Creating a photo through intention

You don’t take a photograph, you make it. - Ansel Adams  

This quote applies to the entire photographic process; from clicking the shutter, to editing the photo, to printing it out. The simple act of choosing an image to work on is part of the process. Each conscious choice you make determines the final outcome. 

I prefer to do this the hard way. I tend to edit my photos twice, once using Snapseed for future  Instagram posts and once using Photoshop for printing. I really enjoy using Instagram as a photo sketchpad. I like to test photo concepts and play with editing techniques all the while trying not to get too caught up in my head. When I want to print an image out on paper, I turn to Photoshop for more traditional photo editing. 

When I am editing in Photoshop I want to try to capture what I created with my quick Snapseed edits. Of course when I write this out, this process seems totally ass backwards to me. Here I am with my big fancy camera and my big fancy printer and I'm trying to capture the quick, grungy spontaneity of an iPhone picture edited with Snapseed.  

Needless to say this has been a challenge. This past weekend I had the most fun with my experimentations, but for all the wrong reasons. The filters I downloaded to play with are designed to emulate film stock. After applying them to my images I discovered something I have not seen in years…film grain! I forgot how much I missed film grain. In this age of digital images and pixillation, film grain is a thing of the past. But for me it was always an important part of my final images. When I enlarged my underwater images to 40" x 30" (that's really, really large) the grain was so pronounced the photos became similar to a pointillism painting. I was so happy to make this discovery, it was like coming home again. 

So needless to say I can't wait to re-edit a few classic images with these new filters, add some grain and blow the best images up really, really large. 

What was your happiest accident?
What is your editing workflow?

~ xxsjc

A detail of an old image re-edited and now sporting some very sexy looking film grain.