So I’ve been experimenting with some new Photoshop filters that I bought for creating black and white photographs – Silver Efex Pro for example.

It reminded me of the limited time that I spent years ago trying to apply ‘post-processing’ in the photo lab at university – holding my hands over the image, so as to over-expose some areas and under-expose other parts.

It is stating the obvious that it is so much easier these days. But it does still depend on capturing an appropriate image in the first place. That said, with enough skill and patience, a fairly ordinary photograph can be made to look far more dramatic. Does that make one a skilled photographer, post-production expert, or designer… or something else? Does it really matter?

Anyway, I do like the above image. I wish it could be processed using a gelatin-silver process. I read recently that a digital silver gelatin process has been developed – I think it was an Ilford product. Would be interesting to investigate this further at some point.