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Misunderstanding with the word "MANIPULATED IMAGE"
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This is always a hot-button topic. I’m right there with Thorsten when he says that postprocessing should never be used as a crutch to rescue a poor or mediocre image. At best the result will be average, at worst it will be poorer than the unprocessed original.
It must be accepted that to succeed as a photograph an image must look natural and largely unprocessed. An educated observer might be able to infer that it has been worked on, but the average Joe should not be able to. Clear indications of postprocessing should never be visible. The work should strive to subtly enhance what was already there and along with the composition direct the viewer’s eye through the work in a pleasing way.
Photographs are accepted as windows into reality (not to be confused with reality itself!). If the work is being sold and/or exhibited as photography, then it should look realistic.
On the flip side of that equation is digital art. I would classify digital art as anything diverging from the above statements. At its most basic, it is a hyper-processed photograph that no longer bears any relation to reality. From there it diverges into countless other possibilities. This has its place, but should not be marketed as photography. Really spectacular photographs that portray accurately the grandeur of the scene are a result of real effort on the part of the photographer – to be in the right place at the right time, to compose the scene just so and to perform sensitive and effective postprocessing to subtly bring out the potential therein. This can be done to a greater or lesser extent – some people produce very minimalist images where colour and tone are understated, some produce vibrant, splashy scenes which are overstated. The real key if you go down this route is knowing how far to go before things cross into the realm of the surreal. This only comes with experience and practice.
Digital art pretending to be such photography is damaging to photography as a whole. It dilutes the impact of real photography by making the viewing public suspicious of every good photograph they see. The number of times I have received a knowing wink from a punter at an art fair, along with a ‘You photoshopped that sky in, didn’t you’ is irritatingly regular. If you’re making digital art, then preface it as such when it’s being displayed and/or sold.
If you look in books or on the web, you’ll see that truly great photography never looks fake. And truly great digital art never looks like a photograph. Both types excel because the artist had a clear vision for the image and executed it with technical excellence. Incomplete knowledge of the technical tools and an incomplete vision will result in images which fall between two stools. This is fine – it’s part of the learning process. However, it’s important to recognize it as such.
Madeleine – you have some really great images. But frankly your HDR shots look hugely overprocessed. To take your example post above – your processed image has lighting problems that firmly place it outside the realm of believable photography.
The main problem is that the sky is darker than the foreground. This can happen in reality, but never with a clear sky like this. The viewer sees this and knows on an instinctive level that the image is wrong. There are plenty of other subtle lighting problems, especially in the rocks in the near foreground, and the stream beyond them. Even in a digital art composition, the lighting would need to be corrected here.
This is a typical problem of HDR photography – it’s incredibly difficult to get it right and looking natural. And the effects like the ones in your example are pretty beguiling to novice photographers because they are so spectacular.
I’ve taken the liberty of performing a few simple edits on the unprocessed image you uploaded which dramatically increase its appeal without pushing it too far.
Your original:
My processed version:
Doubtless more could be done with this, but that’s a result of 2 minutes’ work.
Our minds have a terrible memory for tone and colour, plus we see things far differently than the camera does. The HDR shot you posted may well reflect how the scene made you feel – but it is very raw and unrefined. The discipline is filtering that emotion and lending believability to your interpretation – and that takes practice, both artistic and technical.
That’s my two cents. Your images are certainly very good, and you have a clear compositional eye. You just need to tone down the postprocessing a touch!
Cheers,
PeterPeter, you should have been a preacher! I wouldn’t have listened to you though :wink: .
I can only speak for myself, but I find Madeleine’s gallery to be a little stronger than yours, so it was an odd experience to read a post in which you were trying to ‘teach’ her.
It must be accepted that to succeed as a photograph an image must look natural and largely unprocessed.
Why must it be?
Given that I feel some of my images do not necessarily look natural, yet I call them photographs, am I misleading people?
I know that at one point you described your prints as investments. Are photographers who don’t think everything needs to look natural preventing that year on year growth by diluting the market? :D
Wow Madeleine, I just had a look at your web site and I am very, very impressed.
Peter – surely you would have to agree that the sky in Madeleine’s processed version is pretty spectacular. Personally, I agree that her processed version has gone a little too far – but only with the rocks, not the sky. You felt that the sky was too dark compared to the foreground, but I have to say that instead of brightening the sky, I tried darkening the foreground using a curves adjustment layer, and I thought the final result was not only spectacular but actually quite natural.
Madeleine – as you do not permit manipulation of your images, can I invite you to darken down the foreground in your processed image, retaining the fantastic sky, and post it on here for comparison? A very interesting thread, and very informative. Now I know my camera is not broken when it cannot produce images like yours straight from the camera….. :lol: :lol:
I have just had a better look through your gallery Madeleine and I am also very impressed.
You have obviously found your own unique style. The processing might not to everyones tastes but I think when you have got to this level it is better to find your own way forward rather than overly steered by other peoples comments.
Good luck with it.
I said to myself that I wouldn’t get involved with this thread but sometimes you just get drawn in.
