Waiting To Get Picked Up!
Backing be photographed in West Chester, NY
As everyone knows in this industry, the real money does not start pouring in until the show gets picked up by a network. Even then, it is not uncommon for executives to be frugal with the budget for the first season, waiting for the show to prove itself. This all leads to filming much of the scenes on location outside of a sound stage. Not ideal, but still “cheaper” in the short term.
However, once it comes time to build sets, months have pasted since the last filming was completed. Although this may not too much of an issue in So. Cal., here in the North East, and also the Mid-West, the change in the seasons makes it impossible to photograph your backings without it looking completely different.
Although you can (and we have) add in leaves and change the seasons of backings photographed, nothing beats photographing the scene during the actual season needed for the show. So what are you to do?
This is the exact situation a show we recently worked with in New York found themselves in. The first season was filmed over the summer with minimal set builds and much of the filming done on location. Although everyone was confident the show would go onto another season, especially given the talent, the production did not want to expense the cost of producing backings they many never use. Completely understandable given the cost.
So in this instance we captured, and only charge for, the photography of the six backings they would need for season two come November. Basic proofs were provide for reference, however it will not be until the second season is picked up when the bulk of retouching, production, and licensing will begin and be charged for.
As you can imagine, the cost to produce six separate day|night backings is well into six figures, whereas the photography for these did not exceed five figures, making it a reasonable expense to incur. Assuming the second season gets picked up, not only will this make the backings look much better than Photoshopping in leaves, but it will greatly decrease the overall retouching costs as well
Painting the Winter Blues Away
This time of year it is not uncommon to get a handful of requests for custom drops that need to look like any other season than winter. Not to mention, given the length of the strikes with productions just now starting up, we will probably see even more so this year. Fortunately for us, we foresaw this scenario playing out last autumn when contract negotiations were still going strong.
At the time, I reached out to a couple top grade retouchers I know to see if they could start looking into and experimenting with painting away snow, ice and salt, while also adding in leaves to bare trees and shrubs. We have looked into this in years past, but keeping costs low without giving away the farm on retouching was always a challenge. However, many new softwares have been introduced in the last year that gave us promising results as we waited for Hollywood to turn back on.
Then, finally, on a new Production we worked with last month we were able to put our research to the ultimate test on a custom 20 x 120 foot translight. About four days prior to flying into the location it had snowed 4 or 5 inches and the high for the week was in the negatives. No snow or ice was going to melt away by shoot day. Of course the drop could not have any of this in the final version, so off to an intense 3 days of retouching the file went.
As you can see, we were able to remove nearly all of the snow, ice and salt while also adding back in strips of grass along the sidewalks and mulch at the base of the trees. The production was pleased with our results and the drops are currently on set for filming.
In planning this project, we knew we would not be able to have any snow or ice in the final image, but the conversation of adding leaves did come up as well. I did have my retoucher perform a quick painting in of leaves to a scouting shot we got from locations to give an idea of how it would look. Ultimately deadlines did not allow for us proceed with this aspect of the project, however I am also including our “rough” effort to showcase what we can do when it comes to greening an image.
Stain Glass Windows
Over the holiday, I was looking through some older projects and came across the above backdrop I photographed in 2019. It was for a popular TV show that revolves around priests and the supernatural, and this drop would be used for a rectory room set. I remember the DP really wanted to have the stain glass window bright and lit up in the night version, a task easier said then done.
Traditional stain glass windows on churches are actually opaque, something that seems counter intuitive for a window. However, traditionally churches were dimly lit, and having a fairly translucent window would end up being too bright for the space. So more opaque glass would be used that still allowed for a bright window, in comparison to the room light, but more fitting for the interior.
Of course, this means at night, stain glass windows will appear black, especially from the outside, no matter how brightly the interior is lit. See below for how the window actually appeared, even with the church lights on.
Exterior dusk view of stain glass window.
Interior daytime view of stain glass window.
Knowing this beforehand, I was able to make sure we got access to the interior of the church, as well as the shooting location in the rectory. Then, using a rather tall ladder, I captured the window from the inside during the day when it would be well and evenly lit from the sunlight. See above. In post, I was able to reverse this image, erase the hanging lights and blend it into the main exterior dusk view, giving a bright window in the final version.
AI & Photoshop; The Good
(Part 1 of 3)
AI is here, and the results are both exciting and scary.
