Ben Krasnow of the YouTube channel Applied Science shows how to make images on living plant leaves in his latest video.

Inspired by a 1976 video created by The Royal Institution, Krasnow takes “photosynthesis photography” to new levels by building his own camera and creating an original photo on a leaf.

Before getting to that level of complexity, it is worth looking at the much more basic versions of making images on plant leaves, also called “chlorophyll prints.” A popular way to make chlorophyll prints is to expose an existing image onto a leaf, treating the leaf itself like photographic paper.

This distinct photographic printing process relies heavily on a plant’s natural biological processes rather than putting artificial or harmful chemicals onto the leaf. By controlling the pattern in which sunlight falls onto a plant leaf, the areas that receive the most light will perform photosynthesis more rapidly. If the plant has excess energy, it will store some of the energy it does not need in the form of a starch granule. During the development process, the starch is stained dark blue, revealing the patterned light that fell on the leaf during the “printing” process.

Once a leaf has been exposed, it must be developed. The two-step process begins with an eight-minute boiling alcohol bath to remove the chlorophyll from the leaf. Pure ethanol is the recommended option, although it can be challenging to find.

The boiling process heavily dries out the leaf, which makes it crispy. A couple of minutes in water will help rehydrate the leaf before the final step in the development process.

The next step is when the magic happens. With a rehydrated but now very pale leaf, putting it in an iodine bath exposes the starch granules hidden beneath the leaf’s surface. These granules are organized according to whatever a person used to control how sunlight fell on the leaf.

The iodine solution creates a chemical compound with the starch granules, and as Krasnow notes, the risk of overexposure is minimal with this process, so photographers should just keep a leaf in the iodine solution until it does not get any darker.

Once complete, the chlorophyll print can be dried and preserved. These prints can be surprisingly detailed and offer exceptional resolution, as highlighted by artist Almudena Romero in an article on Lomography.

These prints are an enjoyable, relatively straightforward project that is safe for all ages. However, Krasnow wanted to take it further and build a camera that projects an original image onto a leaf rather than relying upon an existing print to control the light that strikes the leaf.

He built a massive lens using a large Fresnel element on the front and a single glass lens on the back. The colossal lens brings in considerable light and creates a large image circle through the back. Krasnow says it is an f/0.5 lens, so it is very bright.

Adjusting the distance between the elements changes the lens’s effective focal length, and he ultimately settled on a lens that is about 100mm. While the homemade lens has some issues with aberrations, it is not problematic for the photosynthesis photography project.

To see more from Ben Krasnow, visit Applied Science on YouTube.

Image credits: Screenshots from Krasnow’s photosynthesis photography video

Photographer Phillip Lehans created the book “Village Beaches,” which includes a series of photographs taken at East Hampton beaches using a pinhole camera. We spoke with Lehans to find out more.

Tell us about your background and your work as a photographer.

I’ve been a photographer for the last 29 years, ever since I got a camera as a middle-school graduation present from my father. Friends, vacation photos, and landscapes were my main subjects and I got my first taste of the darkroom in high school. That’s probably about the time I began to view photography as an art form, when I was hands-on through the whole process. I had always gravitated to the arts but there was something just so fascinating and soothing about the darkroom, and yes, magical. From that point on, I mostly left drawing and painting behind and went all-in on photography. I began stringing for newspapers, studied photography in college and went back to school when the medium transitioned to digital. The new technology was really exciting but required a whole different set of skills. Film photography felt as though it was doomed to be entirely phased-out but thankfully it’s held on and has even seen a resurgence. 

Can you talk a little about your latest book, “Village Beaches”?

“Village Beaches” was in every way the right project at the right time, a creative response to what was known as the “new normal.” Summer on the East End is always so hectic with most of my time being spent running a photo studio. In-season, it monopolizes the majority of my attention and creative energy. When the pandemic hit, it was basically radio silence. Nothing was happening. As brutal as this was from an income standpoint, it created an opportunity to develop a project and work in a way that attracted me to photography in the first place, as an analog, tangible art form. Over the summer of 2020, I shot 200 rolls of film for what became a very meditative, etherial series of images. Using a camera without a viewfinder, screen or any immediate method of feedback was also part of the appeal. Relinquishing a certain level of control shifted the creative process to a more intuitive and naturalistic experience.

You use a pinhole camera to capture the beaches of East Hampton. What made you choose this medium?

