Something many photographers, especially those just starting out, often don’t take into account is the lighting of a subject. For me, it is all about the light. The term photography means “drawing with light”. Greek term photo translate to light and graph means draw. In fact we are actually recording reflected light on a light sensitive surface be it film or a digital sensor.
I rarely trust nature to provide the light I’m am envisioning. I may use something as simple as a reflector or as complex as strobes and light modifiers.
Learning to control the light is not as complicated as we often think it may be. Looking at the equipment may initially appear intimidating and overwhelming but surprisingly it is much easier than many believe.
Don’t be afraid to learn and if you want find someone who will help guide you through the process of learning about light and how to manipulate and control it.
There are days when I just run out of ideas. Those are the days that I go back through my Lightroom catalog and suddenly may find a gem that never really got developed and shared. Today, was one of those days. I spent a lot of time this morning and never could come up with a topic. I browsed and browsed my catalog, social media sites, videos, and articles, and was still blank. I eventually found the photo above, my first real attempt at boudoir photography. It was a fun session and learned more about what I should do in the future.
The topic of “Photoshop”, using the term generically to mean the use of digital photography editing software, comes up often in photography forums. I find it comes up less often when actually talking to other photographers in person, especially if they identify their work as art. This topic can become very intense.
Through the course of the conversation, it rarely fails that one or more of the “anti-photoshop” photographers will start to refer to photographs that have been edited in software as “digital art” and not a photograph. This is always an attempt to insult the “pro-photoshop” crowd by implying their work is “no longer a photograph and therefore they are not truly a photographer”.
Having seen this discussion many times, I’ve developed (pun intended) a couple of theories on the types of “anti-photoshop” photographers.
They never learned how photographer
The first anti-photoshop is the one that falls into the category of they never learned how to effectively edit their photographs so they have adopted the idea of “if I can’t do it no one should be able to do it”.
The “get it right” in the camera crowd
These are the so-called “straight” photography crowd and often tout the works of Ansel Adams, Paul Strand, and Alfred Stieglitz. Those that argue this often forget that these masters worked in a chemical darkroom to finalize their photography, in other words, comparable to modern photo editing software. This group also includes the straight photographer.
Photoshop makes it too easy crowd
This group believes that because it often took a lot of time and skill to process in the chemical darkroom that the use of modern digital techniques is “cheating”. Just like the “get it right” crowd, this group doesn’t have a problem using modern built-in light-metering, auto settings, and autofocus.
Conclusion
In reality, I don’t care how or what process a photographer uses. I appreciate good photography. Not only do I use photo editing software but I also make use of dedicated light meters to read not only reflected light (used in-camera meters) but supplemental lighting, and light modifiers. Often none of these tools are employed by the anti-photoshop crowd. The true masters of straight photography also used some of these same tools along with creative and/or unusual camera positions and angles.
The photograph I used above is not edited in post-processing nor did it use supplement lighting or light modifiers. What was used was a dedicated light meter to measure the exposure of the light from the sun coming through the leaves of the trees in a wooded area.
One of the most curious things I have discovered in looking at Edward Weston’s gallery is the photographers who are also displayed there, Jerry Uelsmann, Patty Carrol, and Maggie Taylor.
The power of digital photography, even film scanned, coupled with the ability of modern photo editing software, has allowed creativity to flow. Today, we can mix lighting, color grading, and more without taking a truckload of gear. I will still bring lighting equipment and modifiers to use as necessary but I can fine-tune the light or completely change it up.
The image above is the original unprocessed version.
Don’t let anyone tell you that you to stop processing your photographs in post-production. You are losing the power of creativity and might as well be shooting an Instamatic camera.
I don’t profess to be a soothsayer so you won’t find some huge prediction from me in this post. I see all sorts of blogs and articles with headlines that go something like, “Is this the death of photography”, “This invention may soon replace photographers” or “The death of the SLR camera”.
