Stephen Voss is a Washington D.C photographer that freelances for the likes of the Washington Post, NPR Business Week and the Smithsonian.
© Stephen Voss
Voss outlines his three techniques to turning mediocre photos into something spectacular, and perhaps more importantly, something sellable. “After all, trying to get the digital image to the completed image sets you apart at a high level.”
“When you’re shooting with digital the image that comes out of the camera is pretty flat and lifeless, this wasn’t the case with film, so post-processing is critical.” If you’re shooting in RAW, it would be almost blasphemous to show your work without some kind of post-processing. Shooting in JPEG cuts down on your options as it doesn’t record as much detail. It’s a double edged sword when you’re trying to take your photos to the next level. “The image [that] amateurs show is the image that comes directly out of the camera.” Photoshopping, whether we like it or not, is critical.
1. “Get skin tones right.” Use colour balance wisely to match the skin tones of people exactly to what they would look like in natural light.
2. “It’s all trial and error”, Voss finds work that he admires and tries to emulate it. If you admire someone’s work and try to copy the look, there’s a certain element of yourself that you can’t remove so it won’t be a copycat carbon. While you’re busy in Photoshop trying to get that certain effect, allow yourself to play around until you find something you’re happy with. Some photographers Stephen draws on for inspiration are: Paolo Pellegrin, Alex Webb and Sam Abell.
3. “When you’re trying something out, go a little too far and then dial it back. Once you know what doesn’t work, it’s easier to back track. All my techniques have come from playing around.” Voss suggests trying this out with the contrast, take it too high or too low so you loose some detail, that way you know how far you can push this before it starts to look bad.
© Stephen Voss
You can see Voss’ work at http://www.stephenvoss.com/
Just got photoshop last weekend. Very timely post for me, I shall keep these things in mind as I’m learning how to process…
Hi Gem,
Stephen Voss has a newspaper photography background but has moved onto magazine work, where you’re allowed a little more creative freedom, depending on the publication.
When I was interning at Fairfax I was told that it was completely ok to fix up photos by making skin tones look more natural and slightly editing other colours that were incorrectly captured by the camera. I know when I’m taking photos, sometimes it’s hard to capture something exactly as you see it.
When I was studying journalism, we did a case study on how a newspaper published a graphic aerial shot of a massacred family. The ethical issue came up when the newspaper photoshopped the blood to be more red than it really was and then pasted it on their front page in colour.
So as long as you’re doing minor work and it’s to make the picture more true to what you see with the naked eye, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.
I think Photoshop now is like when people years ago first discovered they could dodge and burn film, except it’s a hundred times more powerful and takes less time…I think I should invest in Adobe shares the way I keep talking about PS.
it’s interesting that he’s such a fan of photoshop, being a newspaper photographer. I’m only just starting to really use photoshop to improve the colour balance & contrast of my pics, because when i was at the paper photoshop was kind of seen as the spawn of satan.
but yeah, photoshop can make a MASSIVE difference in how good your photos look. especially if they are being viewed online.