Creative paths
Darkness has the virtue of enticing viewers to peer into it
This month, Michael Freeman shows how shadows make powerful and mysterious subjects for your images
Showing things clearly is one of photography’s defaults, and at the 101 level most instruction is geared toward this idea of efficient capture – focus, framing, sharply frozen, moment, aspect, and lighting. When the subject dominates, as in a news photograph, there’s little dispute that everyone, from picture editor to casual viewer, wants maximum information about it. Efficiency rules, supported by a straightforward set of technical skills together with slightly less easy to define visual techniques. These visual skills include where to place a distinct subject in the frame, and how to relate it to other elements. That usually means in the light rather than out of it. How many of us regularly resist having a passerby fitting neatly into a sharp patch of sunlight? Exploring new creative options, however, means challenging the obvious assumptions – at least to see what happens. When the obvious becomes a part of everyone’s repertoire, boredom starts to set in. One challenge to the obvious is to use the polar opposite, the counterpart, to the lit areas – the shadows – as a place to make things happen.
Shadows stay dark but clear
In recent years, shadows have taken a bit of a beating in photography. The culprits (or benefactors if you take the most widely held, engineering-oriented view) are increasingly efficient sensors with higher dynamic range and more capable processing tools, like Highlights and Shadows in Photoshop and Lightroom. The result is that you can open up shadows more than ever before, which has some obvious benefits, but the next step in the argument has slipped in without much questioning – because you can, you should. But really, to what point? Unless you’re doing crime-scene photography and want every bit of information, shadows have wonderful original qualities of their own, especially being mysterious and asking us to peer into them and pay some attention. The interplay between highly contrasting light and shadow is called ‘chiaroscuro’, after the Italian painting term, and the pattern of dark and light blocks is often the first thing to think about, as in the diagram (top of page). That’s the start, but within it the composition inside the shadow area is a second, less obvious arrangement – here a girl walking, caught in a slightly strange mid-step moment. Exposure and processing are always critical, and the first needs above all to hold all the highlights safely, without any clipping. The sequence of five differently processed versions hints at the massive range of interpretation possible. The first is as shot, straight out of the camera, the second with minimal processing, meaning simply that the black and white points are set to just below clipping. The others follow the largely unquestioned trend to open everything up, which in my view is pointless and without merit. Number 3 uses Highlights and Shadows to their maximum, with a predictably flat and non-photographic look. Number 4 adds
to this with extra opening up locally around the figure with a radial filter. The last attempts the same thing but using traditional photographic controls (Exposure, Contrast, Whites and Blacks), blending two versions in layers manually with a lot more effort. At least this has a more photographic look, but again, opening up does no more than remove interest. The main image uses more subtle controls, principally local adjustment around the figure and the door to stretch the black and white points just within this area, for a more distinct effect not possible with simply Exposure and Contrast.