Ratskinner Loc: Copalis Beach WA

Everyone has their idea of what they want out of a given shot. If you don'tr get it fix it. I just don't want to tell anybody else what to do let alone what they should want. Photography is a combination of art and science, but it's also a hobby and the final result is very subjective and that's one of the many things I love about it.

E.L.. Shapiro Loc: Ottawa, Ontario Canada

The NEW YEAR is upon us 2019! So it's tradition to make new year's resolutions. Here's one. I'm gonna , at least, try to avoid some of theses redundant conversations and arguments. I don't like like use words like "inane, asinine, and God forbid stupid" but some of this stuff must trigger migraines in some of us.

There is always POST processing unless you want the leave the image remain in the camer or on the memory card forever and never view or exhibit it anywhere else. As soon as you want to place it your computer, show it on a screen, project it on the wall or actually make a print, there is gonna be a PROCESS AFTER the shooting. POST means after- Post Mortems are performed AFTER you're dead, not before!

I can understand why some folks dislike overly enhanced or radically altered work or poorly executed editing, enhancement or post-processing or whatever you want to call it. Sloppy or inept darkroom work was just as bad. So...if you only admire or like to do "pure" photography, just carry on and write all the rest off to "special effects".

So many folks on this site refer to the work of Ansel Adams as "pure". Come on folks- the Zone System is the epitome of manipulation! Ever read his book. "The Print"?...I rest my case!

It's great of you can create a perfect image right out of the camera. In commercial work, on film, I had to do it everyday. We used large format transparency films where there was NO remedial alternatives after the fact. Transparency work known a "stripping" pre-lithography and airbrushing correction were all extremely costly and were considered unnecessary expenses by many clients, agencies and art directors. This was and still is that we mostly work under very controlled condition and have plenty of time to perfect many aspects of each shot. If the same S.O.T.C. "ethic" applied to all the photojournalists, press photograhers, street shooters, wedding photographers, and folks that can't always work under ideal conditions- how would that work? If the all scrapped every imperfect shot there would hardly be any photography.

Who said that Henri Cartier Bresson never manipulated his prints? I knew an old fellow in New York City- a master printer, who did a great deal printing for Bresson's exhibits in the the U.S. Bresson never cropped- he wanted to print right down to the sprocket holes but he had no aversion to dodging, burning and contrast control.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with alway trying to make the best possible perfect negative (in the olden days) or file whenever possible. A well exposed and composed file will always make for a better final outcome whether manipulated or not.

ronpier Loc: Poland Ohio

Agreed Mike.

Harry0 Loc: Gardena, Cal

I read the 1st paragraph, and started to formulate my reply. By the time you ended you were repeating what I was thinking. ;-}
We WERE doing pre processing in camera, in the good old bad old days. I used a yellow filter to enhance contrast, a gradient to darken the sky, adjusted speed and aperture to blur or sharpen moving objects, and adjusted DOF to properly frame the subject. And I cropped. Early and often.
When the PP software(s) came out, it was described as a "digital darkroom". You can do what you did- or wanted to get done - easier, faster, and more accurate. And less final. I got into computers 40 years (a Northstar Advantage!) ago 'cause I couldn't type. I could correct, rephrase, reorganize- and print what I wanted. Not having to retype 2-5 times was great. I got into PS for the same reasons. I pretty much shoot in f/8. I can blur/ enhance, crop, re color, , brighten/ darken, etc any part pf any shot at any time.
Which is where the artistry of the science/tech comes in. Everyone's eyes are different- so is our cameras, and the mental baggage we carry around. The print in my hand may not be the image I had in my head, nor the image I wanted to give you. I can fix that. I'm trying to inspire an effect, a feeling, a story in the picture I took; the PP I do can further my attempt at that.
Most of my pictures are not "pure". I ain't going back to grinding my own pigments, mixing them with bear grease, and painting the walls of my cave with a burnt stick from the fire. I *believe* I'm using the best tools I can get to try to make what I want.