Photographs are accepted as windows into reality (not to be confused with reality itself!). If the work is being sold and/or exhibited as photography, then it should look realistic.
Explain Black and White? Only reality to a colourblind person?
A sky is darker than the foreground? It still represents reality as the non-educated won’t care, or notice.I had this minor debate with a club member recently. I don’t want to take a stance as I’ve discovered that many are ready to take an opposite stance on this debate. Do what you like if you, or if you prefer, your target audience likes. There is never, ever going to be a concensus on this one, merely many truths.
Alan.
Well said Alan,
Landscape photography is really about pandering to ourselves. It is one of the most self obsessed hobbies I can think of.
I have often questioned why anyone would ever buy a landscape photograph. It does happen of course, but I would suggest that landscape photography is really about us being in the landscape and being there to take the photograph in the first place. Landscape photography is somewhat irrelevant to other people (even if they have visited the location) and what they think of our interpretation is also somewhat irrelevant.
Unless we see it as primarily a business of course.
I find these kind of arguments interesting because I used to be heavily on one side but have gradually, and somewhat painfully come to the conclusion that what Peter Cox has said is true. The human visual system evolved long before there were humans, or photoshop for that matter. The implications for us photographers are that the processing, turning an upside down image in the retina into a percieved image in the brain is done subconciously, we cannot rationalise around the way the brain expects the world to appear. In short, we’re fooling nobody with neon green grass, heavy-handed HDR and other FX. These kind of effects will always be in the realm of interpretive/artistic rather than representative/’real’ photography and no amount of intellectualising will change that. The goal of processing in the past, and in the present should perhaps be to persuade people that they are looking at a scene, rather than an image.
Each certainly has a place, and I do some of each, but trying to pass off one as the other doesn’t work. As Peter says, look at the great photographers on book shelves or National Geographic, these photographers have learned or knew intuitively that you can only truly immerse the viewer in a photograph (in the traditional sense of the word) if the tricks of the trade are imperceptible to the average viewer. It took me a long time to realise this but I know for sure this has clarified where I am with this hobby and what I need to grapple with in order to improve. Before, I was quite happy with my skills because if I didn’t get what I want in the field I could salvage something on the PC and dress it up. I was bemused when I heard great photographers getting just 10 great photos a year, I would have 10 a month at least that I thought were pretty darn good! What I’ve discovered is that the hardest won skill is not photoshop or exposure, it’s developing subtlety and your own ‘voice’.
Another thing I’ve realised over the past couple of years is that picture researchers working on books, magazines etc. invariably pass over photos I suggested, some of the really ‘wow’ photos, in preference for ones that, to me, were somehow plainer, now I think I understand why.
irishwonkafan wrote:
Explain Black and White? Only reality to a colourblind person?
There is a difference between absence of colour and exaggeration of colour. People will more readily (subconciously) accept absence of colour over exaggeration of natural, expected tones. Images in silhoutte appear to us to lack colour as do night scenes as we use rods in our retina rather than cones which see only black and white. Curiously enough, rods form our peripheral vision too which is black and white but we don’t percieve it, it’s filtered out in our subconcious. We are all colour blind some of time.
Very interesting topic, just thought I’d throw in my 2 cents.
The way I see it I’d also be of the opinion that if it can be caught in camera then it should be caught in camera, but while I’m not a fan of copying a sky from one picture and pasting onto another there is a place for it. I would much rather just go back to a scene another day and try and capture it in camera rather than saying, the sky is a bit boring but not to worry I’ll paste in the sky I got from last week in photoshop, or I don’t like that lampost in the way I’ll clone it out, you should really work towards trying to find a better composition in my opinion. After all thats what we all want to do right? take better photographs. I would see digital art as creating or altering an image in such a way that is not possible other than by computer (hence the digital), thats just my opinion on it, but thats where it gets tricky, I would consider some HDR images digital art if they are extremely overcooked to give unreal colours and saturation, which a lot of them do. HDR can be used very sympathetically to reproduce colours as they were at the time that cannot be caught in camera due to the limitations of the hardware this I would still class as photography. while I’m not a fan of digital art I don’t see anything wrong with it as long as its marketed that way. The guideline I like to use is if it can be done in a traditional darkroom then I have no problem with it being done in photoshop and being called a photograph. People have been altering images for years using traditional darkroom techniques, some alterations absolutely making a photograph look ‘unreal’, look at toning and colorizing, superimposing one image onto another (same thing to use layers in PS?) during exposure with an enlarger, dodging and burning, using cut out masks to selectively expose a photograph, They don’t necessarily look real and I would call them fine art photography, but photography all the same. I don’t think it damages photography, its just another aspect of photography and was always considered as such before photoshop came along. Photoshop is just another tool, as I see it to achieve those ends.
To me its more about the image itself than the processing tools used as to whether I’d call it a photography or not. As long as it was taken with a camera of course! :wink: I’m certainly no expert and would class myself as a beginner, but having said that, I did use traditional darkroom techniques to superimpose and merge images and had great fun with it, (Not recently but about 10-15 years ago, before photoshop was so common, and it was still called photography, fine art photography maybe but photography all the same. I’ve only turned to digital in the last few months and initially thought of photoshop as cheating, but I’ve been learning it over the last few months and have come to realise its not, its just another very powerfull tool that can be used subtly and sympathetically to help produce a beautiful photograph or it can be used extensively to create ‘digital art’. Its all about how you want to use it and what you want to achieve. At the end of the day its whatever your into I suppose.
