The Digital Darkroom

The more I read about digital photography, the more I use software like Adobe Lightroom and Photomatix Pro to process photos, the more I think about film photography and wonder how far from the old days we are straying, wonder how much is too much (with the exception of extreme HDR photography, which in many ways - in my eyes anyway - is more akin to "digital painting" in some aspects).  I see photographers referring to processing photos with software as using the "digital darkroom" but for the longest time that seemed like a stretch...  The more I read and learned and saw examples of film photographers manipulating images in the darkroom the more I could see the parallels between the old ways and the new, but it was a recent experience that made things "click" in my mind.

In Santa Fe the Andrew Smith Gallery features an impressive selection of Ansel Adams' work, including some of his more iconic work.  One of these is Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico.  What I found fascinating was that there were several several prints of this photo hanging in the gallery, and each one looked a bit different.  Over the years Adams developed many prints of this photo in the darkroom, and each time he made adjustments in which part of the print he wanted to lighten ("dodge") and darken ("burn"), with each print different than the last.  And I kept coming across numerous examples of capturing the image on the film negative being only the first step in the process of creating an image, like this article.  So, this is my long-winded way of saying that although I try to "get it right in the camera the first time" I've come to appreciate the finishing touches that using the digital darkroom can lend to an image.

Here are some examples of how I approach using the "digital darkroom" in trying to refine an image to either meet what I saw when I took the photo, or to enhance things just a bit to to meet the "artistic" image that's in my head.  This first photo is the original image as it came out of the camera.  The only adjustment made was to sharpen it a bit for printing, which I do to all of my photos.

In the image above you'll notice that the sun is peeking out through the fog in the upper right corner, so I decided to emphasize that with a sun flare effect as seen below.

It took one glance to realize that this was the wrong direction to go in, so I decided to go  in another direction and bump up the mid-tones in the image, using the Clarity control in  Abobe Lightroom to increase mid tone contrast, which created a more sharpened image, bringing out more detail in the buildings and the foreground, which are not only the dominant features of the photograph, but what I remember most from that day.   

I liked the look of the image above, so I decided to add the sun flare back to the upper right corner, thinking that a combination of the two adjustments might work.  Again, it took a quick glance to realize that the sun flare was too much, it brightened the image as a whole excessively and altered the mood too far from the what the actual scene held.

So, what I'm basically doing is selectively lightening (dodging) parts of the image - the same as film photographers did in the darkroom...

I haven't been able to decide whether I like the first or third image the most.  I like the realistic look of the first image, but am drawn to the sharper, "punchier" foreground of the third image.  Ultimately I decided to add the first one to my online portfolio...  

Nikon D40, Nikkor 55-300 DX VR

Order a print of the first image here