Dodging and burning black & white film photos (in Lightroom) 

Love this! No one talks about dodging and burning digitally.

yay more super talented female film photographers on youtube, please! can you please someday do a video on how to work with color negatives in Lr? I really enjoyed your way of sharing information & techniques! xx

I watched all your videos in 1 night. Seriously, this is my new favorite RU-vid channel.

WOW. Mind blown. Thank you for this beautiful video. I have used dodge & burning for portraits, but never landscapes. I loved this !!

I learned the Zone System from Adams Basic photo books. He started in era of orthochromatic sheet film which isn’t sensitive to red light and can be developed by eye in a tray under safelights to fit the range of the scene to a single contrast grade of paper. That didn’t work for panchromatic film which requires total darkness so he developed a system where based on the contrast of the scene, the development time would be varied to meet the same goal, printing on one grade of paper. The “normal” baseline scene was a subject cross-lit in direct afternoon sun, lighting a digital sensor can’t handle. You shot five or so sheets or rolls of film, developed each for a different time then printed them on #2 paper, exposing the paper with the minimum amount of exposure would make the edges of the film maximum black. The ideally exposed negative would have darkest shadow detail in densities just above film base+fog. The same test would be run on overcast days of lower contrast and it would take more development time than “normal / sunny” to fit that range to the #2 paper. A beach or snow scape with more contrast that a clear sunny day would require less. Exposure in all situation was based on a reading with a Weston reflective meter off an 18% grey card, but in 1970 when I learned it from his 1968 edition spot meters were available and I used a Honeywell 1° meter to directly measure detailed shadows and highlights to precisely determine the range in f/stops and the development film development time needed for any contrast lighting. It became simple to produce prints like his which captured a full range of detail with no blown highlights or blocked shadows. It was from that full-range baseline the dodging and burning would be done to selectively change the tone of areas of the photo to tone down bright distractions and edges and or lighten the focal point creating a light-to-dark gradient. Adams also often used yellow, orange and red filters to darken skies and green filter to make foliage lighter and contrast more when capturing the image. We kept a yellow filter on the lens outdoors all the time because panchromatic film renders blue skies much darker than seen by eye. I managed an overseas printing center for the US Information Agency and had the opportunity to reproduce a dozen of his original prints for one of our magazines as double black duotones. The thing that made Adams work exceptional is that his full range capture process in landscapes captured more detail than a viewer looking at Half Dome in Yosemite in person because the irises in the eyes would contract in reaction to the brightness level and not see by eye the same level of shadow detail as in the photos. The images in books don’t do justice to the way his process captured the full total range, especially the detail in deep shadows in sunlit scenes. Getting the same full range with digital isn’t possible with one exposure with digital in other than overcast conditions. But it is possible by bracketing and blending exposures or by putting the sun at the backs of subjects as rim light then adding both neutral centered fill and key from the same angle the skylight is coming from, techniques I’ve used to get similar range images.

Wow, just wow 🤩

Awesome video Taylor. It's amazing how digital technology can facilitate old darkroom techniques, though I must admit working in the dark room feels so rewarding.

Love this, great insight, thank you

This was soooo informative, and done in a way which you cannot fail to understand. Great images as well btw. Loving these new channels!

This was super interesting - I was literally just thinking about this process as I edited some portraits. Cool to see it done like this. Thanks Taylor!

Sheesh! Amazing, for real! Thank you

Sooooo handy. I wonder what the process is for colour, if it even works properly at all. Great video and great looking images. Thank you so much! 🔥😎

Great video Tay!

Who's your favorite black and white photographer?

Love it!! ❤️

Wow, never heard about dodging and burning before! These subtle improvements are amazing. I'll have to give it a try for sure. Thanks for the tutorial Taylor!

I must say that I've been doing a photography course and B&W is catching my attention so much! Teacher showed us Alan Schaller's work. He's basically a very creative man in this department!

Love it! Can't wait to see more 👏🏻

yooo, such a great video

Hell yeah this was 🔥- def didn’t know that trick about the levels! 🤯

Just found your account through the Moment side, and I'm here to stay! Love your style, personality, all of it! Stoked to try some dodge/burn stuff myself

Woahhh great video! I had no idea dodging and burning was a thing, ughh there's so much to learn with photography

Mind Blown about the starting point on the curve!

absolute VIBES with this one.

Great video!

Fresh into the film world , this was a great technique to see ! Lovin the channel..🙌🏼

Loved it! And I think I stuck on the grain check for a minute, that was awesome 😅

This is so good!! I’m loving this channel! 🙂

More people need to see this! Put to rest all those people saying that editing pictures makes the image “fake” Watching this was so therapeutic

Great video. I know this was a couple years ago, but can you describe what you were doing with the luminance range mask at the end?

this was fun!

This is informative, thanks Taylor 😊

The difference a haircut can make, had to make sure I was still watching the same channel haha jk. Your channel has giving me some motivation to start shooting more. Thanks for the inspo!

That's what I dream of having, my own darkroom and studio. But, that's a bit of a ways off. Have to get a new house with enough space to set one up! I love Ansel Adams's setup but that is probably unrealistic. You'd need a complete other house apart from the one you lived in, to house it!! B&W has a completely different feel to colour. It's more about line and form, tone and texture. I really like it. Colour tends to "get in the way" sometimes and detracts from the subject. Not that colour doesn't have its place but some subjects do better in B&W. Especially in wintertime, when you have bugger all colour.

I come for the photo wizardry, but I stay for the reactions 🤯 - you should do some photo editing streams like a twitch channel.

Yeah. Great video. Keep going

Yo that levels tip though 👀. I need to pick up some more rolls of B&W now.

I personally did not know what dodging and burning was until this, this gives B&W film even more emphasis than it already has on the composition, sweet video.

Freaking INSANE! This is is the YT Channel of dreams 😍

Great vid

why does it take me a while to find this channel smh :(( love from Indonesia Taylorr!

Love this one :)

I am speechless ! Wow

Sickkkkk

amazing video :)

Sébastien Salgado, Brett Weston ( misspelled last name ) were during Ansel Adam's Era. They too took incredible b&w photos.

Nice video

so much love for this !!!

Please stop making me wish to spend more money in more hobbies :(. Hahahahaha quite useful video, thanks. Any ideas for dodge and burning with lights while you do the photo?

Kinda inspired to take some black and white photos. What was the other extra stuff that you were doing to the dark sky edit towards the end?

I've been doing b&w all winter and wondering why I wasn't able to get the look I wanted straight from my scans. Time to go back through and make it all pop.

👍🏻

Yo should check out Pedro Luis Raota's work. A less known but still legendary dodge/burn dark room wizard.

Thank you so much for this video! First of all, this made me feel way more confident in using brushes and masks in Lightroom, like I am not doing something completely against the film photography medium. And on top of that, the video by linusandhiscamera that you referenced is truly amazing - stoked to re-edit some older pics since I am loving the results that I am getting!

and if you don't have lightroom then you can just use the contrast slider!

Missed opportunity to say: I do not have a DARKroom but I got LIGHTroom

Another Awesome vid! checkout Greg Girard.. his photography is beautiful

Welp, if you're ever in SLC and want to print some negatives in my darkroom, hit me up!