An avocation of mine is photography and it is pretty well established that photography is an art. But how much cheating is allowed in art? photographers sure have the ability to cheat with post processing on digital images but for many decades the purest would turn up their noses at some digital images and utter under their breath, "digitally enhanced" and keep walking. However I see a change in that post processing (cropping, burning, dodging, saturating) has become very common and accepted. In other words it is the final product, no matter how you got there, that is accepted as good art today.
So is modern post processed prints of a digital images cheating? Did the master painters ever cheat?
An avocation of mine is photography and it is pretty well established that photography is an art. But how much cheating is allowed in art? photographers sure have the ability to cheat with post processing on digital images but for many decades the purest would turn up their noses at some digital images and utter under their breath, "digitally enhanced" and keep walking. However I see a change in that post processing (cropping, burning, dodging, saturating) has become very common and accepted. In other words it is the final product, no matter how you got there, that is accepted as good art today.
So is modern post processed prints of a digital images cheating? Did the master painters ever cheat?
Why should distortion of mere reality be cheating
It can take a photographer days or even weeks to work on post processing a image; it isnt cheating at all.
An avocation of mine is photography and it is pretty well established that photography is an art. But how much cheating is allowed in art? photographers sure have the ability to cheat with post processing on digital images but for many decades the purest would turn up their noses at some digital images and utter under their breath, "digitally enhanced" and keep walking. However I see a change in that post processing (cropping, burning, dodging, saturating) has become very common and accepted. In other words it is the final product, no matter how you got there, that is accepted as good art today.
So is modern post processed prints of a digital images cheating? Did the master painters ever cheat?
What kind of photographer...sillver halide dark room or Photoshop Digital?
Not that it matters that much about cheating but it is the "weeks" part that interests me.
What kind of photographer...sillver halide dark room or Photoshop Digital?
Not that it matters that much about cheating but it is the "weeks" part that interests me.
Photoshop/Digital imagery.
Digital photographers use a file format called Raw image format. The concept is that it is a raw photo without much if any processing. That is the photo is in its raw unadulterated form. They do it that way so that one can change the photo into any format that they want. Instead of relying on a micro computer in a camera that gives you one chance to get it right, one can just do it later. Which makes it easier to make a HDR photo.
The part though that can take a great deal of time is the pixel by pixel details. You can fix any aspect of the photo, if you are willing to spend the time. Of course none or little of this is done by amateur photographers.
No days if you take a photography class, you will spend over 90% of the class working on a computer. And when you do go out in the field you will take hundreds of photos, not 36 at a time.
Of course this doesnt replace the artsy types of traditional photography. But then most people scan their photos and still run it through software.
Myself? I like most appreciating the photographer that studies/knows the subject, understands trying to obtain the ideal moment of natural light, the optimal shot positioning without any enhancement other than what is on the camera taking the pictures, the reliance on hardware and not the software.
I am a photographer, and the history of the medium is a hobby of mine. Ansel Addams constructed his images using careful, meticulous printing methods, filters, burning and dodging, etc. In short, he was a master of his craft. Each of his prints are unique, in that recreating them would be virtually impossible. He would expose one have of the paper, or small sections, for more or less time, and use diffusion filters here and there to mess with focus (think Gaussian blur), and contrast filters. The result? A constructed image that does not resemble the original scene.
Then there is Uelsman, who made completely surreal images long before photoshop. He's gangster.
Not all digital photographers use RAW but still post process in Photoshop or other software to create the look then want.
As for amateurs they too are doing post processing in the computer. Almost every digital camera company now has free software that can do everything Adobe Darkroom can do and GIMP can do far more.
So no filters on the camera? How about color?To my mind, there should be distinct categories in photography [perhaps there already are; not my specific area of interest ], each labeled so the viewer knows if something was achieved more or less naturally or with digital/other enhancement.
Myself? I like most appreciating the photographer that studies/knows the subject, understands trying to obtain the ideal moment of natural light, the optimal shot positioning without any enhancement other than what is on the camera taking the pictures, the reliance on hardware and not the software.
The other is no doubt art as well, but I more enjoy the art of actual photography, not the computer arts.
I tried to eliminate those questions by the way I described what I felt was real photography. Filters are not dealing with software, microcomputers running software are...So no filters on the camera? How about color?
And do you also scorn the modern 35mm SLR cameras that have micro computers that run software in them? For example the Nikon F6.
An avocation of mine is photography and it is pretty well established that photography is an art. But how much cheating is allowed in art? photographers sure have the ability to cheat with post processing on digital images but for many decades the purest would turn up their noses at some digital images and utter under their breath, "digitally enhanced" and keep walking. However I see a change in that post processing (cropping, burning, dodging, saturating) has become very common and accepted. In other words it is the final product, no matter how you got there, that is accepted as good art today.
So is modern post processed prints of a digital images cheating? Did the master painters ever cheat?
It can take a photographer days or even weeks to work on post processing a image; it isnt cheating at all.
Yes and there are iphones, but there is a difference between the non-RAW crowd and the professional standard of RAW. It is like comparing the point and shoot photographer to an actual photographer. Sure you can make any camera and make it work for you, and you can use any photo editing software. The little Apps will do the basics and it will look good enough for the average point and shoot person. But photoshop/darkroom/gimp and few others can do amazing things that average point and shoot person has no use for. Its like saying I can buy water color paint from the toy section. Of course you can, but it wont be good for a serious water color painting.
Or you can buy a exacto knife set and carve wood. Or you can buy (or in my case make) knifes of quality to carve with.
The point is, a photographer should not have to work that hard after the fact to get what he wanted in the first place. So I would disagree from a fundamental perspective.
I cannot agree
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The famous Adams, "Winter Sunrise" was very labor intensive after the shutter clicked.
The image on the left is the one you have seen before. The image next to it is what his camera saw
Note how he had to burn out much of the light on the periphery of the pasture and dodge in the bright sunny spotlight.
The hills were also darkened by burning
The over all contrast was probably augmented in chemical development
Additionally Ansel was so annoyed with the Lone Pine High Schools "LP" on the hill that he took a razor to the glass negative and scratched it out.
He made three dozen prints of this before he got the one he wanted.
It is not just what the camera sees it is the work you do to help it out that is more difficult in my opinion.
There are quite a few good books on AA
Things I can do in photoshop that Ansel Adams did in his dark room.
Crop
Contrast adj
burn
dodge
blurr
smudge
Just to be clear, Photoshop is to digital imaging what a darkroom is to film photography. It is not a camera.Right; I said that photography has always had some of Photoshop's abilities.
jet57 said:The contrasts in Admans work coupled with his ability to "see a picture" before he took it and then his abilities with old techniques, he could coax out what he wanted with masking. But the process has to start with a really good photograph to begin with.
jet57 said:so - it is kinda cheating in my view.
Just to be clear, Photoshop is to digital imaging what a darkroom is to film photography. It is not a camera.
Nothing has changed in that regard. I shoot digital images and still strive to "see" an image first. Then if I think it has potential I coax more out of it, if I can, in Photoshop
Your opinion is so noted.
Yes Photoshop is cheating. That is the point of this post. But you are still not getting that I have no more advantage than anyone else who shoots straight .jpg images from a smart phone or a DSLR. I use Photoshop to make my jpg images look better. I rarely shoot RAW.Yes, Photoshop is a digital darkroom. And you are a practiced photographer, so your raw images have an advantage that others don't: that's what I'm getting at; for beginners and intermediates, Photoshop is a sort of cheating device and said crutch will hinder their abilities to go out and work for what they want.
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