Fine Art Photography Tutorial

Why should they? Viewers have no personal attachment to you or your images. Viewers are desensitized to photography because it’s so common. Viewers, by default, have a disinterested or negative attitude. Competition is so enormous, that it is critical you offer viewers something unique to make them care.

The photograph is all that matters. The photograph is what people see. Your stories, hardships, problems, excuses – everything else but the photograph, is totally irrelevant. As a viewer of your photograph – I don’t know anything else except the photograph you show me, nor would I care if I did know.

The world is flooded with photographs, it owes you nothing because you add one more. Quality allows no room for conceit, arrogance, self-delusion or ego. What matters is a brutally honest, self-appraisal of your photographic quality. Self-improvement and quality must begin by being honest with yourself.

If you can’t communicate everything visually, your photograph fails. It is your job as photographer to learn the visual communication skills to make words redundant, verbal or written. Relying on words is no excuse for poor quality. The only exception is a picture title naming the location and date taken.

The cliché, literal and generic looking postcard images are photographic suicide nowadays. Everyone is making that type of image – the world’s moved on. You must now offer something different or better. Why expect to achieve anything if your photography only offers the same as every other photographer?

Not wanting to step out of your comfort zone by taking a risk, traps you in a ‘safe zone’- but the safe zone is the killer: ‘literal and generic zone’. You can’t afford to play it safe. Don’t give people ‘what they expect to see’. Commit to one picture, one story and show your personality. Don’t be generic looking.

The universal problem is replacing artistic knowledge with the over-reliance on the camera and Lightroom to make the image. Lightroom is enormously responsible for creating the flood of literal and generic looking images. ‘Tips, tricks and presets’ will never replace fundamental artistic knowledge.

If you offer people something different or better, viewers will notice it and will care. Combine artistic knowledge with craftsmanship skill to implement that knowledge, and you are free from the limited cliché, literal and generic image. People notice and appreciate quality and artistic creativity.

If you don’t stop your viewers, your photograph is wasted effort. Studies prove you have one second to achieve this. In that first glance, viewers decide to ‘stay and study’ – or leave. Bold and simple give the viewer an efficient and instantly understood ‘visual summary’; which grabs their eye and captures attention.

If the viewer likes the ‘visual summary’, they will ‘stay and study’ longer. You have started a conversation with your viewer, visually and intellectually. The clock is now running. You have very limited time to sell them your idea, story, or concept. Get it done fast. Be clear, concise, emotional and interesting.

The last step: Make the photograph appeal to the viewers emotions and you have the viewer sold. Why? Emotion provides the pleasurable reward we all seek. Viewers evaluate and remember your work on an intuitive, emotional level, not logical level. Create emotion and viewers connect with your work.

The viewer is going to take a gamble at the ‘stay and study’ stage. They are going to invest their time in looking at your photograph. Nobody likes a bad investment. If the viewer feels they have NOT been rewarded, they will feel cheated. It’s not about YOUR reward, it’s about your VIEWERS reward.

Everything in life has a purpose. Photographs are no different. Novels tell stories using words, photographs tell stories visually. You love the therapy of being out taking photographs. As a viewer – I don’t care. What’s the story you want to tell me?. As the viewer of your photograph – that’s only what I care about.

However, the novel must also evoke feelings to be successful. A horror novel that doesn’t make us feel scared, fails. Horror novels require a subject to base the story around, but the priority is making us feel scared. What emotions do you want to evoke in me? – As the viewer, ‘What emotional reward do I get?’

Novels must be written with a good understanding of the written language; photographs must be created with a good understanding of visual language. As authors, we must learn the craft of how to communicate. Photographers must learn the artistic principles behind: ‘What Makes A Good Photograph’.

We don’t read boring novels and we don’t want boring images. Cliché, literal and generic, postcard images show me: ‘What I expect to see’ – What I have seen before. As a viewer, you’re wasting my time. Stimulate my curiosity and imagination, emotions. Reward me with an interesting, unique experience.

Like the theatrical stage performance, the photograph must have one, clearly defined lead actor; the ‘hero’ of the photograph. Then a main secondary actor; the relationship between the two, tell the main focus of the story. If we don’t emphasize one hero, the story has no ‘focal point’. The story is confused.

The supporting cast, ‘supports’ the hero, but must never dominate the hero. Secondary objects add additional, general information or ‘clues’ to the story. The supporting cast is content that can’t be removed yet joins or surrounds the hero. This is de-emphasized to remove any conflict with the hero.

The distant landscape and sky is the stage backdrop. Stage backdrops supply the context for the cast and play to be performed, indicate environment and geographical location. Combined with stage lighting, they set the mood and atmosphere for the stage performance. A backdrop for the hero.

