In this post I’d like to talk about photographer’s artistic interpretation of the observed scene.
When I decide to take a photograph of a location, it is usually because I feel some sort of impulse. This impulse comes as a result of the surroundings communicating a certain mood, or association to me. You can say that I am photographing more of a mental image of the scene that I have in my mind at that moment than the actual scene. And consequentially, later when I see the photograph on my computer, it is quite different from my mind’s picture.
I call bringing the two images together “Artistic Interpretation”, and use post processing to achieve that. I constantly feel the need to improve my post processing skills to be able better present my photographic intentions.
In the following two examples, you can see the photographs before and after my artistic interpretation (left photo is before and right photo is after).
It was evening time, about 40 minutes after the sunset. The darkness came quickly and the sky was cloudy, it was going to rain any minute. I felt the “pressure” of the coming rain in the air taking this photograph. When I saw the resulting photograph, I felt that this feeling of a close rain and late evening was gone and I had to bring it back. I increased contrast and reduced saturation. I feel that I succeeded in bringing that mood back, but I’ll leave it for you to decide.
Click on the photo to enlarge.
On another occasion I was again walking along the beach. It was a shortly after the sunset, and because it was cloudy, I could barely see the faint remnants of sunlight. The clouds were really beautiful and I couldn’t resist taking a photo. In post processing I increased contrast and added a bit of saturation to the yellow. I also added slight vignetting to concentrate the viewer’s attention on the horizon.
Click on the photo to enlarge.
What do you feel looking at these images? Can you bring your own examples of your artistic interpretation?
As always any comments, suggestions, ideas and anything else you’d like to say are welcome.
Till the next time, take care!
Greg.
Nice interpretation of post-processing. I can agree with you that many times the photograph that the camera captures is very different than the one that we had in mind before pressing the shutter. For me, however, when post-processing, usually I find new beautiful interpretations, sometimes very different and more exciting than the original one. I guess you can call this “Post-Artistic Interpretation”.
Stas, how about sharing a photo or two here?