Classes in this category examine the systems of visual communication that motivate and inform both contemporary and traditional photographic post-production, modification, manipulation and mastering of the photographic image. This unique insight and analysis of both the photographic details and systems present in the post-production stage will result in a clearer understanding of how to more accurately read, interpret and convey meaning, intent and aesthetics in your final image.
These classes will explore advanced creative and technical sign systems present in both the correction and manipulation workflows of digital post production as it relates to a variety of photographic styles and aesthetics. Students will analyse both structural and conceptual input and output variances that affect the final image.
Classes in this category are suitable for the following styles of photography:
Light and Photography
- An overview of the basic properties of light
- The fundamentals of photographic light
- The emotional and psychological effect of light in photography
- The foundation principles of photographic light: brightness, colour and contrast
Photographic Light
- Light, the subject and the viewer: active modification
- Light and the photographic capture: analogue and digital
- The electromagnetic spectrum
- The difference between transmitted and refracted light
- The difference between incident and reflected light
- Specular vs diffuse reflection
- Direct transmission vs diffuse transmission
- The angle of light
Looking Versus Seeing
- Expanding your vision
- The search for order
- How do we see?
- Subject, object and viewer
- Differences between looking, seeing and photographing
How to Evaluate, Read and Interpret Light in Post-Processing
- Image evaluation principles
- Reading the negative or raw capture
- Making your initial capture notes
- Imaging goals and markup
- Averaging high and low values
- Visualisation and image values
Analysing Your Captures: Analogue and Digital
- Reading photographs: the structural surface
- Reading photographs: the aesthetic interior
- Reading photographs: the abstract exterior
- Deconstructing the surface and interior qualities of pre-existing photographs
- Analysing the pictorial qualities of pre-existing photographs
Interpreting and Communicating Your Photographic Vision
- Meaning, connotation, denotation and empathy
- Semantics in post-processing
- Sense, feeling, tone and intention
- Structural meaning
- Arbitrary and motivated signs
- Aberrant decoding
- Extracoding: undercoding and overcoding
- Meaning: systems in contact
The Expressive Image
- Defining intent in post-processing
- Selective attention and selective perception
- Gestalt: filling the gaps
- Sequences in photography
- The post-processor as an editor
Colour Theory and Perception
- The properties of waves and light: origin, spectrum and colour frequency
- Photographic light
- The appearance and nature of colour
- Colour perception, subjectivity and neutrality
- Colour theory: the colour wheel, harmony and context
- Photographic colour, models and profiles
- Colour space conversions: gamut mismatches and rendering intents
Image Visualisation in Post-Production
- Image evaluation and capture value analysis
- Defining your imaging goals
- Understanding the expressive qualities of the tonal spectrum
- Conveying aesthetic principles through tonal volume, loudness and level
- Black and white conversions vs colour based black and white techniques
Image Interpretation in Post-Production
- Reading an image and considering the viewer’s interpretation
- Balancing pictorial, compositional and aesthetic considerations
- Interpreting depth: three-dimensional planes in two-dimensional images
- Subtractive vs additive post processing principles
Conveying Intent in Post-Production
- Analysing, interpreting and expressing decisive moments aesthetically
- Ways of seeing: controlling the eye of the viewer
- Compositional processing: balancing both positive elements and negative space
- Creating tension through unbalanced physical and pictorial values
Formalism in Post-Production
- Visual and aesthetic rhythms: repeating forms, values and variance
- Pictorial volume: structural dominance, subordination, opposition and proportion
- Visual harmony: balancing texture and tone in both colour and black and white photography
Pictorial Control in Post-Production
- Value control in post-processing
- Intensification and reduction
- Expansion and contraction
- Dynamics and texture
- Place and fall
- The full scale tonal spectrum subject