The Importance of Post Production

“….a negative is only an intermediate step toward the finished print, and means little as an object in itself. Much effort and control usually go into the making of the negative, not for the negative’s own sake, but in order to have the best possible “raw material” for the final printing.”

Ansel Adams: the opening paragraph to ‘The Print’.

An image of a close family friend shot on film for a personal project. Despite being shot on Ilford film, post-production is involved.

In some ways not much has actually changed since Ansel Adams wrote the above opening to his book, ‘The Print’. ‘The Print’ was first published in 1983. If you replace the word ‘negative’ with ‘RAW file’ there is a remarkable applicability of the concept to our current understanding and usage of photography. Then, as now, the final image was the most important factor in the creation of the image. The negative was only a half way step to the final image. Even if photographers used transparency film, often the final print didn’t look exactly like the original transparency (although adepts of ‘straight’ nature photography loved the simplicity of the transparency, albeit with the concurrent difficulties of capturing a range of tones on a medium of such limited exposure latitude). To me, post-production is really the same as Ansel Adam’s print. It is a mechanical and artistic process by which we transform the RAW file into a presentable image.
 

Speeding Trucks

I really enjoy the process of working through a brief to try and actualise a client’s ideas or vision. The odd part is that a lot of clients get excited about the ideas, but then falter once you put the logistics behind a photograph on the table. Images don’t just create themselves; you have to work hard to create something new. That’s why I love it when I meet a client that gets excited about the process and is prepared to put the effort into creating great images. Thankfully, I met one such client towards the end of last year.

Digital Permanence - Reminiscing the Fading

Paging through an old family album, someone who has grown up in the digital era will notice something that to many of us born pre-digital (if there is such a thing) is commonplace. The fading image. Yellowed images and hue shifts are usual amongst the dozens of kodak printed postcard sized images that adorn the large photo albums that mark the passage of time for a family. Now the passage of time seems to be marked by a 'timeline' that pops up on our social networks; viewed on a computer screen dispassionately rather than sitting together on a couch and reminiscing.