Too much Photoshop?

[herron]

Feb 25, 2010 10:50:02 GMT -5 @wayne said:

I take pictures

I take pictures, too ... and each one captures a moment in time.

[Andrew]

if you use a microwave you are still cooking arnt you? yet we hear that many serious chefs wont allow them in their kitchens...they say you lose touch with real cooking or something like that isnt it?


pilots and planes havnt been around that long in terms of years and we could easily imagine that some time in the future a 'pilot' could simply be someone whom sits in the seat while the onboard computer calculates the weight of the airplane, head/cross wind, HP and torque of the motors etc, the computer will probably be able to accelerate, steer and guide the airplane better than a person can, yet the person sitting there will be called a pilot and will say to everyone he is flying the airplane....just like those two blokes several months back that fell asleep (or argued or whatever they care to pretend they were doing) while 'piloting' the big passenger jet, and proceeded to overshoot their destination by hundreds of Klm.

i have ZERO problem with people making pictures, ANY way they want to make them, i dont even care what they want to call the process they make it by...but if i am invited to discuss the matter of term photography, then i think its about time (after a 160+ years) that we all stop hanging onto the made up term (as it was at the time) photography/painting with light and pretending it had a absolute definition, that only means ''painting with light'' as if thats an absolute definition, more particularly pretending it applies to us 160 years later. if we do respect that was the term given, earned and was accepted for the chemical based systems at the dawn of photography and subsequent years..perhaps instead of getting all bent out shape because no one feels like being ejected from the world of photography, we should consider a new name for modern digital photographers (can almost hear the outrage from here hahaha), or at least they should be saddled with digital in front of every pic and reference to their hobbyist title

the capsicum (bell pepper just sounds weird lol) pic is largly computer generated, meaning i am sure that given enough reasonable consideration we could decide one how much of the final pic is based on human (photography/painting with light) imput and how much at the click of a button was computer generated, when one outweighs the other its no longer photography but computer graphic art in its various forms...just the same as when toooo much darkroom manipulation is no longer considered solely a photograph but a piece of graphic art


if painting with oil, or acrylics or whatever by use of the human hand is (as we all know) considered painting, then it is equally true that when the phrase 'photography' was coined it was intended that the process involved the human hands on manipulation and juggling of chemicals (painting with light) that it in fact did...

now, in this day, if one likes to press a button (just like those stupid pilot that sat in the seat) and have the computer in the camera or in photoshop render the pic and then call themselfs a photographer or the resulting capsicum a photograph, then thats ok by me, unless you ask my real opinion...its not real photography because you didnt do enough (its graphic art...just like if you draw a picture on your computer and have the printer print it out, you cant call it a painting! its not!

thats not to say using a digital camera should evict someone from the honour or privilege of calling themselves a photographer, but when the machine input outweighs the human input you honestly need to start taking stock and reconsider whether you are a photographer or ..something else, it may be grander! who knows, but i think each person should know within themselves if they are contributing enough to the picture...

i reckon after 150 or so years of photographers, some of the early ones of which, dealt with dangerous chems and hazards earned the title, deserve a little more than us digital age people pretending we are in the same league. by now with digital its the last straw to separate from being true photography (in many cases)..not that it will ever happen, just like there are many more digital cameras around now, so too are there many more digital photographers, they get to call themselves whatever they want, outnumbered are everyone else and afraid to step on the toes of the people investing in the ecomony

digtial photographers are like the pilots that fall asleep (or those to come). when the airplanes can land themselves we wont even know if or when the pilots fall asleep, but they will still get the uniform and pretend they know what their doing, and argue its all the same...we all know its not

someone has to stir the pot!!!!
unless you use a microwave!

[photax]

Hi Mickey !

Your Tomato looks like made of plastic. Maybe this is a apprehension of our future genetically engineerd designer food. Funny picture, i like it !

Peter, regarding to your "But they are digitally manipulated images; no longer photographs.", hows about "Necronom Ikon" ( inspired by H.P. Lovecraft ) ?

PS.: I like William Turner also

MIK


Peter wrote

MIK

[mickeyobe]

Feb 25, 2010 14:58:22 GMT -5 herron said:

Feb 25, 2010 10:50:02 GMT -5 @wayne said:

I take pictures

I take pictures, too ... and each one captures a moment in time.

There you are.
Ron has the answer.
He has taken some light energy that would otherwise probably still be travelling and continuing on for millions of light years.
He has converted it to electrical energy to do with as he wishes until he makes it into a picture that satisfies him.

So simple.

Mickey

[Deleted]

Edward Weston "Photoshopped" every photograph he ever took--dodging, burning and bleaching to get exactly how he wanted it. I think he would probably love digital photography. On the other hand, the most expensive, sopisticated, whiz bang DSLR cannot produce an outstanding image if the operator doesn't understand composing, framing, focal length and depth of field. That cannot be done with programming--it comes from the head and the heart,

Wayne

[herron]

Feb 27, 2010 21:55:40 GMT -5 @wayne said:

Edward Weston "Photoshopped" every photograph he ever took--dodging, burning and bleaching to get exactly how he wanted it. I think he would probably love digital photography. On the other hand, the most expensive, sopisticated, whiz bang DSLR cannot produce an outstanding image if the operator doesn't understand composing, framing, focal length and depth of field. That cannot be done with programming--it comes from the head and the heart,

Wayne

amen....it's never "the equipment"

[PeterW]

I agree with Wayne.

