While looking at some recent images, including the Electra image from this years APPAs, it’s struck me how digital photography has changed what we accept as a ‘finished’ image.
Before the ability to do significant modification to images post production, a finished image was pretty straight. If you shot transparencies, and had a good lab, masks could be used while printing Cibachrome to alter highlights, shadows or contrast. If colour neg, correct colour and the desired density were almost your only options. You could correct slight perspective by tilting the easel but not much more. and of course a bit of dodging and burning but not too much in colour as the colour would shift.
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So, this image, from a little town called Poowong, is fairly straight. Level, colour and density all pretty all right. Not sure what else I would do if printed traditionally. |
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But now, this would not be ‘finished’. Some perspective control, a bit of pulling back the highlights, lifting the reds a touch and lowering the luminosity of the sky would be considered necessary and then a using a filter, ALCE, to adjust the local contrast and we’re closer to a finished image. |
I know I’m not the first to mention it, and I recognize it’s progress, I just think it’s interesting. 🙂
Some more Poowong
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