synthaetic synapse

Not only is this a description of how I do what I do, you can also use it as a guide for your own nature photography and digitography.

Photographic Basis

My older (2002-2004) works were shot with a Nikon D100 and various lenses (my favorites being an AF VR-Nikkor 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6D, and an AF Nikkor 24-120mm f/3.5-5.6D). Newer works, depending on the situation, were shot with either a Nikon D70 or a Nikon D2X. All three cameras have been kept up-to-date with the firmware upgrades, since they are formative to all aspects of my business. Additional lenses that have found their way into my finer works include the AF-S VR-Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8G (occasionally with an AF-S Nikkor TC-20E II teleconverter), an AF-S Nikkor DX 12-24mm f/4G, a Sigma DC 17-70mm f/2.8-4.5 macro lens, and a Lensbaby G3. At the launch of this website, Lensbaby photos were not included.

Low-Contrast Capture

I am partly a technician at heart, and to be honest, there is just as much, if not more, technicality that occurs after a shot as before and during it. I learned two things early on: 1. that digital photographs need to be taken slightly over-bright because there’s not enough separation of data in the lower light ranges, and 2. that I would have the best post-production results in Adobe PhotoShop or Nikon Capture if I shot with low contrast. In other words, may of the histograms of my base shots look very similar to the histogram of the original digitograph of Rock Island Passage, on the left (important note: this is the PhotoShop histogram, not the camera histogram. the camera’s histogram is rarely conclusive).

Knowing from my own experience the success I’ve had with shooting low-contrast, I feel it’s important to point out that if you’re interested in having the most flexibility in post-production, the greatest control over color tone, depth, and range, and the ability to create more than one version of a piece, then low-contrast capture is just as important as shooting in your camera’s native format (RAW) and producing your results in 16-bit color. Even if you refuse to shoot RAW, shooting low-contrast will certainly provide even greater control over your 8-bit JPEG.

Given the advantages of low-contrast capture, certain other camera settings will also enhance your digitographic experience.

Camera Settings

There isn’t a digital camera on the market today that is going to match your specific artistic inclination. As phenomenal as the high-end cameras are, if you’re interested in making your digitograph look like something other than what it actually was, the last thing you should do is leave quality, sensitivity, color, and sharpening settings up to the camera’s limited set of processing algorithms, when there are far more expansive and dynamic algorithms in virtually any image-processing software.

So, as a rule of thumb, when shooting fine art, I use the following settings on the camera. These lists below are from the D2X. Other cameras (even Nikons) call these same setting other things, and lower-end cameras don’t have these settings at all. Thus, your mileage may vary. I make use of the D2X’s bank settings, having both a Custom Setting Menu bank and a Shooting Menu bank reserved for the settings. This saves me a lot of time, and helps ensure that even when I’m at a wedding or sporting event, I can still properly capture something that I think will be good as art, without spending so much time in the camera settings that the light or a special moment has already passed.

In the Custom Setting Menu:
• ISO auto: OFF
• Exposure Compensation: OFF
• Fine Tune Exposure: NO

In the Shooting Menu:
• Image Quality: RAW
• White Balance: As appropriate for the setting. When possible, I use the D2X’s white balance sensor to detect the proper white balance
• Image Sharpening: 0
• Tone Compensation: 0 (this is the contrast)
• Color Space: Adobe RGB
• Color Mode: II
• Hue Adjustment 0°

Post-Production

Normally, when I’m processing wedding, portrait or even sports photos, the bulk of my work is done in Adobe Camera Raw. Especially in PhotoShop CS3, Camera Raw is an incredible tool that saves a lot of time in my production workflow, even though it feels like I spend the majority of my life with my head in it. But that workflow is all about saving time by processing several photos at once. The workflow for producing fine art, and especially multiple versions of an image, is not directly about saving time. Of course, I always want to work effectively, but this fine-art process is always a one-to-one relationship of artwork to artist—at least it is for me.

As a result, I bypass Adobe Camera Raw when I bring a digitograph into PhotoShop for fine-art processing. All the work is done in various PhotoShop filters or plugins, and the selection of those filters and plugins is largely arbitrary, and are selected for aesthetic reasons.

Versioning

I got the idea for versioning one day while using a particular plugin filter set that allows me to preview the work before it’s applied. As I was working towards one particular effect, I happily stumbled on settings that produced an incredible result, and which in the case of that particular image, wound up being the only version I have published. And that is a key point in my arguments to those who feel that versioning cheapens a work: Every work of art has at least one version, and some people won’t like it. Having multiple versions of a piece of art makes it available to more people.

For me, versioning is a very enjoyable pursuit, as for each version that I choose to publish, I have seen my work in dozens of different ways. It can, of course, have a huge impact on time, so for me, versioning is limited by a few simple criteria:

• each version should convey a different message or inspire a different emotion
• each version should stand on its own
• each version should be complimentary to its sibling versions

As alluded to in that last point, another benefit of versioning is that versions can be hung together as diptychs or triptychs, telling a unique story and thus communicating several different emotions in the same hanging.
Examples of versioning, from the original release of the Synthætica website: