I have been doing a little research into photo editing this week and have come to the conclusion that a little investment in Lightroom and Photoshop can mean the difference between an average picture and a good one or a good one and a brilliant one.
So my long held belief – that to tweak an image after the exposure meant that there was something wrong with the exposure to begin with and to post produce an image was some how dishonourable – has been dispelled, or rather the ability to make my own photos look better is the perfect justification I need to ‘dishonour’ the original.
But is it really ‘dishonourable’? I have read someone say recently the idea of editing a photo is to enhance it, to make it better, so the idea that if you were not dedicated enough to capture a subject correctly at time of exposure – you could, instead of getting up at 5 in the morning to capture a sunrise, just get up when you felt like it, slide a few sliders in Lightroom and not have to run on 2 hours sleep for the rest of the day is a myth. There is no way to enhance something that is not there – like if you leave the lens cap on Lightroom can do nothing for you.
Bill Brandt inspired
I found the task for this week quite a challenge. I have always loved the work of Max Dupain and I do find his work inspirational but I have chosen to mimic the style of Bill Brandt, simply because I had an idea that suits his quite bizarre style. When explaining to my girlfriend what I intended to do I think it sounded quite strange and even now at the result, the picture still looks strange – therefore I think I have successfully replicated the unique high contrast, strange composition, black and white work of Bill Brandt. It took some thinking to come up with a way of positioning my pet rabbit in front of a jetty so everything in the foreground was not seen and so the rabbit would not run away. I ended up solving this dilemma by putting the rabbit atop of a wheelie bin and clicking away. I did not use a fill light but found I needed to modify underexposed sky in Lightroom. I am happy with the picture.
An idea for a set of images for my final assignment
xdarkxlightx 