If you look in old manuals of photography, as distinct from books on old cameras, you find chapter after chapter devoted to what was called “after-treatment”, in other words working on a print to produce effects that weren’t in the original photograph.

They ranged from changing the character of a print entirely, processes such as bromoil and solarisation to working on a fixed and dried print with soft pencils and graphite power used with a stumpy short-haired brush.

In between came chemical work on a wet print. For example, to make objects in the foreground stand out the print would be fully exposed under the enlarger but only partly developed. Then it would be given a rinse in water to stop development, and local areas of foreground would be “worked up” with a sable hair brush dipped in developer .

What used to be called high-key portraits of ladies could be produced by very skilled lighting in the studio, but were also faked-up by using the same stop-development treatment and then using developer on a brush to bring out the eyes and sometimes detail in things like lace collars.

Before the days of colour emulsions, hand colouring of pictures using water colours or oil colours was very popular. This was taken almost to extreme in the period 1900-1930 by a painter of railway locomotives who became very well known as F. Moore, probably a pseudonym for an artist named Thomas Rudd. He used to take photographs of the engines, print them very lightly and then work on them with oil colours till they looked just like a painting. Here’s an example of one of his pictures.

It’s all been done before the days of computers and digital image editing programs. Programs like Photoshop just change the medium and make things a lot easier.


Great Western Railway Knight class locomotive by F. Moore. Photograph or painting?

PeterW

[mickeyobe]

"Great Western Railway Knight class locomotive by F. Moore. Photograph or painting?"

PeterW,

I would say, by the appearance of the coal and foreground grass and the distant background that it is an oil painting. But what a splendid painting

But I am only half right which is a good average for me.

Mickey

[PeterW]

I'll give you more than half marks, Mickey.

I suspect that the engine itself was "F. Moore" but the foreground and background, and possibly the coal as well, were Thomas Rudd.

I'm guessing, but I would imagine that Rudd photographed the engine at the Old Oak Common depot just west of London which was its first home shed. This might account for the single-track line. Great Western 'working' lines were always double track.

I mislead folks slightly about the class of the loco. Sorry, rail enthusiasts. The "Knights" were a group of ten Star class locos built in 1908. The Star class started in 1907 and the first batch were named after stars - Evening Star, Polar Star and and so on.

The last Star class loco in service, Lode Star built in 1907, was withdrawn in 1951 after 44 years service. It is the only one left out of 72 built between 1907 and 1923 and is preserved in the National Railway Museum at York.

PeterW

[daveh]

Well, this is as good a place to any to start for my first post.

Every photograph is a manipulation of what the eye actually sees, some are just more manipulated than others.

Do you remember tilting the enlarging easel to resolve converging verticals? Well Photoshop does that, only it's much easier. Do you remember using a high contrast paper to counteract a 'flat' negative? Photoshop does that too. Dodging and burning in? (Un)surprisingly Photoshop does that too. Hand colouring a black and white photograph? Yep, that can be done in Photoshop too.

We should make every use of modern technology, otherwise we will still be painting animal outlines on cave walls.

That said, there is nothing like real photography. Seeing a print come out the inkjet does not have the thrill of seeing the image build up in the developer tray.

What is true is that whatever method of reproduction is used, the best photographs are normally (always?) those where everything has been right in the camera. Whatever 'right in the camera' means.

[Deleted]

Welcome Dave.

I have to say I don't miss darkroom wet work in the least. Spent too many hours when I was younger holed up in the darkroom instead of interacting with spouse and kids. At least with Photoshop you can still communicate freely with non darkroom folks.

W

[olroy2044]

Welcome, Dave!

I think you will find enjoyment on this forum. I know that I have.

I totally agree with you about the digital versus film discussion. I still use my film cameras almost exclusively, no longer because of better results, because that is definitely not true any longer. I do so because I prefer the tactile experience of my mechanical cameras.

However, as other members here are aware, I recently acquired a Canon EOS (film version) and have begun to really enjoy the auto-focus (old eyes simply don't work as well as they used to!) and it achieves excellent results.

There is no doubt in my mind that a DSLR is in my future. It will surely be a Pentax of some flavor, because a large number of my lenses will either mount directly on the Pentax, or can be easily adapted.

Roy

PS And, yes, I scan, digitally manipulate and store my photographs, regardless of how they are taken. Therefore, the end result is, by definition, digital!

[daveh]

Thanks for the welcome. I have just realised that my location isn't showing up. I shall search out my profile later, and alter what's necessary.

For those of you who can 'spot the spelling', my use of the letter 's' rather than 'z' in realised puts me firmly on the right side of the pond (if only in the sense of looking at the world map pointing north): Wirral, Merseyside to be precise - not too far from Liverpool.

[herron]

Welcome, Dave.

I agree with Wayne about the darkroom. I don't miss those days holed up in the dark.

Photoshop can do a lot, but I also still enjoy "correcting" perspective with the swings and tilts on my 8x10 view camera ... long before getting into the dark!

[Rachel]

Hi Dave. Welcome to the forum.

I too don't miss spending hours in the darkroom but then I don't much like spending hours fiddling with images on the computer I only make the simplest of adjustments to digital images but not with Photoshop. It's too expensive for me.

I enjoy using both film and digital.