Long before digital cameras were capable of providing quality images at prices affordable for all Americans, digital photography was impacting conventional film photographers in another way. I am thinking of 1986 as the year I got my first good hands-on trial of Adobe PhotoShop running on a Mac computer. [I must insert here a bit of trivia that this was the second of two occasions when I met Steve Jobs when our business spaces crossed paths. I should have gone to work with him, but I did not. Or maybe it happened just the way it was supposed to, as I doubt that I could have worked for him. My own independent streak would have clashed with his. But I did know that i was seeing genius in the moment.] I also became aware of PhotoStyler as used with a PC computer shortly thereafter, if my memory serves me right.
Unless one has survived in a analog environment for decades prior to exploring the relative ease that graphics computers brought to photographers as did I, it is hard to even imagine what magic this appeared to be. I have spent literally days in piece-mill man-hours performing analog image manipulation feats that are now taken for granted when performed digitally. Many--no--most--things that we now take for granted simply could not be done prior to the Graphical User Interface style computers. Such feats were mostly unthinkable not just impractical back in the day.
It may also be that current digital photographers and their readily available bag of software tricks don't fully grasp the full potential of what they can do. Just as those first (and to a large extent, the current) versions of PhotoShop and other image manipulation software offerings used icons familiar to conventional photographers, printers, and artists which are at this advanced stage lost upon their users--so are many of the techniques they originally represented. So often it is necessary to know of the evolution of any medium in order to indulge fully in the tools of that medium.
One quick memory comes to mind when I worked as an Area Manager for Canon, USA. I was privileged to attend weeks of Color Theory and other such classes with Canon. I won't say that they made me a much better photographer (but it probably did make me some better). It did provide me a lot more labels, tools, and a common vernacular with theoretical models of color and other pertinent physics phenomenon with which to discuss the digital world.
One of our instructors was describing a process during a desk-top publishing aside we got into one day. She used the term "leading" pronounced with long a "e" diphthong. One of my old-timer classmates was brazen enough to correct her during class, saying that Leading should be pronounced using a short "e" sound--which all of us knew but were kind enough to keep to ourselves during this young lady's discourse. She took embarassed exception to the correction as only an ivy-league educated youngster responsible for instructing a bunch of old analog industry know-it-alls could. She reminded him not to "challenge her publicly during her discourses"--to put it mildly.
Although I fully empathized with this young instructors need to feel that she was not being undermined in class, I also knew that she was mistaken. But no big deal. How was she to know. It had been taught to her that way. Never-mind, that the term had come from describing the original physical length of metal--lead in fact--that was used by hand type-setters a loooong time ago in order to provide space between lines of type. I only knew because I had actually set type that way once upon a time. There are certainly more dramatic moments to illustrate my former point, but this is one that I readily recall--that illustrates how the divide that often keeps generational technologies used to perform the same tasks gets gets lost between translators.
Here now is a quick example of how digital means has made easy tasks of that which was not so long ago unthinkable. I just took a utilitarian snapshot this evening that enabled me to quickly see behind a heavy piece of plate metal that serves as a target backstop in my enclosed handgun shooting range located in a section of my workshop.
The need was to see if Momma Cat had located her litter of kittens there. I could not have seen into it at all without the use of the little digital camera that I try to keep with me at all times these days. As you can see, there was indeed a kitten back there. His siblings were on one or more of the multilevel floors of their penthouse. It was important that I know this. The mother had moved her kittens because my grand-kids had located and handled them.
But the safe place she found behind the target area was understandably not the most desirable place for these kitties to be. The quick snapshot served its purpose for locating the kittens, but as I contemplated fodder for this post, it also shows how ten minutes in PhotoShop can transform a cute snapshot taken blind, with little aiming or other fanfare into a even cuter calendar-style work of art.
I am not patting myself on the back here. Rather, I am making a point that I hope is apropos to this text. I'll show a before and an after shot. You tell me--if you like it or if you don't. It doesn't matter, the illustration is still made. I (or any other savvy digital mechanic can crank this kind of stuff out all day long from the most mundane of images. The art, in this medium, is in the seeing in the abstract, applying the effects, and making it appear in a way that is satisfactory to the creator. Furthermore, he can vary these images infinitely so as to create a gazillion or more originals or ltd images for the end-consumers whether they are found at the foot of your extended family Christmas tree or in a publication.
Let me also -provide this additional information about these images. I try to determine what each image will be used for prior to selecting a resolution. I ere on the side of too large rather than too small. You can always remove, but you can't add (usually) digital information if it is not there. Or at least it is much harder to add it.
High resolution images also allow for greater cropping possibilities while still retaining acceptable resolution. the images you see were captured at 16 mpi resolution. I always do a lot of deleting of images within the camera. I also often do as much rudimentary cropping as my little digital snapper allows. Then when they are uploaded to my laptop-- I take a closer look and further delete fuzzy or unacceptable images.
I crop and do basic correction on the fly as well. If I am in doubt, I may save the original image, but by this bookmark in my life I am pretty sure of what I like and I don't like. Even so, with terabyte hard-drives for less than a hundred bucks, I will always ere on the side of saving too many images as opposed to too few.
Distorted lines of perspective jolt me in the same OCD manner that it does most artists, so this is the first major correction that I made. Cropping was next. You lose a little image when distorting for an undistorted look, so I always crop after doing such things.
I then dealt with evening out the shadow and highlight details, contrast, color temp, etc. I do this strictly by eye--unless I am trying to match something wherein graphs and numbers are provided. I don't know if it is inborn or if it is developed, but I have a very precise ability to see and match colors. This first became evident when I was making color prints via silver-halide in film cameras using lighting and then the color darkroom with the old analog CMYK process. I theorize that just as with many things, this talent can be developed for a net gain except in the case of color-blindness. In those cases, matching or by the numbers is imperative.
Then I applied the artistic effects of burning-in, spot-lighting, and texture. One thing that I failed to do is to intensify the baby-blue catch-light in the kitten's eyes--I may go back and fix this as it will only take a few seconds. Finally, I made a full-resolution copy and saved it. And a low-resolution screen display image which I placed here.
And here is another. Please go to the next post.