I had purchased this wooden pinhole camera years earlier and had used it intermittently for fun. It’s not the kind of thing a client generally requests so it spent a lot of time on the shelf. It’s a miniaturized version of the origin of photography, a camera obscura, basically a box with a tiny hole in the front, no lens. The pace of the world during the pandemic called for this medium. It’s a slow, patient way of working. With exposures ranging from two seconds to a half hour, there can be a lot of down time. With nowhere to go and nothing to do that summer, hustling wasn’t really part of the culture. Exposures with longer durations were moments to settle in and absorb my surroundings, which was an excellent use of time. 

This became your pandemic project?

Yes, my “pandemic project” is what I affectionately refer to it as. From shooting the first frame to delivering the final manuscript to my publisher took exactly a year. The ritual of setting my alarm every morning for quarter to five established a routine and sense of purpose at a time when I and much of the population was deemed “unessential.” I hadn’t done any all-consuming personal work in a long time so for better or worse, the pandemic response created the environment for me to develop a project and work in a way I wouldn’t otherwise have had the capacity to do. All the photography happened in the summer. Through fall and into winter I scanned almost 900 pieces of film for which I put together an abridged demo book. Once I got the green light from my publisher, I began to build the full version, wrote the introduction, and petitioned my friend Michael to write the foreword. By the time all the parts were in order, it was May of 2021 and the East End exploded with its characteristic, seasonal influx. 

Have you always had a strong connection with nature?

My connection to nature didn’t play as prominent a role in the beginning. The project started out a bit more mechanical, probably because I was getting reacquainted with the camera and feeling out the direction the series would take. I feel guilty sometimes when I don’t take full-enough advantage of my proximity to the ocean but a stronger bond came with familiarity. As I became immersed on a more-regular basis, I found myself increasingly in tune with nature’s rhythm and the photography almost became an accompaniment. With many of the exposures in the ten to fifteen minute-range, much of the process was out of my hands. All too often, my photography is a lot about the gear, the lighting, the lenses and the accessories. In the case of this book, nature’s influence overshadowed the equipment, which was an absolutely refreshing way to work. 

What other types of cameras do you often use? We see you do a lot of work with film.

So much of the work I do is digital. It’s probably 80/20 digital to film though I’d like to reverse that. Most photography these days call for digital. Clients generally need photos quickly, almost in real-time. I don’t really like how the medium has morphed in to a largely superficial, disposable craft. For this reason, I try and separate my digital “jobs” from my film-based personal-work and art. For more spontaneous and casual shooting I have a couple 35mm Canon film cameras along with a beautiful 1934 Leica. For portrait work, I really enjoy using my Contax 645 and Pentax 67. They’re slow to shoot with which feels more deliberate and with the larger film format, the images they produce have more presence.

What about the East End inspires you?

On the East End, I’d say I’m most inspired by the people I meet. It’s a very driven population, lots of people pushing themselves, experimenting, creating things, doing their best to chart their own course. Also it’s an amazing place to find collaborators, someone trying to find the missing piece for something they’re working on. People asking, “How can we make something great?” Even in the off-season, it’s not a sedentary population. 

“Village Beaches” is available locally at BookHampton and Sylvester & Co. among other specialty boutiques.  Prints are available through the artist’s website, lehans.com with a select series on display at the Monika Olko Gallery in Sag Harbor. 

Jessica Mackin-Cipro

Co-Publisher/Editor

Jessica Mackin-Cipro is an editor and writer from the East End of Long Island. She has won numerous NYPA and PCLI awards for journalism and social media. She was previously the Executive Editor of The Independent Newspaper.

Over the course of this summer, I ventured on a personal project aimed at re-lighting my passion for creating images in the way I used to.

Despite having immersed myself in AI tools over the past year, I had scarcely picked up a camera. Determined to break free from this trend, I set out to craft something truly original.

Visualising the concept

I conceptualized a scene where a woman finds herself amidst nature, accompanied by a colossal hand emerging from the ground and grasping a giant light bulb. This artwork, titled “Inspiration Illuminated,” serves as a sort of sequel to my previous piece, “Creative Block.” 

Through this endeavour, my objective was to demonstrate that I can craft captivating narrative-driven images without relying on AI tools or stock imagery. Each minute detail within the composition was crafted by hand or captured in the natural environment. Of course, I put it all together in Photoshop and other Adobe tools.

