Joe Cornish in Black and White pt3

moving on um another very different image again and this time maybe the digital compact uh on a family holiday uh in the canaries uh a couple of years ago um and i didn't take my large format camera with me of any description on this holiday you'll be pleased to hear it's a family holiday yeah but i did take my panasonic lumix lx3 and which is a really good little camera we went to a one of these botanic gardens which has fairly exotic plants uh for uh for us northern europeans are exotic at any rate uh this is an agave and i was immediately reminded of a picture that a friend of mine chris jones made many years ago which i absolutely loved he sent me a card of it and this is very much for me an homage to chris's picture of an agave i think he probably made his picture with amamir rb67 f32 whereas if we take this as an example with a small digital compact with a small sensor where depth of field is much less of an issue yes it's probably made at a mid-range aperture but i also shot it in color with the full anticipation of processing it into black and white interestingly we can come back to it in a moment we do have the layers for this one in the um on the right hand side there we do so we can come back to that if you like okay yeah that would be that'd be very interesting i think just looking at it as a black and white for me although it's still clearly what it is it's a plant the the way that the the tones work makes the edges of the leaves seem like lines of light uh and then of course there's that very sharp point of the uh of the kind of leaf structure in the center which gives it a tension a sculptural tension i would argue uh that along with the lines of light are really what makes the image and it gives it a kind of energy and a force it almost looks like a source of light as well the way the light is coming from it and then the tones and the leaves make it look like that that central item is glowing yeah which is an odd one fully enough um in order to make this picture work i had to wait until some went in so it's actually made in soft light uh there were a number of occasions most of that afternoon the sun was around and and it was all i could do to avoid it uh for making these pictures of of uh these extraordinary succulents i got very preoccupied with doing it so i got numerous versions this is the one i like the best um would it be interesting to see how it looks without the black and white conversion yes i think so we have a layer and if we just pull that down in fact you can see uh we might pull that into the left hand screen um we'll do move this over and i want to just go straight to the black and white that's interesting but that's with all the adjustments it is it is that's why it's interesting [Laughter] let's just do this we'll go i don't know if you can do this yes that's that there we have the original raw file i hope it is i think it is a raw file uh without without any changes um so you can see the kind of literal color but it's quite interesting because of the sort of blueness maybe that comes from the blue sky above as well as the kind of native green uh of of the plant itself you can see all of the what's really fascinating is even in color it's very clear how these plants are structured with with their lines of growth which presumably are reflections of earlier periods of growth yeah so the great thing is it's got this radial power but also a concentric ring system yeah to it it's in a fantastic plant isn't it really um the rest of the layers i mean if we go first to the black and white layer that's a straight conversion yeah so it's fairly flat contrast it is it is exactly the first curve i put in in which so at least it says curves one is that one so what i'm doing there is just evening up the overall effect preparing if you like preparing the ground for what is to come so in a way that's taking some of that the the highlights in those in those leaves and reducing there's some of the bottom there's some of the left there is but yes you're exactly that's exactly right i'm actually yeah you i'm if you are one of those people like me who squints at the scene yes when you're out in the field you'll know that thing if you squint at the sea at the at the image um and you can see where the brighter areas are they are there and there and all i'm doing there almost is flapping it out again yeah so you got a flat starting point flatter anyway yeah so curves two is that and if we look at the curve hopefully we can double click here and draw this over we can see it's a fairly abrupt fairly radical fairly aggressive curve we brought the black and white points right in yes black and white points right in almost so that we're going from close to black to close to white and creating a strong s curve as well so that's that's how that one worked uh okay the next one is curve three up here which is a bit of burning bit of corner burning yeah does that make sense now it's interesting i didn't mention in the black and white um article i've written that when you're burning in edges you don't have to burn them all in the same it's not it's not an overall vignetting you can treat different areas differently yeah and i notice that you've you burnt in the bottom edges more than the more than the top yeah and also you've chosen certain areas to burn in a certain area is not in interesting i just thought i'd put that up because this is our burning in