Just a Road

[David Eckels]

Interesting. None of the "improvements" have come close to the quality of the first version.

Thanks, Russ. I do appreciate seeing the different interpretations; to see through someone else's eyes is always a learning experience. What was it AA said, if the negative (digital in this case) is the score, the print (image) is the performance.

[RSL]

Believe me, David, I agree. One of the best things about LuLa's User Critiques is that people feel free to demonstrate ideas rather than having to try to explain in words what they mean. I don't always agree with Slobodan, but he's come up with some really useful demonstrations that have helped me finalize a picture or two.

Yeah, that's what Ansel said and in a sense I think that's true, but I also think too many people take that to mean that the real work goes on in Photoshop, not in your head at exposure time. I have a friend who spends hours and hours putting smiles on faces, opening closed eyes, adding features that weren't there -- to correct badly shot pictures. I've suggested he spend more time trying to get better exposures, but working on the computer is what he enjoys most. So be it. . . to each his own.

[David Eckels]

Yes, and if anybody "did it in his head" at exposure, it was AA! Like most Grand Masters, he could envision the entire piece beginning to end, before it was even created/captured/written etc.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Yes, and if anybody "did it in his head" at exposure, it was AA! Like most Grand Masters, he could envision the entire piece beginning to end, before it was even created/captured/written etc.

Guys, just do not get too carried away with that pre-visualization concept. Nice as it is, it is not "the measure of all things." Otherwise, how would you explain different interpretations, by him, of some of his most famous images, over time? Those that got progressively more aggressive, darker, more contrastive? Which "end" then he had in mind when he pressed the shutter?

[Rob C]

1.  I agree that the negative or file and even, at a push, transparency can be seen as a template or frame within which many things can, and probably should be allowed to happen.

2.  I do not subscribe to that mindset in the case of professional work, where I believe that the photographer's head should be clearly focussed on what he is supposed to be coming back home with - the quality of the bacon is important; there is seldom time (or money) to indulge in second-guesses and reshoots.

3.  Copying others' work and making 'improvements'. One should always ask first for two main reasons: copyright, if we ignore it here, is devalued everywhere; not to ask first smacks of an unpleasant arrogance. Of course, that's just my personal belief - other snappers may feel quite the opposite about their work, and that's fine by me, especially if such treatment of their images is something they want from the forum, and think that it can help them.

Basically, that the photographer's own vision be respected as the final cut was the concept behind Without Prejudice, a place to put images without the 'corrections' that some like to add or suggest, and which can be quite irritating.

Rob C

[RSL]

I agree with Slobodan. When I talk about what goes on in your head at exposure time I'm not talking about Ansel's approach, walking around with a Weston meter, checking tone values so you can fit them within the zone system. I'm talking about what Henri meant when he said: " To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of forms which give that event its proper expression." He also said: "In photography, visual organization can stem only from a developed instinct." It's interesting that when Ansel rushed to the top of his van and set up his camera to shoot Moonrise Over Hernandez he found he'd forgotten his light meter and realized he didn't have time to go back down and get it. At that point it wasn't the zone system that made the picture. It was his developed instinct.

Lately I've been staying away from the street and romancing my other love: wabi sabi. But even in landscape or wabi sabi I'm convinced that the glance that made you raise your camera is where the truth lies. You can dork around in Photoshop all you want, but if you have a developed instinct the best result is going to show what made you raise the camera in the first place.

And Rob's probably right that it's best to ask first before you demonstrate a critique, but as I've said several times before, you always have my permission to show me instead of talking around the issue. Of course, I reserve the right to disagree with what you're showing me, but even if I disagree I always appreciate a second opinion.

[Riccardo]

Guys, just do not get too carried away with that pre-visualization concept. Nice as it is, it is not "the measure of all things." Otherwise, how would you explain different interpretations, by him, of some of his most famous images, over time? Those that got progressively more aggressive, darker, more contrastive? Which "end" then he had in mind when he pressed the shutter?

