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Text description provided by the architects. This photography studio is located on the fifth and sixth floors of a small six-story building. It can be rented for seasonal apparel brand looks, product photography with models for e-commerce sites, and exhibitions. As a result of its purpose, most of the space is taken up by plain white walls, wooden walls, white ceilings, and simple concrete floors, which are needed by many users.

The challenge was how to create a unique photo spot just by this studio within that situation. The fifth floor features a concrete staircase and a concrete box that encases the elevator. The staircase itself has been polished to reveal the encapsulated gravel. By designing an irregular stonework sculptural staircase amidst the orderly white walls and concrete floor, the staircase becomes more than just a means of transportation – it becomes a stay that accentuates the clothes, shoes, and models.

As a photography studio, the sixth floor’s flat shape inevitably created some dead space. Rather than utilizing the dead space for storage of photographic equipment and furniture, a distorted glass panel with a mirrored surface was installed to reach the full 4.4-meter ceiling, resulting in a completely new and unique visual effect.

The potential for using these distorted mirrors to create unique and original photographs will be left to the creativity of the photographers and art directors who utilize this studio. By introducing an unexpected feature into the studio space, I hope to stimulate the creativity of the creators who use it, and that they will produce exceptional photographic works that go beyond the original intent of the designer.

A researcher has used ultraviolet (UV) photography to locate a lost fragment of Biblical text nearly 1,500 years after it was originally written. UV photography equipment has looked beyond layers of text to find a “new” ancient translation of the Gospels.

As reported by Popular Mechanics, medievalist Grigory Kessel of the Austrian Academy of Sciences discovered the hidden text beneath layers of other text.

This is called a double palimpsest, meaning Kessel uncovered traces of original text beneath two layers of writing that had been effaced to create room for a later third layer of text.

Kessel’s findings have been published in the journal New Testament Studies. His discovery is one of the earliest translations of the Gospels.

Some publications report that Kessel has found a “hidden chapter,” but it’s more accurate to say that Kessel uncovered a new translation of an existing chapter. In this case, it’s an ancient translation of Matthew chapter 12.

The traces Kessel found are part of what’s known as the Old Syriac translations. The translation is believed to have been written in the third century and then copied hundreds of years later in the sixth century. Roughly 1,300 years ago, a scribe in modern-day Palestine erased the translation to reuse it, as parchment was an exceedingly rare commodity.

“The tradition of Syriac Christianity knows several translations of the Old and New Testaments. Until recently, only two manuscripts were known to contain the Old Syriac translation of the gospels,” says Kessel. One of the manuscripts is kept in the British Library in London, while he discovered the other in St. Catherine’s Monastery at Mount Sinai while working on his “Sinai Palimpsests Project.”

The fragment that Kessel uncovered is believed to be only the fourth manuscript that “attests to the Old Syriac version,” the press release states.

The newly-discovered text offers a different interpretation of the Gospels. The original Greek of Matthew chapter 12, verse 1, says, “At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath; and his disciples became hungry and began to pick the heads of grain and eat.” The Syriac translation Kessel located instead says, “[…] began to pick the heads of grain, rub them in their hands, and eat them.”

The translation Kessel located was written at least a century before the oldest surviving Greek manuscripts.

“Grigory Kessel has made a great discovery thanks to his profound knowledge of old Syriac texts and script characteristics,” says Claudia Rapp, director of the Institute for Medieval Research at the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

Kessel’s use of ultraviolet photography to uncover erased texts is common in the process of digitally recovering palimpsests. A. Nemeth writes for The Vatican Library, “In the context of palimpsests, the use of ultraviolet light is the most widespread method.”

Nemeth continues, “Today, multispectral photography offers the best solution for enhancing the difference between faded inks and their surrounding areas. To do so, it utilizes multiple numbers of images taken from the same page and captured in the same position while being illuminated by a pre-set succession of fixed wavelengths of light. These images capture the different reactions of the parchment to different light waves, which can be compared fruitfully.”

Digital photography techniques uncover previously invisible bits of erased text and allow researchers like Kessel to investigate ancient documents safely.

“This discovery proves how productive and important the interplay between modern digital technologies and basic research can be when dealing with medieval manuscripts,” Rapp says.

Image credits: Header photo licensed via Depositphotos.

… restaurants always boast about the fresh catch of the day when touting their sea food … then there are those who actually catch their own on a daily basis, like our Western Grebe in the photo above. It is a tad on the large size for him as he swallows the fish whole fish head first (dorsal fins are a one way trip.) It was only moments before he had the fish down and on he went in search of more. I love the red eyes and the tufted hat he was wearing. Grebes spend almost their entire life on the water … they have evolved as incredible swimmers and as a result their feet are the very far back of their body so that they can barely walk on land.

