Dark Matters » Practical Photography Magazine http://www.rogercoulam.com/blog On Photography by Roger Coulam Thu, 01 Dec 2016 15:05:33 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.4 Back To the Wall http://www.rogercoulam.com/blog/2011/07/back-to-the-wall/ http://www.rogercoulam.com/blog/2011/07/back-to-the-wall/#comments Sat, 16 Jul 2011 12:21:11 +0000 Roger Coulam http://www.rogercoulam.com/blog/?p=557 I have worked intermittently with Practical Photography Magazine since 2001, and recently completed a job with them as part of their “24 Hours With..” feature. The brief was that they follow me during a landscape shoot on Hadrian’s Wall, an area I have visited frequently over the years. But with Ben Hawkins, the Deputy [...]]]> I have worked intermittently with Practical Photography Magazine since 2001, and recently completed a job with them as part of their “24 Hours With..” feature. The brief was that they follow me during a landscape shoot on Hadrian’s Wall, an area I have visited frequently over the years. But with Ben Hawkins, the Deputy Editor from PP, looking over my shoulder and noting down my every move, the elements conspired against me, and it turned out to be one of the toughest assignments I have ever done, and definitely the wettest.

Any type of “landscape” work in the summer can be challenging as the quality of light is often poor, and depending on the weather, the “golden hour” can be reduced to the “golden five minutes if you’re lucky”.

This summer I have been revisiting Hadrian’s Wall http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadrian%27s_Wall to try and make something different for stock libraries. Most of my pictures of the iconic Wall have been made in the winter months, when the sun is lower and more predictable.

For a few months in the summer the sun sets north-west of the wall, making for a much more challenging set of conditions and vistas, often dissected with harsh shadow. To complicate matters the north facing side of wall is not accessible in many places, so coming away with useful pictures is much harder than in the winter, when so much is laid out on a plate for the photographer.

An important part of outdoor photography is careful planning, researching the location, understanding the position and movement of the sun, and watching the weather forecast. Sadly the date for this shoot had to be fixed well in advance, and if the choice had been my own I would have not left the house that day.

The forecast was terrible and the rain fell in torrents for seven frustrating hours, only briefly interspersed with flat grey skies and a chill wind…..ah the joys of early summer on Hadrian’s Wall. We must have looked quite a sight, just standing in the middle of nowhere in the driving rain, water logged and dripping. But at least the midgies were drowning!

I had hoped for a shooting window of around two hours to make 20 or so pictures for the magazine piece, covering various locations over a one mile stretch of the Wall; instead I had around ten minutes total working time, with sodden kit and a nice fine drizzle. Outdoor work should be considered and calm, and not carried out at running pace with a journalist trailing behind with his umbrella! It could be argued that all shoots will not go to plan, and this IS the reality of outdoor photography, but ultimately I had quality pictures to produce for a client whatever the weather, and they had to be done that day.

With hindsight at least I got to know the location better, and made some (moist) notes for future visits, and I also know that my coat pockets will fill with water after a while standing in heavy rain. More seriously I received a reminder that for some commercial jobs the pictures have to be a compromise. When time is a constraint, every picture that comes out the camera may not be amazing, but has to be the very best that can be made at that time, taking into account all of the circumstances.

Only rarely on commercial jobs will the expectations that you have in your mind be exceeded, and you must be prepared for even the best laid plans to fall apart. That is part of the challenge and the constant learning curve, and you learn more from adversity and from having to draw on all your skills to complete the job.

Balancing commercial work with personal projects is never easy, and the two strands are often difficult for a photographer to reconcile, but the bills have to be paid.

“Shooting Hadrian’s Wall” features in Augusts’ edition of Practical Photography Magazine. http://www.photoanswers.co.uk/

For my February 2011 guest editorial in PP (relating to HDR and photoshopping) please visit http://www.rogercoulam.com/blog/2011/01/hdr-photoshopping/

]]> http://www.rogercoulam.com/blog/2011/07/back-to-the-wall/feed/ 0 HDR & “Photoshopping” http://www.rogercoulam.com/blog/2011/01/hdr-photoshopping/ http://www.rogercoulam.com/blog/2011/01/hdr-photoshopping/#comments Thu, 27 Jan 2011 06:00:42 +0000 Roger Coulam http://www.rogercoulam.com/blog/?p=175 I was very pleased to be asked to contribute a guest editorial piece for February’s edition of Practical Photography Magazine. http://www.photoanswers.co.uk/ This allowed me to cover a topic that is important to me, namely “Photoshopped” pictures and the abuse of HDR.

