editing
If you are like me, and like going out often and taking lots of pictures, you might have hundreds if not thousands of photographs sitting in your memory cards or in a hard drive. In this video, we'll see how we can go from hundreds of images to just a handful of ones, our very best photographs.
Richard Avedon’s markup
Post-processing is one of the most controversial topics in photography these days, with some even dismissing edited photos as "digital art." This argument often comes from the idea that back in the film days, photography was more honest, and editing is a new thing.
History tells us a different story, though. Some big names in photography, like Ansel Adams and Bill Brandt, knew that what happened after the shot was just as important as taking it. Clicking the shutter was just another step in the very long process of crafting a masterpiece, which often required many hours in the darkroom perfecting the final print.
Other masters would use professional printers to bring their vision to fruition. Take Richard Avedon, for example. He handed his negatives to a master printer. This person would take Avedon's incredibly detailed notes and feedback and turn them into the final print. Now, that is even better than AI!
Perhaps, part of the criticism comes from the fact that the darkroom was once reserved for the most dedicated or the ones with the most resources. Today, anyone with a smartphone can tweak their photos -and it’s easy to overdo it.
Whether you prefer the simplicity of straight-out-of-camera shots or enjoy fine-tuning your images afterward, it is you who decides what to do and how to do it. Never let anyone change that.
New Mexico Church is an image I took in New Mexico back in 2019. I used my old Sony a6000 with the manual lens Rokinon 12mm f/2 (18mm FF equivalent). I didn't do much to the RAW file, besides adding some contrast.
While the contrast slider can do wonders, sometimes you have to roll up your sleeves and go local. In this case, as you can see if you pay close attention to the images above, I added some brushes to make those white parts of the frame stand out even more.
Especially the monk / priest on the bottom right, the second subject in this image after the church.
The effect is very subtle. It's noticeable when presented with the before and the after, but it'd be hard to spot otherwise. It's not obvious.
This is very important when it comes to editing and post-processing our images: to be very subtle. The best editing is the one that does its job without screaming at the viewer.
Black and White photography might lack colors, but that doesn’t mean we can’t use the colors of a scene to improve our images. In this video, I show you some examples of how tweaking with the colors made some of my photographs better.
This is a topic that keeps coming up. How far can we go with our editing? When does it stop being photography to become "digital art"? Is the digital darkroom different from the analog darkroom?
So many question, and so many different answers.
Today, editing software offers us more tools than we'll ever need. Some of them can be used in ways they might have not been intended too, expanding even more the creative possibilities of today's photography.
One of the things I noticed when I switched from 120 medium format film back to digital, was the extra step I had to take with every single one of my photographs. I had to crop them to square. Digital sensors are usually rectangles, 3:2 ratio, so I was capturing more of the scene than I really needed.
At first, I thought that was a waste of my time and of space. After all, after cropping the RAW files to a square, a third of the "negative" was going unused. That could add up quickly, especially if you shoot a lot of images like I do.
Anyway, over time, I started to see how useful that information to the left and the right of what I had seen in the field could be. It allowed me to reframe images where I could have done better, or to discover slightly different compositions from the one I had seen in location.
I liked it so much that I wanted to do the same on the top and bottom of the frame. So every time I was about to take a photo, I'd take a step back to capture a little bit more of the scene.
In this video, I give you a quick overview of my whole photography process. From the very beginning, when the image is just an idea, to the very end, sharing those images online or making a print.
How far can we go with photography? When does it stop being photography and start becoming something else, like digital art?
I discussed this topic in my newsletter a couple of weeks ago, and I thought it'd be interesting to make a video about it.
In this video, I edit 6 images I made this winter on my iPad using Adobe Lightroom CC.
A beautiful scene is not enough to make a good image. Photography is not about capturing, it’s about creating our own fantasies and illusions to express what we feel. For that, we need to stop seeing reality as it is, and start seeing “in images”.
