Beyond the Camera

Once upon a time, I was one of those anti post-processing “purists”.  “I love the natural look, I hate processed photos”, I bleated to myself.  What I’ve since realised is that what I meant was, “I don’t know what I’m doing”.

This obviously doesn’t hold true for all photographers who keep their processing minimal.  This wonderful presentation by National Geographic photographer Michael Melford taught me a lot about bring out the best in an image without serious post-processing – National Geographic have a policy of only presenting real photos to their customers and will not accept overly-processed shots from their photographers – and I have nothing but admiration and respect for his gorgeous images.  But I’m not a National Geographic photographer.

And now I LOVE post-processing.  I love playing with my photos.  I love experimenting with colour and shades and shade and shading, painting my little adjustment brush all over the place, cloning out that distracting branch, softening the focus with low contrast and clarity or making everything razor-sharp with the reverse, tinging my highlights and shadows, cropping and flipping and and all and any combination of the above.  The magic of those little Lightroom sliders… I love it.  I may love it more than taking the photo, especially if taking the photo means getting up at 4am.  I feel a little disappointed when I look at a photo that’s pretty fine with minimal adjustments and think, “Is this as good as it gets?”.

Lightroom is what turned me.  It’s something you can play with without much knowledge, although youtube videos quickly helped me understand the magic.  Lightroom is non-destructive, so I can layer change upon change then turn back time with a click in the History panel.  It lets me take snapshots so I can capture a few of my favourite experiments then directly compare them.  It’s a tool like any other in the photographer’s bag and skillfully wielded it can turn an ok image into a grand sight.  I’m not all that skillful but I love it.

And that it’s hardly a new thing is something I knew but it only really hit home recently.  For example, here is what Ansel Adams had to say about his famous “Moonrise” photo:

I decided to use dilute D-23 and ten developer-to-water sequences, 30 seconds in the developer and 2 minutes in the water without agitation for each sequence. By using ten developer-water cycles I minimized the possibility of uneven sky.

The negative was quite difficult to print; several years later I decided to intensify the foreground to increase contrast. I first refixed and washed the negative, then treated the lower section of the image with a dilute solution of Kodak IN-5 intensifier. I immersed the area below the horizon with an in-and-out motion for about 1 minute, then rinsed in water, and repeated about twelve times until I achieved what appeared to be optimum density. Printing was a bit easier thereafter, although it remains a challenge.

There were light clouds in a few areas of the sky, and the clouds under the moon were very bright (two or three times as bright as the moon). I burn-in the foreground a little toward the bottom of the print. I then burn along the line of the mountains, keeping the card edge in constant motion. In addition, I hold the card far enough from the paper to produce a broad penumbra in its shadow; this prevents a distinct dodging or burning line, which would be very distracting. I also burn upward a bit to the moon to lower the values of the white clouds and the comparitively light horizon sky. I then burn from the top of the moon to the top of the image with several up-and-down passages. – Taken from Notes On Photographs

He did what who where?  There was no Photoshop, but while Photoshop didn’t exist photo manipulation did and had done for as long as photography has existed.  Photoshop wasn’t born out of thin air, it was wanted by photographers to be the digital equivalent of all this work film photographers did (and still do) in the darkroom.  You can see the difference between the straight from camera print and Adams’ post-processed one here.

I recently subscribed (I’m not that keen on the subscription model but the Black Friday sale won me over) to Photoshop.  I used Photoshop a little several years ago but hardly any since, and just opening it is daunting.  I don’t even know where to start.  I really should get to grips with it, add this powerful tool to my bag for special occasions, but I feel I’ve been handed a chainsaw to peel an apple.  I rarely feel the need to leave Lightroom… suspect I’m scared!  Back to youtube I should go but this feels more like a chore than a pleasure.

Anyway, I’m completely on-board with post-processing now.  It definitely helps to get as much right in camera as you can.  But even when you do, sometimes there’s an extra je ne sais quoi you can add in Lightroom.  The eleventh secret herb or spice.  The touch that makes this photo mine rather than any other photographer’s who’s stood in the exact same spot, and I’ve stood in the same places as many, many photographers.

Am I misrepresenting the world?  Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot.  Sometimes I’m merely adjusting for the camera’s desire to average the world’s colour to grey (“no, lil camera, the sunset really was that red”).  Sometimes I’ve flipped the world in a mirror, removed parts of it, changed the colours, lit it up… But while it might not end up the exact scene I photographed, it is what I felt.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Journey

Thanks to The Wanderlust Gene for turning me onto the WordPress weekly photo challenge.   Any excuse to publish a favourite photo, right?

This was taken at Thawil train station, Zurich, Switzerland.  Not the most obvious hotspot for photography, but I was in the area, with a brand new Canon 550D, a head full of newly-discovered mystical words like aperture and exposure, and some time to kill.

I have to admit here that I’m not generally the kind of photographer who sees an image in her mind, then sets up the world around her to take it.  I’ll never be a decent portrait or art photographer, since if you give me a blank canvas I’ll just look blankly at you.  Sometimes, and really I mean very occasionally sometimes, something does pop to mind, and this is one such example.  I had a lot of fun taking this, spending absolutely ages playing with depth of field and taking my first baby steps to really understanding what it was all about.

As an aside, does anyone actually use their depth of field button on their camera?  I’ve mostly given up; I find the viewfinder too small to really be sure of the effect, and it’s just much easier to take the photo and view it on screen.  I realise this would be different in a film world though!

Anyway, another thing this photo started to teach me was to get to grips with post-processing.  After being happy with it in-camera, I got the photo home and somehow it still just didn’t have the feeling I wanted to convey.  Too many clashing colours, too busy.  With a big sigh of regret I was ready to give up on the image.  However, I do own (and love) Lightroom, and my mouse hovered over a preset and the little preview image changed and I went woah.  This might actually be salvageable.

I used to say I didn’t like obvious post-processing, an opinion generated by my blank canvas phobic brain, I suspect.  This image and many subsequentially have taught me that some images cry out for it.  I don’t take photos with obvious post-processing in mind, aside from some monochrome/sepia, but those little presets can be really inspiring and with adjustments have transformed some of my images from what they looked like in real life to how they seemed when I looked at them through the camera.   As a favourite quote of mine puts it, “I can’t swear is this exactly how it happened, but this is how it felt”¹.

¹ If you can identify that quote without the help of google, then we can be shame buddies.

Day One: Crunch Time

So, as mentioned in my profile, I’ve been picking up a camera and photographing everything in sight since I was a little kid.  But for years, I actively avoided DSLRs as I didn’t want to “learn all that complicated stuff”.  To this day I don’t understand my past self!  I’ve worked in IT for over 11 years, so it’s not as if I’m not used to learning new technology.

Still, after a time I was worn down by the frustration of not being able to make my photos look like how I saw them in my eyes, and I caved and started talking about a “proper” camera.  In June 2010, my husband returned from a trip to the USA with a shiny new Canon 550D/Rebel T2i/Kiss (the last is the Japanese model name, I love the international differences!), and I haven’t looked back.

I should have chronicled by journey from the beginning, but better late than never, huh?  Now, after nearly two years, I’ve learnt SO much, but I have so much to go.  I understand apeture, shutter speed, and the importance of the right light.  I must admit, I’m still getting to grips with exposure, and my new latest lesson is to remember that ISO doesn’t ALWAYS have to be set to “auto”, and if I have too much noise in a nighttime shot that I took on a tripod, then I’ve only myself to blame.

Oh, another slightly-less recent lesson?  Lightroom+RAW is not actually a magic fix-everything tool.  Experienced photographers will be laughing at me, but when I first started using Lightroom 3 mid-2011, I was absolutely stunned with the amount of things it could salvage from an initial poor to mediocre RAW photo.  So out in the world I went, armed with my lil camera and ignored the oft-touted phrase used by the best “Get it right in camera“.  Many potentially awesome photos were lost with the arrogance of thinking Lightroom would save me.  Ah well.  Many photos have been lost in all sorts of ways during this journey, and they won’t be the last.  Many photos have turned out better than I could have imagined however, and those are the highs that keep me going.

So here I am, embarking on another phase of this great journey.  Encouraged by compliments from friends and family (obviously biased, I appreciate that), I thought I might put a few of what I feel is my best online.  These live at Flickr, if you’re interested. And if you’re really interested, I’ve started slapping (or rather, painstakingly tweaking) a selection of those images onto a few items on Zazzle. The Zazzle shop has a loooooooooong way to go, but that’s really the subject of another post.

So, welcome to my blog!