 Back in the early 2000s, I used to hang out on a website called DeviantArt. Use a schizo 011, right? If you want to go and look it up. And I fell into a trap that a lot of photographers fall into which is thinking that you can put lipstick on a pig. Now what I mean by putting lipstick on a pig is that you're just taking any old photograph and you are slapping a digital effect on it or back in the day, like an analog effect in the hope that it's going to somehow aimask the, let's say, generously calling the mistakes in your image. And on the other hand, that it's going to somehow make it so much cooler, right? And that's why it was happening on DeviantArt. You know, I had used Photoshop up until that point. You know, I knew what I was doing but I'd mostly used it for either fixing little mistakes, dust spots and that sort of thing or replicating effects that I would do in the dark room, right, in the wet dark room. So this is things like cross processing of doing, you know, soft focus blurs. So when you used to take a like a cigarette wrapper thing and hold it underneath the light and it would blur the image and make the blacks and the whites all sort of seep into each other. It was a fantastic sort of thing. But that's kind of what I've been using it for, right? And again, even then I wasn't, you know, I wasn't absolved of the crime of trying to make an image better by putting in an effect on it. You know, it just, it was harder, right? You had to kind of like kind of work at it. So there was all these kids and I say kids because even though I was only in my kind of, you know, my early mid twenties at this point and there were guys who, you know, a couple of years younger but they saw themselves more as image creators that, you know, they would use photography as a base and then they would kind of build all these fancy effects on top of them. And I wanted to be one of the cool kids. So I kind of went, oh, look, you know, I'm going to copy this, this effect because everybody seems to be doing this effect recently to deviant art and had a kind of like a top deviations page where all these people will get, you know, they'll get all the fame and no fortune, just fame, all right? And, you know, I wanted to be one of those. And all I did was just go through my, you know, my catalog, my portfolio of images. I think that would kind of cool, you know, oh, I could put this effect on it and just ended up with kind of really very dull boring images that had no real purpose beyond just being me kind of showing off what I could do with Photoshop. And this is the trap that so many photographers these days fall into. It's this idea that, you know, we live in a world where there's hundreds and thousands of effects and filters and presets and stuff. And I'm just going to use the word filters as a catch all for this. That you can apply to your image. And I feel a lot of photographers will take very mediocre photographs and then just go through their effects library, just slapping filter after filter, seeing which one's going to stick in a vain hope that, you know, somehow it's going to be like a good image. And that's of course not the case at all. So how do we avoid this pitfall? How do you make sure that you are, A, taking good photographs, right? That are worthy of being enhanced. I'm going to stress that word enhanced by the filters that you choose to use with them. You know, somebody like Pete Turner, he used filters, color filters in his work to enhance what was there already to make it more prevalent. And so you want to do this with your filters is to take your collection and use them to, you know, bring up just the little bits that you want. So the best way to get started with this is first of all, you need to ask yourself the question is like, what effect is this going to give to my final image? And is that too much? Now the way of kind of, I think, you know, finding this out is first of all, you know, to say, look, okay, is this photograph actually a good photograph? Is it good without the filter? Okay, if it's not, then you might as well just draw a line under it right that second and move on because, you know, to go back to that kind of very old saying that, you know, you can't make a good print from a bad negative, but you can make a bad print from a good negative, still holds true. If you're not taking a good photograph, don't bother with it. Go back and take a good photograph and then come back to your effect. And to know what sort of photographs are good and what sort of fit the effects that you might want to use, you need to understand what those effects are going to do, right? I think it seems like it's such a blatantly obvious thing to say, but I think that a lot of people don't get it. They kind of sit there and go, mm, I just, the colors on this one, the colors on that one, but without understanding how that filter is interacting with the elements within the scene. So if you look at somebody like Man Ray, you know, Man Ray was the photographer who discovered solarization and all these kinds of things, you know, there are certain subjects that work better with solarization than others. And there are certain subjects that work better with cross-processing than others. And so on and so forth, there's loads of things. And some of the more funky effects, the ones that are a little bit more way out there are going to start interacting with your images in ways that you might not be even wholly aware of. So you do need to experiment. You need to understand what these filters are going to have, what effect they're gonna have on your image. So you're starting to build up a bit of a process. You're starting to see, okay, well, I've got this filter that's quite grungy, right? If you're into grungy things, I used to be, I used to think that was very hip. Right, it's, I hate it now, but that's, see how tastes change, right? That things move and they go around and don't be hooked into one thing and say it