The text of my piece runs……………..

We live in a world filled with [...]]]> I was very pleased to be asked to contribute a guest editorial piece for February’s edition of Practical Photography Magazine. http://www.photoanswers.co.uk/ This allowed me to cover a topic that is important to me, namely “Photoshopped” pictures and the abuse of HDR.

The text of my piece runs……………..

We live in a world filled with extreme and “perfect” images, made to grab the five second attention span of a hard wired society. The digital revolution positively changed photography forever as technological advances overcame many of the crafts limitations; but these changes have brought suspicion and mistrust, directed towards digital editing. This is because altered images now dominate our lives, and advertisers, media, and governments use them to lie to us – we all now question the integrity of the pictures we see.

I came to this topic after fourteen of my pictures featured in a newspaper and online, and several readers commented that they were “Photoshopped”. They weren’t, but had been “altered” by my choice of film, filter, and exposure. Photoshop is an essential tool that I use every day, but I do so sparingly and carefully, and always try and get things right in camera.

I used to take these “Photoshopped” comments as a compliment, but lately I have realised that the integrity I tried to use in my pictures, was being damaged by the actions of many others. Basically my work was being rejected as false (and by extension not valid) because the world is now full of extreme images that have been largely made by a computer programme.

The next day I received an e-mail from someone asking whether to “Photoshop” their entries into a competition or leave it natural, as they thought the other entries looked “manipulated and fake”.

Later while out working I met a photography lecturer, who commented that they would “sort the light out later in Photoshop” and my mind started turning all this over.

This rant is informed by the current trend to (over)use High Dynamic Range. HDR is an important advance for photography, but is also the source of some of the most hideous, artificial, cartoon like, fake images ever, and when overused it raises even more questions about the integrity of digital imaging. Used carefully it can help produce amazing pictures which don’t look like some mad CG world. But the pictures are computer generated, and maybe this lies at the root of the whole Photoshopping problem? We allow computers to do the work and each time we use software to alter an image, the further from reality it is taken. This can also remove any originality from an image, just as selecting “Super Vivid” in-camera, or “Auto-Levels” in Raw processing, can bring a bland uniformity to the millions of images made by millions of photographers, all using the same factory and computer presets and trapping many in a homogenous digital straightjacket. Don’t get me wrong, this can be fine if that is the output you require, and you are happy with the results, but often these programmes are used to try and make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, or merely to save a bad picture! That is where I have a real problem.

We have to stay in control of every stage of the picture making/editing process, and use previews and layers as a way of stepping backwards. Knowing when to stop is difficult, as it’s easy to be seduced with contrast, super-saturated colours, or by having 14 stops of dynamic range in every shot. We seem to be afraid of shadows, or true whites, and it’s so easy to “overcook” an image.

Cameras will take good pictures straight out the box without any real skills, but that also opens a Pandora’s Box of evils. The digital darkroom made photography accessible to so many, while software allows us to do things unheard of by previous generations of photographers, giving us almost unlimited degrees of control in making pictures, or recording our lives. But this can easily be used to distort reality so much that this adds to the suspicion that photography faces, and can devalue any picture that is taken, lessening the ability of photography to show “reality”.

Photographs only describe things as they are on the surface, and the camera always lies, so why do we keep adding more lies to that by over processing, and creating scenes that patently do not exist on this Planet? Barely possible colours, impossible shadow detail, highlights that are more saturated than midtones, luminous foliage, and metallic skies? This is surely not progress.

Yes, everything is subjective, and this discussion is endless, but I leave a few questions, as it is important to look at what we do, and to look objectively at the pictures we make. So, please ask yourself are you a “sort it out in Photoshop” person? Do you use a computer programme to replace good basic technique and great light? Are you a “good” photographer or “good” with computers?