In May of this year, Adobe quietly released a beta version of Photoshop with their new generative fill feature, the first AI based tool in Photoshop. Given it was a beta release, it did not get too much attention at first, but the news has gained steam in recent weeks. I finally got around to experimenting with it last month and the results are promising, yet some disappointments, but with a whole host of copyright issues. So, lets start with looking at the good aspects of this new feature.
Probably the best, and what I would utilize the most, is its ability to seamlessly remove unwanted objects in the image. Take for example the image above, which I captured as stock when I was in Pacific City, OR in March. Being a stock translight, I was not looking to expend too much resources in post and would fine tune the image if a backdrop of that scene was requested. So I left the trash can, hose and trash in the lower left of the image alone. This was my first test image, and I decided to see what generative fill could do to remove those items. In about 20 seconds with no instruction, not only were they all gone, but I got a variety of options to choose from. I then drew my attention to the mess at the corner of the house in the lower center. Once again, within seconds, I had it cleaned up, and the AI knew that the section of the concrete under the eave would be dry. All this would have taken about 30 minutes the old fashion way, and it would not have looked nearly as good.
These were relatively small parts of the over all image though, so it was time to see what it could do on larger elements.
Recently I produced a stock translight at Independence Mall National Park in the heart of Philadelphia. Although all the buildings either date back to the 1700s or are designed to look that way, you can not get away from seeing modern structures in the background. In the image below, you can see a pale blue building in the distance behind Carpenter’s Hall and a modern stone structure at the right edge. If this were to be used as a backdrop in a period show, these would have to go. Once again, generative fill removed both in a matter of seconds. Although it took a few passes to get the right side to appear natural, the pale blue building looked fantastic on the first pass. What surprised me the most was the computer knew to create a new tree limb for the leaves that would fill in the area where that building was. Now onto something a bit more complicated.
Prior to getting into the backdrop business, I was, and still do, architectural and landscape photography for those in the design and hospitality industries. The image below is of hole 6 on the Bay course of Stockton Seaview Resort just outside Atlantic City. I shot this in 2012 for the resort. It is a nice view, and could work for a backdrop, but the original aspect ratio would limit its use on set. So I decided to use generative fill to see if I could increase the width of the image. Once again, in less than a minute I had a much wider version. Although the left side took some tinkering to get right, the right side is just amazing. I have no idea if that stream AI created leading into the marsh is actually there, but, nonetheless, it makes perfect sense.
Finally, let’s look at what it can do with an urban environment.
For this, I decided it would be best to use a view of a city skyline that is not as well known in order to prevent any bias on the viewer’s part. In our library of images, the New Orleans backdrop seemed to best fit that bill. Here, I erased the right and left flanks of the image and had generative fill recreate the now missing pieces. Then I decided to have it remove that black building in the center, which just draws your eye. Although not amazing, out of focus and in the background of a TV show, it could work well.
In my little experiment with AI, I can say, as a tool, this is looking to be quite powerful. With that said, there were tasks that it did not perform well and, not to mention, the question of who actually owns the copyright to these AI edited images is a hornets nest for both public discourse and in the courts, topics I will cover in part 2, The Bad, and part 3, The Ugly.
Up in the Clouds
After getting our money’s worth out of Photoshop CS6, released in May 2012, we were finally forced to buy into the subscription program last year with new computer purchases. Now to be fair, architecture and landscapes don’t really get that much attention from Adobe in the form of new updates, so now big deal. However, CS6 finally outlived it capability with new versions of Apple OSX, forcing us to shell out money every month for Photoshop.
As much as I hate buying into subscriptions, it turns out Photoshop added in some God sends last year, including a powerful new sky replacement and sky select feature. Selecting a sky the old fashion way was an arduous task, especially whenever you had trees in the image. Unfortunately, with translights, this was always necessary since you need a 100% pixel for pixel registration between the day and night images when you go to print. Everything, including the skies, need to match when printing. Not to mention, you don’t always get the best skies when you are shooting. Many hours would be spent on either adding in a decent sky, or selecting the day sky and adding it to the night image (after editing it to look like night). Now this process is cut down dramatically.
For example, in the image below, which was used in Glass Onion; Knives Out, the actual sky the day of shooting was rather dreary. With sky replacement, in less than a minute, I was able to replace the sky with something better and have it look very convincing.
Or, you can just make an existing sky appear more charming. As an another example, the image below was captured from my New Orleans hotel room on a rainy day in October. Although the shape of the clouds is nice, there are some dark rain clouds in the sky. Using the replace sky feature, I was able to overlay a brighter sky giving the already existing sky a nicer feel.