Creating the elements

The creative process started with an idea and sketching, followed by the crafting of each element. I crafted the hand, first making the plaster mould of my own hand and then using that to create the hand from acrylic resin.

You can see the parts of the process in the video below. I also constructed a miniature landscape using moss, stones, and intricately painted components outside the table of my house.

Earlier on, I had purchased a battery-powered light bulb, which I positioned within the hand’s grasp. It took some hours to perfect the evening lighting and shoot all the needed elements of the backplate image, after which I set about preparing the backdrop for the final image.

Shooting the image

Naturally, the central figure, the woman, needed to be integrated. To this end, I reached out to Taina Törmänen, whom I had long aspired to collaborate with.

Ultimately, a photo shoot was arranged, resulting in the essential component of my artwork. After this, an extensive post-processing phase followed, involving attention to detail: merging the elements seamlessly, refining the tonal palette, and various masking techniques.

And now, after countless hours of dedication and hard work, “Inspiration Illuminated” stands complete. This project, as I mentioned earlier, was a personal challenge—a means to throw myself beyond the comforts of AI that have made the creative process so effortless.

AI versus composite photography

While AI tools undoubtedly offer efficiency and boundless creative avenues, this project holds a significance that goes beyond mere utility. It embodies a level of dedication and emotion that AI-generated pieces sometimes might lack.

Though I remain doing my own and client projects with AI tools for the freedom and efficiency they provide, this project served as a reminder of my artistic roots. The endeavour of putting such immense effort into a single image has made the journey itself as valuable as the resulting art piece.

About the author

Antti Karppinen has won dozens of international awards for visual artistry & commercial photography and belongs to a new generation of image artisans to whom all things are possible. You can find out more about Antti on his website and follow his work on Instagram and Facebook. This article was also published here and shared with permission.

They wear out shoe leather. They talk to strangers. They move through our shared spaces like ballerinas.

For them, the public is the source of their art.

San Diego street photographers like Ariana Drehsler spend their days depicting ordinary life. Drehsler is also a photographer for Voice of San Diego.

“I actually started doing some street photography before I got into photojournalism,” she said. ”Just walking around taking photos.”

Street photography is one of the oldest photographic styles, according to Chantel Paul, the galleries and exhibitions coordinator for San Diego State University.

”Street photography is a style of photography that quite often is referred to as something that is really capturing the energy or essence of life on the street,” she said.

The desire to document San Diego comes out of a sense of pride, she said.

”I think the fact that people are working in our city in this way, it also elevates San Diego in a way,” Paul said. ”To say people want to share what the city is, they want to create a portrait of the city.”

Jason Santiago, another street photographer, said this style is a cousin to photojournalism.

”Street’s like photojournalism without purpose,” he said. ”You know, I’m just documenting everyday life.”

Drehsler said even on assignment, sometimes the street gives her something beautiful.

”Months ago when I photographed the Point In Time count I saw this woman at 7 a.m. feeding the birds, the light was amazing and you see all these birds,” she said.

Street photography is about the public and it’s made in public. So in some ways, it is public art. And it can be seen by the public on social media sites like Instagram, Paul said.

”You can filter your feed to look at certain hashtags, to find certain accounts, and then you can keep following those, there’s a huge community aspect to Instagram,” she said.

Michael Buescher’s Journey with Camera And Photography

Photo Credits Michael Buescher
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Michael Buescher Shares His Journey With Camera And Photography

Russia and Ukraine are still at war. Life is hard for people living in these impoverished conditions. Everyone is watching these unfortunate times of the two nations through the lens of photographers. But have you ever thought about what a photographer goes through? Or what state of mind they are in during their shoots? It can be a pure bliss or a complete chaos. Today our guest is Michael Buescher. He is a model, a professional dancer, a photographer, and an activist. Let’s hear from Michael Buescher about his journey to the Palistian through his lens!

Michael Buescher have been a photographer for over 20 years. The passion of picture making and collaborating with wonderful people has been the fuel for all this time and the journey ahead.

Michael is a proud member of NPS (Nikon Professional Services) and IATSE (International Cinematographers Union). Shooting in film and television production has been an incredible asset in developing my relationships with his business clients.

Photo credit Michael Buescher
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Michael tell us about yourself a bit….

