Skill – Processing

By Charles Gattis

Processing is the third skill set photographers need today, and perhaps have always needed, even though some would strongly disagree that very little processing should ever be done to a photo. I was never of that opinion. Part of my first job, indeed my first endeavor into photography, was to help in the dark room of a local photography studio. I was thirteen years old at the time so most of my “assisting” had to do with cleaning and straightening up, though I was allowed to do a little of mixing of the chemicals when the boss was under a lot of pressure. I was allowed in the darkroom, however, when the master was producing his art and was aware even at that early age that the photograph that appeared at the end of the process wasn’t exactly the image that the camera captured. Some process was taking place, even though in those days it was very little.

Of course, with digital photography, all of that changed. Now everything can be altered, manipulate, and even manufactured to a certain extent with our modern computer software. From all of that comes the whole range of arguments as to how much alteration is acceptable in a photograph. I contend, that even though there are disagreements, processing is an essential skillset for a photographer to develop, whether the full range of those skills are used on any one photograph or not. I have often heard it said that you can’t take a bad photograph and turn it into a great photograph through editing, but you can take a good photograph and turn it into a much better photograph. Or you can take the image you were able to get and turn it into the image you really wanted.

I offer my own experience as an example. Some twelve years ago we were traveling with a group of people in Prague—truly a beautiful city that I enjoyed so much. We had walked down and hill and were crossing a bridge over a little canal when I looked to my left and saw this little boat making its way down the canal. I had my camera on my side and just picked it up and shot. I liked the image enough to frame it and give it to my mother for Christmas one year—it hangs in my son’s living room as I write this. Over the years, however, as I have looked at the image on the wall, I have felt that the lighting was all wrong. I wanted more emphasis on the little boat and wished I could correct that.

A few months ago, I took Matt Kloskowski’s new course on lighting and decided to use this image as a practice image for the course. I completely changed the lighting in the image to make it what I thought the boat might look like coming down the canal at the end of the day illuminated by a bright light showing through from the river beyond. It wasn’t the scene I saw on that day, but rather the scene I always thought about when looking at the picture. You can see the recreated image on the left. I was so pleased with my work that I sent both images to Matt for comments. About a week later, he wrote me back with a somewhat disappointing comment, “you know, I really like both images—one about as much as the other.” To further disappoint, I told my son recently that I had completely relit the picture and that I could provide him with a substitute if he wanted. He thought for a minute and said, “No, I’ll take this one—it was Nana’s.”

I suppose all that says the real value of an image is in the eye of the beholder and the attachment he or she has to a particular scene. That doesn’t necessarily make the case for going through the steep learning curve of learning how to edit a picture, except to say that the processing of the image in some way is a part of the creative flow of producing art. Remember, there is the seeing, the capturing, the processing, and the presenting—all leading to producing a piece of art that brings the joy and pleasure of a scene that the photographer wants to convey to the viewer. Only the photographer knows completely what he or she is trying to convey (hopefully), but only the viewer knows what emotions and feelings a certain image brings to bear. It’s in the connection between the artist and the viewer that the magic happens. And I would say that some of the process of creating that magic comes out of the skill of processing an image in some way.

I had thought about mentioning some of the modern digital tools available now for the photographer, but I think a quick search of the internet would be more valuable than my comments. Personally, I started with Lightroom and Photoshop and am still a big fan. For me, since I derive a lot of pleasure from “playing around” with both of those pieces of software, the monthly fee is well worth the expense for the therapy it brings me. Finding pleasure in that, however, has taken a few years of angst and frustration. There are a lot of other editors out there these days including On1, Luminar Neo, and Affinity Photo, not to mention a whole host of plugins to use if you choose. Perhaps the skill level we need to acquire here is some proficiency with the software, or part of it, that helps us do what we normally want to do with a photograph. For some of us, that may be very little—some sharpening, a little noise reduction, some cropping, and maybe a touch of tone and color adjustments. For others, it may require the complete relighting of the image to produce what we really wanted to see and would like to convey to the viewer but could not get in capture due to lack of skill, time of day, etc. It’s very subjective.

As in all of these articles, I’ll post this one in my blog and you can make comments by clicking here.