To conclude, ever since I have been using this new feature, I have been putting together my own library of high res panoramic skies to use in our backdrops. Below are some skies you may seem in our backdrops.
Kicking the Tires in Manhattan
Given the increase in free time of late, we decided the best thing to do would be to expand our stock library. So a couple weeks ago we walked around Manhattan for the day capturing scenes from a few different neighborhoods, such as the East Village, Bowery, Flower District and Mid-Town. The trick when doing this is to find scenes with little to no cars, which can be challenging in Manhattan. We got eight new and nice backdrops.
Precision Tree Removal
I want to give a shout-out to one of the hand full of retouchers we work with at Precision Backdrops, Brian Williams, owner of Crossboard Creative in TN, who helped us with this project.
Main shooting vantage.
It is not uncommon for us to have to produce backdrops for a show that takes place in the spring, but, due to the production time required for a backdrop, we have to photograph it in late winter or early spring. This can create a problem since the trees will be bare with no leaves. Occasionally, we will be asked to add leaves to the trees, however this is a fairly expensive endeavor. So, in a lot of cases the production decides to keep the scene as is and add their own trees on the set, which adds depth. Of course this only works if there are not any trees in the drop that would be close to the set in real life. In those situations, the leafless tree needs to be removed in post. This is the exact situation we found ourselves in on a recent project a month ago.
For a second floor backyard view we were producing in the suburbs, there was a bare maple tree about 6 feet from the foundation of the house we were in. For this production, this house was going to be used as a shooting location from May through early July, so this tree was going to be in bloom. For the sound stage, the production was going to place a fake maple tree in place of it for depth. Or course, for this to work, the tree needed to be removed from the backdrop. Fortunately we knew this going in, which was a great help.
In order to make the retouching as easy and accurate as possible, I arrived with two tripods. One was a main tripod for the overall image. The second tripod I used from a few different vantages capturing as many different parts of the scene without the tree in the way. The garage and the wooden fence were of most concern, but the ground and neighboring backyard also needed to be documented. This gave Brian lots of options to work with when editing out the tree.
Overall, I think it took Brian about 6 hours to “Photoshop” out the tree, which came out looking better than expected.
After this, we touched up the sky a bit and made a night-from-day conversion for the night image. We were there all day and did manage to capture the true to night, but only used it to drop in the highlights and the orange glow of the artificial light, being careful to mask out any of the tree from the true night version. To finish, we did some light painting onto the night-from-day version where the tree was removed using the true night as guidance.
The Big Portland Drop
A couple weeks ago we flew into Portland to produce a 130 by 26 foot backdrop for an upcoming feature film. It was a beautiful day to be on a roof top especially considering it rained for a solid two months prior yet stopped as soon as I landed. I always remember to pack great weather when I fly!
Now with any drop that size, there are going to be a few issues but this one had the added challenge of it being a backdrop for a corner set. This meant our view was going to be in two different directions, and we needed to maintain the perspective (at least partially) each way. For this, we used two different tripods for each side of the backdrop, one facing east and the other south, giving us the ability to keep all horizontal lines parallel in both directions. This was hardly the end of our challenges though.
Since the shape of objects will change depending the position of the camera, merging two different panos from different shooting positions can be tricky. So our next order of business was to make sure each tripod was at the same exact height. This is easier said than done, especially on a pitched roof with variable parapets. Fortunately the parapets were level, so we were able to use a simple tape measure to achieve this. A step in the right direction, but now we needed to figure out exactly where the two views would meet to help guarantee a flawless merge.
In the middle of the view there is a red brick building that was taller than our shooting position. Since we could not really see over it and it was near the center, this was the perfect spot to merge the two panos. We did have a tree and two distant buildings to deal with, but this allowed for a relatively easy merge in post.
Last, we had to account for the specific camera placements relative to our view. This was more of an issue for our view east since the church we saw in that direction had a gable roof on the main facade. Depending on where you were standing, the shape of the gable (actually the A-frame behind it) would change. Obviously having this shaped as if you were viewing it from the left would not work for any filming from the right side of set, and vice versa. So in order to avoid this “mistake” and give the production the greatest amount of verticality, our east facing tripod was place at the center of the gable, completely obscuring the A-frame behind it. The view south was more forgiving since the buildings in view were relatively far away. This meant the shape of things did not change as dramatically and we choose to place this tripod about two yards from the corner.
