Maybe it’s a bit of a strange title for a blog about photoshop editing but, the truth is, it’s taken me a while to realise that editing and photography is, for me, more than capturing an image – it’s about the feeling, the essence of the moment. When I’m editing I’m not manipulating pixels, fixing something ‘wrong’ (although that does happen)… I’m trying to translate the feeling I had in that moment, the way the breeze felt, the joy of the pony when she looked straight at me holding my gaze, the glow of the luminous yellow of the spring gorse… (If you want to learn more about the edit process please follow this line as the link…)
The originals and then the edits…I was playing with dreamy soft bloom, texture and colour, trying and exploring what brings the presence to the place that matters most in my heart to bring that moment alive again…
Photoshop isn’t about faking it but making it… About giving us the power to recreate the essence of the moment, to put our hearts on our images, to bring the image, the moment and the personal together…
And then there’s the trouble with this sort of photography of ‘moments..’ You can’t ask the pony to move and go and stand here or there… That’s when ‘fixing’ or maybe softening, blending and again, restoring the feeling of what happened well, happens.
And this is how I edit, putting the heart of what I loved in that moment onto the image, recreating (or attempting to at any rate) feelings, sensations, the embodied sense of connection with the world….It’s a piece of experience not a picture…
I’ve played around with different edits here. The moment was shot across a road, just behind the pony, I created some images to show the fast moving vehicles right behind her, to ‘report’ rather than feel. In these shots I wanted to convey the beauty of the gorse and the pony and her interaction (at a distance) with me as she made eye contact noting my presence as she munched and the moment her (seemingly) enjoying her munching on the yellow shoots. I have no idea what was going on in her head, there is other food the other ponies were enjoying but this pony seemed to be seeking out the gorse… Presumably it’s sweet, again, I can’t be sure..
Why am I saying this?
Because this is what I’m trying to paint… When I do my ‘arty edits…’
The essence…the truth not the 2D version in the camera. I don’t see the world in 2D and I don’t see it at all I FEEL IT.. I feel mesmerised by moments, colours, life…the cool breeze on my cheeks.
The two things in this moment that mattered in my heart were this little pony and her personality, her pleasure at munching on the (I guess) sweetness of the spring blooming gorse and the COLOUR of the gorse -because oh my goodness it is stunning right now..
I’ve played around editing different ways, exploring with curiosity what makes my heart sing, what feels good, what reminds me most of the moment…
And this is how I edit…. Yes, it’s photoshop but far from being ‘faked’ this is the most real I can get you to the moments I felt in that landscape with that pony…
