David Osborn - Landscape Photography Workshops 2022

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.

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.

The ultimate story of the photograph is a story about light, the subject is just a means to portray the light and tell the story. Light sets the mood of the picture and creates the emotional connection with the viewer. Without a story of light the picture has no life, soul, or energy;. Light is the landscapes personality.

Light creates form. The feeling of every object having solid substance, shape, volume, and texture. Form also creates spatial distance; how all the individual objects relate to each other as they recede further into the distance from us. Form creates a convincing, realistic three-dimensional illusion of reality.

Emphasis takes the viewer straight to the hero of the photograph, then all of the secondary subjects in order of their importance. The hero is composed in the camera and enhanced, ’emphasized’, in Photoshop. Emphasis is giving the picture a cohesive visual order and clarity by removing all visual conflicts.

Contrast is not limited to only the tonal contrast. Contrast is wider, opposing one quality against its opposite; large against small, smooth against texture, warm against cool. It draws the eye to the brightest tone or edge of highest contrast. Contrast emphasizes areas of the picture and adds variation.

Variety creates an energy and interest. When our eyes explore the picture and find 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 create ‘visual energy’ by keeping every part of the picture changing.

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’.

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.

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.