gdanmitchell wrote: Bruce Sawle quoted \"master photographer Peter Lik,\" who wrote about his image:
...At the end of the talk a person in the audience asked the photographer about the role post-processing techniques played in the creation of the work. It was not a hostile question at all, and the person asking clearly liked the photographs and the photographer. I was stunned when the photographer replied that the vast majority of the photographs (I believe the figure claimed was either 90% or 95%) were presented \"just as they came from the camera\" without any significant work in post because (to closely paraphrase) \"I like to get it right in the camera\" and \"I\'d rather make photographs than work at my computer.\"
Given that virtually all of us and virtually all significant photographers of the past century and a half do rely or have relied on what must be considered \"manipulation\" of images of the subject, I don\'t think we do ourselves or photography (or other photographers) any favors by continuing to persist in the tall tale of \"no manipulation.\"
This subject almost always gets under my skin. What almost all photographers forget (and I always start my students with this concept) is that there is no such thing as \"just as they came from the camera.\" The camera shoots a RAW image PERIOD (digital negative). That is a \"straight from the camera, untouched, non manipulated, non \"Photoshopped\" non altered image. And guess what folks?? It is black and white and can barely be seen! The true starting point is a digital negative so dark and low in contrast it can hardly be seen in the RAW converter! In ACR, zero out all sliders and make the curve linear and there you have it. That is a very close representation of the \"original.\" A JPEG (or what you see on the back of your camera LCD) is massively photoshopped, massively manipulated, massively altered. It is done generically and by the brainless camera guessing at all the basic parameters (a \"Photoshop\" in your camera). But the camera always starts with the RAW \"original.\" Also, the camera never gets even one perimeter correct (for great images all parameters need correcting - which means a lot of correction/help/manipulating/work). IMO it is NEVER a compliment to say \"I barely did anything to this image.\" What that means to me is that you either don\'t value your work enough to put the work in, to get your precious image looking the best as it should, or your are too lazy, or usually people simply lack the skills to competently develop their image to their fullest potential. The bottom line is that we all are committed to making huge corrections to the RAW file to get it to look anything close to what a person saw. This is an ART form, based on interpretation and rendering. Some people also think because they did not move many sliders in RAW that they barely tweaked the image. Balogeny. This is a total misconception. They just added to the already massively (brainlessly) manipulated/adjusted image. There are many (nearly infinite) ways an image can come up in the RAW converter and NONE of them are correct/optimized. All have been severely altered. If you want to say you barely altered an image, then make your raw default settings all linear and zeroed out. Then barely/conservatively work from that true starting position. I\'ll tell you this: no one would do that. We are all committed to huge adjustments and corrections period! Think about 35mm film. Are you going to put that little negative scrap in a frame and on the wall and then proclaim \"This is right out of the camera\"? !!! Same with \"digital negatives\" (Raw files). It is an art form right off the bat. Then of course there are different tastes, preferences and theories of rendering.
Feb 06, 2012 at 04:45 PM
Previous versions of Mark Metternich's message #10316155 « Peter Lik Comedy image »
!!! Same with \"digital negatives\" (Raw files). It is an art form right off the bat. Then of course there are different tastes, preferences and theories of rendering.