Fun with Colorization!

I have already mentioned previously that I have been interested in photography since a very early age, and while most of my love of photography came from my mother (she gave me my first camera, took me on photo shoots, and taught me a few dark room tricks) I was also quite impressed with my paternal uncle's photos, particularly the ones he hand toned of my eldest sister when she was a wee lassie. For those not in the know hand toning is when you use a special paint (of sorts) to add color to black and white prints. It's very time consuming and an art within an artform. I have done a few traditional hand toned prints (one of which that I'm incredibly proud of is framed and in my bedroom, and was consequently the one photograph I've managed to get in an art show way back when) but as traditional darkroom photography is a bit pricey and takes up a lot of space and time (none of which I have at the moment) I have been experimenting with digital hand toning on Photoshop.

I started experimenting with the digital toning/colorization when I took a digital photography class as an undergrad at Southern Connecticut State University, again I only have the prints from that class as the cds with all my files has gone missing. Recently, this past year, I started to take up the act again, more seriously this time. The first one I really enjoyed the out come is this shot:



This is a photo of my friends Will and Mandi that I took at their place in Washington Heights last Easter. It was kind of a supplement to a project Mandi hired me for (taking photos of her picture frame wall art in her room for a book she's working on, more on that later maybe). The photo itself came out kind of crappy, to be honest, so being bored I hacked away at it in Photoshop using some filters and cheap photo tricks. After still not liking it I attempted to colorize it. I deliberately went for a look that did not appear completely realistic. I wanted both Will and Mandi to look as if they were in soft focus and have the feel of the photos my uncle hand toned. In the end I think that went as well as it could with a photo that had little going on with it.

The following is kind of an explanation of how I go about colorizing a photo, or rather re-colorizing a photo to be quite accurate. I first start off with a color photo that I then remove the color from via using Photoshop's color mixer set to monochrome and then fiddle with the color balance giving the black and white photo a bit of warmth or coldness depending (yellows and reds add warmth, blues tend to cool photos down). In the end I'm left with a nice black and white image:



(Oh, this is a shot of the entrance to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens near Prospect Park)

I then go through the photo and select bit by bit the areas I want to color and fiddle with the color balance till I get the color tone I think works well. This is kind of the more involved moment as slowly selecting each area takes a lot of patience and a decent eye for the small details. In the end I ended up with this:



Now I was almost satisfied with this but it seemed a bit to jarring and bright to me so I desaturated the image in small increments until I was happy with the shot:



In the end I like this shot of the Botanical Gardens, possibly because of all the time and effort I put into it, but also because I'm a sucker for photos that look old and to some degree flawed. I'm not saying that these photos are the be all and end all of colorized photos. I could have spent a lot more time on them. The Botanical Garden photos were done during some down time I had at my improv internship at the Magnet Theater.

Though to be honest this is pretty much how I attack photography, with a carefree nonchalance. I enjoy photography and photo editing. I find it really relaxing and fulfilling, part of why I like it so much is because I either shoot on the fly or edit in quick bursts which tends to create problems and flaws. Problems and flaws, to me at least, are what make a photo live. Sure you can spend hours on a subject, searching for the perfect angle, the perfect exposure and settings, editing the photo till it looks far better than the subject does in real life. In the end of doing this you get a photo that, while pretty much perfect, is devoid of life. Life is filled with flaws, rough edges and mistakes, it is the accidental inclusion of some mystery spice that makes the meal awesome.

Roland Barthes, in his book Camera Lucida, wrote about the studium and punctum of a photograph. The studium is what the photo is obviously about, it is what the photographer wants you to see in their photo, while the punctum is what pierces the individual who views the image. Punctum is what draws you into a photo and causes you to feel a connection with it, for me, this is located in flaws and happy accidents (i.e. background activity I totally didn't see while eyeing up the shot). With heavy planning and editing I feel you run the risk of removing any possible punctum the viewer might stumble upon. Plus I hate clean photos, much like I hate the idea of a clean Coney Island (see last post, or just get me started on the subject if you ever talk to me).

I plan on continuing with digitally re-colorizing photos, think of it as a side project tossed in amongst the several main projects I'm working on. These photos will be in a set on my flickr account which you can check out here. I'm hoping that I can at least toss in a photo or two from each of my main projects into this little venture, why? Because, like I said, I find doing this really, really relaxing. So hurray for fun things! Fun things abound! And with that I am off.

Till next my friends,

~C~