Anyone's a photographer, if they can photoshop

[Raj_55555]

All I know is I was taught in high school photography to get it right in camera

You had photography classes in high school? Wow! :no smile:

In camera versus post is irrelevant.

Crap is crap and good is good. Doesn't matter how you got there. You can fix a lot of stuff in post.

Summed up my thoughts in one line. I've seen enough purists behaving as if any sort of post processing is evil, most don't realize that someone else is already doing a lot of post-processing on his/her behalf, meaning every camera has it's own algorithms to create jpegs and a lot of "processing" is done to achieve that. The difference being some programmer wrote an algorithm to automate it, whereas we're doing it in PP softwares. Unless the photographer is claiming it to be sooc after using photoshop, I don't see an issue.

It has been rumored that once, while speaking at an art exhibition, Ansel Adams overhead a man say "I guess anyone can be a photographer if they have a darkroom"; to which Adams responded by making an imprint of an 8x10 sheet film holder on the back of the mans head. He then told the man to go lie in a dark room for a while and see how that developed.

I laughed so hard at this

 

[480sparky]

In camera versus post is irrelevant.

Crap is crap and good is good. Doesn't matter how you got there. You can fix a lot of stuff in post.

Plus, what a lot of people say is "fixing it in post" is really "doing it in post because it cannot be done in-camera".



The camera is a tool. Use it. PP software is a tool. Use it. Post is no less a tool than a choice of camera, lens, filter, using a tripod, etc.

 

[Raj_55555]

I guess I screwed up then. I bought cameras and lenses and tripods and filters and memory cards.

Turns out all I needed was software. Didn't need all that stupid hardware.

lol.. :lmao:

 

[480sparky]

I guess I screwed up then. I bought cameras and lenses and tripods and filters and memory cards.

Turns out all I needed was software. Didn't need all that stupid hardware.

lol.. :lmao:

Now that I think about it, I can ditch my computer, too. And my monitors, and my printers, the mouse, the keyboard. I have a spiffy CD with software on it. That's all I need.

I'm in heaven now.

 

[407370]

I used to make a living doing graphics of all sorts and I have a huge collection of software ranging from high end 3D modeling and animation to a 15 year old version of Paint Shop Pro to my best batch processor of images which was free (Irfanview).

I look at my pictures and ask myself does this pic need anything and if the answer is no (I talk to myself a lot) then it is filed but if the answer is yes then I have the processes at hand to produce an image matching what is in my head.

I was trying to find an image of my glass coffee table that I butchered in a 3D software called Cinema 4D which was abstract in the extreme but it escapes me for the moment. The point is that it is still just a picture no matter what you do to it.

 

[limr]

When it comes to the final image as seen by someone else, then it doesn't really matter at all how the photographer arrived at that final image.

When I look at my final images, it matters to me how I got there. And there are many variables that determine the things we value the most about the process. Part of it is how we were taught, part of it is our natural inclinations for what activities are more enjoyable.

Sure, there was a lot of manipulation of film images, but there were limits (time, cost, skill, materials...) and so there was a real incentive to 'get it right in the camera." Many of us, like bribrius, came up with that mantra. Get it as right as possible in the camera so the post work is easier, faster, and cheaper, if it's even needed at all.

Digital post work is a lot more accessible and affordable, so it feels less of a burden. And if you mess something up, you just go back to the original file and start again. If you mess up the development of a negative, there's nothing you can do. If you mess up a wet print, you can go back to the negative, but it's a pain in the ass.

Additionally, you get people who really enjoyed the post work. Adams spent tons of time in the darkroom. Cartier-Bresson despised the darkroom. Therein lies another incentive for either getting it right in the camera, or creating the final image in post.

Personally, I'm definitely more of a 'get it right in the camera' sort of a shooter. Perhaps when I can afford an actual darkroom to do my own printing, I'll find more pleasure in the post work. I enjoy the tactile work much more than I enjoy sitting in front of a computer with sliders and curves and clone tools. I have very little patience for digital manipulation.

So to bring it back to my original point, if I have to 'fix' an image in post, I look at the final image and feel a little disappointed in myself. Someone else looking at my image doesn't care how I got there, nor should they care how I got there.

To say there's a right way or a better way to create the final image is short-sighted. There's nothing wrong with either approach. But it's also wrong to say "that it shouldn't matter to anyone" because it does matter to some when it comes to their own work, and there's nothing wrong with that.

 

[rexbobcat]

cheapened it and made it more fake. And easier. I still like looking at the lower performing 1940's cars. Type on this laptop but I reminisce of the old typewriters. Granted, it was no where near the capability. But the typing was more real. No delete button. could hit back erase but often it didn't work right, or no erase tape. Might have to deal with white out but that don't always work right. sometimes you might just have to throw out a entire page and start it again if you made a mistake. But for every page that came out you had a much larger appreciation of it. And since it wasn't saved on a disk you guarded it as a treasure. Seemed I made a lot less mistake on a typewriter, as I knew they couldn't often be fixed or at least not always easily. And I didn't want to lose a entire page. so paid closer attention. pjagpjangpjdfngpjdngogpoagkgkodngopdgkajgkangkijfkoank suppose it doesn't matter if I mess up now. I can just fix it later. its in raw.

You also have to remember that it's easier now to show off bad photos than before. There are probably more bad photos than before, but I'd like to think that there are also a lot more really good photos as well to keep the balance since there has always been, I'll wager , more bad photos than good photos anyways

 

[IzzieK]

This is not a rant, just a story I wanted to share.
So I was just back home after a long session in the jungle,crawling around dog poop and stalking a rose ringed parakeet family. I fired up lightroom and started processing the files. This is when my brother shows up, gives me a smirk and says "Anyone can be a photographer if they knew how to use photoshop". Clearly he didn't know the difference between LR and CS, but this led us to a bet and now he has my camera for a week and I've promised to process all his pics for him. The results would be interesting to say the least :lmao:.

