Richard Keeling

Maybe Lightroom is worth it after all

Thursday, February 23, 2012 2:11:54 AM

Yesterday, after an evening's playing with Adobe Lightroom 3, I was pleased but not overly thrilled with the image processing program.

Tonight I played a bit more, taking as my subject some very old digital photos from my old Canon Powershot G2. I took this overexposed and poorly color-balanced shot of a spectacular sunrise looking down my street taken in January 2003 (to left).

Tonight, playing with white balance, shadow and highlight recovery functions and the noise reduction setting, I ended up with the image you see above. Much more like it really was, and pretty stunning!

Fog TropesThere's a story to this photograph

Comments

Sami Serolaserola # Thursday, February 23, 2012 5:35:23 AM

I'm not quite convinced

For me the sky and ground looks "unbalanced", making it look like bad HDR image.

Richard Keelingmusickna # Thursday, February 23, 2012 1:17:26 PM

Not for you, hey, Sami? I put this photograph up on my Pinterest board and got more excitement over this than over any of my other (and to my mind, better) photographs displayed there. I still say it works far better than the original.

Edward Piercyedwardpiercy # Thursday, February 23, 2012 4:10:15 PM

I really don't know enough about image post-processing to comment on this, Richard. But I suppose the bottom line is what a photographer wants to achieve. So if you are happy, it works!

Richard Keelingmusickna # Thursday, February 23, 2012 5:21:06 PM

Originally posted by edwardpiercy:

So if you are happy, it works!

Thanks for your comment, Ed.

Actually, lots of people put a lot of energy into discussions about image processing (and why not? - it's a fun subject), especially in regard to high dynamic range imaging (HDR). Very strongly held opinions, pro and against. Personally, I prefer under-processing rather than over-processing but ultimately it depends on the image and what you want to do with it.

Edward Piercyedwardpiercy # Thursday, February 23, 2012 7:12:42 PM

I saw a good documentary once on Ansel Adams. Most people consider Ansel to be rather a purist -- the photograph represents what a person would see in "real life" if they were standing there. But Ansel's son was saying that was not quite true, that his father put an enormous amount of time into the darkroom stuff trying to get a print that reflected not the literal scene, but what Ansel felt emotionally about a scene. In that sense I guess you could say that a photograph deconstructs the visual reality that is given.

Sami Serolaserola # Thursday, February 23, 2012 7:27:25 PM

Originally posted by musickna:

I prefer under-processing rather than over-processing but ultimately it depends on the image and what you want to do with it.

I agree, and by all means I'm not against HDR or any other method to change the dynamic range. But I don't like pictures like this http://www.flickr.com/photos/black_velvet/401272463/
For me it just looks unnatural in wrong way. I don't mind being surreal or abstract but I dislike what I recall "romanticism".

Originally posted by edwardpiercy:

Ansel's son was saying that was not quite true, that his father put an enormous amount of time into the darkroom stuff trying to get a print that reflected not the literal scene, but what Ansel felt emotionally about a scene.

I have always believed so. No way pictures could look like that without some effort put into them in the darkroom. But he did it well

Stardancer # Friday, February 24, 2012 12:42:03 AM

The enhanced photo is spectacular!

I don't mind when a photographer uses technology to tweak a photo to make it appear closer to what he actually saw, especially when that is his intent and he informs us of that fact. And it's cool when someone experiments with his photos and technological methods to produce interesting and unusual effects. As long as he tells us he's done that.

That's one of the reasons that I enjoy your photography so much, Richard, besides the fact that it's just downright good. You're honest about it. There are others on MyOpera that I enjoy just as much, for the same reasons. (And I do NOT mean to imply that anyone on MyOpera is dishonest, for the record.)

Richard Keelingmusickna # Friday, February 24, 2012 2:49:02 AM

Thank you, Star - I am so glad you enjoy my photographs!

I do try to be honest with them too - I see no point in trickery. After all, they are my story, not someone else's!

P2O2 # Friday, February 24, 2012 1:02:52 PM

Let me step in with my 3p.

First I thought seeing the two images, without reading the post, that the original one was more probable, more close to the reality than the second one.

On the other hand if the "new" old one was real I thought the whole community there would have been outside gaping with jaws dropped to the ground watching the amazing spectacle with awe and bewilderment! That's what I have thought.

Then I've read your text and comments.

I have only one question.

In your opinion. Is that what you achieved, what resembles to me a thermonuclear explosion under the horizon,

already a digital imaging, or a photography yet?

I'm not against processing, I'm against calling it a photography.

Regards

Richard Keelingmusickna # Friday, February 24, 2012 3:54:44 PM

Originally posted by P2O2:

In your opinion. Is that what you achieved, what resembles to me a thermonuclear explosion under the horizon, already a digital imaging, or a photography yet?

I think I'd have to call it a digital image, given that it differs from what the camera recorded. It gets tricky though, as the color balance in my old Powershot G2 could be quite iffy in low light situations, so is what the camera recording accurate or is it itself already a processed digital image? I think the best way to look at it is to regard photography as always an approximation of what the eye sees. This blurs the distinction between a digital photograph and a digital image so that the distinction is ultimately a question of personal aesthetics and unresolvable in any real sense.

Thanks for your comment, P2O2.

P2O2 # Friday, February 24, 2012 5:08:43 PM

Thank you.

But one more question.

So, how could you describe an evaluation process - whether one's digital picture is good or bad?

Sticking to the commonly established criteria or rules? What rules?

The technical ones, which data digitalization has brought to our human world based on, for example, spectral richness?

Or those which were adopted from the old "paper" technology which thanks to its limits, was more "spiritualized" than present one?

Present one being "clinically clear" with tantalizing colors but in reality highly "artificial" or impersonal and devoid of "immaterial" elements? (Vide heavily processed images published in NatGeo, or the highly flawed HDRs crap.)

Is an evaluation of digital pictures justifiable in the light of the doubts I expressed above?

I am deeply appalled how fast the threshold of beauty in photography has been lowered in recent years with the explosion of digital cameras (cell phones!) and modern software. Everyone stopped TAKING photographs today. Everybody CREATES them.

The problem is deeper. Old arts were material, new "arts" are abstract, illusive, living only on monitors' screen. Even printed on "print materials" didn't gain the status of "material arts". No one moved the pixels around, no one even moved the electrons which stored the data with his own hands. They were done by machines.

Is the "digital art" and art yet, when there is a middleman between the results and man's imagination? Why not eliminate the most weakest, unreliable and unpredictable part of the creative process in photography, namely a man?

Perhaps digital technology is not advanced yet but it is only a matter of time. What then? Machine Art? (expletive!)

Regards