Revisiting, reprocessing, creativity and honesty in an image

By alan frost on July 13, 2017

I like to be creative. I like to make an image, not just take a shot. I like to revisit frames taken a while ago, and sometimes I like to reprocess a shot because the first time round it didn’t really work out as I would have wanted…… and finally I like to be honest with myself and the viewer as to how the photograph was made. All of this requires a little more explanation.

Let me start at the beginning. Taking a picture with a camera is simply the starting point. For some it is both the start and the finish, as they want a record of what they saw, pure and simple. If however your photography is about creating or making a pleasing image, then capturing what you saw at the time can only be the beginning. How the picture is processed will be personal to you and will be done in such a way that hopefully expresses how you felt and what you want the image to ‘say’ to the viewer.

This is certainly my approach and the above photograph is I think a good example. It’s one I took many months ago and I processed a number of similar shots taken at different times but was never particularly happy with the outcome. Here is one such example:

A few days ago I was going back through my Lightroom library and came across a frame which I liked and I soon realised that in order to achieve the look I had been after the image needed to be inverted. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. I cropped the frame and darkened the bottom of the picture so there was no detail in the bank. A few further adjustments to levels, contrast and a small amount of localised dodging and burning and the image was made.

I have not used any special filters in Photoshop or other manipulative software to alter the original file – and that’s how I like things to be. Capturing the reflection of the trees and the movement of the water, is just how it was. Nature itself has created this effect and that’s important to me in my photography.

Here is another ‘reflection’ image which also benefited from being inverted.