those corners uh curve here i'll just click it on and off again so you can see hopefully you can see how it's working um and it's fairly i haven't done anything terribly radical but you can see that the image is starting to suffer because the tones are no longer continuous there's those spikes of doom which we sometimes call them can you out click on that on the layer just so we can see yes here what it looks like yeah so that's where so there's a little bit yeah in the top left but it's definitely not an overall no feel um but i've darkened it quite considerably and this is where you there's no way you could do this with color i mean i don't think you could anyway i think you'd end up with a with a lot of tide marks black and white is much much more forgiving okay and then a important move that already looks quite good i think let's just close that one down my final curves is that okay and that's a kind of that's like how can i put it it's like honing the sculpture yes it's like buffing it up you've accentuated the the scoop shapes yeah into those leaves if we do the alt click on this one you can see what i've done okay that's where i've applied this curve so that's another contrast increase it's a further contrast increasing you can see i've actually deliberately clipped the blacks yeah fairly heavily there and i'm not going to to sort of excuse myself or try and explain it all because it took me a long time to do this um and it would take a long time to explain it but i hope that's an interesting workflow just seeing the way that it's been done absolutely okay let's get rid of that a sec and move on and i'm getting near to the end here okay now this is a bit of a talking point because as you can see this is actually not a color picture yeah not a black it is a color but it's hardly color that's right and that's why we've included it because uh i i think one of the questions that arises in my mind is where is the dividing line between black and white and color and everybody who uses photoshop will know you know when you desaturate an image if you do it manually in hue and saturation there's a kind of there's an area of uncertainty when you take the color out now that's not what i've done here this is a full color picture with as far as i remember not much in the way of color reduction did you happen to spot if this was a psd do you have any layers um i think it may have a layers yes so a very quick look um but it's a uh i think there are so let's just see if we can find some and see yeah there's there's no color adjustment in it the only adjustment in it is so i'm going to need that bit um [Music] this is a very very small curse treatment okay so just to bring some highlights back into the water yeah as far as i remember i might have done a little bit of work in capture one uh in in terms of uh processing uh the original and the raw but the photoshop work is absolutely minimal that was just to bring out this sort of central figure but you can see where there is some color it's i mean there's tiny areas of quite bold color here and there in the rocks yes that's right just in here in here and in here yeah and indeed i might have desaturated them very slightly but it's still definitely a color picture and for me the color works to make it more three-dimensional yes less flat almost well we can try we can try switching and desaturating it and seeing what difference it makes sure black and white should just go to black and white yes that's as good a way as any i think uh if i can find it there we are yeah i don't know what viewers will think but i i i think that when you do that it becomes more of a flat picture the sense of three-dimensional sense of depth in it yep gets removed it's funny isn't it i mean i like it actually in black and white but i i probably would still opt for the color version but well because in this case i think for me it's actually quite mysterious and and uh quite strong the way that the color works in it and just in more general terms about this picture it was it was made this year up in north wales uh in january and fantastic frozen very cold at the time yeah it was it was and i i had a very very productive afternoon it was it's one of those moments when you really kind of get into the zone just working on one idea essentially on one bit of river for about four hours without maybe probably four or five pictures and all of them have been pretty decent i think winter is for for black and white photographers quite a gift isn't it because it it gives a natural sense of contrast and tonality rather than colour yeah definitely and definitely this was also shot in in the winter not long after that previous picture and is of beachy head the beachy head lighthouse in the distance here in fact let's just go to actual pixels for a second so you can get a better view of it and that is beachy head it's up there with a little bit of light on it it was uh a day with no very very partial sunlight mostly cloudy very very wet and that perhaps would be less interest to anybody than the fact that as you can see it's a very long exposure uh and yet it is daylight uh so uh that's all thanks to lee filters big stopper ah yes ten stops ten stops of so how long an exposure would that be in the middle of the day very likely uh one or two minutes 30th i think a 30th of a second translates into a minute with 10 stops um yeah it's uh it's an interesting one and i i do i'm very very wary of using