Five, with coffee.
I like to sit still sometimes, and examine what I already know. I like to look at the winter sun through a dirty window. I like the warm living room just before a snowstorm. The ice, the silence...the breath of a sleeping dog.
Shot with the X-Pro2 and XF 35mm f/1.4 R
DISSECTION
First off: I kinda forgot about this didn’t I? I’ll try to add more of these dissections in 2020.
What I wanted to highlight on this particuliar essay is a difference in process: the images above were all edited on my iPad Pro, using Pixelmator Photo (no affiliation). And I find it interesting to reflect on how software ultimately influences our final results. Not through gimmicks but just due to the inherent uniqueness found in every app, something that invariably guide us slightly differently through the same process. Also because our setup may be different: in this case the screen (obviously) but also the presets I’ve created as starting points that tend to be geared a bit more towards alternative toning.
Just for kicks I re-processed those same images in Capture One 20 (this one is…affiliated I mean). Now, I tried to “forget” the Pixelmator versions and edit the originals as I normally would have—which is hard. I think I was tricked into being straighter than usual, an over-correction: I already had heavily toned images so I did something less stylized. I could easily have reproduced the Pixelmator look but that wasn’t the point.
So many possibilities.
One last thing: the major compromise with Pixelmator Photo at the moment is a lack of local adjustments. This is something my photographic brain struggles with, because I pretty much see in layers. Having to process an image as one monolithic surface feels like having a hand tied behind my back—and three fingers missing on the other. Sometimes I can live with the compromise (as I have here) but sometimes I just can’t. This black and white image (on the right) would’ve been “ok” as a single layer...but I used 6 in Capture One and that’s the look I had in mind. There was no point in forcing a less than satisfactory result.
Dissection, out.
