A question to Bob Tullis

This photo is certainly one of the best city landscapes I have ever seen:


Everytime I see it, I keep wondering to myself how on earth did Bob took it!

The camera settings are listed. Relatively high ISO with very short exposure.

I thought photos like this needed a relatively long exposure and can even benefit from some bracketing. It seems I am wrong.

I am assuming you've shot it from a helicopter or a plane. The details of the photo are simply amazing!

Is it the post processing that made it look like that? If so, what was the pp procedure did you use?

Much appreciated in advance!

SpeedyNeo said:

This photo is certainly one of the best city landscapes I have ever seen:

https://www.bobtullis.com/Main/Location/New-York-City/i-nCvh8xw/A

Click to expand...

I had a little difficulty after that session, as in - how does one follow that? [g]

SpeedyNeo said:

Everytime I see it, I keep wondering to myself how on earth did Bob took it!

The camera settings are listed. Relatively high ISO with very short exposure.

I thought photos like this needed a relatively long exposure and can even benefit from some bracketing. It seems I am wrong.

I am assuming you've shot it from a helicopter or a plane. The details of the photo are simply amazing!

Click to expand...

Yes, it was quite the ride. A first, and to date only, adventure in a helicopter. I felt like I was just missing everything as it whizzed by (though the pilot was most accommodating). But I did get a handful from the ride that I felt made it all worth while.

SpeedyNeo said:

Is it the post processing that made it look like that? If so, what was the pp procedure did you use?

Click to expand...

Yes, it took quite a bit of massaging in post. As it wasn't a bright exposure there was noise to wrestle with. Making the foreground properly bright made the sky excessively noisey, so a gradient was needed to pull back what the global adjustment did to it. . . and like that. It's hard to walk through work like that, it sort of guides one as it's handled.

For reference, here's how the RAW looked with all develop settings zero'd out:



I've worked it over more than once, starting from scratch. These are labors of love [g]

--
...Bob, NYC
.
"Well, sometimes the magic works. . . Sometimes, it doesn't." - Chief Dan George, Little Big Man
.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bobtullis/
http://www.bobtullis.com
.

Thank you so much for taking the time to reply. Certainly makes more sense to me now. Without a doubt, it remains a work of art.

Take care.

SpeedyNeo said:

Thank you so much for taking the time to reply. Certainly makes more sense to now. Without a doubt, it remains a work of art.

Take care.

Click to expand...

Thanks, very much.

--
...Bob, NYC
.
"Well, sometimes the magic works. . . Sometimes, it doesn't." - Chief Dan George, Little Big Man
.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bobtullis/
http://www.bobtullis.com
.

Bob Tullis said:

SpeedyNeo said:

Thank you so much for taking the time to reply. Certainly makes more sense to now. Without a doubt, it remains a work of art.

Take care.

Click to expand...

Thanks, very much.

Click to expand...

Oh geez, you’re not gonna let all this go to your head, are you Tullis? ;-)

[P.S. On a serious note fantastic image and some nice insight as to how it got there]

Jerry-astro said:

Bob Tullis said:

SpeedyNeo said:

Thank you so much for taking the time to reply. Certainly makes more sense to now. Without a doubt, it remains a work of art.

Take care.

Click to expand...

Thanks, very much.

Click to expand...

Oh geez, you’re not gonna let all this go to your head, are you Tullis? ;-)

Click to expand...

Hard not to. . . this, on top of my employees of 34 years making me tear up this past Monday, departing the job and the city for good. . . makes it hard not to believe I'm as awesome as some imagine. But I have to be careful. . . it's only a hop, skip, and a jump to becoming a full blown blowhard from here.

Jerry-astro said:

[P.S. On a serious note fantastic image and some nice insight as to how it got there]

Click to expand...

Years of practice massaging low-light high-ISO, with different sensors/formats, is what should get credit. I'm sincerely flattered.

I don't want to pile on to Bob's ego stroke but I think there's a couple things worth noting in what in my opinion separates artists with real talent "making" a photo rather than others who are just "taking" a photo. Far too often people over value portrait photographers in particular which always astounds me. Now don't get me wrong, there is an element of skill and knowledge required in lighting a portrait/fashion photo properly but from there the valid question exists: How hard is it really to take a great quality photo when the lighting is perfect and the subject is standing still and responding to direction? At the very least your hit vs (rhymes with hit) ratio is very high.

To make a beautiful image out of sub par lighting conditions takes an artist and more persistence than I could imagine since you likely are shooting hundreds of photos to get that one great shot, or you're having to plan out and perfectly time a shot around particular lighting and weather conditions. That's work, hard work.

