Phone home | Canberra lifestyle photography

I’m not done with the beach series yet, no siree. I took something like 1500 frames while we were at Jervis Bay in April, and haven’t even made it through processing half of them yet. I hope you’re enjoying them.

Today I thought I’d post a little set of hilarious shots of Toby running after us down the beach with his funny hooded towel on. At the time I took them, I was mesmerised by his shadow dancing about on the sand with the golden late afternoon light behind him, but when I saw them on screen, I immediately thought of ET and other cute little sci-fi characters, and so they took on this other dimension.

Without getting too technical, I wanted to share a little bit about my take on post-processing. For those who don’t know much about photography, post-processing (also referred to as ‘processing’, ‘editing’ and ‘photoshopping’) is what you do with your images after downloading them from your camera. There are about a gazillion ways to process images, and usually the approach to processing is a hugely important part of a photographer’s ‘style’.

When digital photography was first beginning to take over from film (which amazingly was less than ten years ago!), I engaged in many a heated discussion about how much Photoshop work a photographer ‘should’ be doing before their images were no longer ‘photographs’. It always struck me as crazy, because while all professional photographers should know their craft well enough to get photos ‘right’ straight out of camera (and by ‘right’ I mean correctly exposed and with a good white balance), there is just so much more to photography and image-making than pressing a few buttons on a camera. If you break down even just the basic steps, it’s a lot: first there is sensitivity and vision, then there is understanding light, then there is camera craft, and finally there is knowing how to process and enhance your images to bring out their best. I think people forget that images shot on film can be processed and manipulated to a similar degree to digital – first there is the processing of the film which can alter the contrast and colour of the images quite dramatically, and then there is the printing which has a whole other set of possibilities for adjustment and enhancement. Photographers have been post-processing since photography was invented. Digital photography and photoshop just makes it easier, more accessible and a lot less messy!

As you would know from my blog and website galleries, I am not hugely experimental with my post-processing. I like strong colour, clarity and detail, and a rich, full tonal range. I like my images to look real; the way I saw, engaged with and ‘felt’ the moment before I captured it. Mostly I use basic, traditional adjustments (saturation, contrast and tone) to achieve the right look. However, there are always images that call for something a little bit more. For me, these images mostly come from a standout moment – whether it was particularly dramatic lighting, an unusual location or intense emotion.

I have deliberately processed these images in three different ways, however they are all quite close to the original captures that came out of the camera, and very much the way I saw that moment when I lifted the camera and started shooting. I have even included my ‘straight out of camera’ images for you to compare!

In the first two images I have reduced the intensity of the light, and made the overall colour tone slightly softer. I have cropped the images to focus attention right in on Toby. I have also lightened the skin tones, increased the clarity and boosted the shadows. I chose this look because I think it enhances the quirkiness of the images and makes them look slightly more surreal.

My portrait clients would know that I rarely offer images in both colour and black and white. For me there are just certain images that call for black and white, and that is just the way they should be. This is one of them. I am not a fan of very high contrast black and white images. I love to see a million shades of grey so very, very much, and so I always do my best to work on that very carefully with my black and white conversions.

Almost the complete opposite of the first two images, with these I wanted to preserve and enhance the original dramatic lighting by making the images darker, warmer and more intense. These are definitely mood images. The expression and detail is less important than the overall feeling; the sense of movement, space and time.

There is an incredible amount of work that goes into processing images – most photographers spend many, many more hours at the computer with Lightroom and Photoshop than they spend shooting. I think most professional photographers have at some point been asked ‘how can you charge $x for a 5×7″ print when I can get it from Big W for 30 cents’? Well, this is one part of the answer.

I think this is the first time ever that I’ve posted anything even vaguely technical on my blog! I would love if you could give me some feedback, so I know whether I should go down this path more or stick with what I’ve been doing.