Photo Notes A place to talk about making images.

Before I get to the shameless plugs for my book and stuff, I’d like to mention something I think is important. Over the last few days I’ve traded a couple of e-mails with one of my students who is an Egyptian. It is a remarkable experience to have such a connection to world events. This would not have happened to me without BetterPhoto. I truly have a world full of connections because I shared what I know and the photographs I’ve made with the world through BetterPhoto. I urge you to get connected, either with BetterPhoto or in some other way. I wish the Egyptian people good fortune in their new adventure.

And here are the shameless plugs. My book Understanding and Controlling Strobe Lighting: A Guide for Digital Photographers is on Amazon.com. The wonderful folks at Shutterbug magazine are printing a 3 page excerpt in the current issue. Please pick up the magazine.  Here is a sample chapter from the book. Of course I still hope that you will consider purchasing my fine art book B Four: pictures of beach, beauty, beings and buildings. Frankly purchases of this book mean a lot to me, and it is also a fine gift for any occasion. As you know I teach for BetterPhoto.com. I really hope you’ll sign up my class: An Introduction to Photographic Lighting. Sign up are very good this month!

This shot was done with 4X5 film so there were significant expenses.

Back in the misty depths of time I was a large format photographer. I shot mostly on 4X5 and 8X10 film, which was expensive. A single piece of processed 4X5 film was about $4 and a sheet of Polaroid was $3. An average shot took 2 Polaroids and 2 pieces of film, so $14 per shot. Expenses were marked up for the client so film and Polaroid were a very significant part of the client’s bill. The reason I mention this is that I didn’t shoot many extra images, so I didn’t need to edit. You edited with the Polaroids, and the set-ups, getting the shot perfected before you took it. When I began using digital it became obvious that since an additional image had no additional cost more images would get made. Of course this means that editing is very important.

I made about 250 exposures on this shoot.

The number of images I shoot has continued to go up as digital equipment has improved and the cost of memory has come down. I did a typical construction shoot last week. I shot about 250 images of earth moving equipment. I love it when the earth moves. The problem is that the client needs only about 20 images. So I need to edit.

I know photographers who claim that they just can’t edit their own work. I think that anytime you tell me what you can’t do you are probably

A musician's head shot

right. But I also ask myself what kind of a photographer will limit himself or herself by saying that he/she can’t something? There are things I can’t do now, but if I wanted to do them I would learn. Some skills are hard to learn, but a professional will find a way to learn them. An amateur might not feel that they want to learn a skill, and that makes sense, because they are doing photography for personal expression.

When I take a photograph there is always a personal element to it. I am affected by the day, the people, the nature of the job and so on. The thing is that this won’t be part of my picture; my picture is only what I put in the frame. So when I look at a group of images the first thing is to concentrate only on what other people will see. I need to analyze the shot as someone else would see it. This isn’t all that difficult to learn, but it is really important. Most people use photography to diarize their

The musician doing a stock shot.

lives, to remember the moments of their own life. This is exactly what you need to avoid if you are making pictures for someone else. The first thing I look for is will the shot interest the intended audience.

The next step is to understand my shot in terms of the purpose of the shot. So I wouldn’t expect a shot of a musician to look like a shot of a realtor. If I’m shooting construction the look is going to be grittier and more graphic than the shot I would do of a finished home. I may have shots that would be excellent for family, but not for commercial usage. The client gets a group of the images for their stated purpose, but I may include additional images in a separate folder.

For analysis and for understanding my shots, I’ll probably

I did quite a number of similar images, but this had a little more emotional impact. I had to compare several images to make the decision.

use a fairly small version of the shot in an editing program. I use Adobe Bridge most of the time. I may edit with 4 or 5 images on a row. But for the next step I’m going to look at the images much larger. In the early editing process I’m looking for things that keep the image from working. In the final edit I’m looking for what makes the image work.

I want to think in terms of the graphic nature of the image, is it strong or subtle? I want to think about the nuances of expression, how intimate is an image? I want to think about color and technical aspects of an image.

One more thing: you want to go back to your images, in a few months or a year, to see if you’ve missed anything. As much as I try to see my shots from outside the experience of the shoot, putting some distance in time between editing and shooting will still change the way I see my work.

