Alex Webb exposure technique

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Ccoppola82

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I received "The Suffering of the Light" today and upon viewing the images I was really struck at the saturation of his reds and blues, yet somehow managed to keep the skies more neutral. I also noticed that in some of his best compositions he literally allows his subjects or large parts of them to fall into total silhouette while maintaining almost perfect highlights. This led me to the question, is his color saturation a feature of Kodachrome, careful exposure of highlights, careful slight underexposure of subjects, or some combination. I’ve not had digital cameras that produce the same punch that his old Kodachromes have. Is it a mistake to attempt a "proper" exposure retaining highlight and shadow detail, or is it visually more effective to allow our shadows to crush in order to increase color saturation and punch to the image? Personal opinion is that portra type images are nice for airy pretty pictures, but may be a mistake when capturing something more raw. Just a ramble to initiate conversation, but I think too many options we have in digital makes a lot of flat images whereas operating within the technical confines of old slide film actually made a better product by eliminating confusing variables. I mostly shoot BW but I like messing with my Fuji jpgs and might try making a simulation that gets the same visual impact as Webb. Thanks for lookin.
 
When shooting slide film, you have to choose what you want exposed properly, in contrasty conditions this means you're going to be picking between featureless shadows or blown out highlights - and often, you will get both.
 
Some of the newest digital cameras have a “highlight” metering mode, which lets the shadows fall out. That, plus a contrast boost, might get you closer to what Webb is getting. He uses digital now that Kodachrome is no more.
 
Alex Webb is one of my favorite photographers.

I think you can say a large part of his practice comes from the use of Kodachrome; not to give too much credit to Kodachrome itself, but to say he and that emulsion became 'at one' with each other. Kodachrome in an unskilled hand would bear little resemblance to Alex Webb's work.

One quality I loved about Kodachrome, and that no other emulsion shares, is its ability to create the impression of detail in shadow areas, even those that are greatly underexposed--while still retaining a deep, inky black. Velvia 50 is as close as it gets, but it doesn't quite go there (yet it has other wonderful qualities that surpass Kodachrome in many ways). Also, Kodachrome was selectively saturated. You could not rely on it to pump up the color on everything at all times. Depending on subject matter, lighting, & exposure, it could look completely neutral or flat, sometimes even bordering on monochrome.

I don't know much about trying to make digital mimic the look of film stock, but if Kodachrome is the one you are trying to emulate, I think you've got your work cut out for you.

I also recommend a look at Ernst Haas. Another Kodachrome shooter, but mostly from the earlier iterations of Kodachrome. Just beautiful work.
 
Yes, he is preserving highlights while underexposing in harsh light. It is that simple and can be done with any film or digital despite Kodachrome being godly in its reputation.
 
I think his look is more about the light than about the film, although the film certainly plays a part. If you shoot in the middle of the day in places like Haiti, Cuba, Mexico, indeed Florida, you will get these high contrast scenes with bright, vivid colors and deep shadows. A lot of photography books tell you the best time to shoot is during "golden hour" or "magic hour", generally meaning the last hour before sunset and the first hour after sunrise. You are never going to get any images like Alex Webb's if you follow that advice.

I don’t know about being godly, but when I was shooting color film, I preferred Kodachrome to Ektachrome, though I did carry High Speed Ektachrome for when I needed something faster than ASA 25. I also preferred Kodachrome to Velvia, which I thought was unrealistically saturated. With digital, of course, you can dial in whatever saturation you want.
 
Just to clarify, I’m NOT trying to replicate Kodachrome. It’s far too complex and despite being a painter and fairly proficient at dealing with color nuances…I don’t think the synergy of the old dyes can be replicated digitally. But, I think bluesun267 is on the money with it being selectively saturated. For example, one thing I cannot stand is having overly saturated blue sky. I personally find it detracts from an image. Yet when in post, tweaking the sky back to more neutral tends to throw off the balance of the other colors unevenly whereas some of the old films did not. I’ve found many of my favorite images to be somewhat monochromatic with a pop of red. From painting, the general consensus is that if you want a color to pop, it’ should make up 20% or less of the surface area while the remaining colors are more muted and in service to that main color. Photography is a bit different but I think the general principle can apply. I think I will experiment with just using a highlight priority and in post let the shadows fall off and maybe tweak the blues/magentas/greens with the saturation and luminance sliders.
 
