Color processing was used with film even before the adoption of color film. Hand painted animation or monochromatic dyed prints were common more than a century ago. The art of color timing came to prominence with color film though. Timing, itself, related to the duration of the various chemical baths. Chemistry was later mostly replaced by colored printing lights and color manipulation usually happened during intermediate printing. Then digital intermediate came and changed cinematography significantly.

It is hard to overestimate the importance of the post-process adjustments. While a lot of old-school cinematographers still largely create the image in-camera, the new wave thinks of the colorist as one of the most important links in the production chain. The paradigm shooting for post is popular for a reason. With digital image manipulation the creative possibilities are endless. And so is the lack of restraint, but that’s another story.

Color correction and color grading are often used interchangeably. But there are nuances. Or at least we can inject different notions for terminology precision. Color correction is more appropriate to describe the process of fixing, adjusting and matching footage. Color grading is then furthering an artistic vision or creating a look. Looks are all the rage now. At any level of experience, and for any kind of visual media, you can get fast looks (kinda rhymes with fast food) with Instagram, Hipstamatic, Magic Bullet Looks, etc. Being derivative is easier than ever.

So, after this short introduction with a touch of rant, let’s talk a bit about the book from the title. The Art and Technique of Digital Color Correction by Steve Hullfish is a clever book. Its cleverness is coming from the fact that it is largely software agnostic in its description of the tools of the trade. Knowing the principles of a specific color tool means you can go beyond the implementation differences between various software packages. And there certainly is an abundance of tools for video color correction. Each one appropriate for specific tasks or specific approaches. Actually, someone coming from the still photo world may raise an eyebrow. After all, Curves should be enough for almost everything, right?

The book introduces the terminology and the main control tools of the color correction process: the vectorscope and the waveform monitor. And goes into details about how to use them in the color correction process. Both primary and secondary color correction are covered. Primary color correction mostly fitting in the definition of color correction above, and secondary color correction being essentially localized fixes, relighting and color grading. These include basic tonal adjustments, global color adjustments, and the various ways of qualifying image elements for secondaries.

One of the cool things about this book is that topics are disclosed by describing various pros tackling various tasks. Getting a glimpse of the working process of experienced colorists is really helpful. You can work out and synthesize a method by analyzing their approaches, similarities and differences. There is never a single way to do things. And you can pick small tips and tricks on the way. Of particular interest are the more advanced topics, some of them going further beyond the technical side of things: matching shots, color as a storytelling element, creating looks, and communicating with a cinematographer/videographer. The latter, of course, applies when the videographer and the colorist are not the same person, an uncommon case in the low budget world.

It is important to note that The Art and Technique of Digital Color Correction is strictly about creative and technical color manipulation in post. It doesn’t teach about color science and color spaces. It doesn’t talk much about setting and calibrating a color correction suite. It doesn’t concern itself with camera color: color matrices, color profiles, picture profiles, etc. It doesn’t teach how to get accurate color during shooting, through color charts on set or otherwise. Some of these topics are covered in another book co-authored by Steve (with Jaime Flower): Color Correction for Video.

Book Review: The Art and Technique of Digital Color Correction

Light – Science & Magic by Fil Hunter, Steven Biver and Paul Fuqua is probably the most important book on lighting that you will ever read. Moreover, if you only ever read one book on lighting, make it this one. This is, indeed, a rather bold statement. In fact, some readers who are new to shooting images may actually be puzzled by this praise once they read the actual book. The information there can be fully appreciated after you’ve fought a bit with real-world lighting problems.

Lighting is about the relationship between lights, subjects and camera (viewpoint). The third part of this triad is not immediately apparent to everyone. It is surprising (then again, maybe not) how many people “with experience” actually struggle when they face basic problems like removing an unwanted specular highlight in a multi-light setup. They then start switching lights off and on, or moving them around to localize the offending light. And that’s not even in the domain of hard things to do: lighting a shot with lots of glass or glossy surfaces in it can be an intimidating task if you don’t fully grasp how light works.

How does light work?
How many times have you seen this question asked? Then how many times have you seen “I have $1000 for a lighting kit. What lights should I buy?” or “How do you light this shot [insert-reference-link]?”? Yeah. Lots of people asking about lights, no one asking about light.

Light – Science & Magic (An Introduction to Photographic Lighting) actually attempts to answer this question. It is by no means a fully detailed work, and the approach may not be to everyone’s liking (it is quite heavily biased towards product photography). But it is the only book I’ve seen that attempts this. And that’s why I believe it is the first book on the subject of lighting that people should read. You can then move on to other books like Set Lighting Technician’s Handbook or Film Lighting, for example. These are also good books on their own, and will likely get reviews here.

Light – Science & Magic covers the basic photographic properties of light: brightness, contrast, color. Also, typical information like hard and soft, or small and large light, or applying the inverse square law. But where the book really shines is in the exploration of the interaction of light and subject, and light and camera. Transmission, absorption and, of course, reflection. I haven’t seen another book that can teach as much about reflection management.

Specular (direct) reflection, diffuse reflection, polarized reflection are all covered with an emphasis on the family of angles causing direct reflection. The book then goes on to show how this is relevant in revealing surface texture and subject shape, and for the purpose of separation and delineation. This is further detailed in two great chapters on lighting metal and glass. The first material is highly reflective, the second – both reflective and transparent. This is all essential knowledge about suppressing or exploiting specular reflection, and applicable to a myriad of subjects and situations.

Then there is one of the better overviews of portrait lighting, based on the functional properties of the lights involved. Followed by a very useful chapter on the connection of characteristic curves (transfer curves) and exposure, and how this connection relates to overexposure and underexposure. This is an often misunderstood (and sometimes underestimated) concept. Its significance is fundamental when purposefully exposing for a specific part of the transfer curve.

