THE EASE OF POST PROCESSING

MAY 16, 2025

                                       BIKES AND TATOOS ON DIVISION STREET

This week I’d like to approach the debate over post processing from a slightly different angle than last week’s diatribe against the current fascination with “straight-out-of-camera.” I do believe that post processing, in whatever program you like, to the extent that you wish to pursue it, is a very important part of the modern photographer’s toolkit. But if you don’t want anything to do with it, that’s OK too. I just think that you are cutting off your nose to spite your face.

And that is coming from a world-class curmudgeon. So I would like to show a few examples of how I processed several images, and emphasize the simplicity and speed the transformations involved. I do know my stuff, and I have been improving for over a decade, but I would never claim to be an expert. In fact, I am of the opinion that you can learn almost all you need to know in a very short time. Anyone who tells you that this is THE WAY to do things is ignoring all the other methods available to accomplish the same thing. My God, Lightroom is such an old program that it still has cascading menus, if that is your thing.

This first image is an experiment in street photography. I was amused that the security guard seemed to be providing store security while standing outside the store. The final image cropped away superfluous information, darkened the blacks, lightened the whites, and focused the viewer’s attention on the guard. This took about 30 seconds at most.

The next pair of images took even less time, since I just used a different Fujifilm film simulation to pop the colors a little. But then I used Lightroom to raise the shadows to bring out the stair details and then increased the contrast to then emphasize the shadowily in the image.

Another pair of images from Laurelhurst Park required even less work in Lightroom. I really only reduced the exposure a tad, which usually helps with increasing the saturation in woodland imagery.

The lakeside images received the same treatment. I increased the saturation of the greens, which were obviously the main subject. But far more attention was given to deepening the exposure of the pond, which really brought out the reflections. Selective sharpening in that area brought out the texture of the water. All of this work required less than one minute.

Obviously the daffodils had much more impact in color than in the original black and white. But far more important to me was the crop, which eliminated a lot of useless context.

The next pair of images dates from a trip to New York in 2012. I was enamored of the grid and the reflection on a tower in Lower Manhattan, and was very happy with the final image. The other day I came across the image and wondered how it would do in Black and White. As usual, it became more dramatic because black and white allows for more exposure manipulation without losing reality (as long as you accept that the world no longer is in color).
On the other hand I do miss the color contrast which was part of what drew me to the image in the first place. Even such a dramatic change required only a couple of minutes to accomplish - and there are probably at least a dozen other black and white variations available to experiment with.

Finally, let’s return to Division Street, where I noticed a display of definitely ordinary bicycles outside a tiny bike shop. And if you need another tattoo, you can go right next door. You don’t have to find this street scene as riveting as I did, but I think that the 30 seconds of work on the image really paid off. Yes I increased the contrast, which could have been accomplished by changing into another one of the dozens of black and white film simulations available with Fujifilm. But your camera doesn’t know how to crop to achieve the composition you actually wanted, and restricting yourself to the original quick snapshot framing “straight-out-of-camera” seems to really limit your creativity. Will anyone really miss the extraneous wires at the top of the original frame? Is my square crop that centers on the bicycles any less pure? Why would anyone resist the 30 seconds it took to modify this image?