Overlaying Fast and Slow Images (890 words)

We all like that silky effect you get when shooting fast-moving water with a slow shutter speed. It is a very popular effect. But say there are trees or even animals moving in the frame, you would want to keep these sharp.
So in this blog, I will explain how I overcame that issue, I am sure there are other ways of doing this and I am sure many already know and have explained how to do this, but here is my method.

You will obviously need a camera, and its best to use a  tripod, the sturdier the better. Use either a remote shutter or the delay on the camera to help prevent camera shake. You can also use mirror lock-up on DSLR, again to prevent camera shake. If you have an ND (Neutral Density) filter, use it for the long exposure photos. If you don’t have an ND filter, you can up your F-Stop to limit the light getting in, but the ND filter will give better results.

In the photo above, you can see both blurred and sharp water of the waterfall. The trees were also swaying in the wind, but are acceptably sharp, I have also sharpened the rapids in the lower left of the photo.

So, how was this created?
It was created in Photoshop, using Overlays. Many will be very familiar to Overlays for painting in dramatic skies and the likes, but this is a practical use to prevent blurred leaves, etc and maintain the silky look of the water captured with a slow shutter speed.
I am using Photoshop CC and the time of writing is October 2019.

Take a shot of your scene with a fast(ish) shutter speed, I used 1/200th of a second. It should be fast enough to sharply capture the water droplets and any moving items, such as tree branches. Here is the “fast” photo:

As you can see, there is a branch along the top of the photo, it is acceptably sharp at 1/200th of a second. However, the waterfall, nice as it is, does not have the silky motion blur effect.

So without moving the camera, put an ND filter on, I used a 10 stop on this shoot.
Note, that if you were using autofocus, turn it off now and be careful not to knock the focus off.
Now adjust your exposure to have the shutter open longer. Again, if you do not have an ND filter you can get similar results by upping the F-Stop, this closes the aperture and lets less light in, and therefore requiring a longer exposure.

Here is the photo with the longer exposure, a slower shutter speed of 6 seconds:

Whereas we have now achieved the silky waterfall look, but unfortunately that branch along the top has motion blurred also, and most other leaves are not that sharp either.

So this is where Photoshop comes in.

First, do any post-shoot editing in Lightroom as normal, but be sure not to crop or straighten at this point, that can be done on the final image.


Here is the process to sharpen the leaves and in this case part of the water in Photoshop:

• Open the faster shutter speed image in Photoshop.

• Now use the slower shutter speed image as an overlay. File, Place Embedded

Now select to the slower shutter speed image and press “Place”, to load it over the faster image.

• Note, at this point, you can move or adjust the overlay (if you were going to paint in a sky or something), but we will not adjust or move it for this effect.

• You can keep the Blend Mode to Normal and Opacity to 100%, but do play about with these setting to see different effects.

• Now add a Layer Mask to the Overlay by selecting the Overlay Layer and clicking on the Add Layer Mask icon at the bottom.

• Select the Brush Tool

• Zoom in on the area that you want the fast image to show through.

• Set the foreground colour to black. This can be done by selecting the lower left of the colour panel or using the Swatches Tab.

• Adjust the Brush Tool as you wish, but as mentioned, I suggest 100% Opacity to cleanly get rid of any blur.

•  Now just paint over the blurred areas that you wish to have sharper image show through.

• Above is the blurred Overlay image, and below is it partially painted to have the sharper image show through.

• If you unblur a part of the image you didn’t mean to, and you don’t want to undo. You can set the Brush Tool colour to White and paint over the area to undo the blur.

• When finished, save the image which can then be cropped and straightened if required.

The location was Glenariff Forest, County Antrim, Northern Ireland.
To get to the waterfall in the images above, go to Laragh Lodge Restaurant and follow the path around the back and then down to the left. It is a very short walk, but worth exploring the rest of the area, as there are other waterfalls and things of interest on the trails.
Here is a link for Laragh Lodge Restaurant on Google Maps.



Thanks for reading, and I hope you have found this useful.

Manannán Mac Lir 16Dec18 Star Trail (1127 words)

The Story

I checked the weather the night before, while storm Deirdre was still raging outside...

It gave it clear skies from about 6 am, then checked again at midnight and said it would not clear until after sunrise.

I then canceled the 04.30am alarm & thought it would not be worth the drive to the Manannán Mac Lir (Celtic Sea God) Statue at Gortmore Viewpoint, at the top of Binevenagh.

