In landscape photography, are we in danger of losing our shadows, I was looking through one of Joe Cornish books from around 2000 the other day, and an EOS magazine from 2007, and some of the landscape images had deep rich, silky shadows that gave depth and mood to the composition.
Currently the vogue has been to lighten shadows, how often has the comment 'if you could bring out a little more shadow detail' been said in response to a landscape post (and I'm as guilty as anyone).
It would be easy to blame HDR processing (as it bleaches shadows) for this trend, but I don't think it is the cause . Don't get me wrong, HDR is up there with the Ebola virus, famine in Africa and George Michael that I'd actively help to eradicate, but in this instance I think it's in spite of HDR processing.
Is it because we have so many pixels and/or improvements in editing software that we can push images to extract the last amount of detail without the degradation and noise that was common previously.
Is it a bad thing that the tones are being narrowed, so they are more even across the composition, I don't know? personally, I've decided to take a few steps backward, and not tweak the shadows like I used to, as long as they are not blocky/noisy and have a hint of detail, I'll be inclined to leave them as is.
In short, I've decided to embrace the shadows
Currently the vogue has been to lighten shadows, how often has the comment 'if you could bring out a little more shadow detail' been said in response to a landscape post (and I'm as guilty as anyone).
It would be easy to blame HDR processing (as it bleaches shadows) for this trend, but I don't think it is the cause . Don't get me wrong, HDR is up there with the Ebola virus, famine in Africa and George Michael that I'd actively help to eradicate, but in this instance I think it's in spite of HDR processing.
Is it because we have so many pixels and/or improvements in editing software that we can push images to extract the last amount of detail without the degradation and noise that was common previously.
Is it a bad thing that the tones are being narrowed, so they are more even across the composition, I don't know? personally, I've decided to take a few steps backward, and not tweak the shadows like I used to, as long as they are not blocky/noisy and have a hint of detail, I'll be inclined to leave them as is.
In short, I've decided to embrace the shadows
Comment