Sunrise, Shafer Trail, Canyonlands, UT

Happy New Year, wishing One and All a Healthy and Prosperous 2026

       Occasionally since around 2015 I’d begun to think of myself as a “Film Snob”…my phrase, but rooted in my belief Film and Wet Processed prints were the gold standard. After 40+ years a B&W film photographer I’ve taught advanced film processing to photographers visiting my darkroom from Canada, Europe and South America. My videos call home on 5 of 7 continents worldwide and a tenured college photography professor of 25+ yrs on a year’s sabbatical, paraphrasing his take-away…“I’ve never heard or seen anything like you are teaching!”

      For close to week I have struggled to find a humble way to validate my professor level understanding of B&W film and it’s potential against that of a decent high school student’s understanding of PhotoShop and post processing of a digital file, be it B&W or Color. I wondered if I Googled my name and B&W processing what AI would come up with, the first thing that appeared on Google was the below paragraph followed by a few of my YouTube videos.

    Steve Sherman’s approach to black and white film processing is deeply rooted in the philosophy of minimal agitation and the importance of midtone contrast. His methods focus on creating greater vibrancy through techniques like Extreme Minimal Agitation, which allow for a unique and powerful means of affecting mid-tone contrast. Sherman’s work has been recognized by luminaries in the wet process silver gelatin community, and his techniques have been detailed in numerous articles and workshops. His commitment to preserving the soul of a black and white photograph in its mid-tones has made his work highly sought after by photographers who value the artistry and depth of their images. 

     The above internet paragraph directly links to an article I wrote detailing the intricacies of Extreme Minimal Agitation and it’s super power in the Blue Link. Back in 2003 I shared my discovery with a highly skilled B&W large film photographer and close friend, Tim understood and explained my EMA results very succinctly “What used to look like the contrast of a Grade # 2 print, now looks like a Grade # 3 print simply because of the EMA process & resulting mid-tone vibrancy”. The PhotoShop equivalent of my EMA technique is “Unsharp Masking” where computer software exaggerates the transition of tones in the mid-tone areas of an image to heighten vibrancy. I’ve always said my EMA technique accomplishes this “mid-tone exaggeration” in a smoother and more organic manner than PhotoShop can. I have since learned advanced masking techniques that seem to negate the more aggressive PhotoShop algorithm in favor of a more subtle and smoother artificial transition of mid-tone contrast. To be fair, while the EMA technique is organic in the processing of film, it is artificial in reality.

   High level digital photography was happening all around me, good friends were embracing the miniature “elephant in the room” while I remained in limbo. Close friends steadfastly stuck with film generated imagery, some even adopted a more vintage approach than me. A Christmas visit in mid December from one of those close friends and a strict ultra large film photographer, Peter said, “Steve, you’ve simply mastered the medium”. His words not mine, what has become clear, large film and its limitations were not providing the challenges I wanted from photography. Less than a week prior to that quote I visited a friend’s exhibition in Springfield, himself a former film photographer who’d transitioned to all digital capture. Paul has traveled the world making meaningful, exciting and powerful imagery…it’s clear I’ve made the transition to digital at the right time! That said, a new mountain to climb can be exciting and daunting at the sametime…the challenges I am after. Father Time, still at bay has to be balanced with the drive of a 25 yr. old, wisdom of a 50 yr. old and the physical limitations of a 73 yr. old.

    While digital sensors are inching higher (capable of recording higher contrast) every year, the photo & article below of the three cameras was written 12 days prior to my Dec. 21st writing of this Blog. The dynamic range of the best sensors is between 14 & 15 stops of contrast. The 7×17″ film image of the interior of the Eastern States Penitentiary is a full 15 stops of separation. Dark shadows and reflected sun exposed for 16 minutes with normal speed film. A good friend who I taught the very first EMA workshop back in 2004 on my technique saw that print and later went to the penitentiary, Jim would say to me “I had no idea it was that dark in there.”  It’s important to note that for the casual photographer or reader, the standard dynamic range of the final print process, i.e. the photograph you hold in your hands or hang on your wall is 7-8 Stops of Dynamic Range or Contrast. Capturing and preserving almost twice that range on a single piece of Film or a single Digital exposure requires extensive Command of craft and Execution.

Latest Dynamic Range

Eastern State Penitentiary

    Being proficient in several genres of photography has taught me there are benefits and short-comings of each form of capture. With the prison scene above shot on film all focus & depth of field corrections are done standing @ the camera, these corrections are irreversible! Unconventional exposure and extraordinary types of film processing are necessary to record and preserve this much contrast, aka Dynamic Range. This film development is applied to the film during chemical processing, and for the most part is irreversible. There are however any number of printing techniques available to the skilled darkroom printer to partially compensate or enhance the permanent characteristics of the processed piece of film. Any number of variations of the positive print can be made, the negative however is essentially processed to finality. I’ll close the film comparisons with the following. Film has given way to the digital medium, there are far more “digital masters” who have only scratched the surface of film and it’s capabilities. So, my prowess with film many times is discounted and even admonished by the latest wave of digital gurus. To which I can say with far greater understanding of film and adequate skills with digital capture, “in spite of the letters that may follow your name, at this point in time capturing and rendering extreme levels of contrast, certain films and digital sensors are on par with one another. What is no longer on par are the intricate post-processing controls of a Digital file against the more global controls of film processing”.  I’ll finish by saying the entry level knowledge I had of digital file processing, I used to think was “cheating”. If an entry level film photographer knew the techniques and lengths at my disposal for processing film and the wet process printing stage…they too would have similar take-away !