Thats my 2 cents anyway, and a bit of a long post (sorry!!) :D
sharon
Clearly I’ve trod on some nerves here. As always, this is a highly subjective area and people have different opinions. As Andy alluded to, to be a landscape photographer you must have a healthy ego, especially those of us that do it for a living. It’s inevitable that strong opinions are formed and cause sparks when they meet head-on. I gave you mine, intending to take nothing from Madeleine’s admittedly excellent other work. However, I stand by the fact that overprocessed HDR is not believable. When performed correctly it is stunning, but in this case, it simply doesn’t work. Dramatic yes, but it doesn’t work as a coherent composition.
Steve: I’ll ignore your personal barbs which are frankly out of place and inappropriate. To answer your question about misleading people – if you admit when asked that the images have been heavily filtered and/or postprocessed, then you’re not misleading anyone, and more power to you. Your work, while not to my taste, does have a certain internal consistency and you’re doing what you’re doing deliberately (I would imagine).
Rossco: I agree, that could also work. To my taste the sky is also overcooked in that version, but as long as the tonal hierarchy remains intact, the wrongness in the lighting is mostly corrected and the image works much better.
Alan: Black and white is a special case, and it can stand significant alteration without adversely affecting the image – even violation of the tonal hierarchy can be gotten away with as there is not the same expectation by the viewer that things will be a certain way. My point about darker skies than foregrounds in colour images is that most people can see it. They may not be able to explain why, but they see it nonetheless. The image just doesn’t gel like it should. It may be that the dramatic colours and tones would counter for that, but it does leave a jarring note to the viewer all the same.
Cian actually summarized those points very well. It’s all about what our brain expects to see – if you go beyond that then it must be done for a specific reason, and designed to elicit a specific response from the viewer.
Cheers,
PeterMany interesting points here, a very good debate.
I think there’s maybe a case to be made for some photographs whose contents should not be altered (that is to say no addition/deletion of items, but tweaking exposure to return the photo to an “as seen” state I personally wouldn’t be objecting to) , ie those used for documentary/news/evidential purposes etc, but I dont think that is what we are talking about here.
All photography is inherently interpretive. We choose everything, point of view, composition, equipment, settings, and processing. So while some people may try to recreate the scene as they remember it, some may take it in a completely different direction. Both images are equally valid, one may be more “artistic” with its associated “artistic licence” and one may be more true to life, for want of a better phrase.
We cannot record a scene as a viewer sees it. The MkI eye is a far better tool than any camera, and thats before the brain interprets the image. Two people looking at the same scene will have a different perception. So, in my humble opinion, go for it. Produces images you like, tweak it within an inch of its life if you so desire and if that rocks your boat, or “keep it real” if that is your bag. If I may make a musical analogy, sometimes I like to listen to an acoustic guitar played live unamplified. Sometimes I like a heavily overdriven, reverbed, choroused and even wah-wah’d electric guitars. Both are still music, just different types, and I like them both, although I understand that my taste in music wont be shared by all. Just dont try to tell me the grass really was blue (unless it was) however feel free to make the grass blue if thats what your image needs.
Thankfully, there are no correct answers on this one, only opinions.
AndyL wrote:
We cannot record a scene as a viewer sees it. The MkI eye is a far better tool than any camera, and thats before the brain interprets the image. Two people looking at the same scene will have a different perception
There shouldn’t be any significant difference between what people percieve, they may differ in attention and recollection and emotional reaction but their brains will be presented with roughly the same data. Evolution could not ‘design’ a completely arbitrary visual system as it would be of no benefit for one guy to see a leopard and the other a labrador. The visual system is designed to allow the being survey the world and get an accurate indication of the things of consequence. Since humans descended from fruit eating primates, colour tones were vital to discern types of fruit and their ripeness, hence our high sensitivity and emotional reaction to colour, and our discriminating sensitivity.
AndyL wrote:
Thankfully, there are no correct answers on this one, only opinions.
Well, the question on whether a colour is natural or exaggerated is surely an empirical one with a correct and an incorrect answer, as is the question of whether the scene actually looked like a resulting photograph. Whether it’s good or bad to exert artistic licence on the other hand is not an empirical question, and this is the point when taste and opinion can and should diverge.
I’m not trying to be antagonistic here, just trying to clarify the issues we are and are not talking about :)
petercox wrote:
When performed correctly it is stunning, but in this case, it simply doesn’t work. Dramatic yes, but it doesn’t work as a coherent composition.
Peter, I agree with much of what you are saying.
But I think you must you must allow different subjective interpretation and you must accept that your way is not necessarily always the right way.
I feel the quote above should be softened to make it clear that this is opinion rather than fact.
Andy –
You are correct, of course. Consider the point amended appropriately.Peter
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