PUSHING BOUNDARIES

HIGH-KEY EXPERIMENTS

Making creative photographs requires pushing boundaries beyond the norms and trends of the day. Over the decades I’ve made landscape photographs, I’ve found that pursuing new tangents in technique or subject matter has kept me creatively invigorated and moving forward. My latest passion is experimenting with an alternate, high-key approach to post-processing.

The typical way most of us process our photographs is to show a full range of tones, from luminous shadows with detail in them to bright highlights. High-key images show only tonal values on the upper end of a histogram, with the darkest tones being around middle gray and the lighter tones being light gray to near white.

I was first inspired by the high-key images of Don Worth, one of Ansel’s first assistants. His photograph of a succulent plant rendered in subtle shades of light gray has a mystical quality and is one of my all-time favorite images. He also photographed a forest of trees in fog with the same high-key treatment. Huntington Wetherill also inspired me with his high-key imagery of dunes. The more you look at other photographers’ work, the greater your library of ideas will be for “pushing the boundaries” with your own photographs.

My first experiments with this approach began many years ago when I had made some new images of a very foggy pine forest. As I processed the digital files, I followed my basic routine of adjusting the contrast, shadows, and highlights in the image. Although the results looked good to me in a traditional, full-tonal-range sense, the photograph did not reflect how my experience felt during that foggy dawn.

My processing routine is based on having heard Ansel Adams explain his approach to the Zone System for processing his film and making prints during his Yosemite workshops. His fundamental approach was to show a full range of tones.

However, as Ansel reminded his students many times, the Zone System was designed as a flexible tool for creative expression, not as a commandment for enforcing one way of processing. If your interpretation of a scene is that of an ominous mood, or you’re inspired by the vibrant colors or dramatic contrasts in a scene, then process accordingly. The Zone System was designed to allow a flexible range of tonal control, for the photographer to expand or contract the tonal range of a scene depending on the artist’s vision. Digital processing can be used to similar effect. As with the Zone System for film, software such as Lightroom and Photoshop are interpretive tools that can give excellent control over contrast range.

With the inspiration from Worth and Witherill, I’ve explored high-key processing over the years. My images start out in Lightroom, where I work with the Develop module’s sliders. I will push the Shadows far to the right to open up the shadow details and see what is in there. Then I try out increasing the Whites and lessening the Blacks. I often take the Highlights slider far to the left to avoid clipping the highest values and to control the gradations of very light tones. Once I find an effective balance of contrast, I will often push the global Exposure values higher to lighten the overall image.

A more literal rendition of this cypress photograph did not reflect my experience, which was more magical and bright than what I was seeing on my monitor. I decided to try a high-key approach to the image, meaning that all the tones in the file would be placed at the high end of the tonal range. The darkest value might be a middle gray, while most of the tones would be light gray and near white tones.

As I added these adjustments, the image began to come to life. The fog glowed and the trees receded into pale whites. The image became more impressionistic and ethereal, more like my emotional response to the scene. It is good to remember this question when judging your photos: Does this image represent the emotional equivalent of what I saw and felt? Asking this question helped me discover the high-key option shown here.

In my recent retrospective book, I had the satisfaction of presenting the major thematic portfolios I’ve developed over four decades. The challenge for me is, what’s next? I am very excited to pursue a new direction, where ever it may lead. Nothing ventured, nothing gained!

Trees Growing on Moss-Covered Boulders | Baxter State Park, Maine | 1995