I agree that the concept of previsualization is not the measure of all things (see, eg, Garry Winogrand and his famous statement: "I photograph to find out what something looks like when photographed"). On the other hand even Ansel Adams is not the measure of all things.
The measure of all things is how one perceives himself as a photographer. Some consider the photographer a creator of images, others, such as myself, a finder of images: all images already exist and what the photographer essentially does, when he finds an image that is worth, is to build  a "camera obscura" around it and fix the image on a photosensitive plate or a digital sensor. It's like a gold prospector.
It's a very primitive approach, but the charm of photography lies in the fact of being an involuntary art  which imposed itself with a charm that is its own.
My opinion is that attempts to make the photography more "artistic", twisting it with over post-production (a sort of new pictorialism), have as a result  to weaken it.
I fully endorse Russ's statement:

the glance that made you raise your camera is where the truth lies.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... I'm convinced that the glance that made you raise your camera is where the truth lies. You can dork around in Photoshop all you want, but if you have a developed instinct the best result is going to show what made you raise the camera in the first place...

Russ, that is beautifully put.

As a matter of fact, I am going to quote it in another thread (about ethics of photo manipulation) in my answer to Ken Richmond.

[Rob C]

  all images already exist and what the photographer essentially does, when he finds an image that is worth, is to build  a "camera obscura" around it and fix the image on a photosensitive plate or a digital sensor. It's like a gold prospector.

Not so. That may be so (as I have frequently argued) in the case of so-called landscape photography, but certainly not when you think in terms of model photography or still life.

Working with people is entirely something else: you start with a minimum (if you are in luck) of two people standing there, looking at one another. What happens next is what makes you and your model either good or not good. There's nobody else to thank or to blame. You create or you fail. You do not simply erect a tripod, frame what's there and wait for the light to change or not to change before you press the button.

Rob C

[Riccardo]

Not so. That may be so (as I have frequently argued) in the case of so-called landscape photography, but certainly not when you think in terms of model photography or still life.
Rob C

You're right, of course, in the sense that these kinds of images require competences that are not specifically photographic, i.e. the ability to create a scenario and to interact with models. You must play the role of the set designer and director and, in the case of professional models, they must play the role of actors, competences that transcend the medium used.
If I look at someone who prepares a still life or who is giving instructions to a model, I can't know in advance if his intentions are to paint or to photograph the scenario that he is setting up.
If he is a painter, he will create the final image. If he's a photographer, he will capture an image that is formed automatically during the set up.
I was referring mainly to the essence and specificity of the photographic medium and to the fact that, with rare exceptions, the expressive power of the medium is generally weakened by an excess of post-production (this is not true, of course, in areas such as advertising photography).

[Rob C]

You're right, of course, in the sense that these kinds of images require competences that are not specifically photographic, i.e. the ability to create a scenario and to interact with models. You must play the role of the set designer and director and, in the case of professional models, they must play the role of actors, competences that transcend the medium used.
If I look at someone who prepares a still life or who is giving instructions to a model, I can't know in advance if his intentions are to paint or to photograph the scenario that he is setting up.
If he is a painter, he will create the final image. If he's a photographer, he will capture an image that is formed automatically during the set up.I was referring mainly to the essence and specificity of the photographic medium and to the fact that, with rare exceptions, the expressive power of the medium is generally weakened by an excess of post-production (this is not true, of course, in areas such as advertising photography).

I'm afraid you missed the point there: the play on create/capture is real but not applicable. There is nothing automatic at all about model photography nor, for that matter, about still life. If anything, it is so delicately balanced and unlikely to result in success (beyond that of technical competence) that when it does, the pleasure is palpable in the studio or in the location.

That's the whole point about creative photography: it is created, not automatic. Were this not so, anyone with the same camera and facilities could produce the same level of work. They obviously don't and can't.

Rob C

[Riccardo]

I'm afraid you missed the point there: the play on create/capture is real but not applicable. There is nothing automatic at all about model photography nor, for that matter, about still life.

That's the whole point about creative photography: it is created, not automatic. Were this not so, anyone with the same camera and facilities could produce the same level of work. They obviously don't and can't.

Rob C

Photography is always an automatic process, because the image, unlike painting, is always the result of pre-existing optical laws.
In the early days of photography no one (not even photographers) thought that it could produce images of artistic value, exactly because the process is intrinsecally automatic, regardless of whether we can build ad hoc scenarios.
Photography has imposed itself with the strenght of its own images, in spite of their automatic nature.
The charm of photography lies exactly in this balance: on the one hand it is an automatic process, on the other hand, as you rightly pointed out, not all, with the same equipment, are able to produce the same level of images, and this is also true for landscape photography, maybe the most "automatic" of photographic genres.