I am Michael Buescher. I have been a model, professional dancer, photographer, and activist. I like to think my work has been inspired by goodness, education, inclusivity, justice, and a passion to grow and protect those who are most vulnerable. I love art and creativity and hearing about the stories of others. I can often be heard to say, ‘People are my entertainment” because I am fascinated by what we do and say and how they make their way in this world. I hope whoever reads this finds a way to connect with me so I can get to know you also.

Photo credit Michael Buescher
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When did you decide to be a photographer?
I think I fell in love with photography over a period of many years.

I can’t say when the penny dropped but there were so many good experiences along the way. One photograph that always stayed in my mind was a black and white print of Miles Davis playing the trumpet. His forearm was flexing so much it looked like his arm was just fused with the instrument. It was quite incredible. It didn’t occur to me in that moment how such an image could be made or that I could also become a photographer and create such shots. But years later time and circumstance conspired to create an opportunity and I jumped right in. I didn’t know how things were going to play out. Photography still seemed confusing, daunting, and expensive.  But 20 years later I have a successful career and I have had a lot fun along the way.

Before all of that, I started ‘playing’ with photography as a teenager. I bought my first camera, a Pentax ME Super. Unique to the model it had shutter speed control buttons on the top near the shutter release and that seemed really sophisticated and cool for a beginner.

How was the photography during those times? Please share your experience.
I didn’t use the camera too much till I went on a cross-Europe bicycle trip from England to Israel a couple of years later. This was a time when the world looked very different.

In 1989 there was no internet, there were no cell phones, or small electronic devices to aid a world traveler. Every day is an adventure because you don’t know what you are going to find, where you are going to sleep or eat, or who you are going to meet. And that is very exciting. I loved bringing my camera out to point it at things, but the film was expensive to buy and develop. In some cases, I held onto it for months before I could get it to a lab for processing. From that wonderful travel experience, some incredible images were created.

Photo credit Michael Buescher
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Please give us an insight into your traveling journey and your photography.
Visiting Beersheba, Jerusalem, and Dehaisha a Palestinian refugee camp I compiled a little story about life in this small area of the Middle East. At this time it was the period of the first ‘Intifada’, the armed uprising of Palestinians to reclaim the occupied territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. For several years international news outlets showed guns being fired rocks being thrown, and people suffering and dying. Particularly young Palestinian children were becoming involved in the conflicts getting caught in the gunfire and getting killed. The world was outraged at the image of young children being killed by soldiers with guns for doing no more than throwing stones

It was against this backdrop that I visited Dehaisha. The settlement which was next to the main highway had a very high fence to protect passing vehicles from rocks. Access points to the settlement were guarded by Israeli soldiers. They did not want to allow us access to Dehaisha, nevertheless, we had done our research and we knew they could not prevent us from entering a public place. The rest of the story is largely told in pictures. We met very friendly Palestinian adults who were eager to show foreigners their homes and share tea. We also met screaming mobs of children who wanted to touch us because we wore Western clothes and looked so different. Although the language barrier was significant, we walked peacefully through Dehaisha camp under the protection of our new Palestinian friends. It was a simple journey but with a profound meaning for me. I was not a hired professional but I found something I was willing to put myself at some risk to accomplish and I believed in greatly. Although only still in its infancy the photographer in me was born this Day in Dehaisha.

Share a life-altering event that helped you in some way.
Well some eventful years passed, and I had decided after doing some modeling for a local photographer and being really intrigued by the photographic process that I would take my own photography a little more seriously. It was quite a big mental step because it would take a lot of money, which I didn’t have, just to get started. But the day when I woke up and my heart and mind were utterly set to make the leap I received a pre-approved loan for 10,500.00 in the mail from the local Credit Union I had never received a preapproved loan in my life. There was no other way to see this as anything but a message from the universe.

So away I went! I shot a lot of things over the next while and then months later another fortuitous opportunity. I was tipped off by the same colleague who I had modeled for years earlier and she mentioned that a local director needed a photographer for their short film which was going to play at that year’s Vancouver International Film Festival.

