I often read about untouched photos just like if it was an important thing and also just like if manipulated images were borned with digital photography.
I just wonder what it can mean in writer's mind and how they can beleive that such images exist. If they refer to images done in camera only by focusing and computing exposure they are false. If they think that an untouched photo reflects real colors and tones they are still false.
In the film era, you could change the reality just by film choice and no film can render a scene exactly as it is. Excepted perharps a gray card but that's not the kind of photos i'm the most interested in.
Buy a roll of Velvia 50 film, shoot a landscape at the end of afternoon, process the film with neutral parameters and look at the result. Who can say the slide shows real colors and tones ?
Let stay a little bit with film. There are many ways to change the reality just when processing the film in the wet darkroom. More, some people were real experts to remove some annoying details on prints and even directly on the negs. They could not only remove but also add ...
With digital photography, the less we can say is what you see is not what you get.
What do you get : raw datas captured by the sensor. If you shoot jpeg you never see them. If you shoot raw you will probably never look at them because an unprocessed raw file is not really beautiful.
What do you see : an image file produced by software processing from the raw datas. The software is the camera firmware if you shoot jpeg or your raw converter if you shoot raw. If you shoot jpeg you influence the processing by changing some camera's parameters like contrast, saturation, etc. When you shoot raw you do that when you process the raw file.
And what's the importance of real colors ? Two people in front of the same scene probably wont see the same colors. I really think that it's more important to obtain a pleasant result than to try to show the exact reality.
If you look at this old post you can read that colors in the image are unprocessed. It just means that i didn't change anything to the default colors parameters of my raw converter but the most important thing about this image is that it's not a real scene. If you were there with me, never your eyes would have seen such colors. It's just a fake due to the long exposure time combined with dusk light. A fake but a natural photographic and atmospheric effect.
So, how do i make my landscapes ?
With my camera :
- I compose the scene. If i see a plastic bag on the beach i remove it. It's easier and faster than removing it with the clone tool of a photo editor but it's still a trick.
- I use all the tools i know to obtain a sharp result : tripod, remote controler, mirror lockup, etc.
- I compute the exposure not to obtain a definitive image but to capture all the dynamic range of the scene and to optimize the signal/noise ratio.
If the dynamic range is too large, i use GND filters or capture many exposures.
In the digital darkroom : I mostly play with tones curves and saturation and i also use masks to apply these tools with different settings on different parts of the image.
Of course, using photoshop to give longer legs to a model is not the same trick that enhancing colors and for me such a manipulated photo is more a digital image than a digital photograph ...
12 comments :
Excellent post Patrick! In a lot of ways it is just easier to manipulate a photo now with digital technology. I remember doing b/w darkroom back in the day...
Posting that RV for you later tonight... :)
I think your photos are fantastic!!! Virgin or un-virgin!!! :))
Great topic!
I see those type of similar statements often.. like "the colors you see are not manipulated in any way and captured only with the use of filters".. or some such nonsense. As if that was possible or even desirable. I guess that people who know nothing about the process think it is somehow "cheating" if the image doesn't pop out of the camera all by itself ready to hang on the wall and some will try to pander to that mentality:)
We currently have a major Ansel Adams show here in San Diego and prominently displayed is a quote of his: "When I'm ready to make a photograph, I think I quite obviously see in my minds eye something that is not literally there in the true meaning of the word. I'm interested in something which is built up from within, rather than just extracted from without."
They also have 2 prints made from the same negative, more than 50 years apart, to demonstrate his growth in printing technique and the totally different interpretation. He liked to compare the negative to a musical score and the print as the performance.
Of course, we now have "digital negatives" but the process is the same, isn't it? The "reality" of a scene is irrelevant.
You awakened my mind about "untouched photos". I really didn't know the facts.
And I certainly admire your photos. Even the previous HDR photo. I thought HDR was a bad technique (overdone), but your post before this one (I don't think this comment form will accept an HTML link) shows subtle use of the three exposures.
Thank you. See you at RedBubble.com.
You have done another outstanding image!
The colour and the mood are simply spetacular in deed!
Damn!.. after all that I forgot to mention how much I like this new abstract technique. These are simple but very impressive.. beautiful. A great compliment to your usual style.
Patrick, one of your followers Jill Berry (excellent plein air painter btw)left a comment on my blog post and informed me that she saw you were having the similar discussion here.
My post is called "Is that Photoshopped" and hits on some of the exact same sentiments you have written here.
I agree that there is this notion that a "good photographer" should be able to produce good photos straight out of the camera. It is nonsense. A good photographer needs to get the shot as good as can be from the snap, but that is merely the starting point.
Your photographs are wonderful and very well composed. I was never a big fan of much of the HDR stuff that I see usually but yours are done just well without losing the needed depth that shadows and highlights add.
I'm glad Jill steered me in your way.
Thank you Michelle, for your comment here and also for the picture :)
Charity, i'm very glad that you don't seem too bored by this kind of posts.
Mark and Gary, thank you for giving your mind about that.
Yes some people seem to ignore that the camera has never been the only tool we need to use to produce a photo.
I've to add that i'm a little jealous about the Ansel Adams show :)
One funny thing is that people claiming about untouched photos often refer to Ansel Adams :)
Jan,
Thank's for your input here (and for your support on RB).
I think there are no really bad technics, there are just different ways to use them. Some of my HDR images have a natural look and some were interpreted more freely :)
James,
Glad you like this one, i still have a very low keepers rate with this kind of shots :)
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