PP or no PP - A point of view.

[John 2]

Found this today and in view of some recent discussions it seemed worth sharing a professional's take on the subject. One statement that resonated with me was:

"Art made in submission to the rules of others is not art. It’s bondage."

the full article can be found here.

http://davidduchemin.com/2016/06/cam...e-photographs/

I'd be interested in what others on here think of the article. A link to a description of what caused the original debate is here:

http://petapixel.com/2016/05/06/botc...oshop-scandal/

[billtils]

Thanks for that John - a most enjoyable piece on many levels, triggered by the "McCurry incident" (referenced in the second link, for anyone who is not aware of it). The author covers the whole spectrum from his take on "McCurry" to photography in general, but all the nuances in the specific discussion were brought together with:

"We’re all arguing so vigorously over small tweaks that don’t change the message of the story that we’re forgetting to have a discussion about the story itself".

and then sums up the general rather neatly with "Make your photographs any damn way you please. Shock us. Surprise us. Use film, or shoot digitally. Embrace or eschew Photoshop, or whatever creative opportunities or constraints you wish to use in order to create your work".

[Dave Humphries]

Hi John,

David duChemin's text resonates for me; I've long felt that many photographers (and probably non-photographers even more so) get far too hung up on PS manipulation. As David says, there are so many other ways our perception of an image can be influenced.

To quote; "We put on one lens instead of another to include one thing and exclude others. We choose one moment over another. We choose what we focus on, and what we blur. The ways in which we can tell a story are endless, and each time the camera does what we ask of it."

and "There is no one thing called photography, no one overarching reason we all do this, and no single way in which we do it. Like writers, some are journalists, some academics, some poets, and some humourists. We would never dream to accuse writers of changing words around to better tell the story they want. It’s a given. We don’t trust their pens or their keyboards to tell us the truth as best they can. We either trust, or do not trust, them."

I do like that writers analogy.

In summary: "Make your photographs any damn way you please. Shock us. Surprise us. Use film, or shoot digitally. Embrace or eschew Photoshop, or whatever creative opportunities or constraints you wish to use in order to create your work. You can clone things out and still create honest work in most contexts. And you can leave the clone tool alone and still tell vicious lies. Photographs are made with various tools, but they are made by you and I. Whether they are honest or not is only secondary to a bigger question: are we?" and that depends upon whether the place where we are submitting our images have any rules; competitions may well, as implicitly have the fields of forensics and photojournalism. Trouble is, rules get 'bent' or 'interpreted' all the time.


If I shoot a scene of a flower which, when I found it, included some leaf litter, is it unethical to clear it away before shooting, or perhaps even 'dead-head' surrounding 'expired' blooms to achieve a simpler composition? Or do I shoot first and clone later? Is that unethical? It depends where I submit the photo, not to mention the owner of the flower!

If displayed on-line, it may then get republished elsewhere, alongside captions and text that I had no control over. I may later publish an alternate version, as many of us here do in threads, in response to helpful suggestions from other members. So if my photography career took off, is it fair that, years in the future, people locate these images and present them as animated GIFs, out of their original context as 'evidence' of perceived wrong doing? Is that what happened? I don't know.

I am not across the Steve McCurry witch hunt beyond reading the articles and have no desire to go there, but there could be other explanations is all I am saying.

YMMV which is fine by me.

Cheers, Dave

[pnodrog]

I totally agree with the article.

The photographer can PP as much as they like provided it enhances the story they wish to tell. If the story is supposedly factual any PP should not mislead the viewer. The cloning in or out of irrelevant detail to improve the image is totally acceptable. Especially if in doing so the improvement makes the story clearer.

[Shadowman]

Issue could have been avoided if photographer/NG had done this.

National Geographic on photo manipulation

[IzzieK]

All I can say is that this is an interesting thread and I agree with Paul. Presentation is always an issue to us, whether the image is cloned out or not. If the cloning does not change the story told, why difference does it make? Just a thought...

