The Art of Photo Editing
SANJEEV WIGNARAJAH
Photo by: Sanjeev Wignarajah
Half-man, half-tiger. It can’t be real or could it?
It was near the end of October when photographer Tudor Stanescu, 26, and a model went to Evergreen Brickworks for a portrait session. However, they got there too late and it was dark.
“We ended up going to the train tracks and took some shots there but we didn’t have any flashes on us,” he said.
On the way back, two other photographers met up with Stanescu and the model. One of the photographers was carrying a tiger mask for Halloween. Stanescu went home after the shoot to edit the image.
“What I did to make the animal mask pop out more was contouring,” he said. “Girls do contouring for their makeup to add shadows and highlights to make their face more defined.”
He says he did this to make it more detailed and realistic.
Stanescu said the hand happened by chance and it looked surreal.
“It was an odd mixture of overbearing highlights that I couldn’t get rid of on the image because it would kill the bokeh (depth of field),” he said. “I thought it just looked really interesting on how the hand looked.”
Photographers can take amazing images but there is a fine art to editing and manipulating images to make them stand out. It takes minutes, if not hours, of creativity and planning to impress the viewer and make it out of the ordinary.
It took Stanescu 30 to 45 minutes to edit the image because he struggled with the highlights and readjusted contrast and levels.
Stanescu got into photography in his high school days at Loyola Catholic Secondary School in Mississauga where his drama class did weekly journals. It was where he developed his love for film and started making video journals.
“I went out and bought a JVC camcorder in 2006,” he said and learned about cloning and special effects.
Over time, Stanescu upgraded his video camera to a DSLR camera and focused on photography because it was too much of work.
Courtesy: Tudor Stanescu (@legionxstudios)
When Stanescu was a youngster in Bucharest, Romania, his grandfather purchased an expensive film camera while on a business trip in Russia.
“It was one of those classic Russian brands. They were probably some of the best cameras at that time with the exception of Nikon and Canon,” he said. “I remember him telling me a story about how he paid an arm and a leg for that camera.”
Stanescu says his grandfather made back the money all summer by doing portrait and wedding shoots.
Stanescu was fascinated by darkroom film processing.
“I think at that time it was me trying to absorb, trying to learn what he was doing,” Stanescu said.
His inspiration for photo manipulation comes from a well-known Toronto-based photographer Bora Nikolic, who goes by @boravsbora on social media.
“I was recently looking at Nikolic’s photos and I’ve noticed some really peculiar things about his shadows work in the pictures and I think he’s been using a lot of After Effects,” Stanescu said. “It has a lot of interesting tools where you can set 3D planes and make realistic shadows that you would never be able to get inside of Photoshop. Everything has to be kind of mimicked in a 2D plane.”
Photoshop is not just for the experts. It is accessible to everyone. For Preet Joshi, 17, a grade 12 student at Northview Heights Secondary School in Toronto, says he drew inspiration for photo manipulation from Toronto-based photographer Justin Main (@Photified).
“I started copying what they did and I would add on my own layers,” Joshi said.
Main has worked on a photography project called Project 365, where he reimagines the city by adding pop culture references, current events, and politics.
“If I hear a lyric in a song, or see something that wows me in a movie, I just have to create,” he said. “It all begins with an idea, then pulling it off with multiple exposures and editing techniques. It kind of just happens, I don't sit down and storyboard anything I just get a vision and do it.”
Joshi uses Toronto’s multicultural nature.
“Let’s say it’s European architecture. I would edit it to make it look more European and try to go back to the roots of the actual landscape image,” he said.
Joshi uses Photoshop Express and PIXLR Online to manipulate images. He says that he has worked with small clients. Most of the photo manipulation is for his personal use.
Anish Sarkar, a third-year Ryerson University student, uses Adobe Lightroom to edit images. His inspirations for editing images are colours.
“I try to shoot either night time so that I can use colourful lights and I can mess around with those or sunset’s the ideal time for me to shoot,” he said. “If you saw my Instagram, it’s all over the place with edits. It’s not consistent. I don’t have a theme. I kind of have a style of bright, colourful pictures.”
To make their images stand out, Sarkar advises photographers to mess around and experiment.
“Don’t try to copy other people’s work,” he said. “Just do what you like doing and don’t be afraid to go to clichéd spots.”
