Topic: Stained Glass Window Photographs

[GillE]

This was a bit of a departure for me... photographing stained glass windows in churches.  Here's a few samples - I'm thinking of using the angelic pictures as Christmas cards this year.

[Simon]

Those are wonderful!  You've really captured the images well, with just the right exposure to sustain the black surrounds.  Without wishing to be discrediting, have you photoshopped them at all?

[GillE]

Cameras don’t see images in the same way as the human eye.  Digtal cameras normally process the images they capture to get the best representation of what the camera’s software engineers believe are realistic.  So if you take a photo and save it to your camera in jpeg format, you’re getting a good approximation of it, not necessarily a realistic representation.

I save my photos to my camera using RAW format, which means that I capture the data exactly as the camera sees it.  I then use photo editing software to create the image exactly as I recall seeing it when I took the photo.  Is this ‘photoshopping’?  Or is this producing faithful images in the same way that Ansel Adams and Henri Cartier-Bresson did a hundred years ago?

Apart from cropping the images, all I do is set appropriate levels and colour adjustments.  I regard that as being acceptable.  Other photographers do an awful lot more post-processing but I don’t think the worse of them for doing so.

[Simon]

Well, they're bloody good anyway!   

[GillE]

Thanks, Simon.