Most of the examples in the book are based on product photography lighting. But once you grasp the concepts, the rest is really a matter of scale. A popular saying has it that if you can light a human face, you can light everything. Well, after reading this book the obvious conclusion is: “If you can light a small glossy box, you can light everything”.

Light – Science & Magic won’t teach you about specific fixtures or light types (although, there is some info on the latter in the last chapter). Nor will it teach how to envision beautiful lighting. What it does is enabling you to realize your vision by knowing, controlling and finessing light.

Book Review: Light – Science & Magic

Michael Freeman is a popular author amongst photographers. He has written a myriad of books on photography related topics: lighting, exposure, composition, etc. As the title implies, The Photographer’s Eye: Composition and Design for Better Digital Photos is concerned with the subject of composition. This is a vast subject. Composition encompasses everything involved in the graphic (or visual) representation of the scene in the image. And everything means everything.

The usefulness for video of being familiar with (or, even better, being adept in) pictorial and still photo composition was discussed in some detail in the review of Pictorial Composition (Composition in Art) by Henry Rankin Poore. Michael Freeman’s book is a good complement to Pictorial Composition. The latter is a classic text; somewhat formal and theoretic; focused on the image itself and exploring the result. The Photographer’s Eye is more based into practice. It covers a lot of topics and also discusses the process of shooting with a mindset grounded in composition.

One of the strengths of this book is that it makes the reader aware of many compositional elements, some of which are not readily apparent. Even if it doesn’t usually go in depth, implanting the notion of these into the mind of the reader will inevitably lead to some useful thoughts. This is also good inspiration material. The Photographer’s Eye is one of these books that make you feel ideas sweep in your head. Both through concepts and specific examples.

The book covers pretty much anything connected to composition. It starts with the frame as a compositional device and touches upon formal balance and tension (there is more on this topic in Pictorial Composition). Then it goes into details on various compositional elements: content, lines and shapes, motion, rhythm, light, color, depth. Also discussed are the pure photographic elements in their connection to composition: optics and perspective, focus, exposure. The last third of the book delves into intent and process. More specifically: exploring locations, hunting the perfect image, reaction, anticipation, organizing subject matter, repertoire. All of these are useful skills for video; mostly for run & gun and documentaries, but also for improvisation. The topic of intent, style and process is expanded and further developed in a follow-up book called The Photographer’s Mind.

The Photographer’s Eye is richly illustrated. Many of the photos are editorial/documentary material and thus fall into the “telling a story with pictures” department. This makes them highly relevant to video shooting. If you can tell a story with a sequence of pictures, or – better yet – with a single picture, then you can surely do it with moving pictures. Another interesting side is presented by the more graphically oriented product photography illustrations. Cinematography books don’t usually explore the purely graphic side of composition as they are focused mainly on the practical aspects of framing. But graphic knowledge expands one’s visual arsenal and deepens the understanding of shapes and lines. This helps to see beauty in unexpected ways.

Book Review: The Photographer’s Eye by Michael Freeman

A painting or a photo captures a moment. The moment may convey a story, or it may just freeze a beautiful scene. But no matter how good the picture is from a technical point of view, it is the composition that binds the components together. So the study of composition is concerned with the arrangement of the picture elements within the frame.

But how important is composition in video, and what does a book about painting composition has to do with video? A video shot is really just a superset of still pictures. Video adds another dimension to still frames: time; but in essence video is just a sequence of frames. So it is important to be familiar with pictorial composition. Camera and/or subject movement or inherent subject interest can sometime mask crappy composition. But this masking is really just that: it won’t really hide bad composition, just delay its discovery. And in order to successfully tackle moving images a firm grasp over still composition is a requirement. Interestingly, paintings are often much more complex in terms of composition compared to cinema shots. This is because, generally, the eye has more time to explore a painting and appreciate the details.

Great composition can also be a hindrance. A gritty movie can be hindered by beautifully composed frames. Good formal composition also implies deliberation so it may counter the feeling of immediacy. Selecting an appropriate approach to composition is often an important artistic decision: adding pictorial interest to a shot or refraining from doing so can lead to dramatically different results. In any case, as is often the matter with art, it is good to know the rules before breaking them.

It is always best to learn from the masters and Pictorial Composition (Composition in Art) does exactly this. The classic book teaches the basics of composition through the works of the masters. This is a short book; being around a hundred pages it doesn’t linger over the material. The book does not underestimate the reader, so one may occasionally need to reread passages. The text is concise and there are lots of reproductions and sketches to illustrate the points discussed.

The first and most important subject covered is balance: picture elements weight, formal balance, balancing on various axes, balancing by opposition of lines and shapes, etc. Other topics include: transitions inside an image; circular and angular composition; lines; composing with one, two or three figures and with groups of figures; the compositional characteristics of light and dark tones.

The patient reader will emerge out of this book with a decent understanding of composition fundamentals. This will imbue a greater appreciation of the various visual forms of art and will also enable an analytical approach to image judgement. Being critical is a good thing; honing one’s analytical skills never did hurt anyone. Neither does the ability to articulate what you intuitively feel about an image. Ultimately, this can lead to better shots and better understanding why something works out or not.

What Pictorial Composition (Composition in Art) is not? It is not concerned with motion, so it is not about composing fancy moving shots (although it is up to you to apply what you’ve learnt in any way imaginable). It is not a guide or a “how to” book: it is less concerned with process and more with the perception and analysis of the result.

Book Review: Pictorial Composition (Composition in Art) by Henry Rankin Poore