I didn’t know too much about movie sets at that time, but I got some good shots, and the experience of set life really changed me on that day. I was so impressed by the ingenuity, creativity passion, and hard work of this crew and cast.  I kind of fell in love with the whole process of filmmaking. Over the next several years I worked for over 75 local directors on independent film projects, and I worked for every single film organization in this city multiple times over and always on a volunteer basis gaining valuable experience and connections. The rest you can kind of say is history. I got my first big break on a TV series out of town and things sort of flowed from there. I have now worked for every major Studio including Warner Brothers, Universal, Disney, Netflix, and Apple TV. It’s been quite a journey and a life-transforming process! Set life for a still photographer is somewhat like being an ancient Japanese Bunraku puppet theatre artist.

Few words for the readers. And I won’t say too much more about that. Go to the NFB of Canada and find out for yourself and look up the earliest recorded works of this wonderful puppet theatre – it’s much more interesting and powerful to tell this kind of story through the poetic metaphor. I think you would be delighted!!

Check out more about him here — Michael Buescher

Today, we would like to introduce you to a unique photo project by the Czech photographer Dita Pepe. The series, titled ‘Self-portraits,’ began in 1999 and features the author alongside strangers within their own families, often as their doppelganger. Several years ago, we featured some photographs from this series, which showcased Dita posing with male models exclusively. However, this time, we aim to share more photos from this collection, featuring both men and women.

Scroll down to discover how Dita Pepe seamlessly integrates herself into other families and learn more about the series from the artist herself. If you would like to view more photos previously featured in our Bored Panda post, you can click here.

More info: ditapepe.cz | Instagram | Facebook | Self-Portraits

Before works began to transform the notorious Villa 31 slum into an official Buenos Aires “barrio”, Chilean photographer Cristóbal Palma documented its distinct architecture.

Villa 31 is the most well-known “villa miseria” in the Argentinian capital, home to more than 40,000 people including both Chilean nationals and immigrants from neighbouring countries.

Palma started visiting in 2019 when work was just starting to integrate the neighbourhood into the infrastructure of the city, with sewage systems, running water and connection to the power grid.

His photographs reveal the ad-hoc buildings and dense streetscapes that defined this unplanned part of the city.

“It was unique from other kinds of favelas because the pressure on land was so great,” Palma told Dezeen.

“It had a funny kind of metropolitan feel because it was so dense, with up to six or seven storeys of construction. I got the sense that, although it was very poor, there was a lot of pressure to have land there.”

Villa 31 has a definitive border, bounded by a highway on one side and a railway line and station on the other.

This fuelled its isolation, despite a location close to the city centre and adjacent to the affluent Recoleta neighbourhood. Since the 1930s, it had developed without any centralised planning or regulation.

As a result, the resident-built homes were built along narrow, unpaved streets. Cables hung overhead, illegally drawing electricity from nearby power lines, while rain caused the streets to fill up with polluted water.

“The whole thing was very precarious,” Palma said. “Everything felt like it was just about to collapse.”

“But it was also a kind of paradigm of what a city could be if there were no cars,” he added.

“The way people interacted with public spaces felt, in a way, very sophisticated.”

In 2016, the city government started drawing up plans to redevelop Villa 31 and improve conditions for its residents.

The project was not welcomed by all; media coverage revealed that many residents were fearful of the changes, with concerns they would be forced to leave their homes without any eventual benefit.

“It’s very politically charged,” said Palma, “because so many different people have tried to do different things there over the years”.

The scheme, funded by the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, has already transformed the newly renamed Barrio 31, with more changes still to come.

As well as paved roads, sewage and power, the neighbourhood now has three schools and a bank, and is served by buses for the first time. Residents can also get mortgages to buy their homes.

Palma felt it was important to create a record of how things were before redevelopment began, offering insight into what life was like for the residents of this neighbourhood.

“In Latin America, these kinds of favelas are usually on the periphery; you don’t get to see them unless you go there. But this one was so very present,” he said.

His photos show buildings rising up around the highway flyover, made from an assortment of different materials, while others show rooftops covered with materials, washing lines, water tanks and paddling pools.

He also captured portraits of some residents within their homes.

“From the outside, it looked very homogeneous,” he said. “But once I went in, I noticed all of these different sub-neighbourhoods, some more affluent and some more precarious.”

“It was so dramatic with the highway going through,” he continued. “Some people could actually touch the highway from their bedrooms.”

Another thing the photographer observed was the lack of nature within the neighbourhood, besides the occasional tree. “It was a big contrast with the rest of the city,” he said.

