Picture Stories

Once the image is in the camera, the work is only half done. Depending on the ultimate purposes of the image, perhaps less than half! Editing an image in the digital age has become as much a part of the art as looking through the viewfinder and capturing the image . Editing can take a good image and push it to extraordinary. What's more, different edits to the same image can change the story it tells. Editing an image in the digital age comes with liberties never considered possible when images were printed in darkrooms , then developed chemically. In the era of wet development, exploring a myriad of possibilities was not practical, yet in the digital era, nothing but limits on time (and hard drive space) prevents trying variation after variation. What is the Story? The story of an image is sometimes so apparent, the editing process is all about bringing it out from the pixels. However, sometimes, an image could tell different stories depending on how it is edited. Herein li...

The information that follows might annoy the artist in a photographer, but it is essential to understand how the mechanics of photography work in order to be able to fully express one's ideas in the medium. This is a technical understanding that will allow the artist to find his or her voice in light. The mechanics of photography involve getting light through a lens and onto a medium that will convert it to colors. Before the digital era, the light was directed to a film that reacted differently to different colors and strengths of light. In digital photography, the film is replaced by a sensor that saves the color and intensity information as a computer file. The information that follows will skip past the (very, very important) contribution of the lenses and focus on the interaction between the aperture (a part of the lens assembly), shutter speed (part of the camera) and ISO settings (also part of the camera or inherent to the film for non-digital applications). Light is P...

To say light is essential for photography is to be so obvious as to be unnecessary. Whether the photons are reacting with chemicals on a film or with the sensors of a digital device, the light that passes through the aperture is the origin of a photograph. The degree to which photographers understand light and use it determines how effective their photos will be. Rather than "getting lucky" sometimes and snapping a nice image, understanding light helps a photographer plan images to have the greatest impact, whether that is to inspire someone to buy a product or to induce a feeling or emotion. Because of the wide availability for automatic, high-quality, camera phones, this discussion will focus on natural lighting. The use of flashes and strobes opens up a huge array of options to photographers who have access to such. However, topics related to artificial lighting will be reserved for another time. Natural Indoor Lighting If you can see something, it is because there...