Bipod

OK, let's take this apart:
Contrast -- check. but if contrast exeeded sensor dynamic range, you are S.O.L.
Saturation -- oh God, please don't inflict hyper-saturated color!
Color correction--by all means!

Again, it comes down to know what's feasible and what is self-destructive.

Designdweeb Loc: Metro NYC & East Stroudsburg, PA

I never knew that, I thought he was rejecting all post-processing!

Errickcameron

Bipod wrote. “OK, let's take this apart:
Contrast -- check. but if contrast exeeded sensor dynamic range, you are S.O.L.
Saturation -- oh God, please don't inflict hyper-saturated color!
Color correction--by all means!”

That depends... photography as a duplication or as an art form? As an art form then it is completely up to the artist creative intention. As for my personal opinion, there is a lot of art out there that I don’t like but I do like free expression.

Bipod

Good point: for example, the artist Matisse used aturated colors in many works.

But photography is inherently reproductive (it starts as an image captured by a lens!).
And if you examine Matisse's work (or that of similar artists), you find that the saturated
color is employed selectively and also in a slightly abstract, simplified way.

There is a form of "art" which is both purely representational and saturated color: the
dime store postcard. Unfortuantely, that is what many digital photographs resemble.
They do not look like works by Matisse,

Alas, Impressionists cannot be used to justify any old bad triadic color, nor can Pcasso's
cubism be used to justify geometric distortion in a bad lens. Artists are not defective
machines--they are creative human beings.

Turing up the color saturation is not a particularly creative act. It's a cheap ploy for attention--
like painting your pushcart bright red.

Around 1900, the pictorialists did do creative things: draw on their negatives, use gum and carbon,
etc. Some of that work--e.g., early Stieglitz and Steichen--is very impressive. But ultimately, that
school lost out to "straight photography". Stieglitz and Steichen became champioins of photography
that interprets the world without drawing and painting. And what we are seeting today isn't
skilled manipulation, but just turning up a dial, or applying color adjustments and algorithms
in processing software.

I doubt very much if any of these contemporary "postcard school" (or commercial advertising)
digital photographers could draw Bambi. They certainly have no clue how to take photographs.
But they know how to get the viewers attention: bright colors, green grass, blue water,
white beech, naked sunbathers, etc. etc.

A good photograph isn't one that grabs your attention--it's one that keeps it. Maybe you didn't
notice it at first, but now you return to again and again.

Dr.Nikon Loc: Honolulu Hawaii

All photography has engrained within an unalienable right to ARTISTIC LICENSE ... to the shooter and or post editor ...

“A Good Photograph is one that Grabs your attention and H O L D S IT .... “

Delderby Loc: Derby UK

Well - you have your opinions - PP may not be not "skilled manipulation"- but just the result of enlightened vision.

Bipod

All art need not be shock art.

Dr.Nikon Loc: Honolulu Hawaii

I have to go use the bathroom now .. this overall topic works better than coffee ....


Merry Christmas everyone ....ain’t life Grand ....

Bipod

I try to present not opinions, but arguments and reasons. If I failed, I'm sorry.

One can't just lump all PP together. We didn't do that with film: dodging and burning were one thing,
drawing on your negative another.

There certainly is artistic freedom--thank heaven. But not every experiment will be a success.
Over time, the artists, critics and art historian may decide that, for example, painting over a
bronze sculpture is not a good idea. If you went to all the trouble casting in bronze....

Some PP -- e.g., global color correction for lighting -- is entirely harmless and in accord with
the best photographic traditions. We have always used color-correcting optical filter, and a
color-correcting digital filter works much better (because it more adjustable then selecting
from available Wratten 80 and 81 series filters and trying to stack them).

But other digital filers -- such as sharpen -- seem to be exactly the kind of phoniness that
Adams, Stieglitz and Edward Weston were warning us against. And for that matter,
that millenia ago Plato was warning us against: "making the lesser case [or photograph]
appear the better"-- Plato's definition of sophism.

