Register here - as a registered user you get more features and fewer ads.
Hmm.... I can tell from your comments and request to send you a large copy of my picture ( which I trust you have now deleted ) That it is myself amongst others that you suspect of “Photoshop” style enhancement.
I hope you won’t mind if I comment about that.
I have been a photographer for over a quarter of a century and in all that time I have never seen a good photograph that did not owe its success to some input from the photographer.
Firstly there is the choice of equipment which affects the angle of view. Then there is the choice of viewpoint, which affects the subject. The next step is to choose your framing which excludes or includes different elements of the scene.
Now we move onto choice of shutter speed and aperture which affects subject movement, camera movement and depth of field to say nothing of exposure considerations such as lightness, darkness, contrast and dynamic range.
So far we have done nothing exclusive to the digital workflow and we have not even begun to discuss the effects of film choice and development parameters for the film. Neither have we discussed the use of camera filtration, dodging, burning, contrast management and filtration in the darkroom. Then there is after treatment of the prints or slides, scanner choice and corrections and the host of other controls of image quality that affect a traditional silver gelatine photograph before it can be displayed on the web.
Don’t even start me on colour management across different web browsers!
It seems to me that there is a presupposition that because it is digital it must be manipulated well the answer is simple……Yes it is.
A camera sensor simply cannot produce an image that can be displayed on a monitor without manipulation.
On a point and shoot digital camera this manipulation is done within the camera’s CPU according to algorithms designed by some boffin in a back room, but it is manipulated, in just such a way as the latent image on a film has to be manipulated so we can actually see it. It’s inevitable.
It’s manipulated again when the camera decides how much sharpening to apply, how much to boost the saturation, whether to reduce noise and which file format to store it in. All these algorithms are “market specific” so your camera will produce a different result depending upon the model aimed at your demographic group.
So where exactly is the “truth”? because it’s certainly not what comes directly out of the camera.
Photographers have been manipulating their images since the very beginnings of photography’s history, the only difference now is that digital technology is catching up to our imaginations and opening new boundaries of possibility.
Intention is the important point here, as is integrity. My intention when I make an image is to show something of the landscape that actually matched my personal experience of the scene itself. To achieve that intention, a single exposure may quite often be sufficient. On other occasions I may choose to use pictorial elements taken at the scene over a period of time or in some rare cases, elements taken from another scene that renders something that I was technically unable to properly capture at the original location.
This is where integrity comes in. I have no intention of creating fantasy landscapes, although that is certainly possible with modern digital technology. I have nothing against such fantasies or the people who create them; it is just not my style. My pictures represent my real impression of these locations, which may be formed over many different visits. For me, some such images portray the spirit of these locations with more fidelity than a single fraction of a second exposure ever can.
I will not be drawn into an argument about this or that picture being real or fake in some way. That is not important because a photograph can never “be” the scene, it is derivative by definition.
What is important is whether the depiction is true to the subject and for that you will just have to rely upon my integrity.
Something is not right. This message is just to keep things from messing up down the road