When I do a photo shoot, and particularly so when I shoot poeple I am waiting for the pictures to tell me what they want me to do with them in post-processing. I don’t have a particular workflow or one particular way to plan the outcome of my editing. It is more as if I am waiting for the pictures to give me instructions about how they want to be treated. I often try several different ways of processing them until I find one way that seems to be suitable.
With Sarah’s dance pictures (please read the previous blog article about the shooting with Sarah) it was a very interesting experience. One week after the shooting I sat down and started playing with the pictures that I had uploaded to my hard drive. And out of this playing an editing process emerged that was very different from what I usually do with my pictures.
I usually process my pictures in black and white and I have certain Photoshop tools that I use to enhance the blur effect. But these pictures evolved effortlessly into colour and I just followed the path. The result is very different from what I had expected. I thought, the pictures might look quite naturalistic and represent Sarah’s natural dancing style. But what happened was that they are very intensely processed so that sometimes it is not even recognizeable that it is her who is dancing. And also the space where we took the pictures looks very different after the editing.
Not a very naturalistic image of my model!
In these pictures as with other series I maintained the workflow that I found (or that found me) in order to have a coherent series for an outcome. I used a “modern5” preset in Lightroom to desaturate the pictures and then transferred them to Photoshop where I used the Analogue Efex plug-in app of the Nik collection. Here I created a preset that I re-utilized on many of the subsequent pictures. I don’t stick too strictly to one workflow though to allow for some variety in the series.
After completing them in Analogue Efex I applied in some pictures some additional blur in Photoshop before transferring them back to Lightroom. There some additional local adjustments, some color grading and use of texture and clarity as needed.
When I looked at the series after the editing I was wondering if I could discover the “Inner Core” in them. I noticed that I could see something that often looked very different from the Sarah that I had experienced during our pre shooting meeting at a bar and also during the shooting itself. I asked Sarah to tell me if she finds herself in these pictures and if the “other Sarah” is somebody that she recognizes as herself. I will add her response to this article.
The “other” Sarah
A naturalistic portrait of Sarah, shot during the session at Thistle Hall
Particularly with this series I was surprised how strongly and independently the pictures guided me into the way the wanted to be processed. As artists we need to have a certain ability to sense what is needed to complete our work and to create mood and consistency in series. Over the years I have the feeling that my relationship with my pictures (and also with my models) has become more intense and more intimate. Something happens during the shooting and in the subsequent process that “hooks me on to them”. And this “something”, this intuition, this human touch is something that I like very much. It enriches me and adds something beautiful to my life.