Tag Archives: Technique

Commentary, Ideas, Photographers, Technique

Video: Michael Adams on “Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico”

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As if on cue, right after I posted my “Photographer versus Photoshopper” piece yesterday, in which I mentioned Adam’s “Moonrise…” photograph, I saw this wonderful video interview with Ansel Adams’ son Michael in which he offers a basic description of the extensive post-processing that Adams applied to the original negative to produce the print we know so well.

The interview also reminded me of another topic for the “Photographic Myths and Platitudes” series that I am thinking about, namely the claim that great photographers always carefully compose and consider their subjects before they trip the shutter. Sometimes they do, but quite often it is more a matter of “tripping” over the tripod as one scrambles to capture a moment of beauty that appeared unexpectedly and which may disappear any second if you don’t work quickly. Of course, well-developed technical and aesthetic instincts help when it comes to turning such a moment into a photograph.

Commentary, Photographic Myths and Platitudes, Technique

Photographic Myths and Platitudes – ‘Photographer’ versus ‘Photoshopper’

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Read enough online stuff about photography and you eventually begin to recognize certain “common knowledge” assumptions about photography that are frequently repeated, quoted, and stated as truths. Unfortunately, quite a few of them are, at best, personal opinions rather than facts, and a good number are just plain wrong. I have a couple of ideas for a series of posts on this blog, and I’ve felt that occasionally dealing with some of these myths and platitudes might be one such thread. So, here goes — a new series: “Photographic Myths and Platitudes.”

I’ve seen writers attempt to draw distinctions between “photographers” and “photoshoppers” – in fact I just saw another today. The underlying assumption seems to be that if you are really a “photographer” you’ll be able to do everything perfectly in-camera and won’t have to do anything in the “post-processing” stage, and that “photoshopping” is a form of non-photographic cheating or tweaking that only has the purpose of making a poor photograph less poor. Further, quite a few who hold this view attempt to build their case on photographic history, often suggesting that “Great Photographer X” fully and accurately “pre-visualized” the image in its finished form, carefully calculated composition and exposure in such a way that the final print would be inevitable, pressed the shutter release, and captured a perfect image that could not be improved in any way by further work.

Of course, with the exception of a few genres of and approaches to photography, this is generally nonsense both as history and as a practical description of how photography is done. Continue reading Photographic Myths and Platitudes – ‘Photographer’ versus ‘Photoshopper’ →

Technique

How I Sharpen – An Overview

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(I originally wrote this article way back in 2009. Some portions were revised in February 2019 to reflect changes to sharpening tools and some different ideas I have developed regarding sharpening settings. It was updated and modified again in 2023.)

I just posted something elsewhere about how I sharpen for prints and I figured I’d get some extra mileage out of it by posting it here as well. First, few disclaimers…

  • The title of this article originally referred to a “quick overview.” Clearly, it is too long for that! But there are whole books on sharpening, so by contrast I think this qualifies as a quick description. In fact, I’ve left a lot out of the description!
  • There are people with far more expertise on this topic than I have, and I have no illusions that this description represents the “right” way to do this, much less the “best” way!

The subject of how to sharpen photographs in post for print or electronic output is one that confuses many people… and a subject to which many books, online articles, and forums posts have been devoted. There are any number of ways to get the desired results via sharpening, and different techniques are called for depending upon taste, the nature of the image, and the final form of presentation: size? print? jpg? etc…

Here is a general description of what I do when I print. I’ve left some variations out of this description. The description also covers software that I use in my workflow — you might prefer something different, but you might still be able to adapt these ideas. You’ll note at least one controversial method later in the list, but try it before you dismiss it. The approach I use could well be “over-kill” if you just want to pump out a bunch of jpgs to share with friends and family or if you want to make some small prints — my end goal is good sized prints, and I work on each one rather carefully rather than mass-processing them and printing a bunch at one time.

And please understand that I’m most certainly not implying that my way is the right way. It works for me, and that people who view my prints often remark on their sharpness and detail. (And a few other things, too, I hope! :-)

Continue reading How I Sharpen – An Overview →

Technique

Reader question: How to add borders to online photographs

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From time to time people ask what techniques I use to create the simple frames for versions of my photographs that I post online. A while ago I wrote about this: Creating Frames for Online Photos: My Method. The explanation involves the use of Photoshop CS3, but the technique is essentially the same in the current version of the program.

You can read the details at the link above, but the process is basically fairly straightforward. I use Image –> Canvas size to add a series of borders to the original image: a one-pixel gray border immediately around it, a larger white border beyond that with a bit more width at the bottom, and finally a one-pixel black border at the outer edge. I turn this into an action that I can apply by selecting it and clicking a button to run it.

The approach to creating the text incorporated into the web images is similar, though it requires a bit of tweaking with each photograph. Essentially, I create three text layers: one for the large type at the bottom, one for the small embedded copyright notice, and a slightly larger “watermark” that will go over the image itself. The action I recorded creates the three layers and inserts the boilerplate text, but I always have to do a bit of alignment manually, and I may also have to make some decisions about opacity and so on depending upon the characteristics of the individual image. Still, it takes less than a minute to do the whole thing even in the wost cases.

Why apply a border, “branding” text, and copyright to the photographs?

  • If people like your photograph, it makes sense to make it easy for them to find you – so I include the easily readable text with my name and web site URL. No matter where the unaltered file ends up, viewers will be able to find the source.
  • The use of consistent presentation helps to establish the photographer’s “brand.” This is true even when the image is displayed in ways that are out of your control, including search engine results.
  • Inclusion of the copyright information is a formality to remind viewers that use of my photographs requires advance permission.
  • Although the inclusion of a watermark cannot stop a dedicated image thief, I think it reduces the likelihood of misappropriation – and that is probably about all that one can really hope for on the basis of a watermark. It may tweak the conscience of the typical user, who may perhaps simply not have thought about the issues of legal usage, and it may encourage others to look for a different image that won’t expose their illegal use and/or require them to take the intentional step of trying to remove the text to cover up the source.
I also addressed these issues in a separate post at this blog.
(Occasionally a person interested in purchasing a print or licensing a photograph for some other use wonders if the embedded watermarks, copyright information, and branded borders are part of the original images. No. When you purchase a print there is nothing on the paper but the photograph itself and my signature. Photos licensed for other uses – books, magazines, web site, etc – are normally provided without added text.)
Articles in the “reader questions” series:

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
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