swamp shutter wrote:
...after reading all the things about reducing and cropping and all the other computerized language i wonder if the photos will still be of the same subject that was photographed in the first place. Is anyone a real photographer anymore?...i wonder how many are just computerized images. Swamp
In the darkroom, you can reduce, crop, dodge, burn, adjust exposure contrast and colors and... These terms are not "computerized language," they are photographic language. Conceptually, I don't see a lot of difference between a negative and a RAW image, nor between darkroom processing and software processing. In either case, the photographer composes a shot, captures it, and then processes it to get a desired effect.
What separates great photography from the rest is the skill of the photographer: his or her vision and, of course, experience, be it composition or processing. Don't get me wrong, I'm far from a great photographer, but I can appreciate Henry Cartier-Bresson, Matthew Brady, Man Ray (take a look at some of his photos if you want to see some interesting pre-Photoshop compositions), Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange (who caught Albert Einstein sticking his tongue out) - she said "A camera is a device that teaches people to see without a camera," which personally resonates.
When cameras appeared, painters probably looked at photographers as cheating. I suspect that some in the different schools - classicists, romanticists, impressionists, cubists, surrealists, modernists, etc. questioned the capabilities of the others.
Some of the great classical painters manipulated subjects in their work for purely commercial reasons, driven by the fact that their sponsors had very specific views of what they would pay for (a lot of what is recognized as great portraiture is very flattering to the paying subject...). And the truly great artists were almost completely unconstrained by the actual subject: take a look at Picasso's Guernica, then compare it with photos of the bombed town.
Technology advances, and art along with it. Doesn't mean the old is bad - there are still painters. Nor does it mean the new is bad either.
Just different.