Photo of the Week #231

The way I see it, there are two types of people who are photographers. This is generalizing it and there are of course exceptions but there are technical people and creative people. The technical people spend more time researching and learning about gear than shooting. I place myself firmly in this group. The other group are the creatives, the people who couldn’t care less about technical matters, they just want to be making good photographs above all else.

I have no idea if creativity is something you’re born with or if can be learned but I”m trying to look in different directions and to “see” differently. This image is one that I created recently using a double exposure idea. It is done in Photoshop as I want to retain control over the post-processing. My camera will do double exposure but it creates a jpg. output file that has already been processed by the camera.

Before and After

When photographing live events such as concerts, we like to compose the perfect shot all the time yet the reality is we can’t. Live stages are usually cluttered with lots of stuff like mic stands, amps, lights, monitors and assorted other distractions. When we are learning composition in photography, we learn that items that don’t help the image hurt it. This is often the case in concert photography too.

A friend who also shoots live music recently posted some of her work with before and after shots to illustrate how some of her work is edited. It got me to thinking about my own work and I got looking around at some photos that might be better images if they had a bit of help. After all, photography is art, right?

Some people are purists and feel that photos should never be altered. That subject is often debated in photography circles but my personal feeling is that my work is my art and I can do whatever I wish to make it my own creation. Another factor that I hear a lot is that some people who don’t wish to spend time at a computer processing. I actually enjoy my time processing images, watching them take shape from raw data to art.

The above images are Max Kermen of Arkells with some simple edits that I feel makes it a much stronger image and really, the biggest change is just simply removing a mic stand and a person. Both of these items were a distraction in the frame. The smoke was added just for a bit of interest in the new negative space that I created.

I would love to hear any thoughts you may have. Feel free to leave a message.