So I used compositing for this one, which I mentioned briefly in week 6, but it's being utilized slightly differently here. Instead of using the component images to balance the lighting in a static scene, here it's being used to track and then show the whole progress of a moving subject (thanks to Ben Woodward for making himself available for this one)
This also seems like a good opportunity to write about editing philosophy. I used to be very bothered by the idea of changing up a photo too much when I first got started with photography, an approach that would be well suited to photojournalism or forensics (no material changes allowed at all.) I've softened on that stance quite a bit over the years, as you can tell from comparing one of the original shots to the final image:
This also seems like a good opportunity to write about editing philosophy. I used to be very bothered by the idea of changing up a photo too much when I first got started with photography, an approach that would be well suited to photojournalism or forensics (no material changes allowed at all.) I've softened on that stance quite a bit over the years, as you can tell from comparing one of the original shots to the final image:
There's a couple reasons for this. The biggest one revolves around what the purpose of the final image actually is, because that should determine what restrictions you as the creator impose during the editing process. To take that forensics example again, there's potentially serious consequences if certain elements are removed from a photo of say, a crime scene, in order to draw attention to the thing that is meant to be the subject. In my real estate work, the purpose is to show a property in quite literally its best light as well as giving a maximal view of the rooms depicted, even if the aspect is not the same as what the human eye would see from the exact same spot. This allows for a certain level of flexibility when it comes to removing things like clutter on the kitchen bench, but also restrains you from getting rid of permanent features that may not be the most photogenic to look at. Specific to this image, I presume it's obvious to everyone that I did not, in fact, find six other Ben clones and manage to get them all lined up to perfection just for this image. So because it's obviously not an image meant to be taken literally, I feel justified in removing distractions in order to place the focus on the action itself and the effect I was trying to achieve.
It's also the reason I named my company Resonance Images, rather than something that used the words photos or photography, because I use them to mean different things. To me, broadly speaking, a photo is what comes straight out of the back of the camera, while an image is the final product after any editing has been done. So I wanted my company name to reflect that I care about the whole process from start to finish, rather than just the photo capture process. To be clear, it's not something I'm trying to turn into an industry standard, it's just what I mean and other photographers are welcome to use the terms interchangeably as far as I'm concerned. But it helped me to resolve the tension I felt between the desire to be authentic in my work and the kind of edits I wanted to be able to make for the sake of creativity, so I'm gonna stick with it.
EXIF data:
1/500, f/8, ISO 160
30mm focal length
(all component photos)
1/500, f/8, ISO 160
30mm focal length
(all component photos)