The future of photo editing

I’m not sure there is one.

Some of the more well known graphics software companies are having their share prices affected so badly now. It will be interesting to see if companies like Adobe will still be here in five years time. Let alone my worry that Photoshop will be changed beyond recognition as more and more AI features are implemented to compete with AI engines out there that can already produce great images from a few keyboard commands.

As far as I can tell, if anyone is looking for a specific image for their advert / brand / company - they are generating them on one of the many AI engines now.

I am sure that many landscape photographers are steering this way as well. If anyone hasn’t won a photo competition from generating an image by AI, then it won’t be long. It’s going to become pervasive.

If there’s less of a demand for software by Adobe or other companies, then they will have to adapt and change very quickly. This is why their share price is affected at the moment. How to manage that change, and to what, is the big question. No one knows where the whole AI thing is going, and I think all we can guarantee is that it will change in ways that we hadn’t considered. I don’t think Tim Berners-Lee ever thought that the creation of the world wide web would have, as a side effect ‘reality distortion bubbles’ for instance. No one could have predicted it. So we have no way of knowing how the whole AI thing is going to morph and change, or how it is going to affect society, behavioural patterns and life in general.

As much as we may welcome Generative Fill, these AI features are really just the tip of the iceberg for me. I have always believed that humans take the path of least resistance, and relying more on software than actually spending time and effort learning something is often the easiest approach for many. Convenience always wins.

I’ve always enjoyed learning. I’ve always enjoyed putting the effort into whatever it is I get interested in. I have seldom looked for a quick fix because I learned many years ago that they don’t really exist. There are no shortcuts in life.

It is one of the reasons why I do not use Luminosity mask software. I prefer to build masks manually as I am of the very opinionated view that building masks manually allows me to learn more about the image I’m editing. For each time I finish editing an image, I feel as though I have been educated as to how the image hangs together. I have learned how the tones work throughout the image.

Because by working through an image manually, we gain experience in learning to “read” images. This is a skill that few talk about, but this is exactly what a traditional darkroom printer gains experience in: “reading the image”, so they know “what” to do to them. When we use automated tools we don’t gain experience. We don’t learn to “read the image”. Instead, we have delegated our decisions to automation, and are essentially editing blind. This is a dangerous area to be in, because we are at risk of fixing areas of the image that weren’t broken, because we’ve not learned to “read the image”.

I hope the future allows me to do manual editing of my images.

I hope I am given the option. And if not, that it is just a period we go through.

Predictions are off the table. As a friend has said to me several times “humans can never predict the future, all we are good at is creating the present”. We simply cannot predict where it is all going. But I do think that the path of least resistance is the one most folks take. Convenience always wins.

The Creative Act

This is by far the best book I’ve read on creativity. Written by Rick Rubin, a famous music producer, this book comes from someone who understands what it is to be creative.

All of us are creative, but few of us realise it. In this book Rubin offers insights into how to tune in, how to recognise ideas and how to work on them. Always, I enjoyed his writing because it all comes from a place of understanding that everything is fluid, nothing is ever complete, that there are always ideas being presented to us, and it all mostly stems from working on one’s own awareness and trusting and sensing one’s own intuition.

I particularly enjoyed his sections on ‘how to move on from work you’ve completed’, and more so his thoughts about art related competitions. I was relieved, but not surprised to find that Rubin is more focussed on the truth that we create art for ourselves, and often it is the creating of it, rather than the final results that matter the most.

Never judgemental of others acts, he prefers to focus on how one can tap into their own creativity citing for instance that Picasso preferred to paint when he had music, the tv and the radio on at the same time. EMINEM is another artist that can only write lyrics when he has a tv on in the background for company. I know also, that when printing in his analog darkroom, Michael Kenna prefers to listen to audiobooks. Knowing this about these artists surprised me because I prefer silence, but everyone has to find the environment that works for them.

This book is pretty much how I see creativity. I have always preferred to focus more on the internal / philosophical side of creativity, rather than the ‘how to’. This is what Rick Rubin does best in this book.

Creativity is always more a case of finding one’s way through the work. It is also about learning to trust one’s own hunches, and to change one’s mind if something better presents itself.

For me, reading this book was more a confirmation and I often found myself saying to myself ‘that’s right’ when he states something that I have always deeply known, or innately understood to be true.

A copy of this book should be on every creative’s bookshelf.

Maybe

Last year I was gearing up to publish a new book this year. It is all written, designed, and the foreword was written by Guy Tal, a photographer whom I greatly respect.

I’m sorry to let you all know that I have shelved plans to self publish any books for the foreseeable future. My reasons being that I have found over the years of self publishing, that the process is fraught with many challenges.

For the past six months or so, I have really gone off the idea of self publishing and I don’t think my feelings on the matter will change any time soon.

Self publication has been enormously stressful for me and I think the stress is now outweighing any personal artistic or monetary benefits that I could gain from going through the process again.

The only way forward for me now, would be to find someone who wishes to publish my books.

