An Anatomical Mono Breakdown: Brad Nichol

[Chris Dodkin]

This articel appears on Steve Huff's website, and is a superb 'how-to' on capturing and processing B&W images in the digital age.



Brad describes in detail how he captures low contrast RAW files, using filters, and then transforms these into stunning B&W images in post processing.

First a little background, going back several years ago, probably like a lot of people do, I looked at my work and wondered why there wasn’t that real life “being there” punch and why did my images not match the vision that I saw with my own eyes, and more importantly how could I address this imbalance and get closer to my artistic intents?

From these three questions and following many years of exploration, testing and taking literally thousands and thousands of images I determined the answers and subsequently developed a holistic system of photography which I call True Light Capture. TLC fundamentally works on a completion backwards principle, in other words I determine what I want as the end result and then put into place all the steps I need along the way to get to that end point, being careful that nothing is done that would compromise the following processes. It sounds technical and perhaps limiting but in fact it is quite the reverse, the methods are now so ingrained for me that I feel free to just concentrate on the creative output.

well worth a read and further study http://www.stevehuffphoto.com/2013/06/18/an-anatomical-mono-breakdown-by-brad-nichol/

 

[Brian Moore]

Thanks for posting that, Chris. I'm defo going to have a read!

 

[Rob MacKillop]

Link? Am I missing it?

 

[Chris Dodkin]

Link? Am I missing it?

fixed the link - should never post before the first coffee of the day!

- - - Updated - - -

http://www.stevehuffphoto.com/2013/06/18/an-anatomical-mono-breakdown-by-brad-nichol/

 

[Rob MacKillop]

Thanks, Chris. That's a lot to take in. I'll save it and study it.

 

[Julian de'Courcy]

Chris a fantastic article and thanks. Many of the things written I had thought about, some I have and do try to do. Reading this has shown me clearly how to and validated I was in the right area so thanks. I have to approach images from a painters point of view as I trained in constructing paintings, what he says about construction of an image and dealing with one local section, will affect and alter the whole image, is a known and used process in painting. For instance adding a colour does change other adjacent colours. it all becomes very complex and why many artists would spend several years on one painting. So I get all of that and the different channels, regarding noise was interesting. I have and do set the camera so that the images come out as raw and very flat low saturation . I always preferred this and did not fully understand why but it worked, I know do understand why I was doing this.

A question? A while ago I download Photo Ninja , a lot was being spoken about it's highlight recovery. I got it on trail and found that the B+W simple conversions using this program were superb. The highlight recovery and DR was so much better than PS Cs6, or at least so much easier to obtain. I know the fuji Xtrans is new on the block, but Have you yourself tried Photo Ninja? If so what are your findings?

 

[Pete Askew]

Thanks Chris.

 

[Ahmad Bhai]

"Fundamentally good colour to monochrome conversions are impeded by differing noise signatures across the three colour channels, normally the green is quite noise free, the red has a greater level of noise and the blue may have quite radically high levels of noise. "

This is possibly because the Bayer filter as well as Fuji X Trans has 50% green, 25%red, 25% blue.
Leica Monochrom & Sigmas dont have this.