Identifying a photo style and potential how to?

Eersel · Jun 30, 2015

Hi All,

I keep coming across this coloration/effect and I find it very appealing. I'd eventually like to work it into some of my looks.

I've attached one as a reference.

Could someone please identify the style, and potentially some in camera and post pointers.

Greatly appreciated

Please do not post images to which you do not hold rights. You may post a link. Greatly appreciated.

Derrel · Jun 30, 2015

1)Procure young 20-something with surgically augmented, cantaloupe-hard breasts
2)Do FULL makeup on her
3)Dress her in skimpy lingerie
4)Have her do odd ducklips/pouty facial expression
5)Hire retoucher.

;-)

Ysarex · Jun 30, 2015

Here's the histogram of that photo. The answer is there plus reduced color saturation.

Joe

P.S. This has been a raging fashion fad of late often referred to as the matte black look. Instructions can be found in the Fauxtographer's Guide to LR Presets.

vintagesnaps · Jun 30, 2015

It's called something?? Really, I'd have to ask what it is about that look that is appealing? To me the subject looks gray, and the background has a number of distractions.

I would say you'd have to do a lot of overprocessing to achieve this if for whatever reason you want your photos to look like this; to me the processing overpowers the subject and the image itself.

Ysarex · Jun 30, 2015

vintagesnaps said:
It's called something?? Really, I'd have to ask what it is about that look that is appealing? To me the subject looks gray, and the background has a number of distractions.

I would say you'd have to do a lot of overprocessing to achieve this if for whatever reason you want your photos to look like this; to me the processing overpowers the subject and the image itself.

Your background shooting film should strike a chord of recognition with this style. The result is very similar to what happens when you put ISO 100 color neg film in your camera but forgot that the last roll you shot was ISO 800 and you didn't reset the ISO dial. Then you try and print those botched exposures anyway -- it's a classic "screw-up look."

Joe

vintagesnaps · Jun 30, 2015

Oh, well, that'd be easier than a lot of processing! But I've done that before and can't remember ever getting anything quite like this.

At least you explained how it was done if someone wants to try it. I don't get it (why people would want their photos to resemble this) but to each his own.

Derrel · Jun 30, 2015

vintagesnaps said:
I would say you'd have to do a lot of overprocessing to achieve this if for whatever reason you want your photos to look like this; to me the processing overpowers the subject and the image itself.

I've been studying this phenomenon for a little over a year now, and have read the opinions of a number of modern photograhy critics and commentators. There is actually a real, viable theory that many of us hold: this "look" is a response to the ease of click-and-share that we've come to expect in the digital camera/smartphone age. What it represents is a conscious effort by newcomers to photography to "elevate their work" above the millions of images snapped every day. The fact that this image HAS BEEN processed heavily, that the processing is obvious, that the processing *is central to* the image, is a response to people who want to make their images look modern, "different", "contemporary", and also to make it obvious, plainly obvious, that the image HAS BEEN given some definite attention/effort.

It's easy today to shoot 300,400,500,700 images in an afternoon. The images straight out of the camera look plain, raw, unmodified; applying a treatment/color toning/look, whatever one wants to call that second skin, is a new way to present photos in the 21st century. A lot of old farts can;t actually wrap their heads around why anybody would sacrifice that Ansel Adams-era dogma of the Holy Grail of the full tonal range, in JUST EXACTLY the same way that Adams went on a decades-long vilification of the Pictorialists...the guy was so f***** narrow-minded that he insisted a picture HAD TO BE sharp, clear, and crisp, or it was a worthless POS. His opinion held sway for decades, and still lingers on in the minds of many who just cannot grasp why anybody would sacrifice a portion of the Holy Histogram and go with a more muted palette.

THAT is why this new style has gained some traction in this, the 15th year of the twenty-first century. It is no longer 1945. It is no longer 1955. There's a new way to handle images now. There are new "looks" that have become available. It's a lot like the era when impressonist painting was developed--the salon judges and the art critics railed at impressionism, with its worthless,fuzzy,muted coloration and its soft, non-revelating detail. Where is all the micro-detail, the realism, the fidelity!? they cried. This is what happens when new centuries occur...when NEW technologies are developed, when NEW people come into fields...the old ways lose favor quite often. Deliberate "looks" are decried as "mistakes" by the establishment.

