Digital offers the contemporary photographer flexibility and speed and perhaps most important, the ultimate in creative control. You can change from color to black and white “on the fly,” change white balance and film speed similarly, and there is no delay in processing, proofing and printing.

Digital capture provides the ability to instantly preview images, meaning that if you missed the shot for any reason, you can delete that file and re-take it right then and there. The photographer and the subject or client can examine the captured images instantly and simultaneously, capitalizing on the excitement of the in-progress photo session.

The daunting task of traditional retouching has all but been eliminated by the ease of retouching in Adobe Photoshop with its many tools and techniques. Special effects, once the province of the accomplished darkroom technician, are now routinely created quickly and expertly by the photographer in Photoshop. The opinion of most professionals is that the range of creative effects offered by Photoshop and other programs far exceeds those done in a traditional lab or darkroom.

The digital shooter is not hampered by having to change rolls of film frequently or by being caught with the wrong speed film in the camera. In-camera digital storage media now offers multiple gigabytes of data for virtually unlimited shooting, and film speed is instantly adjustable, from frame to frame, if so desired.

The proliferation of digital technology is virtually exploding. New digital camera systems are appearing overnight, as are peripheral products that support digital imaging. Almost without exception, manufacturers’ entire R&D budgets are going into new digital products. New cameras with higher resolution, improved imaging chips with added functionality and better software for handling digital files are being introduced with ever-greater frequency.

Many photographers have not yet made the huge investment in digital; opting instead to digitize film images by scanning; a cost-effective means of offering clients a full range of digital products. And some photographers have spent years perfecting their shooting technique using films they thoroughly understand and enjoy using. To these photographers, the digital change means a radical departure from business as usual.

Perhaps the greatest advantage of digital is creative control. According to well known wedding and children’s photographer, Kathleen Hawkins, the other half of Jeff Hawkins Photography, the greatest benefit of digital is “the creative control of our work.” The pair has a renewed excitement for covering weddings and an appreciation for being able to view the images right away—a “powerful advantage for both photographer and clients.” Photographers are no longer just recording images and sending them off to the lab for color correction, retouching and printing. Says Kathleen, “We can now perfect our art to the fullest extent of our vision!”

Digital capture lets the photographer create a work of art to deliver to the client. Photograph by Jeff Hawkins.

Regardless of whether a photographer shoots digitally or with film, the impact of Adobe Photoshop has permanently changed the style and scope of professional imagery. The photographer, in the comfort of his home or studio, can now routinely accomplish image manipulations that could only be achieved by an expert darkroom technician in years past. Photoshop and its many plug-in filters has made wedding and portrait photography the most creative venues in all of photography. And clients love it.

Kersti Malvre uses her scanned and Photoshop-manipulated images in many ways. This image is part of a series of 5x7-in. digital note cards that she sends to potential clients and friends. The prints are printed on velvet paper and mounted on elegant printed card stock with her signature and a message about her artwork and bound in a mini-portfolio that she has created for her 10-print portfolios.

One of the biggest complaints of photographers who have gone digital is the long and exhaustive workflow. Money saved in film and processing seems to go right back into expensive digital equipment and computers and ever-changing technology. More than the cost, the time spent in front of a computer monitor has drastically increased.

Ultimate Control

Most of the photographers featured in this book are digital artists, and while they are not above using time-saving shortcuts in the image-processing side of things, they still spend a great deal of time perfecting each and every image that goes out to a client. Perhaps this aspect of contemporary photography, more than any other, has accounted for the profound increase in artistic images. This fine-art approach, in turn, raises the bar financially for such photographers, allowing them to charge premium prices for their sessions. Says photographer David Beckstead, “I treat each and every image as an art piece. If you pay this much attention to the details of the final image, your clients will pick up on this and often replace the word ‘photographer’ with the word ‘artist.’ ”

David Beckstead considers himself more an artist than a photographer and he likes his clients to believe the same. He is constantly searching for new angles and moments within the wedding day to create striking images that are unique.

