exposure 1.0 review

There are a lot of tools out there for the modern digital photographer. The amount of ways one can attack a photo in the development stage is now greater than ever, and even the most seasoned veterans of the digital darkroom can sometimes get intimidated by the sheer number of options. This dizzying array of programs and utilities serve to confound the inexperienced developer, and force them into a workflow from which there is no escape, simply because it is the least confounding. We are, after all, human beings, and we tend to run to what we know is safe. I find this safety unfortunate, because one of the things I notice most when someone shows me a photo taken with a digital camera is lifelessness and lack of panache. Sure, the digital camera can reproduce with great clarity and resolution the exact scene as it appeared to the human eye, but whatever happened to taking chances? Certainly, digital camera makers have a tough choice... on the one hand, they wish to make a device that captures a picture perfectly with good focus etc etc (these camera manufacturers are in the market for one thing, to make money), but on the other, these same technically "perfect" cameras neglect to reproduce the spontaneity of film, or the creative potential of a Holga. Lets face it... without a creative workflow, many photographers stumble into the post processing phase with a singular objective: to achieve the best possible rendition of their experience, as true to life as when they experienced it. We sharpen the photo and boost its saturation and contrast, we fall into the trap...

It's time to take a stand against these perfect snapshots with unlimited depth of field and unparalleled clarity.

Now, I am not proposing we all abandon the inherent beauty of a perfectly rendered scene, but, with so many good photographs out there, the main differentiation between most photographs in the future will not be their representation of perfection, but rather, how they achieve sublime imperfection. This is where Exposure comes in.

When I was a kid there was this thing called film, and we used it to take pictures. The cool thing about film was that you never knew what you were going to get... there was no reviewing the images on the little LCD screen and we relied on someone else (gasp) to develop what we had shot. Depending on where you were in the world, the photos you got back from the developer could be a little on the warm side, a little overexposed, a little blurry, and after 5-10 years could look radically different from the day which you picked them up from the photo lab. All of this was cool, because it gave the photos personality. Fast forward to today. The digital age has ushered in the perfect photo. But it also begs some questions: What about the imperfect photo? Where did it go? What if there were no mistakes in photography? Would it get boring?

This is a subjective review, I am not out to be impartial here, nor do I expect to quantify my analysis in a way that might satisfy those pixel peepers that populate so many online photo forums. This is not about being modest either... I know what works after some years with digital, and while you may not believe my assertions, you will be hard pressed to find someone more empassioned by them. That being said, lets deliver the meat and bones.

Exposure is a photoshop plugin that relies on the premise that there are those of us who wish to deresolve our photographic experience (yes, deresolve, its not a word, just something I made up) and enhance the imaginative experience. When people look at my most recent photos, they are not seeing the best possible version, the definition of "best" being a photos radical truthfullness, its attention to detail, and the clarity of its subjects. Instead, my newest photos serve me through their creative interpretation of a particular scene and the fact that they are discordant with reality. While I am not out to be a rebel, the subtle but profound change to my photos has forced me to come to a serious conclusion: imagination is more powerful than truth.

Wha?

We can all argue the definition of a good photo. We can all assign points to things like color, form, and symmetry. But where does that leave the human condition? Lets face it, to really achieve perfection in a photo we must rely on our own inherent creative interpretation of a particular scene. When we look at the great painters like Monet or VanGogh, we realize that their finest works are not the ones which represent reality, but rather the ones that misrepresent it. The greatest artists the world has ever known are not famous for details, instead, they are known for their conspicuous attraction to bending the rules, and blurring the lines.

It's time to blur the lines in digital too!

Here is a typical example of a frame I want to process in Exposure, its just a little to dull for my tastes.

Fig. 1: Straight out of the camera... here is a frame from halloween. Lets face it, Mike was definitely not going to win any beauty awards, but the funky red colors and weird lighting in the background will serve us well for this conversion. Take notice of the somewhat flat skin tones and the effect of the flash on the frame, slightly on the grey side out of the camera in my opinion.


Fig. 2: What's that you say? Cross-processed Agfa Optima might be cooler looking (pun intended)? Well I thought so too, and now we have more of an art-house pic, or colors that make us think this is from a bad horror movie.


Fig. 3: Here we have an example of more subtle effects... contrast, saturation and grain are all added with the Fuji Provia 400 filter. Skin tone is the biggest benefactor, showing a slight shift in color to the warm side and a noticeable increase in contrast. While this effect may not be to clear for these smaller web-sized images, I can assure you that the final print of this Exposure processed frame is quite different from the original, straight out of camera. Just look at the crops below.


Fig. 4: 100% crop as shot, straight out of the camera. A nice clean image from the D70 at 320iso. But its lifeless! The bad lighting lighting and flash exposure combine to make the shot plain dull, and even though its clear and technically accurate when looking at the histogram and correcting the WB... skintone is a little lackluster. This is just the kind of shot that Exposure seems to relish.


Fig. 5: This is the same 100% crop processed through the Provia 400F filter in Exposure. Lifeless it is not. We can clearly see that some of the stitching on the dog collar and leather top is washed out by the filter, but at the same time a nice graininess has been introduced to the image, lending a more organic feel to its overall presentation. This, I believe, is the more natural frame, because it contains the look so prized by film aficionados. Grain and color have been given a boost at the expense of extreme detail. Is it worth it? I seem to think so.

The above examples are just a smattering of the possible effects one can apply to digital photos with the Exposure plugin. Over the next few weeks, more and more of my most special shots are going to be reprocessed using Exposure, and certainly almost all of the new ones. While not all shots will benefit from its use, extremely detailed landscapes come to mind, most of the shots I take do yield a subjective improvement when given the Exposure treatment.

At $199 this plugin is not cheap. But, when you think of the engineering effort and research that went into creating some of the filters, it really is a bargain. Not only does it mean you get wonderful color film conversions, but I haven't even covered the B&W films or even the Infrared films the plugin offers. With dozens and dozens of presets all yielding subtle creative effects, Exposure allows the busy photographer to dispense with hand processing desired image effects individually in PS, and with its batch feature, can put an end to the ultra clean, grainless B&W batching that wedding photogs use to bang out their B&W's.

Fig. 6: Just look at the sheer number of creative effects at your disposal as seen at the left of this screenshot from Exposure. the interface serves to streamline the creative workflow, providing a nice option to preview your work before assigning a filter.

Conclusion: Exposure is merely the start of radical change in the way digital photos are processed, the rebellion against pristine photos has begun. Not only does Exposure add imagination to photos, but, in some instances, it produces effects that are entirely unprecedented and quite sublime. If you want to push your photos through the same old tools be my guest, but you are cheating yourself out of a creative experience that is similar to being in a darkroom, only now, you have to wait seconds to see your results rather than minutes. Highly recommended.

Tags: exposure, post processing, film, plug-ins, photoshop