Contrast in Photos:Are YOU a Contrast Junkie?

[Ed K.]

No, not contrast as in irony. The technical one, although it can produce the other contrast. Also, not about the Zone system, but rather where you like to end up, whether you're "zoned out" or not.

Certainly, areas of contrast in an image tend to call attention to themselves, however just where do you draw the line on contrast?

Some years ago, I was a contrast junkie. Lots of those rich blacks and brilliant highlights the paper companies promised were everywhere in my early B&W work. Today, I've aquired a much more gray-centric taste; images that I like are often considered to be "too gray" to some viewers used to the modern POW! in your face contrast, yet they have values from highlight down into the shadows, show what I want to show ( sometimes a bit more or less ), and let me spend more time wandering around in the image. And well, I do confess to the occasional silhouette.

For non-photographers, it is an aquired taste, for this photographer, it is the preferred meal to have a varied and expressive range more often than not ( except when used for effect ). I'm definitely a grade 2 person these days, whereas I was often a grade 3 or 4 person in the past. Most of my subjects have plenty of contrast for grade 2 paper, and I love seeing textures. Perhaps also it is just the contact print that enjoys the more gray treatment. Maybe it just matches the color of my beard...

While sorting through stacks of old photographs from the 40's, which my father shot, I appreciate the ones with lots of information in the greys - I can actually see how people looked during the war in Alaska. The contrasty ones just cheat me of seeing what was going on. Ah, those "gray images", those sharp, honest little contact prints are the parts of a time machine that made it safely to me after 60 years. Interestingly enough, the glossy ones look the best of all.

Side point - I hope that many of you are making contributions to your own sort of time machines with your LF equipment! ( Thank goodness my dad didn't have a digital camera - yet he was taking 50-100+ megapixel images as a matter of course without even operating or knowing about digital computers ). One thing for sure, the grays in the image let me walk through the surface of the photograph into another time long past.

The old textbooks talked about placing certain color on the grayscale, or by example, "correct" vs. "incorrect". Or for many, it has always been just representing what's important in the limited paper range.

Alright, some of this is about developing and all that, however a lot of it is a combination of composition, and creative or selective interpretation on the part of the photographer. Never before have we had so many "sure fire" tricks to manipulate contrast in an image, with so much ease ( analog or digital ).

Okay, it depends on the subject, the photographer, and the purpose of the image, right? Your style, right? Certainly there are creative choices, trends among viewers, and with no doubt preferences of the photographer.

I'd like to hear how you call it in your mind's eye when you're shooting large format, and when you're making prints. What are your guidelines? What do you enjoy contrast-wise in prints? Are *you* a contrast junkie? And if you're not, how you prepare your viewers for a more subtle and understanded yet elegant presentation?

[PigleT]

I'm probably a little too fond of high-contrast at the moment. Then again, my favourite subjects are landscapes, particularly with patterns of sunlight and shadow on them, and I'm drawn to olde-worlde moody prints, so it's almost inevitable that mine look best when hogging the full histogram width.

However, I have shot the Humber Bridge in mist (relatively high-key, low contrast) and started experimenting with both POP and VC paper for contact-prints, with some amusement, and I'm thinking my PS tweaks have got in a rut, so maybe it's time to play with lower-contrast options. Thanks for the heads-up :)

[Bruce Watson]

The only way to communicate visually is through creating some sort of visual contrast. There has to be something that allows the human visual system to distinguish between various objects in a scene. This is true of any medium, from oil painting to photography, from charcoal drawings to water colors. Without some sort of visual contrast, all you have is a painted wall.

When you get down to it, the only real tools are variations in hue, and variations in value. I can't recall a real world example of using variations in saturation, but that might be possible as well.

For the special case of B&W photography, the only tool available is variations in value: the range of tones from black to white. While this sounds limiting, in practice it seems to allow unlimited possibilities for photographic expression.

So... am I a contrast junkie? In that I do a lot of B&W work, I'd have to say yes. I do like to make, and to look at, photographs that use a wide range of tones.