P.S. I have read the link on the cause of the article but not the article itself...yet. I will do so when the morning light comes up and I am fully awake.

[Shanghai Steve]

This is nothing to do with post processing.
Mr. McCurry clearly used photoshop to remove annoying elements to make his photographs look better. I have lost count of the number of times my own shots have had issues such as these and at times I've tried all sorts of cropping gymnastics to get rid of the offending article. But if it ruins the shot, it ruins the shot and I delete it. I don't get my digital eraser out and pretend an entire wheelbarrow and lamp-post weren't there; I accept that I have the responsibility to take the shot while paying attention to the background! It's a pretty basic skill, isn't it? And I am barely out of the beginner's category! One also has to ask, was the rickshaw shot the only rickshaw shot it was possible to take in that environment, or could he just not be bothered to wait for the next one to come along? The shot that caused the whole issue in the first place contained such a schoolboy error that it beggars belief. And in aid of what? A perfectly mediocre shot of a perfectly boring street!
No matter how many photographers jump to his defense, it is entirely possible that his reputation will have taken a hit. In my opinion, this is nothing to do with "Artistic Vision" and a lot more to do with laziness and arrogance.

[thetraveler]

Why set the line there?
If the image is too bright or too dark, just toss it and shoot it again.

Because it’s way easier to argue about how a story is told than it is to be the one telling the story or to have something meaningful to say about the actual message.
David Duchemin

[Manfred M]

Thanks for posting this John - I agree pretty well 100% with what duChemin has written and I have used the arguments about PoV, focal length and DoF in these discussions on this site (and other photo sites as well).

I remember a comment on another photo site, a member getting all upset about what McCurry had done and ranting about it in a posting. The poster was an outstanding photographer and is a Canon Photo ambassador in the country that he lives. I said something along the lines that every experienced photographer should not be surprised about the revelation as it is something we should have suspected all along (and this goes well beyond McCurry) because to repeatedly getting those outstanding images he:

a. He has been Photoshopping for a very long time;

b. Has been posing the scenes; or

c. Is the luckiest photographer alive. With that run of luck I would be buying lottery tickets instead of taking pictures...


I have been part of similar discussions on retouching versus the use of makeup on models, and the consensus out there is makeup is okay, but Photoshop is cheating. I have never been able to figure that one out either. I think the consensus seems to have been (and not everyone agreed) that removing small temporary blemishes like acne might be okay, but anything permanent, like a mole was not. That would have to be hidden by makeup.

Some years back, one of my professors suggested I should sit in on a makeup course to better understand how makeup is used to enhance looks, so I did that. It was interesting because I learned a lot and some of the women got some nice shots of their work for their portfolios. I'm fairly certain I posted this image here before:





This is the original shot. I suggested that the bare neck wasn't working that well, but the makeup artist disagreed and went with this one. I'm fairly certain I have not posted this image before.




I printed both versions. I'll give you one guess which one ended up in the portfolio, in spite having had the makeup applied in PP.

[Black Pearl]

For the most part the images I share are how I would like them to be, how I want them to be seen and how I wish the viewer to interpret them. I'm not a photo journalist, I don't report news events and I don't profess to document life as an absolute - I take pictures because I enjoy doing so and I present them in the way I want.

If that means I edit what I see before me by choosing a lens, aperture, shutter speed, particular crop etc and do little else then its because that particular resulting image is one I feel is representative of me. If I continue to edit the shot using software, regardless of what I might do to it the final result will, I hope, still be representative. It matters not what I have done or at what point I stopped editing because for the most part someone viewing it would never know, or to be honest, ever care other than to either like it, dislike it, feel it says something to them or (this is where feedback from forums helps) feels they might have done something differently.

