Polishing Photos

Squint. Squint. Whew. I just finished polishing the most obvious defects from the photos for Twelve Months at Hurricane Ridge. No sandpaper involved, but smudged have been smudged to near-oblivion. But I’m not done yet.

Welcome to the world of nature photography. I’m not the most meticulous of photographers, so blemishes like dust, residual rain residue, and sometimes the occasional hair make themselves obvious. There is little that I do to my photos but I always clean up the sky. Smudges disappear in foregrounds and removing them can leave a more obvious mark. 

And, no, I am not planning on using AI tools. I don’t trust them for this fine work. If I was going to get someone or something else to polish the photos I’d hire Joe Menth at Feather and Fox (https://featherandfoxprintco.com/). He’d done every book and photo while I lived on Whidbey Island. Let’s see what I can do.

Here’s an example of the smudges that happen to my camera and photos. (Let’s hope I remember to Insert it.)

A blog, a cloud of a blog, a something that most folks wouldn’t notice, but I’m preparing the photos on the chance of fine art sales. Imagine that photo blown up and some patron being distracted by a blotch. There are tools for that, and like with a paint brush, I brush them away. Unfortunately, there is some artistry because what replaces the blemish may not match the background. It’s common for a ridge line to get a bump in it. Blemishes can be so bad by crossing various backgrounds, like a ridge, that I only save the photo if it is otherwise excellent.

Of 48 photos, I polished 12. (To Joe’s credit, if he did it he’d find dozens including miniscule ones, but he is far more meticulous and has better eyes.) 

The task went quicker than I expected. That’s why the next step is to print every photo. It is too easy to chase screen dirt that isn’t in the file. It is also good to remind me of how folks will see the photos in real life. Zooming in with a monitor can always find more, but a photo is also about the whole view. If a detail catches the eye, the mind wasn’t so taken with the subject. I’m guessing. I also keep in mind that some of my most popular photos were taken with a 1Meg camera circa 2000. The subject matters.

My online gallery has a few hundred photos from previous trips and Twelve Month studies. You are the best judge for you. Take a look.

It can sound like I’m done with the photos, but each will now get a pass at things like contrast, white balance, brightness, etc. I don’t use fancier techniques like HDR because I don’t know how to use them while maintaining a natural feel. I expect that step to take a few weeks, but I may be surprised.

In the meantime, this is also a reminder to clean my lens – again. Cleanliness may be a goal for some but I have also experienced taking it too far. My previous photo essay was a ten-year chronicle of ten Twelve Month essays on Whidbey Island. It was the same camera throughout. By the end of that chronicle, I’d cleaned so well that I left miniscule scratches on every photo. Maybe allowing a few imperfections in the camera is fine as long as I can clean them in the computer.  Squint. Squint.