That said, I've made some photographs in fog that have a dynamic range of about a stop. I tend to expand this a bit on printing, but end up with a range from dark gray to light gray, with no full black and no paper white. And these prints I like as well.

In reality, I let the particular image tell me what it wants in the final print. Scenes with strong cross lighting and full sun naturally want high contrast prints with full black and usually some paper white. Scenes with full overcast usually want a more restricted set of tones, often with a touch of full black but without any paper white.

Now that I think about it, it's probably more accurate to call me a shadow detail junkie ;-)

[N Dhananjay]

Interesting question, and a little hard to answer. I'm going to avoid the simple answer of 'whatever contrast is right for the image'...

At least part of the answer is technical in the sense that you are eventually limited by the paper. The natural scene may comprise a very large range of luminances that has to be squeezed down into the available 7 stops or so of reflectance luminances that the typical paper is capable of. So, we basically do a variety of 'robbing Peter to pay Paul' exercises where we steal contrast from some part of the range and give it to another part of the range. If you shoot a scene that is matched to the range of your paper, you still have a spot of trouble due to the distortion of contrast in the toe and shoulders of the characterisitic curve. So try to get your extreme ends looking right and the middle range is typically overly contrasty. In fact, the typical POW! print you describe is basically lacking in midtones, right? The contrast has been stolen from the middle tones to pay for good contrast in the highlights and shadows (to the extent that many middles tones have effectively disappeared).

Add to this perceptual issues - the human eye-brain combination 'sees' by continuously scanning (well, actually by darting all over the place) and adjusts to variations in illumination very rapidly - the center of gaze typically sees a very saturated and high contrast image. That is, we 'see' the shadow under the tree at a fairly high contrast but we also see the sunlit top of the tree at a high contrast level. Of course, we ignore the fact that the eye-brain combination did some prodiguous adjusting in managing this. So part of the answer is learning to 'see photographically'.

But I suspect there is another, and perhaps more interesting, side to this. There does seem to be a 'high contrast' aesthetic and a 'low contrast' aesthetic - starting from the kinds of photographs one makes to the printing style. I suspect photographers often get drawn to the high contrast aesthetic because of the immediate 'impact' - we often seem to be unconsciously using 'impact' as a heuristic for a 'successful' photograph. It's a bit like composing music using the low and high ends of the scale - very dramatic. And then you have this other way which uses the whole scale with a lot of the action taking place in the middle of the scale and the ends providing accents. Human perception is drawn to regions of high contrast. If you track the human eye as it darts over a picture, you will find it being attracted to areas of high local contrast. So, the high contrast image provides a somewhat 'jittery' experience, as our eye keeps darting from one high contrast area to the next (said another way, the high contrast areas compete for limited perceptual resources). Typically, you can process the dominant areas but it is difficult to process details in any area because immediately, other high contrast areas start competing for attention. So, you can perceive the overall forms and gestalt very quickly but it is hard to see inter-relationships between various parts of the image because they all compete for limited attentional resources. The low contrast image will likely invite a more measured and contemplative experience. You can process different parts of the image at what seems a more relaxed pace and eventually, the interrelationships between the dominant forms sort of emerges - the experience is what I can only describe as an emerging gestalt.

Cheers, DJ

[domenico Foschi]

The biginner in 99% of the cases likes high contrast, through the years the faithful B/W photographer then starts looking for the middle greys that have been missing for so long in his/her images.
It is a natural course of action and esthetic development.
It is an exciting and frustrating process that is bound to widen and enhance your skills as a photographer as a printer and forces you to start looking at the subject in a more detailed manner.
Every little part of the image becomes important, we start thinking in how to render the beautiful light we have on Paper.
We have many tools, like filter at the shooting stage, The beautyful old time rule of exposing for the shadows and developing for the highlights, , Paper flashing( which can really open you up to new posibilities), VC paperetc.
These are all wonderful tools for achieving the greys you are looking for , the rich blacks, the textured highlights, unified by your unique vision.
It is a frustrating journey in trying to master all of these tools, but overtime it will show you how far you have come from the high contrast period.
Explore, make mistakes and find your own voice.