Ask any photographer shooting film if he or she mentally inventories the number of exposed and unexposed rolls during the wedding or portrait session and they’ll all tell you that they do it. They also mentally calculate the fees of buying, processing and proofing that film. Not so with digital, where there are no film and processing costs. The net result is that digital photographers shoot many more images at any given event.

Digital capture also provides the ability to instantly preview images, meaning that if you missed the shot for whatever reason, you can delete that file and redo it right then and there. “That kind of insurance is priceless,” says Kathleen Hawkins. “Think about it—you’re photographing the first dance, capturing the couple from all angles and possibly using your assistant to backlight them. You see that the background light is not bright enough or that your on-camera flash misfired. With digital, instead of waiting a week or two to see that you blew it, you can adjust the lighting and move on.”

The ability to review an image on the camera’s LCD monitor is one of the tremendous benefits of digital capture. While learning to read your images on the LCD monitor is sometimes tricky, particularly at first, the more you shoot and transfer files to the computer where they are re-evaluated, the more proficient you’ll become at determining optimum exposure and focusing accuracy from off the LCD. Most LCD screens on DSLRs are highly sophisticated and offer a means to enlarge sections of the captured images. Also, you don’t have to merely view the captured image to gauge exposure. A histogram, a graphic representation of the exposure, is also an option with most professional LCDs.

Another benefit of digital is its archival permanence. Traditional photographic film and prints achieve archival status by having a reduced chemical reactivity of their basic components. In other words, the dyes, pigments, and substrates used in their creation remain stable over time, provided that storage or display conditions are optimal. A digital image, on the other hand, is stable over time and there is no degradation in copying. Every copy is a perfect copy. Multiple copies stored on stable media assure survivability and endurance over time.

Album design programs, such as Montage allow you to drag and drop images into to template pages for the ultimate ease of design. Because the program doesn’t require full-resolution images, proxy images are used instead, it is fast and lightweight, making the design process fast and seamless. Images by Kathleen and Jeff Hawkins.

Remarkable Technology

Digital photography is completely interlocked with computer technology and derives many benefits because of it. Commercial photographers will often use a laptop computer as a control station. Nikon Capture, the RAW file processing program for Nikon NEF images, also comes with a program called Nikon Capture Control, which turns the camera into a remote capture device for the computer. You can download captured images directly to the laptop, where they can be viewed full screen. Clients on location can view live, in-progress images and make useful comments on the success or failure of the assignment. This is a huge difference from the days of film, where the client would be shown proofs or transparencies hours or days after the job was shot. Creative client input can be put into effect immediately as the assignment progresses. And there is no need for loupes or light boxes. The image is bold and bright on the laptop screen.

A screen grab from Nikon’s Capture image editor shows all of the different possibilities of changing a RAW, or in this case NEF, image before processing.

Another remarkable feature of digital photography is the wireless transmission of images, otherwise known as WiFi technology. With a wireless transmitter, it’s possible to transmit images directly from the camera over a wireless LAN (local area network). Nikon’s Wireless Transmitter WT-2A allows photographers to not only transmit images over a Wi-Fi network, but also allows wireless remote control of the camera over a Wi-Fi network from a computer running Nikon Capture software, as in the tethered application above. Photographers can position the camera in places that may be inaccessible or restricted to photographers, and wirelessly adjust settings, trigger the camera, and instantly retrieve the images over the LAN. Locations such as the Space Shuttle launches, where security is unforgiving, can now be made remotely with greater control and the images retrieved immediately. The applications of this technology are limitless. The latest versions of this software feature drastically improved transmission times and highly refined security protocols, making it nearly impossible to for someone to intercept the transmission.

Image by Mike Colon

Mike Colon is a well known Southern California wedding photographer who uses Nikon DSLRs and their WiFi technology to download images to a laptop as they are recorded throughout the wedding day. Mike’s assistant preps the images and then saves them into a slide-show program so that guests just entering the reception are treated to a visual treat of the images already made throughout the day. The power of digital imaging has transformed the wedding day into a multimedia event.

