effects Vs 'natural pp' ..

[blush_1]

Hi all .. I was just wondering what people think works better .. lots of post processing to a picture or keeping it more natural .. ??

[mnl]

The question sounds a little slanted to me. It's not a bi-polar question - - -one vs. the other.

1. Post processing is part of image capture. It's a tool, and not to use it (typically) is to artificially limit the photo.
2. If you can detect post processing when looking at the final shot (especially if it calls attention to itself) then PP is overdone.

[mnl]

- - - -unless you mean something on the order of what's discussed in this article:
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/ ... technology
These are not to my liking, generally, but clearly, if done well, it's all good.

[madlights]

I think and art can be made from either...or both... At least in some circumstances. However as mnl says some PP is required especially if shooting in RAW and even with jpg sometimes. Most photo journal sites have guidelines and rules as to post process acceptability, and in that regard some photojournalists have seriously damaged their careers if they've gone too far. It's a very complex issue and in many areas this issue seem to be still developing and changing (although it always existed even with film). It depends I think on the "vision" the artist has in areas other than photojournalism (and a photojournalists "vision" might affect the shot, but better do it before or during the shot and not afterwards). Just my opinion and there are lots of opinions on this.
My own personal preferences are toward less processing in a photo that's clearly designed as a record of something...except to make it look the best if can look without looking "processed"
Then on the other hand there is another form of photography that bends things much more as there has always been. And I've seen some of it that's really great to my eye. Think that it's a matter of "done well" either, both or combined...and of course personal preference.

[mnoble]

Photography is an art. It is interpretive, subjective. Photoshop is a digital darkroom with all the tools available to everyone. There is no too much pp or too little pp. It is what the artist (read photographer) decides for that particular image. You may not like it, but it is not your art. I find that the tools in Photoshop just keep providing more creativity.

Mike

[fotomann]

Photography is an art. It is interpretive, subjective. Photoshop is a digital darkroom with all the tools available to everyone. There is no too much pp or too little pp. It is what the artist (read photographer) decides for that particular image. You may not like it, but it is not your art. I find that the tools in Photoshop just keep providing more creativity.

Mike

Well said Mike!

John

[madlights]

I agree on the definition of art is in the mind and eye of the artist. There are however other aspects to photography such as photojournalism where creativity in post processing isn't rewarded. However, even the camera itself interprets things differently than our minds and eyes do. How many of us have a macro lens for an eye? Or a telephoto that compresses distance, or a wide angle eye? So really photography is subjective from the 'click'. Ansel Adams spent much time in the darkroom, and at least to me, Photoshop is a great darkroom...but then again Reuters might not think so, especially if done beyond basics. And it is true than no matter if "we" like or dislike certain techniques of post processing, it doesn't matter...what someone does or doesn't do is still valid in an artistic sense. I guess to me, and can only speak for me....so much is dependent on intent. However much the art is dependent on the intent of the artist, the viewer still has a right to like or dislike, understand or not understand.

[sean_mcr]

You would not find it easy getting a show in a reputable gallery with over processed images, contemporary art photography has an everyday like appearance with the world, it's subtle, understated, meditative. That for me as always been what the best photographic art has been about-which is not the same as other arts. The greater the artistic license in photography the less photographic it becomes; A photograph may not be the actual thing itself, but it's evidence of it, for it to work you have to have faith in what you're seeing. We know that the world isn't black and white, nor does it simply fit in to a little box, but photography came to be in a time where the study of nature and science was an obsession, where new technology like photography proved that all a horses legs left the ground at the same time while galloping. Revealed the lines in a hand or a face in a way that a painting never could ("This mortal enemy of art") allowed the poor to know what their ancestors looked like for the first time.

Since photography's birth it's been used as a means of study. to record what it finds before it, sometimes in great detail. sometimes not, but always with the intention of highlighting something that the maker believes to have intrinsic value, I stress the word intrinsic because the best photography is subject driven and a good subject clearly & simply defined really is a thing of wonder. If a person chooses the medium of photography as their art, by and large it is because of the properties and qualities that are inherent in photography. It's why people like William Eggleston, Stephen shore, Walker Evans, Diane Arbus, Robert Adams, Robert Frank, Gene Smith and countless others (including Ansel Adams) chose photography as their art. Photography's relatively short history in the arts is littered by those who forgot or didn't' realise what made photography special. By and large they have been forgotten or seen to be wrong or as footnote to abandoned practices like pictorialism

I can't recall which painter said this and I'll paraphrase "I'd give up all the paintings of Jesus for one photograph of him"