Is a Photoshop user just a chef?

[Ray]

I was recently looking at some Photoshop tutorials on DVD which I'd picked up in Bangkok, a bit cheap I admit. But for some reason, I find them rather boring. It reminded me of those ubiquitous, 'ever so popular' cooking programs one gets on TV. A bit of Basil here, a bit of Thyme there, a pinch of salt, an ounce of butter and a dash of pepper etc etc.

I'm beginning to feel I'm a visual cook, catering to the esthetic eye rather than the well trained olfactory and taste-bud palette.

I mean, I could spend the rest of my life re-hashing, re-doing, modifying, altering, improving, enhancing, reconverting, stitching etc. etc. the images I already have, without taking another single photo.

Whatever print I produced just 3 years ago, I now feel to be inadequate. I'm confident I can now go back to the RAW image and perhaps by just using Raw Shooter instead of ACR, do a better job, not to mention a few other techniques I might have picked up in Photoshop in the meantime.

When is a photographic work of art really complete?

[Peter McLennan]

Good question.  I believe it's a common saying in the art world to state that it takes two to create art.  One to do it and one to tell the artist that "It's done".

I feel the same, Ray.  Every time I use Photoshop I think I learn something new about photography.  

And that's a good thing.

Peter

[BernardLanguillier]

I feel that each piece an artisit create is relevant at the time of its capture.

It is made of of mood, inspiration, circumpstances and technical limitations of the medium and of the artist himself.

Do we tear down art nouveau building because new titanium forming technology makes it possible to machine metallic flower more accurately? Did Picasso redo all of his previous paintings the day he decided to change style?

We should be proud of who we were 1 year, 5 years 10 years ago and the work we procuded them remains relevant and valid.

cheers,
Bernard

[Jonathan Wienke]

You can always revisit an image and make a new interpretation of it, but that isn't necessarily a good thing. If a sculptor keeps chipping away at a block of marble, eventually he'll have a pile of chips instead of a statue. You need to stop fiddling and move on at some point. Finding that point is just as important as learning exposure, focus, and composition.

[Tim Ernst]

Ansel Adams often changed the way the printed his images, and they evolved from year to year as his vision of how he wanted the scene to look varied. Nothing wrong with that, and why not give your pasta a little different flavor as your own tastes change? Photoshop is just another darkroom/kitchen and there will always be different ways to cook.

[Tim Gray]

I've always looked at photography as a subtractive process - stripping away everything that's not essential to the fundamental image (I'm not distinguishing the sub-processes that go into creating an image - ie capture vs pp).  In that sense a painter is more like a chef - starts with an empty plate and adds stuff until its "done".  I think painters have more difficulty in knowing when the painting is finished than do photographers and their images.

[KeithR]

Ansel Adams often changed the way the printed his images, and they evolved from year to year as his vision of how he wanted the scene to look varied. Nothing wrong with that, and why not give your pasta a little different flavor as your own tastes change? Photoshop is just another darkroom/kitchen and there will always be different ways to cook.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=73059\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I knew that Ansel changed the way he printed, so I decided to look up some examples. From his book "Examples-The Making of 40 Photographs", I looked for his "Moonrise-Hernandaze New Mexico". Not only was this image printed a varity of ways due to changes in papers that he used, but it was also interesting to learn that several years after he took the shot, he went back to the only negative he made, and "re proccessed it". Can you imagine how he would have handled Raw images with todays technology?
Within the last few months, I have gone back to images I made 10, 20, even 30 years ago and have found them even more intersting, and challaging at the same time.

[Hank]

I think of Photoshop more as a paint brush for photographers.  It's functions lend it to expressions of "artistic license" in much the same way a painter interprets reality.  Artistic license and self-expression are accepted and respected in painting, and I see no reason they can't fill the same role and find the same acceptance in artistic photography.  

Before photography leered its head  painting was commonly used as "photojournalism," but the medium has certainly survived being supplanted in that role by photography.  I don't see why some similar transition in photography over time isn't possible, or even likely.  

With the ever-stronger emergence of television and webcasting, video is in the process of supplanting still photography as the main medium for photojournalism.  My glass is usually half full, so I regard that as an opportunity for still photography to move on from the strict dictates of "reliality" imposed by traditionalists, much as painting was freed from reality by the emergence of photography.