On a less exalted plane: there have always been makers who wanted to cut corners, and
makers who did not want to cut corners. Whose work has stood up the best to the test
of time?

Notice when I say "Ansel Adams", nobody says "who?" And he's been dead for 34 years,
although it seems like yesterday.

The technology of painting and drawing can in large part be separated from the creative
act. But not so in photography. If I chose the camera, set it up and hand it to you, then
I took the picture as much as you did. Heaven knows that my open photos would be a
lot better if Ansel Adams was setting the exposure compensation.

Each generation rebels against the previous generation, and that's how it should be.
But if they forget or ignore previous generations, then we have a dark age.

People forget that William Blake begin by drawing from Greek statues purchased
by his father. His first heroes were Raphael, Michelangelo, Maarten van Heemskerck
and Albrecht Dürer. He then became apprenticed to master engraver James Basire
for seven years.

Van Gogh was trained as a child by Constant Cornelis Huijsmans, who had been a
successful artist in Paris, and later worked for art dealers in The Hague and
London (Stockwell).

Picasso was trained in art from an early age---his father was a professor at the
School of Fine Arts in A Coruña--and at the age of 16 entered the Real Academia
de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid -- the best art school in Spain.

This is called "paying your dues". "Just doing your own thing" is highly overrated.
No one is born knowing anything about art or about photography--it has to be
learned from someone who knows.

There are now thousands of books on photography, and many more web sites,
yet there are still very few real experts, and even fewer whose work has stood
the test of time. Mostly, what we have are the blind leading the blind.

The artists and photographers who are famous after many years are not the majority
who were working at the time. They are always a minority--often a dispised
minority. Straight photography was called "imitative", "uncreative" and
"mere reproduction". And it could have been--had the straight photographers
not been as creative and imaginative as they were. (In my opinion, Adams
Yosemite rockscapes are not his best work. His most famous photo is of a town
in New Mexico: "Moonrise over Hernandez".)

Changes in technology cannot invalidate art, anymore than changes in spelling
can invalidate literature. Unfortunately, advertising has sold the American public
on the idea that photography is easy--anyone can do it--even a computer! The
creation of good works of art can be automatic if you just buy our new fourth
generation AI mirrorless camera gizmo!

That is just not true. Photography is difficult, photographers have pay their days,
and the road to good work is long and arduous. Young photographers would do
well to spend more time looking at good prints, and less time reading industry
advertising and paid opinion.

Photography doesn't belong to Sony, Canon and Nikon ... it belongs to you,
the photographers.

tdekany Loc: Oregon

You must be very lonely. Way too much noise. You should go out to take pictures, talking isn’t ever going to improve your lack of skills

mudhen

This argument about post processing almost seems silly. From what I've been seeing the argument against post processing is either lack of knowledge on how to use the tools or lack of funding for it. The camera and software are basically tools to produce a product, a photo. Some people are just satisfied with getting some kind of an image and think it's the greatest pie and are proud to present it. Many of my friends have shown me their snapshots, and try to convince me it belongs in an art gallery. One of my friends is an author and tried using an I phone for his images and was shocked when they were rejected for printing. In this case I became a co-author and took the photos and for him. Two of those photos became cover shots for two consecutive months.

There are two parts to produce a nice image. Part A, the camera and part B, processing software. These are the tools available to produce a nice image. Most Media need a TIFF format before it goes to print. It's archival and lossless. I'll save a photo as a TIFF in full size and then make a small JPEG version for the net.

I enjoy doing landscape shots, and sometimes I would like to do a large print. So in my pre-planning I'll use a telephoto lens to bring in the background closer and take several pan shots, so I can stitch them together. Of course, I don't know of any cameras that auto stitching, so I do it in Photo-shop. So as some would not use PP software, I guess those type of shots are out of the question.

Here as an example of one of my shots that became an over a hundred megapixel photo. It will print up to be about six feet in length with nice sharp detail. With the smoke in the west lately, I've had some interesting pictures as well.

Chris

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