No sitting on the fence

I've made some headway with my new e-book and I hope to have it published in a month or two from now.

This is really part 2 of of my tonal adjustment series.

Part one ' Tonal Relationships' was 'software agnostic'; I deliberately left out any 'how to' in the text and focussed more on the 'why' because image editing is an interpretive process where understanding tones and relationships is more important than figuring out which slider to adjust. Indeed the technical is something anyone can master, but the artistic interpretive side is a life-long artistic endeavour tied in with improving one's own visual awareness. Being able to 'see' what is in the image is paramount in achieving the most from your edits.

But there does need to be some kind of technical instruction if one wants to push things as far as they can. In my forthcoming new e-Book 'Photoshop Curves', I now take a look at the technical: in particular, I take you through the most powerful tonal editing tool available: Photoshop Curves.

Forthcoming e-book about Photoshop's Curves tool. The Curves tool is, in my view, the most powerful tool for tonal adjustment available.

I know this will be highly contentious to many: but it is my view that Lightroom does not offer the fine degree of tonal adjustment / control required (at the time of writing) that Photoshop's Curve tool offers.

Lightroom is a good editing tool. It is intuitive and offers most of what we need. At present though, the tonal adjustment side of it isn't as powerful as it could be. I know many love Lightroom and feel it is all they need for photo editing, but to me, it's a bit like saying 'I'm happy with what I know, even though there may something out there that can offer a whole lot more'. If you're serious about improving your photographic editing, and thus upping your photographic style, you need to get to grips with Photoshop and in particular its curves tool. That is where all your future growth as an editor lies. Believe me.

But I realise that Photoshop isn't an easy program to learn. It isn't intuitive and this may be a reason why you will choose not to learn Photoshop. However, this point shouldn't stop you if you are faced with the knowledge of what it can provide you with in terms of tonal adjustment. There is nothing better out there.

Over the past few years that I've been running my Digital Darkroom workshop, many participants who start the course as Lightroom users often end the course wishing to defect from Lightroom to Photoshop once they have seen what I can do with the curves tool. Even with seasoned Photoshop users I still find room for improvement in their knowledge of curves and how to utilise it to really tune individual tones.

So with this in mind, I have decided to write specifically about curves. It really is the most powerful tool available to image editors.

I appreciate and anticipate that my point of view will be highly contentious to many, but since my blog is all about my point of view, that's what I'm giving you, after all, you didn't come here to hear me sit on the fence, now did you?   ;-)

Progress Isn't linear

I have to confess I've been having difficulty writing something on this blog for the past few months. After almost a decade of writing a frequent blog, things become harder to cover as the risk of repeating oneself becomes higher. I don't like to write on my blog unless I really have something to say. 

Each year I have been very lucky to surprise myself. I never envisaged this shot before the trip to the central highlands: it just landed in my lap.

Right now, I feel I am at a cross roads with my photography. There has been so much progress and development for me over the past decade. I've been fortunate to find certain landscapes that resonated for me and have been instrumental in helping me grow (or perhaps grow up) as a photographer: the Bolivian altiplano was the beginning of my style development, and has over the years taught me so much about simplification. I know know that when I thought there was nothing there but just negative space, gradual shifts in tone were still present. I learned to look again and to work with the less obvious, subtle shifts in light.

Over the years that I've been continuing to develop as a photographer, my choice of colour palette has become more muted (when appropriate). This too, was an instructive lesson, given to me by the stark landscapes of Iceland and Patagonia. I've learned that not everything works in soft warm colours and that I can also celebrate the more stark aspects of the landscape.

In essence:  the landscapes that  I have been drawn to have had another purpose beyond just being an aesthetic choice: they have been my teachers and I am now a very different person from the one who started this blog almost 10 years ago.

But progress isn't linear.

I have had to learn to work-through lean times. I've had periods of stagnation, where I felt I had perhaps reached the end of the tracks in how far I could go with my own development, only to find a few years later that my photography was taking a turn for the better. Either it was progress - a strengthening of already learned ideas and techniques, or it was a shift - a change in direction, or a change in tastes. Perhaps I found I had grown tired of the old ways and was now interested in a new way of seeing.

I have learned that I can't force progress. Forcing anything never works for anyone. All I know is that I just have to be open and wait for the cues for taking that further step forward.

We are the products of our experiences and memories. We are all defined by what we've learned and what we've seen and our experiences become part of us.

This is no different from our photography: our photographs are the culmination of our experiences that we amass over time, so in that way, our own progress is bound to slow: we start to haul around a lot of history with us.

My journey has taken me to this point. Last year I created perhaps one of my most minimalist images to date.

A photographic life should be full of wonder. We need to keep surprising ourselves, of shedding old skin and evolving. I know so far that I've been lucky for this to happen for me at different times over the years.

I'm aware also, that in recent years my photographs have become less focussed on the iconic landscape, less saturated, and to me at least, there is more of a thematic side to them brought about by tonal responses. I know I still have a long way to go, but just sometimes I'm not sure what the path up ahead is taking me, and I need to be patient and let it come when it's ready.

Have soul & be authentic

It's a new year, and I feel it's a new beginning. We are always beginning though, aren't we?

If I were to give advice to those who are just beginning in photography, or perhaps those who have been doing it for a while but feel they need some guidance, I would say the following:

"If you want to be a good photographer, then just focus on being as authentic as you can be. Connect with who you are, and let things flow naturally.

You can read all the photo-magazines in the world, read all the websites about technique, download all the photo-plug-in's and buy the latest gear. But all of it will be meaningless if you don't have soul for what you do.

Focus on yourself, not the gear. Focus on your aspirations and what you feel inside when you make photos that matter to you. Everything else is irrelevant.

Don't give a damn what others think, and don't seek compliments from others. Trust yourself and your gut, you know when something is right or wrong. Listen to how you feel inside and trust your intuition.

Above all else, have soul, and be authentic. Authenticity is your calling card to the rest of the world. It is your way of telling others who you are and what you stand for. If you can be authentic, then you can't go wrong".

Happy new year!