[Leica] Picture of the Year Controversy

[mark at rabinergroup.com (Mark Rabiner)]

The Raws were poor?
The Raws here were being illustrated as being flat and over exposed.
Had the Raws been illustrated correctly or differently no one would be
calling them "poor". Perhaps they'd be called slightly below average?
Or slightly above.
And the contrast between the Raw and the psd or jpg would be nowhere near as
great. He burned down the sky and ground and optimised those selected areas.
Big deal.
We don't know what the circumstances of who got that raw image rendered what
his so called "default settings" were on his raw plug in or whatever it was.
No one understands this stuff.
Its supposed to be like a negative;
Or in this case perhaps a positive, an over exposed slide.
We don't really know it was over exposed; or flat.
It could have been the opposite.
But its more complicated than that as it has to be opened with so called
"default" settings which means what? No one knows. Someone said it depends
on which software you used, which plug it; but its the settings.

Let's face it. It was you, Charley.

Mark William Rabiner



> From: Philip Clarke <nod at bouncing.org>
> Reply-To: Leica Users Group <lug at leica-users.org>
> Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 17:48:26 +0100
> To: Leica Users Group <lug at leica-users.org>
> Subject: Re: [Leica] Picture of the Year Controversy
> 
> George Lottermoser wrote:
>> As always - the questions at hand,
>> "where do we draw the line between:
>> journalism
>> art
>> self expression
>> visual truth?"
> I reckon the line just got drawn by the competition judges. Then if
> Steve McCurry had been banned from using Kodachrome, the Afghan girl
> picture wouldn't have been as good:
> 
> http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photographers/afghan-gir
> l-cover.html
> 
> (looks better at an exhibition). I think the competition judges have a
> point though, the RAW's were poor, and any other photographer in that
> competition that had shot straight would have been registering
> objections faster than a burst of flash if the guy had won a prize. I
> say great artistry, poor RAWS, thumbs down for photojournalism.
> 
> Philip.