[Ray]

You can always revisit an image and make a new interpretation of it, but that isn't necessarily a good thing. If a sculptor keeps chipping away at a block of marble, eventually he'll have a pile of chips instead of a statue. You need to stop fiddling and move on at some point. Finding that point is just as important as learning exposure, focus, and composition.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=73056\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

That's not the best of analogies, Jonathan. All processing in Photoshop can be undone or discarded if the processing consists of layers that have been kept. If it doesn't or they haven't, there's the RAW image which is often described as a digital negative but is in fact much more than that. The RAW image is more like a latent image on a roll of film that can be developed and redeveloped as many times as you like. Imagine what Ansel Adams would have done if he'd had that opportunity, as new types of developers came on the market, or even experimenting with existing types of developers on the same piece of film.

Just making a larger print from an image, because one has bought a wide format printer or for whatever reason, requires a reworking of the image with regard to contrast, sharpening and interpolation.

[Jack Flesher]

Whatever print I produced just 3 years ago, I now feel to be inadequate. I'm confident I can now go back to the RAW image and perhaps by just using Raw Shooter instead of ACR, do a better job, not to mention a few other techniques I might have picked up in Photoshop in the meantime. 

Maybe that is nothing more than a result of your development as artist and technician?

When is a photographic work of art really complete?
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=73027\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Excellent question!  

For me, I think I have a real 'winner' when I can print it anyway I feel at the time (like a bit cooler or a bit warmer; more saturated or less; lighter or darker) and it remains a good image.  And yet this certainly doesn't imply the image is perfect technically -- most of mine aren't!

Cheers,

[Jonathan Wienke]

That's not the best of analogies, Jonathan.

I'm well aware that one can go back to a RAW and process it an infinite number of times with an infinite number of interpretational intents. But the fact that a thing can be done does not mean that it should be done. One only has so much time in life, and allocating all of it to reinterpreting one image when one could be out shooting something even more meaningful is perhaps not the wisest use of a limited resource. At some point, you ought to go out and shoot some new dead horses to beat.

[Ray]

At some point, you ought to go out and shoot some new dead horses to beat.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=73135\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I do and I am, Jonathan. I've got more images than I can handle already and shortly I'll be going on another trip to shoot another 5 to 10 thousand. I've got no shortage of images to work on.

[32BT]

I feel that each piece an artisit create is relevant at the time of its capture.

It is made of of mood, inspiration, circumpstances and technical limitations of the medium and of the artist himself.

But, in the context of the original question, isn't this exactly why it is more important to "focus" on the mood or message alone. If the mood or message is conveyed adequately, then the piece is finished. Regardless of whether:

- the picture can be reduced to still convey the same mood/message (even though I like Tim Gray's idea of a subtractive process)

or

- the picture can be shot with more quality, under better circumstances, or even with better skill...

This also reveals the necessity of "intent". If you shoot without prior intent, just hoping to "catch" pretty pictures, then it obviously becomes much harder to define when a picture "adequately" depicts the intent, no?

[Hank]

For me the answer is purely pragmatic.  An image is "done" when I'm satisfied with it, when I tire of it, or when another image grabs my attention.  Going back at some point in the future is a separate decision motivated by a new insight, curiosity about a new processing technique, or a new use for the image.    It's kind of like deciding whether to release a new, revised edition of a book or simply to write another book.

There's a perfect parallel in writing.  You can edit a piece of writing to death, but when is it really "done?"  At some point you either print it or file it, but you do stop editing.

[James DeMoss]

Just my 2 cents... the less i do in photoshop, the better my image was

[Gordon Buck]

When is a photographic work of art really complete?
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=73027\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I like the story about the violin maker, who, when asked how long did it take to finish a violin, replied, "I've never finished one.   After awhile, they just come and take it away."

[Dale_Cotton]

Sorry, Ray - but your responses to Jonathan suggest to me that you didn't take his meaning. Let's put it in pragmatic terms: I absolutely forbid you to rework any image until at least two (2) years have passed. Two years being just a guess on how long it would take you to reach a new developmental plateau. (I'm referring to heart+soul, not technical, development.)

Another reason to shelve an image is that it takes a certain length of time to get over the initial infatuation. After a certain length of time one can hope to see an earlier work with fresh eyes, which - to shamelessly mix metaphors - frequently has the effect of winnowing the wheat from the chaff. No point in labouring over an image only to chuck it from your master portfolio at a later date.
*
And, if I may be permitted a meta-comment, a lot of excellent responses so far. Apparently you've crafted one of those rare questions that is amazingly resistance to head-tripping ... can you post a few more like this, so I can figure out how it's done? ;)

[Ray]

Sorry, Ray - but your responses to Jonathan suggest to me that you didn't take his meaning.

