How much treatment on your pictures?

Nick said:
I saw a something on Facebook recently where people would offer up a photo they took in the finished form as well as the, untouched raw file and let the group play with it and post their edits using their workflows and techniques. I thought it looked fun and I've been wondering if there would be enough people okay with that kind of thing here on BCP to do such a thing. Whaddya think, photogs? I'm in.
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Sounds intriguing....
 
Sounds like there's enough interest in the raw editing thing. I'll start looking into setting up something for being able to upload raw files to the forum. Since they're so big, it will take some sort of special technical setup that will probably be limited to a specific sub-forum. I'll report back soon.
 
That is one thing that BCP shows, besides great photography, great post-processing and that the end results can vary dramatically based on personal preference. Also that personal preference and the philosophy embodied in the end results vary dramatically.

At the end of the day the camera mostly doesn't capture what is real because what is real is defined by your observation and the limitations of your visual acuity, color awareness and perception all laced with a great deal of subjectivity. We know that animals see in different color spectrums including some in wavelenghts we do not percieve. Paraphrasing what Randy - @IntrepidXJ has asked... I wonder if we "see" different variations of the color palette? Do we ever see the same thing, even without the foibles of the camera's sensor in the way?
 
IntrepidXJ said:
x2 I'd rather control the output of my photos than rely on the camera to automatically do it for me. It's my creativity, skill and vision that help make the final image.
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x2 for me as well. When the camera adds in its own adjustments/corrections (as it does in jpeg) you are stuck with whatever the camera decides, even if it gets it wrong. With RAW you can change whatever you want, re-edit later, correct mistakes, etc. That's also why I like Lightroom, it never changes your master file.
 
Untouched means as it comes from the camera.......photoshoping IS manipulating. A lot of photos I see posted around are more than just 'minor' touchup. They look faked and unnatural. Of course, just my opinion. Everything I post is how it came from the camera. There are a lot that like the super contrast, color saturated photos. Natural looking to one will be different to another.

To each his own.
 
Photos have been "manipulated" during the making of a print for the last 100 years or more. The making of a "straight" print, also involved the act of dodging or burning during printing, or changing the contrast grade of the paper you print on, I guess it is manipulation but it is an integral part of the process IMO.
The most famous photographers who shot in film always considered these options as part of the art of print making. We alter our digital shots in much the same way, it is just easier to do with many more options at our disposal.

If you are shooting in RAW and leaving the image as is then you are not taking advantage of what the technology has to offer. If you are shooting in JPEG then the camera decides for you.
 
We are talking about manipulating photos as in sitting down and adjusting the pic with whatever. You can nit pic and call the camera, raw or jpeg is manipulating.... whatever. There are some 'famous' photogs pics I do not like because the look fake..... a good pic to me is like what I see thru my eyes.......I don't photoshop. I have shot both raw and jpeg. Usually mostly jpeg, and no I don't have a just push the button auto shoot...if that's manipulating so be it but I am not editing the crap out of a pic. Why use a technology I have no use for and I don't like what it produces? KInda my choice.....Like I said to each his own.
 
I totally agree and see where you're coming from, and I don't mean for this to sound like I'm trying to discredit your opinion. I think the hang up is that EVERY photo in existence has been manipulated in some form, even the ones you take, so saying manipulated photos are just bad is like saying no photo is good. There literally isn't a single photo on this planet that is just a natural representation of what our eyes can see and there is not one camera that captures things just right. You could take 10 cameras and line them all up side by side and they would all record a scene in a different way - sometimes dramatically different. I mean heck, just think of what an 'untouched' photo looks like today vs. 20 or 30 years ago. Does making the technology better count as 'manipulating'? How is that different from using software to make adjustments to a photo? Why should one camera's untouched image be more accurate than another's?

By saying you don't like anything that's been manipulated, you're really just saying you don't like photos that appear to you to be manipulated. How they got that way is really irrelevant. Whether the photo was manipulated inside the camera, in plastic trays in a darkroom or by software on a computer, it's just a step in the process. Personal preference of the end result is a completely separate issue and I totally respect the opinion that many photos don't look natural. Sometimes I wonder if in 50 years from now, we'll have such good photography technology that our photos today will just look terrible.
 