The last detail that really just blew my mind is that Bob actually shared his before editing starting point. First, most photographers don't do that as they'd like you to believe that the artistry lies in their ability to get something out of their camera that you can't. So my hats off for your willingness to share that. The real question is though, how many of us would have seen that image and thought it was nothing? Maybe play with a slider or two to see what you can recover but likely hit the delete key and call it a loss. The humility in calling that photo gently massaged is hilarious. That is nothing short of genius level editing that certainly doesn't happen in five minutes and a couple clicks.

There are few artists who can see something that the rest of us just can't. They know what they can do with their medium even in it's raw form (slight pun intended). A prince once came to the studio of Michaelangelo to find him staring at a tall block of marble after hearing that he had been doing this daily for four months. The prince asked him what he was doing and Michaelangelo turned and whispered to the man, "sto lavorando", which translates to "I'm working". Three years later that block of marble was the statue of David.

Bob has a gift to see something in a scene or an image that most don't and beyond being able to just press a shutter button, he has the ability to make it into a piece of art.

I've been a member here for just short of a year and once I tripped over a post or two of Bob's work I've been admiring his talent and skills seen throughout his astounding portfolio. As a hobby photographer your images have been an inspiration to me and I just wanted to take the opportunity to share my appreciation.

Fortunately, I took the laptop into the kitchen before seeing your post. . . it might be days before the swelling abates and I can fit through doorways again, but I have about two days worth of groceries that should carry me though it. To be on the safe side, I should start by rationing it anticipating having to go a full week - just in case.

--
...Bob, NYC
.
"Well, sometimes the magic works. . . Sometimes, it doesn't." - Chief Dan George, Little Big Man
.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bobtullis/
http://www.bobtullis.com
.

Perfectly stated, I couldn't agree more. After looking at both ends, starting point and finished product, it takes someone with true vision to complete that journey. Had it been me that took the initial picture I probably would have looked at it and said "good idea but it didn't work", then moved on.

Hi Bob,

By any chance was this photo influenced by Roman Kurywczak. He used to be a regular on DPreview and is now a Sigma contract photographer. He pioneered this type of work and has done a number of workshops teaching how to do this from a helicopter with an open door.

Morris

Thanks to Fuji Maine for taking the time to document what I'm sure many of us are thinking. VERY well said and agree with every bit of it.

--
Jerry-Astro
Fujifilm X Forum Co-Mod

Bob Tullis said:

Hard not to. . . this, on top of my employees of 34 years making me tear up this past Monday, departing the job and the city for good. . . makes it hard not to believe I'm as awesome as some imagine. But I have to be careful. . . it's only a hop, skip, and a jump to becoming a full blown blowhard from here.

Click to expand...

Thank you for not taking that path. That position has already been filled before (and no, I'm not offering any more details than that).

the shadows are full of noise from the recovery process, and the colored areas are mushy in detail and lost their color fidelity.

if you click the button on bottom right to view image at 100% with its 24mp resolution, you'll see more drastically how unsharp the details are.

but none of that actually matters, because viewing the picture as a whole gives a really wonderful impression, because it was well composed, and well finished with a good vision.

i hope a few people take note before they go into a flamewar over some iso 1600 test chart comparison, because photography is about the image, and not the technical details

b0k3h said:

the shadows are full of noise from the recovery process, and the colored areas are mushy in detail and lost their color fidelity.

if you click the button on bottom right to view image at 100% with its 24mp resolution, you'll see more drastically how unsharp the details are.

but none of that actually matters, because viewing the picture as a whole gives a really wonderful impression, because it was well composed, and well finished with a good vision.

i hope a few people take note before they go into a flamewar over some iso 1600 test chart comparison, because photography is about the image, and not the technical details

Click to expand...

LOL, and yet you still felt obliged to point out all the deficiencies (and "technical details") you saw in the image before saying that they don't really matter. Your point being....?

Hi Bob,

I loved that shot almost three years ago when I saw it in Sony land. I have to say that I'm blown away with it now that I look at the original RAW file. Fantastic vision (the blue Memorial column of light in perfect alignment with the new Trade Center), capture and processing. One word...chapeau.

Steve

Bob Tullis said:

SpeedyNeo said:

This photo is certainly one of the best city landscapes I have ever seen:

https://www.bobtullis.com/Main/Location/New-York-City/i-nCvh8xw/A

Click to expand...

I had a little difficulty after that session, as in - how does one follow that? [g]

Bobo Hodls said:

Everytime I see it, I keep wondering to myself how on earth did Bob took it!

The camera settings are listed. Relatively high ISO with very short exposure.