Light creates the mood and emotional atmosphere. Strong spotlights focus attention on the lead actors, softer lights emphasize the supporting cast. All the elements from actors to lighting, designed to work in harmony to create a polished performance: To offer the audience maximum reward.

Objects are the physical content but light is the story. Light creates mood and mood creates emotion. A photograph without any feeling of light has no life or soul. Light communicates the personality of the landscape. Old master painters teach us, the real power to create emotion came from portraying the light.

Form is the feeling of substance, shape, volume, and roundness. We want to create objects with form so real, that we feel we could put our hand into the photograph and hold each object, be able to pick them up, feel their weight. Texture is forms personality. Form creates visual order and realism.

Spatial depth is ‘atmospheric depth’. How the atmosphere alters the tones of objects as they recede into the distance. If we recreate, even enhance these tonal changes in the image, we create a powerful, realistic illusion of ‘how we perceive the world’. This psychologically ‘draws us into the photograph’.

A convincing three-dimensional illusion of reality, has a great psychological power to draw the viewer ‘into the image’ not look ‘at the image’. Viewers become ‘participants IN the scene,’ not outsiders ‘looking AT the scene’. This invites us to search, explore, and discover; create an emotional bond..

Emphasis gives the picture a cohesive, readable, and logical structure. Emphasis controls the viewers eye, taking the viewer straight to the hero first, then other content in their order of importance. Photographers limit emphasis to camera composition. We must use retouching to create stronger ‘visual order’.

The eye uses the brightest tone or area of highest contrast as an entry point to the image. It then uses the ‘edges of high contrast’ as visual roads to travel around the image. Control the ‘visual roads’ and you control the viewers eye. Retouching allows us to control how the viewer ‘reads’ the photograph.

Variety creates an energy and interest. When our eyes explore the image and come across an area that does not change, we loose interest very quickly. We get ‘visually bored’. A flat blue sky is boring, it has no variety. In retouching we can create ‘visual energy’ by creating variety in every part of the image.

Cohesion is making every element work together in harmony with one aim: To create a polished performance and deliver a clear, concise and rewarding experience. To communicate the story clearly and efficiently by removing all conflict, confusion, and distraction with clear emphasis on one ‘hero’.

Visual attention software produces a heat-map report showing where we look during the important first 3-5 seconds. Blue areas having a low chance of being noticed. Yellows to reds have a high chance of being noticed with red at a 99% chance of grabbing audience’s attention. Above is the raw file and it’s heatmap. There are no red ‘heat’ areas on the hero of the photograph: The Cathedral. The photograph fails ~ it does not communicate my story in that first 3-5 seconds.

Above is the finished version and it’s heat-map. Notice the largest red ‘heat’ area is now on Florence Cathedral. The cathedral now having a 99% chance of being noticed in the initial 3-5 seconds of viewing. The image now works because science proves you notice, what I wanted you to notice: ~ Florence Cathedral. All I did was manipulate how you view the image by applying the artistic principles in retouching. I gave the image emphasis and structure.

Invest your time in one good composition, not multiple compositions that you later delete. Transfer the questions you ask while editing at home, to being the questions you ask before shooting on location. This forces you to think harder about the story you want to tell and have maximum time to shoot quality.

Investing your time and effort in one good composition, gives you more time to wait for the light to come to you and photograph all the variations of light that happen. Time allows you to capture the changing mood and momentary conditions when the light hits certain subjects in a unique and moody way.

This efficient approach means you have the best composition because you thought about it. The very best light, because you waited for it. No wastage, because you invested your time in one composition. Now you have all the components to create the mood, drama and atmosphere in Photoshop.

All content works either for or against the story. Compose with only relevant content that adds to your story, remove the irrelevant content that detracts. Composition is ‘Visual Jango’. How much can you remove, before there’s not enough left to tell the story? Efficient compositions are simple and clear.

Base images are the traditional approach of aiming to get the perfect picture in one exposure. This becomes the finished photograph after all the technical and artistic exposures are added. The identical time, care, and attention to detail is taken to capture the base image, as if we only had one sheet of film available.

Technical exposures improve the technical and tonal qualities of the image. Primarily bracketed images to control global contrast and create rich shadow detail. Other reasons include freezing moving objects or removing unwanted objects. Also exposures that provide better separation between objects.

Artistic exposures are when light falls on different subjects in the landscape at different times; not all captured together in the single base image. Artistic exposures are artistic improvements to the content of the photograph. Other reasons would include adding additional subjects like people and animals.

Sky is non-geographical; it could be taken anytime from anywhere provided the sky is a suitable match. While we photograph, we visualize the image we could create from the exposures we have taken and then identify the critical exposures we still need to capture; to create the photograph we want.

