Autumn Tree 2

In keeping with the recent emphasis on trees…

Autumn Tree. Fuji X100. 23 mm (Equiv 32 mm). ISO 400. 1/240 sec at f/8. November, 2013. Copyright Joanne Mason 2014.

This was shot in late fall, just reprocessed in black and white. (Same tree as here: different shot in color.) I’ve been working in black and white lately and have been reprocessing some images originally saved in color. This one distinctly resembles an infrared image, but it’s not. Post-processing consisted of a bunch of exposure adjustments, high contrast, and a red filter.

A few words about photo processing philosophy: There is a school of practice holding that photographic images should look just as they come from the camera, that all framing, exposure adjustments, etc, should be done in-camera. The final image should be completely faithful to what the camera produces. I do not belong to this school. For me, the image produced by the camera is, if not the starting point, but one step in the creative process. I do agree – generally – with not adding things to the image that aren’t there, or taking away things that are. But otherwise, I’m completely open to doing extensive adjustments to the appearance of the image in post. Photography is all about manipulating light to produce an image; that manipulation can continue in post.

For me, the purpose of photography-as-art (of course, this isn’t the same for journalism or most documentary photography) is not simply to reproduce something seen, but to create something new, an image. The image should stimulate a response in both photographer – in the act of creation – and of course in the viewer. The image can be an altered representation of the original scene or an entirely new entity.  At its most basic level, the image can generate a new or different way of seeing something, a different insight or perception of a subject. I think this tree is a good example. It’s not a simple reproduction of a tree in autumn – as colorful and delightful as that can be (see here) – but a separate and original representation of it that suggests different ways of seeing it.

I’ll have more to say about photography-as-art in a future post.