Episode 15 - Little Things Done Well: Post-Production
Audio:
Shownotes:
Guy Fattal’s Kayaker Photo:
(left: original, middle: Guy’s edit, right: Matt’s edit)
Actions from this episode:
Look for the little things - Take a look at your best photos. What are the little things that make them so good? And then take another look with a critical eye. What are they missing? What could you do next time to make that shot even better?
Shoot more - Not sure what you're looking for yet? Shoot a bit more. So you have multiple options to choose from during the selection process.
Shoot less - Do you know what you're looking for then select as you shoot by not pressing the shutter as much.
Be cutthroat - See what it feels like to choose only your best images and to make that choice quickly rather than stewing about it.
Speed it up - Set yourself a limited amount of time to make your selects in. What techniques can you come up that will help you process faster?
Try it all - When toning, challenge yourself to adjust each slider just a little bit. Click the before and after button to see what you get when lots of little things are changed.
Clean it up - Pick a couple of things you'd like to clean up by retouching. See if what this does to your image gets you closer or further from your vision.
Reflect - Take a shoot that you liked and think about one or two things that could be better. Think about how you might achieve that and try them out in your next shoot.
Repeat - Getting better at photography has a lot to do with repetition. Get out there and shoot a lot. The more mistakes you make now, the better your photography will be in the future.
Episode Transcript:
Matt Korinek: How much do you shoot? I know some photographers who shoot as many as 10,000 images per day, and some photographers shoot less than a hundred. But no matter how much you shoot, they're not all going to be winners. So the job isn't done yet, it's time to pick the best ones then season and garnish them with what we do in post-production.
Today, I'll be wrapping up my four-part series on how great photography is made up of little things done well. Post-production including selection, colour correction, toning, and retouching are the final steps that lead to great photos. It's Matt and welcome to the Photo Proventure Vlogcast, a place for photographers to get better, one action at a time. Subscribe, if that sounds like you and let's get into it. Let's do this.
The first challenge after a shoot is to narrow down the selects. Whether you have a heavy trigger finger or not, it's a process that we all have to go through. The selection process is made up of three things, judgment speed, and at least for me, discomfort. Judgment of course is the most important and also the most complex. When judging images during the selection process, I'm reacting to what images feel right.
Learning how to discern what feels right to you is going to be a big part of your development as a photographer. This is actually how I came up with the idea that photography is made up of little things done well. By looking at my photos and seeing that two similar frames can have a different impact or feeling, little things really do make a difference. And those little things we look at during the selection process are a combination of all the little things that were planned for in pre-production and how little things in the moment came together during the shoot. Now you just have to choose which combination of those little things has created the best shots.
I find it helpful to think about what images I want in my portfolio, as this will inherently bring my photographic style into the process without me really being aware of it. Of course, my portfolio isn't always going to be the most important part of a shoot, unless it's a personal project. For any client work, I want to bring in the original concept of the shoot, what they were vibing with on shoot day. I always find it easier to make selects for a project when the needs of the client, their vision, and my style are all aligned.
The second major aspect of the selection process is speed. Something I'm not always good at. Time is money, or even if you don't do photography is your job, then time is time. Time you could be spending on other aspects of your photography or other parts of your life.
The main skill to work on to speed up your process is decisiveness. The faster, you can decide whether or not a shot makes a cut, if it's portfolio worthy, or if it's right for the client, that's going to make a difference. And I'll save those specific tips for another episode. But for now, just think about what you could be doing to speed up your process.
One less talked about way of speeding up the selection process is taking fewer photos on set. I know this because I shoot anywhere between 500 to 5,000 images in a day. And going through 500 images is always faster than 5,000.
I'm usually close to the low end when I'm doing a personal project. That's what I like to slow down and not rush myself. I'm just waiting for those best moments that I connect with. I also find when I'm shooting with film cameras, that they slowed down my process and I shoot way less frames. That's why I believe that gear does matter, just not the way you think. But I've already talked about that back in episode two.
When shooting for clients, my numbers start to go up and there's a few reasons for that.