an nd filter in this very aggressive manner but i think when there's a good justification for it can be quite effective and the the difficulty for me with this place was that the abundance of textures was so great and the rock it is predominantly is white but it's very dirty in parts with a lot of rather slimy indistinct colors that don't help and and then you've got the quite bright seaweeds as well greens which can be very very dominant so it's a natural one for a black and white conversion and the big stopper was used to simplify the appearance it's created quite a nice high key effect as well whether with this with the spoon it was the right word for it yes yeah the flowing uh elements while the flowing water which of course there's no structure in it really whatsoever let's see if there's any there is a a couple of layers in here we'll have a quick look and see what i did i must have done it as a black and white straight out of photoshop out of i beg your pardon out of capture one it's a phase one p45 capture on a linux techno that's just a little bit of lighting enhancement yeah that's curse two curves one is it's an overall contrast increase yeah it's lifting the blacks and lights on the fifth yeah yeah you can see just steepening the curves a little bit so i must have generated a little too flat out of capture one um the the thing that one of the things i love and i think it's worth pointing out about this picture is that for all that it's very soft very soft sky very softly rendered very soft tones overall no blacks really to speak of there is a hopefully a real luminosity about it but it's also very sharp in a very subtle way if we go to actual pixels and bearing in mind this is not a full resolution image you can see the detail is beautifully rendered in the foreground in the middle distance and in the background and even almost up to there or it starts to fall out a bit and all those large format photographers out there will recognize that that is because i've used tilt and hopefully used it correctly have a plane of focus almost parallel with the ground exactly plane of focus that goes all the way through and even with digital with a technical view camera you can still use the plane of focus in exactly the same way as you can with film and it is part of the fun and joy of large format photography being able to control the image in that way and also as you can see the beachy head lighthouse is absolutely perfectly rendered and that's because i use drop front to compose rather than tilting the camera down so camera back's absolutely level um i say drop front it's actually probably rear eyes and then a bit of tilt and the tilt gives the perfect focus the rear rides gives the perfect rendering of the um of the lighthouse it has that neutrality which is something that i do aim for structurally it's quite pleasing i think it's very it's nothing particularly new about it competition but interestingly compositionally there is there's the black rocks which um yeah yeah look very bold but actually provide most of the balance in the bottom right of the picture i'm pretty sure that without them it will be too dominant left hand side and they they do provide a very important counterpoint you know in a kind of musical expression yeah there um i like this i mean and i know it's miles more effective as a black and white than than it was as a color which is why i didn't even bring it in in colorado and again when you were when you were taking this would you have been thinking about a black and white interpretation very much so yeah yeah as it happens i made this picture with i was down there with two friends who are photographers colin westgate and adrian boyd and colin in particular his work is very high key tends to be very luminous and very bright and he's a lovely style and i'm sure i was influenced by the fact that you know he was there i think i had in mind i wonder how you could use this kind of uh landscape in that way so that's that's that that was very recent and i think this is even more recent this picture was made just a few days very very different it was made literally two days ago as as we record this at the thought perro arboretum in north yorkshire and i wish i knew the name of the tree and i do apologize for those horticultural and botanical types out there who could identify it for me on the spot um i was simply enchanted by these lovely four petaled flowers and the way that they are like they are like butterflies started dancing on on the surface of the tree it was it was shot really almost as it was getting dark and maybe that enhanced the way it felt for me um i've printed it or prepared it fairly low key although i think there's still some work to be done here i was keen to to make sure i had all the textures on the flowers i was obliged by necessity to shoot almost wide open yes with the 40 millimeter lens because they were flickering around even an eighth or a quarter of a second it was a quarter of a second there was it was always at risk of being spoiled by honestly yeah yeah that's right abrupt movement so i think it's come out reasonably well still work in progress really this one i think but interestingly when i shot it i wasn't thinking black and white this was jenny's suggestion my other half and she said have you thought of that as a black and white picture and these leaves have got a beautiful delicate pink tonality in them but there was something about the