posterization

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My brother Bennett, who died in 1996, would be gaga over technology now. He had a personal computer before most people and was close friends with one of the early technicians of the Internet (no, not Al Gore). Besides being a computer geek he was a stellar amateur photographer who serves as inspiration for everyone in my family who takes pictures. As a 14-year-old I sat on the floor of our parents' living room spellbound watching slides from his college trip to Europe in 1970, especially captivated by Lautterbrunnen, Switzerland, a tiny hamlet in the narrowest and deepest valley in the world at the foot of the Jungfrau. (I was so smitten I took the same study abroad trip five years later.) Then after he graduated college he used to stay up all night developing photographs in the dark room he'd set up in Mom and Dad's basement.

One of my favorite projects was when he posterized photos, including one he took of Rembrandt's Dutchmasters painting in Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum. The original is above, and Bennett's posterized image is at the right. It's very 1970s-looking. (Sorry, my photo of it has some lamp flare.)

Posterization - which can be intentional or not - is when tones that are gradual in a photo become more abrupt and distinct with flat areas of contrast. When it happens by accident and is unwanted, it's called "banding." When it's intentional, think Andy Warhol's silkscreen of Marilyn Monroe, below. Actually the process of posterization reminds me of silkscreening.

When Bennett did posterization purposely in his dark room, he had to create several separate high contrast negatives and positives for each layer of contrast. It took hours to create one posterized image. The negatives and positives have to be paired and aligned on the photographic paper. I remember several piles of discarded attempts with misaligned layers of color scattered around the darkroom floor.

I often wonder if Bennett were alive, what he would think of digital cameras and digital photo processing. He was so fastidious about his film images, would he have chafed at the easy manipulations I do on PhotoShop and picnik? And would he prefer that particular quality of film that is lost in digital? I appreciate film photographs, but I'm grateful I don't have to practice on film and can delete thousands of digital images without a care for expense.

My preference for a photograph is an image as close to what the eye sees as possible, but it is also fun to play with processing and create an image that enhances what you see in some way. I almost always adjust levels of light and dark and contrast before posting photographs.

Here is an untouched digital photograph of a clematis flower on our farm.















This second image is after cropping it in PhotoShop to make a more pleasing composition (although I kinda like it uncropped too), adjusting levels of light and dark, as well as some highlight/shadow adjustment. Then on picnik I used the Orton effect then desaturated it a little.

Below is my posterization of the clematis flower done on picnik. Still at picnik I added frames and then did that "tearing up" of the frame I like doing on PhotoScape.

I recognize and appreciate beauty in other people's work that I will probably never replicate - either because I lack their imaginative powers (for instance rauf for his eye, skill and human connection, and Claudia, for her craft, composition and imagination), or because their style isn't my style, though I might still love their work, like Garry Winogrand.

I am not a trained photographer. I use "auto" settings most of the time and am hopeless at learning the rules about aperture and the rest. The way pianists "play by ear" I "shoot by eye"with a camera. But until I take Photography 101, I guess passing a quiz isn't important.

If you want to play and pay use Adobe PhotoShop, or you can use free downloads like PhotoScape and online tools such as picnik. There are many other tools, and if you use one and want to share, please leave info in a comment.

Here is a quote from David Bailey (extraordinary work), to remind myself (but not to reflect negatively on my dear painter friends who need insight and imagination too):

It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter because you can invent things. But in photography everything is so ordinary; it takes a lot of looking before you can learn to see the extraordinary.

Here is Bennett in a rare photo.

Man, I wish I could talk with him.