{"id":523,"date":"2011-04-23T12:56:35","date_gmt":"2011-04-23T19:56:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beautiful-landscape.com\/Reflections\/?p=523"},"modified":"2023-09-04T13:55:16","modified_gmt":"2023-09-04T20:55:16","slug":"of-cakes-and-plugins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beautiful-landscape.com\/Reflections\/of-cakes-and-plugins\/","title":{"rendered":"Of Cakes and Plugins"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>White Sands Black & White<\/em><\/p>\n

I recently published a short essay about the photograph above on Luminous-Landscape.com \u00a0(you can read the essay at\u00a0this link<\/a>). This essay brought a question about which plugin I used to convert this photograph to black and white.<\/p>\n

Fact is, I don’t use any ‘creative’ plugins. When it comes to the expressive aspects of my work, I do everything from scratch.<\/p>\n

All my work is done in Photoshop using layers. I tried plugins a long time ago and what happened is my style became the plugin style. No more of that for me. I’m only interested in my own style!<\/p>\n

For me art is about freedom and I found that I have the most freedom when I use layers that I create myself. I want to be guided by my inspiration, not by software designers.<\/p>\n

Of course, you don’t have to use plugins with presets. While that is an option, you can also modify the presets and make your own settings.<\/p>\n

Eventually, this thing with using plugins with presets, or using plugins and making your own settings, or not using plugins at all (like I do) is comparable to baking a cake. You can buy a ready made cake, or you can buy a cake mix and add butter, milk\u00a0and a few other ingredients, or you can make your own cake 100% from scratch.<\/p>\n

Only option three is entirely your work and that’s my favorite. It takes longer, requires more knowledge, and necessitates more efforts, but it is the only one that results in the most personal and unique creations.<\/p>\n

Certainly, doing everything from scratch does take more time and \u00a0since ‘time is money’ this requires more financial resources as well. \u00a0 While this is certainly accurate, that is not how I see things. \u00a0For me, creating fine art is not about saving time. \u00a0It is about creating the finest image possible. \u00a0This means getting out of my way and spending more time than most would when necessary.<\/p>\n

My goal is to create the finest quality images possible, not the largest quantity possible. In any given year, I produce somewhere between 10 and 25 images that I consider to be fine art. \u00a0I do take thousands of captures, if not tens of thousands, but those numbers are attempts, not final images. The number of final images I create is in the 2 digits. \u00a0So far this number has been between 10 and 25 yearly.<\/p>\n

The case can also be made that it is inevitable to use some plugins such as sharpening, CS5 Photomerge, noise removal, and the like. \u00a0This is a valid point. \u00a0However, to me using these plugins does not affect style. \u00a0They are more ‘practical’ in their functions than ‘artistic’. \u00a0Their use is not an end in itself. They are means to an end rather than a personal style ‘crutch.’ \u00a0They are used for practical reasons, not for inspirational reasons.<\/p>\n

The plugins I stay away from are those that affect the three parts of color: hue, saturation and luminosity. \u00a0I also avoid filters that impose a texture, or other visual effect, onto the image. In short, I avoid ‘creative’ plugins, those that change my style. \u00a0However I do use ‘practical’ plugins because they make my life easier. \u00a0My goal is not to make this any more difficult than it is. \u00a0My goal is to make this as creative as possible.<\/p>\n

Art is not about saving time. \u00a0Art is about saving emotions. \u00a0Art is about preserving what we experienced and sharing it with our audience in in a work of art, a photograph in this instance.<\/p>\n

Alain Briot
\nApril 2011<\/p>\n

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White Sands Black & White I recently published a short essay about the photograph above on Luminous-Landscape.com \u00a0(you can read the essay at\u00a0this link). This essay brought a question about which plugin I used to convert this photograph to black and white. Fact is, I don’t use any ‘creative’ plugins. When it comes to the…Continue reading Of Cakes and Plugins<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16756,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[27,43,28,29,26,32,35,33,38,52,37,47,40,48,39,30,36,44,31,34,42,50,41,49,46,51],"class_list":["post-523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art","tag-alain-briot","tag-antelope-canyon","tag-art-2","tag-canon","tag-composition","tag-digital-photography","tag-fine-art","tag-fine-art-photography","tag-grand-canyon","tag-landscape-photography","tag-landscapes","tag-leica","tag-lightroom","tag-marketing-2","tag-navajoland","tag-nikon","tag-painting","tag-personal-style","tag-phase-one","tag-photography","tag-photography-ebook","tag-photography-workshop","tag-photoshop","tag-selling-photographs","tag-sony","tag-workshop"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beautiful-landscape.com\/Reflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beautiful-landscape.com\/Reflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beautiful-landscape.com\/Reflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beautiful-landscape.com\/Reflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beautiful-landscape.com\/Reflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=523"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/beautiful-landscape.com\/Reflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16758,"href":"https:\/\/beautiful-landscape.com\/Reflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523\/revisions\/16758"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beautiful-landscape.com\/Reflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beautiful-landscape.com\/Reflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beautiful-landscape.com\/Reflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beautiful-landscape.com\/Reflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}