Acer leaves and real colours

click photo to enlarge
The widespread use of photographic enhancement is starting becoming a problem. I don't frequent social media websites, but the images that I see associated with them frequently have an effect applied - bleached colours, heavy vignetting, "antiquing", heavily saturated colour, etc. Enthusiast websites such as Flickr, 500px and the rest all too often feature shots that have been heavily processed to the point where I'm often tempted to ask, "On which planet were these taken?"

Now, I'm aware that photography comes in many forms, and manipulated images have always featured in the craft. However, too often the manipulation is to achieve no other end than to make the image more eye-catching; in other words they are a substitute for vision and skill, and they frequently take the photograph into the realm of painting. Down the road of ever more effects, lies an escalation that ends in madness.

The other problem with the omni-presence of manipulation is that it makes us disparage reality and even forget what it looks like. Consequently it can make some examples of photographic reality look like examples of manipulation. Take today's photograph of fallen acer leaves. The colours on display have a similarity to shots that have received a washed-out magenta cast. But, there has be no such trickery involved. These are the colours the camera recorded and they are quite close to what my eye saw. The only effect I've added here is that old stalwart, vignetting, where I used it to accentuate the shadows that were naturally invading the scene. My armoury of effects, by and large, involves the digital equivalents of the wet process effects we used in pre-digital days, especially dodging, burning and vignetting. Am I old-fashioned? In this regard, probably.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Nikon D5300
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm (150mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6 Shutter
Speed: 1/160 sec
ISO:720
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Using photographic effects sparingly

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There's a place in photography for effects, that is to say, the post-exposure (or in-exposure) manipulation of an image away from what the camera ordinarily offers. Photography has never been about recording "reality" but rather a form of a reality as mediated by the photographic process. Consequently, any further manipulation should properly be seen as an addition to already existing manipulation rather than the adulteration of some kind of pure vision.

But, and its a big but, though effects have their place, they are much more effective (pun intended) if they are used sparingly, and we are very familiar with straightforward photographs. There's an analogy here with swearing: if it happens every other sentence the effect of the forbidden word is much less effective. If it's reserved for just the right occasion then it can have a very big impact. At least that's my view - on photographic effects and swearing. By extension, my view of Instagram and similar services is that eventually they dull the vision of its users and create a desire for ever wilder photographic effects.

My way of using effects is to wait until I have a photograph that looks like it could wear one well. Today's shot of an antique shop in Great Malvern, Worcestershire, had that appearance so it had a vignette, tonal contrast, a brown "grunge" cast and a few other things thrown at it. To my eye it pushes a photograph that advertises only through the phone number and the burglar alarm box that it resides in the twentieth or twenty-first century, back to somewhere in the grubby nineteenth century.

© Tony Boughen

Camera: Nikon D5300
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 27mm (40mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/80 sec
ISO:100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

The camera and the eye

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Something that I like about photography is that the camera often sees what the eye doesn't, and sometimes it sees what the eye can't. Take this photograph. Had I been walking by the River Slea in Sleaford without my camera, and with my mind on anything but photography, I wouldn't have noticed this semi-abstract composition. I wouldn't have seen the line of three posts in the water supporting the boarding that stabilises the river bank. Nor would I have seen the way they make a lower left to upper right diagonal across which the branches of a nearby tree makes wavy diagonals at right angles to them. More than that, without a camera I wouldn't have seen the extent to which the shifting surface of the water was making a scribble of lines out of those branches. I know the latter to be the case because my eye noticed a lot less movement than was recorded by the camera, and before I pressed the shutter I wondered if the composition would have enough interest.

It is said that the camera never lies, but, as I've said elsewhere in this blog, it's truer to say that the camera always lies, in one way or another. Sometimes the lies matter little, as when the perspective is altered by the focal length or the dynamic range is less than our eye can see. At other times it matters more, for example when colours are noticeably shifted, or what appears sharp to the eye is blurred, or a scene that looks deserted is only empty of people because you waited for a rare moment when no one was in the field of view. In fact, the camera induced effects that impinge on some photographs can make a shot what it is and sometimes it's worth deliberately trying to generate them: or at least be welcoming of them when they unexpectedly appear. Here are a few examples -silhouettes of ducks under an overhanging tree, the sun deliberately included in the frame, a sepia effect resulting from contre jour lighting and laser pen light and distorted colour (that radiator is white!) from a long exposure.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 27.9mm (75mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f4
Shutter Speed: 1/80 sec
ISO:400
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Jewels and photographic effects

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Circumstances have kept us fairly close to home in recent days. Yesterday, after struggling for half a day with an old laptop, trying to install Mint Linux on it - the machine was the problem not the software - I gave up and my thoughts turned to macro photography. I needed a pursuit that wasn't quite as frustrating as trying to make old hardware work with a new operating system.

