[Leica] NEWSWEEK MAGAZINE & PHOTOGRAPHY.

[tedgrant at shaw.ca (Ted Grant)]

Jim Nichols ASKED:
Subject: Re: [Leica] NEWSWEEK MAGAZINE & PHOTOGRAPHY.

 

Ted,

This starts one thinking.  At what point does one morph from photographer to


PhotoShop artist?<<<<<<<<<

 

Hi Jim,

I surely don't know. Me I'm staying just as I've been for near 60 years now,
a plain ordinary old fashion "documenting photojournalist" for a better
word.

 

Photoshop for me is only a simple replacement of working in wet trays and
darkroom. What you see in my photographs is about as truthful as it can be.
Maybe a touch of burning in a sky no different than wet darkroom operations.

 

But the twisting, turning, manipulating and all the other phony add on bits
to "make a photograph" of so called artistry by the new wave PHSP artists,
has absolutely nothing to do with observing, shooting and hoping you've
caught the perfect moment.

 

The manipulators are what they are, merely PhotoShop techie operators using
the medium of photography. But they are not photographers! Certainly what
they turn out is hardly recognized as a "pure photographic moment!"

 

A Photojournalist shows truth with the moment captured, at least that's been
my way all these years. The PHSP artist may start out with some kind of
exposure, but ends up with a purely unrecognizable image of nothing like the
original. We, photojournalists, shoot for pure reality, not what's
manipulated into the scene off a computer screen.

 

When does this "morphing take place?"  Possibly when one realizes they've
shot crappy images and have to save their ass by mucking about using
PhotoShop to make their screw up work in some fashion to hide their
inability to be a photographer first!

 

What I really do know is, the day I feel I'm fiddling things into a scene
and changing what I reacted to is the day I quit!

 

ted