Catharsis
So, the long awaited process of going through my many files from seven, pre COVID trips to Japan has been started. Going old school, I have assigned a diary to the process, which was only semi organised until now.
A long journey, but one I cannot put off any longer.
Some initial thoughts.
Capture 1 is handling the files with a delicacy and surety that Lightroom lacked, especially at the time. My skills and expectations have changed, but the process is majorly different.
This file is a little soft (mild double imaging of moving subjects) and my processing at the time concentrated too much on that at the expense of the overall file. This version has a very mild global fixes and a minimal amount of brush sharpenning over the central girls face.
Artificial colour, tone and harshness are gone. The Hollywood OTT colours have given way to more delicate and realistic tones. A few previously “pushed” files may suffer in the short term, but just like my overall journey over the past few years, I will adjust and appreciate a more realistic representation.
All the images from this wet day in Kyoto have represented to me the coldness, hardness of the light. Just opening them up in C1 has bought new feelings of excitement. From one image I liked, I now have a full set.
The old Adobe balancing act of noise vs sharpness, which took several processing steps to address (oh it is all coming back to me!), particularly from noisy shadows and the overly “simplistic” look of EM5 mk1 files is giving way to a cleaner, sharper and more mature look.
The 17, 25, 45 and 75mm primes as well as the 75-300 went on this trip with a pair of EM5 mk1’s and all shone brightly.
The files seem reborn and I am a little sad I have not seen them like this before. I am also more than a little sad the EM5’s did not get more of a life with C1, which may well have fundamentally changed how I shot and processed with them.
I am excited by the potential, my eyes opening to more files I gave up on, some that I missed and a few that will be different for sure.
My “Reservoir Dogs” shot. The version I have been uploading from my blog files is colder, harder and less balanced overall. I used the brush tool a lot to avoid global issues, especially in shadow noise and I clearly remember being a little addicted to over the top colour, often applied just to see what would happen.
Starting methodically with the 2015, files in order, I have culled 4000 downloads to about 1000 with internet potential, some already visited, some not. From here the much more stringent question of print level quality comes into play and from there I will decide on (from the prints) which ones I will include in the book or books.
The original was frustrating, leaning towards cool and odd colour. This has been slightly warmed and that is all. The soft/sharp dynamic seems to be more pronounced and cleaner. There is a slight hint of Magenta in the file that I could remove, but when both C1 and LR agreed that it should be there will accept it as a true representation (often the windows had a slight cast).
Aster the initial reduction, I am expecting a roughly 10% keeper rate at each level, so from the above 1000 about 100 will get printed as my long term portfolio, 10 will make it to a book with about 100 needed maximum.
Feels about right. I have had these kicking around for years and only a handfull of each group have the visual endurance to go further.
Our first and still best visit to this quirky cemetary outside Kyoto. The stone statues only date back to the 1970’s, some even have head phones on! From just this one short visit I have a series of images that excite me. It is like revisiting the country and reshooting with different cameras.
The surprise to me though is a few of the contenders are not the ones I expected. I will have to go slow and be open minded or I may miss files. I may even relook at the original files once I have gone through just to make sure I do not miss any more.
Japan has so many interesting sights, many just mundane places. Osaka rail station.
Is it possible I may even develope a mind set I have since lost, just by trawling through these again. Maybe we should all go back to old projects and not only re-process them with newer techniques, but at the same time learn from them, discover something we have lost.
An old favourite, I think now it fails to make the grade.
We are going again later in the year so I am on a kind of time limit of at least needing to know what I have already, possibly reinventing my processes from here on with that in mind, allowing a full stop to be firmly set.
It rained so much on this Spring trip. Hiroshima, Kyoto, most of Tokyo were “umbrella” days, giving the trip a theme and probably shifting our outlook of Japan. On a differnet trip, we sufferred a heat wave, so like anywhere when is as important as where.
A photographer reborn? A lot of “re’s” above so something is stirring from the past.