Photography
Awareness of the outside world. Why do some disasters make world headlines and others slide off our radar? [Today]
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Been talking with Photo Guru Meg McKinney about online photo-processing lessons. Manipulating photos is not a new idea. Whether you are in a darkroom using chemicals or at a computer shifting electrons, the goal is to produce images with light. Meg McKinney, Photographer, [Archives]
Or so I’m told. I’ve never done much post-processing. At the newspaper, a full-time photographer did all of the developing. Later, in my days of taking photos to go with articles, I used commercial labs. I briefly intersected with the digital era – yeah I’m that old – but the computer system of the magazine in question and my system did not mesh. They could not read anything I had worked on. I had to send files straight out of the camera or off the scanner.
So, I need to learn this. I do nothing to my photos. Well, nothing substantive. Crop, resize, watermark, border, done. OTOH, I’d rather not take a class. First off, I don’t want to be tied to a weekly schedule. This is not a pressing skill for me to acquire. Casual would be good.
Second, my desktop runs Linux. Most classes are program specific. Come learn PhotoLightRoomShopElementWhatnot. Half of the class content would would not apply to me. I’d be figuring out which buttons to push on my own.
I’m hoping a professional photo genius can help me learn general photo theory such as highlights and color and light values. Then, I’ll sit down and figure out how to execute those ideas on my computer, with, I hope, only minimal desire to heave said machine across the room.
Any photo techniques would be an improvement. I am so plot-driven, I rarely pay attention to anything other than the content and is the content in focus. Art I have not. I am the visual equivalent of tone deaf. This is neither good nor bad, simply the skill set I have, or rather, don’t have.
Historical Note
Hi*Fi Color For Comics gave an online talk, Learn How to Color Comics, for Comic-Con@Home 2020. This talk is what brought the idea of post-production back to the forefront for me. While I have no intention of coloring comics, I was struck by how much can be done with a computer. And how little of that I do. According to the video, I get as far as ‘flat color” which is step one. I figure what I learn about photos can also be applied to graphic design.
Photos edited by Meg
[Foto Friday: Morning Mist]
[Foto Friday: Tractor Writ Weird]
Photos edited by Me
Posts where I played with photos. This represents the sum total of post-production I have done. Most of them were deliberately over the top.
Serious
“Fiddled with lightness & saturation sliders to make the photo look more like what I saw. A first, or close to.” [Dressage Called on Account of Rain, Show Unreport #1] 2019
Semi-serious
“Disclosure: I upped the color saturation with GIMP, mostly to hid the blur.” [Art Foto Friday: Stained Glass Sunset] 2015
Goofing Around
[Foto Friday: Saturated Spring] 2017
[Farm Scenery: Foto Friday Branches] 2015
[Art Foto Friday: Color Cat] 2015
[Art Foto Friday: Threshold Cat] 2015
[Foto Friday: Spotted in GIMP] 2013
The new darkroom. [Portrait of A Photographer]
Stay safe. Stay sane.
Katherine Walcott
Virtual Brush Box 
I’ve often toyed with the idea of learning to Photoshop, etc., but that’s as far as it’s likely to get. I’m interested in your discoveries. IMHO, your photos are fine but it will be fun to see what you learn.
Top 2 photos are fantastic, the first looking almost like a fantasy landscape. I have done nothing on computer but crop and resize. Keep meaning to work on other stuff, but somehow just don’t have the energy. I have a really old program called printshop deluxe but I need to relearn how to use it. Pretty basic stuff. Don’t even have a camera at the momernt.
Even if I never use it, I’d like to have some idea of what’s available.