The old days... learning from 35mm photography

It's instructive to take a step back and learn from the past. What we do today often references and builds upon earlier ideas and forms. For example by making digital cameras look and behave a bit like traditional film cameras we make it easier to adapt, learn and take on the new ways. (On the other hand it holds back truly revolutionary designs a tad and keeps us a little hemmed in by the past. It doesn't help those who have never used a film camera at all, either.)

Hanging onto the shape of a 35mm camera is not a bad thing. And carrying-over the terminology of chemical processing at least makes continuity of experience possible. If you knew how to develop and print film then you already knew about framing, cropping, burning-in, blocking, stops, depth of field, film speed and so on. And these things (and more) have been carried over as a standard set of terms.

OK, so let's explain a few things, just in case.

1. Cropping and framing are obvious enough analogs for what we do with the printed (or framed, like a painting) output
2. Film speed is just the speed with which the light is captured and retained as a potential image, and digital cameras also react more (or less) sensitively to light in much the same way
   
3. Depth of field is the "in focus" area of a shot, and it changes with focal length and aperture, so what you think is in focus may not be... stopping down a bit will deepen that focus area
4. But what is this "stopping" business? Stops are a measure of how much light is getting into your camera, digital or not. When you change the aperture by one stop upwards, you are doubling the amount of light in the scene, making things altogether brighter but risking some over-exposure
5. But by stopping down you reduce the light available, ie 1 stop down halves the light. You risk darkening the whole image but get more "depth" of focus
   
6. In this way 2 stops upward is four times the original amount of light, or just a quarter if you stop down
7. On an analog camera you twist the aperture ring or adjust the camera's overall tendency to under or over-expose by "fiddling" with your ISO/ASA film speed ring. On a digital it's usual to find an Exposure Value (EV) control that probably lets you adjust the under or over-exposure in finer increments, such as 1/3 stop
8. So why bother? Back in the old days lightmeters and film behaved in different ways on different days, often because film 'ripened' and changed in its reaction to light. So stopping down to slightly under-expose was common, especially effective when using Kodak's Ektachrome slide film, and of course stopping down gains you depth of field whilst opening the aperture decreases that depth
   
9. But now we can see our digital image instantly, and if we see an image that's over or under-exposed and want to try again it's easy - just use that EV adjustment to stop up or down slightly and try again.
   

Experiment with that EV control (or the aperture ring and/or the ISO/ASA filmspeed if you still use a film camera. See what you can do to capture more of that image, the way you like it! More later...

Photoshopping for dummies like me

I don't know about you but I mostly learn software by trying it. The best tactic of all, I find, is to set myself a mission and attempt to figure out how to do it by any means possible. Mostly that means trying lots of things and occasionally - in desperation only - reading help files or web sites that I stumble over.

These bicycle pics illustrate that taking a fairly ordinary item and choosing to frame it just so and then to crop and alter it for impact can result in some interesting images. These were all 35mm film shots, mostly from the 1980s, using a Pentax K2 SLR and Ektachrome.

This gallery also takes some mundane but interesting (to me, anyway) pics from the 1970s and Photoshops them to death, until they are almost unrecognizable. (You could use any similar program, such as the GIMP, of course.)Well I like 'em anyway. They demonstrate the use of filters, mostly, and give you a hint of how trial and error can take you places.

For example I go from here... to here... and end up... there.
I've adjusted contrast and brightness, used a few fave filters like dry brush, cutout and plastic wrap and bingo!




And I go from here to there! And so on. It's infinite, really. I end up with a few new skills, some ideas and a new batch of images I didn't have before. Some of them will get reused in various ways, and the insight I gained in making them will be used again on other images. And I had fun as well.

And when I have fun there's no stopping me. There are many more examples of what can happen when you go crazy with filters, layers and contrast... and someof them are absolute rubbish. But gee I've learned something, anyway ;-)

Yet more images

OK, I like photography. It gives me the same artistic kick as painting or drawing except it's so much quicker. I know, I know, it's like fast-food art. We tend to value painting and drawing so much more because it's a labour of love, but we should not forget that a good photo can also consume time and effort - not just in composition but either in the old-fashioned darkroom or the new fangled digital 'darkroom'. So here are some of my latest efforts... some of these are actually acrylic paint on wood, photographed with the Nikon and then manipulated in Photoshop. Well I like 'em anyway!

More images

Can't resist posting a few more pics... all on the Nikon D50.... like this Nephila orb weaver hanging around in our garden... or this exciting shot of a broken seatpost (yes there's a story there!)... and this hibiscus flower.

Digital tampering - effects and filters

In a moment of weakness I altered some images... like these... using Photoshop. Basically using the artistic filters to blur, resize, change aspect ratios and then alter the texture and colour with brushes and effects. Using the brushes effectively - to digitally repaint the picture takes time (I use a mouse, not a tablet or anything fancy). It can get bizarre, layering effect upon filter... but it can also result in interesting new images.

Digital artistry

Not sure exactly what this is, but it's certainly a gallery of art. Images, both photographic and painted, scanned and manipulated in Photoshop to be somewhat different from reality. I like the fact that digital imaging tools can do in seconds what used to take hours in the darkroom. Yes, I've succumbed to the "instant gratification" school.

A small warning, as some images may offend. It's also a bit arty-farty and should be taken in small doses.