Landscape article - Peter Eastway

[Mark D Segal]

My bottom line - is the image interesting and would I like to have it hanging on a wall in my house.  The images in the article are all well done.  Digital processing is a fact of life as was dodging and burning in Ansel Adams days (also remember that Adams also used zone system principals in developing the negatives).

Well put.

[amolitor]

Just because a thing exists doesn't mean it's not worth discussing, and discussing well.

[rabanito]

"If you take a photograph in Yosemite, should it look exactly like Yosemite, or is there room for interpretation?"
 I'm a newbie here and maybe I didn't understand well the subject of the conversation :-)
As far as I know when I take a picture of Yosemite I am converting the image I'm seeing into a number of 0's and 1's through the eyes of my camera. This, I suppose, is the Raw File.
Then, say, I put this file into my PC and send the data to my monitor using (so i believe) a translating profile. My monitor shows me a picture of Yosemite that can or not be what I felt and saw when I took it. My Monitor is calibrated to some standards and shows me a (hopefully) pleasant picture that can be or not what I took. But I bet this is NOT the Yosemite I saw and/or felt an that moment and from that place.
So already there it has been a lot of "manipulation". Do I remeber Yosemite as it was then or my memory tells me something different?  (at my age after 10 minutes I cannot remember many things :-)
OF COURSE I am going to interpret. I firmly believe that there is no other way.
The important thing  is that the picture pleases me. If other people like it, I'm still more pleased. But if not, then they just like something different.

[Mark D Segal]

Yes, you got it. There is lots of manipulation happening from the moment you push the button on the camera. But I think that aspect of it should be distinguished from the intentional constructs photographers can create in post-capture workflow, where the possibilities have become infinite and really only limited by the imagination. It is here where photo most intentionally departs from "scene reality" and the question about its legitimacy is asked. I think this aspect is more of what Eastway was writing about.

[faberryman]

How much "manipulation" is too much "manipulation" is unanswerable in general. The example given was saturation: +20 is okay but +50 is too much? Different people are going to draw the line in different places. Lots of heat but not much light.

[leuallen]

About the cigarette but prominent in the landscape. The dude would crop it out or use another image. Come on. I spent time and effort getting the image and no stinkin cigarette but is going to ruin it for me. It reeks of photo snobbery at its highest. Viva Content Aware Fill!

Larry

[digitaldog]

About the cigarette but prominent in the landscape. The dude would crop it out or use another image. Come on. I spent time and effort getting the image and no stinkin cigarette but is going to ruin it for me. It reeks of photo snobbery at its highest. Viva Content Aware Fill!

Larry

Yes he could crop AS mentioned. No he will not use Content Aware Fill and as its his images, it's his call.
Your images?

[luxborealis]

Amongst all artist media, this only seems to be a debate amongst photographers...

Do landscapes need to be factual? An emphatic No!

They NEVER have been and NEVER will be. The only ‘reality’ is reality itself. Everything else – EVERYTHING – is a facsimile. When will photographers finally wake up and realise they do not corner the market on reality. They never have and they never will.

BTW – a contact sheet may be the most direct way of making a photograph without human manipulation but it is still a facsimile. You have changed reality by introducing a medium that is not reality.

Art is not reality. Photography is art. Therefore photography is not reality!

Aaaaaagggghhhhh! (Sorry, that’s the sound of my blood boiling at yet another iteration of this ridiculous debate.)

[amolitor]

The whole business has almost nothing to do with how manipulation is appliied,  or of what kind.

It has to do with gap between the viewer's expectations, and the reality. Not with what the viewer's expectations "ought to be" but what they actually are, which something to do with the individual viewer, a little bit to do with the context in which the picture sits, and a great deal to do with what the picture looks like.

As a separate issue, the modern take on landscape photography leaves me completely cold. The idea used to be that The Land was something very special, and that showing it to people was a wonderful thing. The answer to the question "did it look like that?" was expected to be in the affirmative, in  some reasonable sense, because the entire point was that it looked wonderful.

Now the answer is a laugh and "of course it didn't look like that!" which begs the question "why the hell am I looking at your picture, then?"