The following day when we started working on the print file, we had five different panoramas to merge into one. From each shooting position we generated a rectilinear and Vedutismo pano plus an additional rectilinear pano from the southern view but with our center directed at the intersection. The wings of the backdrop were sourced from the Vedutismo versions with most of the backdrop coming from the three rectilinear panos in the center.
Overall, it was a fun shoot, the production designer and art director were great to hang out with, and I even got some inside stories on shooting Portlandia, a favorite show of my wife and I. Artwork approval from the client was given yesterday and now the drop is in production for delivery in two weeks.
Bringing the Man to Afghanistan
So technically we really were bringing Afghanistan to the man, but that does not flow as well.
On a Friday last February around 9:30 PM EST, when I was bottling my Mendocino Left Bank blend from 2021, I got a phone call from California asking if we could do a translight of the Afghan mountains for a big name show with several A-list actors. The image needed to have snow on the peaks and dirt in the valleys printed at 100 x 25 feet, and they could send me a set drawing for more reference if I felt we could do it.
Needless to say, this is quite the uncommon request and one for which we did not have the artwork to produce. I was not even sure if we could produce such a drop. However, in the words of Sir Richard Branson, “if someone offers you a great opportunity and you are not sure if you can do it, say yes, and then figure out how to do it!”
“Email me the set drawing and I will get back to you on Monday,” I replied, and went back to bottling my wine.
Since we did not have anything that would fit this in our library nor could we fly to Afghanistan to do the photography ourselves, we had to rely on stock. My first instinct Saturday morning was to reach out to a few photographers and other backdrop producers in Europe and the Middle East I knew who could have something to work with. While waiting for their response, I started researching the mountains of Afghanistan only to find out that there are a few ranges, all distinct from each other. I felt that the Hindi-Kush mountains in north Afghanistan best fit the look of the set drawing, but I wanted to make sure I provided options and waited to hear back from those I reached out to.
By Monday afternoon we had 6 different files we could work with and sent them out for review. They decided to go with the first image below, which was my favorite as well. Now comes the retouching.
First order of business was to warm up the image, but making sure not to turn the snow yellow. (No one likes yellow snow!) This was achieved though a variety of camera raw filters, warming filters, several curve adjustment layers with a heavy use of masks. Then, we needed to create the night from day version. Using level and saturation adjustments, and a Night from Day LUT, we were able to get the image looking somewhat night like.
Next, cutting out the sky … manually… which took five hours. This then allowed us to drop in a true night sky (I captured while in Key West last January) using both the manual cut out and a softer computer generated selection. Due to the amount of clouds in the image, we had to be careful not to over do the night sky, other wise it would look fake. The final touches were to drop in the moon and perform some light painting on the mountains.
All was going well and the translight was coming together nicely, but then …
It started raining in California and would not stop. Originally the production schedule was set up to film all exterior locations first, finishing on the sound stage last. The rain forced production to reverse the schedule, and our delivery time frame went from three weeks to three days. This was simply not enough time to finalize the artwork and print the backdrop. Although the project fell through at the last moment, we did consider this a great educational exercise on solving a pretty unique problem. The client also liked our response, and said they will reach out to us in the future.
Memory Lane
Recently I did a deep dive into my digital archive, going all the way back to 2007, a rough thing for any artist to do. I was just an aspiring young photographer at the time with an amazingly high amount of confidence especially in comparison to the work. That very first project I was hired for, a Chinese Food Restaurant for Asian Market News with owners that only spoke Mandarin whereas I didn’t, sure brought back some nostalgia. Fun times.
Anyway, jumping forward about 7 years I got a call from a new architect client about a possible project for one of his clients, the owner of 205 West 39th Street. And by that, I mean he owned the entire building … that he inherited from his grandfather … mortgage free. It was the first time an entire floor had been empty in a couple of decades so he wanted a pano of both the floor and the view from the terrace. Not really sure why, he said, since Calvin Klein was starting their fit out next week for a 10 year lease, but just in case he needed it in the future.
So, Ryan, I believe that was his name, flew in from Bermuda on his private jet to let me in. He was wearing shorts and a t-shirt, I think sandals too, even though it was March in New York City. He shook my hand, took me inside, told me “here you go” and that his plane was still on the tarmac so he could not stay any longer. Now, some may think flying international to only let a photographer in your building before returning back the same day would make him crazy. No, he’s eccentric … he’s rich.
