Enhancing or Defiling: Post-Processing & 'Reality'

[William W]

Read what I write and try to understand from a positive point of view!

I do.

I ask the same of you.

WW

[William W]

(I wonder how many calories running around like a headless chook in ever-decreasing little circles burns?)

In 1980~85 I worked from time to time with a genius sound mixer, his catch phrase was:

"When in trouble or in doubt,
Run in circles scream and shout!"

Descriptive, no?

Thanks for reminding me of his talent and his ditty.

WW

[ajohnw]

If the SOOC camera shots are as good as the ones that have gone through post-processing, I have no issue with your statement, Andre. The issue is that they rarely are and often could be improved with a touch of post processing, therefore the photographer is demonstrating one of several choices he or she has made:

1. They can't be can't do it in post, because they don't have the skills. In this case they should learn these skills;

2. They have no interest in post; in which case they should work harder to get it right SOOC; or

3. They are looking at SOOC from a philosophical or academic standpoint, in which case, they should also be looking to get it right SOOC.

Just to add to that statement, there is alway the "good enough" issue. If the image is good enough for my purposes, why bother with post. This is indeed the case most of the time for me, hence most of my images never see post. That being said, those images are generally not being viewed by knowledgable photographers.

Just what is a knowledgeable photographer Manfred? There is a whole rats nest buried in that, Including the style some one aspires to.

SOOC's? In some cases they are and in others they are not. Probably fairly rare but similar problems crop up in relationship to the web in all sorts of areas at time.

John
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[Wayland]

Here is an example I sometimes show people. I freely admit that this has been PhotoShopped.

I had been on location, set up and waiting for about half an hour.

The rooks were flying around as usual, playing noisily on the wind and there were intermittent flashes of light breaking through the scudding clouds.

People were visiting and leaving the circle as they do all day, every day.

One beam of light burst through into the valley and traversed the scene over twenty seconds or so. I took five shots of it.

I took three shots of the rooks and I took a shot of the circle while no one was in the frame.

All the shots were taken within about two minutes and the elements are represented exactly where they were.

A two minute long exposure would have included all of these elements but the movement would have rendered much of the activity blurred or invisible.

The nine quick shots that I took in that time allows you to see, just as my eye did, the scenario that I experienced.

I have of course made decisions. I could for example have chosen a moment where people were visible in the circle but I chose not to.

If I had shot a movie in those two minutes you would have seen all of this and more but I chose to distil it into just one image. I also chose to depict it in monochrome in this instance.

Some might feel that two minutes is a long time but geologically speaking it is still just a fleeting moment.

Did it look like this at any single precise instant? No.

Does this present a true impression of what it was like to be there during that time? Yes, I believe it does.

[John 2]

I very often take a photograph, not just as a record of what is in front of me, but as material that I know that I can use to turn it into an image that I have in my minds eye. An image that others may (or may not ) appreciate. I am really struggling to see the problem with that. I don't have a problem with SOOC or even photographers that aspire to it provided it is not held up as an end game. I think that I'm beginning to lose the will to live.

[Venser]

1. They can't be can't do it in post, because they don't have the skills. In this case they should learn these skills;

This reminds me of the photographers who only shoot with natural light. My first inclination upon hearing a statement like that is either they're too lazy to use strobes/flashes or they don't possess the skills. I believe it's the same situation when I hear the SOOC crowd.

3. They are looking at SOOC from a philosophical or academic standpoint, in which case, they should also be looking to get it right SOOC.

Agree completely. If you're not going to post process, you better nail everything right then and there.

[Mike Buckley]

Nice photo, Wayland!

Does this present a true impression of what it was like to be there during that time?

For me, that's not a criterion when making an image or viewing someone else's image. I really couldn't care less about how much the image resembles the actual scene.

[Venser]

I would like to believe that most of us are using post camera software on a computer to enhance an image. Enhancing would mean minor tweaks and twiddles to change WB, sharpness, saturation and everything else that would be possible to do in camera. It is mostly lack of camera skills and in some cases, lack of features in camera and quality of images produced by some cameras, that would force the user to enhance images in PP. The better the camera the less the Photographer should need to enhance images in PP.

