This is our last Monday blog post for the semester – just a few ideas about photo filters, that you could use in your own image-making pursuits. Like Light Painting, the purpose of this post is simply to introduce some techniques that could be good to experiment with, and which, if you have time, I will again offer you 1-3 points extra credit if you create ten or so filtered photos and post them to a Picasa album.
There’s two basic kinds of filters: physical filters that you put in front of your lens, and software filters that you can use when processing the image. Physical Filters… most screw on to the front of a lens, but basically a filter could be anything that you place between the lens and your subject matter.
[photo courtesy TiffenFilters.com]
UV Filter: basically this is a piece of glass screwed on to the front of a lens. Its main function is to protect your lens from scratches, sand, water, etc. It doesn’t really change the colors or values of your images, but can save you a lot of trouble… much better to scratch a $50 filter than the actual glass surface of your expensive lens! If you’re using a digital SLR camera with interchangeable lenses, then this filter is a must-have safety device.
Polarizing Filter: Useful for cutting out glare and odd reflections.
Neutral Gradient Filter: mainly for landscape imaging. It’s quite difficult with certain types of scenes, such as an expansive view from the Hairpin Turn across the valley, to get a good exposure and detail in the land when the sky above is bright. Half of the filter is dark, half is clear -- you can set the dark part on the part of the scene that's too bright, thus altering your histogram's width, avoiding the dreaded blinkies.
Color Filters: any color of plastic or gel can be used to change the images you create. For example, many black-and-white photographer use a red filter to alter the contrast in their images. A sepia filter will make the images brownish, often quite lovely.
Home-made Crazy Filters: You can use any transparent or semi-transparent material to create your own filter… tape on plastic, soda bottle, sunglasses, Vaseline on a uv filter, paint on glass, plastic cling wrap, and so on. Here’s an example of a photo I made in NYC, using a homemade filter made of scotch tape and stringy packing tape placed on a piece of clear glass and then held in front of the lens to blur out the text in the menu above the waiting line:
Here’s another image, using scotch tape on glass to blur out some of the content
There is a look and a kind of visual detail that only physical filters can give you. But many appearances can also be created using software filters. Post-processing images can be useful and a lot of fun. And easy to over-do. If you’re in Photoshop or GIMP, then you have an entire menu of ‘filters’ which except for tools for blur and noise and sharpen, are in my oh-so-humble opinion truly ugly ways to ruin good photos. For example, there’s a filter called ‘watercolor’ that’s intended to mimic the look of a watercolor painting. If you apply it to a photo you’ll see quickly just how awful the results are, how it doesn’t at all look like watercolor paints, and so on. To show you the problem, here’s a delightful bunny photo I made, titled ‘Home’:
Here’s the bunny photo altered w/the watercolor filter:
And just to prove the point, here’s the same photo altered using the ‘brush daubs’ filter:
Yuck. But there are filters that are potentially useful. For example, here’s the Photoshop ‘Diffuse Glow’ filter, applied lightly:
That’s not that bad, and if applied more subtly could really alter the symbolism and mood of the resulting image.
Color Software Filters: two ways to make them – in Photoshop you can select Image -> Adjustments -> Photo Filters; or in GIMP or Photoshop you could create a new transparent layer, in which you paint a solid color and then set the transparency to what you want. Similarly, you can create the look of a neutral gradient filter: create a new layer, apply a ‘gradient fill’ of any color combination that you need, and then set transparency, luminosity etc. If you were a graphic designer charged with adding text to a photo, you might create a software gradient filter so that you could amplify some text.
Ultimately as artists we each find our own favorite ways to create images. Some of us will find it beautiful and interesting to heavily retouch, fiercely filter, and radically alter our images. Others of us will need to create minimally retouched or processed images. The same artist might also grow throughout a career, and in one phase of experimentation alter images a lot, where in another, the work is more minimal or straightforward. The choice is yours!
Ultimately as artists we each find our own favorite ways to create images. Some of us will find it beautiful and interesting to heavily retouch, fiercely filter, and radically alter our images. Others of us will need to create minimally retouched or processed images. The same artist might also grow throughout a career, and in one phase of experimentation alter images a lot, where in another, the work is more minimal or straightforward. The choice is yours!