Dale,
It's nice of you to drop in. Another sane and experienced voice on the forum is always welcome   .

I understood Jonathan's comments perfectly. But his situation is very different from mine. For example, I get the impression that Jonathan has taken more photos than the combined sum total of all the photos taken by all the photographers who have ever visited this site in the past 5 years. Perhaps a slight exaggeration   , but the consequence of such prolificacy is that one can't spend more than 5 minutes processing a single image. You have to move on, especially when you might have clients impatiently waiting for their wedding photos.

Another reason to shelve an image is that it takes a certain length of time to get over the initial infatuation. After a certain length of time one can hope to see an earlier work with fresh eyes, which - to shamelessly mix metaphors - frequently has the effect of winnowing the wheat from the chaff. No point in labouring over an image only to chuck it from your master portfolio at a later date.

Absolutely spot on! But there's another angle to this. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has a lot of images that don't quite make it into the master portfolio (or even into the second tier master portfolio), but (one thinks to oneself) they might after some extensive reworking. Now, sometimes it's better to revisit the location and take another batch of shots. But sometimes it might not be possible, might be too expensive or inconvenient, or the scene at the location might have changed drastically. I don't think it would be possible to duplicate Ansel Adams' Moonrise at Hernandez. The place has changed too much.

I revisited Nepal a few months ago for the first time in 40 years. I have just one Kodachrome slide of Pokhara, for example, taken with my Pentax Spotmatic in 1964 (I was very economical with film in those days because I was travelling on a meagre budget).

I tried to find the exact location of that one shot I had of Pokhara, taken 40 years earlier. It was difficult because I didn't bring a print of that old photo with me. I eventually found the street. It was difficult to be certain it was the same place, but after many enquiries , I was assured that there was no other street in Pokhara with a small shrine blocking half the road and a view of the mountains.

Below on the left is the original scene, dragged from my archives. It needs some work. On the right is the modern day scene, unfortunately taken with a wider lens. The original shot would have been taken with a 135mm lens, probably from a hotel balcony.

[attachment=887:attachment]                          [attachment=888:attachment]


Now, I'm not trying to say that the original shot is any great work of art, but it's all I've got and it's unique and irreplaceable. I therefore feel compelled to make the most of it.

I was disappointed with the changes after 40 years. I didn't find much that was photogenic in that particular street, but as I walked down the street away from the mountains, I got the following shot which I think is rather good.

[attachment=889:attachment]

[BernardLanguillier]

But, in the context of the original question, isn't this exactly why it is more important to "focus" on the mood or message alone. If the mood or message is conveyed adequately, then the piece is finished. Regardless of whether:

- the picture can be reduced to still convey the same mood/message (even though I like Tim Gray's idea of a subtractive process)

or

- the picture can be shot with more quality, under better circumstances, or even with better skill...

This also reveals the necessity of "intent". If you shoot without prior intent, just hoping to "catch" pretty pictures, then it obviously becomes much harder to define when a picture "adequately" depicts the intent, no?
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=73143\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I think that I see what you mean. Let me re-phrase: if the essence of an image is the message, then re-interpretation using state of the art techniques would be forgiveable since they don't affect the real self of the image...?

Yes, I can probably agree with this, but at the same time, I feel that the medium is part of the message too. And the medium  - the print or the web image - is influenced by technology and technique. I am not saying that re-working a previouly released piece of art is unlawfull. But to me, once an image is "released" to the public (and the public can be oneself + one person), it is a done statement. Other interpretations of a past released image are IMHO other pieces of work. they should not over-write the previously released version, but co-exist as an alternative of it.

By the way, I don't think that Tim's substractive approach is incompatible with what we are saying. He speaks process while we speak end product. The substractive dimension of photography is definitely part of my process as well.

Cheers,
Bernard

[Ray]

But to me, once an image is "released" to the public (and the public can be oneself + one person), it is a done statement. Other interpretations of a past released image are IMHO other pieces of work. they should not over-write the previously released version, but co-exist as an alternative of it.
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Bernard,
If what you mean by 'released to the public' is a finished print, then of course that work cannot be overwritten. In a sense, a print can be considered as either a finished stage of a work in progress, or the final stage, never to be reworked.

I don't see any finality in either my prints or unprinted (but processed) images in file format.