includes more images from this series.