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Why the angst against manipulations?
I'm trying to work out why there is so much angst about the use of software? I mean a lot of the things software can do, can be done in the physical sense. Makeup, grease on a filter, light modifiers, old school photo editing with inks in a dark room. Using lens distortion as an effect, double exposures when using film. Reality is ever since photography was been invented photos have always been manipulated. But as soon as we mention a manipulation with a computer all of a sudden it's a bad thing. Apr 03 14 02:09 am Link Digital Vinyl wrote: Where are you seeing this angst? On MM? Apr 03 14 02:17 am Link CHAD ALAN wrote: It's just an observation in general about photography. Apr 03 14 02:26 am Link Digital Vinyl wrote: There will always be new ways of doing things, some bad some good. Apr 03 14 02:59 am Link Lots of reasons. Some people don't know how to use PS so they claim that its this horrible travesty against photography. Some have seen crappy manipulation done, and it scares them off. A lot of people don't understand that PS is just a darkroom for digital and that the tools of it came from working with film. They just can't get that processing and print making was manipulation. And a lot of people think "straight from camera" is a purer form of photography and only see PS as a crutch for the unskilled. Apr 03 14 03:01 am Link Few here will remember an old cartoon featuring George Jetson. His job, working at Spacely Sprockets, was to commute into work and press the big, red button. Then, he came home and complained what a tough day he had at work. Welcome to the future. With the aid of powerful computers and photo manipulation software, photography can be reduced to pressing the button. Pressing a button in itself is not a bad thing. It's just not "photography." It's "digital art." Apr 03 14 03:35 am Link Raoul Isidro Images wrote: Well said! Although I have a drawer FULL of effects from the 70's & 80's, I plug my Les Paul straight into my Fender Hot Rod Deluxe. Apr 03 14 03:40 am Link In the hands of an expert, photo manipulation can create genius out of an otherwise blah image. In the hands of an unskilled post processor, photo manipulation can make a stellar image look like a 6 year old got out their crayons. Apr 03 14 03:46 am Link Digital Vinyl wrote: Is not Apr 03 14 09:19 am Link Natalia_Taffarel wrote: I think you're right except for me! I'm old. Apr 03 14 09:24 am Link Natalia_Taffarel wrote: I wouldn't say that... Apr 03 14 09:26 am Link Pros in this town shoot film and I see the evidence hanging on 120 film hooks at the local lab. They do not - or they don't want to learn - digital so they bad mouth it. Some still shoot their old film Hassleblads and Mamiyas and probably don't want to buy new digital gear either (Some are really cheap!). Camera shop had a PS class once and it was a total disaster with the pros who attended. It was sort of funny though listening to the reasons for "Not getting it." Old School vs. New School most likely. Ugh! I just thought about my Facebook page that I haven't been to in two months. Seems it has turned into an ad spamming space for anyone and everyone else. I don't get it either, so I now feel a need to bad mouth it too! Apr 03 14 09:35 am Link to me it has to do with at what point in the manipulation does an image stop representing the truth? for instance if you take a nature shot of a bear and then add foggy breath and all sorts of other stuff is that still a nature shot that can be submitted to a wildlife contest or is it now digital art? likewise for journalism. when does it stop being legit for journalism? i don't have the answers but the ease and extent to which things can be manipulated in photoshop has raised some interesting questions. but with the nature shot example it still could be staged in some way even without photoshop manipulation. unless you were there (or there was unmodified video) how do you know whether that image is "real"? Apr 03 14 09:35 am Link CHAD ALAN wrote: I think the angst is most often encountered from old school, die hard, elitist film photographers (puritst, if you will). Yet, this group of hypocrites are guilty of performing every imaginable manipulation in the darkroom, or during exposure. Apr 03 14 10:03 am Link  Apr 03 14 12:27 pm Link There is value in both. Digital workflows can be great. Manipulated images can be great. And work shot on film with little post processing, can also be great. But they are all different. It depends on what you're going for. If you're hero is Mary Ellen Mark, then you probably have very little use for digital manipulation. If you're hero is Annie Leibovitz, then it's a necessity. Apr 03 14 12:48 pm Link Digital Vinyl wrote: Dinosaurs don't want to die and end up in museums. Apr 03 14 12:52 pm Link Christopher Hartman wrote: This is a pretty ignorant statement, to go along with a number of others (on both sides of the divide) that are often trotted out when this conversation comes up. Apr 03 14 12:54 pm Link Giacomo Cirrincioni wrote: Not ignorant at all. Apr 03 14 12:59 pm Link Raoul Isidro Images wrote: I think that's a pretty good analogy. When new effects get introduced they tend to be used in the most pronounced and noticeable ways. Like with the in-your-face on the beat wah-wah-wah-wah. Apr 03 14 01:03 pm Link Well, all forms of digital output have their detractors. The web has so many haters. So many viruses and crap. Photoshop is the most important accessory for a digital photographer. But I also find many are nostalgic about their film equipment. It's something to be expected. Learning a skill and having to abandon it is not easy for anyone. But some hate Photoshop for being Photoshop! Apr 03 14 07:20 pm Link the end results justified the means Apr 04 14 06:50 am Link I don't think anyone is against manipulation it's poorly executed manipulation their against. Apr 04 14 09:51 am