If you're bored...

[shutter_bug5]

I have collected my best work into a portfolio and constructed a website, I would really appreciate if you took the time to look at it and comment

Pure Pics

 

[KmH]

You lost me right here " that I believe photography is about capturing moments as they are, not as they are edited to be."

Photography does not capture moments as they are. Every photographic image is edited.

 

[ColinBishop]

You lost me right here " that I believe photography is about capturing moments as they are, not as they are edited to be."

Photography does not capture moments as they are. Every photographic image is edited.

Not necessarily, check out rukes.com, he has very little post-processing (apparently) in his photos.

 

[shutter_bug5]

Mine are not edited at all, and it's precisely the "every photographic image is edited" stigma that I'm trying to shake off. I feel like photoshop has ruined a lot of what it means to be a photographer. Anyone can edit a picture to make it look good...except me, because I refuse to learn photoshop

 

[mar1u5]

Anyone can edit a picture to make it look good...

Photoshop doesn't make a crap image good. For any picture to be worth something, you need to have a good image to start with. Anyone who can do some post processing can't just stick his camera out the window and shoot something at random and make a great image.

And 99.99% of what you see isn't straight out of the camera. People do color/contrast adjustment atleast - or the image is beeing processed by the camera. If anyone wants to try and impress with "pure" images, they need to shoot raw and post those. It'll be a pretty sad bunch of images.

And people tend to forget (or not understand) that people did post processing in darkrooms, before digital cameras came along. It's not something new that photoshop invented.

 

[burgo]

yes I agree mar1u5.

 

[abraxas]

You lost me right here " that I believe photography is about capturing moments as they are, not as they are edited to be."

Photography does not capture moments as they are. Every photographic image is edited.

I'm not so sure about the word, "edited". Possibly 'altered' is a better choice?

... is that I am completely photoshop illiterate,

Natural talent?

Mine are not edited at all, and it's precisely the "every photographic image is edited" stigma that I'm trying to shake off. I feel like photoshop has ruined a lot of what it means to be a photographer. Anyone can edit a picture to make it look good...except me, because I refuse to learn photoshop

You may get over this as you mature.

Not everyone that uses Photoshop can edit a photo and make it look good.

Anything goes--Anything.

You have quite a bit of work ahead of you without rationalizing postprocessing. There may be possibilities.

Good luck--Let me know how that donation thing works out.

-

 

[shutter_bug5]

I'm not looking to make money, the donation was in case anyone wanted to help, running a website and buying gear is expensive, but a cost I'm willing to pay. This is just personal art. I know people have been editing before photoshop, and I know it can't do everything. I'm a little offended at being called immature simply because I have a certain standard for my photography, if I was out to make money, I understand I would need to edit, but I'm not. I'm really out to show the world what can be done with simply a camera.

 

[abraxas]

I'm not looking to make money, the donation was in case anyone wanted to help, running a website and buying gear is expensive, but a cost I'm willing to pay. This is just personal art. I know people have been editing before photoshop, and I know it can't do everything. I'm a little offended at being called immature simply because I have a certain standard for my photography, if I was out to make money, I understand I would need to edit, but I'm not. I'm really out to show the world what can be done with simply a camera.

If you read closely, you'll see that I did not call you immature.

Good luck.

-

 

[emac82]

While on one hand I can agree that some photographers do too much PP, very few pictures are not altered from their "original state/pose"...I mean, if you are shooting in any mode but Auto your pic is not likely to be "pure" looking...I mean, I don't think we see bokeh in real life, lol....Only in pictures

 

[Namibia]

I have collected my best work into a portfolio and constructed a website, I would really appreciate if you took the time to look at it and comment

Pure Pics

And now I am going to stick out my neck - not that I am a talented photographer either - I think your images are ok - but not mindblowing. sorry !!!

 

[shutter_bug5]

I have collected my best work into a portfolio and constructed a website, I would really appreciate if you took the time to look at it and comment

Pure Pics

And now I am going to stick out my neck - not that I am a talented photographer either - I think your images are ok - but not mindblowing. sorry !!!

don't be sorry, in my bio I say they aren't great

 

[DSLR noob]

I see what you are trying to convey, and I respect that. I myself, try to edit my photos in a way that one couldn't look at them and say that they are edited right away. So I kinda feel you on at least having "real" looking pictures. As stated though, no photo is pure, a camera is not an eye, and the way an eye works is vastly different from an image sensor. Your eyes have way more dynamic range than any camera on the market, and also the best in White Balance technology is your eye. These are just two of MANY examples why no photo is pure.

Example 1:

Go near an "orange" street lamp with a friend in white shirt, a friend in a gray shirt, and a friend in a green shirt. Your brain will identify the white, gray, and green accordinly, having seen them in "white" light before (none of the times you saw your friends in these shirts was the light ever white, but your brain knows how to rationalize white). Now take a picture of the 3 friends near the orange light. Unless your camera has excellent auto white balancing, you will see a Bright orange shirt, a dull orange shirt, and the green shirt may very well now look like a gray or black shirt. Hard to call this type of image "pure" or "as it is" WITHOUT editing. And even "without" editing, the camera has done it's best to adjust the colors in its white balance algorythms through built in (here comes the word) image processing software. Processing being key. As in, edited, manipulated, messed with, not "pure", or any other synonimous term.

