Pixiq

Light and Land, Landscapes in the Digital Darkroom by Michael Frye is a new eBook that starts by reminding us of the words of Ansel Adams about the "score" and the "performance."

Michael Frye lives at the doorstep of Yosemite National Park, so he is inspired by the same landscapes Ansel Adams saw. And like the master he believes that you have to post-process your images to make your vision a reality.

On his eBook for Craft & Vision library, Michael Frye reminds us of the words from Ansel Adams in 1983: “I think of the negative as the ‘score,’ and the print as a ‘performance’ of that score, which conveys the emotional and aesthetic ideas of the photographer at the time of making the exposure.” Although the tools are different, we’re still bound to manipulate the originals from digital cameras to the final print or screen-viewable photograph. That’s what Light and Land is about.

The author states that “the digital darkroom gives us tremendous control over our images. We can make them lighter, darker, add contrast, change the colour balance, increase saturation, turn a colour photograph into black and white, remove telephone poles, blend exposures with HDR, combine ten images to capture infinite depth of field, or put a winged elephant in the sky.”

But, asks Michael Frye, “what do we do with all these choices?” The photographer thinks ”the guiding force should be your original vision. What inspired you to press the shutter? What were you trying to convey? Every decision you make should be guided by that primary idea, and by the feeling you’re trying to convey. Communicating the drama of a stormy sky requires a different approach, and different settings, than portraying the delicate beauty of a flower. Or, as Ansel said, your 'performance' in the digital darkroom should convey your 'emotional and aesthetic ideas' at the time you made the exposure."

Light and Land is written specifically for people with an interest in landscapes and who want to clarify their own unique vision. Landscape work, like other specific genres, has its own challenges with respect to the digital darkroom, and this ebook will be invaluable to anyone wanting to take their post-processing to the next level.

With equal parts inspiration and instruction, Michael goes step-by-step through the aesthetic judgments behind each decision and he unpacks the principles behind the landscape-specific considerations. This eBook walks you through the Lightroom-based development of 5 different images, discussing the hows and whys of each one. The principles apply equally for Lightroom as well as Aperture or Photoshop.

The eBook can be bought and downloaded directly from Craft & Vision. For the first four days only, if you use the promotional code LAND4 when you checkout, you can have the PDF version of Light & Land for only $4 OR use the code LAND20 to get 20% off when you buy 5 or more PDF eBooks from the Craft & Vision collection. These codes expire at 11:59pm PST December 19, 2010.