So I was up there in the Spring of 2014 for a few hours just doing panos of the view, which you can see above, and a 360 pano of the floor, see below. I even shot these with my old P45+, which I have not owned for over 5 years. It is lower in resolution than my current setup, but I always felt the color was better, more natural.
I also managed to capture a nice view of the New York Times building with dusk sunlight glow around the structure.
I was told I could stay a long as I wanted to and started breaking down about 40 minutes after sunset.
I have a few more nice views from memory lane, including one looking over Times Square just after Christmas with the count down clock already going towards 2014, that I will be adding later.
Get Past Legal
Since getting rich off a lawsuit seems to be the American way, film and TV sets have always had teams of lawyers reviewing every possible detail to make sure no legal liabilities are present. These could come in the version of lawsuits over copyright, trademark, rights of privacy, rights of publicity, and a whole host more. This is why so many movies have brandless appliances, non-real phone numbers, generic family pictures, and so on. Backdrops do not avoid this either and could get slowed down going through legal as well. This was the case with one of our recent backdrops on 42nd street at Times Square.
When we first arrived, we planned on capturing the view above (captured with my cell phone). As you can see, there is a giant Target dog directly in view, which was not going to get past legal. So we opted to move about 30 yards to our left, across from the Yankees shop. This solved the dog problem, but brought with it issues concerning the Regal.
Here we have both a screen showing previews of the films currently being run and a large 3-story ad for Regal’s 4DX “viewing experience.” Both of these brought with them a host of copyright, trademark and licensing issues.
Foreseeing this, I captured several variations of the screen to ensure we would have enough of a selection to choose from to drop in place. The fast moving action in most previews did make it challenging to get a scene without any branding or too much blur, but I did manage to capture a nondescript military vehicle driving who knows where. This worked perfectly.
For the 4DX ad it was suggested that we blur the image so much so it would no longer be recognizable. Although this would have worked, the amount of blur would have been so much that the image would become unsightly, not to mention the mullions would bleed into the image to the point of being distracting. I insteed opted to just replace the image all together.
In my other business I work as an architectural photographer and one of my best clients is JKRP, the go to theater designer in the country. I photographed the Regal at Houston and Essex for them a few years ago and thought the dusk exterior I captured would work well as a replacement. Since I fully own the copyright to my work and this was an exterior shot, no licensing or location issues would come into play, and I made sure to place the image so no signage was present, avoiding any trademark issues as well. Choosing one of my images also allowed us to quickly find a solution and maintain our deadline. After dropping it in, I gave it a slight blur, added some digital noise and a gradient for realism.
The art director loved it and was able to get past legal for a print approval 5 days after the photography.
Those Pesky Times Square Pedestrians
Two Tuesdays ago we were contacted by an art director who needed a custom day|night translight of Times Square. One caveat was that the deadline to be on set was Jan. 5th, a tight production schedule. The second caveat was there could not be any people or cars in the image. The third caveat, the forecast was predicting an inch and half of rain for Thursday and Friday. This all meant we needed to shoot the very next day. Thankfully we were winding down for the year, had nothing going on, and a Wednesday in Manhattan is always a great time. So off I was to 42nd street the next day.
In most locations, we can always count on a few periods where there will no people in the scene. Times Square, as you can see in a rough proof above, is not one of them. So for this location we instead had to capture several images of all angles needed for the panorama. This allowed us to layer them in post and replace where there are people and cars in one layer with a cut of the same location from another that was clear. This is a tedious exercise to say the least.
Fortunately there is a slow down in Times Square during the lunch hours, so it was not too bad. Now the next hurdle, capturing the night image free and clear of cars.
Sunset at this time of year occurs right at rush hour, and 42nd street is a major thoroughfare in Manhattan. The street would be packed at 5 PM, not to mention the exposure would be 10 seconds at this time. I was fully expecting to be there until 8 at night to capture the six slides I needed to create the night panorama. Luckily for us, 42nd street happens to have a traffic light in the middle of the block for some reason. Every 8 minutes or so this light would turn red just as the light at the intersection became green, allowing the street to clear out (see right). I only had enough time for one exposure each time this happened, so it did take 40 minutes to get all of the captures. However, we were done and packed up by 6, which was fine by me.
We spent about two days working on the backdrop in post production clearing up the block, straightening the street, adjusting color/exposure, and getting it past legal (a topic for another blog post). It was approved and into our printing queue by end of day Monday. Although the shop is closed over the holidays, this will be printed first thing in the New Year to be on set by the 5th.
