Olivier's Blog
Discovering the Magic Cloth
Written by Olivier on date 31 October 2010 in Photographic Techniques .
A few days ago, I found by accident an article on the web describing a photographic process unknown to me and perfectly suited for low-light photography.
Named by its creator, Tony Brackley-Prower, the Magic Cloth technique is an extremely powerful way to extract information from high contrast scenes without using graduated filters or combining exposures for HDR processing.
In principle, the technique is so simple that it seems surprising it hasn't been exploited by other photographers before, at least not that I'm aware of.
The idea is as follows, instead of using strong graduated filters to darken the brighter parts of the scene, a screening object of some kind, such as a cloth, is used to manually regulate how much light reaches the sensor in different areas. For example, a night scene requiring 10 seconds to reveal details in the foreground but only 2 seconds to keep cloud texture in the sky can be achieved by selecting a 10 seconds shutter speed and masking the sky using the "magic cloth" for a duration of 8 seconds. This would be equivalent to using a 5 stops graduated filter.
As one can guess, this technique is only applicable for long exposures as the photographer needs time to move the mask in front of the lens. For this reason, it is particularly suited to low light photography.
Excited at the idea of trying this new technique I prepared a set of masks, each one made of a card board piece stuck on stick with sticky tape, which I will refer to, for obvious reasons, as a lolly. 
I headed to the Poolbeg lighthouse, in Dublin, located at the end of a long pier extending into the Irish sea and offering a beautiful view on Howth, Dublin and the instantly recognizable towers of the old power station.
After a few attempts at the magic cloth technique, I started getting better results. Here is one of my best pictures of the evening.
f/14, 20s at ISO 200.
What I like about this picture is the amount of details I managed to capture on the pier (moss, stone grain, etc) and in the sky. remember, this picture was taken without any graduated filter. Cheap and effective! But I have to admit it took me five or six tries at this scene before getting the desired result.
What I found out is that the lolly should be kept right against the lens as otherwise the light reflecting on the cardboard will create a flare like artifact on the final image. This is probably not ideal as touching the lens could cause vibrations and therefore reduce sharpness. One possible way to allow keeping the mask away from the lens would be to paint the mask black or, even better, wrap the mask into black velvet.
f/16, 30s at ISO 200
In the picture above, the magic cloth technique made it possible to reveal many details around the rail which was plunged in near darkness. In comparison, the sky was very bright as it was lit by the remaining light of the sunset and the city lights underneath.
f/6.3, 30s at ISO 400
As I was walking back towards the car, I took the image above. At that stage, it was extremely dark and the rocks leaning against the pier where pitch black to my eyes. The magic cloth allowed me to reveal a lot of shimmery details on the water surface.
Finally, I took this last shot before leaving. While I'm very happy with the final result, it shows one thing, that even the magic cloth cannot reveal light where it doesn't exist.
f/7.1, 30s at ISO 400
In conclusion I must say I am really excited about the magic cloth technique. Interestingly it allows me to become active during the long exposure times. In some ways, it reminds me of the dodging and burning process used in the darkroom except that this time the photographic paper is replaced with the camera sensor.
It is not 100% accurate but can yield results that are dramatic without the need for expensive filters and doesn't yield sharpness reduction that is unavoidable with extra glass between your sensor and the scene. Moreover it's free and fun.
I would like to thank Tony for sharing his technique with others and I invite everybody to discover what he has managed to achieve through is wonderful photographs.
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