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”.
To somewhat quote Yoda from the movie Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back, to become a successful artist, just like a Jedi knight or anything else, requires a deep commitment. You must commit a lot of time and energy to become an artist. When becoming a photographic artist there is not only the commitment of time and energy but one of money to be able to buy the equipment. The dedication to looking at the world and revealing to others how you see it.
The deep commitment comes from being able to see beyond looking. Creating photographic art is more than pointing the camera at a subject or scene and pushing a button. Creating photographic art is about seeing beyond using your vision and imagination. It is about letting the world see what is inside your mind.
I made that commitment once and let it slip, possibly enticed by the “dark side”, but I’m now finding my way back. While there may not be many “Jedi masters” I have found my search for the “force” of art continues. The quest begins this week to get back on the path of an artist and to once again make a deep commitment to creating art as an artist.
Do you, we, just copy the work we see of others, or are we original artists? I don’t even mean copying the work of others intentionally but subconsciously copying the work of others. I often like to think of myself as an original artist but am I truly? I suspect we are all influenced by the work we see, especially if we like the work.
Just this morning, I read a blog article sent to me by a friend. It was titled “Brain and Eye Photography” and can be found here. This article got me to think about this topic even more so. Are we unduly influenced by what we see and how we see it? Do we change by seeing more photography or by seeing less photography?
I guess one of the reasons I have never bought presets for Adobe Lightroom is that I edit each image individually. While this sounds great it makes it difficult to get consistency when putting together projects where you want to have a consistent style.
I know I have mentioned it in the past but I feel it bears mentioning again. One of the features of Adobe Lightroom (not Adobe Lightroom Classic) that I have found I really like is the “remix” and discover features. This feature takes you to the “cloud” and lets you see how others see the same photograph when developed in Adobe Lightroom. I find looking at these to be truly inspiring and hopefully become more creative and original.
If you have followed my blog for any bit of time you may have gathered I further develop all my photographs in my digital darkroom using a variety of products and techniques. I do this because I don’t believe a digital photograph is ready until then. While my chemical darkroom techniques were very simple back in my film days the choice of the film I used did make a difference. It wasn’t because I couldn’t learn advanced darkroom techniques but I had limited opportunity to learn more advanced techniques.
When digital came along I was able to experiment more. The only thing I lost was a bit of time and used a bit of electricity. No waste of chemicals, film, or photographic paper. If a technique failed, start over.
Even with simple changes in color tone, you can change the entire look and feel of a scene.
The same scene from the same image developed slightly differently gives us a completely different message by its look and feel.
If you don’t embrace the modern digital darkroom, now is the time to give it a try. You may be surprised at how it changes your art.
Photographer Clay 