The debate, about “manipulation of images” and “purists”, is drawn out of context by those whom fail to master the tools of the trade and have to resort to post camera software to “produce” photographs. If for any reason you cannot “produce” images in camera, feel free to “produce” it in PP. Whenever you need to resort to manipulating images to “produce photographs” you are cheating yourself, no one else. If you fail to “produce“ good images with a $2000 camera you might as well have stayed with the bottom of the range “cheap” DSLR. Rather spend your $ on computers and software!

Emphasis mine.
Do you really believe these inane statements? I would argue the better a photographer is with a camera the more PP they'll do. They have a greater understanding of their final destination, and often, it's about getting there as fast as possible. When I shoot for clients they don't care if anything is SOOC or not. They're paying for the final product; how it got there is irrelevant (this does not apply to photojournalism).

What about photographers who mainly create composites? The problem is you paint too broad a stroke with your generalizations.

[Polar01]

I have been reading this thread with great interest, so I thought that I would add my 2 cents worth. Now remember this is my 2 cents and my way of thinking, it may not be correct for you but it works for me.
Now the term "straight our of camera or SOOC" is to my thinking a weasel term and I will explain with images as I go along. Please stay with me as I sometimes get long winded.



Now to me the above image is a j-peg of the raw file of the image everything set to default in the raw converter, only the WB carried over with camera set to auto WB. Ok it is about 1-stop under exposed it was taken @ f/18, @.6 sec., ISO 50, so 1-stop under no big todo. Not what I would call a wall hanger. So to my way of thinking that is the only type of image that is "SOOC".



Now here is where the weasel term starts of come into play, if I had set the camera to j-peg and maybe made some in camera adjustments as most photographers know how to do, then the resulting image could have looked somewhat like this. So I could claim "SOOC" as there was not post production program or programs used. However I did not do that, now weasel term really comes into play, some may think that if I can do those things with the camera's raw converter and claim "SOOC", than if I use a more powerful raw converter than the camera's, I can still claim "SOOC".
The above shot was done with a raw converter and to my way of thinking once I have started to enhance the image it is no longer "SOOC", that also goes for j-pegs as they have been enhanced by the camera's converter program.
For those that feel that it is still "SOOC" in the converter stage you may agree with me or not, but I still think that it is not at the wall hanging stage.



Now this is the image that I ended up with after taking it into a post production program, here at home I can see a big difference between image #2 and the final image even when all the images are j-pegs and same size and pixel counts. Once finished in post it was printed and now hangs on a wall, image #1 and #2 would not have hung on a wall as they did not capture the feeling I felt that morning. Oh one correction it hangs also on 15 other walls.
To me it is not about pounding one's chest or telling everyone that you only photograph "SOOC", I photograph out of my mind's eye that it what I produce to hang on the wall, it is what I saw, felt, and my reality at that moment. If someone asks is that what it really looked like, I answer yes in my reality it did.

Cheers: Allan

PS: I may have done on a little.

[Manfred M]

This reminds me of the photographers who only shoot with natural light. My first inclination upon hearing a statement like that is either they're too lazy to use strobes/flashes or they don't possess the skills.

In my personal experience, you are bang on with your statement; with perhaps a minor addition to your thought. Some of the ones I know are unwilling to get out of their comfort zone of being existing light shooters and have something akin to “fear of failure” as the underlying issue of not wanting to shoot flash. They are comfortable with their existing light work and know that they won’t be able to hit their own quality expectations during the learning process. Rather than risking failure, they’ll stick with what they know. They don’t seem to understand that there is an upside to acquiring a new skill.

Agree completely. If you're not going to post process, you better nail everything right then and there.

My issue here is that outside of a highly controlled studio setting, I can always see even some minor improvements in my work; if nothing more than a crop or a bit of dodging and burning; sorry, too many hours in the wet darkroom to break that habit.

[AB26]

All digital images are post processes - numbers into images.

John,

That statement might be debatable, depending what post means to you. Would it be post shutter release?
What does the processing of data in camera, the sensor or the processor? Transferring data from a processor to storage media cannot mean processing, or does it?

