Some of them Italians just got no respect.

[Redcrown]

My wife came back from 3 weeks in Italy and dumped about 500 images on me for "retouching". So, I've been plowing through them for several days on my Photoshop chariot. Good shots of the beautiful old-world architecture. But... and it's a big but, I'm running the wheels off my clone/healing stamp cleaning all the crap off the roof lines and signs off the walls.

Antennas galore, wires running off them everywhere. Small satellite dishes and some electronic gadgets I don't even recognize. One shot of a large, beautiful, hand carved door, maybe 500+ years old, and some cretin nailed a no parking sign on it. Another of a fountain in a piazza fronting a huge cathedral, and they found it necessary to run a line of steel poles painted in red and white stripes across the whole thing. Gotta keep people from driving up there, I guess. Yet, I found one shot of a street scene with a storm drain that was an ornate and decorative piece of art. The dichotomy was striking. Good looking storm drains, ugly roof lines.

Can't they find a better way? Is there no attempt at preservation? I think if there was anything worth looking at here in Iowa, we would try to keep it that way.

[kers]

Problem is they have a lot to preserve..and very skilled delicate craftsmen. But they simply cannot keepeverything in good shape.
Then the car rules and goes everywhere in these tiny very old streets... no place to walk but all place to ride.
The north of Italy is far richer and has more eye and money for preserving the old cities and art.
Compare Palermo ( Sicilia) to Padova to and see the difference..

[petermfiore]

Antennas galore, wires are running off them everywhere. Small satellite dishes and some electronic gadgets I don't even recognize. One shot of a large,

Can't they find a better way? Is there no attempt at preservation? If there was anything worth looking at here in Iowa, we would try to keep it that way.

You could not edit to that extent and keep them real...

Peter

[Alan Klein]

Try to get your wife interested in scuba diving.

[Redcrown]

Try to get your wife interested in scuba diving.

Wife is a big-time marine (salt water) aquarium goddess. 5 Tanks in the house. Don't need another hobby. This one started via snorkeling in the Caribbean 20 years ago.

She sells a lot of corals, and they have to be photographed for on-line ads. Have you ever tried to white balance aquarium shots? They have exotic lights that defy analysis. In the beginning I'd show her my best guess, and she'd say, "Nah, that's not right. Try again." Then she discovered that her little Sony P&S camera has an "underwater" mode. She's been happy with the colors ever since. The colors are not right, but I keep my mouth shut. No buyer has ever complained that what he saw is not what he got.

[langier]

One night with I think Jim Richardson and I know Kurt Markus many years ago after each of our presentations, we had a discussion about "cleaning" things up in post in the early part of the 21st century. Photoshop was in common use at the time and each brought a different perspective to the conversation. What was memorable to me that evening (there were maybe a half dozen-ten sitting around swilling Picon Punch and other adult beverages there after dinner was the lamentations of Markus. This was his second presentation to this group over the years.

For many year, Markus was the master of shooting cowboys and ranches in the west with large format, each meticulously taken to avoid barb wire fences, utility poles and pickups, anything 20th century or newer. He realized the digital tech would now make his work a little easier to "clean" things up after the fact. Yet to him in retrospect, it was the absence of the sense of time in his photos that was bothering him.

He was now regretting that his work now looked like other cowboy photos from any time in the past 150 years since the inclusion of those barb wire fences, utility poles and pickups would have separated his work from those before him and added a sense of time to his work, placing his in context with the rest of the world.

Up to that time, I made it a point to tell and demo this wonderful digital technology that we could use to eliminate this clutter and since then, now use it as a tool to put my work into the context of the era of which I create it rather than to try to turn back the clock and eliminate.

I now find beauty in this "clutter" and use it as park of my vision when it enhances and places my work into the present.

Sure, it's nice for the "pristine" and uncluttered image, but to always want to "clean up the mess," I'd rather find a way to include those things as a creative part of the composition or find a way in the viewfinder to minimize when I don't have other options.

This approach isn't for everyone but for me, it lifted a burden and started a new direction in my work that has created my own vision.

Just my 2 cents by sharing a different approach to another of a photographer's life annoyance of the world out there.

[Alan Klein]

One night with I think Jim Richardson and I know Kurt Markus many years ago after each of our presentations, we had a discussion about "cleaning" things up in post in the early part of the 21st century. Photoshop was in common use at the time and each brought a different perspective to the conversation. What was memorable to me that evening (there were maybe a half dozen-ten sitting around swilling Picon Punch and other adult beverages there after dinner was the lamentations of Markus. This was his second presentation to this group over the years.

For many year, Markus was the master of shooting cowboys and ranches in the west with large format, each meticulously taken to avoid barb wire fences, utility poles and pickups, anything 20th century or newer. He realized the digital tech would now make his work a little easier to "clean" things up after the fact. Yet to him in retrospect, it was the absence of the sense of time in his photos that was bothering him.

He was now regretting that his work now looked like other cowboy photos from any time in the past 150 years since the inclusion of those barb wire fences, utility poles and pickups would have separated his work from those before him and added a sense of time to his work, placing his in context with the rest of the world.

Up to that time, I made it a point to tell and demo this wonderful digital technology that we could use to eliminate this clutter and since then, now use it as a tool to put my work into the context of the era of which I create it rather than to try to turn back the clock and eliminate.

I now find beauty in this "clutter" and use it as park of my vision when it enhances and places my work into the present.

Sure, it's nice for the "pristine" and uncluttered image, but to always want to "clean up the mess," I'd rather find a way to include those things as a creative part of the composition or find a way in the viewfinder to minimize when I don't have other options.

This approach isn't for everyone but for me, it lifted a burden and started a new direction in my work that has created my own vision.

Just my 2 cents by sharing a different approach to another of a photographer's life annoyance of the world out there.

There's lots of value in telling the truth.