Shot day for night with 4×5 film and composited in post with some digital elements (see the raw film scan below).  No retouching footage this time around, my machine was taxed to the max this morning

Some will no doubt feel similarly about watching these retouching clips from a few recent personal images, although luckily they’ve been sped up x10 (an advantage I rarely enjoyed with dad).  Mostly just color-tuning for now, but I’ll try to post a few more with significant compositing when I come to it.

Example 1:

Example 2:

Example 3:

Example 4:

And, for those who can’t see the films inline, here are the links:

http://www.matthewturley.com/galleries/movies/100213/100213_retouch_b.mov

http://www.matthewturley.com/galleries/movies/100213/100213_retouch.mov

http://www.matthewturley.com/galleries/movies/100212/100212_retouch.mov

http://www.matthewturley.com/galleries/movies/100212/100212_retouch_b.mov

When I followed up with my friend a couple weeks later, he sounded disgusted and said something to the effect of, “You photographers are all a bunch of selfish idiots.”  Apparently his buddy had balked at his suggestion, stating that he had no intention of associating with ‘the competition’.

Lame.

Years later, I encountered a much different philosophy while working with a successful advertising photographer.  Even though he was well aware of my intentions to eventually go out on my own, and knew that we would likely compete for jobs (which we have!), he nevertheless shared generously from his wealth of knowledge in order to help me succeed.  He was, and continues to be, a great friend and mentor.  And, while his success is obviously a result of his creative talent and wise business skills, I like to attribute at least a part of it to good karma.

Ironically, the latter photographer probably had much more in the way of ‘proprietary trade secrets’, and thus much more to ‘risk losing’ by sharing.  He also happens to be much more successful of the two.  I think there’s something to be learned here.  I think we as photographers often assume the stance of the former, reluctant to share our knowledge and know-how with others.

Now, I definitely recognize that maintaining proprietary information has its place.  The magician’s motto of never sharing secrets has a striking parallel with photographers.  We are, in a way, hired to do the same thing: magically produce surprises out of our little black boxes in a way that no one else quite can.  Incidentally, I believe this explains why so many photographers are upset about the preponderance of cheap professional-quality digital cameras.  It’s like magicians getting upset because WalMart now sells magic kits.  But that’s just it.  They confuse the box itself with the ‘magic’ at work behind it.  There’s no way we can coast along if our craft can be reduced to simply a specific camera, lens, lighting scheme, or Photoshop filter.

In the end, I think it has to do with relationships.  I’m frequently asked how I do what I do, and my responses vary widely, usually depending on who’s asking

I often get asked which Adobe Photoshop actions I use to get ‘that look’.  While I’m not really sure what constitutes ‘that look’, the short answer is: none.  My opinion is that images should be dealt with on their own terms.  Automation, at least when it comes to photography, is bound to eventually reduce quality.  (That’s not to say that I don’t use Adobe Lightroom’s ‘Sync RAW Settings’ feature extensively, as I consider optimizing a RAW image and even applying a Lightroom ‘preset’ to be very different than full-on retouching).

 However, I do have a few actions that I use everyday.  Three, in fact.  What are they for?  Organization.  My actions simply populate the layer stack with all the elements I need to retouch an image, whether it’s a simple global color adjustment, or a 12-image composite.  It’s color-coded, hierarchal, expandable, and best of all, consistent.

Organization goes hand-in-hand with non-destructive editing and is especially important when retouching with tons of layers (often more than 30!), or when working in multiple sessions as often happens when clients enter the scene.  I’ve often had to return to an image after several months and been very glad that layers were well-named and were right where I’d expect them to be, saving me time and my clients money.

Of course, this system wasn’t developed overnight, which means I’ve also had the experience of returning to images I worked on years ago and wading through a swamp of unnamed layers, complete with nested masks, and funky blending modes.  Sometimes I feel I’m better off starting from scratch.  Either way, it can be pretty frustrating when all you were trying to do was round up a few images for a stock request!