must be like this because everybody else is doing it. That's also, that's a whole other discussion about having the bravery to just say, no, I'm gonna do something different. So, you know, so understand how those filters work. What sort of subjects work best with them? And then you're on the route to be able to go, okay, well, I want to try and do this kind of feel with an image. Oh, I know that that sort of filter's gonna help me and I need these things. You know, if you go back to Pete Turner, he likes the color, right? So he kind of goes, I need images that have very powerful colors within them and then I can start using my filters. Then I can start using these things to bring out what is there already, you know, rather than just sitting there going through all of the pictures, going, gee, you know, let's try this, let's try that. No, no, I don't, does this work? I don't know. You know, then you stick it up on a Facebook group and you're like, oh, I don't know if this particular thing works. You know, why do people ask opinions of other people, you know, photographers and say, why? Why is it that, you know, that I am taking this photograph and it's not very good? You know, should it be color? Should it be black and white? Should I put this filter on? Should I put that? You know, they're not the questions that you should be asking if you want to create a better photograph, if you want to use filters effectively. Stick to the questions we've looked at here, you know, what is this effect going to do? What subjects does it work best with and is it going to enhance the image? And all of these can be answered by yourself, right? You need to trust your gut with a lot of these things. I do see, yes, through the mentoring and through talking with other photographers, people who are trying things out, who are experimenting and that's, you know, part of using filters and stuff is about experimenting. But throughout all of this, I'm reminded of, you know, a thing we get told at soccer practice, football, you know, for the rest of the world. Most of you Americans, I'll say soccer and we were told, you know, never do something in the practice session that you wouldn't do in a real game. And in my case, what they're talking about is just picking up the ball with your hands in the penalty area because it's a laugh, right? Because you get into the habit of doing things. So if you, when you're experimenting, you still need to experiment with good images, right? If you look at people like Harry Callaghan of Laszlo Mohly-Nagy of, you know, all these people who were like pushing the boundaries of chemistry and seeing what came out the other side, most of the photographs themselves are still crafted with a mind towards composition of having a good image, a base image. They're not just kind of really nearly just kind of throwing out any old stuff and seeing what happens and say, well, it's an experiment, it doesn't really matter. They're still working on things. So I want you to, you know, when you experiment, when you try out new, you know, filters, if you want to buy a new preset or something like that, is to look at what the preset, the filter is supposed to do and then photograph something that would benefit from that filter to see what it's going to work with. You know, all of these people, especially for the color grading ones, they use that picture of that young lady in the red head that we've all seen, you know, that she, what happened there? It's like, how did that become like the poster child for styles, right? And I actually found out who originally shot it, some guy in Australia, you know, it was like, wow. And, you know, one wants to hope that he got some sort of, you know, some sort of financial gain from it, but I have hearing probably not, you know, which is why it's been used so much. It was probably just, you know, a piece of, you know, free stock photo and stuff. But there we go. That's, you know, the interesting side, you know, imagine being somebody whose photograph is like everywhere, it would be so cool. But the thing is, you know, so what they're doing is all of these people are just putting this lady on there and slapping their filters on and say, look at them, look at the colors it does, right? It's not enough. You need to kind of know what it's doing. That's what I was saying earlier about, you know, about knowing what that effect is. So once you've got all this sort of stuff and you've got to handle on how the effects work and what have you, you have to ask yourself that same question you write at the beginning, you know, is this effect going to dominate the image or is it going to enhance it? And the easiest way to find this out is if somebody says to you, if they look at your photograph, if they look at this image and they go, Alex, this is, wow, what a cool effect that you have here. That's so, where did you get that from? Right? That's kind of, that's wicked, like that, right? Then they're not reacting to your photograph. They're reacting to the filter that you've put on it. And if they're doing that, then you have failed. Then your photograph is not standing up to what's going on. Think about filters and effects and stuff as a garnish, as seasoning, as herbs. You know, like Gordon Ramsay talks about, you know, using herbs, he says that herbs are like jewelry. Once you get dressed, right? So a lady gets dressed. So that's the, that's the, that's the plate of food, right? Is all cooked lovely. So that's the dressing, the herbs that you then put on afterwards, you know, the seasoning, they're the bits of the little bits that make it all come together. So think about filters like that. Stop putting lipstick on pigs because it's just going to end in tears either for you or the pig, right? And if you want to find out a bit more about Harry Callaghan, then check out this video over here because it's not the Cop in San Francisco. Thanks ever so much for watching and I'll see you again soon.