Learning How to Edit Photographs

 

From the “Scavenger Hunt” slideshow, uploaded in the blog on February 4, 2021, two photographs, that were taken one minute apart on February 2, 2021, were chosen to undergo further edit.

I was at the South bank of the Maumee River in downtown Toledo, Ohio. I took both photographs standing in the same place but aiming the camera to opposite directions: to the East (at 6:27 pm) and to the West (at 6:28 pm). I have chosen these two images, from a group of ten, because there is a sense of continuity of the scenery and in the compositional narrative. Both images face each other, two different bridges, crossing the Maumee River, sharing the same sky. The two photographs show a city image devoid of human figures but with plenty of clues of their existence. Toledo, Ohio is inviting the viewer to enjoy in our own exploring and looking for art forms or “findings while browsing art” of the city’s landscape.

The unedited photographs were taken with an iPhone camera for the slideshow that was done with the smartphone’s app Clips. The photographs’ dimensions are 3024 x 4032 pixels (width x height). The iPhone’s resolution total of 12.2 megapixels (multiplying 3024 x 4032 equals 12,192,768). A megapixel (MP) refers to one million pixels.

To edit the photographs I used Adobe Photoshop, which is a raster graphics editor. "Raster-based images are comprised of pixels." A pixel (picture element) represents one square of one color at a time. The resolution of the image “is determined in large part by how many of these tiny squares (pixels) are packed together in a small space.” The images sizes were resized to 1000 pixels of the largest dimension of the original photograph (that is considered a good resolution for the web) and then were saved as a JPEG format (Joint Photographic Experts Group) to compress and reduce file size.

The photograph of the West (see above) shows the Anthony Wayne Bridge, the sunset, footprints in the snow, city lights, a black metal fence and the river. I cropped the foreground, the left side and part of the sky of the original photograph. The black metal fence’s upper border became a leading line to help the viewer to focus on the background where the sun is setting. The sun is seen immediately to the right of the bridge’s tower (that is also at the end of the leading line/fence). The sun’s shape and color can be confused to the bridge’s and city’s lights, but the sun is slightly larger and reddish and more intense. Color was hardly edited to maintain nature's colors.

The photograph of the East (see above) shows the Martin Luther King Bridge, an artwork in yellow that reads “You Are Beautiful,” two black benches, a fence gate, snow, and the river with patches of ice that indicate that it is frozen. I cropped the foreground and left side and part of the sky to focus the attention to the foreground of the opened gate that invites the viewer to seat in the empty benches that are facing the North side of the city and the frozen Maumee River. The balance of cool color (blue of the sky) and the warm color (red of artificial light and the sunset) were appropriate in the original photographs. I modified vibrancy and some hue, in the image of the East, to intensify the colors in the photographs. Also, I used filter that sharpens the edges.

Two works of art from the permanent collection of the TMA that makes a connection with this learning exercise regarding pixels and the location of the photographs are:

Chuck Close (American, 1940) "Alex" 1987, Oil on Canvas. TMA# 1987.218. 

http://emuseum.toledomuseum.org/objects/54766/alex?ctx=21f748a2-79d1-42e3-acc0-0d42c32b9ba8&idx=3

Maya Lin (American, 1959) "Silver Erie" 2012, Sculpture recycled silver. TMA# 2012.103

http://emuseum.toledomuseum.org/objects/73593/silver-erie?ctx=10ffec33-e4ac-443f-b39a-cdae21aeb510&idx=0