larryepage Loc: North Texas area

I've been using a camera since I was about 7 years old (Hawkeye Brownie), moving to a "real" camera when I was 12, shooting Kodachcrome at ASA 10. (I grew up in a fairly remote rural community, and our best processing option was through a local pharmacist who had a system set up with the Kodak processing plant in Dallas.) We got three day turnaround that way, but had no local processors for print film, which required about a week through Kodak for some reason. After coming back from a trip to Germany and Austria in 1990 with several rolls' worth of technically quite good but artistically somewhat questionable images, I completed a couple of photography courses at our local community college which helped extend my engineer's eye to include more aesthetic concerns when capturing and printing images.

My first digital camera came in 2006, after having used a compact point and shoot camera at work for a couple of years. Because of my many years of shooting transparency film, the habits of working hard to properly capture the image at exposure continued to exert a strong influence. But I gradually learned that I could use the photo programs inside the Windows operating system to make improvements in color balance, contrast, and saturation. Somewhere along this time, I also rediscovered black & white photography. But because I was mostly a solitary photographer without a support network, that was about as far as it went. JPEG files remained the norm. Work photographs, generally used to supplement training materials or various reporting requirements (internal or to external regulatory agencies) generally were captured and displayed as exposed, in order to demonstrably preserve factual integrity.

A major turning point came when I attended a night sky workshop in the summer of 2018. I don't know if you have done any night sky work, but it is just about impossible to take usable photographs of the night sky, certainly photographs with impact, without doing post processing. Additionally, one of the assignments was to produce a panoramic image stretching from north to south (plus a little bit extra at each end). Uh-oh. Now it is all of a sudden necessary to be able to stitch a series of images together into a panorama. More software required.

So to answer your question...I think that the majority of us have been photographers for quite a while. Some of us have learned to use digital equivalents of darkroom techniques that have been around for a long time to extend our capabilities. Others have perhaps started with the electronic capabilities and used the digital capture mechanism of a camera to provide a starting point for expression. My kids at school have taken the step beyond that and manually create their starting point images.

I'm not sure that there is (or even has ever been) any such thing as a "true Photographer." Or perhaps there has always been and we all are. But I'm not aware of anyone handing out "True Photographer" badges anyway. And please note. I am not trying to be mean or nasty here. But I'd like to make sure that we don't get too much like the old "True Ham Radio" grumps that came pretty close to killing amateur radio a number of years ago with their attempts to preserve its "purity." I personally lived through that now quite embarrassing debacle.

Tomcat5133 Loc: Gladwyne PA

My take is you have an interesting point. I see some good photography here and
in the the reading and research I do. I know when the look is post processed.
Usually for me less is more and it goes to far like the vivid setting on my Sony's.
But whatever it is is what we see is more and more. The new smart phones create
looks with a couple of buttons that we all do sometimes.
It is still photography. As the smart young lady mentions the darkroom was post.
Manipulated photos. Manipulated video and movies.
I will be honest that over hyped photos are not to my test.
Everyone who shoots is a true photographer.
Note: all the Netflix etc movies commercials have a colorist and
and are shot with settings for post enhancement.

JohnSwanda Loc: San Francisco

Before digital would you have complained that photographers used the darkroom to doctor up their prints, and ask if anyone without a darkroom considers themselves to be a true photographer? Everyone makes mistakes, and it's good to have the darkroom or software to fix those mistakes. But the best use of both the darkroom and the computer is to take images as good as they can be out of the camera, and enhance them in ways the camera can't do.

RichardTaylor Loc: Sydney, Australia

Sent the rolls of B&W film to a pharmacy, and the transparencies to Kodak.

GoofyNewfie Loc: Kansas City

Fauxtographer.

speters Loc: Grangeville/Idaho

That's all part of the photo taking process, it starts with pressing the shutter on your camera and ends with the print in your hands. Doing some finishing touches in pp are just part of this process, just like you did back then in the darkroom!

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Touché!

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

There are no rules for good photographs, great photographs have just one: the photoshop work is exquisite.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

cowboydid2 Loc: The highways and byways of America

Nope, I'm just a guy who takes pictures. Maybe some day I will have learned enough that I MIGHT consider myself a photographer.

joer Loc: Colorado/Illinois

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Why do people continue to differentiate?

'Tis puzzling.

BebuLamar

Is there a fake photographer?

Jessie.Paige.Kramer

I'm not sure if I'm a true photographer yet, im just beginning. I still have a lot to learn. I will say, that I definitely have a passion for it.
Please feel free to give me any feedback. Right now im trying to learn all I can. Thank you

Attached file:
(Download)



Attached file:
(Download)

Attached file:
(Download)

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Shot black and white and extensively manipulated images using dodge and burn, frisket, paper negatives etc. Same concept, older tools.

Your question seems to make all sorts of assumptions - the main one is that before digital, images were never manipulated - everything you saw was straight out of the camera. And the insinuation that image manipulation makes one less of a photographer. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Here is one example among the millions if not trillions that exist -

I guess, in your world, Ansel Adams was not a "true photographer" because of the extensive manipulation he did on his images.

I suggest you re-consider your post. It makes no sense at all. Un-manipulated images have a few things in common - they either look like Ken Rockwell took them - oversaturated, overexposed, blown color channels, oversharpened, etc - or completely lacking in dynamic range, poor contrast, etc etc etc. Even in controlled settings, like studio with careful lighting setups, even the best results are not beyond post processing manipulation. All you have to do is some work for an ad firm or corporate graphics department to fully understand this notion. Things are just easier with digital than they ever were, and more accessible - but the downside is that there are a lot of amateurs with access, and tend to lack the skills to evaluate an image and properly enhance an image.

.