I asked Char Tanner to come to my studio yesterday. While editing the photos I thought it would be interesting to see the steps I took in post to create the final photo.

The image to the left is the .raw photo, in the middle is the animation and the right is the final.

I think that I’m a black & white photographer at heart. I never know quite what to do with color.

Sort of a lame Polariod thing going on here.

I try to hold off posting photos that I’ve just taken. It usually takes me about a week in post processing to finalize a picture that I like.

It’s not that I every day I go back and play with a picture, but it usually takes a week for me to get some perspective on an image.

On the left is the most recent. Not a huge change, but it makes a difference. Check the contrast.

So looking at this photo I had all these thoughts about it, but I couldn’t seem to fit them into much of a post. So instead of pushing my feeble writing skills to the x-treme limit this post is going to be bullets.

I like this photo, but I don’t know why. It’s a more complicated composition then I usually make. I’m not quite sure if it was a successful attempt. An interesting try at least.

Its photos like this that I’m sometimes weary of posting. That is, photos that I think are interesting, but I’m not sure are good. Being objective about one’s own work is hard.

I’ve gone back to this photo a couple times today to analyze it. Initially I don’t much care for it and I find I have to stare at it for a while before I come around.

This photo is a little unsettling to me. Since the composition is more complex. I feel like I don’t really understand it.

I’ve experimented with some crops, but neither of them really do it for me.

So those were my thoughts on this photo. For the record I’ll be the first to admit that bullets are a major cop-out. Oh well.

After the shutter is pressed there are many different ways to process one photo. Black & white, color, crop, the list goes on.

Working with my photography I often create more then one image from the same photo. It’s interesting for me to see the different possibilities for each image. It helps me choose the best one.

But sometimes there is no best photograph. Just different takes on the same image.

This brings up a question: Why don’t photographers show multiple takes on the same photo?

I’m preparing to take my own senior portraits (one year later). These are photos to test the lighting.

This is the original photo

These are some images I made from that photo.

Some of these I like more then others, The one that stand out to me the most in the last. But I think each photo has a different feel and brings a different quality.

So I wonder, why not show multiple takes of the same image?

This photo started out as a picture for my MySpace and Facebook profiles, I wanted to create an interesting image to represent me. I didn’t want to have a photo of me taken in the bathroom with my phone.

My grandma had given me a wooden T for Christmas and I thought it would be interesting to incorporate it into a photo of me, serving a subtle representation of me.
So I put the camera on timer and stood in front of a white wall.
When faced with a camera and the inevitable release of the shutter most people don’t know what to do. I am one of them.
This is why I am puckering my mouth. (At least I’m not doing that “suprised” look.)
I loaded the photo on the computer and start playing with it.


Eventually I came to this photo. Took my head out.

The bh4j on my shirt is distracting, so I took it out.

And added my name.

So I’ve put up a new category today, it’s called “The Process”.
The idea is that I’ll post an explanation of how I got from the conception of a photograph to the finished piece.
The first one is of my photo of Aldric Seeyouma. Tell me what you think in the comments.

While taking a rest during a hike I noticed a shaded area that would be good for a portrait backdrop. Aldric was closest to the rocks so I told him to stand in front of them.
He didn’t really know what to do in front of the camera, so some of the photos are like this.

Then I told him to “look cool”.

— This is where I start editing the photograph on my computer —
While analyzing the photo I decided that it would look best in a square format.

Experimenting with the square crop I played with only keeping his head and upper body in the frame.

I didn’t go with that because I think having the arm go out – and back in the frame is distracting.
I moved to this one, putting more of his body in. I cropped just above his water bottle, since I thought it was another distracion.

Between his skin, shirt and the rocks this photo has a lot of red/orange. The photo doesn’t have lot of “pop” at this stage, so I switched to black and white..

Darkening the tone of the rocks.

In the final photo the rocks have been darkened a little more and his skin has been lightened.

And that is the finished photo.