Today's post is all about the creative edit. I'm been very kindly given permission to use one of the images that was discussed and edited during my Digital Darkroom workshop this past May. Many thanks to Orchid for allowing me to share this image with you.
Disko Bay, Greenland
Image © Orchid Fung, workshop participant, Digital Darkroom class May 2018
There is often an image hiding within an image, and often a re-interpretation hiding within an interpretation. When we first compose a scene out in the field we often look at it from the point of what was there, often focussing, composing, setting up with the intention that we are going to record faithfully what we see. But when we come to edit or to review the image later, we often re-interpret the original composition and see other crops or other compositions within the original frame. This I believe is perfectly normal and should be encouraged.
I think if you are a photographer, you are always 'seeing', but also, you should always be interpreting, and that means even re-interpreting. To look at a photograph and see something else within it, is a similar process, if not identical to the one that allows us to look at the original world view and choose how to interpret it with our initial capture.
If you get good at choosing what to put into the frame and what to leave out , then I see no reason why this should not continue when you come round to reviewing your work and then deciding to re-crop or make another photo out of an existing one.
Which is what we did here with this photograph.
The original capture (RAW file with no processing applied) it shown below. My intentions are to illustrate that sometimes there are strong shapes and motifs in a photograph that will get stronger if we manage to remove the other things that are competing for our attention, and also, that it is perfectly ok to depart fully from what was captured.
The original raw file
During my workshop, we discussed how as visitors to a location, we are often caught up in the experience of being there. We live in a 3D world with real objects and we often tend to separate them in our mind because we know they are physically different things. I also believe that we look at tones in different ways when we look at scenery compared to how we look at tones when we look at a photograph. I am convinced that my dear friend Orchid thought the highlighted snow in the foreground was a pleasing part of the photograph because I too, have done the same. I have also taken many many photographs where I was inclined to put a foreground into the picture when non was required. This is, I believe, because as physical beings we wish to represent what was immediately in front of us. Foregrounds are a way of allowing us to step into the picture after all.
It is only when we review the image later that we find that perhaps the foreground is too distracting, or maybe it doesn't have enough aesthetic beauty to support the rest of the frame. Which is what we discussed with this photograph. I know the photograph was taken because of the mountain peak in the background and I believe the foreground was put in there because of such a need to have something to help us walk into the frame.
For me, I'm fascinated by the disconnect between a photograph and reality. I do believe that we see differently while on location than we do when we are reviewing photographs. For many of us the process is different, yet I have a very strong feeling that it shouldn't be. We need to be able to 'see photographs' while on location. Not scenery, and this is the hardest thing to do for most of us because we've had a lifetime of thinking and seeing the world as a living breathing 3D reality.
So what of the final edit? Are you shocked at all by how different it is from the initial capture? I'm curious because for me, I think of photography is the art of creating an illusion. Photographs aren't real, even when we don't alter them, they still do not convey what we saw or how things actually were. We could get quite philosophical if we chose to on this one.... but for me, photography is a creative-arts endeavour where our aim is to create a beautiful illusion. How we get there is a matter of personal ideals of what photography is and what it isn't. I have my own thoughts on what is photography (dodging, burning, cropping) and what isn't (blending, HDR, merging, superimposing things) but that is just for me. I realise that each and every one of us has our own boundaries of what is and what isn't photography and I respect that you may be happy to merge or superimpose things - there are after all no rules, and nor should there be. It's an arts endeavour we're discussing here.
I think my interpretation I made of Orchid's photo takes the viewer to the heart of the picture - that beautiful peak at the back of the original frame. By softening the tones down dramatically across the picture, we have removed a lot of textural details that would be vying for our attention. Doing so enables that beautiful graphic zig-zag shape to emerge in the photograph a perhaps the reason for the photograph. It was there all along, but it was competing with so many other elements that it was being drowned a little.
I think editing is an enormously creative process. It is a space that I can spend hours and days in, and it has taught me never to judge my work at the point of capture. I never really know just what the final images may end up being like, and I've certainly had images that have become personal favourites when I almost never worked on them because I wasn't convinced they had enough merit.
Photography is the art of looking again. And again. Of being open, and willing to re-interpret something another way. I hope today with this example I've shown you exactly that.
Many thanks to Orchid Fung for allowing me to reproduce and discuss her beautiful image.