The Process of Thought

It is true to say that when I'm working on one of my projects I do tend to plan quite a bit.  In fact the logistics of getting a shot can be quite as important as the shot itself.  Both are inextricably linked; if the logistics fail the shot fails.  That being said, I'm not adverse to a bit of randomness.

Anyone who reads my blog on a regular basis will have seen the shot above a few days ago.  This was taken on one of my unplanned shoots and was very much a work in progress as the shoot went along in that I started shooting traditional 'large scale' landscape images working down to 'micro landscapes' like this.

The whole point of this post was to show you the process of thought behind the finished image.  For that I have to go right back to the beginning a show you the original file (click on it for a larger version).

I knew I wanted a monochromatic image so the colour wasn't too important.  I also thought I wanted something high key so I over exposed the shot (for any numbers geeks it was shot at 55mm for 30 secs, f20, ISO 200).  So I went home with a shot that I was reasonably happy with.  Next was to process the image in Lightroom.

The first image out of the bag was this one.  I don't use many Lightroom presets and certainly not for my mono work, I just don't like them.  I tend to work from what I see.  If it looks right to my eye then it's probably right.  90% of the time it works.

I was too happy with this image and I thought it was going to end up in the bin.  Its a little too flat and lacked the drama that I have been looking for.  So a couple of hours later it was back to Lightroom for a second attempt.

The second go at processing was a little bit closer that the first.  The differences between the two are very subtle.  This one is a bit more contrasty and has a bit more fine detail in it but I'm still not happy with it. Time to leave it a lone and come back to it.

At 2am in the morning, I wake up and can't sleep.  The image is playing on my mind.  Time to get up and try and work it again.  This time I know exactly what I'm doing.  I add grad filters to the corners to darken the two stones down, add a vignette to direct the eye to where I want you to look (namely the centre stone) add some film grain (don't normally do this, but it seems to suit this image) and add a brozne coloured cast to the shadows to give it the colour tone.

Then the images is exported to Photoshop for some more work.  Namely, cloning out dust spots, dodge and burn to give the image an almost metallic look, a little work on the levels and selective sharpening using a high pass filter to give it an extremely sharp finish.

So the next time a photograph catches your eye be it on the internet, TV or magazine stop and think how much work, time and effort has gone in to this image.  Anyone who love photography as much as I do puts in this amount of effort to every image.