This has taken me more than a year to really grasp, to really understand. I'm not aiming at any of the posters in this thread with malice, but with the effort to shed some actual thought effort on the issue of why "Instagram filters" and "screw-up looks" and "fuzzy crap" are finding a lot of favor in this..the 15th year of the twenty-first century. Look at Pictorialist images from say 1880 to 1920....the Ansel Adams and the f/64 accolytes simply can NOT see any value in that way of imaging....they deny its validity, deny the skill of the practitioners, and deride the images themselves. Kind of like parents always do with that awful music their offspring listen to. The idea that the processing overpowers the subject and the image itself is missing the point, a lot like my father did when he pissed and moaned about that long-hair music the Beatles were making. he just simply did not have the viewpoint to grasp that music as having any validity.

The OP here is trying to identify a style...the matte black look, as many call it...a style that is very fashionable right now--JUST as the Beatles were fashionable in the 1960's to 1970's era.

vintagesnaps · Jun 30, 2015

For me when I see a photo and wonder what was done and that's primarily what I'm seeing, that it's extremely processed, then I think that detracts from the photo itself.

I can understand someone going for a particular look or style but I think it needs to be done well, even if it's not my thing.

The Beatles were more than just a fad, even if they started out as such. If something's good it will likely stand the test of time, good then, good now. Some things you can appreciate as good even if it's not your preference. I like modern art, but I can still have some appreciation for impressionistic works.

And you're as old a fart as I am! lol

Derrel · Jun 30, 2015

Well...I think the idea of validating/invalidating the quality of an image based on its histogram is a fool's errand. It's just a fixation on that old idea of every image needing solid blacks, and pure, white highlights...the old "full tonal scale" theory of judging B&W imagery.

We are in the midst of the changing of an era. It's a time when many people will use older, earlier so-called standards to evaluate artistic or aesthetic efforts, like poetry,music,theater, cinema, photography, based on older standards that were developed in an earlier era, or in multiple, earlier eras.

The idea is that the heavy processing is an entirely new style, one that has found favor among millions and millions of younger viewers. This is not about what old-line photographers think and believe: this is what younger viewers in the current, modern,present era think about images they are SEEING.

In the 1950's, the photography magazines had many,many images shot with 4x5 sheet film cameras with one, single flashbulb placed in a 5- to 7-inch parabolic reflector...hard, crisp-edged shadows and ON-camera flash were staples among serious enthusiasts; today, most people ridicule that style! When I look back at 1980's fashion images, I kind of chuckle. When I see the "Hosemaster" images shot in the early 1990's with fiber optic lights made by the Hosemaster Corp, I cringe.

It can take a very long,long time for widespread acceptance and appreciation of radically new styles. Impressionist masterpieces that could be bought for $10 to $40 in the 1920's can now fetch tens of millions of dollars. It took almost 100 years for Impressionist paintings to move from cult appreciated items to the most-popular wall decor art.

We are discussing a new, popular style in digital photography here. Who here wants to be the father figure, decrying the long-hair noise those Beatles are making? My dad died in 2001.

Ysarex · Jun 30, 2015

These guys were really fashionable back in the 60's too. I'm Henery the VIIIth I am....

We're always on the look out for innovation and something new -- that's a good thing. And the process is at all times active (the 1950's gave us Robert Frank and Jack Kerouac). It's often missed or misunderstood when it first shows up. Beethoven's violin concerto was panned by the critics and Stravinsky's Rite of Spring caused crowds to throw rotten tomatoes.

When we look at the innovators and the conditions in which they worked we frequently find them struggling and unaccepted by the established fashionable industry. Manet, Daumier -- the early impressionists were vilified by the art establishment. What's innovative rarely begins existence as fashionable. The innovator usually has to wait for a couple decades after she/he dies to gain acceptance and fame and adulation. Fashion is the last place to look for innovation; fashion's foundation is imitation.

This matte black look is very popular and very fashionable right now. You've got a few old fart voices like me and Sharon saying it looks like the mistakes we threw away: Basically everybody loves it. It's a hit! I'm Henery the VIIIth I am....

Joe