I hope you’ll suggest my BetterPhoto class An Introduction to Photographic Lighting to other photographers you know, or perhaps you’d like to give it as a gift? Amherst media sent me the cover for my second book, you can see it here, of course you can still buy my first book on Amazon . Also if you look at the March issue of Shutterbug you’ll find a three page excerpt from my book. I am so pleased that they did this.

Made with my custom Super-wide camera that uses a 28mm Nikkor lens on 120 film

Editing photographs is not only difficult, sometimes it is heart wrenching. Often each image seems a special and unique expression of your creative vision, how can you bare to part with even one. Get over it; this feeling is personal. No one else will ever experience your photographs the way you do. You remember the day, what happened before and after, you remember the client and you remember whether you got paid. The viewer doesn’t experience any of this, and for the photograph to be effective for the viewer you have to give him/her an image they can perceive in their own terms. That is the purpose of editing. I am going to attach some photographs I made to this blog. I designed and built the cameras that made these images. Because of that intimacy no one else will ever perceive the shot in the way I do. I hope they will like it, but they will inevitably have a different feel for the image. You may think editing is time consuming, and it is, but it will make you a better photographer.

The first step in editing is shooting. You need to shoot a lot of images. The last head shot job I did was around 300 images, but on a product job I might shoot only 2 images per product. Since we are now working in digital it is important to always shoot that extra image, or extra dozen images. It is always easier to shoot more than it is to go back. Although Eisenstaedt was famous for just taking a few shots for an assignment, we will do better not to emulate him.

Made with a custom camera that uses a Speed Graphic body and a 30mm lens

In order to edit effectively we need to be ruthless. The first step is to remove everything that is clearly a mistake. With a portrait type job this is generally pretty easy. A mistake is an image that doesn’t grab your eye. A mistake is an image that is out of focus. A mistake is an image that is not focused on the subject. A mistake is an image that is blurry. If you shoot in raw a shot doesn’t have to be perfectly exposed, but if the shot is two stops from perfect exposure the shot is a mistake. If the strobes didn’t go off it is a mistake. Get rid of all this stuff, you should have plenty more images. I understand the Photoshop CS 15 will be able to fix everything, but that hasn’t happened yet. Photoshop 16 will be able to make your entire childhood perfect. Yes there are many mistakes you could fix, but you could spend days working in Photoshop. It is better to move through the process quickly. But you might as well save these images somewhere.

Step two is to get rid of everything that makes the subject look like a doofus. So that shot where the subject is checking out your shoes? Gone. At the same time you should part with all the shot where you awkwardly cut off body parts, hands cut in half and so on. Yes a lot of these shots could be saved. If you shot enough you shouldn’t need to save them.

I used a custiomized Graflex SLR with a 180 soft-focus lens from Fuji

This should do it for negative editing; that is removing images because of problems. With any luck you have removed any where from 20 to 50 percent of your shots. Good. The other thing you have does is to look at all of the images that are left at least twice, well you went through the images twice didn’t you? That familiarity with your images is going to help a lot in the next go round. When you look through the images this time, look for images that are particularly fine, not just acceptable. They should have something special they may need cropping or other minor work, but the quality of your vision should be apparent. Also you want to look at the images as if you didn’t shoot them, as if you were seeing them not editing them. Look for an image that really connects. Certainly you can keep images you are unsure about, but you should end up with less than 10 percent of the images you started with.

Made with a digital camera mounted on a customized 4X5 Toyo C

I do this in Adobe Bridge, but there are certainly other programs that would do as well or better. As I go through each step I display the images larger, so that I get a better feel for the shots. The next step is to bring the images into Adobe Raw. Raw gives me a better look at each image, and I can begin the image processing. In raw I can do batch corrections on color, contrast, saturation and so on. I can also crop my images and do a variety of individual corrections. I will do my final choices on editing in raw. An image may get left behind at this point for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it is something I could fix, but don’t want to, or perhaps two images are very similar.

Finally I will open up all of the images that made it through raw in Photoshop. While I will rarely remove an image form the group in Photoshop I will perfect the images in Photoshop. This is where I will sharpen and do other detail work. Now finally, if the client asks for just there shots (not likely on a head shot) and I don’t have any personal reasons to make a choice, I can say enie minie moe….

Made with a lens I built

You can download a copy of my article on building cameras at this link: www.siskinphoto.com/magazine/camerabuilding.pdf