The Value of Immediacy

Also in This Edition

• A New Photoshop Trick
• Seminars!
• In the Pipeline
• The Value of Immediacy

A New Photoshop Trick

I'm intentionally not the most knowledgeable at Photoshop.  (I prefer to control my light instead.)  And so when I learn something really obscure I like to share it.  

It started out with this modest portrait of downtown Los Angeles which I posted on Facebook:

Someone commented on that photo, saying I was there a bit too late.  I said "No, I've been waiting for about 90 minutes for the right light which never really arrived", and to prove it I uploaded this picture I had taken earlier:

Photo taken while waiting for dusk.  It took me awhile just to find the right spot where downtown Los Angeles was framed by two palm trees.

Then a friend, Stuart Lee Friedman, who had taken my seminar in New York but we didn't realize we were related until years later, took those two pictures and produced this beautiful hybrid:

"Wow!" I said to myself.  "That looks great."  But how did he do it?  Every effort I made to try to duplicate what he had done looked awful - I couldn't match the color, and everything I tried left masking artifacts around the tops of the buildings.  We spoke a few days later and he explained the secret. 

1) First, he copied the lighter picture and pasted it as a new layer on top of the darker one.

2) He then did a quick selection of the mountains.  (In this instance, it doesn't have to be exact.)  

3) Then he set the Blend Mode to "Pin Light"

(What does "Pin Light" do?  The official explanation is "It replaces the colors, depending on the blend color. If the blend color (light source) is lighter than 50% gray, pixels darker than the blend color are replaced, and pixels lighter than the blend color do not change. If the blend color is darker than 50% gray, pixels lighter than the blend color are replaced, and pixels darker than the blend color do not change. This is useful for adding special effects to an image."  If your eyes just glazed over, think of it as just showing the brightest areas and not showing everything else.)

Then he tweaked the layer to taste (in this case increasing the saturation.)

This looks WAY more impressive when you click on it!!  :-)

Voila!

Seminars!  Seminars!  Seminars!

Plans for 2018 are starting to congeal.  If you're interested in any of these send me an email to Gary at Friedman Archives dot com.

• Denmark (possibly Sweden or Norway as well) - Spring, 2018
• Marietta, Georgia - August 2018
• Boulder, Colorado - September 22 - 23 2018
• Portrait Lighting Seminar - co-hosted by me and the amazing portrait photographer Brian Ramage.  Mid-July in Orange County, California.
• Scottsdale, Arizona - November, 2018

In the planning stages:  Bedford, Massachusetts

In the Pipeline

• A7R III ebook is just a few weeks away!  You can Pre-order now at 10% savings, or just send me an email and I'll let you know when it's ready.
• .epub and .mobi versions of the RX-10 IV

The Value of Immediacy

It was really dark in the wedding reception hall.  Hardly any light at all.  All the guests were shooting away with their smartphones, getting poor-quality photos in the poorest of conditions.  Many then posted these images to Facebook as the event was occurring.

Me?  I brought my RX-100 V (I was a wedding guest, remember?) which I knew would provide much better results compared to the smartphones, given the larger sensor and f/1.8 lens.

Taken with a smarphone.

Taken with the RX-100 V.  My camera did a better job, but so what?

When shooting people I've found myself in the habit of shooting continuously at about 3-5 frames per second, which helps me capture just the right expression, especially of the kids who never pose.  Later on I'd go through the images, pick out the best, and post just those.  It's just too time consuming to go through the shots in camera, pick the best, upload them via the camera's Wi-Fi connectivity, and post them from the field.  "My pictures are worth the wait!" I tell myself.

Really dark, lots of motion, fast shutter speed... most smartphone users don't even know how to select a fast shutter speed.

Really dark, lots of motion, fast shutter speed... most smartphone users don't even know how to select a fast shutter speed.

But guess what?  Normal people don't care about the difference in quality, the lower noise or the higher percentage of better expressions.  By the time I get home, find time to cull and tweak and post, the photos are already considered "stale" and tend to garner less interest.  Mine will only be of consequence to someone who is creating a photo album from the crowd-sourced input.  My images may be better (at least in my mind), but the differences are meaningless for non-photographers.  It's no different from the days when people would shoot Polaroid instant cameras at a party - those who shot with film may have produced better results a week or so later, but the value of immediacy wins out - people would rather have it fast rather than have it good.

This just reinforces what I've been saying for years, regarding the differences between a snapshot and a photograph.  A snapshot triggers a memory and doesn't have to be technically sound.  A photograph is designed to make others say "Wow!" without having the benefit of the prior experience.  Kodak understood this for decades, which is why consumers just ate up their progressively poorer film formats starting in the 1970's - first with the small 110 film format, then the horrendously smaller Disc cameras (remember those?).  Customers never noticed the poorer image quality, as they were used just to jog a neuron.  Smartphones can actually do both (with good light the new models are perfectly enlargeable).  We live in amazing times.

Heaven Art Gallery - Entry Deadline Extended

If you're on my email notification list then you're already familiar with the deal I've worked out with the Heaven Art Gallery.  Basically I've negotiated a great deal for you - two months of exposure for the price of one, on a special screen dedicated just to Friedman Archives subscribers!  The next deadline for the February - March time frame has been extended to January 27th.  Here's your chance to have your work displayed in an art gallery for a mere $10/image!  For more information email  info@heavenartgalleryusa.com and reference the Friedman Archives Featured Artists exhibit.

Until next time,
Yours Truly, Gary Friedman

Waiting for the light to be right for the Downtown L.A. shot.