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Paulo Calafate
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# Posted: 8 Apr 07 16:47
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This is an article of Rob Sheppard and was extracted from Digital PhotoPro magazine (The Guide To Advanced Technology And Creativity)
Myth: the pure camera image captures reality better than Photoshop
Imagine a photo of an emotional news scene with the subject dark against a very bright background.
Our eyes, and the eyes of any witness to the event, can see both the subject and the background, and seeing both is important to understanding the significance of the event. The camera can't easily do that and will capture an interpretation of the scene that doesn't show its realíty in tones and color. In fact, the "pure" image direct from the camera lies about what was happening.
Suppose a photographer adds a powerful flash unit to his or her camera and blasts the dark subject with light. The light is balanced between the subject and background; technology triumphs, allowing the camera to properly expose tones and colors. Editors are happy now that the scene is also properly "exposed" to reveal the truth of what was happening.
But there's a problem. Any photographer knows that light can affect the emotional quality of an image. In this example, perhaps that direct flash creates a light alien to the real story, yet it's automatically accepted because it allowed what was there to be recorded by the camera.
Perhaps another photographer exposes the scene well without a flash and double-processes the RAW image, once for the foreground and again for the background, then puts those images together in Photoshop. Now the red flags go up from a number of publications. A photographer can't do that sort of manipulation because, well, just because it's "manipulation." No one can really explain how this natural light image that's closer to the truth than the flash scene is wrong.
Next, a third photographer brackets the exposure in an instant so he or she has two perfect exposures, one for the foreground and one for the background. Each image is processed to make it look its best and true to the scene; then, horrors, the two shots are composited together so that the foreground and background are rendered true to how witnesses saw the event.
Most publications dedicated to photojournalism wouldn't allow that latter composited shot, even though it's true to the scene. Most of those same publications would allow a straight photograph, "unmanipulated" from the camera (without flash), to be published even though it couldn't be true to the scene. What we have here is "approved" technology versus approved truth in photography. Technological manipulations of the scene done at the time of the photograph are "okay," yet technology used after the photograph was taken in service of making a more truthful image is not.
To ensure the camera better captures the reality of the world, photographers use many technological aids and gadgets, such as graduated neutral-density filters to balance tones we can see but the camera cannot. We use different focal lengths of lenses to change how perspective is seen. These are all, in fact, manipulations of the scene to make a better and truer photograph (and they can be used to lie just as much as Photoshop).
Why wouldn't we want to use technology to make our photos truer to what's in the world? A writer knows that a good, truthful news article must be based on accurate notes interpreted honestly during the writing. This should be the Standard for photography, too, not basing truth on what comes directly from the camera. It's time to trust photographers to do the right thing in their work on an image, then deal harshly with those photographers who would deliberately lie to mislead the publíc, whether in how an image is shot or in manipulating an image in Photoshop.
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I completely agree with the author.
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de stilte
Member
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# Posted: 8 Apr 07 19:34
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I've read the article with great interest , thnx for it Paulo, I also agree with the author.
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Evanickelbridger
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# Posted: 8 Apr 07 20:44
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I agree with de stilte that I agree with the author :)
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de stilte
Member
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# Posted: 8 Apr 07 22:32
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nice to know Evan and so on and so on........;-)
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devish
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# Posted: 8 Apr 07 22:46
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I also agree on your agreements :)
Anyhow I think there should be some moderation, I don't mean that you can't do a picture and modify it a lot and call it art, because it still is art, but in my opinion it falls in a slightly different cathegory. (obviously examples like the one in the articles or saturation modifications etcetera are fine).
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Evanickelbridger
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# Posted: 8 Apr 07 23:03
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@devish
I like this discussion :)
I'd like to think that I can produce what's in my minds eye when I see something and photo it, not what some piece of electronic equipment has been programmed to do...
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John Melskens
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# Posted: 8 Apr 07 23:15 - Edited by: John Melskens
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Paulo, at the newspaper for which I worked in the 80ties, all photographers were NOT allowed to use a flash - only natural (= existing !!! / available) light. And B&W.
Well, how truthfull to the news is black and white?
I hear that now most photographers are using a flashlight. I think because they feel the colors look better and the photo is sharper then.
B&W and the use of a flash and working in the darkroom or on your computer with Photodhop are all manipulations or modifications. Of the truth?
It doesn't mather: those modifications and manupulations are subject to FASHION as well.
And the taste of the art / photodirectors.
In the 80ties I used a flash (fill-in flash) when I thought it was necassary to get the best possible photo for the situation and to show what was necassary to tell the "truth" about the story.
Truth is subjective and so is the way we look at photographs.
So if all is subjective, do as you please and use whatever technic to get the picture you want, the way you want it.
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rezz50
Member
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# Posted: 9 Apr 07 04:51 - Edited by: rezz50
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One of the great photojournalists weighed in on the subject a number of years ago:
The documentary photograph carries with it another thing, a quality in the subject that the artist responds to. It is a photograph which carries the full meaning of the episode or the circumstance or the situation that can only be revealed – because you can't really recapture it – by this other quality. There is no real warfare between the artist and the documentary photographer. He has to be both.
-Dorothea Lange, "Mary Ellen Mark : 25 Years" by Marianne Fulton,
Also:
"While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see. "
-Dorothea Lange
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pansa
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# Posted: 9 Apr 07 19:59
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Nice article. I fully agree with the author. Photoshopping is a part of the photographers technical and aesthetic toolkit and should be used (if necessaray). Of course I don't mean putting somebodies head on another body but just in the sense of the author.
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