Kingfishers are a very difficult bird to get whether on land or water. Once in a while, one of them will hang around and let you in close. This one played with us for about ten minutes the other day, flitting between branches of trees in a back bay, but staying close for great shooting … the perfect opportunity to get photos of them in flight … a small tough target to shoot.

Into yet another day which will be filled with wonder … not sure what, but it will be a day filled with opportunities and choices … choose well, have a fabulous day and smile at those you meet and greet!

Cheers,

Ted

I bring but this one common thought
My life has wrought;
That from the dregs of drear despair
Still every where
There is a joy I yet may sip—
‘Tis comradeship
With all mankind, the high and low
I know.

excerpt from I Know by Max Ehrmann

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The easiest way to reach Mr. Grussing is by email: ted@tedgrussing.com

In addition to sales of photographs already taken Ted does special shoots for patrons on request and also does air-to-air photography for those who want photographs of their airplanes in flight. All special photographic sessions are billed on an hourly basis.

Ted also does one-on-one workshops for those interested in learning the techniques he uses.  By special arrangement Ted will do one-on-one aerial photography workshops which will include actual photo sessions in the air.

More about Ted Grussing …

Lens filters are one of the most affordable yet also most versatile accessories you can stow in your lens bag. Some of them, like polarizers and UV filters, are practically ubiquitous in modern-day photography, used both to lend images a unique look as well as to protect your costly gear.

But one particular lens filter is only rarely talked about these days: the humble color filter.

Today, let’s rectify that. By analyzing not just what color filters are and how they work, but what has affected their greatly changing popularity over the years, it’s easy to determine how color filters may fit into your creative process, too!

Table of Contents

Identifying a Color Filter

Hold a color filter in your hand, and two things are likely to stick out to the naked eye right away. The first is the intensity and clarity of the solid color it radiates. Punchy, strong contrasts that are very aesthetically pleasing are the hallmark of a high-quality color filter.

The second is the physical similarity between color filters and any of the other lens filters you might already be familiar with. Color filters use the same filter threads and the same construction as any other lens-mounted, circular filter.

The only difference is the way the glass surface is treated to achieve the desired effect, making the learning curve for those experienced in using filters practically zero.

What are Color Filters Used For?

This raises the question: why should you use color filters?

The answer is a bit complex (I would not have written a whole guide about it if it wasn’t), but in a nutshell, color filters are there to help you control contrasts and light balance in monochrome photography.

If applied to color photography, the color filter will do something very simple indeed: shooting with a red filter will paint your whole frame red, shooting with a green filter will make everything in your viewfinder appear green, and so on.

But it is in monochrome photography that color filters can really do something unique and interesting.

How Color Filters Work

Let’s take a moment to see how color filters do what they do to our images.

In black-and-white photography, the colors of the world around us may be expressed in terms of gradients of grays and blacks and whites.

But that does not mean that our lens or even our film does not “see” color! It is merely the spectrum within which the colors are represented that differs from “color photography”.

Hence, when applying a color filter (say, red), that color is literally filtered out, darkening all parts of the image containing that color since it will be less exposed. This allows the neighboring colors on the color wheel to pop out more.

At the same time, the color filter’s complementary colors (for red, that would be green) will also be darkened, if not by as much.

Since all color filters remove at least part of the spectrum from the image, they also act like sunglasses for your lens, removing reflections and certain unsightly optical effects. This is most apparent when shooting in bright sunlight.

The Whole Palette of Color Filters Available Today

Let us take a closer look at each of the color filters for black-and-white photography commonly employed today, and how their effects translate to the final image.

Yellow Filters

The yellow filter is by far the most common color filter in monochromatic photography. In fact, it has been considered the standard filter to use since the early days of the medium, and most young photographers were trained during the last century to keep a yellow filter on their lenses by default.

Why is that? In simple words, it’s because the yellow filter affects your image in subtle ways that are more often welcomed than not, making it fairly universal.

Yellow cuts through small mist or fog relatively easily, clearing up the frame a little. It also increases the contrast between clouds and the sky, helping prevent that overblown “whiteout” look that you can get on a bright day.

Furthermore, many people find medium and light skin tones look more pleasing through a yellow filter, which helps in portraiture.

Green Filters

A landscape photographer’s perennial favorite, green cuts through the muddiness that often results from shooting wide, open areas covered in thick foliage. By filtering out large parts of the green spectrum, it allows contrasts between leaves, flowers, trees, and other natural elements to stand out more, making them more crisp and three-dimensional in appearance.

Red Filters

Red filters create a similar effect to yellow filters, though the results may look much more intense. Like yellow, filtering red separates clouds from the sky. However, red filters do more than just add a subtle layer of contrast – on a bright day, the blue sky will show in your photo as near-black while clouds stand out in punchy shades of dark gray!

Patterns, such as the texture of brick tiles in architecture or the fine details of skin, look much grittier and more detailed through a red filter. This is often employed to lend photos a “weathered”, rough look.

Also like yellow, red cuts through fog, mist, and thin cloud layers. However, it does so much more potently, allowing the red filter to eliminate almost all forms of atmospheric haze from the picture and clearing up distant scenes to a significant degree.

Orange Filters

Orange filters are neither as common as red nor as yellow, but they present a neat middle ground between the two.

Not as intense as the former but much more noticeable than the latter, they are especially useful for balancing out certain skin tones. They also render more interesting details and contrasts in light-colored organic subjects, such as flowers and other plants where a stronger green filter would darken too much of the frame.

Blue Filters

Even less common is the blue filter. This filter essentially does the opposite of the red filter – its effect is about as potent, yet instead of cutting through fog and sharpening textures, it appears to smooth out color gradients and bring out haze and mist more.

While rare, blue filters can be useful if you are dealing with an overblown scene and you wish to bring down the contrast to let certain details stand out more.

Special-Purpose Colors

Beyond these “standard” color filters, there are many more options that are rarely discussed. Given enough time and diligence, you can probably manage to find at least one color filter for every named shade of the visible light spectrum!

However, that doesn’t mean that every single color filter imaginable will do something aesthetically preferable to your image.

Most rare and unusual color filters for monochrome photography will state relatively clearly on their packaging what precise use case they are intended for.

To name just one example I am familiar with, the French brand FOCA made a special brownish filter called the “DYMA” for their own cameras. Its color profile absorbs roughly the same spectrum as a yellow and green filter combined (though slightly less intensely than either), making it an ideal solution for landscape scenes heavy in flora.

Color Filter Factors

Do note that not every color filter is created equal. I am not just talking about obvious issues of quality from off-brand gear, but rather about something called the filter factor.

Every color filter will display a small factor labeled “X”, followed by a number. This is usually found on the rim of the filter, and the number indicates the factor of exposure lost.

Because color filters literally remove light from your image, you do need to adjust exposure accordingly. The filter factor helps you determine the amount of extra light you need to push through your lens to achieve the same exposure as without the filter.

Note that filters with stronger effects, such as green and red, will naturally remove more light than more subtle filters and thus carry a higher filter factor.

Thankfully, most modern cameras are perfectly capable of compensating for this automatically by using TTL light metering. Still, it’s handy to know about filter factors to be able to do quick exposure estimations in your head when need be.

Wratten Numbers for Color Filters

There is one more way in which color filters differ from one another, even two of the same color!

That is because there is no universal standard on, for instance, the shade of green that is considered appropriate for a green filter to have.

Rather, all filters come in many different shades, or intensities, and it is up to you to choose which to use! When I mentioned yellow as the long-running standard for black-and-white photography earlier, I was referring to one specific yellow: Wratten 8, also commonly referred to as K2 in the K series of Wratten numbers designed for use with tungsten light sources.

What does 8 or K2 mean? Well, if you look them up, an 8 or K2 filter is called “Medium Yellow”. This is a standardized definition based on something called Wratten codes, or Wratten numbers.

Patented originally by Kodak for their own lens filters, Wratten numbers have become the global baseline by which all shades of color filters are still measured. Because Kodak doesn’t make the original Wratten filters anymore, it is up to third-party manufacturers to adhere to the Wratten codes – and not all do, especially low-priced brands.

But generally speaking, you can still take the original Wratten designations for color filters as a guideline to understand how different shades of the same color filter will act differently.

Should You Use Color Filters In-Camera or in Post-Processing?

While simply screwing a filter of a color of your choice to the front of your lens will allow color filtering to be done in-camera, that is nowadays but one way of compensating for color contrasts in monochrome photography.

The power of digital post-processing enables us to do much of what physical color filters do in software instead of hardware. All you have to do is jump into the suite of your choice and edit the color balance of your photograph. Usually, the program will give you a few different ways of doing this, for example via sliders, or by adjusting color curves.

Some post-processing software even comes with its own color filters built-in! Select “red”, for instance, and the program will automatically filter out exactly the parts of the spectrum that a physical red lens filter would.

This has a few clear advantages over mounting filters on the lens. Digital photo editing is mostly non-destructive – you can play with the effects of different color filters, redo and undo them, and pick the one you like most.

That is especially the case when shooting RAW files, which give you much higher editing headroom than JPEGs.

By and large, skillful use of post-processing software can very closely emulate the effects of on-lens color filters.

This isn’t actually even a modern innovation per se. Already in the film era, using color filters in the darkroom when printing could, if done properly, closely recreate the effects of lens filters without having to alter the original negative.

In the end, that makes the question of whether to use color filters in-camera or in post-processing one of user preference. Some might argue that on-lens filters provide a more reliable experience – as long as you are somewhat familiar with the factor and Wratten number of your filter, you can predict what the image is going to turn out like.

On the other hand, others might appreciate the freedom of experimenting with the countless options and endless leeway for fine-tuning that modern photo editing provides.

Image credits: Header photo from Depositphotos