Those are, I suppose, to circle back somewhat laboriously, my expectations for landscape photography, and I am exquisitely conscious of the gap between my expectations and the reality of pictures thrust under my nose in these modern times.

[faberryman]

As a separate issue, the modern take on landscape photography leaves me completely cold. The idea used to be that The Land was something very special, and that showing it to people was a wonderful thing. The answer to the question "did it look like that?" was expected to be in the affirmative, in  some reasonable sense, because the entire point was that it looked wonderful. Now the answer is a laugh and "of course it didn't look like that!" which begs the question "why the hell am I looking at your picture, then?"

I think this is an important point to remember. A lot of landscapes today look like sci-fi renderings of other planets from my youth. Many are beautiful, but entirely false. It initiates the discussion of photography vs. photo illustration, which never ends well.

[rabanito]

Well this "ridiculous debate" made me aware of the existence of Content Awafe Fill which I thought is not present in CS2, the version I was using until not long ago.
For me it has been "useful debate" in a way
Just joking :-)

[Ranger Rick]

Has anyone downloaded the 2017 book?  I keep getting all the images dimmed out, using Safari and Firefox.  Never had this problem before.  Used both Safari and Firefox.  Looking at the flip book (which technology I detest) is fine.

Rick

[DChris]

I am very open minded about photography, I am never critical about what equipment someone uses or how much post processing one does, and I find all these "illustrations" great and wonderful, I would have been proud to say I had done these...but...I would NOT call these "photographs", "illustrations", yes, but not "photographs".

How about "international landscape illustrator of the year", I would say yes to that.

Sorry if that's against everyone else's thinking.

Dave

[Dave (Isle of Skye)]

Amongst all artist media, this only seems to be a debate amongst photographers...

Do landscapes need to be factual? An emphatic No!

They NEVER have been and NEVER will be. The only ‘reality’ is reality itself. Everything else – EVERYTHING – is a facsimile. When will photographers finally wake up and realise they do not corner the market on reality. They never have and they never will.

BTW – a contact sheet may be the most direct way of making a photograph without human manipulation but it is still a facsimile. You have changed reality by introducing a medium that is not reality.

Art is not reality. Photography is art. Therefore photography is not reality!

Aaaaaagggghhhhh! (Sorry, that’s the sound of my blood boiling at yet another iteration of this ridiculous debate.)

I think the fact that the competition now under discussion, ends on the 30th of November, means this article is actually a thinly disguised advert, to try to get us landscape photographer types, to pour a little more money into the organisers coffers, but hey ho, I might be wrong.....

I sort of agree with most of what you have said above Terry - mostly!

But when manipulation and PP moves from being derived directly from reality and into creating a composite fantasy, then it should be declared as a fantasy and judged against other works of fantasy and not against works of reality, as this competition seems to be doing and the author seems to be saying he is happy to do.

I really feel sorry for the poor schmucks who pull their guts out, day in and day out, trying to make the best picture they possibly can, based on a representation of what was actually there in front of them at that moment they released the shutter. Who are then competing (and also paying highly for the privilege - $25 per image in this instance) in these types of loooong internet domain name 'photography' competitions, against people who just make stuff up, even though they might be very skilled at doing it, it is not based on reality and therefore it is not fair, it's like comparing apples with oranges. But as long as there are enough schmucks to keep on handing over their hard earned cash, in a forlorn hope of winning, even when as it turns out, they never had a snow ball in hell's chance of ever doing so, then of course they will be happy to let anything go through - as long as you give them plenty of money.

I also agree that anything can be 'art' and in that respect anything goes. But surely in competitions, it is incumbent on those running it, to differentiate the awards given for images that are of a processed reality and images of a processed fantasy?

And again I agree, that if you are creating something (a fantasy image/art) and people are buying it and they like it and you enjoy doing it, then there is nothing wrong with that, and so fill up your boots as they say. But if you are making something up (a fantasy image) and entering it into a competition and winning, against people who are not making stuff up, then surely that is not fair, as it is just not a level playing field is it?

In my mind several of the images shown in this article, seem to be more in the fantasy images category and remind me of a line from Father Ted "it's like chewing gum for the eyes".

