Yesterday I had my introductory call with my new tutor for Social Documentary. Whilst the call addressed a number of topics one comment gave me pause for thought, "What processing style do I want to adopt?". This was in response to my initial posting on this blog in which I have a number of B&W images that were processed fairly neutrally, I had no particular visual style in mind, just simple adjustments to contrast.
This is a question that I am familiar with and have asked myself before when working with landscape photography. Is the set going to be high contrast, strong/soft colour, low key/high key, will I print on glossy, stain or matte paper, etc.? To date this has been a decision that I have made as I close in on assembling an initial set of images as a straw horse. It does affect how I shoot as clearly a soft image set is not going to emerge easily from a highly contrasting capture with an extreme dynamic range, but, is more of an influence on processing. Each assignment in Landscape had a different processing target depending on subject.
With this course I may need a different approach as I plan to build a coherent body of work investigating the people of Munich, a set of photographs that will need consistency when placed together in a book. I guess this is akin to selecting a film type for a project and then sticking to that decision to ensure consistent tonality, grain, and colour cast. Fortunately with digital capture these decisions can be made later in the process, however, a processing goal can influence how I shoot and even what I shoot. Exposure compensation decisions can influence whether I go down the high or low key route, time of day might influence whether I end up with a noisy grainy look or a clean smooth tonal range.
To test some of these ideas I have selected a photo taken on the weekend and worked through a number of slightly different processing strategies. This group of ladies were sitting opposite Munich's shrine to Michael Jackson, a rather bizarre collection of memorabilia arranged around a statue opposite a hotel that he once stayed in. The statue is some civic dignitary from the 18th or 19th century, nothing do to do with Michael. This was 2 days before the 3rd anniversary of his death and several groupies had gathered for a vigil, planning a long stay by the amount of stuff they had brought with them. It is not a great photo, could have been better framed, need to think more about opportunity and execution, however, I kind of like it and it is good for this purpose.
The first image is a straight conversion to B&W with no other modifications, fine, but not very interesting.
If I was to simply process the image with no specific target in mind, I would increase the overall and local contrast, sharpen a little and reduce the highlights to manage the overexposed background.
An alternate route would be to reduce the contrast and soften the overall look of the photograph, something that I might do with a landscape, but not a good idea for a street image such as this one
If I was to go for the B&W look that I like it is to boost the contrast a long way and accept some black areas together with a few blown out highlights. I like this almost glossy very black and very white look. It is still not extreme and preserves most of the data in the image. The girls all wore black and this makes that much more obvious. There is far better separation to the background and if it is overexposed so what, this is not the information that I want this photo to convey.
Another possibility is to introduce a little colour into the photo through half-toning, I quite like B&W images with a faint blue cast. The problem is that this almost an affectation and I think would look false over a large body of work, versus a single print.
Finally another strategy is to emulate film grain. I honestly do not like this, again it seems very false. I work in digital so should embrace what it can do, not ape film. If I want to have film grain I can go buy some ISO1600 B&W film and use my film camera. However, that is not my goal here.
A clear benefit of Digital photography is that there is huge latitude in processing, the drawback of Digital photography is that there is huge latitude in processing. Visual style is a choice with a great many degrees of freedom, it is very much in the hands of the photographer to decide where the final print ends up. In my case, I think strong contrast, deep blacks and bright highlights are my personal style. Did I mention that one of my favorite photographers is WeeGee? OK I am not a fan of strong strobe light, but his graphical imagery of New York are an influence on my own visual style.
Another key question is how I plan to produce my final output, in my case it will be ink jet prints on matte archival paper. This delivers deep deep blacks and again support the idea of going for high contrast.
Ultimately it is the subject that drives the treatment. A city is built around right angles and edges, artificial light is always present, and during the summer the natural sunlight here in the South is very strong and contrasty. I do not need to make a final decision now, but I do need to remember when considering what and where to photograph that subject and treatment go hand in hand.
No comments:
Post a Comment