One might be that I'm not as confident as to what the client wants or knowing what they want and how many different assets they need to fill. Another thing is things aren't always going my way and I'm both problem-solving as I shoot and hoping that whatever it is that I'm struggling with, will sort of sort itself out.
Since I love candid photos. I'm not just shooting the peak of a movement, but the moments in between as well for client work, I'm usually between a thousand to 3000 images per day. The times when I'm pushing up to 5,000 is usually when the day super long, if there's a ton of different outfits or if I'm shooting something I've never shot before.
Yeah, that's right. When I'm not sure what moments will look the. I cover my butt by shooting more. And to be honest, I sometimes feel oddly embarrassed when I do overshoot. Do you ever feel the same way? I think it's probably because it means that I wasn't as comfortable or as confident as I'd like to be.
Of course, I can't tell you how many photos you need to take to get the photos that you love, and that will bring you clients. What I can say is that if you can do it in fewer photos over time, then you'll be speeding up your selection process. Think about it as pre-selecting, by not taking a shot. The other aspect of the selection process for me is discomfort.
And although it's the last piece of this puzzle that I'm talking about right now, it's most obvious early on in the process. That's because my first round of selects is where I see all of my worst photos. The ones that didn't work out, the ones where I made a mistake, the ones where all the little things weren't working together to create a great shot.
Of course, the pain of seeing those small things that I'm not doing well, drives me to change and get better. It opens my eyes to a new detail to pay attention to a new problem to solve and to change my approach, to get different and new results. That's how I've gotten to where I am today and to where I'm going to get to in the future.
I can grow as a photographer by paying attention to the little things that aren't working or are missing from my work. To take those important small things and be able to put them together in a single moment, that's great photography.
But we're not done yet. Once I've got my selects, it's time to colour correct and tone the images. Some people split these two steps out by colour correcting the RAWs and then toning and Photoshop. But I tend to do them at the same time in Capture One or Lightroom. How much color correction I do will often depend on how color accurate I need to be for the most part I'll deal with specific color accuracy issues during retouching.
So for the most part, I'm just toning the images to give them a look and a fell. Now, I'm not going to get into the weeds on color correction and toning in this episode. But if that is something that interests you let me know and I'll work on putting together an episode about that for now, I'll just share some advice.
Color-correction and toning are the epitome of little things done well. To me, editing my RAWs is about moving most sliders a little, rather than a few sliders a lot. So if you find yourself pushing the editing sliders to the max, it may mean you should have captured things differently.
Back in November of 2020, I did a bit of an experiment on Instagram with fellow photographers. I wanted to see how two photographers would approach toning the same raw file. And as you might expect, we all had different results.
One was an epic shot of a kayaker going over a waterfall that was shot by Guy Fattal. Now, if you're listening to this as a podcast, you'll be able to see the images in the show notes or on YouTube. You can always find the show notes on my website for every episode, over at mattkorinek.com/vlogcast
Here's Guy sharing the backstory and his toning approach after the fact,
Guy Fattal: Hey Matt, thanks for inviting me to share my thoughts on this photo. A bit of a backstory and my process of editing here. So I shot this photo with my friend Ed, who is a professional kayaker.
It was about the midst of summer, and we were deep into the woods. And if you familiar as the sun was coming in, creating these patches, which created a really difficult scene for me as a photographer. So we kind of had to time it right as I wanted the sun to land right on the waterfall to enhance the athlete when he was dropping. So we waited for about two hours and we were able to get this really unique photo.
And in my editing, I wanted to stay true to the contrasty environment of the original photo and the scene. Um, so I didn't want to mess with that too much. I played a little bit with the clarity. On the waterfall itself to enhance the action, uh, dropped the highlights a little bit as I didn't want them to blow up.
And I didn't, um, I didn't bride in the shadows too much, kind of out of staying true to that original vibe. Uh, finally I went with, um, vibrant vivid green tones for my, uh, photo itself and worked quite a bit. The brush tools, a spot brush tool. If you're familiar with that, to kind of pick my spots of where I want to edit, mostly around the kayaker himself and the waterfall, um, to enhance that action. And, and this is a edit I came out on with.
