Image Enhancement – Always a right moment and place

Alchemy Dance Company - Photo by Bill Hebert
Alchemy Dance Company – Photo by Bill Hebert

So i’ve been just doing straight photo columns for a while and decided to revisit the topic of image enhancement. Now by image enhancement I don’t mean changing the core of the moment itself or adding things to the image.

In most cases I usually mean playing with the lighting within the images or conversion to black & white. As most of you have seen at least with my rehearsal images it’s my preference to convert them to black & white as you see with the image below.

Choreography by Katie Pflueger and Photo by Bill Hebert
Choreography by Katie Pflueger and Photo by Bill Hebert

I just feel for rehearsal images having them in black & white not only helps the viewer focus better on the dancers themselves (ignoring the water bottles, clothing, foam rollers and other rehearsal paraphernalia) but really sets a mood for the image. Rarely if ever do I do this with performance images BUT when talking about enhancing the image some images just call out to you for something a little extra special. I DEFINITELY don’t mean this in a negative way since I mean what would that say about me the photographer who captured the original moment. Rather what I mean is that sometimes you capture a moment and see something special about it, what would make that moment even more memorable or special.

This is why for the first image from the Alchemy Dance Company’s current performance at the Performance Garage I chose to convert the image to black and white and adding a photo filter. Again not changing the moment but converting it to black and white to enhance the image.

For the final image of the photo column that will appear below, and also from Alchemy’s show “I Am We” AND from the same piece as the first image, this time I chose not convert the image to black & white but rather play around with the image by over exaggerating the contrast levels, just a bit. Again I generally don’t do this with any of my images it was just that I saw the potential to create a really special image from this moment.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this column and its image but you won’t have to wait long for the next column which I should be releasing in the next couple days. As always comments and questions are always welcome.

Alchemy Dance Company - Photo by Bill Hebert
Alchemy Dance Company – Photo by Bill Hebert
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