NEW: Lighting is everything - Editing with Paul Mitchell

About the session

Paul Mitchell has a line he comes back to. Light is everything and post processing can only help you.

It sounds modest. It is really the point of the whole evening. The edit is not where the picture gets made. It is where you take what the light gave you on a damp morning in the woods, and bring it back to what you saw standing there. That is a different job, and it asks for different habits.

So Paul is going to show us his.

He starts with his own pictures. Woodland, landscape, infrared, and some of his more creative work, and he talks about them: where he was, what the light was doing, why he pressed the shutter. Then he opens the RAW files and works on them in front of us, start to finish, in Lightroom and Photoshop.

This is the part people always ask us for. Not a technique lifted out of context, but somebody good sitting down with a real file and saying every decision out loud, including the small ones and the ones they change their mind about.

What we will cover

The pictures first

• Where each one came from. Paul talks through a selection of his favourite woodland, landscape, infrared and creative images before he touches a slider.

  
  

Then the files, worked in front of us

• Global and local contrast. Two different jobs that most of us do with the same slider. Where each belongs, and what happens when you get them the wrong way round.

• Dodging and burning. Moving the viewer's eye around the frame by making some parts of it quieter. Paul does a lot of this and it is most of why his pictures feel lit.

• Colour grading. Setting a mood across a whole image without the colours going strange.

• Sharpening. Where in the process it belongs, how much is enough, and why it is the last thing rather than the first.

• Infrared. The channel work that turns a raw infrared file into either that clean black and white or a colour image, which is a genuinely different workflow from the rest.

  
  

Who this is for

Anyone who edits their own pictures, at any level.

• If you are still finding your way around Lightroom, you will get a clear order of operations. One of the most useful things about watching an experienced photographer edit is seeing what they do first, second and third, and how little of it is dramatic.

• If you are comfortable already, this is about judgement rather than tools. You know what the sliders do. The question is when to stop, and Paul is very good on that. His pictures are quiet, and quiet is hard.

What you will need

Nothing on the night. Paul is demonstrating throughout, so you are very welcome to sit with a cup of tea and watch.

If you want to work along afterwards, Lightroom and Photoshop are what he uses, and the recording will be there for you.

About Paul

Paul Mitchell is a landscape photographer based in East Dorset, and a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society who until recently chaired its Landscape distinctions panel.

He was born in Yorkshire and picked up a 35mm rangefinder in his teens, then studied photography as part of a graphic design degree at Hull College of Art. Design was his living for the next forty five years, most of it running his own studio in London. He now spends most of his time lecturing and running workshops, and that design background is all over his photographs, in the way he handles shape, tone and balance.

His work has been recognised in Landscape Photographer of the Year, where he won the Sunday Times Choice Award, and he took the RHS Gold Medal and Best in Show at the Saatchi Gallery's Botanical Art and Photography Show. He has exhibited widely in the UK, been published in many of the photography magazines, and written a book on pinhole photography called Spirit of Light.

See more of his work: paulmitchellphotography.co.uk

From Mark

Paul has been part of Camversation for years now. Woodland Ways, The Seeing Eye, Beyond the Visible, and last December he talked about why he stays close to home and photographs the places he knows. He also gave up his own time to stand with us on our very small stand at The Photography Show, which is the sort of thing you remember about a person.

I will say the obvious thing about his pictures, which is that they are sublime. There is a stillness in them. He photographs woodland in a way that makes you want to go and stand in it.

I have wanted to see him edit for a long time, and this is the session where he does. Watching somebody work on a file is one of the things this community enjoys most, and there is a reason for that: you learn as much from the pauses as from the moves. Two hours with Paul and his RAW files is a good way to spend a Wednesday.

Tickets

£6.

The recording will be on the website within 24 hours and you have access for four weeks.

Also from Paul, on demand

Three of his previous sessions are on the site, all £6:

• Woodland Ways and The Seeing Eye, on looking past the obvious picture

• Beyond The Visible, his infrared talk

• Fear of Flying, on photographing the places closest to home