editing

Spotlight #17 - Shadows /  by Aman Sridhar

I go through phases between colour based editing and then straight up high contrast black and white. 

I don't have a real preference because I believe each has massive merit, and I really respect photographers who choose one and stick by it. 

I find it too hard to choose between the two, because often times I just go with what suits the picture best and it's hard to get myself to say that I'm a 'black and white photographer,' thus make everything black and white. 

Having said that though, there are sometimes when a picture just works so fucking well when it's made black and white. 

Here's one of them

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The original is filled with a mix of orange, red, green and yellow light, and is decent enough. But I knew almost immediately that I had to make this one black and white because there's just so much potential with it. 

I generally love bumping the contrast and the blacks up a lot, and it's easy to get carried away doing that. Sometimes the beauty of black and white pictures, is in the grey. 

This isn't one of those pictures. 

The highlights and the blacks adds so much to the feel of this image. I also love how one of the guy's caps covers a part of his face. This just amplifies the shadows in the image and really just edited itself. 

 

Check out last week's spotlight here - https://www.amansridhar.com/blog/2017/9/23/spotlight-16

Boxout Wednesdays 025 /  by Aman Sridhar

Scroll through the pictures below to view the highlights from last week's Boxout Wednesday gig :)

Read more about my work with Boxout here. 

Check out the previous week's edition here

Shooting landscapes /  by Aman Sridhar

I remember as a kid (don't you love it when articles start like that?), a 'good' photograph was one that captured the landscape really well. 

And so, no matter what my camera was, I always pushed for capturing a good landscape. 

Recently, however, my pictures have been of a more documentary style. It comes from the belief that I have about pictures capturing reality and freezing it forever. Manipulating the picture to make it seem like something else is manipulating reality, and so I was dead set against it. 

Just yesterday though, while I was editing my pictures from Ladakh, I happened on a technique that truly opened my eyes to something new. I've been following this Instagram accounts for a while now - accounts that edit their pictures so well, the pictures seem other worldly. 

A part of me has always been skeptical of it because of that very belief i talked about above, but a part of me was both envious and in awe of it all because it's truly beautiful. 

And while I was editing, I chanced upon the technique on how to do it. 

Suddenly, my perspective on it all has changed. I still believe landscapes cannot truly ever be captured on camera because of their raw beauty, but from an artistic perspective, landscapes provide the most room for experimentation. 

Now, my recent trip was a mixture of many different kinds of pictures - landscapes, people, street, animals etc. and I never imagined I would have gained such a new outlook on photography as a whole. 

It's an exciting time for me where I can experiment around with a new style of photography and see where it takes me. 

Cheers