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.

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.

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

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

Just curious: what printer do you use to print it "to about six feet in length"? And what that printers dpi resolution?

Too bad about the poor depth-of-field, but that's inevitable with miniature format, even when you stitch them together.

In half the time you spent with a tripod taking those pan shots, you could have used a 8" x 10" view camera
and ended up with superb resolution, superb depth-of-field, and the ability to make an optical enlargement.

But no doubt there is a way to use four bicycles and a bed frame to carry as much as a pickup truck...if you really, really
want to do that....

Just curious: what printer do you use to print it "to about six feet in length"? And what that printers dpi resolution?

Too bad about the poor depth-of-field, but that's inevitable with miniature format, even when you stitch them together.

In half the time you spent with a tripod taking those pan shots, you could have used a 8" x 10" view camera
and ended up with superb resolution, superb depth-of-field, and the ability to make an optical enlargement.

But no doubt there is a way to use four bicycles and a bed frame to carry as much as a pickup truck...if you really, really
want to do that....

If y'all will stop yelling at each other for a moment, I have something interesting.

You can have the best of both worlds- an 8x10 View camera that does panoramic photography. They are called Cirkut Cameras. The operat with a slit rear shutter, a clockwork motor all built into a 5x7 or 8x10 body. Attached here is a picture of a wooden antique model, however, there is a photographer somewhere in the Midwestern US how is making them out of metal and equipping them with an electric servo motor. At one times, a few years ago, Kodak was spooling 8 and 10 inch roll film for theses cameras in black and white and color negative.- on special order, of course. Imagine, no lacing together, no distortion- normal lens for the format and a panoramic image in one fell swoop.

There is a Russian made 35mm camera with that same design- perhas someday there will be a digital model.

Theses original camera are best known for military groups of entire regiments where each face were tack sharp and easily recognizable. The group is arranged in a semicircle and the camera pans it end to end. It can actually rotate a full 360 degrees. There are all kids of incredible scenics and events made over the years.

Definitely not a mainstream photographic activity- a niche for sure. There are also 8x24 Banquette Cameras that can bring an entire ballroom full of folks in sharp focus via its tilting front standard.

If you dig down deep enough you will find all kids of STRANGE things in photography- and strange people doing them and writing about them! Makes you appreciate the more simple things in life.

If y'all will stop yelling at each other for a moment, I have something interesting.

You can have the best of both worlds- an 8x10 View camera that does panoramic photography. They are called Cirkut Cameras. The operat with a slit rear shutter, a clockwork motor all built into a 5x7 or 8x10 body. Attached here is a picture of a wooden antique model, however, there is a photographer somewhere in the Midwestern US how is making them out of metal and equipping them with an electric servo motor. At one times, a few years ago, Kodak was spooling 8 and 10 inch roll film for theses cameras in black and white and color negative.- on special order, of course. Imagine, no lacing together, no distortion- normal lens for the format and a panoramic image in one fell swoop.

There is a Russian made 35mm camera with that same design- perhas someday there will be a digital model.

Theses original camera are best known for military groups of entire regiments where each face were tack sharp and easily recognizable. The group is arranged in a semicircle and the camera pans it end to end. It can actually rotate a full 360 degrees. There are all kids of incredible scenics and events made over the years.

Definitely not a mainstream photographic activity- a niche for sure. There are also 8x24 Banquette Cameras that can bring an entire ballroom full of folks in sharp focus via its tilting front standard.

If you dig down deep enough you will find all kids of STRANGE things in photography- and strange people doing them and writing about them! Makes you appreciate the more simple things in life.