Just about the time I delude myself into thinking I’m an OK photographer, I stumble across someone who is doing truly great things. One such person is Flickr photographer Johnny Blood. I am amazed at the quality, clarity, color, and composition he is able to achieve.
One of the most incredible things is his abilty to capture these images of everyday objects. Can you say "photo envy"?
Invariably, thoughts such as, "If I only had a better camera" or "If I only had better lenses" run through my head. Unfortunately, Flickr has a new tool which will allow you to search by camera. Now I can browse every image on Flickr that was taken using a Nikon D50. From what I’ve seen, this clearly blows away any idea that a better camera might improve my shots. I still might have to spring for better lenses at some point.
I also like to keep track of what local Flickr photographers are doing. Metaltoad has developed a new Flickr KML feed for Google Earth. Another local D50 user that has been geotagging her shots is Lucid Nightmare. Once again, her colors just seem more vivid that what I’ve been able to achieve. I don’t know if it’s post-processing, or what. I guess I’ll just have to keep learning.
I’ll guess it’s either the glass, a filter, or (more likely) shooting in raw and adjusting using whitebalance and other options. Seems to me that keeping the camera’s processing to a minimum, and making your own decisions in the digital dark room is the way to do this.
Thank you very much for your kind comments. I appreciate them very much.
I can tell you exactly how I achieve the colors and hues in my images. While I am very fond of the low-light performance of my Canon EOS 5D and the glass I have accumulated over the years, I also shoot everything in RAW, adjust the color temperture and tint using Adobe Raw Converter and then use Photoshop CS2 to ‘tweak’ the colors.
Commonly I go to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation and dial back substantially those colors that do not add to the shot. By doing so it accentuates the other colors in the image. For example, magentas in an image are notorious for detracting from the other colors in an image (unless of course they were intregal to the photograph in the first place). I will dial back the saturation to -80 or -100, depending on the situation. Cyans and blues call also affect an image.
The second step is to duplicate the layer and use Image > Adjustments > Selective Color to boost the whites, neutral colors and blacks in an image as necessary. I am very fond of making whites as white as possible (without blowing them out).
Self taught, I have found post processing as important to the photographic process as photography itself. If I am a better photographer than I am a graphic artist (i.e. Photoshop, et. al.) I am doing myself a disservice. Similarly, if I am a better graphic artist than I am a photographer, I am also hurting my ability to capture images. I have only been photographing for less than two years. If I ever feel I’m succeeding more in one area than the other, I stop and work on the areas that are neglected.
I hope that explanation helps.