Salgado is world known photojournalist who captures images of global issues. His images however are different to many other documentary/photojournalists as his images are presented in black and white with a high level of contrast showing a vast tonal range from pure white to pure black. Although this may impact the natural sense of reality to these image because the contrast seems to overdramatise his images, i am going to experiment with doing similar edits to his works. I will focus of the use of black and white editing to make beautiful and aesthetic images which may portray a slightly different story to my original images.
Through the use of light room i have 126 selected images which are my favourite from the 5 shoots that i did whilst in africa. On lightroom you are able to edit one image to black and white and make the adjustments you want to and then synchronise this edit with all the photographs in the collection so you dont have to individual edit each one you can then just make slight adjustments to them to get the outcome you desire.
How to Synchronize edits on lightroom:
- select one image from your library of selected images you want to edit
- Go to the develop tab on lightroom
- use the adjustments such as Black&white, contrast, lighting,exposure and highlights to edit your image the way you want to
- once you are happy with your edit go back to library and press Ctrl + A to select all the images in the collection
- Once you have selected all the images press the develop tab again in the top right of the screeen and then select ‘Sync…’
- it will now pop up with a message, select ‘Synchronize all’
- Now all the images in your selection should have the same adjustments as the initial image you edited.
I used the synchronize tool in light room to edit all on my image in my ‘need to edit’ collection. Now i can see all my images in black and white and begin to look through them and pick out aesthetic images which show a similar dramaticed piece of artwork similar to that of Salgados.
Through editing this image alone to black and white it has compleatly changed the meaning and message of the image. Even though the image may look more artistically beautiful due to the extreme tonal range in the image, it has lost the story of the image and what is actually going on because through making the image black and white it has lost any colour and therefore happiness to the image which then creates a negative atmosphere to this image. As the protagonist isn’t smiling in this image and it is black and white the reader may see this image as being a sad narrative where the young children are before forced to work, whereas this is not the case they were voluntarily helping and loved having something to do and getting involved with improving their local community. Therefore i think that the process of making this image more aesthetically pleasing has destroyed the natural narrative of the image and is therefore an example of how Salgado’s images are not authentic because he uses the technique of beautification.
Again with the two above images edited in a similar style use a high level of contrast and a big tonal range the mood of the image can be compleatly changed to what the photographer was experiencing in reality. when i took these images the individuals where happy and energetic however never smiled for photographs so in my original photographs its the bold colours and energy which is evident in the images which makes them have a positive tone however still showing their hardships. However as soon as the images are turned black and white and striped of colour it is as the individuals have been striped of their personality.
For further experimentation i looked at my photo book which includes all of my best images from the photo shoots i completed in Africa. As i had synced all the images to be black and white i could just click on the book production tab and all of the images where in black and white. I did this because i wanted to see the impact that removing the colour from my images had on the narrative of my photo book. The impact was that the images all seemed to be extremely over dramatized and the whole narrative had been lost and made to look as if i was trying to create a photo book which showed a third world community which was struggling. i don’t like the way it has negatively influenced the audience to think it is a sad story. This is evidence to the amount a narrative or meaning can be changed just through digital manipulation.
I have showed both the edited and unedited image above to emphasise the differences between the two images and in my eyes i see two compleatly different stories being told.