Palma is one of the judges of this year’s Dezeen Awards. He has run his own photography studio, Estudio Palma, since 2008 and is one of the leading architectural photographers in Latin America.

He is currently showing four large-scale prints from the Villa 31 series in an exhibition at Galería Gallo, which is part of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile in Santiago.

The exhibition Construcción Villa 31 is on show at Galería Gallo from 10 August to 4 September. See Dezeen Events Guide for more architecture and design events around the world.

In John Berger’s highly regarded book Ways of Seeing, he closed his chapter on the nude by posing a challenge: “Choose from this book an image of a traditional nude. Transform the woman into a man. Either in your mind’s eye or by drawing on the reproduction. Then notice the violence which that transformation does. Not to the image, but to the assumptions of a likely viewer.”

It seems a simple experiment. Can we change white into black and black into white, flip the script and see it anew? It is what Berlin-based photographer Hani Hape has attempted to do in her new photographic series, Helmut Newton As Seen By Hani Hape, which features recreations of Newton’s famous – or infamous – overtly sexual photographs of female nudes, replacing them with images of men.

Talking to the German website Monopol, in an article headlined “It’s not easy to find men who drop their pants”, Hape explains that the idea came to her after she began questioning the lack of sexualised male nudes in art. “How can it be,” she says, “that the world is full of female nudity and there are hardly any pictures of erotic men? Women are likely to have a similar interest in their sexual partners as men do. Newton’s work is the prime example of the female nude photograph. He created icons with them.”

Hape is right. These “icons” no doubt stem from a culture dictated by (male) old masters, who idealised the female nude through their portrayals of Venus. Images that have negatively enforced gender roles, perpetuated an inherent heteronormativity, and emphasised how, as Berger wrote, “men act and women appear”.

Hape plays with this idea further. Her photos have now been published in a book titled Sakura, meaning cherry blossom, which weighs 1.2kg. This is in direct contrast to Sumo, the 35kg book Newton published. In this way, Hape is questioning, literally, the cultural weight and price of a man’s art over a woman’s, given that copy No 1 of Sumo fetched a record 620,000 German-marks (about £272,000) at auction in 2000. Would a female photographer’s book go for the same price? And what does it tell us about our society if objectified images of female nudes can fetch such huge sums?

I am also fascinated by how widely accepted Newton’s images are, despite the criticism that his work is “pornographic-chic”. Although the response to Hape’s work has been predominantly positive, some objections were voiced by men. And when she asked hotels to exhibit her work, she was told, on one occasion, that it didn’t “fit the setup of the house”. This speaks volumes about the normalisation of female nudes in such spaces, where they are seen as chic (and unthreatening). Clearly, we have a long way to go before the male gaze stops being the default gaze.

Newton’s images are, fundamentally, derogatory towards women. But I don’t agree that this means we should objectify men. History, especially art history, has scraped away at women’s identities, valuing them as the object and dismissing their individuality. Although Hape mentions in the interview that her male models are “choreographers, computer scientists, psychologists”, they still don’t feel like much more than just a spectacle for my gaze.

Additionally, there is an ahistorical element to Hape’s images. The objectification of women has been bound up in shame for millennia, ever since Eve was blamed for tempting Adam in Genesis, the woman’s divine punishment being to remain forever subservient to the man. Consequently, men may not feel shame when they look at these pictures in the same way that women may when looking at Newton’s.

So what is the answer? I don’t think sexism can be solved by simply flipping something on its head. It’s about creating a fresh space, a new set of rules that benefit everyone. It doesn’t work to have one gender dominating another, nor for that to be reversed. I believe the value of Hape’s series is to spark a discussion around these complex issues. Her work also challenges Berger’s remarks. What if, rather than switching the gender of the subject, we could instead switch the gender of the creator? What would change if the creator had a similar anatomy to the subject’s, and who therefore understood its depths? It’s a potent thought, given Berger failed to reference a single artwork by a woman in his book.

Explaining why she referenced Newton, Hape says: “I didn’t want to do a niche project, but was looking for a strong reference that many people know, to challenge established viewing habits.” She is definitely on the right track here: sometimes you need a strong reference to challenge long-held assumptions. The discussion can lead to bigger and more important changes – and, ultimately, pave the way to equality.

This is part three of a three part series on editing wildlife images. You can see part one here, and part two here. 

