Joel Tjintjelaar

It’s no secret that I love long exposures. However, I already declared and explained my love for long exposure photography in another article. This article isn’t about why I make long exposures, it’s about the filters I use to make the long exposure.

Joel Tjintjelaar

In part 1 of this series I discussed when and why you can or should use the HDR techniques in your photography. In this final part I will discuss how you can use HDR specifically for B&W.

Bringing up the structure

HDR really brings up the structure of objects, especially objects like wood or rocks. It actually depends on how

Joel Tjintjelaar

HDR, what is it?

First of all: this article isn’t about how to make HDR pictures. I want to give you a better understanding of what HDR is and when you can and should use it.
So, let’s start.
Imagine you are shooting a landscape on a bright and sunny day with some clouds. You fill the frame with 1/3 of landscape and

Joel Tjintjelaar

People often compliment me on the skies I use in my pictures, usually followed by the question “How did you do that?”

Well, first of all, there are basically two ways to capture a sky:

1. Without the use of a ND filter;
2. With the use of a ND filter.

To make those skies

Joel Tjintjelaar

1. Black and white: not always the way to go

Not everything works well in black and white. Just try to convert a picture of a sunset to B&W. The results are (usually) quite disappointing. We like certain things, just because of its color. Like said sunset. Always consider what you’re aiming for: colors or composition. Keeping this in mind, will eventually improve your pictures.

This picture wouldn’t have Continue reading | 12 Comments

In part 1 of this series, I mainly talked about preparing your image for the conversion. In part 2 I’ll discuss the actually conversion itself.

I’m going to continue with the picture used in part 1.
Step 3: picking your conversion tool

As you may know by now, there are many tools that can convert your image to black and white. I already discussed some of these tools elsewhere on this site.

Basically you want much control over the conversion, but you don’t want it to be too complicated to handle. I myself use the great little program called Silver Efex Pro. This program gives me so much control over an image and there are so many presets to choose from. However…this program might be a little too much for beginners. It’s a complicated program and it isn’t free either. You can however download the 15 day trial from Nik Software’s website. Continue reading | 7 Comments

Joel Tjintjelaar

There is a great deal of people out there who love black and white images. Many of them want to try out digital black and white photography, but just don’t know where and how to start. This tutorial is for those people.

Step 1: shooting in RAW or in the highest quality possible

First things first. If you want to get the

Joel Tjintjelaar

In part 1 of this series I explained how you can get spectacular black and white skies by using some specific techniques in Photoshop. Part 2 of this series is more about the in-camera possibilities and conditions than about Photoshop.

The setup

First of all, you’ll need the following:

1. A camera that has the option

Joel Tjintjelaar

Making a soft and silky sea as in the picture above isn’t that hard, it pretty much comes down to having the right equipment and being at the right place at the right time.

Equipment

First of all: you’ll need some essential equipment.

• Camera with the option “bulb”. You most probably are going to use shutter speeds over

Joel Tjintjelaar

As I explained in a previous article, there are quite some ways to convert images to black and white with Photoshop. Today I’m going to talk about two conversions that DO work and give you much more control and much better results than Desaturation and Grayscale.

First things first

Before I convert an image to black and white, I always make sure