In general (such a slippery phrase!), viewers are more willing to tolerate shadows without detail than they are blown highlights. For that reason, in my training, back when Kodachrome was the standard, we were always taught to expose for the highlights with transparency film. If the shadows went black, so be it, but we were also trained to read the light and avoid those high contrast situations. But all rules are made to be broken, and Webb is a master at breaking the rules and making it work. On the other hand, ignoring the rules because one doesn't know one's craft, or doesn't care, usually just leads to poor, incoherent photographs.
Perceptual research has borne out what artists and photographers have known intuitively. When eye movements are tracked by researchers, viewers unconsciously look first at the brightest highlights in an image, then at the most intense colors, particularly warm colors. Things get thrown for a loop when a human face is introduced, and viewers often go first to the face, then the highlights. A little thought will make it obvious why, from an evolutionary standpoint, these behaviors have had survival value for our species. It follows that, if we're hard-wired for certain things, visually, we can work with those biases to make our photography more impactful.
 
Retro-Grouch said:
In general (such a slippery phrase!), viewers are more willing to tolerate shadows without detail than they are blown highlights. For that reason, in my training, back when Kodachrome was the standard, we were always taught to expose for the highlights with transparency film. If the shadows went black, so be it, but we were also trained to read the light and avoid those high contrast situations. But all rules are made to be broken, and Webb is a master at breaking the rules and making it work. On the other hand, ignoring the rules because one doesn't know one's craft, or doesn't care, usually just leads to poor, incoherent photographs.
Perceptual research has borne out what artists and photographers have known intuitively. When eye movements are tracked by researchers, viewers unconsciously look first at the brightest highlights in an image, then at the most intense colors, particularly warm colors. Things get thrown for a loop when a human face is introduced, and viewers often go first to the face, then the highlights. A little thought will make it obvious why, from an evolutionary standpoint, these behaviors have had survival value for our species. It follows that, if we're hard-wired for certain things, visually, we can work with those biases to make our photography more impactful.
Click to expand...
(Emphasis added by me.)

+ 1 on this. Absolutely. If I might throw in another visual element in the draw-the-eye list: text. If there is text in your photograph the viewer's eye will also be drawn to that. They will read it if it is in their language, and they will ponder its significance if it isn't. The hierarchical relationship between faces, highlights, intense colours, faces (or a human form), text, etc., really depends on the context but it suffices to say that you have to deal with them as major elements: they are either working for you or against you.

Alex and Rebecca Norris Webb are among my favorite art-makers. Pure visual pleasure.

On Kodachrome. I'm old. When I did this for a living, I shot a lot of Kodachrome -- probably north of 5,000 rolls. It was my favorite film. I always thought maybe I was colourblind/skewed because in some situations, but never consistently, I thought it had a slightly greenish cast, as if there was a brightly lit lawn just out of the frame somewhere. Sometimes I thought it was the bulb/lens combination in projection, sometimes I thought the cast showed up in the re-photography for publication, or a C-print. Elusive.

Ironically, I always really liked they way green saturated on Kodachrome. It wasn't until I realized that others had noted it as well that I started dealing with light and colour in a slightly different way.

In digital, I never wanted to replicate Kodachrome per se, but rather learn to become "one" with the way the sensor/jpeg engine rendered colour and light. This may seem like anathema to the RAW crowd (I shoot RAW + JPG) but it's the way I work, as if the sensor/jpg engine were a particular film stock, until I'm getting what I want.

Cheers,

Shane
 
General observation (based on 30+ years in the graphic arts industry): Whenever you're looking at images in an art book, you're looking at the handiwork of the photographer AND the scanner operator, the color workstation operator, and the press operator. No ink-on-paper process can reproduce the full range of tones from a slide in a projector, so the photographer has to work with the graphic arts craftspeople to make decisions about which tones to retain, which to enhance, and which to suppress. If you're making your own prints, you can go through the same process yourself, but you may need to be prepared to create your original differently in order to get the end product you want.
 
