Simon Keitch Photography Blog

I saw something of an inflammatory post over at the HM Art Buyer blog recently about post-production; suggesting that a lot of photographers these days are relying on their Photoshop skills rather than concentrating on getting good photos. Certainly not a new discussion-point and predictably the argument then kicked-off in the comments with points being made both for and against so-called ‘photo-illustration’ but the upshot was a call for RAW files to be sent in to the blog, a selection of which were posted in a before-and-after style, which I thought was an interesting idea so I thought I’d weigh-in here with some of my own pre/post images and opinions. Featured above is Chris Opie; I chose this image because it’s a pretty standard photograph and illustrates a fairly typical workflow from the original RAW file straight out of the camera on the left, and the finished photo on the right after basic adjustments in Lightroom and further final tweaks in Photoshop. As you can see, pretty subtle adjustments with a slight crop, exposure and contrast bumps, as well as final sharpening that doesn’t show up at this size.

Okay; this one is from a local town centre criterium that I received a lot of questions about; other photographers guessed a lot of post-production was involved to get this effect but it was all done in camera; up top is the RAW file and the finished image underneath. The post is pretty subtle but just gives it that extra pop.

I always try to get as close as possible in-camera and I’ve found that when I have an image which I like but that requires a lot of post-production work I ultimately come to the realisation that it just isn’t a great photo and scrap it. Plus, when I work an image a lot in post it just starts to look a little weird and personally I ultimately want my photos to look like photos. Photo-illustration has become a big deal in recent years and I’m kind of on the fence to some degree, possibly because coming from a background in art – a lot of my early darkroom experience was at art college – I can understand the position that photoshop is just another tool which the photographer/artist can use towards achieving their vision, but I think that the currently fashionable Dave Hill Look is already over the hump and will date a lot of current images in the same way that cross-processing dates photos from the Nineties. I’ve even seen good photos ruined – in my own opinion – by over processing. Of course there’s also the moral question of re-touching photographs which has been in the news a lot recently, which extends to changing the subject’s entire body shape and bone structure; I personally remove any skin blemishes from my portraits, as well as lint or stray hairs that distract the eye, but I like to see every detail in a person’s face and I always find it amusing that so many models and actresses apparently not only don’t have a single faint wrinkle anywhere on their face, but their skin is also entirely devoid of pores. Creepy.