DIGITAL IMAGES

We had in mind obtaining a photograph of flamingos
flying past the sun setting over the ocean. We wanted the sun to fill the
frame and have the birds fly in low over the water. We soon realised, however,
that such a picture would be next to impossible to shoot. To get a setting
sun to fill the frame would take a very strong telephoto lens. We had a
600 mm lens and a 2x converter which effectively made a 1200 mm lens, but
even this could not make a frame-filling sun. More importantly, the flying
flamingos and the sun would not both be in focus if such magnification
was used. In addition, there was the problem of waiting long enough till
a flock of flamingos would oblige us with their presence at sunset.

We thought of shooting a double exposure, that
is shooting the flamingos and then the setting sun without advancing the
frame in the camera. We had used this technique previously to add a full
moon to a photograph of a Little Owl (see Camera Talk in Arabian Wildlife,
Vol. 1, No. 2, 1994, p17). This technique would not work for our flamingos
in sunset photo, though. If you try to add the sun – or the moon for that
matter – in the same place in the frame as another object the bright light
of the former will burn out and make the additional object effectively
invisible. Instead manipulation of digital images would be the answer.

We first looked through our library of flying
flamingos and sunsets and found two slides that looked suitable. The fact
that the two photos were taken six months and 500 km apart was no problem.
Here are the two original photos:

We handed the two slides in to Kodak and had them
scanned onto a Photo CD. The disk can hold 100 slides and they are stored
automatically in compressed form in five different resolutions. The file
sizes for slides in the five resolutions are 18mb, 4.5mb, 1.13mb, 288kb
and 72 Kb, respectively. A fairly powerful computer with lots of memory
(RAM) is needed to handle files of the biggest size. We have a 120 MHz
Apple PowerMac 9500 with 80 Mb RAM and could easily handle the highest
resolution files. Less will do, but all operations on the photos will take
more time. Alternatively, one can choose to work with a lower resolution
image from the CD. The minimum requirement is probably a 66 MHz computer
with 8 Mb RAM and dual speed CD. It is possible to have the slides scanned
in at an even higher resolution on a Pro-CD. Here the file of the highest
resolution will take up 72mb per slide! This is quite expensive and not
really necessary for us amateurs.

The software that everybody seems to be using
is Adobe Photoshop. We have version 3.0 speeded up for the PowerMac. One
can, of course, have a professional do all the operations, but that would
be expensive and take away all the fun. We have never had any courses in
computers or in the use of Adobe Photoshop. We were able to do the manipulations
for our target picture after just two or three tutorials that were built
into the software package.

We first worked on the sunset picture. To begin
with the picture was straightened up by rotating it 2 degrees counterclockwise.
Then is was cropped to make the sun almost fill the frame and to make it
a horizontal picture. Using the 18mb file ensured that we could enlarge
the cropped picture and still have a reasonably sharp photo. We didn’t
like the colour of the sky and the water and added a bit of blue tones.
The resulting image was saved and stored in a new file on the computer.
The flying flamingos picture needed quite a bit of change as well. First
we removed the three birds on the left that are just entering the frame.
This was done by using a paintbrush and choosing the colour by clicking
the sky just next to the birds. The paintbrush is operated by the computer
mouse and we simply painted the three birds away. Then we selected everything
in the photo that was not blue, that is the flamingos, and painted them
black as we wanted them to look like silhouettes against the sun. The sunset
file was reopened so we had the two images next to each other on the screen.
The black flamingos were now pasted onto the setting sun where we wanted
them and the resulting image stored as our final image. We printed out
lots of these images on our HP DeskJet colour printer and used them as
our seasonal greetings cards for 1996. Here is the result:

This article would not be complete without a comment
on the ethics of digital images and composite designs. Many photographers
and wildlife photographers in particular will probably stay far away from
this new technique and label it as unnatural. Others would accept certain
manipulations, but the dividing line of what is acceptable and what is
not, is very diffuse indeed and varies widely from person to person.

We must not forget that a photograph is a two-dimensional
representation of a three-dimensional world and thus can never be the ‘real
thing.’ We are so used to looking at pictures, however, that we readily
accept this and don’t even think about it. Most people would not object
to the photographer using fill-in flash or a polarising filter to enhance
colour saturation and make clouds stand out. Again we have got used to
these ‘tricks.’ But what about the use of colour filters and double exposures?
Are these acceptable? As far as wildlife photographs are concerned, we
think most people would accept a picture – even a digitally altered one
– as long as it depicts a natural scene correctly. To use a computer to
remove an annoying piece of out-of-focus grass or the ring on a bird’s
leg would probably not upset too many. But if an animal was digitally placed
in the wrong environment we think the invisible line of what is acceptable
has clearly been overstepped.

Whatever you may think of digital images, they
are here to stay and we believe in a big way. We have had some scanned
photos printed out on a professional printer giving results that clearly
surpassed any photographic quality. In advertising it is already the norm
rather that the exception to use composite designs produced on a computer.
Remember that ad of a 4-WD vehicle in a most impossible terrain without
a dust particle anywhere and the wheel discs reading the name of the car
perfectly horizontally? Do you think for a moment that this is not a digitally
produced image?

Personally, we see nothing wrong in using this
new technique. However, it would be wrong to pretend that a picture such
as the flamingos in the sunset was a purely natural one. In addition, we
think it is highly enjoyable to play with digital photos. Some may even
say that it is adding a bit of artistic flavour into the photographic world.