Oh and even though you and I are all now talking about 'realism' in photography due to this article and what is acceptable and what isn't, that was only ever a veneer to stir things up and spark some interest. But getting you to go to their loooong internet domain name website and then possibly be tempted into giving them some of your money, that was the real reason I suspect.

But as I said at the beginning, I might be totally wrong here and if I am, then I apologise whole heartedly and without reservation, as I am obviously a complete idiot, but then again, I might be totally correct.

Dave

[Rand47]

Well, there certainly are no boundaries for where realism ends and sur or hyper realism begins.  At least as far as modern, digital, landscape imaging is concerned.  Most of the really stunning landscape images I see posted in places like the Fred Miranda site, one would never see with their own eyes, no matter how long they camped out at the site of the original "click."

One very honest "fine art" photographer recently spoke to a group I belong to.  His talk was on how to become a fire art landscape photographer who actually sells their work successfully.  His all too telling "bottom line" for success was to create images with "major impact" (loosely translated as 'turn up the saturation!") and "will it match someone's couch in their living room."

Thank God for people like Charlie Cramer and G Dan Mitchell.  Their work is truly inspiring, and while "manipulated," it is manipulated to better give a sense of "how it felt to be there" (in my opinion anyway).

The images in the book presented here (with a very few notable exceptions) are, in my opinion the very definition of the humorous saying about the difference between POP art and ART.  That being:  POP Art = "Wow!...….. Huh?"   And ART = "Huh?..... WOW!"

Rand

[DChris]

POP Art = "Wow!...….. Huh?"   And ART = "Huh?..... WOW!"

Rand
[/quote]

I like your post

Dave

[Wayne Fox]

Maybe I missed this decades ago when I worked in the chemical darkroom like so many of us, but how does one burn and dodge a contact print, which to my recollection is usually a negative firmly sandwiched onto a piece of photographic paper and exposed to light? As for the rest of it - clearly yes - starting from the selection of film one used - they all had their own grain structure and characteristic curves, and the developers we used had different effects on the character of the resulting negative. Etc.

Pretty easy to do with a large format contact print, since often the light source is an enlarger/lens without a negative in it.  You can dodge/burn it the same way you could if you were projecting the image from a smaller negative.

As far as a raw file being digitally manipulated, I think many forget just how much a film exposure is also manipulated by the engineering of the emulsion.  Most transparency films modified saturation of certain colors and often the choice of film was based on the colors in the scene.  Net result was rarely 100% true to the colors of the original scene, but the result were pleasing to viewers.

[Mark D Segal]

Pretty easy to do with a large format contact print, since often the light source is an enlarger/lens without a negative in it.  You can dodge/burn it the same way you could if you were projecting the image from a smaller negative.

As far as a raw file being digitally manipulated, I think many forget just how much a film exposure is also manipulated by the engineering of the emulsion.  Most transparency films modified saturation of certain colors and often the choice of film was based on the colors in the scene.  Net result was rarely 100% true to the colors of the original scene, but the result were pleasing to viewers.

Ah, yes - I had those lightboxes in mind in that comment, but now that I think of it, back in the 1950s/early 60s I did put negatives shot with a Graflex on top of paper, under glass, and exposed the sandwich using an enlarger. So that would have permitted dodging and burning. I did this only for indexing/referencing (and still have them!!) so never thought of manipulating them.

For the film - very much so. I remember from my stints in part-time photographic retail back in those days comparing photos made with Kodachrome/Kodacolor versus Agfachrome/Agfacolor, as we sold both - the former was more saturated than the latter, to the extent one talked of the Kodak look versus the Agfa look. I remember the discussions - people accustomed to Kodak film found Agfa film anemic while those accustomed to Agfa considered Kodak colours artificial. Neither provided accurate renditions of "scene reality". Likewise in B&W, one obtained very different effects between say Plus-X/D-76 versus Adox KB14 developed in Neofin Red. The problem with pigeonholing the realism of photographs is that they can look so very real in some respects and be so very unreal in others in one and the same photograph.

[Alan Klein]

Most of the pictures he showed in the article look fake.

[LesPalenik]

Fake, but pretty