This afternoon I have been busy loading the car and getting packing done for a trip tomorrow that will lead to some friends in the Houston area. We will be gone for about a week, hence there will be no posts here during that time.
But I am going to do a little ranting. It is about one of the least understood subjects, i.e. post processing of photos. This was brought on by a remark a reader made about one of my photos that I posted to my Facebook page. It was a beautiful photo of a Painted Bunting. It is truly one of the most beautiful birds in the United States. This reader said that it must of been “Photoshopped”. Well, of course it was. I don’t think that he meant anything derogatory in the remark. I actually believe that he was giving me a compliment, and I appreciate it.
However, it gets my dander up, when I hear that term used, as a lot of people tend to think that the pictures were somehow ‘doctored’ up to make something look different.
In the old days, I post-processed photos in a darkroom, or I had a photo lab do it for me. I always process my images, whether it is film in the darkroom, or done digitally in a computer. With the computer, I just don’t get my hands dirty. But I accomplish the same either way.
There is a term, “the camera doesn’t lie”. That is true. But they don’t produce an accurate image of what the photographer sees either. I have to check the lighting and adjust accordingly, or adjust the contrast to give the image more pop, or correct the color, or remove dirt spots. But the odd thing is back in film days, you wouldn’t hear such remarks like, “Hey, that picture was ‘dark-roomed”.
Look in any magazine, book, trade magazine, you name it. You will never see a photograph that was published straight out of the camera. My photos would still be very nice, but you can see a marked difference between my originals and the processed ones. But do they look anything different that what I saw when I took the picture, Of course not. An exception would be if there would be, for example, a beer can lying in an inappropriate place in a composition. I would try to remove it, but I would also do the same if I was using a darkroom. I believe that would called be using a bit of artistic license.
Which makes bring up one more point. If a paint artist can paint a picture, interpreting it as he sees it, a photographer has the same freedom. Again, that is artistic license.
That is the end of my rant for today. I am sure that I will now get comments about the pros and cons of post processing. Now I have to get back to work. I have a number of photos that I need to Photoshop, er, uh, I mean Darkroom. 🙂