And who remembers the short-lived and much-maligned Kodachrome 200? Grainy, contrasty, weird colors that seemed to have a greenish or sometimes sepia cast. I loved that stuff! If you worked with it, instead of trying to make it look like Kodachrome 64, you could make some wonderful images. Almost as interesting as the old Ansco 500!
 
Ccoppola82 said:
I...Is it a mistake to attempt a "proper" exposure retaining highlight and shadow detail, or is it visually more effective to allow our shadows to crush in order to increase color saturation and punch to the image?
... but I think too many options we have in digital makes a lot of flat images whereas operating within the technical confines of old slide film actually made a better product by eliminating confusing variables.

...I like messing with my Fuji jpgs and might try making a simulation that gets the same visual impact as Webb.
Click to expand...

Exposure for digital imaging is not complicated. The goal is to maximize the raw-file data information content. This creates rendered (demosaicked) images with the highest possible perceived image quality. Using in-camera JPEGs is more challenging than using raw files. But in principle an in-camera JPEG that happens to perfectly exposed and can be accurately rendered with a single set of color temperature parameters makes full use of the raw-data information content.

There are two goals that maximize digital-image information content.

1. Maximize image MTF50
  • Focus well.
  • Set the lens aperture for best MTF50 performance aperture and, or sufficient DOF
  • Use a shutter times that minimize motion artifacts caused by camera, and, or subject motion.
This is no different than film.

2. Maximize sensor exposure when the shutter is open.
  • Prioritize sensor exposure by using the longest shutter time and widest lens aperture as determined by goal 1 above.
  • Use the lowest camera ISO setting that increases image brightness without clipping the highlights.
What about camera ISO setting and perceived image quality.?

When exposure settings are prioritized, camera ISO settings determine image brightness. ISO setting does not have a direct affect on exposure. Increasing ISO increases image brightness after the shutter closes. At the camera's base ISO image brightnesss is unchanged. Above base ISO image brightness increases.

If you choose not to prioritize exposure, camera ISO setting simply determines the upper limit for sensor exposure. This means if the camera ISO setting is pointlessly high, the shutter time and, or aperture will needlessly underexpose the sensor.

The primary way digital photography is more complicated than film photography is a digital camera can loose highlight detail in two different ways. With digital you retain highlight detail by avoiding sensor over exposure when the shutter is open and choosing a camera ISO setting to avoid rendered image over brightening (R, G,or B channel clipping) after the shutter closes.

The same goes for underexposure and, or a low camera ISO image that results in a loss of shadow region detail.

The second way digital is more complicated is you need to think about ISO setting to protect against avoidable sensor under exposure. This is achieved by trying to use the lowest possible camera ISO setting that's achieves goal 1. Auto-ISO minimizes ISO setting when a camera has a good Auto-ISO system. Also, in-camera JPEG users can auto-bracket ISO by 1/3 to 1/2 increments and keep the JPEG with optimum highlight or shadow detail.
 
ranger9 said:
General observation (based on 30+ years in the graphic arts industry): Whenever you're looking at images in an art book, you're looking at the handiwork of the photographer AND the scanner operator, the color workstation operator, and the press operator. No ink-on-paper process can reproduce the full range of tones from a slide in a projector, so the photographer has to work with the graphic arts craftspeople to make decisions about which tones to retain, which to enhance, and which to suppress. If you're making your own prints, you can go through the same process yourself, but you may need to be prepared to create your original differently in order to get the end product you want.
Click to expand...

One Hundred Percent.

We are always subject to the form. If you make photographic prints, the camera is just the beginning. This is not to say that what one does in the camera isn't critical. It is critical.

But I'm always thinking about the printer when I shoot.

Anything beyond the print depends on the level of involvement provided for in the contract/commission. It can be wonderful or, thankfully, only occasionally, a trial.

Respectfully,

Shane
 
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580/Q, I salute you! It's refreshing to see that someone does care about syntax and clarity. It's been said, but I can't remember by whom, that the writing of good English is a moral issue. I agree.
 
Retro-Grouch said:
580/Q, I salute you! It's refreshing to see that someone does care about syntax and clarity. It's been said, but I can't remember by whom, that the writing of good English is a moral issue. I agree.
Click to expand...

Thank you for the kind words.

Respectfully,

Shane
 
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