Posts Tagged ‘filter’
Some Nice Things we Missed
logo of cokin (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Sometimes the news flies so thick and fast that items deserving of a look get over-looked. Let’s take in a few such interesting items from the past week or two.
Dissing Digital
Norman Jean Roy is a fashion photographer ‘on the make’. He has shot both George Bush and Kate Beckinsale and his images have graced both Vogue and Vanity Fair. Two weeks back FStoppers published an interview with Jean Roy in which he talks about his philosophy of photography and his take on the camera as a neutral instrument.
Though he shoots digital too, Jean Roy claims to favour film: because it does not have the same instant gratification as digital, it alters for the better the way one approaches a shoot.
Jean Roy says that perfection in photography is destroying it as an art, and he blames digital for introducing the capability of perfecting photographs, ergo digital is killing photography as an art in general and fashion photography in particular.
Rich, Thin Filters
New York socialites say, “You can’t be too rich or too thin.” Cokin has adopted that battle cry for its Pure Harmonie series of filters: Cokin says they’re the thinnest filters in the world! Filters available currently are a UV, a Polarizer, and a Variable Density Neutral Gray.
These filters begin at $50 and go up from there. Just like those New York socialites, these lenses favour those who are . . . ‘rich’!
Another Type of Filter
We’ll close with the sort of filter that is integrated into most modern cameras; anti-aliasing filters that suppress moire. Digital imaging has sharply-defined limits of resolution by frequency (as opposed to film) – because, after all, unlike film, the image is resolved on a grid of pixels – therefore, it interprets certain patterns, such as fine checks on clothing, incorrectly and introduces banding effects.
Anti-aliasing filters eliminate moire patterns at some cost to image quality and they’re a standard part and parcel of digital cameras and other digital imaging equipment.
Fujifilm, like Leica, decided that there was a way to eliminate moire without anti-aliasing filters. This technological step, however, prompted a photographer to compare Fujifilm’s decision to building a sports car without brakes! Is that a valid comparison or a total exaggeration?
Post-Processing Filters can turn you into a Pissaro, Monet, or Van Gogh!
The very word ‘filter’ has come to connote something totally different from what it used to – pieces of tinted gelatin or glass from Hoya, Tiffen, and such. How ‘totally different’ is brought to the fore in An Artistic Approach to Post-Production in Photography Using Filter Effects by Celso Bressan who turns his photographs into impressionistic paintings by applying post-processing filters!
Granted, it is perhaps a misnomer to use the word ‘filter’ for some of the effects available through the likes of Nik Software and Filter Forge, which Bressan mentions, but that’s progress (or redefining terminology, take your pick).
Bressan does not provide a mechanical how-to; rather, he explains his approach and outlook starting with “selecting photographs for work.” “some pictures were just ‘made’ for the job” i.e. filter-based post-processing into “something that resembles a piece of art.”
That said, he offers two unequivocal technical pointers to get you off the ground: use low-res images and don’t discount noise. Another one is to split photographs into two to four parts when applying processor-intensive filters because “some effects take hours [to process].”
That Bressan is very adept at his very unusual field of photography-art is obvious from his mini-gallery. If you had not known about Bressan’s niche, wouldn’t this image have left you asking “Is that a painting or it is a photograph?” And talk of paintings . . .
—Here is something distinctly Monet’ish.
Consider the subject, composition, and (very importantly) palette here. Anyone else reminded of Vincent?
Isn’t something besides the name and the subject of this ‘photograph’ and this painting by Pissaro very similar? How about the impressionistic style?
I hear you: “Just how did he make them?” Well, even Bressan doesn’t know: “Some effects are so complex and random that, if needed to go back and do it again, more often than not it would be quite difficult or even impossible to obtain the same result again unless careful notes are being taken about every single step used.”
No problem – the photo-artist has given you a clue or two. It’s up to you, shutterbug, to make a Picasso now.
Follow us on Facebook for all the latest in canvas printing news and exclusive deals!
