Tonal Abstraction

Photo manipulation is a modern term for a wide variety of digital techniques that were completely unknown to film photographers, or required long periods in the dark room dealing with complex chemical and light manipulation operations.  In this article I want to share a technique I've found that allows me to discover unique and valuable images in my photographs.  Basically, what I call tonal abstraction is a combination of extracting or abstracting elements of the photograph using the tone curve.

The photos I'm going to discuss each have a dominating figure and a background  The nude figure provides a clean simplicity of figure without the clutter that clothing introduces.   In this first photo,  Running Abstracted, she could be thought of as wearing a skin tight suit, perhaps a special space suit for nymphs from some other planet that happen to be visiting my forest.

Running Abstracted 1

Tones and histograms

In photography, the term "tone" refers to the shades of grey in a black and white print.  Ansel Adams' zone system is based on the concept that a photograph should exhibit a well distributed range of grays from black to white.  With color, we are also looking for a reasonably even distribution within each of the colors present.

The histogram is a diagram that graphically displays the actual range of tonal values present in an image.  Most cameras and photo editing programs will show you this diagram and much has been written about how to read it.  This article from Cambridge is one of the better ones.

Original exposure values

The "ideal" exposure has an even distribution of tones present in the scene being photographed.  The out of the camera version of this photo has a good distribution of tonal values, though most of pixels in this image are on the darker side, moving the hump to the left.

In this image we want the fairly high contrast between the light figure and the darker background.  If we were to use camera settings or post processing to shift the hump to the middle, we'd end up with a washed out or "flat" looking image.

What I call tonal abstraction is done by adjusting the tone curve so that I am abstracting or extracting what I feel is the essence of the image.  I do this primarily by changing the shape of the tone curve, although I may tweak other aspects also.  The basic shape of the tone curve is a diagonal across from darkest on the left to lightest on the right.  Pulling a point up lightens the values of the pixels in that part of the tonal range.  But it's not always obvious what's going to happen until you try playing with the tone curve control that is present in most photo development software.

Tone curve adjustment

The tone control enables you to do what in film days was a maneuver involving complicated operations at various stages of the film development and printing process.  There were many variations, using quite different techniques, that are now all in the modern tone curve.

More complex curve adjustment

The wikipedia article on Posterization deals with one kind of current digital technique, while the article on Solarisation discusses the film techniques.  This site by Motoyuki Chino, a Japanese photographer, gives some great examples of film tonal work.  I hadn't seen his work before, and I really glad to have found it.  His work is stunning and inspirational!

For my digital manipulation from this original to a tonal abstraction, I wanted to emphasize the figure and the motion of the figure.  I decided the darker background on the left of the tone curve needed to be close to "reality" and that I wanted the figure emphasized or abstracted from reality by modifying the lighter tones on the right.

I discovered two versions that I like quite a bit, very similar, but with different feels.  The top one is more forceful, the bottom one more energetic.

The links from the captions will take you to a buy page where you can also see the image in a much larger form.  To the right is a comparison of the face detail at full resolution (the size I uploaded these at is 705 pixels square.).

Tonal Extraction, or Background abstraction

Morning sun coming through the trees

In this next one, I opted to extract the figure and abstract the background.  The original image has serious overexposure problems in the entire upper background areas, and underexposure problems in the lower right area.  In other words, the original image will not make a decent print if the aim is realism because the available lighting just doesn't work for that.  But it does work quite well for this tonal adjustments are made and the aim is an image the extracts the essence of the pose.

There have been various movements in the history of photography.  Early in the last century, there was spirited debate about whether a photograph should portray realistic reality, or if photography was just one more tool in the visual artist's palette.  The realistic point of view dominated the photography as art scene during the  its initial appearance in art galleries.

Marina Cashdan, Writer and editor at Huffinton, posed the question:

When photographs look painterly, does that offer a unique quality?

My artistic vision includes room for that possibility, and I am offering some of my photographs as candidates in this area of photography.

Some photographs work better when they are realistic, some work better when painterly, and some work fine either way.

This next pair of images both work, though they are quite different. The one on the left is better suited for digital display, while the one on the right works for both digital and print.  I'm finding that low key images seem to work better on digital displays than they do on paper.  A darker image on a digital display is lit from within, but in a frame on a wall, the print will only work if the lighting is just right.  The photo on the left is pretty much as it came out of the camera, while the one of the right is a tonal abstraction of the entire image.

Buy link to the one of the left; buy link to the one on the right.

This next one reduces the image to very bare essentials.  We have something that looks more like an original painting than a photograph. In fact, the original photo, on the right, looks pretty surreal due to the way it was set up and shot. So tonal abstraction can be done using the camera and special lighting arrangements, which makes sense because lighting determines the tonal range and tonal values.

There is much less of an erotic feel in the original for this next abstraction.  The fabric became more translucent as a result of the tone adjustments.

Resting

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I welcome comments, questions, or suggestions and will respond within a few days.  Click on the word "comments" to pop up the comment box.  Thank you for reading my post.

Autumn colors

The golden hour is the period just after sunrise or before sunset when the light is special.

 She runs (purchase print)

In the fall of 2011, Anna and I collaborated on a shoot to capture the fall colors that went best with her colors.  I have made the full size images available for printing at Redwoodtwig.com.  The image hosting service I'm using is Smugmug, and they have a wide variety of excellent products on which to put the images.  Both photographer and model would love it if you would like to decorate your wall with our images.  The captions under the photos have links to to purchase that photo and to explore the other images from this shoot.

Creating fine art images in which the nude figure appears requires a special kind of collaboration between the photographer and the model.  This is also true of any kind of image creation work in which there are human or animal models, but in most cultures around the world today, the naked form of a human has a multitude of cultural strictures.  Some strictures against nudity in art have been around for thousands of years but others have shown up recently, even after a long cultural tradition of nudity in art.

When you hang an image on your wall, you are making a statement about what you consider pleasing to your soul.  Well, maybe.  It might also be that you are making a statement about your wealth and happiness -- "That's a signed original, printed by so and so and worth lots of money."

The images in this blog are currently offered as decorative art rather than limited editions.  When I am doing the entire process from exposure to print, I will be able to offer signed originals.

For this blog entry, what you see are essentially original images, just as they came out of the camera.  The post processing included cropping and once in a while a bit of dodging and burning.  Instead of the cardboard cutouts I used to use under an enlarger during the print exposure, I have only a circular and a full frame rectangle tool to work with in Lightroom; however I can do more with the digital tools than I could with the darkroom set up.

Autumn colors 1:  she listens  (purchase print)

Photographing the naked form requires only two things:  a naked form and a background in which the form is presented.  Here I chose to use a stand of late autumn grasses in the foreground, the figure in the middle, and a hint of the forest in the background.

The color of the light in the late afternoon on a fall day brings extra warmth to the scene and the figure.

Still photo and movie makers gain special pleasure when able to work during the golden hours near dawn and dusk.  The golden tone of the light brings out things otherwise not seen.

Autumn colors 2: she looks (purchase print)

Autumn colors 3:  oak leaves  (purchase print)

The golden light of autumn also brings a special glow to the oak leaves, which only turn brown much later.  Instead they begin a gradual transformation from light green to darker and darker hues, mixed with the red veins that later turn the whole leaf brown.

Autumn colors 4:  she starts to approach, with a hint of a smile

We hope you have enjoyed your visit here, and if your soul should happen to resonate with an image, we hope you will consider purchasing a print.

(Note:  for commercial or editorial use of these images, please contact me.)

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I welcome comments, questions, or suggestions and will respond with a few days.  Click on the word "comments" to pop up the comment box.  Thank you for reading my post.