I'm not big on cloning things out but I absolutely will if I feel the image will be stronger for it. If I can't capture the scene in a single shot I absolutely will take more either to extend the exposure range, to increase the field of view beyond the capability of the lenses I have or add elements in. I shot some advertising hoardings for a firm once and because the streets weren't particularly busy I shot several images and combined the passers by to make it look busy. I regularly shoot down at the coast and sometimes get seabirds in the sky and sometimes clone them out if I feel they don't look right or are in the right position to fit the composition.

Do I think these further manipulated (edited beyond their point of capture) images are any less worthy - no.
Do I think I am in some way cheating - no.
Do I think they are no longer photographs but maybe some form of art - not really.
Do I think it matters as I'm not presenting them as absolute proof of something - absolutely not.

[rpcrowe]

I PERSONALLY THINK THAT ANY DEPICTION OF REALITY IN ART THAT DOESN'T LOOK EXACTLY LIKE REALITY IS BAD - THIS INCLUDES TERRIBLE STUFF BY MONET, CEZANNE, DALI AND PICASSO

Now, is that a reasonable comment??? CERTAINLY NOT!

Then why should digital photographers be restricted any more than paint and canvas artists in their interpretation of the life around them

I will agree that images offered as news should not be tempered with to skew the meaning of these images in any direction - THIS INCLUDES THE NARRATION ACCOMPANYING THE IMAGES

However just the decision that the photographer makes in framing the image, deciding what to shoot and deciding when to shoot alters reality to one degree or another

If I were covering a political rally that had very few people attending, I could cover that rally to look like it was crowded with people or to look like very few folks were attending. I could do this without any editing except for deciding what to shoot and how to shoot. Is this any less the skewing of facts with my camera than later photo shopping the event?

OTOH, in non-journalistic endeavors - IMO, any way the photographer decides he/she would like the images to look is just fine with me!

BTW: Our friend, Ansel Adams, did not exhibit any of his images SOOC! They were all manipulated (very often to a great degree) but, I don't hear anyone complaining about his work What is the difference between wet darkroom manipulation and manipulation using Photoshop or other digital editing programs?

Also - regarding an earlier posting on CiC... What is the difference between keeping the photograph of the original flag raising on Iwo Jima...



Or Joe Rosenthal shooting a more dramatic image with a larger flag the next day...



The difference is that Joe Rosenthal's image won the Pulitzer Prize and has been adopted as a symbol of the United States Marine Corps...

[Shanghai Steve]

No-one is denying your right to do that. They're only photographs after all, not UN Human Rights Reports, but at the same time any viewer of your photographs has the right to find your methods objectionable and cease to view or buy them and I believe that it is ethically laudable at the very least to advise any prospective buyer or voter in a competition of how you have manipulated the scene depicted.

[billtils]

Enjoying the discussions, but to chip in a purely personal perspective, I get the greatest overall pleasure from creating a good image within the constraints of the "rules" that apply to wildlife and nature competition photography than I do from other genres, even although (if I go by the results in my club competitions) I produce "better" images in the non-wildlife areas. There's just that extra something from getting it right straight from the shutter click, because of the way the shot was set up.

[Shadowman]

Would any of us do a special edit (cloning out an unwanted object or correcting for a missing limb) if we were asked to do it? Suppose you were shooting a wedding and had either some formal or candid shots of someone special to the family and it was the only good capture of that person's likeness, would you do some editing wizardry if asked to do so? I know I would if I could do it perfectly. Now if I had to edit say twenty or thirty shots in the same manner I'd probably quit after the first five, there's nothing that takes the fun out of this game when you have to deliberately re-create the scene, but for a few small touchups; why not. I suppose the problem with this line of thinking is "when you start along that track when do you get off".

[Black Pearl]

No-one is denying your right to do that. They're only photographs after all, not UN Human Rights Reports, but at the same time any viewer of your photographs has the right to find your methods objectionable and cease to view or buy them and I believe that it is ethically laudable at the very least to advise any prospective buyer or voter in a competition of how you have manipulated the scene depicted.