A True Day|Night Backdrop With the Summer Moon
With so many going on vacation, getting the last days down the shore before the kids go back to school, the end of summer always slows dramatically. With some extra time on our hands, this makes a great occasion to produce personal and stock work. So when all of the factors for a true day|night landscape fell into place this past September, I jumped at the chance and headed over to Valley Forge National Park to set up the camera.
Usually when producing a landscape, we generate the night version from the day since so many conditions are needed for the true night version. First, you can not have any wind, all day, since this would ensure the day and night will not line up due to the vegetation moving. Not to mention, wind would also create motion blur in the longer night captures. Next, with no sources of light, you require a full moon to keep the exposures from getting ridiculously long. Even so, five minutes (times eight captures) is average for a full moon night shot. Weather not only needs to be good, but cloud free to ensure the moonlight is not obscured. Last, you have to wait until two hours after sunset, when the sky turns black, before capturing the night images.
I arrived around 4 PM to set up and start capturing the day version. However the light was very harsh at this time, so I ended using a variation captured just after sunset, at 8 PM, for the day image. It was not until 10 PM that I was able to start the night captures, which took about 45 minutes. When I got back to the studio the next day, I had the two images below.
As you can see, the skies were not ideal. I had the obvious orange hue in the day image that occurs at sunset, and the indigo sky with star streaks you get with long exposures at night. I opted to replace both skies; the day with a blue gradient and the night with stock.
Even with the conditions being ideal, we did get some movements of leaves and such with it being most evident in the foreground. So I created a night image from the day and blended in them together just to ensure we had perfect registration from day to night.
At this point the night version was coming together but still needed some final touches. The image was a little muted, so I painted in brighter patches throughout the field and in the distance. To give some life, I added a touch of smoke above the chimneys and an orange glow around two of the windows in the old farm house. Last, I evened out and added a slight gradient to the sky, giving us the image below.
Although we could certainly take this further, such as adding in a couple of oil lamps to the path or perhaps a campfire over the hill, giving it more nuance, I opted to end here and move the image into the stock catalog. After all, we can always add those items in at the behest of the client.
Brushing Off the Rust in Pittsburgh
Just before Thanksgiving we had the opportunity of working with a new crime drama taking place in the Rust Belt. Now that the show is expanding into its second season, new filming locations are being added, creating the need for new sets and, most importantly, backdrops. So it was off to Pittsburgh for a couple of days.
As with any drop, we had to solve a couple problems, first deciding on how to deal with the many electrical wires just outside the location. Initially the team felt it would be best to shoot from a scissor lift in the street using a super wide lens, however doing so would make it impossible to have a matching day and night image. Not to mention, the street in the edges would be more compact while also having extension distortion. So in the end we decided to shoot from the window and remove the electrical poll and wires in post.
Thankfully the building was under construction and we had access to the entire second and third floor. This allowed us to capture additional images from a few different locations and heights, greatly helping with the retouching.
Additionally, we were looking across a parking lot with nothing to break up the vanishing lines. Typically it is best to avoid vanishing lines whenever possible since they draw the eye to the backdrop. In this situation, we choose to warp the center of the image a bit to force the street and building lines to be less angled. We also removed the white fence in the distance and the rear portion of the grey house, which helped a lot in obscuring the effect.
Last, we touched up some of the leaves on the ground and de-saturated the background a bit for a wintry feel, removed a few cars, logos and political posters, and turned the construction site a less distracting grey.
Altogether, the retouching took about a week to complete, and then it was off to the press. Printed at 20 by 60 feet, the drop is now hanging on set ready for filming.
The Swamp
On a road trip down to Myrtle Beach this summer, I decided to take the back roads of South Carolina looking for stock images. Lucky me, I found a classic horror movie swamp scene in Lake View. We did not have time to wait around 9 hours for sunset, so we generated the night version from the day shot, which is what we have to do anyway with a scene like. Here is the transformation.
Night from Day Landscape
Although we always strive to captured the actual day and night version for our translights, often with landscapes without any sources of light at night and a lot of greenery we generate the night version from the day. With out any artifical sources of light, a night image can come out looking flat, dark and dull, not to mention it would be almost impossible to ensure all of the leaves and branches would line up for the print.
Below is a video showing how we recently turned a day image captured on the Forbidden Drive in Philadelphia into the matching night version.