Photography - Let's have a chat about it

[Scaff]

I know, Movie & TV might not be the best place for this thread (@danoff, please feel free to move it).

I have a love of photography that stretches back to my youth, I've worked in photographic retail, and have a reasonable second career as a professional photographer (mainly in event, music and promo works), and have been fortunate to both curate and exhibit my work on a regular basis.

Here are a few of my images, to get things going (you can see more here: https://gideonliddiardphotography.com/)

[Mikey]

A keen photographer friend of mine tells me that a lot of professional photos are retouched and digitally manipulated to more closely resemble "reality".

I'm not sure whether this is the case with Alan David McFaden's "London Bus" photo taken in 1960 but if so it certainly looks effective.

Alan David McFaden - London Bus (1960).jpg (214.84 KiB) Viewed 236 times

[GBO Possum]

A keen photographer friend of mine tells me that a lot of professional photos are retouched and digitally manipulated to more closely resemble "reality".

I'm not sure whether this is the case with Alan David McFaden's "London Bus" photo taken in 1960 but if so it certainly looks effective.


Alan David McFaden - London Bus (1960).jpg

Probably not digitally manipulated, but likely manipulated in other ways. Back in the late 1950s, I and a few school mates used to mess around with black and white photographs to "improve" them. Typically this was done during the process of enlarging negatives onto print paper, where the negative image was projected by an "enlarger" onto the paper for an often extended period of time (up to a couple of minutes in some cases) and then the paper would be developed, "fixed" (to stabilize the image) rinsed and finally hung out to dry.

The techniques we used included using different chemicals and photo papers to change the contrast or other metrics. One could buy different photo papers which were designed to provide different print options. I suspect this may have been done in this case, at a guess.

We also used to bring up details in the shadows (analogous to the "Shadows" slider in, say, the Apple Photos app). This we did by rather unscientifically waving a spoon-shaped tool around in places of the image where we wanted the print to be less dark. It was very much trial-and-error, but with enough patience and luck, it worked.

So there were a bunch of ways that images could be manipulated, maybe to "correct" the appearance or to simply provide a more pleasing version. One must always understand that our visual perceptions aren't necessarily "reality", and photographic equipment doesn't "see" things the way our eyes see things.

These does one can achieve with touch of a slider on a computer screen something which might have taken an hour or more back in the day

[Scaff]

A keen photographer friend of mine tells me that a lot of professional photos are retouched and digitally manipulated to more closely resemble "reality".

I'm not sure whether this is the case with Alan David McFaden's "London Bus" photo taken in 1960 but if so it certainly looks effective.

Alan David McFaden - London Bus (1960).jpg

Pretty much every professionally taken image you see has been manipulated to some degree, in press work it will be very, very minimal, as agencies have strict rules against it.

However, in work of the nature I do, yes editing in post is critical, in the video below I talk through the basics of my editing workflow for gig work, which in all honesty, is quite minimal in terms of editing. Work with product or headshots is much, much more involved.

Probably not digitally manipulated, but likely manipulated in other ways. Back in the late 1950s, I and a few school mates used to mess around with black and white photographs to "improve" them. Typically this was done during the process of enlarging negatives onto print paper, where the negative image was projected by an "enlarger" onto the paper for an often extended period of time (up to a couple of minutes in some cases) and then the paper would be developed, "fixed" (to stabilize the image) rinsed and finally hung out to dry.

The techniques we used included using different chemicals and photo papers to change the contrast or other metrics. One could buy different photo papers which were designed to provide different print options. I suspect this may have been done in this case, at a guess.

We also used to bring up details in the shadows (analogous to the "Shadows" slider in, say, the Apple Photos app). This we did by rather unscientifically waving a spoon-shaped tool around in places of the image where we wanted the print to be less dark. It was very much trial-and-error, but with enough patience and luck, it worked.

So there were a bunch of ways that images could be manipulated, maybe to "correct" the appearance or to simply provide a more pleasing version. One must always understand that our visual perceptions aren't necessarily "reality", and photographic equipment doesn't "see" things the way our eyes see things.

These does one can achieve with touch of a slider on a computer screen something which might have taken an hour or more back in the day

I started back in the film days and darkroom work was a massive part of the final image, and you are 100% right, it took far longer. Pablo Inirio, who worked for Magnum, was a master of this, and his test prints were marked up with the adjustments he planned to make, and are fascinating.



Image manipulation goes back to the very start of photography, with the first known example coming from around 1840 (Hippolyte Bayard's Self-Portrait as a Drowned Man), while a more well-known example (in terms of the photograph) would be this:



In which Thomas Hicks composited Lincoln's head onto a photograph of John C. Calhoun in the 1860's.

[Mikey]

Here are a few of my images, to get things going (you can see more here: https://gideonliddiardphotography.com/

Scaff, how is the recent UK ban on sites like imgur.com affecting you? They clearly couldn't be arsed to comply with our online "safety" standards which I find perfectly understandable.

I haven't used imgur in a dog's age so am fine with waving bye-bye to my collection of photos and screen grabs but I guess it'd be much harder and far more inconvenient for pros and semi-pros.

I think I appreciate your photos more knowing that they've been tweaked as the work which has gone into them is more evident to me now. It's not just point-and-snap.

[Scaff]

Scaff, how is the recent UK ban on sites like imgur.com affecting you? They clearly couldn't be arsed to comply with our online "safety" standards which I find perfectly understandable.

I haven't used imgur in a dog's age so am fine with waving bye-bye to my collection of photos and screen grabs but I guess it'd be much harder and far more inconvenient for pros and semi-pros.

To be honest Imgur's issues in the UK havn't affected me at all, it's use as a picture sharing platform seemed to become secondary to it's use as a meme platform quite a while ago.

Most of my marketing (and client feed) comes via Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, as well as 'word-of-mouth', and my own website. In terms of image sharing, review, etc. with clients, I use PicDrop, which is much better in terms of presentation, professionalism and toolset.

I think I appreciate your photos more knowing that they've been tweaked as the work which has gone into them is more evident to me now. It's not just point-and-snap.

Thanks, that they don't come across as 'heavily-edited' means a lot. I always shoot in RAW, which means some work is always going to be required (but I get to decide what that is, rather than the camera's built-in processing - which is what you get with JPEG outputs). Some only take a few minutes, others can be up to an hour (as mentioned earlier, portraits, headshots, and product work require the most), but even the 'quick' ones are only quick because of the time I've put in to develop my workflow and technique.