Perhaps we should create a new Photography term, post-Post Processing. That would mean altering data in a computer after it was downloaded from the camera storage media. Hence the camera does the first “post” processing, the process of changing/altering data in computer software (Photoshop), cannot be called Post Processing.

When changing analog to digital is it, processing or converting, analog to digital? Does the analog picture change into a different picture when converted to digital?

Just asking, I am to dumb to understand it.

[flashback]

Having absorbed the surfeit of profundities I have no alternative other than toss my DSLR and hunt up an older (but high quality, of course) 35mm rangefinder. Thus over the months, nay years, of diligent effort will I only then be able to confidently capture the image exactly as it is, drop off the film to a capable processor who will only gently bath the film in the most basic (yet freshest) appropriate chemicals and then print (using only natural light that has been brought forward through a system of mirrors) onto paper that will most closely render the final image nearest to the actual reality. It is then and only then that I shall become known as 'He Who Paints With Light!'

And as a Master Painter of Light I needn't worry about such Photoshopper crutches as an LCD display (with which to Chimpeth, and thus be tempted to re-shooting if necessary) nor any need of a Histogram Display (as surely I will know exactly how rangeth the light). Yea verily I will walk the path of enlightenment knowing that any visage mine eyes should spy I shall be able to captureth said visage and render it unto a paper in a manner true and appropriate to the highest discernment of Light Painters everywhere.

Or.........I go and have fun, be a happy snappy, pitchur takerer and live my life without a distal outward woody stemmed growth impacting my gastrointestinal terminus.

[Mike Buckley]

If we're going to even consider the definition of terms, I would go back to my basic definition of a photograph: any image of incident and/or reflected light that was initially captured by a camera. If that image has been printed and the print itself was altered by a topical application such as paint, the image is no longer purely a photograph. (A hand-painted photograph is not purely a photograph.) If similarly fundamental alterations have been made to an electronic display of the photographic, such as the genre often called photo art, that image is also no longer purely a photograph.

Once an image meets that basic definition of a photograph, it doesn't matter to me what processes were used to make the photograph or what the precise definitions of those processes might be, especially since there are so few widely accepted definitions that are precise.

[Mike Buckley]

Way too funny, Jack!

[Venser]

What does the processing of data in camera, the sensor or the processor?

The processor obviously. All the sensor does is record the amount of light hitting its surface.

Perhaps we should create a new Photography term, post-Post Processing. That would mean altering data in a computer after it was downloaded from the camera storage media. Hence the camera does the first “post” processing, the process of changing/altering data in computer software (Photoshop), cannot be called Post Processing.

What difference does it make if I ramp the contrast up on the camera or perform it later on the computer. It's the same process, just different mechanisms perform the task. Both are applied to the RAW data to produce some other file format.

Why can't process of editing in software be called post processing? It's exactly what it is. I'm thoroughly confused by your statement in this regard.

[Cliff Roamer]

Emphasis mine.
Do you really believe these inane statements? I would argue the better a photographer is with a camera the more PP they'll do. They have a greater understanding of their final destination, and often, it's about getting there as fast as possible. When I shoot for clients they don't care if anything is SOOC or not. They're paying for the final product; how it got there is irrelevant (this does not apply to photojournalism).

What about photographers who mainly create composites? The problem is you paint too broad a stroke with your generalizations.

It seems to be mainly some amateurs that have issues with PP and the pros will use what ever is needed to achieve the shot, not really surprising as the pros will have a much better idea of the shot they want and how to achieve it in the time they have.

Incidentally, I listened to a radio program recently about Ansel Adams, in his later years he didn't take a lot of pictures but his prints were commanding such large sums of money that he spent a lot of time processing and printing his original negatives so most probably no two prints would have been the same!

[FootLoose]

No-one has mentioned the Polaroid instant camera. Now that was SOOC!

[Mike Buckley]

Excellent point, Greg!

[Kodiak]

No-one has mentioned the Polaroid instant camera. Now that was SOOC!

Yes sir, it was! I used for the medium and large format cameras this instant
process… but their rendition was poor, not fully satisfying.

[Mike Buckley]

Wow! The process isn't defunct. The Impossible Project is still making Polaroid Land cameras and film to go in them. True SOOC lives on!