The editing process and finding a consistent "visual style"

General Film Photography
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Hello, I am posting for the first time. Briefly about myself for context, I first started to dabble occasionally with film about a decade ago. I have slowly been shooting film more and more and my affection for it has grown tremendiously during this time. I started using NLP this year and commited to film scanning at home. I am super excited about having my own “workflow” shooting, scanning, and editing film.

I chose to post this under “General Film Photography” because it doesn’t really fit into any other category. I am less interested in “technical” advice or solutions and more about how we personally approach the editing process, what methods we use, and how satisfied are we with our results. This is more about “finding your own style”. I am interested in finding a way to consistently edit film scans so that they have the same “look” and agree with each other visually.

Please don’t take offence when I say I do not use presets and never want to use them. I really enjoy editing and take my time giving individual attention to each photo. I love editing. It’s part of the joy of photography for me.

I’ve noticed lately that I get better results editing when I have some kind of “reference”. Something to “aim” at specifically when color-correcting inverted negatives. For example, I’ve switched the background to white in LR in the “Develop” window and zoom out more to increase the white negative space around the image. It helps give a visual reference when white balancing and correcting color casts.

Something I’ve heard other photographers talk about that I also struggle with is “tunnel vision”. When deeply focused on editing an individual image, a sense of context and tasteful restraint gets lost. Something I thought looked “GREAT” ends up being too warm/cold, or too bright/dark, or there is an obvious color cast that I mised, or the saturation and/or contrast is too heavy or not enough, etc. Once I look at the image the next day with fresh eyes, or compare it to my other photos (that are 100% finished and I am already completely satisfied with), it suddenly looks wrong and way off from what I thought when I was stuck in “tunnel vision”.

Do any of you relate to this and what are some of the ways you try to overcome this issue? Have you successfully found a consistent way to create results you are happy with? Do you have any “reference” methods to keep your editing in check?

If you have read this far, thank you very much for your time. I hope this is a topic that resonates with a few folks.

Cheers,

~Grant

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To find your own style, it helps to pause editing and check appearance again after one or more days.

But what will be one’s style?

  • something you like to see?
  • something that others might like to see?
  • something wayyy off of the ordinary?
  • something that balances nice with ugly?
  • something that one might call beautiful?
  • something that fits all scenes?
  • something that happens or has to be fought for?

The way to the answers to these (and lot more) questions is the way to your personal style.

  • don’t ask people, their answers will make you stray.
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I don’t have “an answer”, but here are some thoughts.

My LR catalog contains about 15,000 images including:

  • Digital camera images (jpeg and raw) from eight or ten different cameras (starting with a 1990s Kodak just under 1 megapixel and including Leicas, Nikons, a Caplio and a Fuji.
  • Fujichrome images from 2000 originally scanned to a Kodak PhotoCD then converted to TIFF.
  • 35mm transparencies and negatives (Nikon, Leica, Konica A4) from the late 1990s to about 2010, scanned with a Coolscan scanner and Nikon or Vuescan software.
  • 35mm transparencies and negatives from the late 1960s to about 2005 digitised with a Nikon DSLR, including monochrome negatives.
  • 35mm and 6x6 transparencies scanned with an Imacon 323.
  • Some of them have been digitised more than once, e.g. with the Coolscan then the DSLR, or Photo CD then DSLR, or DSLR then Imacon.

And of course I’ve worked on some of these and not on others, and some exist in more than one version if I’ve re-worked them.

The result, combined with Lightroom’s indexing and filtering capabilities, is that every time I fire up LR I see different images in different states, in other words an ever-changing context.

In addition, we do most of our TV-watching via Google TV. One of its features is that you can upload images to a “gallery” in Google Photos and use them quasi-randomly as a screensaver when the TV is on but you’re not showing a programme. I have lots of favourite images in this gallery and when I’ve been working on or reworking an image in LR I often upload it so it comes up in the screensaver in the context of other of my images.

