Category: Portraits

Work Image and Post-Processing

Photography, Portraits

(Photograph copyright 2010 by Dan Routh)

This image is from a recent commercial shoot. For this blog, I do a considerable amount of post-processing to my photographs. I look at a blog as a venue for experimenting and trying new things. How much is enough? Actually, I think enough to produce the feeling that I’m after in a photograph. Digital imaging has made it easier to do such work, but it’s nothing new. In film days we used to do all sorts of lab techniques and duping processes to produce the looks we wanted. It just took a little longer and was sometimes a little messier. Even black and white master Ansel Adams talked about the negative being the score and the print being the performance. A raw digital file is merely an electronic negative and it is up to each of us to decide where to take it.

Pig Picking

Farm, Food, Portraits


It was pretty cold this past weekend, but not cold enough to stop neighbor Tommy Routh from continuing with his annual “pig picking” for friends and neighbors at Goat Lady Dairy in Grays Chapel. A 200 pound free range hog raised by his son-in-law Bobby, split in half and cooked slow for about 15 hours until the meat falls off the bones. This is the “whole hog”, with a choice of ham, shoulder, rib and tenderloin. I’m primarily a vegetarian these days, but I freely admit I did have to try some. Excellent.



(Photographs copyright 2010 by Dan Routh)

Winter Farming

Agriculture, Farm, Portraits


When cold and messy weather comes, most of us can duck inside and get away from it. On a dairy farm, it means dealing with it head on. Cows have to be milked and fed twice a day whether it’s sunny and warm or frigid and nasty. Michael Williams of Williams Dairy south of Greensboro, North Carolina handles it every day.



(Photographs copyright 2010 by Dan Routh)