How Do You Want Your Pictures to Look?

A long-running theme of mine is human beings juxtaposed against the often-stark, hard-edged architectural elements of big cities. That's why I look for angular shapes and high-contrast lighting to better define them. I expose for the highlights, then darken the shadows in Lightroom if necessary to increase contrast and impact. If color is distracting or unnecessary I remove it by converting to black and white. That's my basic approach in a nutshell. What's yours?

Have you thought about it? I mean really thought about? If you're shooting digitally--and most of us are these days--your images are more plastic than ever before. (By "plastic" I'm referring to the original meaning, as in "malleable, or offering scope for creativity." The materials known as plastics were invented after the word itself.) Your camera has JPEG presets for neutral, normal, vivid, vibrant, radioactive, toy camera, pro camera, and another adjective you can think of. Some camera makers refer to these as creative settings, as if you have a choice of whether to be creative of not and, if so, in what way.

Raw shooters bypass all that and go straight to Aperture, Lightroom, Photoshop, or their favorite raw converter, where the choice becomes whether to leave it as-is or tweak it and, if so, how much and in what way. You can boost or reduce the color saturation, but which should you choose and why? You can switch from color to grayscale, but again, why? Should you darken certain tones and lighten others? Yet again, why?

The point I'm trying to make here is that if you don't know what you want, almost anything will do. Tools are useful only if you know what you want to do with them. If you're not exactly sure what you want to do with yours, try coming up with answers to the following three questions. They may help you decide where you're trying to go and how to get there.

1. What areas and tones in the image attract the eye the most? (These are often the brightest areas but not always.) Is that where you want the attention to go? If not, what you can do direct attention elsewhere?
2. What types of photographs do you like most? What qualities attract you? Some photographs specialize in images that are "quiet" while others are "loud." Some go for hyper-realistic detail. Others like impressionistic blurs. What do you like?
3. Is your primary interest to create photographs that others will like or that you will like? Depending on your circumstances either approach is valid, but if you're externally focused you need to know not only what your audience is looking for, you need to know whether you're capable of producing it at a high enough level to make the enterprise worthwhile. There's no point in producing dozens of HDR images if you suck at it, especially if you have a gift for straight portraiture.

I'll stop at three for the sake of brevity. If any of you readers out there have any other personal guidelines and philosophies you find helpful, feel free to post a comment.

Comments

[Tim]

As always, you make a good point. If there's a style to avoid, I suspect it's "just shoot stuff, with no vision, and boost the saturation afterwards." Or the pre-visualisation is a skill to encourage.

Interesting to see your shooting mentality, too.

Well, since you ask: I concentrate on little compositional details one might find in a forest whilst walking the dogs (for some strange reason). It might be a shape of a fallen branch looking like a wish-bone, or frost-covered leaves, or tree angles and lines and forms. Frequently these are shot in pre-sunrise light and/or on a diffuse grey day, which avoids harsh contrasts (exposure works well with no compensations in P-mode) and lets objects' intrinsic shapes shine through the B&W conversion.

B&W is intentional from the outset. My composition is inspired by Tom Ang: a "sense of harmony and balance" in the frame (so I frequently compose to put objects on or in the quarters of the frame, allowing visual play-off "this-against-that" across the diagonals). I have ACR presets that get me most of the way--either to B&W (auto or default B&W tone-mapping) or a default "realistic" landscape or "film effect." Vibrance +20 or something disgraceful looks like Velvia with contrast-enhancing filter (ouch).

[Ryan Lavering]

I've been thinking about "vision" a lot lately, as it's by far the weaker of the technical-skill-vs-artistic-vision equation for me. But try as I might, I couldn't come up with proper words to describe the nebulous concepts I was pursuing.

Then the other night at dinner I was describing what I was thinking to my wife, and she summarized it so neatly that I was floored. "You're being too future-oriented," she said, "It sounds like you just need to be present-hedonsitic." (She's a psychologist. Yes, they really talk like that. And yes, it's fantastic. :-) )

There it was. The nameless concept I'd been pursuing. Present hedonism. Being in the moment. I instantly realized that this was the thread that connected most of my best images: they were shot when I was most immersed in the moment. When I'm not there in the moment -- an outsider looking in -- my photos are boring and drab.

So that's my new mission: to put myself in tune with the moment, so that the instant I click the shutter is when I know the moment is right. Because I'm there.

[emptyspaces]

I like patterns, juxtapositions, and those little glimpses you see sometimes where you're looking off in the distance, but instead of seeing depth you see a 2-dimensional frame that only looks the way it does from that specific spot. Sadly, I see a lot of these while driving!

I have an almost two year-old daughter and I take a million pictures of her discovering the world. It's nice that it is so easy to crank out a photo book of a particular adventure, because family members really dig them. My wife and I maintain a blog of her adventures, which is really my main photo gig at this moment.

Tim mentions gray, diffused light. I love it, too, especially in winter when I get out and shoot a lot of B&W film. I love the angular silhouette of a naked tree against an evenly gray backdrop on Tri-X or Plus-X.

[JMR]

Vision, inspiration, aspiration, easy words to write and say, but difficult to explain.

I think it is difficult for all but a few to see what it is they really want to say with their photography, especially if one is young, or until we are older or at least more worldly experienced and mature.

Looking back, I had no idea I would take interest in landscapes and light and forms as subjects in themselves, or even notice their subtleties; and then to imperessionist imagery. And then to move away from postcardy images, even though I love a good sunset/sunrise image as much as anyone. Is it a phase or discovering and expressing oneself or both? What I can offer in this regard, is, if you feel that you are filling some human need with photography and using it as vehicle for expressing yourself, then it is all worthwhile, whether you attain success or not, whatever that is. The journey is as fulfilling as the photography itself.

Would I have noticed all the interesting things I photographed in my local park or conservation area if I had not developed a way of seeing and appreciating their many facets in different light? And conversely, now that I am more keenly interested in the subjects I photograph, I take a more active interest in maintaining the natural state and beauty of the environments I visit.

BTW, I shoot only JPEGs, discovering, at least for me, it is not worthwhile expending so much time and energy trying to maintain two of everything. Now I am off to find Tim's fine diffused light. Where did he say it was?