Viewing, Editing & Preserving Your Own Images

Viewing, Editing & Preserving Your Own Images

by William Lulow

First, I love making images of all kinds and I have been doing it for over 50 years now. Second, I love viewing all kinds of images and mine as well. I peruse them on a regular basis trying to see if they could be made even better! It is also important to realize that over time, people’s attitudes toward the images they see are always changing. Those who have been in the business as long as I have need to be able to see current trends and keep up with changes.

I wrote a piece back in June of 2019 about making prints. I think it is still as important as ever for photographers to make prints from their digital files or from their negatives, whatever format they prefer. One of the reasons is that it is the way images were meant to be seen. But we have all become used to looking at our various screens when we are looking at photographs. But just take note of how you view photographs on either platform. When you look at your smartphone, for example, you are looking at an image, when it occupies the entire screen, of roughly 3.5″ by 2.5″. If you are looking at a tablet, iPad or something similar, the screen size is approximately 10″ on the diagonal. So we are not talking about large images here. Your computer screen could be substantially larger, but all screens don’t behave the same way. Some screens are sharper than others and the colors may be slightly different. Whenever a screen is larger, it usually takes more pixels to fill it and consequently to make a clear image. We are also swiping through literally thousands of images each time we look at our photo app! I had a friend once who wanted to show me his vacation pictures and then handed me his camera, put it in “playback” mode and showed me which button to press to play the next image! To me, that is not how photographs were meant to be viewed. I would have preferred him to make a couple of really good prints that were representative of his travels.

I should interject here the fact that even viewing an image on your camera’s LCD screen has problems. Because of the small size of the image, it is often easy to overlook details in an image you have just captured. The screen needs to be scrutinized very carefully by enlarging parts of it in the camera to make sure everything is sharp and clearly visible. When I used to shoot with my view cameras, I always kept a loupe which I actually attached to the camera so that I could examine parts of the image to make sure they were sharp. Another fact that deserves attention is that with today’s mirrorless cameras, the entire image is more easily viewed in the viewfinder than with traditional DSLRs. It comes as close to the view camera experience as any digital camera to date. You still have to enlarge portions of the screen to examine them, however.

But looking at an image on a smartphone presents a totally different experience than looking at one on a wall in a gallery, say. One of the first things you notice is that you skip from one image to the next relatively quickly. In order to “study” an image, you have to enlarge it on your screen which means that you can’t view the total image, only parts of it. This detracts from the overall experience you get. Now, think of the images you actually stop at to examine more closely. Perhaps you use your fingers to enlarge it a bit. If you do that, as I said, you won’t get the entire image all at once. You will have to keep moving the image to see all of it. Then think of why you stopped at that image. If you can examine that motivation, you might get a hint at the kinds of images you need to shoot to make people stop and look at them closely and have a sense of awe when they view them. That is always my goal: to create a sense of wonder when looking at the photographs.

So viewing a photograph on a screen is somewhat of an unsatisfying experience compared to attending a gallery exhibition of photographs that can be viewed from afar as well as close up. The other thing is that no matter what people tell you, you can never get a high-enough quality image from a smartphone unless you take the trouble to mount it on a tripod (which you can do), or take other precautions to keep the phone as steady as possible. The iPhone 13 has an upgraded camera, but its resolution is still only 12MP (megapixels). You can make an excellent 8×10″ print from that resolution, but not much bigger than that. One of my regular DSLRs has 18MP and the other has a 32MP sensor. I always have judged the resolution of any of my images by making a standard 16×20″ print. If the detail in the image was sufficient to make an excellent print that size, I knew I had enough detail in the original image. That was how I judged my image sharpness and “enlarge-ability.” I have been somewhat obsessed with making even larger prints these days for exhibitions. I now like to make 20×24″ prints. One reason is that I like not having to view the picture from such a close range. It is also easier to see and if you do move closer, you can really inspect the print to get a good sense of its quality. And, larger prints make a greater impact, all else considered. (Sometimes small prints can be effective as well. It depends on subject matter and how they are treated).

A DSLR with an 18MP sensor, creates an approximate 50MB JPEG image which translates to about 60×40″ as a print. If you shot the image in RAW format, it would generate roughly a 90MB file which you could use to fill up the side of a building. There is no doubt that, up to a certain point, the resolving power of the sensor will determine how much the image can be enlarged before it begins to lose some sharpness.

With all this being said about making prints, it represents one sure way of really determining how good an image is. If it stands up to being printed, and you think it is good enough to make a print, then it’s probably a good picture. But on a recent trip I shot probably 800 or 900 images. Out of that, maybe I got 10 that I thought were good enough to print. Here is one:

I was attracted here by the mountains, naturally and how the water added a good foreground treatment and original Black&White filtration gave the sky the dramatic black tone. I enhanced the image in post-production by adding some clouds. I don’t know if it is a prize-winner (I suspect not because, even though it represents the actual place, I am not sure that it is all that unusual). I did make an 11×14 print of it though and I like the look of it overall! Because I like it doesn’t mean it’s a great piece of art.

There were actually many images I took on another trip that tended to look similar so I began making quite a few Black&White images. My thinking was to document the interesting light that I found in alleys and other walkways and roads. I think it represents what photographers do when they are just out touring. They “look for light” in various situations in the real world. Here is one example. Note that detail is discernible even in the dark shadows:

This was one such location that seemed to appeal to my sense of composition as well as light and dark. Here is another monochrome image, which was shot in original Black&White and filtered rather than converted in post:

Looking at one’s own work however, presents other problems.  The photographer has to try to assess whether or not the image will stand on its merits as a single image. These are the factors I use to determine if my own images are good enough to print:

1. Composition: The image needs to appeal to my sense of what a good composition entails. It has to draw the viewer into the frame and have enough information to keep someone’s attention.
2. Tonal Values:  The image has to follow basic requirements of good Black&White images. There has to be detail in the highlights as well as in the shadows and has to have one spot of pure white and one of pure black.
3. Subject matter:  The image has to be visually interesting. Either the action or the subject matter needs to have qualities that would make people interested in viewing it.
4. Visual interest:  The image, because of all the above aspects, really needs to be interesting to look at. 
5. Lighting: It almost goes without saying that light is a major factor in the making of photographs. By definition, they are “light images,” so the lighting is of paramount importance.

So, all the factors listed here and my gut feelings about having made the image in the first place, go into deciding if I want to print it and exactly how I would print it for some kind of impact. This is a well-composed image made from yet another trip to the big island of Hawaii:

This one I thought worked well in color because of the blue-green water, the green palm trees and the white/beige sand.

But I should say a word or two about print materials. I work with a great color, ink-jet printer (Epson XP15000) which does a superb job with Black&White images as well. It does the work that I used to do with my older Epson printer for half the money and 1/3 less space. In the darkroom, I always used to favor Agfa products and especially their Brovira papers. Now I work almost exclusively with Inkpress Pro Silky, 300GSM Lustre paper in all sizes. It’s really sturdy like the Agfa products were and it has a really nice, matte finish which adds a bit of a shine to the finished product but not a glossy one.

Editing one’s own images is often extremely difficult because you are the one who made them. You know what went into making them and therefore, carry a little prejudice when it comes to deciding if they are really print-worthy or not. But as I mentioned, we need to keep up with trends in our industry which makes reviewing our efforts constantly so important. We have to train ourselves to be able to look at our own work with a more objective eye. That seems to be the secret.