Julia Anna Gospodarou | Black and White Fine Art Photography and Architectural Photography

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Home » Blog » Tutorials Fine Art Black and White Photography » HOW TO SPEED UP FINE ART PROCESSING – FINDING YOUR VISION READY IN THE WORLD

June 15, 2016 by Julia Anna Gospodarou

HOW TO SPEED UP FINE ART PROCESSING – FINDING YOUR VISION READY IN THE WORLD

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ESB Fleeting Light © Julia Anna Gospodarou 2016 - How to speed up fine art processing

ESB Fleeting Light © Julia Anna Gospodarou 2016

Do you always need to spend hours and days editing your images, or are there ways to speed up fine art processing? My answer is in this article.

WHEN, WHERE, WHY

I shot this image a couple of weeks ago in New York after my (en)Visionography workshop and I consider it a gift the city made me in a very gracious way, without me needing to do much for it. For which I can only say: thank you New York!

It is part of a project on night photography that I’m working on for a couple of years already but from which I haven’t published much. I am going to do that in the future and I’m quite excited by this project. I’ve shot by night in many cities over the past few years, and even if this can give you the chills sometimes when you’re alone in the streets, in the middle of the night, in an unknown city, carrying a load of gear with you, it has become quite addictive and I am now doing it systematically despite the risk. After all, there is no art without struggle, and no good things can come out if you don’t risk sometimes. Happily, for this image I didn’t have to risk but it has offered me in a very generous way.

I believe, and this is what I’m also trying to pass through my writings and my teaching, that one should strive to create the best representation of his vision in the image he creates, no matter the photographic material he starts with, scene and conditions, because this in my opinion is what art does, re-creating the world, and by extension this is what fine art photography does. I consider photography as a tool just like other tools an artist can use to create art, like painting, drawing, sculpting or designing, so the end goal of using photography to express your vision is not to present a subject but to present the artist. I have written about this more extensively in my article Top 5 Tips for Creating Original Fine Art photography

AUTOBIOGRAPHIC FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHY

Creating the best representation of one’s vision in an image means to me that one should re-create reality to show it in a different way, a way that looks like himself and not like the reality he starts from.


I call this making autobiographic work and this is what I aim to do in my photography, not necessarily by telling the story of my life, which autobiographic would mean in a literal way, but by using photography to interpret the word in a way that is as unique, just like I am as an individual. I don’t believe in masses, I believe in oneness and that each of us has a different way of reacting to reality and can express a different and unique emotion in his work.


Most of the times this means working on an image you took from outside and re-creating it from many points of view, one of them being the light chart of the image which can take many faces depending on our artistic intention and the feelings we want to instill into the image. You can read here and extensive tutorial showing how I usually process my fine art architectural images.

 

FINDING YOUR VISION READY IN THE WORLD

Sometimes though, I admit not very often, you find an image outside that is ready for you and that expresses exactly your thoughts, or at least it is very close to what you need in order to transform the scene into (en)Visionography. This was one of those moments when the Empire State building just like the entire city was covered in diffuse soft fog, a phenomenon I had seen for the second time in New York and which always moves me deeply and instigate my imagination to create stories.

On a practical level what finding these conditions ready in front of me meant was that I could spend less time editing the image and found a way to speed up fine art processing.

THE DECISIVE MOMENT IN FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHY

I could call this a decisive moment, as I think Henri Cartier-Bresson would call it, and I’m grateful I was there to capture it.

I’m always going into great lengths to re-create the word in my images but I am also ready and happy when I find an image that expresses me so well that I hardly need to do anything to change it. This is one of my quickest published images after its capture and one of the ones I’ve done the least processing to. My feelings were already there and for once, all I had to do was to be attentive enough to recognize them and capture them.

PROCESSING THE IMAGE

SPEED UP FINE ART PROCESSING

Technical Data

TECHNIQUE

Night Photography. Handheld image with support.
– Camera settings:
1/6sec. , 28mm @ f/4, ISO 250,

EQUIPMENT

CAMERA: Canon 5D MKIII
LENS: Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS

Black and white processing – Photography Drawing (PhtD)

– LR5, PS CC , Topaz B&W Effects  (Topaz Labs B&W Effects 2 Full Review) +Topaz DeNoise + Topaz Detail + DxO View Point
You can see below how the image was looking in the color version with a little geometric correction I applied with the DxO ViewPoint and some basic processing I’ve done using the Topaz plug-ins.

ESB Fleeting Light - Color Processing version © Julia Anna Gospodarou 2016

ESB Fleeting Light – Color Processing version © Julia Anna Gospodarou 2016

Also, you can see my layer palette, and those who know the way I’m processing my images generally will understand that this is an exception to my role as it contains so few layers and such limited processing.

What I did here was to work with general adjustments mainly, one of the things I always say should be just the first step, but in this case it was a big step. The second thing I did was to work on the contrast and intensity of light by adding and removing it using bright and dark gradients applied selectively on the gray tones.

ESB Fleeting Light - Layers Palette © Julia Anna Gospodarou

ESB Fleeting Light – Layers Palette © Julia Anna Gospodarou

By publishing this article I also want to respond to those who asked me, and there were quite a few lately, if one really needs to spend hours and days working on an image or if there is a way to speed up fine art processing.