In this video, I edit one of my black and white image as I guide through some of the most important tools I use on a daily basis.
A short video of me editing 5 of my most recent images in Adobe Lightroom CC.
I try not to think too much about composition when I shoot: I point the camera at whatever I saw, I move around, and press the button whenever it feels right.
It's when I'm back at home that I can see more clearly if the image works or not. Although rare, there are cases where I'll find an image I had not seen in the field, an image I can still make by "re-composing" the original negative or file.
Most of my images are square, as you know. If I'm shooting digital, that means I have to crop the files to that format. While I'd rather shoot square natively, having that extra room for editing has proven to be very useful.
One example is this image of a couple of swans I took in Lago di Garda, in Northern Italy, a few months ago. It was only when I looked at it on the computer that I saw how it could work with a heavy cropping.
Original 3:2 raw file showing the crop.
Final square image.
Another example is this image of the Badlands National Park, in South Dakota. I'd taken the original photo almost 2 years ago, but it wasn't until recently that I "saw" the panoramic image in it. It was not my intention when I took it, I wasn't thinking about a panorama, but it works.
These are extreme examples, though. Most of the time, all I do is small adjustments to the composition I did manage to capture in the field. For example, take a look at this image of a tree in the italian Alps, and compare it to the original square crop. I decided to place the tree a little bit further to the left, giving the branch a bit more room to grow to the right of the frame.
Original square crop.
Adjusted square crop.
There's no shame in creating a completely new image after the shot. As I said many times, photography is not a competition, there is no prize for those who get it right the first time. Legends of photography like Ansel Adams kept playing with old negatives for decades, coming up with new edits and interpretations.
Photography is a creative process, inspiration can hit you at any point in your workflow. Embrace it.
The advent of touch interfaces was supposed to bring a new era of computing, and while they have certainly achieved that as devices for content consumption, I'm not so sure when it comes to content creation.
Read MoreA few months ago, I decided to start calling myself an artist, instead of a photographer. After all, I create art. Or I try to.
Artists aren't trying to represent what I see in an accurate and truthfully way. We try to express ourselves.
Instead of capturing nature with proper exposure and focus so it resembles as much as possible the original, we try to use it to express an idea or emotion, to add our own character.
This approach to photography is less about what's in front of the lens, and more about who's behind it.
In order to make an image able to convey our message from a realistic representation, often times we have no choice but to edit, in software or the darkroom, our negatives, RAW files, whatever it is, so creation can happen.
Many dismiss this as unethical or unnecessary. I say, this is how art is done.
Going through your photographs to select the best ones can be a very daunting task. Even harder if you take a lot of photos (like me).
Over time, I've developed a workflow that makes this process relatively fast and painless. The basic idea is to split the decision making process in a few steps to make it easier and ensure you are selecting only your best images.
I use Lightroom CC to organize my photos, but you could use any other software or even regular folders.
Read MoreI've been testing out my iPad Pro 9.7" (2016) as my sole device for writing, photo editing and video editing. I will be talking about the whole experience in more depth soon, but today I wanted to share the easiest way I've found to copy video files from a Sony camera to the iPad.
Read More"Photography is not a sport, there are no rules, everything must be tried and tested" - Bill Brandt
Bill Brandt is one my greatest inspirations. I love his landscapes, portraits and even the nudes (not a big fan of the genre, but the way he did it was just genius).
I think what I like the most about him is his approach to photography. For him, it was all about creating something with the medium, avoiding silly self-imposed rules.
He died in 1983, 5 years before Photoshop was created. That didn't stop him from completely changing his images in the darkroom. Actually, he admittedly did most of his work in the darkroom.
The image of the seagull is a good example. He added the bird afterwards, and the morning Sun years later.
He was brilliant, and we'd be wise to follow his advice to experiment and try everything.
PS: If you want to know more about Bill Brandt, I strongly recommend watching this interview from 1983 for BBC's Master Photographers.