I don't consider myself to be a macro photographer and yet every now and then I like to do a bit. It's the different view of the world that the macro lens gives that interests me. With that in mind I set about photographing a pine cone that I have on the bookshelves in my study. I took it upstairs into a bedroom where the light was good and set up some black and white vinyl sheets as a curved backdrop. This needed weighting down so I used my wife's jewellery box. I took my shots and decided that, on the whole, they were extremely average. So, I looked in the box to see if there was anything that I could use for a shot. I took out a few silver and black necklaces and arranged them in an "eye" shape and tried different brooches as the "pupil". Today's photograph with  a floral, enamel brooch in the centre was the best of the bunch. As I processed the shot on my computer I thought I'd try a few "effects " on it. I don't see myself as an effects person any more than I do a macro photographer: you'll find very few examples in the blog other than a bit of split toning. But, when I tried these radial rays I quite liked what they did to the image and thought they matched the subject quite well. It's a different kind of photograph from my usual fare, an approach that you won't see from me very often.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm macro
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 2.5 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

A Victorian photographic effect

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Over the past few years I've tried on several occasions to photograph the church of St Laurence at Surfleet in Lincolnshire. This medieval building is known for miles around for its mainly fourteenth century tower that leans westward quite dramatically due to subsidence. However, it is one of those buildings that is hemmed in by trees on the side where the best photographs can be secured, a problem that is present in about a third of all churches if my experience is anything to go by!

So, this year I determined that I would photograph St Laurence (and a few other tree-bound churches) when the leaves had fallen. As I passed the building the other day the autumn winds seemed to have done most of their work, so I looked for my shot. The best composition I could find was from my favoured position at the south-east corner of the churchyard. At Surfleet this gave me a view with a tree trunk to the left and right with a veil of thin branches between, all of which acted as a "frame". Looking at the image on the computer I reflected that this was a very traditional composition, of the sort that might have been taken by a Victorian antiquarian with his plate camera. And that thought caused me to experiment with sepia tone and a bit of white vignetting. As I've mentioned before, I'm not a great believer in photographic "effects", but this one pleases me for its quite authentic old fashioned look, and so I thought I'd post it rather than my original colour photograph.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 5.1mm (24mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f3.2
Shutter Speed: 1/400
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Photographic effects and silver birches

click photos to enlarge
There's a saying amongst some photographers that an effect applied after shooting won't make a bad photograph into a good one. It's a maxim born of seeing too many images where HDR, selective colouring, starbursts, graduated colours and the like, are added for just that reason. Some purists go further and see any effect as an unwelcome addition, regardless of the quality of the original. I think that the originally stated case is largely true, but as for the idea that effects have no place in photography, well, I disagree. The fact is there are too many good photographers who prove the contrary.

Bill Brandt, the British photographer, is probably best known for those images to which he applied the effect of very high contrast. The U.S.-born Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitzsky 1890-1976) was so fascinated with photographic manipulation that a significant part of his ouvre uses his "rayograph" technique or solarization. Other examples of the use of effects can be found in the work of eminent photographers past and present.

So, why are effects not widely used? Well, it depends on what you're trying to achieve with your images. Brandt is also known for his "documentary" style photographs of the working class in England's northern cities. In those images he mainly used traditionally exposed black and white photography of "normal" dynamic range. But, he's also known for pictures that lean towards the artistic side of photography, and here is where he uses high contrast - almost pure black and pure white in some instances. Man Ray come from the tradition of Dada, and painted as well as taking photographs. Consequently his portraits of notable people tend to be recognisably "normal" photographs, whereas his artistic abstracts use more unusual effects. Both photographers used effects where it contributed to what they wanted to achieve.

There is clearly a place for effects, though I tend to agree that over-use soon becomes tiresome, and makes you wonder why photography is the chosen medium as opposed to painting. I don't use such effects too often, but sometimes a subject tips me in that direction, as did this grove of bone-like silver birches. I've applied two effects to copies of the shot I took. I can't decide whether I prefer the "halo" effect" in colour, or the high contrast black and white. Each adds something to the original image that I find attractive. How about you?

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 11mm (22mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/320
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On