[Eric Biggerstaff]

This is a great post, thanks.

I like all kinds of images and how I print denpends on the image, my mood, the project I am working on, etc. Printing is a personal thing of course and our vision changes over time. Look how different Ansel printed "Moonrise, Hernandez" over the years, very different in terms of contrast from early prints to later. This is sort of the "West Coast School" vs. the "East Coast School" argument.

Am I a contrast junkie? Well, it depends. I tend to photograph when there is not much light, towards the very end of a day, so a bit more contrast can help. The key is knowing where to stop of course, and this comes with experience.

I don't think you can "prepare" the viewers for anything, I don't see that as my job. I make the images I want to make and print them the way I want them to look, the viewer can accept or reject my interpretation if they want, but I really only care about how I am seeing at this point in time. Of course, 10 years from now I might see the same image in a different way, and print it differently - that is great. I have seen a lot of elegant higer contrast prints, and a lot of elegant lower contrast prints. It really depends on the skill of the photographer ( I have also seen a lot of boring work at either end of the scale and in the middle). The key is that a skilled photographer can make the image look how they want, a beginner has a more limited set of skills so tends to print in one style only (in my opinion).

I think the key to contrast is using what you need to use to make the print look the way you want it to look. I like black and white as it is far removed from reality and using contrast ( and other printing techniques) to highlight this is great, I don't really want to make a literal interpretation of what I see, so if I want inky blacks then that is what I will print in order to get the image to match my vision. I try to not limit myself to any particular contrast range, or printing technique. For me, part of the art is to use a variety of tools and techniques to get to my vision.

[Brian Ellis]

After admiring John Sexton's work while attending several of his workshops, and trying to figure out why my prints didn't look like his, I finally concluded that (ignoring inherent talent) it was his use of grays. He gets a marvelous range of grays in his work. I think it depends on the particular print but as a big overgeneralization, I prefer a tonal scale that uses blacks and whites primarily as accents with everything else a shade of gray. In the years I spent teaching and judging and looking at portfolios of others while attending workshops, I thought the biggest single fault in b&w printing were prints that lost detail in important areas by printing those areas as blacks or whites (i.e. not too much overall contrast but rather too little tonal gradation).

[CXC]

Yes.

[bruce terry]

Yeah. Seems the deeper one goes into B&W, the more the Holy Grail morphs into tonality - your own personally-redefined "contrast". For me, a simple ziatype gives all the dmax I need without losing much tonal range. So maybe your choice of process defines how much of a contrast junkie you are. The irony of course is, whatever the process, the contrast question still remains.

On "preparing the viewer" I find most any non-prompted person will walk right up to a good contrasty silver print - even in poor light, immediately pass judgment and move on. An alternative matte-surface print on the other hand, good as it might be, won't even get a walk-up unless it has gangbuster lighting. Well-lit though, the cold-turkey viewer will often stare and stare at an alternative print because there is so much to see, because it is so "different". (Not better necessarily, just different.)

[Joseph O'Neil]

I think it depends on your market. I find that when I do prints for other people - for example, I did a bunch of prints (freebies, a favour) for my son's air cadet band, from some 4x5's I shot during thier last competition. While I think I have some shots with great ranges in grey tones (but by no means anywhere near as good as masters like J Sexton and others), people said they were "nice", but you know what people liked better? Prints that had more contrast. I shot several plates fo film that day, on two different types of film, but the contrasty shots are the ones that seem to appeal to people.

I recently shot the setting sun on water (B&W) on Lake Erie - pointed my G-Claron right at the water. Very, very contrasty shot,very few greys or mid-tones. But the one test print I did, people love it. By comparison, some Civil War re-enactor shots I did last year (Confederate wear grey, remember. :) ), it was a very hazy day, and shot between trees in shade , but wonderful, soft lighting, fully saturated. Although the contrast is by no means stark or strong, you can see every single leaf on the trees, detail in the uniforms, and more.

