I just made up the term ’emotional visual memory’ and I have to say, it’s brilliant. It’s a great travel photography tip. Although we are using an urban setting, this will work for natural environments as well.
A little while ago, my wife was looking over my shoulder while reviewing my photos from our recent trip to Italy, Rome and Venice to be specific. I had a photo up and moving some Lightroom sliders around to show her options of how the image could be ‘improved’ from the RAW image file. At one point, she stopped my and said, “That’s too sharp, I think of Venice as dreamy and romantic.” That my friends, is emotional memory.
It’s not always about a purely executed photograph, all crisp, sharp and clean, of a particular scene that’s moves us. Many times, I believe, the real goal is to create a photograph of the place and time and how it made us feel, emotionally. My wife wanted her photograph that would rekindle the emotions of how she felt in the most romantic city on earth.
The shot is from a bridge catching a quiet, peaceful moment of a small segment of a canal. It’s a very intimate place and moment in time. I started by bringing the shot into Silver Efex Pro to get the basic black and white values where I wanted them. I saved then re-imported into NIK’s Analog Pro using one of the Wet Plate presets but removed all the scratches and plate imperfections. I just liked the slightly altered tonal values and the blur vignette. It really highlighted the emotional fabric of the canal and brings the viewer into the center reflections and buildings along each side. Next, I saved and brought back into Lightroom and added my own ‘warm tone’ preset.
So there you have it. Sometimes you just want clear crisp and precise. But keep emotional visual memory in mind as part of your personal post-processing options.
And as always, please help me by browsing through my ebooks or photo galleries of beautiful New York City black and white photography. There you can select a gorgeous high-resolution print file that you can download for only $20 and print it anywhere yourself. And I’ll donate 20% of the purchase price to one of the global humanitarian charities that you can select on checkout.
Until next time, happy shooting.
Bob