fight that was going on with the green sorry the the flower petals with the green leaves that that wasn't working and green magenta pink isn't the most attractive it was difficult it was difficult yeah they fight with each other those colors so uh one literally kills the other in fact of course we use that we know that if we've got a green cast we will apply magenta and vice versa in photoshop um but here i think it does help to preserves the atmosphere of the idea but it gets rid of the problem of the color so the rhythm of the flowers becomes that one i don't know what the color look like but it looks like the the the dancing of the petals is emphasized because they're placing them against a consistent background i think so and i'm able to i you know will probably work on various aspects of the tonality maybe even make it more moody there's still quite a lot of uh of gray background detail what you might call zone three zone three zone four in there and maybe taking it down a bit dark and make it a little bit moody and might might work quite nicely just as a last thing to ask about is when you print black and white pictures what what what's your workflow do you use the epson advanced black and white i do i do that's a that's a really interesting question and you know i don't think there's a right answer yeah i think that that everyone who wants to print digitally will find their own way but certainly using the epson advanced black and white is a very simple and easy way of producing a very good result straight out of the printer because the the way that the company has structured the ink flow means that you always get a nice consistent black and white with any color or lack of color that you want yeah the the color is managed by the printer rather than by photoshop that was my next question is do you do you tone pictures very often you know i the answer is i have toned them uh in the darkroom in the past um if i'm doing the the advanced black and white then the answer is yes i do i do use a little bit of color i quite like to do that and but not so much that you'd really notice it it's it's as if you just want to put in enough to well again to use that phrase to set the tone yeah to give it a feeling just warmth illness that's right exactly if you lay it on with a trowel you draw attention to the process so in a way it's using in a very very subtle way i think is the best way and if in doubt you can do a lot worse and come up with an absolutely neutral rendering it can still look very very good i certainly don't subscribe by the oh it should always be slightly sepia tone or it should always be one or the other um i honestly believe in look at and interpret the feeling and the mood of the image and try and and bring that out in whatever way you treat it just as you would i think it as a color printer for anybody who's a dedicated darkroom printer i hope that this experience hasn't been too traumatic and it's not in any way intended to be a a sort of i'm certainly not saying darkroom is dead far from it i i love darkroom prince i actually think that one of the most interesting uh realities for for advanced and enthusiastic photography is the conversation that there exists now between those who embrace digital and those who uh who persevere with the darkroom and who i'm doing magnificent work in there and and i strongly believe the darkroom will persist for many years to come the reason why i'm now using this digital workflow is because i'm shooting digitally and because i have a scanner when i'm using film and it just makes sense intriguingly i know quite a lot of photographers now using internet printed from digital onto acetate and then using those as contact prints yeah to use old photographic processors very interesting isn't that great you know that there is that fusion of of uh technologies you know i think that's what it should be yes you know that it there isn't some kind of dividing line but rather that the creative opportunities and the kind of stylistic opportunities that are presented by you know mixing and matching should should be used and that there's something about a darkroom print that is different to a digital print there are some beautiful digital prints being made now that are very good and valid in their own right but for certain people and probably for collectors yeah a darkroom print will probably seem more valuable perceived added value yeah and i think some of that is to do with the simply the physical nature of the the mineral in the paper as opposed to it being composed of pigments it may be perceived that especially a toned silver print you know one that's become platinum or gold for example is the most archivally stable material known to man and that that and woman i beg your body um and that that is uh there therefore makes it more valuable by its very nature how true that is is hard to say you know but uh that's a perception and in our a lot of it is down to perception as we know well hopefully we'll get an interview with somebody who does that if anybody wants to contact us you know somebody who really knows what they're talking about when we're we're looking at black and white yeah let's hope so thank you very much pleasure thank you you

Channel: On Landscape

Views: 1,403

Keywords: +joe cornish, +post processing, +landscape photography, +on landscape

Id: lsN4U9F3Ihw

Length: 24min 36sec (1476 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 24 2022