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Lurking Musings

~ Musings of a newly published writer

Lurking Musings

Tag Archives: photoshop

Eastercon Artshow

31 Wednesday Mar 2021

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Musings

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Tags

Artshow, Birmingham UK, Eastercon 2020, Eastercon 2021, Fangorn, Photography, photoshop


Easter is on its way and that means it is time for Eastercon!

It’s back… and this time it’s virtual!

So, because of the international emergency situation vis a vis COVID19, there wasn’t a British Science Fiction convention over Easter last year. The event was planned to have been in Birmingham but was cancelled. Then it was planned to be in Birmingham again this year but has since had to revert to a completely virtual event.

I’ll do a longer post at some point soon about the difficulties of achieving a fully virtual convention… but this post is all about the Artshow.

A preview

So, at Easter 2020 I had managed to book a place on the Eastercon artshow. This runs every year at the con and artists display their work and it is offered for auction or sale. You get to see what well known fantasy and SF artists have been working on and maybe even get the chance to own some of your very own. I had a plan to bring along 15 photographs – 5 large (10 X 8″) and 10 small (6 X 4″) and had bought a set of mounting boards and packing bags for them ready to go. I was in the process of selecting the final 15 when the event was canceled.

Which meant I was actually fairly ready for this year’s artshow with very little extra work.

Well, apart from the fact I had spent most of lockdown learning more about how Photoshop works, getting better at editing, and making new images to sell… so my final collection is different to the one I might have taken to Eastercon 2020 and I spent a bit of time re-editing some of them to be even better.

And there will be other differences.

For example, because this is a virtual auction, I don’t need to print off a set of images ready for display. In a normal artshow, you’d bid for or buy a physical item that is hanging on the wall and, at the end of the weekend, you take it home with you. This time, however, the images will be displayed in a virtual environment created in Kunstmatrix like the one shown here. Which means, in my case at least, I will be able to effectively do prints on demand. At the event, everything will be displayed with a price for the 10 X 8″ version. However, you are welcome to contact me and ask for a quote for any reasonable size and I should be able to supply it.

The caveat on this is that I only have five 8 X 10″ mounting boards and ten 6 X 4″. Once I run out of those, or if you order a different size, there may be a slight delay in delivery times while I order some more in. I’ll let you know when you order if this is going to be the case.

So, if you are at Eastercon this weekend, I hope you take the time to wander around the artshow and, while pondering whether to get the Fangorn original cover art for your favourite book, you also consider some of my images…

Photo-editing

03 Tuesday Nov 2020

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Musings

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Tags

controversy, editing, Photography, photoshop


Triggered by a recent Facebook group post, I’m going to talk about something that seems to be a really controversial thing in photography – editing.

There is such a lot to unpack with this and everyone seems to have an opinion. There are those, for example, who claim you ‘should just get it right in camera’ or say they ‘never edit’. Others edit liberally to the extent you can sometimes not see the original image under the processing. And, just as in the aforementioned Facebook group post, it seems to polarise the community.

I guess there is good reason why it does. After all, there are often celebrity controversies about it. Claims that they present an unrealistic body image are justified. In a recent (September 2020) government survey (https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5801/cmselect/cmwomeq/805/80502.html) the following question was asked:

This indicates that social media images (mostly edited with filters and similar) and celebrity images (both on TV and in social media) are huge influences on how many feel about their appearance. The use of photoshop style editing is part of that.

However, my opinion is that this is a more nuanced issue.

First of all, those who claim they never edit or ‘they didn’t edit back in the days of film’ are a little misled. Back in the day of film a hell of a lot of editing did occur. The very act of processing film required making decisions about exposure and timing the developing process to suit and many of the features of Photoshop (layers, dodging, burning) are based on activities that used to occur all the time in dark rooms. For example, photographers would use acetate sheets with different elements layered over an image in the same way a modern editor will copy and paste layers of image to make a composite.

As for ‘I don’t edit my digital images’, it has to be understood here that every digital camera – whether it is your camera phone, a compact ‘point and click’, a DSLR or a mirrorless – edits the image before it shows it to you. All digital cameras will record the data of the image taken as a RAW file – usually a huge file that takes up a lot of storage space – and will convert that into a more compressed jpeg or similar so you can view it on the screen. In making this compressed file, the computer in the camera uses algorithms to make decisions about the exposure etc. based on what it thinks you want to see in that image. Some cameras (e.g. DSLRs or mirrorless set to ‘manual mode’) store the RAW file so you can do your edits. Others (such as most camera phones) delete the RAW file after it has made the conversion.

Now, in my opinion, the issue should not be so polarised. We can accept that editing can be used in a way that causes harm to others. We can also accept that all images need some editing, even if that is achieved by an algorithm. What we actually need to be considering is not ‘whether editing should be done at all’ but rather ‘editing should be done as appropriate for the image’. Journalistic or sports photography is always going to need less editing than high art. The trick is deciding where you feel your image fits and how much editing it needs as a result and whether that editing is ethical. This can be a very personal decision.

I do a lot of fantasy and SF themed photography. While you can do a lot with make up and special effects on the set, there will inevitably need to be some form of edit in photoshop to give the images oomph. This might be changing the background to a fantasy scene instead of the studio backdrop or plain brick wall of the original. It might be replacing a bland sky with something with storm clouds. It could be adding lightning flashes or other things to make a character look like they are doing magic. All of these are changes that an editing critic might say were deviating from the original image too much. However, in these specific examples, I would argue they are essential to create the image. The two images below are an example from a trip out with a vampire a few years ago…

Before
After

Twitter Updates

  • Just entered the Creative lighting competition on @PurplePort #photo #competition #PurplePort purpleport.com/competition/vi… 5 hours ago
  • A blog about my editing of some Cyberpunk images of @thedemonfoxx #cyberpunk #cyberware dalascelles.co.uk/2022/08/12/cyb… 4 days ago
  • Just entered the Rain competition on @PurplePort #photo #competition #PurplePort purpleport.com/competition/vi… 6 days ago
  • Just posted a photo @ Prestwich instagram.com/p/CgAyEWFId8A/… 1 month ago
  • Just entered the Other worldly competition on @PurplePort #photo #competition #PurplePort purpleport.com/competition/vi… 1 month ago
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