I woke early anyway, as I normally do and had a quick look outside. I could see the stars through the bedroom window, but also some clouds passing by... The anticipation started to rise, I boiled the kettle for the flask, while getting ready. Set the camera settings to what I wanted, filled the flask and packed everything into the car.

As I drove towards Coleraine I could see lots more stars and was getting nerdily excited about the prospect of the photo.

When I reached Binevenagh mountain, I was driving uphill into the darkness of the night (early morning, but night sounds better). The light pollution in the rearview mirror was the only signs of civilisation, even though it was emitting from Castlerock.

When I arrived at Gortmore, I could hardly open the car door against the wind. I grabbed the kit and made my way to the statue through what seemed like ice cold gale force winds (it wasn't, just seemed like it at that ungodly hour). In my keenness to get set up, I had left my gloves and woolly hat in the car.

At the statue, the wind was howling, I tried my best to set up, but my fingers were freezing and could hardly operate the camera and remote timer. Before frostbite and hypothermia set in (it was about 5c and 40mph winds, so I was really only being a drama queen), I set the heavy tripod up, fitted the camera and tried to find Polaris (the north star, it does not move in a star trail). But I couldn't even see the statue of Manannán Mac Lir with the camera, never mind Polaris, and there were just too many stars to pick out the Plough, also known as the Big Dipper as a pointer to Polaris, as you will see in the photo below.
To make things worse, I had left my phone in the car and could not find the plough in the sky to give me a pointer to Polaris, and without the phone, I just had to guess where north was.

So with watery eyes being battered with the cold wind, I pressed the remote timer and rapidly retreated to the car. A hot cuppa and heat on in the car and I was starting to think straight again.
Now I am thinking, should I return to the Manannán Mac Lir and try and do him justice by finding Polaris, but then I remembered how warm I now was (and lazy) and stayed put.

As astronomical twilight approached, I returned to Manannán Mac Lir to recover the kit.

I took a quick photo of the statue head on, just to try and salvage something from the shoot.
I checked it and was happy enough, went back to the car. I didn't even look at the star trail photos until I got home. I really didn't think it would turn out at all...

Then boom, I had got Polaris perfect, and it was right above the Manannán Mac Lir statue.

So to all those that don't believe me when I say, I just press the button and see what comes out, this was the ultimate in shooting blind, and I am absolutely chuffed with the result :)

It probably is not technically a great or even good shot, but the feeling I got when the blended photo was displayed now has me hooked :)

Just need to move to a country with clear skies :) :)

Photos

So many stars, I could not find the Plough or any other star constellations. 

A quick snap, hoping to salvage something from the shoot. 

The blended Star Trail, the setup was near perfect :)

Location

Click on this link to find the statue on Google Maps:

Tips

The statue is situated only 3 miles from Downhill beach, just drive up the Bishops Road which takes you to it.

It is placed at the top of Gortmore Viewing Point, which has great views along the Foyle shoreline, across the Foyle to Donegal's headlands, and along the rugged North Coast.

Well worth a visit, and it is free :)

How it was done - settings, etc.

Star Trails can be created in two ways.

1) A very long exposure, but this can lead to noise as the camera's sensor is on for a long period of time and will create heat.

2) Several shots and blend them together, this is the option I used here.

First off, you will need a tripod. Then I set the camera to mirror up, to help prevent shake when each photo was being taken.

I took these photos using a Canon 1300D, entry-level camera, so had to use a remote timer. I set it to 20-second exposure, 5-second interval and repeat until stopped.

The camera settings were as shown here.

A better camera could handle a higher ISO.

I then imported the RAW files into Lightroom and did a bit of post-editing. Edit one photo and copy the edit values by pressing Ctrl & C, then paste to all other files that will make up the Star Trail by highlighting them and press Ctrl, Shift & V. This was on a Windows PC.

I then used Photoshop to blend the photos and make the Star Trail, and here is how it's done.

1) Load all images into a single stack in Photoshop

File -> Script >- Load Images into Stack from Photoshop

When you browse to select the files – click on the first file, then press shift and click on the last file.
This will select all the files at once.
It may take a while to load all the files?


Select the second to the bottom layer and set the blend mode to Lighten, it reads "Normal" by default. Click the Normal dropdown & select ‘Lighten’
By making sure you are on the Layers Tab

Right Click on the layer name and select ‘Copy Layer Style’

Now select all layers above, Right Click & Select ‘Paste Layer Style’ which is just below the ‘Copy Layer Style’
This should create the star trail, just save as a JPG and you are done.
Also, as mentioned, you can put all the RAW files into Lightroom, batch process them and then save as JPG’s in a new location. Then blend as above.