Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2005/02/27
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]>It's certainly becoming more common to see the PS approach. >If you look on something like photo.net, the vast majority of shots >are heavily manipulated. Nothing wrong with that, but to me it's just >not >a photograph anymore, but a graphic. > >Personally I really dislike the attitude that a lot of shooters take >these days, of "oh, I'll just fix it later in PS". Why not just shoot >it right the first time around? Somehow strikes me as, gasp- cheating. >It makes a lot of people look like they are far better photographers >than >they really are. I feel the same way about a lot of people I know who >shoot >with heavily automated cameras and claim to be 'professional' >photographers, >when they don't even know how to use a lightmeter, grey card or >understand >the relationship between asa, shutter speeds and aperture. > >Photography as a craft is not what it used to be. Feli May be things are not so simple. When in the dark room most of us do (did?) framing and cropping, find the the right paper for the right contrast, set the right exposition and developing timing and the right chemic and so on, we are finally making choices about different alternatives. Only one is the *truth*?.I think not Same with digital. Framing, contrasting, etc...However there are steps beyond. Modifying, adding,subtracting, changing substantially the image. Where is the limit. I don't know but for me that counts is the final result. I forget the way traversed and the means used; It is the photography/graphic,drawing or whatever you may call it what counts. If the result is strong, beautiful or awakes some sentiment in my soul or a big admiration the effort was a good one. The subject is very important and if relates to human beings is even more but beauty does not end in human beings. Any subject has his own beauty or any other capability of awaking some pulsations of our souls. Pictures of PJ are very often terrible but IMHO are very often too good pictures. Composition is very important but not always, and is a technique that can be learn mainly from painters in the museums starting from this Battaglia whose author I cannot remember that when finding out some solution to perspective problems jumped out from his bed leaving his perplexed spouse. I try to get my mind open about what could be photography and more and more the result worths infinitely more than the means used to get it. Felix PS Once more I apologize for my English.