Changing Aesthetics and the Grace of RAW Files

I’ve mentioned before the advantages of RAW files and I firmly believe that anyone doing post production on their images should use them if only for the exposure latitude.  There are exceptions of course (sports shooters, parents who take 1000 photos of their kids, etc) but
to get the full potential of the image quality in your images you need to be able to get to the original data off the sensor.

One of the cool advantages of RAW is that RAW converters keep getting better, and you can always go back and reprocess old shots. it’s like upgrading your old 20D with a new image processing chip.  It’s also useful when you want to return to an old image for aesthetic reasons.  

As an example I pulled out a picture I took of my friend and author Grant Stoddard back in January of 2006. Almost exactly 3 years to the day. Back when I knew even less about photography than I do now.  It was shot on a Canon 20D with a 50mm prime and if I remember correctly, a big octabox on an Alien Bees 800.

Below are three different ‘editions’ of this image:

The first is a straight export of the raw image with default settings in Lightroom.  It’s a little over-exposed, but at the time I wasn’t quite that observant.

The second image is what I came up with 3 years ago when I post-processed the RAW file.  Really just exporting it with some extra contrast and then cleaning up a few do-dads. To my eye’s now, his skin is really blown-out and has no detail. It’s over saturated, and I was too heavy handed with the overall contrast.

This third image is what I did with it tonight. Obviously much more like my locally-contrasty sharpened look that people comment about. That said, it’s very different than the one from 3 years ago.  And just imagine what I’ll do in 3 more years.

Tom

Cynthia

Charles

Here are a couple portraits I took of a man named Charles King for POZ magazine about two months ago. The issue came out last week, so I can share them with you. I was pretty happy with them.  They’re lit by a skylight above his head and a wall of windows behind me.

 

Wes

Great Email

I got an email from a reader of the blog the other day, thought I’d share:

I’d just like to say in my defense, that it was totally unintentional. <grin>

————

Bill,
Something was unsettling about your portrait of Malcolm Gladwell.
I couldn’t put my finger on it untill I woke up the next day and found the answer
(check the slant of the eyes)

Malcolm Gladwell in TIME

I shot author Malcolm Gladwell (Blink, The Tipping Point) for TIME a couple weeks ago and it’s in today’s issue if anyone wants to take a gander.  Below is a scan of the magazine as well as the original version and my favorite portrait from the shoot.

 

Neil Gaiman

I had the chance to shoot author Neil Gaiman for 5 minutes last night.  Here are the results.
 

Kathleen

Another silly self portrait 021108

Well, I was the only person I had to shoot tonight. Oh and make sure you go vote tomorrow morning.