Episode #97 – A Question Of Visual Style

This week: I’m looking at how and why we choose to produce pictures in a certain style.

Whether you capture neutral tones which are sympathetic to the subject or harsh, contrasty images designed to provoke a certain response in the viewer – there is never a right or wrong way, of course.

That’s the beauty of working in such a creative medium – but it certainly makes for interesting debate!

Some quick links to things mentioned in this show:

Music featured in this episode is courtesy of Matt Stevens. You can check out more of his work here.

2 thoughts on “Episode #97 – A Question Of Visual Style

  1. I enjoyed listening to your consideration of personal taste in image processing. I tend to prefer to “get it right in the camera”, although I generally add a little definition and clarity on importing to my processing software.

    For my landscape stuff, I tend to go for what I think is a naturalistic look. If I’m shooting in-camera black and white, I like a lot of contrast. I rarely print my work, most of it being shared on places like Flickr, or my blog, so I think I tend to process to make things look nice on a screen – *my* screen. Gawd knows what they look like on a rubbish screen! I dislike spending hours fiddling about with the digital darkroom, so aside from the occasional experiment most of my shots end up as they come off the card.

  2. Hi Heather.

    Thanks for listening – glad you enjoyed the show!

    You make a good point about how images look on others’ screens… Of course, we can never guarantee how their monitors are set up (calibrated or not), but so long as you know that everything is as it should be at your end, that’s the important thing.

    Personally, I have never set any of my cameras to shoot in black & white, preferring to have a full-colour-information file from which to create the final results. If I choose to take the black & white route after the fact, there are many ways to approach this, depending on the subject matter.

    But, when all’s said and done, any photographer must create their images according to their own preferences. After all, the world would be a boring place if we all did the same thing!

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