Link Using digital technology to create images that could not otherwise be made is amazing, using it because you don't know how to work a camera is another thing. Apr 04 14 09:58 am Link CHAD ALAN wrote: I'm also questioning this. Every professional photographer I know uses some kind of manipulation software, some very minimally, and some so far it crosses from photography into digital art. I see arguments against BAD manipulation, but not the practice in itself. Apr 04 14 10:02 am Link The Something Guy wrote: Yep! This, 100% PS gives us a darkroom in the digital world. All too often though, people mix the digital chemicals, poorly!:-))))) Apr 04 14 10:02 am Link from the perspective of how it's seen in the artworld, generally digital everything has a bit of a distrust associated with it. though that's changing, i've seen video loops selling for $7k a pop in toronto..nothing overly stylized, more like someone standing in a field and blinking at you but to each their own eh..comes from the early days of photoshop and image manipulation with software, a lot of it was very tacky and gimmicky. resulting in a big distaste for it. similarly many art galleries and agents tend to lean more towards traditional, hand-made designs..sells better, essentially. from the circles i work within anyway. it's different for mixed media but even then the preference still leads to more analog/handmade works. of course most photographers know the technicalities otherwise ..but nobody listens to us, which is probably why we have such a large voice on the internet now that i think about it. that, and well, hipsters. can pretty much blame them right and justly for anything that said, pretty much everywhere else it's a different story. if you don't know how to illustrate, desktop publish, 3D model, texturize and retouch it all together into a big melange of gobbledeegook , you're really looking at a limited scope of clientelle. so yeah, it could be you see it more pronounced there. Apr 04 14 10:04 am Link It should be noted that you can most certainly make a royal mess of a photo in the darkroom, too. Apr 04 14 10:19 am Link Alabaster Crowley wrote: I have pointed this out over and over in these threads. Well, not the royal mess part. Apr 04 14 10:23 am Link Giacomo Cirrincioni wrote: I agree! Apr 04 14 10:25 am Link Digital Vinyl wrote: it's probably best to not talk to most people on this planet Apr 04 14 10:36 am Link Digital Vinyl wrote: Simply because several on here get their panties in a twist over anything that doesn't blow their way. Apr 04 14 10:41 am Link Digital Vinyl wrote: Ignorance. Apr 04 14 10:48 am Link it's just another tool, and tools can be used with sophistication or they can be used to create cheap gimmicks that aren't going to fool anyone but other amateurs. here are a few questions i always find worth asking myself: a) is it obvious what technique i used, and if it is, can i blend it with the original until it adds to the image in a less obvious way? b) is it a digital version of "spin art" where even a five year old can create one "amazing" image after? this would probably also apply to certain cell phone apps. c) is what i'm doing calling attention to the technique or is the technique organically disappearing in service of the image itself? d) am i using a technique to help make a very good picture great, or hoping to distract people from noticing that it's not a very strong image to begin with? e) would i be embarrassed to show it to a photographer whose work i really admire? Apr 04 14 11:45 am Link The Something Guy wrote: And this is where my "angst" takes over. Apr 04 14 11:47 am Link I was messing with photos when I used film and it was messy, smelly, clumsy and time consuming even when I had a dedicated workspace available. Doing it from a computer has been a gift from the heavens. Post-production as always been part of the process even if it only meant leaving the film at a lab and trusting them to make them look 'normal'. I took slides for a decade that is the closest I ever came to "getting it in the camera". It was a demanding way to learn. Apr 04 14 11:53 am Link There's a time and a place for everything. Back in the bad old darkroom days, we had all sorts of tricks. They were great for portrait clients, for commercial shots and for art projects. They weren't so good for journalistic shots or evidence for lawyers. Same thing today. There's a time and a place for manipulation and other times and places where it's improper to illegal. Ironically, I have to disagree with some of the folks above. I know far more amateurs who are into heavy photo manipulation than I do professionals. Doing manipulations with a deft hand is the purview of the professionals, by and large. Apr 04 14 12:08 pm Link Giacomo Cirrincioni wrote: Absolutely - however, unless generally you were a black and white artist (photographer), which for instance I never really was (although I did do *some* darkroom work), the photographer was not generally the one doing the manipulation. The photographer just handed off the chromes - I miss those days (although now I do like having this control) when I didn't need to be proficient at the retouching - an expert would do that if done. I just had to be skilled at the photography and lighting Apr 04 14 12:19 pm Link For me, when I started out learning photography I choose not to use photoshop. My thinking was that if I fixed everything in photoshop as was suggested to me, then I was not really learning or mastering the photographic process. I enjoyed the challenge. At this point my work contains very little manipulation. I am now thinking of learning photoshop as just for the challenge. Apr 04 14 12:20 pm Link Because any old hack can pick up photoshop, smudge a few pixels and claim they're a retouched. Or Because they are computer illiterate and like drugs, photoshop is "bad" Seriously, anyone that uses "photoshop" as a verb is an amateur in my book. Apr 04 14 04:19 pm Link |