"oh, it looks kinda dull. " are the comments I get. Well, maybe it is a dull shot - or more/worse, but I liked it.

I think contrast in pictures is kinda like a chorus in a song. Ever try and explain Jazz to somebody? Ever try and explain why the average piece of Jazz music doesn't have repeating choruses? Trying to explain why a picutre doesn't have that storng range of contrasts is sometimes the same thing.

joe

[Gordon Moat]

Good morning Ed K,

Generally not something I conciously consider when taking photographs. So I took a quick glance over my images, and see that sometimes my choices are high contrast. I did not take this as only a B/W imaging question, since this is an aspect of colour imaging too. My choices in colour transparency films for 4x5 tend to be mid to high contrast, with my preference going to Kodak E100VS, which is one of the highest contrast transparency films. However, the film I wish Kodak made in 4x5 is E200, which is low to medium contrast.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat

[Ralph Barker]

Am I a contrast junkie? In a word, no.

While I enjoy a print with a full range of tones as much as the next person, I also enjoy prints that are nearly monotones, both high key and low. Although it may be the "cheap way out" to say it depends on the image, it really does. Each type of image creates its own mood or mental response in the viewer. Some viewers simply have broader horizons than others.

[Eric Leppanen]

To follow-up on Eric Biggerstaff's observation about the work of Ansel Adams: If pressed for a generalization, I would say that I prefer the "later" Ansel versus "early" Ansel. I always thought that Ansel's more contrasty renditions had more "punch" and were more interesting to look at. Of course, it takes a lot of skill that I frequently don't have to pull this off without obviously blowing out highlights or blocking up shadows!

I got into B&W photography after cutting my photographic teeth on contrasty color chrome, and one of the first teachings my B&W mentors hit me with (to which I still largely follow) was that a good B&W photograph has good, solid shadow detail. Add to that a requirement to avoid blowing out the sky (present in much of my work), and I find that contrast frequently becomes fairly circumscribed. In general, I try to do contrast control via the negative, rather than through selection of various paper grades.

So...if I can get away with plus development I will do so, but in general my B&W work emphasizes shadow detail and a more reserved, formal look. This makes for a nice counterpoint to my more overtly showy, highly contrasty and saturated, "look at me!" color images.

[JW Dewdney]

Contrast and tone should, in my opinion, be used MEANINGFULLY.

Think about it. Read Edward Tufte - lots to think about there.

[Ed K.]

Hey JW - I have Visual Display of Quantitative Information and others. He does have good points, and they apply, however I was hoping for thoughts more specific to photographic applications. Indeed, so many ways to go on the subject - and nice to hear what others have to say about it.

[JW Dewdney]

Hey JW - I have Visual Display of Quantitative Information and others. He does have good points, and they apply, however I was hoping for thoughts more specific to photographic applications. Indeed, so many ways to go on the subject - and nice to hear what others have to say about it.

Well - what I take from Tufte is really simple. Essentially what I said above. But essentially - keep things (contrasts - tonal contrasts, conceptual contrasts, etc etc) as simplified as possible. Keep the drama for the dramatic information. In the way that Tufte would suggest that layers of information on a map should be subtle but distinguishable enough to be read independently - likewise there are times when you don't necessarily WANT cutting sharpness and detail everywhere. Sometimes it detracts from the photograph. Of course - one needs to enter into a dialog of what a specific photograph is about in order to determine this... but I think that one can operate intuitively with respect to making well-ordered pictures. So the dialog can be had unconsciously I suppose. Anyway -you're certainly getting me into territory that is pretty new for me in terms of actually VERBALIZING it - but I think I probably expressed my ideas fairly faithfully - I'll let you know when I have a sudden breakthrough...!

Jonathan

[JW Dewdney]

I'm having a Columbo moment here (re: the TV series - the way he'd always walk back into the interrogation) - in case I didn't HINT at it before... I think it's generally tasteful when a full range of tones are printed - and only just a hint of pure white or black - likewise it's the hallmark also of good graphic design. Very subtle shading and layering of information and just a splash of color where needed...