Me trying to look pro.
Listen up kids, long ago, in photography, before this confounded thing we call “digital,” there was this little medium we called film. It was delicate, time-consuming, expensive, had a set ISO, and we could only shoot 12, 24, or the massive 36 shots on one roll. We bought these rolls in packs at Costco to save money, and stored what we didn’t use in the fridge to keep them fresh. Just to make prints we camped out in darkrooms and used huge enlarger machines and dodged and burned with our hands. We ruined our pictures (not to mention our clothes) when we weren’t careful with emulsion and gosh-darned it, we liked it that way!
Ok, so I’m not really that old. While I did do all that, I thankfully didn’t have to for very long and was an early adopter of the digital photography revolution. I owe a lot to Dan Dawson, our wedding photographer, who gave me my first glimpse of the digital SLR–the Canon d30 (not to be confused with the 30D) for you old-timers. It wasn’t until much later that I got my own digital SLR, but now, years later, as the new medium has matured, even 5 year olds have $30 digital point-and-shoots and can make prints right from their printer of their own home.
I don’t consider myself a professional by any means, but with the help of some friends and family who are, I think I’ve gotten to be pretty good shot. I love taking pictures of family events, and especially my boys. A couple weekends ago, when California was redefining “winter” with warm, sunny days in January, I took some shots of Caleb and Tyler.
While point and shoot cameras do some auto-correction in-camera, digital SLR’s give you the option of saving the “raw” image, unedited, leaving that to the photographer later with the software of their choice, e.g. Photoshop, Aperture, or Lightroom. (But we all know Aperture is what real photographers use…) The raw image looks something like this:
The raw image straight out of the camera (click to enalrge).
In its unedited form, aren’t ready for print. It’s too dark, there’s not enough contrast, and just needs more massaging. That’s where the beauty of the digital age really comes in. Do any photographers out there actually miss the darkroom? That whole painful process is now done on the computer, in, as they say “in your underwear.” Here’s the same image after cropping, softening, level-adjustment, dodging and burning.
The finished photo, ready for print (click to enalrge).
After all the image-editing has been done, we end up with a more dramatic photo. The boys, the focal-point of the photo, really stand-out while the grass around them is de-emphasized. I think it’s ready to send to Bay Photo for an 8×10! What do you think? Any of you pro guys have any suggestions for improvement?
Using Mozilla Firefox 3.0.6 on Mac OS X 10
I personally do miss the darkroom days. There’s just something very intimate about the whole process. Rolling your film correctly so they’re not touching in the reel, letting it sit in a canister full of developer for ten or so minutes, hanging it up to dry for another 20 minutes…there was just that level of excitement and anticipation that you get that you don’t get anymore with digital. Of course, it’s not over at that point, you have to still use an enlarger to make ONE print, but even that was so mechanical and scientific that you have to really pay attention to your picture. Dodging and burning was a lot of fun and also very frustrating, and keeping time on how long your print was in developer and stopper and fixer. I bet most people don’t even know what those things are anymore! It really was a process that created a strange relationship between you and your picture(s). Maybe I’m just way too sentimental, but sometimes I wish that I still had a darkroom to do some printing.
The picture you have of Caleb and Tyler is awesome (weirdest smile from Tyler). I know that I’m the one that showed you a quick way to burn the edges to give it a little more punch, but it is slightly noticeable. Maybe if you let off the burn just a bit, or if you took the burn tool and burned the area where it’s not darkened in the top corners to make it more subtle, that might help. Also, if you send it to print, I was always told to put a tad of sharpening because prints make things look a little soft. These two things, though, aren’t a big deal, I’m just being super picky.
Using NetNewsWire 3.1.7b4 on Mac OS X
I was glad for the darkroom experience I had, becasue it forced me to understand better some concepts like dodging & burning. But I have to say that I don’t miss the chemical dark room one bit! It sounds kind of romantic, or hard-core to work in a real darkroom. But I much prefer the digital darkroom. I honestly don’t miss film a bit!