What I find interesting, a few years ago many predicted the death of film cameras. While there are not many new advances or new models of film cameras being developed but you can still buy film and film cameras. In fact, looking at a big-name photography retailer and online store you can even buy a pinhole camera.
A few short years ago smartphone cameras took small, grainy, blurry photographs. Today’s modern smartphone cameras can rival the quality of many dedicated cameras and the technology is advancing. As I think about it, my smartphone is a miniature computer. It has replaced my address book, my GPS device, my landline telephone, and my radio. I can stream movies and television with my smartphone. I no longer need a dedicated device to store and play digital music. While I still have vinyl records and compact discs with music I rarely use them. Although, I am getting back into listening to vinyl records.
I’m not saying I’m giving up my dedicated cameras for smartphone photography. Not in a moment. Hell, I started shooting film again with my twin lens reflex and a 35mm film camera. I may soon look into adding to my film camera collection and do more with them along with developing my own film again.
I’m thrilled to think where photography may go next because we will have more options available. I, for one, love to embrace new advances in technology.
One of my most popular months for photography is coming up. During a recent search of metadata in Lightroom Classic, I discovered the months where I take the most photographs are June, October, April, and November in that order. I found that 21% of my photographs were taken in October and November and 24% were taken in June and April. If I add May in, which is the 5th most photographed month I can account for 33% of my photographs.
Maybe that makes me a “fair weather” photographer? Nah, what I really think is happening is in May and June there are loads of things to photograph after a cold winter. It is before the weather gets hot and humid. Then after the hot humid summer, things become cooler, and the inspiration of autumn (my favorite season) with all the colors and then the inspiration of the creepiness of Halloween.
It’s interesting to me, to see how this stuff plays out. Now that cooler weather is coming and I am once again getting inspired to do more thanks to my many blog followers and photography friends I am ready to see what I get this fall.
Yesterday, I took a much-needed break. I played video games and watched mindless television. We, my wife and I, had intended to go to a small town in Kansas on Saturday. We didn’t go because we had to wait for a delivery and didn’t want to do the 1 hour and 45-minute drive after the wait. Instead, we visited a local winery.
Grape vines at Bluejacket winery
I didn’t do much photography but I did manage to get a couple that interested me and, of course, enjoyed some wine and cheese.
It’s important to remember to take the occasional break. Sit back and relax. Even though I enjoy my photography some days you just need a break.
I must say I’m impressed and people who restore photographs may soon find business slowing. I began working with a public beta of Adobe Photoshop. Amongst the beta features is a feature called “Photo Restoration”. The photo restoration feature can make corrections that can take a couple of hours to do manually nearly instant and do a remarkable job.
The Original photographAI restored before colorizedAI restored after colorizationManually restored using Photoshop tools and colorized
As you can see by reviewing the above photos the A.I. (artificial intelligence) filter does a good job and saved a couple of hours of work.
At this point, I haven’t used the AI filter to restore a photograph that has pieces missing but I’ll try that soon.
Is all this stuff becoming “too easy”? Maybe, but not for me I’m looking forward to it.
Just taking a picture with your camera doesn’t make you an artist. You have to have a vision, you have to move your audience to feel the scene.
The photograph above is just a picture. I saw a band, in the woods and took a picture of the same. It doesn’t speak nearly as well as the one below.
This even applies to photographs that don’t require this level of processing.
The photograph above versus the one below
For me, it is the difference between a snapshot and a photograph. Use creativity to give images emotion. Get your audience involved and feel the scene.
I learned something new a few days ago. If you are an Adobe Creative Cloud member you also get access to beta applications. These beta applications have features that aren’t available in the full releases. I have worked with beta applications in the past, which can be fun and troublesome. This weekend, I will give some of the beta applications a run when I’ll have time to explore them in more detail. Keep in mind, that these are public beta applications so there isn’t a risk of divulging any “secrets”. This leads me to today’s topic, playing as a photographic artist.
Not everything has to be a serious attempt to create art. Sometimes you have to play. Just like the old saying goes, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”.
Photographer Clay 