You can never go back

Yesterday I visited a dear uncle of mine, whom now has vascular dementia. I found I connected with him about my travels. I remembered that he spent many summers traveling around Europe with his wife and girls, so I mentioned several places to see which ones would spark a reaction in him. Switzerland seemed to be the place and when I mentioned the Matterhorn in particular, my ucle became even more present.

So tonight I dug out my few images of the Matterhorn that I made back in 2012. I thought I might print one for him as a present.

Looking at this image tonight, I am struck by the realisation that I really would struggle to pull off an image like this one now: I’m not the same person any more.

There is this belief I think, that progress is a one way street (improvement only). But that it simply not the case. Each time we gain some advancement in our photographic skills, the innocence of our beginner self is diminished.

When one gains, one also loses something about themselves. We are changed.

What we may assume as immaturity of our style at the time of creation may, many years later, be seen as something beautiful that we no longer possess. I am acutely aware there are things about my earlier work that I think are beautiful now, that maybe I did not accept or acknowledge at the time. Time has passed, and so to, have my abilities to create what I once did.

I think this is similar to looking at old photographs of ourselves. We are reminded of who we were, our immaturities, and also, of the innocence attached to our younger selves. The life of an artist is similar: we all have an artistic childhood, an artistic adolescence, and also an artistic adulthood.

As in life, so too in photography.

This perhaps touches upon the realisation that change is the only thing that is guaranteed. Everything we know is transient. This includes our creative abilities. They fluctuate, are fluid and are constantly changing. What we create now, is more a record of who we were at that time. A marker of where we were artistically.

One should always embrace their past, accept who they were, and also realise that no matter how much they’ve learned along the way, we are, and always will be children in our creative hearts.

Digital Grading

The whole reason I like to shoot film, is because it isn’t verbatim. For instance, Fuji Velvia film has a massive blue colour cast in the shadows. Kodak Portra is overly warm / reddish in hue. Each film has its own palette which adds its own character to the scene.

Just recently I bought a very old digital camera - a Leica M240 - (which I am loving by the way) to experiment with. It has lovely colours and I think it almost (note “almost”) has a film like quality to it. I have been wondering of late, if it is possible to impart a filmic look to the images, and I think the straight up answer is no. If one wants to have a film like look: shoot film.

I realise that this is an ancient argument, and these days, most folks don’t care. Except for a very small number of folks.

I’ve been playing with introducing a colour cast to the images above (top row, as shot with minimal RAW editing), bottom row - myself playing with trying to impart a sense of filmic look to the work.

What I have noticed, is that most films have contrasty blacks. There is often a bluish cast to some films, or even a greenish cast. Kodak’s Portra has a reddish cast to it.

I don’t think I will be substituting my film cameras for digital ones any time soon. But I must admit that I have been enjoying playing around with digital. I am around a decade too late, but I have never been keen to jump into something new when I am working with something that works quite well already.

However, it’s nice to be able to shoot scenes in low ISO that I couldn’t before, and I’m enjoying working with a rangefinder system again. I have always loved rangefinders - my first ‘proper’ camera being one: the Mamiya 7II. Which I used exclusively for the first decade of my medium format photography.

The thing is: film and digital just look different. With a little bit of nudging and massaging, you can get your digital files to look sort of like film, but not the same. Applying a curve preset does not work, as I have often found film seems to react to different light in different ways. But as I said: this is no longer an issue for most. If it were, digital camera manufacturers would be trying to make their sensors more filmic and they’re not.

But, I am enjoying working with a 12 year old digital camera. Perhaps this is becoming a thing also? Is there such a thing as ‘retro-looking-digital-capture’?

It’s fun to play with different mediums. I am currently thinking of taking a digital system along with me on my trips, so I can capture ‘behind the scenes’ shots. I think that would be a nice thing to offer - some additional insight to what it was like to be there, in addition to my finished film images.

Assynt Workshop '26

Just heading home from my workshop up in Assynt. Been coming here since 2000. So that is now twenty six years.

We had a mixture of weather this week, but overall, we got some very nice shots. Here are the images that I chose to edit from all of the participants.

What I like to do on the ‘Scottish’ trips, is take a digital projector with me. We have a private room in the hotel and we do a ‘review+edit’ for two hours each morning after the sunrise shoot and breakfast.

It’s hard for me to explain what the ‘review+edit’ is like. I am always encouraging, but I do point out where I think the composition does not work, how it could have been improved (often by moving) and then choose to use the participant’s images to show editing techniques. Rather than assuming my aim is to ‘make the image better’, I like to emphasise that it’s more about conveying concepts. My edits are often not precise enough at the time - I am after all, editing live in front of a group. I have always found that I need to live with my edits for a few days to help my eye adjust. As the week goes on, I then start to show the group how I would assemble a portfolio, and often use one image as a ‘reference’ to help me notice discrepancies in others.

