I ran into a random photographer in the field awhile back. During our conversation I mentioned I shoot with Photoshop in mind. He claimed he didn’t do any post processing to his images. He seemed to feel it was cheating or not real photography. He felt the artistic skill was lost if you used Photoshop to enhance your photos. The only way for the photo to be authentic was to be the camera capture and perfecting that was the real form of the art of photography.  I appreciated his passion and stance, that’s for sure. But at the end of the day, it’s not my job to save the world from “old school” photographers, so I shook my head in disbelief and wished him a good day.

Years ago, when I shot slide film (chromes), I became aware of the importance of Ansel Adams’ place in the world as a photographic artist. I took a one week photo workshop with Rocky Mountain School of Photography. I was fortunate to be instructed by the school’s founder, Neil Chaput de Saintonge. Neil had studied under Ansel Adams and shared many of Ansel’s techniques. Ansel was an artist who used his field work and the photographic negative as his canvas. Most of his time was spent in the darkroom, not the field. He mastered the process of dodging and burning which gave him the ability to better control the viewers eye and stir up an emotion. He is known for this quote; “Dodging and burning are steps to take care of mistakes God made in establishing tonal relationships”. I left the week with a whole new understanding of my interest in photography and where I wanted to go with it. How to get there, however, took a very long time for me.  Ansel worked with Black & White film, which allowed a lot of room for manipulation in the darkroom.  I shot color slide film. It was extremely difficult to work with slide film in a darkroom and so very few did. Slide film had no room for manipulation due to its extreme limited latitude. We just had to accept what came back from the lab. It wasn’t until I owned a good digital SLR and taught myself Photoshop that I found my way.

Today I shoot all digital and use a variety of software including Adobe Photoshop CS5 and Adobe Lightroom 3. When in the field, I often think with Photoshop and Lightroom in mind. It’s taking an already fantastic scene, framing a great composition and being sure to nail the exposure so that I have a canvas on which I can do my thing. Once in Photoshop or Lightroom I maneuver the sliders and lay down some brush strokes in special select areas of the image. By doing so I can control the eye to land at a particular place in the photo as well as control the time it takes getting there. For me, post processing is as important to a great photograph as is the time of exposure.

Unlike the photographer that I spoke of at the beginning of this post, the image that comes out of my camera is merely the beginning of the process of making my photographs into art. You can see from the samples below that if I took what came out of the camera and considered it finished…welll…you be the judge.

Other than stitching in Photoshop, this image is how it looked coming from my digital camera.

This is the same image but after hours of careful post processing.

If you read my previous post about using Photoshop to process a HDR image you may of came away afraid if you’re not up to speed in Photoshop. Photoshop can be a difficult program to learn. If you don’t have years of using it behind you, you might find it frustrating and give up. If you’re not aware, Adobe makes another fantastic photographer application called Lightroom and they have a free 30 trial for it. Adobe Lightroom, although, still deep, is much, much easier to get a solid hold on and in a much shorter time period. You can make all sorts of adjustments to your images using simple tools labeled for any newbie to figure out.

I thought it would be interesting to make an artistic HDR using only Lightroom. All adjustments and color changes to select areas where all done in Lightroom alone. I love this program and am currently using their Beta 3 versions which has a ton of new features that are really nice.

This first image is the one that came out after tone mapping it with Photomatix Pro.

This second image is all Lightroom tweaks. It never once went into Photoshop. I love it!

I recently have become interested in creating HDR images as sort of a fine arts project. If you’re not familiar with the term HDR or HDRI (High Dynamic Range Image) you can read more about it here.  A HDR image once processed in the computer offers many different options for the final look of the photo. One of my favorite is the “Illustrative Look”. The artistic or non-real look. For those not familiar with the look of an illistrative HDR image might think the image is actually a painting. Which in my opinion is great. This gives me the ability to make the image look the way I want it too. I can choose to use Photoshop to add or remove certain elements in the image. I can change the brightness and color of objects to make them stand out more or become less noticeable in order to control the viewer’s eye better. The following three image show just what I mean.

This first image is the original images I made at different exposures to capture all the detail. They were converted from RAW files with no processing. Notice how bland they are.

This next image is what it looked like after I processed it using Photomatix Pro, a great program for tone mapping HDR images. The image certainly has a interesting look and some might find it ok stop there but for me it still lacks any creativity other than good composition.

This third image is my final image after intense Photoshop work. I changed the color of the water, desaturated some areas as well as over saturated some areas. I find this image to have a much higher impact on the viewer’s eye as it should.

This all being said, if you’re experimenting with HDR’s don’t be afraid to really work them in Photoshop and create a true piece of art.

I think that is what you’re suppose to say when you start you first blog site. I plan to use this as my main website and blog site for now. I found with just having a website I rarely ever put up new images due to them maybe not fitting with the theme of the site. Now I have a gallery section for my theme stuff and a new post section for the latest of what might only be one image that I think is cool. I could do this on facebook, but I like the idea of a site dedicated to my photography. Plus facebook has the rights to use my photos any way they see fit. So for anything I’d rather them not have rights too I now have this blog. Anyway. Welcome to my blog and please sign up to hear what I have coming up next.

Luv, DD