Does anyone do "as shot" photos any more?

[Grandpa Ron]

When I see a great photo I like to think "Boy would I have liked to have seen that" or "The next time I am out west I am going to hunt down that spot. In short, I like to think that I could see that image for myself.

What I do not like to think is, "What a great shot, it is too bad the scene only exists in pixtals of some memory card.

How do you know which is which? Quite often you do not. Yet something tells you, that you have shot dozens of scenes like that and they were never quite that perfect. Maybe the photographer was having a super luck day.

In the photography magazines it is a lot easier. Many times the pictures displayed are accompanied by the photographer's comments, which go to great length instructing others on how to "tidy up" the photo using this or that post processing program.

My point was driven home this Christmas when I received an Ansel Adams calendar. My son in law saw the cover shot and said he was their last summer. Sorting through several dozen photos on his smart phone he shows me the same scene. Sure the clouds and snow cover were deferent but nobody had added a tree line or removed an errant mountaintop to clean up or balance the scene. He pretty much saw what Ansel saw some 60 plus years before.

I suspect that most folks do not give two hoots about how much post processing goes into the final picture and why anyone would care about my opinion on the subject is beyond me. I certainly have no significant impact on the photographic world or how it evolves with changing technology. I am just curious how many folk prefer to print their photos as shot.

 

[AlanKlein]

So what if you add a mountain or two?

 

[Ysarex]

When I see a great photo I like to think "Boy would I have liked to have seen that" or "The next time I am out west I am going to hunt down that spot. In short, I like to think that I could see that image for myself.

What I do not like to think is, "What a great shot, it is too bad the scene only exists in pixtals of some memory card.

How do you know which is which? Quite often you do not. Yet something tells you, that you have shot dozens of scenes like that and they were never quite that perfect. Maybe the photographer was having a super luck day.

In the photography magazines it is a lot easier. Many times the pictures displayed are accompanied by the photographer's comments, which go to great length instructing others on how to "tidy up" the photo using this or that post processing program.

My point was driven home this Christmas when I received an Ansel Adams calendar. My son in law saw the cover shot and said he was their last summer. Sorting through several dozen photos on his smart phone he shows me the same scene. Sure the clouds and snow cover were deferent but nobody had added a tree line or removed an errant mountaintop to clean up or balance the scene. He pretty much saw what Ansel saw some 60 plus years before.

Wow. That's fascinating. Ansel was one of the heavier manipulators of his era. I mean there was a running joke about his stuck filter period when he couldn't get the deep red filter off his lens. You take my photo back a page or two of the yellow tree leaves in the park and even though I moved those leaves around some I would think that photo is much more faithful to reality than to what Adams often produced. I mean when's the last time you saw the sky turn black in the middle of the day? https://imgc.allpostersimages.com/img/print/u-g-F5KV590.jpg?w=550&h=550&p=0

Joe

I suspect that most folks do not give two hoots about how much post processing goes into the final picture and why anyone would care about my opinion on the subject is beyond me. I certainly have no significant impact on the photographic world or how it evolves with changing technology. I am just curious how many folk prefer to print their photos as shot.

 

[limr]

I think the point was not that Adams altered contrast or use filters, etc, but that he did not move the major elements of the image to the point that you could not recognize the view if you were standing in front of it in the same spot where he originally shot it. It's not like El Capitan is suddenly 1,000 yards in a different direction.

 

[Ysarex]

I think the point was not that Adams altered contrast or use filters, etc, but that he did not move the major elements of the image to the point that you could not recognize the view if you were standing in front of it in the same spot where he originally shot it. It's not like El Capitan is suddenly 1,000 yards in a different direction.

Seems to me that moving El Capitan a 1,000 yards one way or another would be a much less extreme intervention than picking it up and transporting it to another planet in the galaxy where the sky is black in the middle of the day because that sure doesn't happen here on earth. Adams is a really poor choice for the guy who photographs it as shot. Funny too, if I moved El Capitan a 1,000 yards you'd probably never notice but how can anyone miss a black sky in the afternoon.

Joe

 

[Tim Tucker 2]

Interesting discussion...

But I think it is a far more interesting question if we ask, "why do we expect photography to be an exact representation of reality?"

