I’ve been experimenting a bunch lately with some photographic techniques and styles.

I took the following photos of a statue in one of the most famous graveyards in Germany, which happens to be up that hill I referred to in yesterday’s post.  For our photo group this week, the theme is “Hard Rock”, and so, since we don’t really know where there are any cliffs or large rocks to be found in Tübingen, we decided to check out this famous cemetery to find photogenic (grave) stones. One of the most interesting ones we saw had a slightly larger-than-lifesized statue.

For the photo of the full statue, I envisioned the scene as something a little more dramatic around the statue than it actually was in real life. Since I have the power in my digital darkroom to make the trees darker — which was the way I saw the scene in my head — I went ahead and did it on the computer. So, in the photo below, I have  “burned” (photographic term for darkening) everything around the statue, and then “dodged” (lightened) the statue a bit to enhance the contrast between the two.

It took a little time and experimentation to do all that, which gave me yet again a real appreciation for everything that a film photographer manages to do in an actual darkroom, compared to my digital one. After all, in my darkroom, I was immediately able to see  what effect my changes were going to have as I did them. Plus, I had an “undo” button at my disposal if I changed my mind at any time. Both are advantages that film photographers don’t have available when they are doing similar things in a real darkroom. I can’t even imagine the patience required to do it all manually again and again until you get what you want. Anyway, this photo has by far the most darkroom tweaking I’ve ever done in a single photo to change the contrasts and lightening to fit my vision.

I must say it’s satisfying playing with nature until it conforms with how you wanted it to be. If only that worked in real life, eh?

Contrast that with another technique I’ve also been trying recently. It’s the opposite approach, where I try to set up everything in the camera perfectly, so that when I take the photo, it comes out just as I envision it without adjusting the lighting very much on the computer.  It’s not something I do often, but when I took the closeup shot of the statue I had a particular look in mind, and I realized I could at least attempt it all in the camera. The result is below. Well, I couldn’t resist just a tiny tweak on the computer, of course, but it’s so minor as to be all be indistinguishable from the original. The pink rose had just a hint of shadow on it in the original, so I touched that up.

There’s a reason I don’t often try to get it all perfect in the camera – I think I just love what can be done in the darkroom more. 😉

Anyway, see what you think.