Matt Korinek: I did my edit without knowing any of the backstory that Guy shared. I wanted to see how I tone it as someone just reacting to the content of the image without the context. So here's how I approached it.
One of the things that I always think about is drawing the viewer's eye to where I want it to be. In this case, the kayaker is going over the waterfall. So I did want to bring the shadows too high and to make it about the location and not the kayaker. I also used a few different local adjustments to help draw the eye directly to them.
The other thing that I thought about was the fear that I, or maybe you as a viewer might feel going over a waterfall. I thought to myself, what could make that worse, cold water. So I cooled down the entire image to make it feel more wintry and cold. And to heighten that feeling of fear. Now, as you can see, a bunch of small things came together to create two very different versions of a single image.
Shout out to Guy for contributing to this episode and to all the photographers who participated on Instagram.
Once I've toned the images, then they're ready for retouching. Retouching for some photographers is a dirty word. What do you think? Is retouching a bad thing? Let me know in the comments on YouTube or Instagram and tweet me at Matt Korinek. I think that all, but the completely digital artists have a line that we tend not to cross. And I believe that each person has to draw their own line. And then be honest with where that line is.
Now I come from it from my belief that photography isn't real anyways. So I am okay with tweaking some things in posts. If you look at my work, I think that for the most part, you'll find that it appears real and authentic.
And that's because I'd explain my current approach like this, because photographers capture moments as still frames. It allows viewers to pick apart the subject to a level of detail they would never do in real life. And so I want my subjects to be represented in a fair light. So I'm comfortable retouching things that are transitory like pimples or things that you wouldn't have noticed if you met that person in real life.
So my retouching approach tends to be pretty subtle and for my subtle approach, it's about a lot of little things done well. A little bit of skin cleaning without going too far, some dodging and burning to smooth the skin without making it look plastic. Removing things that would have been impossible to frame out without changing the shot. Or fixing some hair or makeup issues that just happen as people move.
Of course, my commercial clients have their own set of rules and preferences that will dictate how their product shows up. So, if you're just getting started with retouching, start with the biggest issues that draw your eye first. And unless you stylistically want photos that look surreally perfect, then I'd suggest you don't go too far down the retouching rabbit hole. A few small tweaks here and there will improve your shot without making it look fake.
So, those are the little things that need to be done well in post-production. Put those together with all of the little things that you did in pre production and then on shoot and you'll be well on your way to creating great photos.
Here are some things that you can action between now and the next episode.
Look for the little things. Take a look at your best photos. What are the little things that make them so good? And then take another look with a critical eye. What are they missing? What could you do next time to make that shot even better?
Shoot more, not sure what you're looking for yet? Shoot a bit more. So you have multiple options to choose from during the selection process.
Or shoot less. Do you know what you're looking for then select as you shoot by not pressing the shutter as much.
Be cutthroat. See what it feels like to choose only your best images and to make that choice quickly rather than stewing about it.
Speed it up. Set yourself a limited amount of time to make your selects in. What techniques can you come up that will help you process faster? I'll have a bunch of tips in a future episode.
Try it all. When toning challenge yourself to adjust each slider just a little bit. Click the before and after button to see what you get when lots of little things are changed.
Clean it up. Pick a couple of things you'd like to clean up by retouching. See if what this does to your image gets you closer or further from your vision.
Reflect. Take a shoot that you liked and think about one or two things that could be better. Think about how you might achieve that and try them out in your next shoot.
Repeat. Getting better at photography has a lot to do with repetition. I was lucky enough to be forced to shoot at least once a week for about five years and that volume of experience making mistakes and implementing little tweaks is what got me to where I am.
So, we've reached the end of the process and hopefully you've got some work that you're proud of, or if you don't, then I hope that you've learned something through the process.
Perhaps you had one small realization that will help you in your next shoot. Repeat that over and over across hundreds of shoots, and you'll realize that great photography is made up of little things done well.
And now I'd love to hear from you. What do you struggle with the most during post-production? Where is it that I can help you unlock a better post production process?
Thank you so much for watching or listening. I really do appreciate it.
And between now, and the next time I see you try one new thing and get closer to the photographer at you want to be.