This goes right back to the roots of photographic history. When Roger Fenton shot the two plates of "The Valley of the Shadow of Death" there still continues today an argument regarding their authenticity of representing reality. But what reality? With wet plates having to be prepared before and developed immediately after exposure in a horse drawn mobile darkroom there were limitations as to what and where you could shoot on the Crimean Battlefield. The first image, (and the one in Newhall's "History of Photography" because it's deemed more *authentic*), shows the cannonballs lying across the small valley after the battle. The second shot shows the same scene after the soldiers had run across the ridge and thrown the cannonballs towards the road running along the bottom of the valley so they were easier to collect for re-use, (the valley offers shelter from rifle fire) and the time between the two shots consistent with the time to develop the first plate and prepare the second.

Arguments about *staging* the shot and therefore it not representing reality still exist today, but whose reality? The arguments stem from the fact that there are two shots to compare and so we see that cannonballs have been moved. It also stems from our assumptions of what we *think* the scene represents when viewing the second shot rather than knowledge of what it actually does. It's us who read the shocking realities of war in the second image and make assumptions of what the battle was like, us who made the assumption that the cannonballs lay where they fell after the battle. And us who then decipher and make assumptions when we compare the two shots. To what purpose do we question? For one of the most shocking anti-war images of it's time what is the outcome of us dismissing it's authenticity? If you think of it the second is more revealing in the quantity and that they were collected at the risk of death so they could be fired again and so re-create the same rain of death...

This theme continues with Emerson's "The Old Order and the New". Emerson shot *his* romantic idyl of happy peasants who are content with their simple life close to nature. He didn't shoot the reality of being poor, having to live in small ramshackle tenancies working very long hours for little pay or the problems and misery that it creates. He shot the version that people preferred to believe and hang on their wall, the one that absolved the wealthy landowners from guilt, an honest and enviable existence that should be preserved? This is very much the same as the view Jackson and Curtis presented of the Native Americans when they published their photographic surveys of the tribes. A false and romantic idyl of a people in tune with nature, proud and detached, mystical and enlightened. It's a falsity that still exists today, our view of what we believe, or wish to believe their existence was and not one of reality and how it actually is.

Above is a family image of Sandra's Grandfather who lied about his age to join WW1 as a piper. It is typical of the portraits up to this time in that it is entirely staged. It's a family heirloom that lives in a draw and has become quite faded so I copied and restored it.

So where does this expectation that photographs should represent reality come from, the nature of photography or the nature of us the viewer?

To take a trip further into the realms of the abstract I have a recent image of the Callanish Standing Stones on my wall. Being B&W it doesn't represent the colour, they have moved more than 1000 yds as they are now hanging on my wall. a wall that supports their weigh as it is only paper thin and they are only now 10" high. It represents a view that though you can approximate doesn't correspond to the exact perspective and you would have problems duplicating the exact perspective if you were to try. It shows a light that remains constant whether viewed on a sunny day or at midnight under the picture lighting.

If you were to visit the stones where the light was different and less *atmospheric* would you be disappointed in the stones or the image upon which you based your assumptions, which wouldn't measure up to your expectations? It raises the question of whether this argument is about understanding what photography is or trying to define it into what we think it should be; an absolute, understandable and representational reality. For it to be the latter then photographs would have to contain within them an accurate representation without imagination. We would have to view them dispassionately without making an assumption of their meaning or allow them to resonate through the way they remind us of our own experience and memory.

I think the OP has a point though, just that the old argument of the absolute authenticity of photography has never been a sound one. Modern digital has, across all media, tended more towards *WOW*, the instant attention grab and with each incarnation the reality is pushed further into fantasy to achieve the same visual effect, more saturated colour, more contrast, more detail, more abstraction from reality. It is a shallow view of the world and one that gets not so much removed from reality but our ability to connect to it through our experience and memory. As the world of images delves further into fantasy so it has less of a connection with how we see and experience real life, our human understanding, and so has less relevance and less meaning to us once we get past the initial visual *WOW* factor.

Everything has it's place, and we should explore the limits of visual believability, but we are in danger of creating a virtual world that has little relevance to our memories and experiences. Landscapes become more *look at me* shots whereas Ansel Adams always said *look at the landscape*.

Sorry for the essay...

 

[paigew]

I very rarely manipulate an image.


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[Grandpa Ron]

So what difference does it make if you add a mountain or two?

