A deep dive

Over the past few years, I’ve learned to use Adobe’s Photoshop and Lightroom Classic to edit my images. My use has been rudimentary, but has served me well so far, but I wanted to take a deeper dive into these programmes, especially Photoshop, so I’m following some tutorials.

The photographers I really admire have all encouraged photographers to learn about lighting and post-production: I start into the former when I finally acquire my first lighting set up; as to the latter, I need to be using post-production more effectively.

Up until now, I’ve used Photoshop for tweaks such as exposure, white balancing and little else. I have done the odd experiment, normally following a tutorial from Amateur Photographer magazine to the letter, but little on my own. All the while, I have looked at other photographers use post production to manipulate their work into art as well as representation. I’d like to try this.

Twin-focus combination
Solarization
Cross-processing

The tutorials I’m following are a deep dive into post-production. At the moment, I pay for Adobe’s photographer package; this may change in future as I learn more.

Some tutorials have touched upon making a “vintage look” on new photos. I have family photos from decades back that are vintage: they were taken to the best of their photographers ability to represent the event depicted. I feel the same way about the photographs I take now, but I am inclined to use post-production more effectively for interpretation as well as representation.

I dare say that I was reluctant to try any new techniques as I was trying to get my images as “in camera” pure as possible. But I realised that I made choices on how I photographed something on film and once in the dark room, I definitely made choices on how to print it. What I’m doing now is simply the digital version.

I’m three tutorials in so far. Whether I use all I’ve learned is yet to be seen, but it would be a dreadful waste of this resource if I didn’t have some idea of how to use it more fully.