And if you feel that none of this matters, step away from Photoshop right now, never touch the saturation slider again, and please do not even consider using HDR.

(All text ©Roger Coulam)

I was very pleased to be asked to contribute a guest editorial piece for Practical Photography Magazine. http://www.photoanswers.co.uk/ This allowed me to cover a topic that is important to me, namely “Photoshopped” pictures and the abuse of HDR.

The text of my piece runs……………..

We live in a world filled with extreme and “perfect” images, made to grab the five second attention span of a hard wired society. The digital revolution positively changed photography forever as technological advances overcame many of the crafts limitations; but these changes have brought suspicion and mistrust, directed towards digital editing. This is because altered images now dominate our lives, and advertisers, media, and governments use them to lie to us – we all now question the integrity of the pictures we see.

I came to this topic after fourteen of my pictures featured in a newspaper and online, and several readers commented that they were “Photoshopped”. They weren’t, but had been “altered” by my choice of film, filter, and exposure. Photoshop is an essential tool that I use every day, but I do so sparingly and carefully, and always try and get things right in camera.

I used to take these “Photoshopped” comments as a compliment, but lately I have realised that the integrity I tried to use in my pictures, was being damaged by the actions of many others. Basically my work was being rejected as false (and by extension not valid) because the world is now full of extreme images that have been largely made by a computer programme.

The next day I received an e-mail from someone asking whether to “Photoshop” their entries into a competition or leave it natural, as they thought the other entries looked “manipulated and fake”.

Later while out working I met a photography lecturer, who commented that they would “sort the light out later in Photoshop” and my mind started turning all this over.

This rant is informed by the current trend to (over)use High Dynamic Range. HDR is an important advance for photography, but is also the source of some of the most hideous, artificial, cartoon like, fake images ever, and when overused it raises even more questions about the integrity of digital imaging. Used carefully it can help produce amazing pictures which don’t look like some mad CG world. But the pictures are computer generated, and maybe this lies at the root of the whole Photoshopping problem? We allow computers to do the work and each time we use software to alter an image, the further from reality it is taken. This can also remove any originality from an image, just as selecting “Super Vivid” in-camera, or “Auto-Levels” in Raw processing, can bring a bland uniformity to the millions of images made by millions of photographers, all using the same factory and computer presets and trapping many in a homogenous digital straightjacket. Don’t get me wrong, this can be fine if that is the output you require, and you are happy with the results, but often these programmes are used to try and make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, or merely to save a bad picture! That is where I have a real problem.

We have to stay in control of every stage of the picture making/editing process, and use previews and layers as a way of stepping backwards. Knowing when to stop is difficult, as it’s easy to be seduced with contrast, super-saturated colours, or by having 14 stops of dynamic range in every shot. We seem to be afraid of shadows, or true whites, and it’s so easy to “overcook” an image.

Cameras will take good pictures straight out the box without any real skills, but that also opens a Pandora’s Box of evils. The digital darkroom made photography accessible to so many, while software allows us to do things unheard of by previous generations of photographers, giving us almost unlimited degrees of control in making pictures, or recording our lives. But this can easily be used to distort reality so much that this adds to the suspicion that photography faces, and can devalue any picture that is taken, lessening the ability of photography to show “reality”.

Photographs only describe things as they are on the surface, and the camera always lies, so why do we keep adding more lies to that by over processing, and creating scenes that patently do not exist on this Planet? Barely possible colours, impossible shadow detail, highlights that are more saturated than midtones, luminous foliage, and metallic skies? This is surely not progress.

Yes, everything is subjective, and this discussion is endless, but I leave a few questions, as it is important to look at what we do, and to look objectively at the pictures we make. So, please ask yourself are you a “sort it out in Photoshop” person? Do you use a computer programme to replace good basic technique and great light? Are you a “good” photographer or “good” with computers?

And if you feel that none of this matters, step away from Photoshop right now, never touch the saturation slider again, and please do not even consider using HDR.

(All text ©Roger Coulam)

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