Some believe that the image their camera records is an unalterable truth. The camera, though, is only a means to an end, which is the final image, living in the mind of the photographer. It’s the hammer for the carpenter, a tool needed to do the work to finish the job.
The camera is compromised by reality, prevented from telling the truth because first, it reduces a three-dimensional world to two. Second, it arrests motion, freezes time. Third, neither film nor flash cards can capture all that the eye sees. A photograph is an abbreviation, the Cliff Notes of reality, a truncated version of what’s actually out there.
For film photographers the darkroom brings out more of what they want to say. Anyone seeing Ansel Adams’ “Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico,” would be amazed at the transformation between what Adams saw, what his camera recorded, and what he was able to say in the final print. For digital photographers, software mimics the work in the darkroom.
I’ve using a photo that I took almost five years ago to show how I use software to create a “final print.”
We went to a Pow-Wow in Stockton in 2019. This little girl caught my attention. I liked the image straightaway, as she looked right back at me when I pushed the shutter button. Unedited . Auto exposure, auto focus.
Cropped. No other changes applied.
The Adobe app Lightroom has a feature called “masking,” allowing me to select just the girl and make changes in her. I brightened her without changing any other part of the image.
Lightening her face, her eyes and darkening her outfit on her right arm. These changes are subtle and aren’t easily revealed on a computer screen, but they show up in a print.
I began making changes to her face. (The black mark shows just where I began. Masking isolated the background. I darkened it and threw it softly out of focus.
I darkened the bright hand of the person to the girl’s left. Bright areas take your eye away from the subject. I lightened the sclera (the whites of the eyes), added a little vignette to the edges, then put a black frame around it. The frame changes nothing. Lightroom saves all the “rough drafts” of an image. The frame signifies my satisfaction with the image. As software improves so do final images. I often revisit images and see if I can make them just a little better.