I was wondering what's the most absurd thing you guys have ever heard about photography?

I shoot RAW so I need to use PS to translate my photos to a medium I would like to see it, whether it be on PNG,TIFF or Jpeg. Does that make sense?

I once went to a music event in a mall where I was taking piano lessons. I took a lot of shots and not really a good photographer (as if I am now...:lmao and one musician saw my gear and said "Wow! now that! is a camera!" I was actually encouraged to shoot more pictures. Found out later on when I was doing my PP that I miscalculated my WB. How silly did I feel!

 

[bribrius]

back to the main o.p. statement.

without the digital and post processing I wonder how many "photographers" would no longer be doing photography. Where as some dropped out of photography with the development of digital imaging and photoshop even more seemed to have picked it up. Lets face it it's easier, cheaper and much more forgiving of mistakes.

 

[Overread]

Photography is easy just point and click

Anything that goes wrong can be edited, you just press the auto buttons and PS does all the work for you

If its still bad you can use arty filters; they instantly transform your image into art!

 

[KmH]

As far as getting it right in the camera:

It's rare when you can get it 100% right in the camera. The actual goal is to get it as close to 100% right as possible.
What we now call post processing can also be called retouching or 'photo finishing'.

 

[Overread]

Getting thing right in camera does not mean the same as not editing.

All it means is that you get the shot you want in camera which you know you can then edit to give you the concept you wanted when you pressed the shutter button.

This might mean that all you do in editing is set the basics and prepare for print/webdisplay or it might mean that you'll spend hours editing on it to get to the end result.


The key is that when you're editing you're not trying to "fix" mistakes.

 

[bribrius]

whatever. Everyone do what they want and have fun with it!! :mrgreen: I was accused last week of photo shopping a building on another website I hadn't even photo shopped. Go figure. lol.
Some people don't like processed photographs anymore than they like processed cheese.

 

[Scatterbrained]

back to the main o.p. statement.

without the digital and post processing I wonder how many "photographers" would no longer be doing photography. Where as some dropped out of photography with the development of digital imaging and photoshop even more seemed to have picked it up. Lets face it it's easier, cheaper and much more forgiving of mistakes.

...and this is a bad thing? More people are riding motorcycles now too, yet I don't pine for the finicky motorcycles of my youth. Sometimes I have to wonder if the people agonizing over the development of digital photography would have been agonizing over the invention of the power loom?

You know, my grandmother did fine art photography when I was growing up. I spent my evenings and weekends there and while I didn't give a wit about photography at the time, I learned some interesting things from the processes. She had her garage split in half. The back being the darkroom, the front being the workshop where she stored her equipment, made frames, made paper (from scratch, fun stuff), kept metal plates for printing on, etc. She had a room adjacent to the garage that was her retouching room. When you're a kid watching someone cut a mask from a sheet of rubylith, hand tone a B&W image, or make paper from scratch is neat stuff. (didn't make me any more interested in photography though ) It's safe to say her "workflow" was a wee bit different than your average shooter, but so were her results. My point? That there have always been people who embraced the development side, and that even in the film era photography was about more than just pressing the shutter for plenty of shooters. Meanwhile there are still plenty of people, like yourself, who abhor post processing, just as there were in the film era.

Just out of curiosity, do you pine for a return to the days of the straight razor, where mistakes in technique were painfully punished?

As a side note, you may not have noticed it, but the ubiquity of digital has been pushing a lot of fine art shooters back to film (many are actually picking up large format, and some for the first time). It's becoming more of a "process art", where how the image was taken is what really matters.

Anyway, I'm done rambling for now, it's time for lunch.

 

[terri]

When it comes to the final image as seen by someone else, then it doesn't really matter at all how the photographer arrived at that final image.

When I look at my final images, it matters to me how I got there. And there are many variables that determine the things we value the most about the process. Part of it is how we were taught, part of it is our natural inclinations for what activities are more enjoyable.

Sure, there was a lot of manipulation of film images, but there were limits (time, cost, skill, materials...) and so there was a real incentive to 'get it right in the camera." Many of us, like bribrius, came up with that mantra. Get it as right as possible in the camera so the post work is easier, faster, and cheaper, if it's even needed at all.

Digital post work is a lot more accessible and affordable, so it feels less of a burden. And if you mess something up, you just go back to the original file and start again. If you mess up the development of a negative, there's nothing you can do. If you mess up a wet print, you can go back to the negative, but it's a pain in the ass.

Additionally, you get people who really enjoyed the post work. Adams spent tons of time in the darkroom. Cartier-Bresson despised the darkroom. Therein lies another incentive for either getting it right in the camera, or creating the final image in post.

Personally, I'm definitely more of a 'get it right in the camera' sort of a shooter. Perhaps when I can afford an actual darkroom to do my own printing, I'll find more pleasure in the post work. I enjoy the tactile work much more than I enjoy sitting in front of a computer with sliders and curves and clone tools. I have very little patience for digital manipulation.

So to bring it back to my original point, if I have to 'fix' an image in post, I look at the final image and feel a little disappointed in myself. Someone else looking at my image doesn't care how I got there, nor should they care how I got there.

To say there's a right way or a better way to create the final image is short-sighted. There's nothing wrong with either approach. But it's also wrong to say "that it shouldn't matter to anyone" because it does matter to some when it comes to their own work, and there's nothing wrong with that.

:cheer: