My banner image
...Descending... has elicited many comments and questions, so I've prepared a step-by-step example of my work, and hopefully, my thinking about the presenting of this image. The old Pictorialists used many techniques to achieve their stylistic ends, such as the use of multiple image printing, heavy manipulation of negatives, soft-focus, and the use of techniques such as gum bichromate printing, all of which were intended to lower the detail and produce a more artistic image. My use of post-processing techniques seems mild in comparison...
Here is the my post-processing sequence:
 |
| 1. Original Photograph, Pinkham & Smith lens, Lightroom "Nikon-Neutral" profile |
This original image is lovely, and can stand on its own, showing the look of the Pinkham & Smith Visual Quality Motion Picture lens, and the context of the scene with the windows and lighting fixtures. It has no post-processing added, being as neutral a conversion of the digital raw image as I can accomplish. Some viewers, for various reasons, may prefer this image to the end result, which is perfectly fine.
While I really liked the image, I was bothered by the question of what the subject of the image was-- is it the windows, the stairway, or the figure? I chose the figure as the center of interest, and cropped to an 8x10 aspect-ratio:
 |
| 2. Contrast and black levels adjusted |
Details seemed less important than
Chiaroscuro, hence the adjustments of contrast and blacks. But the window line above and the step line below bothered me:
 |
| 3. Added post-crop vignetting to fade edges to dark |
Some isolation at the edges solved those problems; now I wanted to emphasize the qualities of the light:
 |
| 4. Split-toning warmth added |
To emphasize the light, I added some toning. I chose to leave the image as color, just adding tone to it. Now the image looked "too close". I wanted to pull back and re-frame...
 |
| 5. In Photoshop, increased canvas size, adding and offsetting image |
I added negative space around the image and off-set it to use as a desktop background.
At this point, the image was too harsh and needed something else. I wished for some great shaft of light, like the wonderful light in Josef Sudek's
St. Vitus Cathedral images. To accomplish that, I resorted to the use of Digital Film Tools' wonderful plugin,
RAYS. Rays allows the user to move and manipulate a light source inside or outside the image boundaries, and control various aspects of the ray-traced light beams:
 |
| 6. Using a plug-in called "RAYS" to add light diffusion |
Here is my initial result:
 |
| 7. First result using RAYS |
After staring at this version for several days I decided it was over-done and the angle of the light was wrong. So I re-did the treatment:
 |
| 8. Final result using RAYS; now the light comes from a better direction |
Finally, I changed the crop to a square format:
 |
| 9. Final square crop: ...Descending... |
Voila...
Comments are always appreciated. Too much? Too little? Is manipulation useful, or even appropriate?
What do you think?