What I answer to this question is that this mainly depends on what you want to do with your image and how far you want to go with transforming it, but this also means that on the occasions you were lucky to find conditions close to your vision already there in front of you, then you may need a very limited amount of processing.

 

CONCLUSION
What is the moral of the story?

Photography is so vast and so wonderful that it cannot be enclosed in hard and fast rules, but these rules have to be just a guideline. Another conclusion is also is that spontaneity is paramount in photography and that the photographer is a photographer 24/7 and not only when he decides to go out shooting. We need to think and live as photographers, as artists, 100% of our life, even when we do other activities, because everything we see around us can be a subject for creation and can move our feelings and imagination so we can, in our turn, move the feelings and imagination of the viewer.

Flexibility, openness and curiosity are essential in finding and giving shape to your vision, and it has happened more than once that some of my favorite images were taken when I wasn’t even out shooting intentionally but had the camera with me so I can capture everything that moves me.

This is what happened this time, as I took this image while I was out with friends in a rooftop bar close to the Empire State Building and we were waiting to be seated. How much more of a deceive moment could you wish for?

 

FURTHER STUDY RESOURCES – FINE ART BLACK AND WHITE PHOTOGRAPHY, ARCHITECTURE, LONG EXPOSURE

You can find more resources about fine art black and white photography, (en)Visionography, long exposure photography and architectural photography in my extensive collection of photography tutorials. To receive my future tutorials directly via email you can subscribe to my website.

More about how to create fine art photography, from vision to processing and the final image you can read in my book From Basics to Fine Art – Black and White Photography, with co-author Joel Tjintjelaar and in my video tutorial Long Exposure, Architecture, Fine Art Photography - Creating (en)Visionography a hands-on tutorial accompanied by an eBook presenting my processing workflow, or attend one of my workshops.

Julia Anna Gospodarou - (en)Visionographer

Julia Anna Gospodarou Fine Art black and white photographer Julia Anna Gospodarou is an internationally acclaimed photographer, architect with a Master degree, author and highly sought-after educator, teaching workshops and lecturing around the world. Founder of (en)Visionography™ and creator of Photography Drawing™, author of the best-selling book From Basics to Fine Art - Black and White Photography , with high distinctions in the most important photography competitions worldwide (International Photography Awards IPA Photographer of the Year, World Photography Awards SWPA and Hasselblad Masters finalist, as well as 80+ more awards), widely published internationally in books and magazines, Julia is passionate about the art in photography and striving to spread it into the world.
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Delighted to have won the Best of Nation Award for Delighted to have won the Best of Nation Award for Greece and be a Top 10 finalist in Commercial Category at WPC World Photographic Cup 2021.

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Fluid Time V – Aligning Paths The 5th image in m Fluid Time V – Aligning Paths
The 5th image in my Fluid Time series, shot in Chicago in 2013. 
You can find limited edition prints of this and more images at www.juliaannagospodarou.com 
I’m quite fond of this image, and I remember how much fun I had playing with the camera and the geometry to get a dynamic shot of the convergence of these 2 buildings. The image was shot with the 24 m TS lens of a Canon full frame. 
The particularity of this image is that I wanted to emphasize the composition's dynamism even more by using selective focus with the tilt function of the TS lens. One of the challenges was to place the area of focus in the right spot, given that focusing with the tilt function of TS lens is entirely different than the way we regularly focus. It took quite a bit of work and patience to get it right but it was worth it. 
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Fluid Time IV – Stopping Time This is the 4th im Fluid Time IV – Stopping Time
This is the 4th image in my 2013 Fluid Time series and it shows one of the iconic historical buildings in Chicago, the Wrigley Building. Finished in 1924 and built in the Spanish Colonial Revival style, it was one of the first highrises built in the area. 
Here too, I used the tilt function of the tilt-shift lens, as in all the images in the series, and it was actually a quite challenging image to shoot because of the intensity of the effect I needed, which wasn’t easy to create. But the more challenging, the more I love it. Easy images are boring, isn’t it? As everything that is too easy. :) 
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Fluid Time III – Two Worlds The third image in m Fluid Time III – Two Worlds
The third image in my 2013 Fluid Time series. This is one of the most interesting buildings in Chicago, the Hancock Center. One of the things I love about this building, in terms of architectural design is that the structural frame of the building is placed exteriorly and not at the interior as usually, and it is visible on the façade. For those who are wondering, this x-braced reinforcement system allows for larger open spaces in the interior of the building which is why it is ideal for an office building like this, and it also allows for rising taller structures. When it was built, in 1965, the Hancock Center was meant to be the second taller building in the world. 
Like all the images in the series, here too, I used the tilt function of the tilt-shift lens, to focus on the relation between the 2 buildings – hence the title: Two Worlds. 
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Fluid Time II – Utopian Connections Second in my Fluid Time II – Utopian Connections
Second in my 2013 Fluid Time series, this image shows the Prudential Plaza Tower in Chicago, flanked by the Prudential Plaza One building and the Aon Center.
Here I used again the tilt function of the tilt-shift lens, as I did in all the images in this series, to isolate different planes of focus in order to create depth. 
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