124 — Luminosity Masks — Interview with Tony Kuyper

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #124 fea­tures an inter­view with Ari­zona fine art pho­tog­ra­pher Tony Kuyper. After years of exper­i­men­ta­tion Tony has devel­oped an inter­me­di­ate post pro­cess­ing tech­nique NOT based on the pix­els that make up the image but rather the bright­ness lev­els or tones that make up the image. One of the game chang­ing rea­sons to work in this way is the tonal con­trol and level of pre­ci­sion you can achieve with your selec­tions and the fact that these selec­tions are nat­u­rally per­fectly feath­ered.  This is accom­plished by cre­at­ing a lumi­nos­ity mask (in Gimp, Pho­to­shop Ele­ments or Pho­to­shop) and Tony describes how and why to do this in the podcast.

Although this is an inter­me­di­ate level pod­cast, newer pho­tog­ra­phers might want to lis­ten to get ideas for future study and post-processing play. Tony explains the con­cepts clearly!

Thanks to The Cam­era Store (The largest cam­era store in Cal­gary, Alberta, Canada)  for spon­sor­ing the Photography.ca podcast.

Here are some of Tony’s images processed with and with­out lumi­nos­ity masks. You can see that the images processed with the masks ‘sing’ louder.

Brine Stones by Tony Kuyper - processed without luminosity masks

Brine Stones by Tony Kuyper — processed with­out lumi­nos­ity masks

 

Brine Stones by Tony Kuyper - processed with luminosity masks

Brine Stones by Tony Kuyper — processed with lumi­nos­ity masks

 

Elephant's Feet by Tony Kuyper processed without luminosity masks

Elephant’s Feet by Tony Kuyper processed with­out lumi­nos­ity masks

 

Elephant's Feet by Tony Kuyper processed with luminosity masks

Elephant’s Feet by Tony Kuyper processed with lumi­nos­ity masks

 

Navajo Bridge by Tony Kuyper processed without luminosity masks

Navajo Bridge by Tony Kuyper processed with­out lumi­nos­ity masks

 

Navajo Bridge by Tony Kuyper processed with luminosity masks

Navajo Bridge by Tony Kuyper processed with lumi­nos­ity masks

 

Links /resources men­tioned in this podcast:

Lumi­nos­ity masks — Tuto­r­ial on Tony’s site
Tony’s tuto­ri­als page
GIMP lumi­nos­ity mask tuto­r­ial
Pho­tog­ra­phy assign­ment on our forum — Space
Level 2 pho­tog­ra­phy assign­ment on our forum — Dip­tychs
Illu­minight — Pho­tog­ra­phy exhi­bi­tion by Marko Kulik

If you liked this pod­cast and want to review it on Itunes, this link gets you to the main page

If you are inter­ested in writ­ing for our blog please con­tact me photography.ca ( A T ) G m ail Dot co m (using stan­dard email formatting)

Please join the Photography.ca fan page on Facebook

My Face­book pro­file — Feel free to “friend” me — please just men­tion Photography.ca
My Twit­ter page — I will fol­low you if you fol­low me — Let’s con­nect — PLEASE email me and tell me who you are in case I don’t rec­i­p­ro­cate because I think you are a spammer.

If you are still lurk­ing on our forum,
feel free to join our friendly :)  Pho­tog­ra­phy forum

Thanks as well to Mike Bons, Lucy 72, Jimmy Brown, and Dar­nell B who posted com­ments directly on the blog.  Although ALL com­ments are appre­ci­ated, com­ment­ing directly in this blog is pre­ferred. Thanks as well to all the new mem­bers of the bul­letin board.

If you are look­ing at this mate­r­ial on any other site except Photography.ca — Please hop on over to the Photography.ca blog and pod­cast and get this and other pho­tog­ra­phy info directly from the source. |Sub­scribe with iTunes|Sub­scribe via RSS feed |Sub­scribe for free to the Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast — Photography.ca and get all the posts/podcasts by Email

You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player.

Thanks for lis­ten­ing and keep on shooting!