I thought photos like this needed a relatively long exposure and can even benefit from some bracketing. It seems I am wrong.

I am assuming you've shot it from a helicopter or a plane. The details of the photo are simply amazing!

Click to expand...

Yes, it was quite the ride. A first, and to date only, adventure in a helicopter. I felt like I was just missing everything as it whizzed by (though the pilot was most accommodating). But I did get a handful from the ride that I felt made it all worth while.

Click to expand...

When I went to work at Fairchild Camera and Instrument, I came out of the RF and signals intelligence world. I was talking over all R&D for both their signals intelligence and imagery intelligence. One old timer, Ed Wright the senior imagery engineer, took me under his wing. He said while we are pushing toward digital for a lot of reasons - namely real time support digital cannot hold a candle to what we are now flying. It still can't. At that time the photo interpreter that detected Soviet missiles in Cuba from a U2 photograph which lead the the Cuban missile crisis had retired from CIA and was consulting with FCI. Good old Dino Brugion - a good NY boy that loved Italian food said I needed to see arial imagery and what it could do. The camera on the U2 was a FCI camera and we supported the program among others. Dino kept teasing me that I could not do my job until I understood imagery.

I said okay make me understand. He said, I still have connections I can get you on a U2 flight. I said okay fine, thinking he was bluffing. He wasn't. The next thing I know I was out at Edwards AFB shaking hands with a CIA pilot that was going to take me up. Seeing the world from above - is truly amazing and seeing imagery from above is a unique perspective that can't be realized otherwise.

The U2 still files and the U2 still uses a six inch film camera similar to the FCI camera. The Air Force runs the U2 program today out of Beal AFB. Why does the U2 still use film - digital currently cannot support the mission. I remember Ed Wright telling me in 1985 that the resolution of the 6 inch film camera we flew on the U2 would require over a 10 gigapixel resolution camera to to compete with the film. We're not there yet.

Of course since the U2 has transferred to the military from the CIA, it is much more open. Below is a WSJ report on the plane. The one thing I remember from my flight - the beauty and unity of the world from above.


Nice shots Bob.

Jerry-astro said:

b0k3h said:

the shadows are full of noise from the recovery process, and the colored areas are mushy in detail and lost their color fidelity.

if you click the button on bottom right to view image at 100% with its 24mp resolution, you'll see more drastically how unsharp the details are.

but none of that actually matters, because viewing the picture as a whole gives a really wonderful impression, because it was well composed, and well finished with a good vision.

i hope a few people take note before they go into a flamewar over some iso 1600 test chart comparison, because photography is about the image, and not the technical details

Click to expand...

LOL, and yet you still felt obliged to point out all the deficiencies (and "technical details") you saw in the image before saying that they don't really matter. Your point being....?

--
Jerry-Astro
Fujifilm X Forum Co-Mod

Click to expand...

That technical flaws exist, if one looks for them.

But their existence do not, in the scheme of producing and expressing and consuming photography, matter.

It was illustrative of a point. Like pointing out that Cindy Crawford has a mole.

Ha-ha-ha-ha. All photography needs emotion and motion. Motion of the eye and mind. This photo has both. Nice, very nice. Take a bow, Bob, and excuse me while I go take a look at your web.

b0k3h said:

the shadows are full of noise from the recovery process, and the colored areas are mushy in detail and lost their color fidelity.

if you click the button on bottom right to view image at 100% with its 24mp resolution, you'll see more drastically how unsharp the details are.

but none of that actually matters, because viewing the picture as a whole gives a really wonderful impression, because it was well composed, and well finished with a good vision.

i hope a few people take note before they go into a flamewar over some iso 1600 test chart comparison, because photography is about the image, and not the technical details

Click to expand...

I'd say your comments are noise in a thunder of applause. Your pixel peeking took away your enjoyment of a beautiful image

Morris

b0k3h said:

That technical flaws exist, if one looks for them.

But their existence do not, in the scheme of producing and expressing and consuming photography, matter.

It was illustrative of a point. Like pointing out that Cindy Crawford has a mole.

Click to expand...

I guess you missed (or weren’t concerned about) the irony I saw of starting with the critique and spending over half your post pointing out the flaws, then winding up with a “oh, what the heck, none of it really matters” comment. It’s probably just a matter of your posting style and it’s reminiscent of something I’ve heard referred to as a “left handed compliment.” [no offense intended to southpaws/lefties here].

We all have our ways of reacting to and comment on images... it simply struck me as a bit odd, that’s all. Perhaps giving some consideration to seeing the big picture rather than the nitty details might help.

--
Jerry-Astro
Fujifilm X Forum Co-Mod