Photography vs Digital Manipulation

[e30pwr]

IDK why this has recently caught my eye, but I've been looking more and more into how people that shoot stills for magazines and have found that they use more digital manipulation that true photography. Maybe its because I learned on an all manual SLR with B&W in the darkroom and had to develop everything myself, so when I see people just casually drop in a new sky, or light all the different parts of the car and chop them all together in different layers, I don't see it as proper photography. In the darkroom you could drop in a new sky but it took hours and a lot of tries to get the right dodging and burning to make it look seamless as well as exposing both negatives on the enlarger with the proper ratio to get the tones and contrast correct.

Now thats not to say that I won't do this kind of shooting, but I feel like when you look at ads today for cars, and its all PP I feel like the customer is getting a "better than real life" interpretation of the object. I've recently found a program that you can do rolling shots from a single still shot and drop in the car after you blur the background properly. I feel like all this digital ability only makes the photography less of a factor and its more how Photoshop/computer savvy you are.

I do love the shots that come from all this digital manipulation, but i feel like its wrong to shoot something and them go back and drop in a new sky, layer different parts of the car for the proper lighting etc and call it photography.

/rant

So whats your opinion? I know a few of you do this sort of stuff, and I'd love to hear your take. I'm not here to say your wrong in the way you shoot or edit, but I want to know what your opinion on the two words/phrases are.

[StreetHazard]

Here is my opinion....

The journey of how you end at any given result is completely irrelevant....as long as the result accomplishes your intentions and your goals. That means you can take as many shortcuts and "easy way outs" as it takes, as long as it looks good.

And this goes ESPECIALLY in the professional world in my opinion, because you are up against the client request, client dead lines, budgets, hourly costs and time...and other projects lined up behind it. So the only person that might care whether or not you shot the entire thing "in-camera" is YOU, the client is not going to give a flying fuck OR even know what you are even talking about.

I can almost guarantee a paying client never fails to bring out some stupid shit like...."I love the orange sunset shot you did, but my daughter really likes the color purple, do you think you could change it so the sky is bluish/purple"?

Now I am going to give you a true story about when I worked at a advertising agency and we did a couple of ad's for Ford Expedition. I designed a nationwide ad for Ford using photography supplied by Ford themselves, it was something typical like the thing crawling over a bunch of boulders or some shit. and when it was presented back to them they asked me to make it look like it's driving through SNOW with the wheels turned a totally different way, AND not willing to pay for more photography to get the legitimate shot! In this case you do what you have to do to just get the shit done...fake your way through it and bill the customer for art time.

I am a graphic designer by profession...and I have learned how to shave corners off of a fucking circle to get shit done on time and as cheap as possible. And I would say digital post-processing in photoshop is as much of a legitimate art as the actual photography itself and a very valuable skill that any photographer that wants to be taken seriously needs to know how to do. I have to say that as a designer I use photoshop in a completely different manner than a photographer would...and vice versa. It's almost a completely different skill set. It wasn't even until recently I even tried my hand at it.

[james]

Here's the deal:

its just like carpentry- you measure twice and cut once. Unfortunately recent "photographers" have been 'measuring' once and digitally enhancing to the point where the shit isn't even out of the camera. Photographers have been learning (and should still be learning) that the more you practice behind the camera will go farther than you photoshopping an image or editing otherwise afterwards. Like I said, unfortunate! Unfortunately, people are getting paid big bucks to fart around behind a computer screen all day than they even know what to do on a camera.

Know what you are good at. That will play out much stronger than anything you can do with a computer.



/in before tarzandoucheman comes in with some fucktard reasoning that photoshop is better that he read in some idiot magazine.

[mushroom_toy]

James...op...not James above haha, Man thats why I shoot all manual all the time (its cheaper too), but I only post stuff that I take directly from the camera, besides maybe a crop, resize, or watermark I dont edit my shots at all...and I prefer it that way. But of course there are those who will say that a picture is like a canvas, and all that blah blah blah, which is true to some extent, but when you end up with an image which doesnt look humanly possible....Anyway Im not ragging on it either, sometimes you can get some truly neat stuff out of a processed or otherwise changed image.

[Tarzanman]

Traditional photography still has its place (journalism, event photos, documentation, and even some art), but some of you guys sound like old geezers or luddites complaining about the advances made in digital manipulation.

StreetHazard is absolutely right. If you're doing a layout for a print ad or trade show graphic or whatever... no one gives a rat's ass if the image was manipulated. All they care is whether the photo makes the finished product look good, and that the work is completed before the deadline. The entire reason digital manipulation is so prevalent is precisely because it is easier and takes less time to get satisfactory results.

If you want to sit on the dock in the harbor and wait till 4:30pm for the sun to light the sky the way you want it, then go right ahead. No one is stopping you.... but bitching about photoshop while you're using a digital camera with automatic focus, a light meter, and automatic exposure modes is hypocrisy. If you're such a bad-ass old school enthusiast then you should eschew other such modern conveniences.

The only photographers I hear (or read) bitching about what other photographers are doing are the insecure , untalented hacks who realize that a soccer mom with no experience can plunk down $1000 for an SLR and take photos just as good as they can.

Cry me a river.

[CHADbee]

its 2010...post process is a HUGE part of photography. learn it or get left behind!

[mushroom_toy]

Traditional photography still has its place (journalism, event photos, documentation, and even some art), but some of you guys sound like old geezers or luddites complaining about the advances made in digital manipulation.

StreetHazard is absolutely right. If you're doing a layout for a print ad or trade show graphic or whatever... no one gives a rat's ass if the image was manipulated. All they care is whether the photo makes the finished product look good, and that the work is completed before the deadline. The entire reason digital manipulation is so prevalent is precisely because it is easier and takes less time to get satisfactory results.

If you want to sit on the dock in the harbor and wait till 4:30pm for the sun to light the sky the way you want it, then go right ahead. No one is stopping you.... but bitching about photoshop while you're using a digital camera with automatic focus, a light meter, and automatic exposure modes is hypocrisy. If you're such a bad-ass old school enthusiast then you should eschew other such modern conveniences.

The only photographers I hear (or read) bitching about what other photographers are doing are the insecure , untalented hacks who realize that a soccer mom with no experience can plunk down $1000 for an SLR and take photos just as good as they can.

Cry me a river.

Thats pretty ignorant man. Some of us, me included, shoot mostly all manual, while yes we are using a digital body, we set everything. I shoot with glass from the 70s and 80s which is not automatic at all. I focus on my own, set the aperture, and set my exposure. I even have an old light meter I carry around when I feel the need. Shooting automatic is simpler and faster, but its also more expensive. Plus I find the optic quality of vintage glass to be fantastic even better so then some of the newer lenses available for my system. No body is saying post processing is bad. And actually Im pretty positive James (op) has shot fully manual with 35mm slrs, just like I have. I have 4 slr bodies I shoot with on occasion as well. I carry one as a backup to my digital, and use it often.

[mushroom_toy]

its 2010...post process is a HUGE part of photography. learn it or get left behind!

You did the lighting work yourself. You didnt add it in completely from scratch. In my case I think it looks great since you did all the lighting work, you had to put it together some way. Just like taking bracketed photos, now if you only had one image and manipulated it with processed lighting then I would be pretty turned off.