[David Eckels]

I'm convinced that the glance that made you raise your camera is where the truth lies. You can dork around in Photoshop all you want, but if you have a developed instinct the best result is going to show what made you raise the camera in the first place.

Now that I think about this more, of course you are right, as HCB shows. And your own work here, too. I admire him and AA and have so much to learn from your discussions. I also agree with Slobodan, this was beautifully put.

[Rob C]

Photography is always an automatic process, because the image, unlike painting, is always the result of pre-existing optical laws.

Again, no: that simply means that it operates within optical (and chemical or electronic) laws and boundaries, not that it is automatic. A painter is enchained within the bounds of his pigment, as a pencil artist by his HBs. Everything is bound by something else, but that doth not automatic make it.

You might as well claim that Chopin was on automatic, too. And he didn't even have a Korg, heaven help him.

Rob C

[Riccardo]

No, again.
Wherever you build a "camera obscura", there you'll find an image.
In the front door of my house there is a small hole and upon the internal wall I can see the image of what is in front. No one has created that image, that image exists automatically and this is the basis of the photography and is basically true for every photograph. It 's a big difference compared to Chopin, who creates a non-existent music.
In some genres, photography is already practiced in an automatic form, for example in wildlife photography, when  some cameras and photocells are placed for snapping to the passage of the animal. The photographer tries to predict where it will form a good image.
With this I don't want to say that there is no creativity in photography (I'm a photographer, after all), but that the creativity of the photographer is of a different kind respect to the creativity of a painter or a musician. The creativity of a photographer is basically to predict where and when a good image could be grabbed.
The presumption of the photographers who perceive themselves as creators of images, and not finders, leads to the absurdity of the excesses in post-production, such as Alain Briot, who does not make scruple about deleting the loop of a river in a landscape because it doesn't match his vision: in my opinion such approach is depressing and ultimately weaken photography.
In another post you said to Cjogo: "you have a great eye" and this means: you are able to see what others are unable to see, even if it is under their eyes.
Seeing is the main creative side in photography and we can see only what already exists.

[amolitor]

I disagree.

Henry Peach Robinson argues that while a photograph must be "True" it need not be "Factual". This is a quite old and conservative point of view, much photography since his time has been neither. In any case, he suggests that a picture should, essentially, be credible and believable. Whether it accurately represents a single configuration of objects present in front of the lens in a single instant (i.e. is Factual) or not, it should represent something the viewer can easily image was present. That is, it should be True. In the 150 years since then, we've seen a great deal of successful photography that's not even True in any sense HPR would recognize (cf Man Ray, etc).

A good part of Robinson's rationale is simply that emulsions of his era could not be Factual. You had to choose between Sky and Land, and so composites were used to get them both in the same frame.

To extend Robinson, it is in fact absurd to insist on Factual representations. When you imagine that you are taking a true and accurate representation of what was in front of the lens, you are kidding yourself. Your picture is, for starters, flat. It generally does not accurately render either the tones or the colors. In general, your picture can be and has been made a better picture, often a Truer picture but a less Factual one, by burning and dodging and other relatively mild manipulations (cf. Adams, etc).

To draw a line arbitrarily in the sand and say "these manipulations are ok, and these are not" is the absurdity.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

I disagree with your disagreement 

[William Walker]

I agree with you disagreement of the disagreement...

[amolitor]

I uh, dis uh, um. I like you! Also, I like peaches!

[Riccardo]

May sound strange, but I totally agree with Amolitor.
I don't want to draw a straight line in the sand.
Jerry Uelsmann and his cubic clouds, is ok: he's not  trying to cheat me.
A "straight photographer" can spend a lot of time in post-production to compensate the limits of the photographic medium, that is not able to evoke by itself, for example, the effect of brightness of a wall in full sun. Even here there is no cheating, but dedication to the medium.
A. B. claims to be a landscape photographer and deletes the loop of a river: is this immoral? no, it's pathetic.
W. E. Smith? He cheated, but he was aware and tried to keep it secret.
When I see clear and quiet skies transformed into highly dramatic skies, I do not make an ethical issue, but a depression issue.