Tagged: Photoshop
Portraits: Amy
Amy was after a headshot for acting jobs and I was delighted to have the opportunity take her photo: her expressive features and personality were a great draw.
In the event, the photo session was fun, with us trying a variety of poses and set-ups in the soft light of the garden near her flat. Several choices were made from the completed image, but I always liked the cheekiness of her smile in this one.
The big difference with this portrait was the post production edit. Normally I just balance the levels in Adobe’s Lightroom Classic, but in this case I used Photoshop, to layer and retouch Amy’s hair and skin. It was a fascinatingly involved process and I felt it really enhanced, rather than distorted, the image.
Often I have used just a few tools in Photoshop and wondered how things would go if I made more extreme alterations with skin tone, clothing or backgrounds, but I feel that I would need to design the image in my head before shooting and post production. I hope to experiment more with this in future.
Scanning
Having worked through my old digital images, I’ve begun to sort through my transparency photographs.
I shot on transparency film exclusively for a number of years at the turn of the century: most were mounted and scanned, but as I shot more print film and then moved onto digital capture, I left transparency film by the wayside. I have quite a few rolls to go through.
Shooting on 35mm and medium format film, I found the images on transparencies, especially when projected or on my light-box, to be full of gorgeous detail and light. However, my scans never quite measured up to what I saw “live”. Furthermore, on Kodak’s beautiful Technical Pan film, a single scan pass didn’t do justice to all the detail held therein.
After chancing by an article in the Guardian, in which a photographer talked of scanning his images for highlights, shadows and mid-tones before layering them in photoshop, I changed my scanning technique. I made three scans of each image for the bright areas, shadows and “normal” areas then looked to how I could best combine them.
The internet is full of tutorials on this, but I found the most comprehensive (and understandable) ones gave pointers on using image>apply image with layer masks on Photoshop. After recording a few steps, I worked through the scans pretty well. As to the results?
Fitzrovia Square
I’m currently working through some donated rolls of 35mm film on my rangefinder: black and white print film. In time, I hope to be working through more 35mm and medium format film and I’ll be trying more scanning and blending techniques to display them.
The deep dive
I’m currently amping up my photoshop skills.
There have been two projects so far; both to do with layering. They have been fascinating and frustrating in equal measure, but also totally necessary in order to make the images I am ambitious to create.
I have been inspired by such photographers as Ilina S, Erika Tschinkel, Sabina and Zhang Jinga, who all suffuse their images with an air of the fantastic, with their use of subject, composition, lighting and post production. Their images and technique remind me of the painstaking work of special visual effects teams in film making.
My rudimentary efforts so far make me think of how one can know when an image is “complete”. I’ve never been able to work that out in my writing, editing or darkroom work. The idea that creative work is never finished but abandoned comes to mind.
Maybe such knowledge comes from knowing how to best use the tools, which is what I’m learning now. Tutorials abound and I’m practising regularly.
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.
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.
Burning Details 
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