What sort of manipulations do you believe you should advise a prospective buyer?

You used a super-wide lens to distort the scene making the foreground/subject larger in relation to its surrounding?
You used a super-telephoto lens to significantly isolate your subject and make it look like you were very close to it/them?
You manipulated the white balance so the scene is no longer the colour temperature it was when you stood there?
You manipulated the HSL sliders to emphasise certain areas and subdue others?
You used a low angle to hide something behind the subject that if the person stood there would be very obvious?
You cloned out a stray arm which didn't look right or cloned out a phone line that cut across the sky?

If you feel that any and all digital manipulations should be presented with the image otherwise the image is somehow unethical then you're going to spend an awful amount of time listing them.

[tbob]

So is this exceeding the bounds of manipulation?

There was no earthly way to get this shot without my shadow. Or the raindrops. Then there is the matter of colour adjustments to suit my taste. I would probably do more but this was a quick adjustment to make the point

[Manfred M]

Steve - to Robin's point. I took these two images, using the same camera and lens. The shots were taken less than 2 minutes apart and my sole purpose was to manipulate the viewer. The subject is a famous painting in a famous museum.

The point, to me, is obvious.






The first shot makes the room look virtually deserted. In the second, I wanted the place to look crowded. In truth, it was neither, but I lied with the camera lens.

[John 2]

.............................. but at the same time any viewer of your photographs has the right to find your methods objectionable and cease to view or buy them ........................

Steve I can't disagree with that statement although it is pretty much a statement of the obvious. Equally however, a prospective buyer may well only be concerned with the aesthetic merits of an image, manipulated or not.

I can't agree with the final part of your post namely:

...............and I believe that it is ethically laudable at the very least to advise any prospective buyer or voter in a competition of how you have manipulated the scene depicted.

I can't help feeling that it is a mistake to look at this just from too narrow a viewpoint. I explained my own view in a support of a post by Donald on one of my manipulated images and having read all of the above comment, it hasn't changed.

PP is a matter of context and intent for me. Shots that purport to be an accurate record, should remain unaltered in terms of the subject whether we're talking about an event, an item, a person or even scenery. I have no problem with PP that is confined to improving image quality or even minor tidying up to improve the clarity afforded the actual subject but none of which alters the subject itself. However, I believe there is a stage beyond that where rather than just taking a straight forward record, you envisage a composition that uses an original capture as raw material but that can then be developed in PP to produce a pleasing image, in effect and in part, from your imagination. I don't say one is better than the other. They are just different aspects of the hobby we all enjoy and it puzzles me why there are some that want to ascribe rights and wrongs to one aspect or the other. This BTW, has nothing to do with competition rules where in some cases the comments have been surface deep when there are more practical reasons why they exist as they do - but I've had my say about that elsewhere.

When it comes to a competition in which I've had many years of involvement, all that a voter needs to be sure of is that a given image as presented, complies with the rules of the competition in question.

[Manfred M]

Enjoying the discussions, but to chip in a purely personal perspective, I get the greatest overall pleasure from creating a good image within the constraints of the "rules" that apply to wildlife and nature competition photography than I do from other genres, even although (if I go by the results in my club competitions) I produce "better" images in the non-wildlife areas. There's just that extra something from getting it right straight from the shutter click, because of the way the shot was set up.

Bill, I constantly get pushed to enter my work in competitions by other photographers I know. The moment I appear to be considering it, I am sent a link listing the "rules", at which point I politely say "no thank you".

It is either a good image or it is not. These rules DO NOT create better images. The cynical side of me suspects they have been put in place to protect the vested interests of some of the membership that never expanded their photographic skill set, so they put artificial constraints up to protect themselves.

[Manfred M]

The difference is that Joe Rosenthal's image won the Pulitzer Prize and has been adopted as a symbol of the United States Marine Corps...

Yes, that famous image that was staged for the photographer....