Also: I think you’re wrong to dismiss presets. I don’t like the idea of relying on them, but they can be useful even if it’s just flipping through a few to see what effect they have. Also, sometimes it’s worth creating your own presets. (And in the same vein, get familiar with copying and pasting settings.)

It’s a long time since I’ve shot a roll of film, but there’s still a Paterson tank in a cupboard somewhere and a couple of 35mm cameras, so one day perhaps…

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To be completely honest, I spent a lot of time trying to mimic photographs that appealed to me — whether they came from well-known masters or just the next guy who happened to shoot a good picture. I think what inspires us in other people’s photos is usually something we personally relate to, something already linked to our own style or vision, even if we don’t realize it yet.

I’m not sure you can cultivate your style deliberately — I think it eventually emerges on its own. It’s not about editing; it starts with capture and framing. Editing can enhance a picture, but it can (almost) never make it. You’ll find that the simplest-looking photos are often the hardest to create — they need to be executed with high precision to become powerful.

A lot of the necessary grit comes from just forcing yourself to show up at a specific place, on a specific date and time, and then taking the time to explore every angle, every option. After that, you have to carefully review the results back in the lab. Meanwhile, other people will try to hurry you up, offer you a “great” idea about the shot or angle, the weather won’t cooperate, and street traffic will wreck your shot. That’s how the sausage is made.

Reading books — especially Ansel Adams “Examples” — is very revealing. He does a great job describing the ten thousand variables you need to manage at once to make a shot. I’m not saying you have to become a disciple of the zone system, but you’ll definitely benefit from understanding how deep a scene analysis can go.

Try to visualize the lighting in any photograph you admire. More often than not, you’ll realize you can’t fully explain how that candid street shot was achieved without imagining a couple of assistants just out of frame — holding lights, reflectors, or diffusers. That’s when you truly begin to appreciate the role of serendipity.

So yes, reverse-engineer the photos you admire — and you’ll quickly learn what’s within your creative and technical reach, and what isn’t. There will always be things you recognize as not your style — like asking people to pose if you’re an introverted, private person and photography isn’t something you use to change that about yourself.

Shooting film makes all of this even more intense. Film puts hard limits on what can be captured, and whatever stock you happen to have loaded in the camera limits how you can react to changing conditions. Of course, overcoming those restrictions has long been a point of pride for photographers — but for me personally, breaking free from the confines of film felt truly liberating.

The ability to endlessly edit images — at the mere cost of someone’s time — is another disorienting rabbit hole. Some might argue that personal style is forged at the Lightroom panels. But I believe this is exactly where the proverbial “slow down and think” becomes essential. You can’t keep re-editing the same picture every time someone shares a new “smart” technique or a clever way to handle high dynamic range. Of course, you need to understand the fundamentals and be able to visualize your intended result before opening the Layers menu in Photoshop and experimenting with every blending mode, hoping for a breakthrough. That’s a learning curve you simply can’t skip.

But ultimately, every image — as you see it — has a final shape and form, even if someone else might turn it into something more polished or technically impressive. That’s where your identity as a photographer begins to take root, and that’s the space where you want to feel at home.

Finally, having a small group of trusted people to discuss and critique your work is incredibly important. Often, someone else will say it before you even realize it: “I recognize your style.”

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Absolutely. If something plucks a c(h)ord, the c(h)ord must be present already. We could call it style. BUT how we perceive things is molded by what we see. Imprinted from early years on to whatever the last few years contributed. Therefore, we need to first find what the goal of our style should be.

  • something one likes to see - even if it’s an “old” self?
  • revive something out of fashion?
  • create something unique?
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Yes, but @piphlenitricity also says “I am interested in finding a way to consistently edit film scans so that they have the same “look” and agree with each other visually.” So working out what “look” to settle on is one thing, and being able to repeat it consistently is quite another. However he’s not looking for a technical discussion, which I understand, but that has top play a large part in maintaining that look consistently, particularly with colour negative.

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