Kit Sims-Taylor

Some Thoughts on the Digital Darkroom

Is it real or is it digital?

This is a hot topic among photographers. How far should we go in using digital technology to alter the image that our camera has captured? Is there some ethical boundary we are crossing when we delete, add, or alter some of the millions of pixels that make up our photographs?

Part of the answer is that there are very different types of photography. On one end of the scale are the abstract compositions of photographic artists such as John Paul Camponigro—it is obvious to the viewer that these works are products of the imagination. At the other end of the scale is photojournalism. We expect James Hill's stunning photographs of the war in Afghanistan for the New York Times to be accurate representations of what he has seen. There are journalistic standards in this case, and to digitally move bodies or tanks around would violate those standards. Of course it would be just as serious a violation of journalistic standards for a war photographer to hire models and make-up artists to stage photographs. We must keep in mind that many forms of photographic manipulation precede the digital era.

Another part of the answer is that photographers have always manipulated visual reality in a number of ways. Film cannot capture as wide a range of light and darkness as our eyes can—so the exposure we pick will emphasize some parts of the scene more than others. My "Money Plant" photograph was taken in a dark forest on an overcast day. But I could still clearly see the jumble of plant growth behind the money plant in the foreground. By adding a small jolt of flash and using a small aperture I was able to emphasize the foreground plant and mute the background.

And lenses cannot hold as much in focus as our eyes can. Focusing sharply on something in the foreground may leave the background out of focus. The photographer has a lot of leeway here— as how much will be in focus and how obviously out of focus some parts of the scene will be is affected by the aperture we use. In my "Japanese Garden" photograph, I focused on the foreground branches. By using a large aperture, I rendered the background even more out-of-focus than it would have been with a smaller aperture.

My current use of digital image technology falls into four areas:

Minor adjustments and touch-ups: Adjustments of tone and contrast, cropping, touch-ups to remove dust spots—these are all things we have traditionally done in wet darkrooms. The digital darkroom has simply made them easier. We can try out different crops on the monitor before printing; increase or decrease contrast and visually evaluate the changes on the monitor before making a print; etc.

Bigger adjustments and touch-ups: The camera is on the tripod and the ocean scene is perfectly framed by a log-strewn beach. Now you are just waiting for the right moment during tonights' sunset. The moment arrives—and so does the jogger. The digital darkroom has made it much easier to eliminate such flaws from our photographs.

My "Steamclock" photograph had a fairly serious flaw. Steam had condensed on the inside of the glass pane covering the clock face. It appeared that the clock face was out of focus, yet it is a focal point of the composition. Fortunately, I had taken another shot from the other side of the clock, and was able to lift the clock face from that photo and patch it in.

Overcoming the limitations of film: Compare these two sunset scenes. The one with the seagull is a pretty traditional silhouette. By exposing for the sunset, the foreground is rendered as nearly black. Had the exposure been set to render the seagull and railing as I saw them, the sky would have been washed out and the sunset would have been lost. The other scene—the sunset over the log-strewn beach—is combined from two different exposures—a longer exposure for the foreground and a shorter one for the water and sky. The result of combining the two exposures of the same scene is a photograph that is much closer to what we actually see than we could get from either exposure alone.

Obvious digital alterations: One technique I have been exploring is using digital effects to gain more separation of the subject from the the background. two columbine were nearly lost against the strong colors of the background mountain and sky. I used Photoshop's 'colored pencil' effect filter to mute the background while leaving the two columbine unaltered.