    The immediate image following was post-processed to my 2024 skillset, most all adjustments are done on a global basis. Now, with advancing knowledge and the power of “masking” smaller areas, the correction of a digital file is more akin to a painter applying paint to specific areas of a canvas, the options and finite controls are mind-boggling. Very simply this first iteration below suffers from too much color saturation and exaggerated miss-matched colors where they shouldn’t be, a difficult enhancement to back away from once seen on a backlit computer screen !! Since this December 2024 iteration of Shafer Trail below I have only chosen a handful of digital images to permanently correct as my post-processing skill-set continued to evolve.

1st Iteration, Sunrise Shafer Trail

     With Digital capture there are still decisions that need to happen at the time of exposure, however, those decisions can be “post-processed” in a number of different approaches without damaging the originally captured file. As with darkroom wet-processed prints there are a number of different approaches to arrive at the final rendering to meet the makers original vision. To that very point, what follows are iterations of the opening image over the evolution of my learning curve in post-processing, both with Adobe Camera Raw and PhotoShop.

  Below is a shot taken with the cell-phone of the Sony as I waited for the sun to rise, notice there is more detail in the darker areas of the cell phone shot…because, there is less dynamic range, aka, contrast while the sun is still below the horizon.

IPhone 14 Pro 5:34am

     My goal is to keep this explanation as simple as possible and rooted in visuals rather than text. The following images will show the original captured file directly out of the Sony a7CR, at the time capable of 14+ stops of dynamic range. As seen on the right side correction panel, nothing has been adjusted, all “sliders” are @ zero. RAW files record the most information available and allow for advanced post-processing corrections. Sunrise, Shafer Trail was captured on July 5, 2024 @ 6:06 am. It’s important to note, this file @ the time the camera was exposed was intentionally under-epxosed by 3 full stops as it looked directly into the rising sun’s fireball.

Unedited Direct RAW file

   The best approach to such a high dynamic range scene, i.e. shooting straight into the rising sun is to make separate camera exposures & adjustments for only the sky, and then a second exposure adjustment for only the darker areas. The two resulting files would be post-processed for only the sky and then the darker foreground independently. Followed by carefully aligning and seamlessly blending in PhotoShop.  See a shortened progression of the above scenario following here…

    1st correction below is to run the Denoise feature in ACR to remove resulting noise (grain) in the darker areas of the image on the exposure intended for foreground detail. I have learned that Noise is a product of dark values in ANY photo and has no relationship to the ISO used to capture the image, higher ISO settings simply brightens the image in the viewfinder.

1st Step, run ACR Denoise

     2nd adjustment below…run the Auto correct, see where Green arrow lowers ‘Highlights” by 84 & Red arrow raises “Shadows” by 80…this can be done several times as an FYI, naturally there are side effects, but there are workaround the drawbacks. Bear in mind, auto-correct is a global adjustment, with advanced masking techniques intricate parts of a digital file can be color adjusted as well brighten or darken with no indication of manipulation !!

Shadow Adjustments

    Below, made color and relationship adjustments to only the sky area, which include adding in appropriate color to the over-exposed white ring around the sun.

Sky Adjustment only

     Finally the two independently adjusted / corrected files are loaded into a “stack” in Photoshop with the Sky corrected file on the bottom of the stack and not active. The top shadow corrected file is active and seen with the Red arrow. The right side of the photo shows the “eraser tool” is set to 100% with the hard edge seen on the right side to illustrate the blending method is erasing the over exposed sky area of that shadow corrected file. The left side of the below photo shows the eraser tool set to varying degrees of “eraser opacity” beginning around 40% and gradually reducing down to 20% as the eraser technique approaches the actual horizon essentially disguising the technique so the blending cannot be detected. Reducing the opacity approaching the actual horizon line is exactly the sequence one would use in darkening in the sky with a darkroom wet-processed silver gelatin print !   

Top stacked file active > Eraser Tool reveals corrected sky file

      In closing and a benefit for the masses, a similar reduced brite value exposure approach will yield much more exciting imagery from today’s very powerful cell phones. Take this same image with your cell-phone and just before commanding the phone to take the pix, tap your finger on the brightest area in the photograph, the phone will immediately try and correctly expose the brightest areas while forsaking the darker areas. Once that file is on your phone, simple post-processing programs right on your cell phone can and will recover significant amounts of the darker details. It’s simply the way a digital sensor captures and preserves information. Most cell phones are designed to produce proper “brite values” but not the mid-toned or darker areas, particularly if the phone is set to a “Vivid” style rendering.

Good Light & Good Health thru 2026 and Beyond !