Image by Chistian Lalonde

Chris LaLonde is an award-winning Canadian commercial photographer who routinely uses his G-4 Powerbook as an on-site monitor when shooting assignments. The images were captured directly to Chris’s Powerbook so that he and the client could inspect the photos at close range; especially image sharpness. Often times, if the layout calls for a specifically shaped photo, Chris will create a black matte mask that he will tape into position on the monitor.

For Connecticut’s Charles and Jennifer Maring, digital has opened up a wealth of creative opportunities, transporting them from being merely photographers to the status of artists and graphic designers. Their unique digital wedding albums include an array of beautifully designed pages with graphic elements that shape each page and layout. Their story-telling style is as sleekly designed as the latest issue of Modern Bride. The Marings not only work each image but also design each album. Says Charles, “There is a unique feeling when designing the art. I don’t know what an image will look like until I am almost done with it. I also don’t know where the vision comes from. I relate this to the art of photography. A higher place maybe.” This talented couple believes so totally in controlling the end product that they also own their own digital lab, named R-Lab. “We have been totally digital for quite some time, and the challenge and precision of the change has actually made us better photographers than we were with film,” says Charles. He believes the outside of the album is every bit as important to his upscale clients as each page therein, and has been known to use covers ranging from black leather to metal, to red iguana skin. He has even found a local bookbinder with his own working bindery for finishing their digital albums.

Charles and Jennifer Maring put so much fun and creativity into their wedding albums. Here is a sample page from one of their albums.

The Internet also plays a huge role in the life of the digital wedding photographer. Online proofing and sales have become a big part of every event package. Bridal couples can check out “the take” of images while on their honeymoon by going to the photographer’s web site with the prescribed password—all from the comfort of their hotel room or a digital café.

The use of FTP (file transfer protocol) sites for transferring files to the lab for proofing and or printing has now become routine.

Album design software, which often relies on the use of small manageable files, called proxies, allows the photographer to quickly and fluidly design the album and upload it for proofing or printing.

It is easy to get caught up in the hardware of digital photography. It is expensive, exotic and amazingly productive. Yervant Zanazanian, an award-winning Australian photographer puts hardware in perspective. “A lot of photographers still think it is my tools (digital capture and Photoshop) that make my images what they are. They forget the fact that these are only new tools; imagemaking is in the eye, in the mind and in the heart of a good photographer. During all my talks and presentations, I always remind the audience that ‘You have to be a good photographer first’ and ‘don’t expect or rely on some modern tool or technology to fix a bad image.’ ” It’s good advice.

Yervant, like Charles Maring, is an expert album designer and even has a line of album page templates available (www.yervant.com) called Page Gallery for designing album pages in Photoshop.

As you will see from the photographs throughout this book, the range of creativity and uniqueness displayed by today’s top digital wedding photographers is incomparable. I wish to thank the many fine photographers who have contributed to this book—not only for their images, but also for their expertise. As anyone who has investigated the technical aspects of digital beyond a surface level has no doubt discovered, there are contradictions galore and volumes of misinformation surrounding everything digital. It is my hope that throughout this book you will find many of those mysteries unraveled.

I also wish to thank the many photographers who “shared” trade secrets with me for the purposes of illuminating others. Some of their tips, which appear throughout the book, are as ingenious as they are invaluable.Photoshop is one of the great technological innovations of this or any other era. The application is so richly layered that users find many different ways to achieve the same or similar effects. It is a powerful application too. Many of the effects displayed by the artists in this book are the result of an intuitive approach to solving a specific imaging problem in Photoshop.

This book is not another how-to book on using Photoshop. There are already seemingly many such books on the market. Instead, this book is about those who use Photoshop as a mainstay in their digital imaging business—artists, illustrators, commercial photographers, album designers, wedding photographers, portrait photographers, teachers and a few unclassified professionals will be presented here. It is my hope that you will learn from their innovative and often original uses of Photoshop.