Always the aim is to educate. Never to ‘perfect the images’. So I am not there to micro manage images, and we can sometimes get lost in someone’s feeling that something is ‘not quite right’. With a group of six people, it’s not a good idea to edit by committee. So I often make a point at the beginning of the week that the aim is to show concepts, and not to spend time fine tuning them.

Thanks to everyone who came. We had a great time. I love coming to Assynt and Ullapool.

Portfolio revisioning

It took me two days to edit my new Hokkaido images. As much as I always set aside a whole week to do such a task, I have found that usually by day 2, I’m done. The work is mostly there, and I just need to now sit with it and see how it ages over the next week or so.

Above is the final portfolio. I’m quite happy with it, but I did have to go through a few revisions to get to this final version.

In particular, I struggled with getting the right depth to the darker tones, and I went through a few revisions. First starting off with a much lighter, softer version of the set. On day 3, when I chose to review the completed set, I felt they could go a little darker, so I did just that and was sure I was now complete.

It was only on day five, after taking some time away from the work that I felt they could go darker still.

So here is the previous revision, before I went darker with the blacks. I hope this is informative for you. The main uptake from all of this is that sometimes I have to sit with the work for a while to notice where it needs more work. I do sometimes have to go back and rework images because I feel I haven’t used the full tonal range at my disposal (I don’t have to do this of course, some work requiring a narrower tonal range). But in this instance, I felt the blues in the set could do with being deeper. They slowly became a ‘thing’ for me with this set.

Here is the previous revision. I would compare them to the final set above. Not to say that one is better than the other (you may prefer the previous revision). More to point out that as time goes on and you live with the work, things may be altered and I often have to do this until I feel the set is just right.

Hokkaido Hills

The past few days I’ve been film processing. I always enjoy the process, because as each roll of film appears out of the development tank, and I put it into the stabiliser, I get a glimpse of what I shot.

Glimpses are important, rather than a steady hard look at the work. Impressions are in my book, much more powerful. It’s the lack of detail that’s important to me. When a picture is incomplete in one’s mind, then the imagination goes into overdrive imagining what is there.

It has now been a decade since I started to go to Hokkaido. It’s educational for me to go back to the very first work I created there, and to notice how things changed over time.

Today is my first day selecting and editing. I’ve literally just begun work, and this is the first edit I’ve made.

I’m well aware that as my editing session goes on, things change, and I may come back and re-edit this one. Or, it may not even make the final selection.

I give myself permission to be freeform for the first while, to see what surfaces, to see if a theme emerges. I’ve got to do this, to allow what is there, a chance to surface, and to show me what it is.

Hasselblad film cameras and extreme conditions

The past few years I’ve been experiencing more and more hardware failures in the field with my analog Hasselblad 500 series cameras that I use.

Admittedly, I am using a system that was never designed for the outdoors. Hasselblad film cameras are really studio systems. Plus, they are old now. Most of my kit dates from around the mid 80’s.

What I have learned is that the system requires regular servicing to operate. Buying ‘mint’ or ‘unused’ film backs or bodies from e-Bay may seem like the right thing to do, but in truth if the item has not been used regularly, then the lubricants inside it have probably expired. If you feel any resistance when winding on, the film back, or the body, or both probably need to be serviced and lubed.

I do go to extreme places though. In Brazil the temperatures can go up to 40ºC and the humidity is very high. I always leave my camera gear inside the bag, and I do not take it indoors with me whilst there. I avoid any condensation as much as I can, and when I am forced to bring it indoors, it remains inside the bag for several hours to help the internal compartment acclimatise to the air conditioned room and difference in temperature.

I’ve become accustomed to doing some partial service while I am in the field. For instance, sometimes the film backs jam, and will not advance. There is a simple fix that requires taking off the back plate of the film back and cleaning out a spring that has got some moisture and dirt in it. When this spring does not work, the back will not advance. It’s rather easy to correct, and I now bring a small screwdriver with me for such occasions.

The main issue for me though, is that a combination of dusty, snowy, freezing and humid landscapes that I am taking the machines to, require that I service the equipment regularly now to avoid failure in the field.

Although this post today is perhaps more of interest to anyone shooting film with vintage gear, it is also appropriate for those with digital cameras. Everything takes a beating when we are using them in different landscapes. Everything requires some care and attention, and if one wishes to photography great / interesting light, then we have to risk the camera being in all sorts of weather. Shooting only when it is sunny and dry will lead to your photos being one dimensional.

If I were a digital shooter, I would not be investing in expensive camera systems for my escapades abroad. I would be looking for bargains - and there are plenty to be had now - many digital systems from a decade ago give great results. Cheap camera systems are less of a worry when working in challenging environments. I will be less upset if the camera falls into a river in Iceland, or dies due to humidity in a sand dune complex in Brazil. Practical comes before desirability. Making pictures comes first, and I would like to be able to risk making images in challenging conditions, rather than worrying about some expensive camera system that I end up putting away for fear of environmental damage.

Our friend in Fukushima

Some lovely new images by our intrepid friend. I am impressed to find out Michael is now 72.