Being Thankful For The Power We Have To Edit Images In Today's Digital Photography World

RAW image straight out of the camera with only a bit of sharpening applied (click to enlarge)
Fujifilm X-T2; 16-55mm f/2.8 lens @ 43mm; 1/4000th sec. @ f/5.6; ISO 200;
I purposefully underexposed this image a bit to keep more of the detail in the distant water.

Several days ago, a good friend commented to me on the power of Lightroom.  I agreed and thought how LR and other editing tools can save images that would have been lost when we all used film to make our photographs years ago.  Today, I think many photographers who have only shot with digital camera don't fully appreciate just how good we photographers have it today as compared to what we had in the old film days.

That short conversation turned my thoughts to a series of images I made a couple of weeks ago.  I was out photographing near a local waterway when I spotted two men fishing from a small boat.  They both were standing, casting, reeling the line back in and then repeating this all the while the boat moved slowly across my field of view by way of a small electric trolling motor.  As it moved, I moved along the shoreline in parallel with it.  The problem was the scene was backlit, with the direct sun relatively low in the blue autumn sky.  Then add the specular highlights and reflections of the sun on the small waves dancing in the water.  Should I or should I not try to photograph this scene?

Of course, I did.  As I did, to complicate the situation, one of the two men asked me if I would email a copy of one of my images to him?  Yes, I responded and he called out his email address.  Knowing that the lighting was about as bad as it could be but also I had the power of Lightroom and other editing tools at my disposal, I felt I could make this difficult image acceptable, at the very least.

The top image is how the RAW file looked straight out of the camera.  I purposefully underexposed it knowing that it is much easier to pull up shadows than to try to recover highlights.  Only a bit of sharpening was added.  The one I emailed to him is below.

Same image but edited to keep some semblance of realism yet open the shadows enough so the two individuals

would easily recognize themselves and be pleased with the image. (click to enlarge)
I can't predict how this image will look on various viewers' monitors, but on my calibrated monitor
color, contrast, and saturation look pretty realistic.  Who knows how it will be translated when posted?

My thoughts when editing this image was to keep the "mood" of the day, which was high contrast with sharp specular highlights, reduce the haze in the background a bit, and open the shadows so the two men could easily recognize themselves but not to the point where it looked like I used fill flash.  I don't know if you feel I succeeded, but the response from the subject in the image was very positive with an additional offer of fresh fish next time he went out!

I'm very grateful we have the tools we have today.  In the film days, especially with color film, there was no contrast adjustment in developing as could be done with black and white film.  Some films were more contrasty than others.  Amateur films (example Kodacolor 100) had a bit more saturation and contrast as that is what the general population liked best.  Pop!  Slide film was even more contrasty.  I used a wedding and portrait film (Kodak Vericolor III), which was manufactured with realistic colors and a lower contrast specifically to hold detail in a white wedding dress and a black tuxedo in the same image.  I found that film also worked well for landscapes, etc.  But other than picking a certain film, there was no other kinds of options available as there are in the digital world.  

Also, in making color prints, there was no contrast adjustment available as well.  Kodak made one grade of color paper and you hoped your image would work within that contrast range.  Right toward the very end of the color film era, if my memory serves me correctly, I believe Kodak (and potentially others) may have made either a harder or softer grade of color printing paper to accompany the normal grade.  Not sure, but it seems that was buried deep in my memory.  To mitigate all these restrictions, photographers and lab geniuses came up with all kinds of "hacks" to increase or decrease contrast to optimize images.  Today, by comparison, everything is really easy!

Thanks for looking. Enjoy! 

Dennis A. Mook 

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