The camera response curve, red line on graph, shows the relationship between incoming light received by the camera and the tonal value of that light created by the camera. The camera alters the tones it records and not in a uniform way. Shadows are darkened and compressed, killing their richness and detail.

The camera histogram represents the captured tones of the scene, after the camera response curve has altered the tones. As we expose to the right, the histogram shows the effect of this on the shadow tones. The left side of the curve becomes a smooth curve, meaning smooth shadow tones.

The key to good quality, rich shadows is to greatly overexpose them. Move the shadows up the red camera response curve, well away from the bottom, flat part of the curve and into the straighter line area higher up. This reduces the amount of noise content also, which helps to improve tonal quality.

Dark shadows brightened in software are further destroyed. ‘Tonal’ gaps are created during brightening which the computer fills in with estimated tones, interpolated data. Overexposed shadows are higher quality, have less noise and do not need interpolation as no data gaps are created to fill in.

After initial editing and raw conversion, the primary step is to composite all the exposures required for the final image. The end result is a flattened image, that represents a single exposure, as if taken by the camera. No retouching artefacts showing; it must be perfect. Primary techniques being blending and masking.

The primary role is to create the three-dimensional illusion of reality. Light, form, texture, and spatial depth. We use every artistic principle to recreate: ‘How our eyes perceive the world’. This satisfies the logical criteria our brain demands – if we want to fool it into believing it is perceiving reality.

Because the image has the underlying realistic foundation, it allows us to be very radical artistically, yet the image still ‘works’. This creates a conflict: The image ‘FEELS’ real, artistic treatment makes it ‘LOOK’ unreal. Interpretation is the key that transforms clinical and generic into unique artistic statement.

Utilizing every artistic principle, means we can maximize the potential of our image; make it more creative, powerful and personal. Cameras locate a raw diamond – Retouching transforms that raw diamond into the sparkling gem. Artistic principles are proven guidelines that help create ‘sparkling gems’.

Cameras are machines. Machines have no concept of creativity nor any artistic principles. Cameras produce recordings, clinical and factual. Creativity is human input. Retouching is the only opportunity to add human creativity. Without the retouching, there is no creativity or personalization. Images remain clinical.

The scene and the photograph are different entities. The image is a cropped view with borders, tones changed by the camera. We look at images, totally different to scenes. Images have visual principles that make them successful. Not retouching means ignoring the principles that create successful images.

We don’t want a rough diamond. – We want the polished gem. You must add something of your personality to the image, to add value and offer maximum reward to the viewer. Retouching is where you add value; increase the value of the ‘rough diamond’. Remove the worthless clinical, literal and generic look.

Lightroom has many limitations that reduce our ability to implement all the artistic principles; limiting the potential of what your image could become. If all photographers work within the same creative limitations, then all of their images would take on a similar look. That is exactly, what we see nowadays.

YouTube has created a tsunami of ignorant ‘self-proclaimed experts’. YouTubers have no incentive to be good at photography. They earn a living from YouTube, advertising and product promotion based on volume of views. Videos made for their income first. not your education. YouTube is about pleasing mass viewers.

The quality knowledge you need to learn is held by the professional working photographer. They don’t have the time or desire to spend their lives making YouTube videos. The result is those you see and hear the most, are in fact the ones with least experience, knowledge and talent to teach: YouTubers!

Amateurs have hijacked photography education through YouTube and the internet. This has created a massive void of professional quality knowledge. YouTubers are dumbing down photography and corrupting standards. The real, good quality knowledge is now almost impossible to find and learn.

YouTubers promote cheap and lazy – ‘tips, tricks and effects’. Their minimum effort, superficial approach is promoting clinical, banal, generic and soulless images, lacking quality or creativity. If YouTubers were good photographers, they would be earning their living – being employed as photographers.

Digital cameras produce ‘ready-made’ images. No artistic knowledge is required to produce images of high technical quality. Photographers can be seduced by, then over-rely on this easy ‘instant image ability’. Digital photography fools you into believing that technology has replaced your need for knowledge.

Lightroom is the duplication of the digital camera scenario, in software form. Art and creativity can’t be reduced down to a set of simple sliders or presets. Digital photography appeals to the natural human desire for minimum effort, laziness. Manufacturers create products that appeal to that lazy desire.

Photography education is the next extension of the problem. Education is big business. One which allows those with little knowledge, to make easy money. This created an explosion of amateurs teaching photography, dominating the education market. Enthusiasts are now taught by amateur photographers.

Photography has mutated into an isolated bubble. One that propagates lazy ‘automation and instant gratification’ along with social media validation. We have totally lost sight of the important issues: Learning the artistic principles which are the fundamental qualities to create good quality photography.