Example 2, dynamic range.

I stated earlier that your eye has more dynamic range than any camera on the market. Here is the experiment. Go to a reasonably well lit room (one or two lamps) where you feel like it is easy enough to identify everyhting in full detail but not so bright that it looks like a flashlight is pointed directly at anyhting. Open up the window during either a sunny or cloudy day and try to look for some trees. Have a friend stand to the left or right of the window. Now, you go to the opposite end of the room and face towards your friend and the window. Try to be far enough away to look at your friend, and the trees outside at the same time. Can you see the colors and details in both your friend's clothing, and in the trees outside? Now without using flash, try to take a single photo that will expose both those outside trees and your friend evenly. It cannot be done. The camera will either take a picture of your friend in stunning detail and color (well, actually pretty dull color if you're using "neutral" settings on the camera which is color, contrast, and sharpness all at 0, which is often not default anyway) with the window blown out to solid white, or take a picture of the trees in stunning detail and color, with a dark shadowy window frame that is supposed to have your friend near it.

Neither of these scenarios can be overcome without image editing by the photographer. In the rare occasions where lighting is just right so that a camera can, it is still editing these photos so that you will get the end result you desire.

The arguement of choosing not to process images yourself for their purity is a weak one, weather or not you are aware of it. I feel it is mostly coming from your inability to understand what editing has been done to photos you probably thought were "pure" in the first place. Chances are, if a photo gives you that "wow" feeling, that unless the photographer got incredibly lucky with what they were shooting, they spent at the very minimal, 5 minutes adjust levels and curves (neither of these are really considered editing by most people, as most photographers consider this as part of the processing, something they chose to do instead of letting the camera).

I suggest rather than just feeling inadequate about your abilities to post process and basing a fairly disregaurded philosophy around how you shoot off of it, that you learn. Get an older copy of photoshop from a school that has updated ot newer software, or some other legal means (or not but that's not to be discussed here) and go through some photoshop tutorials. Particularly on processing things your camera already does. (White balance, levels, curves, sharpness, contrast, etc.) Honestly though, like I said, your frame of reference around what photography is, or what it should be is a very weak one that most photographers will disregaurd, push aside, and not take seriously. The only people who will respect it are fellow new photographers or ignorant non photography people who have $400 point and shoot cameras that do LOADS of in camera editing and make them feel talented when in full Auto mode. They will think that "a good photographr is a person who can point a camra, get the right angle, and push a button. anyhting beyond that is manipulative and not pure or real as you had stated.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE keep in mind that nothing I have said is meant to be taken as a personal attack to your, or your photographic philosophy, but rather try to see how I am trying to help you. Want to take photos that WOW people and not feel guilty about it? Avoid doing things like cloning out background distractions, or adding blur to make soemthing move. Just learn the difference between what you personally consider to be "fake" editing and "proper processing". The only ay to start is to learn to do a myriad of both fake and real looking edits in a program, then you can decide what you consider ehtical or not from there. Then proudly show of eye capturing photos to your friends, and if they ask "is this real" you'll have learned that by adjusting levels and curves, those vivid colors are popping because tthat is how you saw them in real life, and that your camera couldn't capture it. so you can just say "yes" instead of "well no, I bumped the colors up a bit, and added sharpening, but both of these are things my camera did anyway, just not enough"

 

[Overread]

You've made the first important step:

is that I am completely photoshop illiterate

Your second natural step after finding a limitation to your understanding is to work upon changing that limitation - that is to learn editing.

Photography is always a 2 part process of capture and editing and trying to remove the importance of one of those two aspects always detrimentally affects the final result - a shot taken poorly will suffer just as a well taken shot processed poorly will suffer.
Learning processing isn't about tricks or cheating nor is it about improving upon mistakes at the camera level (though I would argue that there isn't such a thing as a totally perfect shot ).

You might get some help watching this series of youtube videos (its a series so just follow one using the youtube links to the next one in the series).


You don't have to use it all at all and its well broken into sections that deal with specific methods - the whole combined into a workflow to give you an idea only of how they combine together - rather than just as standalone tutorials that often leave one confused as to the best way to use them with a shot.

Furthermore its not the only method out there - for example with the RAW processing many people will use the inRAW sliders rather than use this photographers method of having them all set to 0.
It's an approach and just like there are different ways to take the same photo there are different ways to edit.


Furthermore remember that if you shoot JEPG you're not shooting unprocessed shots - all you are doing is letting the cameras automatic processing software process the shots for you - in much the same way that if you send film to the processing lab they do the processing for you - someone else is making the final all important choices as to the final appearance of your capture.