I tweeted yesterday that large format photography is like playing the French horn or the oboe: both these instruments can produce beautiful music, but are absolutely unforgiving if you make a mistake. One difference in photography though is the tools available to rescue a photograph, and the image in this post is an example of what can be done to “fix it in post.” The original image (taken yesterday morning using by 4×5 view camera, antique brass lens and paper negative) was severely underexposed, and was not flattering in terms of skin texture, but through the use of scanning and image manipulation tools I was able to bring enough of the image back to create a portrait I quite like.

Gorgeous photo, John. Have you posted the “before” photo somewhere (the raw material you started with, before “fixing” it)?
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Thanks! I don’t think I’m going to post the before image, the underexposure did some not nice things to the skin texture, and I’d rather show the model in her best light.
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