I love the big differences in opinion. I agree with @Bob on the idea that a Photo's ultimate goal is to show what it looked like as you shot it. I differ in that it comes only from shooting it one way. I often look at photo's from really good photographers only to notice over-saturated images that look like cartoons. I've also noticed "straight shot" photo's (mostly my images, as I was still learning) that look totally blown out, and the contrast just looks bad, much worse than my eyes would have viewed the same thing. Like the best things in life, it's all about balance.
 
True...... 10 cameras 10 different pics probably, 10 people.......10 different pics and ways to take the pic.
Yes, I get blown out pics.......back with film, whoever remembers, I was happy if I got one really good pic out of ten taken.

Might be I just don't have the time to mess with photoshop type programs ....... :)
 
To each his own I think it the most important thought here.

I actually prefer more natural shots myself. That said, without meaning to pile on... I'd even argue no manipulation is an not an achievable goal in the sense that even the choice of lens and F-stop should be considered manipulation. Back to another lesson from my cinema teacher, the human eye has an incredibly narrow dynamic range -- much less than any camera. However, it can dilate quickly and the brain actually merges multiple images together to get what we *think* we see. Natural human HDR if you will. Same is true for the eye's focus. This leads to the unending debate of what really is real. I love the existential exercise of what Randy referenced re: if what we see is what other's see.

Ultimately I think photography should be about telling a story. If you want your story to be... "this is exactly how most people see this location" then you need to try to re-create that. But there are other stories to tell... "star trails spinning around a bunch of people drinking around a camp fire", "a scorpion's pincers in focus but nothing else", "an over-saturated face of hiker on his way to to the summit", etc. These stylized shots tell the story better IMHO.

- JG
 
Bob said:
True...... 10 cameras 10 different pics probably, 10 people.......10 different pics and ways to take the pic.
Yes, I get blown out pics.......back with film, whoever remembers, I was happy if I got one really good pic out of ten taken.

Might be I just don't have the time to mess with photoshop type programs ....... :)
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The great thing is, as long as you're happy with what you shoot then it really doesn't matter. No one has to win or be right in debates like this.
 
Nick........ so true. Good discussion on it tho..... no right or wrong.
 
When I started out taking photos I was adamantly against Photoshop, shooting only in jpeg and keeping everything straight out of the camera. Then I realized that straight out of the camera wasn't as accurate a rendition as it seems like it should be. I realized I had much more control shooting in RAW and with the colorspace on Adobe rgb, which means that my out of the camera shots are flat (as I demonstrated earlier) and I must do postprocessing. It's all about finding your eye and what you like. If others don't like your style that's their right. My comfort zone is to use single images and mainly adjust color, sharpness, and exposure. Some people like to blend multiple exposures and that's something I chose not to do, but it doesn't make my photos any more authentic than theirs. The photo is your vision of what you saw, however you choose to get there.
 
I think it's great that we all have our own style. How boring would it be if there were no variety in the way people treat their photos? Personally I do process my photos, but unless I feel like doing something a little different with a particular shot, I process my photos to look as close to natural as possible. Enhanced, but not fake. I do blend exposures occasionally when dealing with difficult conditions, but even then I try to avoid the HDR look.
 
Don't know if it has already been mentioned or not, but it really suprised me just how huge of a difference the monitor you are using can make. Long story made short, I had a chance to look at some of the pictures I have posted online on about 10 different monitors. I was semi-shocked at how awful they looked on some of the monitors, horribly over saturated and over cooked looking. While looking like I thought they should on other monitors (that is to say, looking like they did on my monitor when I developed them).

My opinion, based on the above, is that the closer the monitor used for developing is to being properly calibrated, the worse your pictures are going to look on a typical totally out of the box cheap consumer display. It seems to me, that developing on even a rudimentarily software "calibrated" monitor, and especially developing for print, you have to push the colors to get them looking good on the calibrated monitor, for print. And they end up looking garish and cartoonlike on the HP monitor from Costco that someone else is viewing them on over the 'net.

Totally disagree with the natural thing, too. There is simply no such thing, in a photograph. Never has been. Doesn't exist. If you prefer to see those that appear that way to you, that's great, so do I, but I know that they usually took quite a bit of skillful manipulation to make them appear that way, and, it truly is only an "appearance". Ansel Adams was famous for his strikingly beautiful landscape prints. He was also famous for spending literally HUNDREDS OF HOURS "manipulating" a single print in the darkroom.

I'm not skilled. I just develop mine to my liking as best I can, without spending too much time on them. Some others like them, some don't. Simple as that.

- DAA
 
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