During the pre-digital age professional photography resulting in an image imagined differently than the reality required time-consuming steps. The results of camera settings weren’t immediately available for viewing as they are now and thus knowing what to expect was important to getting those results—which might be an hour later at best. Images also depended upon chemical developing of film and photographs made from that film.
But the digital-age photographer need not have the entire composition imagined or planned. He or she can immediately see the altered image in a number of reversible ways or keep every version of an altered reality that he or she captures—be it by virtue of skill or trial and error.
The photograph above is just such an example. It is a second photograph of a lighted tree (the first photograph is the previous image in this gallery). This second photograph, however, was captured using minor adjustments in camera/exposure settings. Then, post photography, the background, foreground, lighting and saturation were further altered. The image looks exactly as I imagined it when originally maneuvering for the angle that gave form to this particular creation. But instead of spending nearly an hour in the darkroom, I spent a few moments adjusting the camera settings and a few minutes at the computer.
The original image is a Tagged Image Format File (TIFF) with a file data size of 35.1 megabytes (MB).
For display on this web site the TIFF was duplicated and the duplicate re-formatted as a Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPG/JPEG) image with a file data size of 2.19 MB. To approximate detail visible at the time of capture the image was sharpened as necessary and resampled via the Photoshop Bicubic Sharpen algorithm. The re-sampling increases the image resolution from 300 Dots Per Square Inch (DPI) to 360 DPI.
Unless otherwise noted the image was corrected to offset color shift and balance. This restores black (shadows), white (highlights) and neutral gray (neutral mid-tones).
• An unnumbered image is the only one of the subject matter.
• A number corresponds to the sequential order in a subject-matter-related sequence.
• The letter “B” indicates color correction to approximate what was visible when the image was captured.
• The letter “C” indicates enhancement beyond an approximation of what was visible at the time of capture.