From the photographic perspective, none. In fact it may improve the overall balance of the photo. Brush and canvas artists do it all the time, adding and changing the color of objects.

From the photographer's perspective you have gone beyond the standard practices of digital cropping, filtering, burning and dodging, which by itself can be overdone; and abandoned the photo. The photo now becomes the base upon which you build your artistic endeavor.

To the brush and canvas artist, it is like their rough pencil sketch prior to painting. At that point, it make little difference what you do, the actual scene in the photograph becomes secondary to the artist's vision. Whether you use it as a backdrop for for forest critters playing jump rope, the underwater world of Atlantis or an improved Ansel Adams print, the scene can only be visited by eye, not in person.

Many photographer enjoy this newfound digital freedom. It certainly is promoted by the photo mags. Obviously my preference is to stay closer to the original, sometimes going back for yet another angle. In short, I would rather wait for the perfect sunset, snow storm or cloud cover than create it on a monitor screen.

Contrary to some folks opinion, I do not feel this approach is, better than, truer than, more natural than, etc. any other; it is simply the way I like to do photography. Apparently, so do a few others.

 

[markjwyatt]

... How about an image created using a lens for starters? Does the image have to be exclusively created by a lens?...

Joe

Excluding pinhole cameras?

 

[Grandpa Ron]

Markj

Interest question. As a pinholeholic myself, a lens, is a lens, is a lens. Even a fisheye or soft focus lens captures what it sees. The lens does not add or subtract from what it sees.

What is interesting is before the use of glass lenses, a pinhole lens was commonly use with the camera obscura to project a scene onto a piece of drawing paper so the artist could sketch the image. That image was then used a base for the artists painting.

So it seems my original question has very deep roots, did the artist embellish the scene projected by the camera obscura or was he or she so taken with the scene, they tried to do an exact replica.

If I may go off topic, my best pinhole effort (attached) with a 35 mm format was with an f 190 pinhole. It is a bend in the Tippecanoe River. I am going to try a 4x5 cut film image when I restore my old view camera.

 

[markjwyatt]

Grandpa Ron- the reason I brought this up is because a pinhole camera is often thought of not having a lens (it has an aperture but no refracting, concentrating or dispersing elements). This may be a matter of definition.

As to your OP I just watched a lecture by John Szarkowsi on Ansel Adams, referring to Adam's thoughts on photography, he made the comment that you could see a scene, look away for a moment, and when you look again it is a different scene (the light shifts, clouds move, water flows birds fly by, etc.). This does not contradict the idea of catching a moment (or moments), but certainly underscores the fleetingness of a moment. A given scene can contain many scenes occurring on different time scales, such as the scene below. It contains the time scale of milliseconds (before the girl's feet hit the ground again (the girl running from the potentially falling sphere) to the 1-2 hour Segway tour, to the span of life of a disabled person cared for by a loved one to a century plus construction of the Sagadra Familia in the background (not to mention geological timescales present...).


Scene by Mark Wyatt, on Flickr

 

[Grandpa Ron]

Mark, you are correct the street scene will change in mere minutes or even seconds.

So my question still remains, would you "Photoshop" the scene to remove the ball, the running girl, the crane in the back ground etc? Some might even add in a statue from an adjacent park. Or, would you use the photo "as shot."

I can think of several reasons for doing both.

However, I am not compelled to change it to the way, I want it to look. I am more inclined to use the photo the way it was taken.

 

[markjwyatt]

Mark, you are correct the street scene will change in mere minutes or even seconds.

So my question still remains, would you "Photoshop" the scene to remove the ball, the running girl, the crane in the back ground etc? Some might even add in a statue from an adjacent park. Or, would you use the photo "as shot."

I can think of several reasons for doing both.

However, I am not compelled to change it to the way, I want it to look. I am more inclined to use the photo the way it was taken.

I agree. I prefer to keep it as I shot it, but do not object to some manipulations to make it look as I saw it (contrast, dodging/burning, etc.). I do not add elements, but could see removing an element in special cases (though I generally do not).

 

[n614cd]

This debate reminds me of the discussion of how many Angel's can dance on the head of a pin?

This premise and basis is so very subjective, that even after a hundred years of photography we do not adequate definitions to even begin the discussion.



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[mickmoonie]

What I see through the viewfinder is what I take, it's real life!!!!


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