New Tricks 5 — Editing to Greyscale
As I go on my photographic journey, I’m noting down things I haven’t done before. These aren’t anything new to any half decent or experienced photographer, they are just new to me as I continue with my journey of discovery with (often wild eyed) wonder into the art of photography after many years of just point and click. This is number five of a series which may run for some time.
On the whole my editing had been limited to cropping (and until six months ago that was mainly done in PowerPoint of all places), and putting a random effect on a photo out of frustration. I had tried a bit of cloning on very small area, and no one else noticed, but I thought it looked shit.
That might be my main problem with any kind of editing, or post-production, of photographs I have taken. I have so little of a clue about what I’m doing I don’t know whether I am making the end product better or worse. Do I have a photographer’s eye at all? I’m really not sure. It is something I need help with.
One of the issues may be that my bridge camera (Sony DSC -HX350) only takes photographs in jpeg format, there is no option to take RAW files, which if I have understood what the many veteran members of the camera club talk about, is a much better format from which to edit photographs post production. But as it is, I’m stuck with editing jpegs.
Previously I have always chosen the photo type in the in-camera settings. Whether that is normal, colour pop, black and white, illustrated, retro, toy camera, etc. There are a host of options to choose from. And I will often take the same photograph several times with different options chosen.
What I haven’t done before is take a colour photograph and edit it to greyscale. But there was an image I had from a January wander, which I wanted to edit and put into the January club competition.
I wanted to crop it, so it was a thin portrait concentrating on Ifield Mill and its reflection on the semi-frozen mill pond.
Which was fine, but I know that there are comments about distractions within photographs in the club competitions. And the red of the life preserver is something that drew the eye. So I converted it to greyscale using Photo Commander.
And then asked for an expert opinion from the better half. (Whose tastes seem more in line with camera club members than mine is as she thought my processed ukelele effort was really good, whereas I thought it was a crock of shite, and it finished third.) She much preferred the black and white one. So I entered that.
I got a mid-range score for it, better than my other two entries for the month, but was unfortunately away for the feedback session, so haven’t been able to ask the question about whether they would have preferred it as the original or the greyscale.
I have also been digging back into archives for other photographs to try the process on. As despite having ignored the use of black and white on the camera for years, there is something quite classy about a decent black and white shot. I did pick one which was low on colours from our trip to New England, and submitted it to the ODI competition the club were having on Monday night. And I was surprised to find it did well, getting a highly commended and a 19. Quite happy with that.
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