Fortunately I bought a book last week-end-- Digital Photography Master Class by Tom Ang. It is beautifully put together, interesting segments, lots of photographs to illustrate the concepts, but also simple enough to help me understand the various technical aspects not only of getting a great photograph but also using Photoshop in such a way that the photo is enhanced, not ruined.
Although I take a lot of good photographs (my opinion), I also have ruined more than a few. In honor of buying this book but not yet having read it enough to claim any impact, I thought I'd share one of my recent photo attempts. Basically the hardest for me is often a photo of myself because of the skin tone problems and most especially when I had an idea of a concept and then try to make it happen.
This one began with the new fountain and my thinking how cool it would be with a woman in front of it, silver earrings, long silver hair, a black blouse, sandals, and jeans. Not too complicated. I had someone to use-- me. Slimmer choice would have been better but you work with what you have.
When we began taking the photos (Farm Boss got roped into the project because it wasn't a pose I could leap up from and quickly redo short of ruining my knees permanently), I saw fairly soon that my original idea wasn't so simple. For one thing, a gray background tends to impact the colors and the exterior of this house is gray. Then the lighting was complicated. If we took it in the morning, it would be mottled shadows from the oak leaves, then as the afternoon moved along, there would be very bright light right in front of shadows due to the house roof and angle of the sun.
Good way to ruin a photograph-- lighting with extremes.
Despite that, he took a few which came out pretty good for color. When I got them on the computer, I then saw the background. Too much stuff back there. Clutter in a situation like that tends to distract, make the eye travel around and never settle where the photographer wanted.
Good way to ruin a photograph-- don't take into account the background.
You'd think, since I am going to be the same person and can wear the same clothing, that repeating it without the background clutter would be easy. I knew that doesn't automatically work. Smiles aren't that easy to repeat and poses vary just a little to turn what might have been a good photo into so so. Then there's still the lighting problem.
Anyway, with Farm Boss's agreement to again play photographer, I cleared the background. We waited for what we thought would be the right light. The pictures once again looked fine in the camera but when I got them onto the computer, instead of the rich, glowing evening color I had hoped to see, these were grayed.
Since I was tired of having my picture taken, I thought maybe I could salvage them with one of my photo programs.
Good way to ruin a photograph-- photo shop.
My manipulation ruined one photo totally. I could have avoided that if I had saved it in its original format but I hadn't. What could go wrong? How about a highlighted look that wasn't realistic or good. There appeared to be no going back. The only consolation I had was knowing it is it is an example of what can go wrong. I also don't think there was any way to really get a good picture with that grayed tone to everything.
So I decided to use my favorite clone tool and see if I could take the clutter out of the first photo I had liked. That was kind of okay, but you know it never feels as good when I clone. It loses something in terms of satisfaction-- especially when removing something as large as a chaise lounge.
In a lot of ways this kind of thing doesn't matter for general snapshots. It's not always about the eye going to where you want. It's not about creating a message, but when it is trying to create that perfect photo, background matters as much as subject.
I am hopeful that when I take some time with Digital Photography Master Class (it has been a busy season on the farm) that I will gain more control over future results.
The following photos fall in order from grayed snapshot; to ruined by photoshop; then expression and lighting about right but cluttered background; finally to the cloned background. Nothing did what I had hoped. Maybe next time.
9 comments:
When you have an artist's eye, your expectations are going to be very high. Your photos are quite nice, but you know what particular thing you were aiming for. It's so interesting trying to translate a vision with a digital camera. I think you've done very well with it.
Lovely pics of a lovely lady !!
Have you ever seen that funny e-mail going around of the results when a photographer ignores the background? Some of them are hilarious.
I don't have Photoshop so I have to be careful when I take a picture and think of the total frame. It's not always possible to eliminate something that you don't want to have in the picture. (Like electric or telephone wires.) I think you did a great job of editing your photo and giving a lot of thought to the results.
It looks like your work with the clone tool is pretty good but you are very right that it would be better to clean it up first.
As to lighting, try a reflector to put a little more light on the subject (you in this case) or look into a smart and adjustable flash unit. Also experiment with changing your camera to manual exposure control and set the light metering to spot so you can pick the light that is on the subject and not an average of everything including the background.
Recreate the scene with something in place of you and just shoot away, trying various things. That is one of the wonderful advantages of digital photography. You are not burning up a piece of film with every shot and you don't have to wait until they have been processed & printed to see the results. Photoshop is wonderful but it does have its limits.
You have a marvelouse pose here and I would color the chase a few shades darker if photoshop would let you. Maybe you should just buy a darker cover for it or put a medium value grayed blanket on it. I think your photograph could be ok unless you want something unreal like photographic studios do.
Interesting ideas, Dick. We do have reflectors but tend to use those mostly when doing a portrait although maybe this qualified. They are kind of a hassle to set up just right. We took some with nobody but the skin tones are the real problem with such photos. We also were using manual exposures. We could have used separate flashes from the camera but I hate flash in general as they take away shadows that I especially like in photos. But they do give better color; so it's always a hard call.
I agree with Dick on the beauty of digital photography. We can all take a million photos just like only the pros used to do. And then you can instantly see which ones you like and which ones get deleted.
Again going back to one of the advantages of digital photography, even if you think you may not like the results of a photo taken with flash, do it. Do it both ways. I don't know about your flash but I can control mine as to how strong it is, especially the off camera flash, so can set it to not create its own shadows but just give a little fill in the shadows and a highlight in the eyes. Remember, if you don't like it no one but you see it and it can always be deleted.
Rain, What a great post. ---Thought you might enjoy a piece about digital master, Pascal Dangin, that appeared in the May 12th issue of The New Yorker....It's fascinating. Peace, MandT
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