HSL/Colour

We don’t use this a lot, but occasionally it’s handy to dampen down colours which appear unnaturally oversaturated, such as acid-yellow flowers.  If you use a polarising filter, watch out for foliage turning electric-green, and adjust the hue and saturation to combat this effect.

Targeting specific colours can be an effective way of helping make your subject shine.  If we’ve photographed a lion, with muted fur tones of yellow and brown, against a wet season grassy background, with verdant hues, we might drop the saturation of those greens so they are not out-competing the animal. 

We might even reduce the luminance of the greens, to darken the background if the animal is a light-toned subject.  As ever, subtlety is key.

Noise and sharpness

Once we’re happy with the image in Lightroom, we’ll finish it in Photoshop.  We prefer to do our dust removal in Photoshop, using a combination of soft-edged Clone stamp and Healing brush tools.

If there’s any noise reduction needed, we do this in Photoshop, using the Topaz Denoise AI plug-in. Topaz is a very powerful tool, but noise reduction should only be used on images that really need it, rather than by default.

Overuse can give a plasticky effect, soften the image, and produce random artefacts, especially around highlights.  We find the auto setting in Topaz far too strong and generally set a very low level of Reduce Noise, and the minimum level of sharpening possible.

As a rule we don’t sharpen our images before archiving them, other than occasionally applying a little local sharpening to, for example, an animal’s eyes if the focus was a tiny bit off.  Overall image sharpening should be applied according to the intended use, an image for the web will need very different settings to an image which is to be printed.

So we export our images from Lightroom as 16 bit tiffs, do any necessary work in Photoshop, then save them for archiving as uncompressed 8 bit tiffs, with no sharpening applied. 

Only when we come to use individual images for specific end purposes will we apply the appropriate amount of sharpening.  We have Actions set up in Photoshop to batch resize and sharpen images for various uses including Facebook, Instagram, etc.

invert, and then darkened to make the lion ‘pop’. This was further enhanced with tone sliders. White balance temp and vibrance were increased significantly, to bring up the golden hues that were lost in the RAW file.
Canon EOS 1Dx II, 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L lens at 400mm, 1/400 sec, f/11. ISO 500″>

The final edit

When we’ve worked through a series of images and output them fully processed, we’ll do a final edit, comparing all our images and deleting any that don’t make the grade. Working as a couple allows us to give objective feedback on each other’s images and point out the shots, that if we’re truly honest with ourselves, don’t quite work.

The final task is to keyword our images to make them searchable. We keyword our images individually in Photoshop, creating templates on the fly for use with multiple images of the same subject. 

It’s a laborious, painstaking process but ensures we are happy each image is thoroughly and accurately keyworded with all the relevant metadata fields filled in.

It works for us, as we edit our shoots very hard and only keep a relatively small number of images, but If you’re dealing with lots of images it makes more sense to do your keywording in Lightroom, where you can apply relevant data to multiple images at a time.  You can create sets of keywords in Lightroom which you can apply regularly, for different species, locations, etc.  

Keywording is essential if you wish to submit your images to photo agencies, but it’s also valuable for your own uses, especially as your image archive grows. 

Be thorough but relevant with your keywords, including the obvious info such as species’ common and scientific names, location, and behaviour, but also any relevant concept words, such as ‘fierce’ or ‘cute’.

We also include photo techniques, where relevant, such as ‘high key’ or ‘monochrome’.

This is useful if we’re looking for images to illustrate specific photographic approaches, perhaps for a slideshow or article.   And don’t forget to include copyright and contact details in the metadata.

Once we’ve completed keywording, we’re finally ready to archive the images. We save the tiffs and RAW files on three different hard drives, plus a fourth kept off-site and updated every couple of months. 

We also convert the images to high quality JPEGs and upload them to a cloud storage service, which means we can access them when we’re away from home, so long as we have internet access.

A final word

Perhaps more than most photographic genres, wildlife is unforgiving of excess in the digital darkroom. 

With post-processing we’re generally aiming for a final image with a good range of tones and no clipping, natural colours, a complementary, but subdued background, and emphasis on the animal through the restrained enhancement of contrast and clarity, colour saturation and luminance, and differential focus effects.  

But then sometimes we apply more radical transformations for creative effect and to push at the boundaries of the genre. Either way, there’s a balancing act to perform. The outcome should be like successful cosmetic surgery – the appearance enhanced, but no signs of the operation that produced it.