My thoughts on post processing




Well I've been learning more and more about post production on photos and for a long time I resisted doing a lot of post production because it seemed like cheating. I finally gave up on that. I'm just not that good a shooter. I think it was when I read that one of my favorite pictures had a sky added to it in post I decided to just jump in. (who needs principles when you have photoshop?) This isn't a great example of post production, what it is, is a semi boring shot made slightly more interesting with the use of cropping, some blurring, some darkening, a lot of exposure control in areas and careful use of color saturation. You'll see it a lot in my stuff where I strive to create a focal point to a picture. That typically means darkening, blurring or reducing contrast/color in all the areas that I don't want you to look at and then some color manipulation to make the shot interesting. The best way to start with posting is to shoot RAW if you can. RAW format is exactly what the camera's sensor sees and unlike a jpeg may contain as much as 2 extra stops of highlight or shadow information. RAW also allows you to squeeze enough information out of it that you can make HDRs. Of course, you'll need a raw converter or a recent version of iphoto. One shooter who does interesting post processing has a blog at:

http://www.chromasia.com/iblog/index.php

Since this is a picture of melissa, I might mention that Belle was found to be itchy because she had fleas. After several bouts of dogsitting from the Melissa/Christie house, I think that I've got fleas. Or at least that's what I hope the 7 or 8 angry red bites on my legs are... hopefully they weren't from the 2 huge spiders I killed (one mashed, one drowned) around the house recently. I guess fleas can also give you tapeworm... UPDATE: Actually I counted and it was 18 bites total, 12 on one leg 8 on the other. A little hydrocortisone cream from the first aid kit helped the itching and there were no fresh bites after a good laundering of the sheets so... cross your fingers. I'm pretty sure they weren't spider bites, although I think the 2 big ones I killed were of the brown recluse variety. If you feel like losing your lunch, google brown recluse spider bite images.... ick.

Here's a shot of Caitlin that I messed with last night to make it more interesting... it's not a ton of post processing, but enough to make the photo better I think...

Posted: Fri - June 23, 2006 at 01:08 PM          

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