DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

There are 10 groups of people in the world. Those who use binary notation and those who don't. In photography, there is a difference of opinion on postprocessing.

Recent threads (and lots of past threads) expose the dichotomy of opinion on postprocessing. "Photoshop is lying". "Photographs are art".

There are reasons for both opinions, but the reasons do not overlap much. I'm in the "art" group and I will let everyone know that my photos are processed, sometimes just a bit, sometimes a lot. It's the difference between a pleasing photo and photojournalism, which eschews changes to the "original" image, whatever that is.

I would like to support the "art" group with an example from a recent wedding I attended. I have a photo that was taken by someone else (since I was in the wedding party I did not take any photos of the ceremony). I am presenting the photo to illustrate a point: it is my opinion that wedding photos are NOT photojournalism (unless there's some unusual newsworthy aspect of the wedding, which does not apply here). Wedding photos are to please the family. I don't have permission of everyone in the photo to post this so I have blurred all the faces, but I think my point can be seen here.

The original photo was taken as the bride and groom (now husband and wife) walked down the aisle away from the officiant. The wedding was outdoors on a sunny day, late in the afternoon. The photo shows most of the family so it is of interest to the family. Since it was late in the afternoon, some trees behind the photographer shaded half of the group. So the original photo shows a bunch of bright faces on the right and dim faces on the left. In my opinion this detracts from the value of the photo to the family (particularly those on the left).

I ran the photo through Photoshop and brightened the faces on the left. I only had a jpg to work with so the dynamic range wasn't really great, but I got something that I believe is better than the original as far as the left group is concerned. The left group is not as bright as the right, but they are not heavily shaded as much as they were.

My version is not reality if you only consider the response of the camera sensor to the available illumination.

My version is reality if you consider that the human eye can adapt to differences in illumination much better than a print of a photo can realize.

My thesis is that Postprocessing, even relatively heavy processing that Photoshop can produce, is a way to approximate the reality of a photo.

Original with half the group shaded

(Download)

Photoshopped version with the shaded group brightened

(Download)

Quixdraw Loc: x

Reality no. Subjective interpretation yes. Post processing is simply wish fulfillment.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

But it is closer to reality than the original. The complexion of the people on the left is not darker than those on the right.

The darkened faces is an artifact of the lighting.

Quixdraw Loc: x

Reality is what happened and to an extent, what the lens captured. Wish fulfillment was your repair of what you subjectively evaluated as a flawed scene.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

I disagree that the lens always captures reality.

I can agree that the results are my approximation of my memory.

Quixdraw Loc: x

Did I say that it did? Miss the qualifier?

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

A camera sees the world differently than the human eye, so who cares what the camera saw?

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

Hit send too early

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

Just Fred Loc: Darwin's Waiting Room

I don't quite understand the hubbub. I generally set the white balance on my camera to "cloudy" because I find I can adjust to a truer white balance later, rather than have to keep changing it depending on light conditions. Many of the photos I shot recently I redid in Lightroom, just to change from "cloudy" to "daytime." The photos then appeared more like the scenes I remembered than what the camera saved. Did I lie?

Quixdraw Loc: x

First off, no camera I am familiar with has a World view. It shoots what it is aimed at. The camera is an electro mechanical device which captures physical conditions relatively inflexibly based on its design, programming, and science. The human eye, and brain, more than a bit subjective. Language analogy - there is an exercise in police training which consists of whispering the description of a suspect down a line of ten people. By the tenth person the description is considerably altered, suspect bears no relation to original description, unidentifiable. We all have filters, which strongly influence the way we see and communicate, camera does not.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

But the camera has a filter that depends on its design, programming, and science. It is true that those things are more repeatable between cameras than the filters inherent in us (but the filters depend on what settings we put into the camera), and I maintain that a photo that I have worked on can easily have more accurate relationship to "reality" than a camera's output (assuming some skill on my part).

Of course my interpretation is influenced by my memory, which shows distinct aging. Processing a photo shortly after taking it will be more accurate than one processed after a significant period of time (which probably gets shorter with age).

One other thing is that reality is not always the goal. In the case of the wedding photo example, the goal is to produce an image that will trigger memories of an event and show individual members of the family as they were at that time. Postprocessing was necessary in the example to meet that goal so that future viewers will not think that people on the left were duller than those on the right.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

I don't shoot what it looks like. I process it until it looks like I want.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

Typed by a true artist.

Quixdraw Loc: x

Whatever, they are your photos / ethos not mine, your reality (and memory!) as well. Have at it, but don't expect me to agree with your premise!