Art of Photograpgy

[KmH]

Call me a newb but when I look through my old 35mm photos, the only "editing" I ever did was with the camera. I've never used a dslr, but if/when I do, I don't feel that photoshop will be a tool I rely on to get "the shot".

So, you've NEVER developed your film (or paid a company to do that for you)?

Don't confuse "editing" with "photo manipulations", it doesn't have to mean the same thing. You (or your camera) have to process the raw image either way.

Adding to that - If you had a good lab develope your film and make prints, it's very likely your photos not only got edited but got manipulated by the lab too, though they never told you.

 

[spacefuzz]

Muwahaha I am a photo editing sociopath. I will mix white balances, blend exposures, swap sky's, delete anything that offends me (including kittens), do HDR, and use my photography as a pure expression of art. I am evil.

 

[KmH]

The Art of Photography

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I've only gotten back into photography recently. Never had an slr before. However I've noticed alot rely on photoshop. Is there any who just take photos and use as is?Anyone think it takes the skill or enjoyment out of the picture if you have to edit it?

It's your art, but the way digital photographs work they cannot record what you see.

Post process is where you ensure that the photo is as close to what you saw as possible. So for photo accuracy's sake, at a minimum you need to:

• Set the white and black points.
• Correct the white balance, and that is done by shooting one photo with a certified gray card in the photo and using that gray card as a known reference.
• Sharpen the photo. Digital cameras have a number of filters in front of the image sensor, and one of them, the anti-aliasing (AA) filter (a.k.a low-pass filter) makes the lens focus look somewhat softer than it really was. How much softer the focus is varies by camera make/model (the agressiveness of the AA filter).

It's best to capture photos using your camera's Raw image data file type, because the JPEG image file format edits the photo (saturation, sharpening, contrast, etc) in the camera before it ever shows it to you on the rear LCD. Additianlly, because JPEG is a lossy, compressed 8-bit file type it has to discard about 80% of the color information your image sensor recorded when you released the shutter.

 

[Vtec44]

The magazine covers that you've seen around, yeah they're all edited.

 

[Ballistics]

I look at photoshop like I do dietary supplements. They are both there to supplement what you cannot fulfill on your own. They can't replace what isn't there.

 

[D-B-J]

Call me a newb but when I look through my old 35mm photos, the only "editing" I ever did was with the camera. I've never used a dslr, but if/when I do, I don't feel that photoshop will be a tool I rely on to get "the shot".

I call BS--when you made a print from the negative, you chose a specific time to expose--be it 10 seconds, or 60. That right there is editing in an of itself.

 

[Jace]

Just buy a Polaroid

 

[ann]

Have you ever seen what was being doing with Polaroids? Talk about manipulating.

THen of course these days, that just isn't an option (at least for me, as I don't care for the Impossible Project film)