Lessons in Black & White . . . and in Color

I’m definitely getting my money’s worth studying John Sexton this month.  As I’ve mentioned, he’s a master of black and white photography.  Perhaps it is more apt to say that he is a master of the millions of shades of grey between black and white.  So it should come as no surprise that as I was studying one of his images and his use of subtle tonal controls, I thought of a particular image of mine that I had never been satisfied with, and I knew what direction I had to take it to improve it.

I’ve struggled with tones (black and white and color) since going digital.  It is simply too easy to over-contrast and/or over-saturate an image, not to mention over sharpen.  And I’ve been particularly frustrated with my efforts at black and white image making (I won’t even go into my thoughts when comparing black and white inkjet images with what traditional black and white silver-based papers can produce).  Then add to the the issue of trying to make sure one’s monitor is calibrated properly and concerns about the light conditions in the room, and you realize that it is difficult to get the subtlety that is evident in fine art black and white prints on an illuminated screen.  Still, one has to try because it must be possible . . . isn’t it

Interestingly, the image I immediately thought of was one of the images I’d used in the June’s Photographer of the Month post.  It was a photograph of the redwoods taken on our short trip down there from Bandon during our Christmas trip.

I never seemed to grasp the quality of light in the color image . . .

An issue that carried on over to the black and white version of it as well.  Every time I looked at it, the image seemed harsh and contrasty.  Really, what I’d describe as a larger print from a poorly exposed and processed 35mm black and white negative in the old days.  Except we know its digital.  And I know I should do far better than this.

So studying John Sexton’s images made me realize that, while almost all of them are full-toned (i.e., blacks are black and whites are white), there are millions and millions of middle grays at play too in most of them.  Then it dawned on me that the issue with my image was in the contrast (i.e. with the contrast slider).  In my efforts to make sure that whites and blacks visually separate, I’d lost the fine gradations in-between.   I was using a #3 paper instead of a #2 or #1.  

I returned to the image, made a copy of it and started from scratch, making sure I didn’t over-do the contrast.  As a learning exercise, it would be better to be a bit flat, but have rich middle-tone gradations, than to be too contrasty.  I wanted to focus on the quality of light I felt as I was making the image - and which I still recall.

This is a much better rendering of my intention at the time and begins to capture how I was feeling about being in that incredible forest.  

I returned to the image a few days later (as I was writing this post . . .), wondering if I could better capture the quality of light hitting the ferns.  I wound up burning (darkening) the trees and background off to the left quite a bit, and burning a slight bit more of the dark part of the tree to the right near the edge of the image.  And I left the ferns alone.  Sometimes to lighten an area, you darken things around it. 

I’ll have to live with the images for a bit to see if I prefer one or the other.  Or just accept that I’ve learned what I can from these images.  But they are getting there, and they are miles ahead of what I had before!

Bruce Percy lately has been talking about his dislike of the sequencing of the Lightroom controls in the control panel.  They’re sequenced to have you work on major adjustments  first, and then finer tuning later on.  The sequence is similar to how one works in the darkroom.  But just like the darkroom, get one of the early decisions wrong, and you’re constantly trying to make up for it in other ways and generally can’t “fix” a mistake.  Better to start over again.

Bruce advises that once you get the general image ok, making sure not to go overboard on any overall adjustments, to revert earlier to the specific area adjustments and work there to build up the image.  Like increase the contrast of a specific tree instead of the contrast of the entire image.  I’m starting to think he has a point there, because that’s what I did here.  I guess I have a lot of experimenting to do to refine my developing techniques, but at least I have a better idea in the direction that should go.

Last, it dawned on me, that the initial solution for black and white may also be a solution for the color image to.  So without doing anything else to the image, I simply decreased the contrast of the image (going into the negative side of the scale).  That adjustment alone did wonders.

People used to ask me what the most difficult thing was when working in the darkroom.  My answer was easy - decision-making.  It’s so easy to get it wrong.  Especially after you’ve been at it for a few hours.  I’m learning more and more that my answer for the darkroom is the same for digital work.  

At least it’s a lot easier to go back and start over again!