Think Think Think Think Think - July 08, 2005

I thought and thought and thought about this one. I love this photo and most of the others I took at this location.

But today I was reading through this is me screaming and thinking about "processing the crap out of photographs". I love so many of the photos on that site. And yet I've always felt an aversion to doing that. I don't think there's anything "wrong" with it. But I think the reason that I don't want to do it is that I want to focus more on the photographs themselves. I've always been good at production tricks, artistic and otherwise. But right now I have too much to learn about taking a good photograph without getting distracted by all that other stuff.

So when I decided to use this photo today, it was yet another photo that I thought was really powerful. The surreal quality inspired me to try and add to that with some blur around the outside edges. But it only looked kinda cheesy and cliche. Some of that may be inevitable trying that on a photo like this. But part of it is, of course, tools in inexperienced hands. So I decided to leave it alone. Except for sharpening. And I thought and thought about that. I usually do a little sharpening on most, but I was thinking maybe I should keep it soft.

I sharpened it.

7-14-2005: Just to be clear. I know at least one person thought that I might hold major processing of photographs in some kind of disdain. I definitely don't. Not at all. In fact quite the opposite. I respect the hell out of anyone who is confident and creative enough to do beautiful things with any kind of postprocessing. Whether it's in a lab or on a computer.

Comments

thanks for the comment about my site.

All of the "processing" on my photos is actually analog - which changes by whichever slide film i choose to use and by the exposure. You can read all about "cross processing" if you do a google search.

Google seach Shanz and he's got some pretty cool crossprocessing actions for photoshop which emulates the cross processing technique.

Posted by: pablo korona on July 13, 2005 03:48 AM