This post is just a way for me to think about why I like the photographers I like and to see what insights I may find because of it. Read at your own peril.
Ben Long: Ben Long is a San Francisco photographer with a host of videos on lynda.com. He discusses cameras, software, technique, and how to view images, all without ever talking down to you. Throughout, he is humorous (well, he has my sense of humor, so who knows!), informative, clear thinking, supportive, and just plain nice. If I ever meet him, I’m going to tell him so. I have been shooting and teaching photography in some form or other for most of my life (damn I’m old!) and yet he gives me insights I had never considered before. Out of all the people on this list, I have to say he is the one that got me inspired to explore digital and come back to photography. Although we have never met, thank you Ben for all you have done for me. Justin Reznick: Justin Reznick works with landscapes (what I am most interested in), architecture and even infrared images, working out of Seattle Washington. Like Ben Long, he has great videos available on lynda.com so take some time and see what makes him one of my favorites. IshP: I found the work of Ish while searching for Fuji photographers. Her work includes street and urban photography, architectural studies, documentary and even a few images just for fun. She got into digital work around the time I was thinking of leaving photography altogether and found, as I did much later, there is a great big learning curve to get over. We both came to the same conclusion… digital SLR’s are just too bulky, heavy, and unwieldy. Digital cameras also have the unfortunate habit of having multiple menus that are irritating and rarely make things easier. I like my Fuji mirrorless... what can I say? Valerie Jardin: After settling on purchasing the Fuji X-T1, I decided I had to explore what others were doing with the system. Valerie was the first photographer I found that explained why she chose the Fuji system and how she used it to her advantage. Her images often surprise me, especially since I have never really embraced street photography in the past. She makes me think, and that is far more important to me than technical specs or software gimmicks. Karen Hutton: I found the work of Karen Hutton through YouTube of all places. She was in a video with Valerie Jardin and complimented her style with her own color work, which got me interested in color photography to begin with. It’s amazing what new paths you can find when you aren’t even looking! The second half of the list in the next post!
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I bought my first amateur digital camera sometime in the 2000s (I have no idea exactly when) to take pictures of vacations and our family growing up through the years. These weren't images that I planned on reproducing in 20 by 30 inch print size for hanging on a wall. They were for personal memories and would never get printed larger than 4x6. I chose digital because it was easy... no having to process film then go in a darkroom and print all night.
After some time, I realized once I shot those images, I was looking at them on a monitor -- not just negatives that I never got around to printing, but the positive digital images I could see immediately on the camera and computer. This was a big change for me. I had a load of negatives that I had never actually seen because they had never been printed on paper, but digital allowed me to see my work right away. That in and of itself was miraculous! I found I could create little slide shows for the family, add these digital images to invites and family emails, edit in a comfortable room with no chemical smell. And not once did I have to create an actual print. What?!? No print?!? I can hear you all silently screaming. This was a significant, and at the same time, uncomfortable revelation to me. Not in my wildest dreams did I think I would give up printing -- I mean, wasn't that the whole point of photography? It was disconcerting to think that all those years of printing could so easily be discarded. And although I like to see prints and turn pages in a book or portfolio, I see no need to go through the process of creating prints just because that is something I like to do. I have come to realize the point of photography is not so much the printing of images as it is the sharing of images. We share ideas, we share moments, we share ourselves, and that can easily be done without an actual print. The images we create can be presented in many ways, through social media, through a website, via email attachment or text. It may be digital, but it's sharing nonetheless. My life, all our lives, have become more and more digital and less and less analogue. I do not get a newspaper... I read news off of my phone. I do read books... but more and more that is becoming digital as well. Sure, if I wanted to, I could create prints of almost any size since I shoot RAW files, but do I really need to do this in order to share an idea, to make a statement, to share an emotion? Nope. When you create images for printing, you have to change your parameters, your way of thinking. The image on the screen is emitting light from that screen, so has a very different look from a print that reflects light off paper. You have to worry about lost detail in the shadows, image contrast, how ink will reproduce your work, and a host of other elements that create issues when you try to create a physical print. For the most part, people see my images on a screen, so I make those images the way I want them to look on that screen. That is my canvas. Will I print photos again? Probably so, but I don't see any pressing need at the moment. I am not interested in selling my images, I don't have so much empty wall space that I need to fill it up with prints, and I am honestly happy with the way my images are presented on screen. You may think that a photograph isn't a photograph without the print, but I would argue that if anything can be the embodiment of "light-drawing", it would be the one made out of light... in other words, the screen image. Oh the horror I hear you cry, oh the fists I see raised in my general direction. I feel your pain... I really do. It's hard for me to even write that I'm not printing, but still consider myself a photographer. I spent half my life learning chemical processes and acquiring the skills needed to successfully reproduce my negatives in print form. But I had to get to a point where I was able to let go of my beloved darkroom, my film, my paper. It was just getting harder and harder to find the products I used, find darkroom space to work in, and keep the passion going as digital took over. I applaud any who are jumping into traditional print photography... it makes me happy to know there will be a new batch of image makers that will stun the future with their work. But for me, in my new reality, the reflections of a print are of a bygone day... the incident light of the computer screen is now my home. And since I've spent half my life in one direction, I think it's high time I try a new one. Photography has gone through quite a few changes in the last quarter of a century.
Back in 1992 I was teaching black and white photography at a community college. That means darkrooms, chemistry, and film for those that can't remember a time without the Internet. Back then, there were digital contraptions we laughed at because of their bulkiness, their expense, and the horrid images they produced. No way was digital even approaching what chemical photography could do. And we were right... at least in 1992. Jump five years to 1997 and there were now little digital cameras that we still laughed at because of their expense and the amateur images they produced. It would take decades before digital could be used for professional work... or so we thought. Jump just another five years to 2002. Who was laughing now? By this time, professional cameras like the Nikon D100 and the Canon EOS 1D were out and film was losing ground... and fast. These cameras were more than adequate to handle professional work, and did. By 2005... not even five years later... I saw the writing on the wall, slammed my head on that wall, and left both teaching and photography for a long time. Digital had taken over and I was not prepared for that change. For me, the magic of seeing a print appear from a blank sheet of paper was gone, turned into ones and zeros and a mess of digital gibberish. I could not see myself making students spending long hours in a darkroom when digital was obviously the future. Change for those entrenched in chemistry and film was slow, and it was time to let go. All of that said, I never hated digital imaging. It had, and still has, a lot of advantages to traditional film and chemical photography. There was no standing around bored as you processed film, no long hours in the dark printing, no chemical smell on your clothes when you got home. Slide presentations could now be created quickly and professionally with software -- gone were the days of tedious hours creating title slides for presentations that had to be shown on a screen in an unlit room. The greatest advantage to digital, at least with how I see the world, is its ability to show a visual representation of how people think, what goes through their mind, what kinds of things interest them. Because of the long hours it took to create images chemically, many images just didn't see the light of day. With the advent of the digital imaging and the vehicle of the Internet, it is now possible to see hundreds of images by the same person, and that allows us to see into that photographers mind and their view of reality. The ease of which one can create a photographic image to communicate with has great power, and this has allowed digital imaging to become one of the most interesting ways to see how a society reflects upon itself. But I also began to realize something more personal was going on. There was a shift on how I worked with my images, something that I would have never given up when I shot film, but now find somewhat redundant. But I'll get to that in the next post. By now you may have noticed I am more interested in why we do what we do rather than in the technical aspects of how we do what we do. There are a lot of places you can go on the Internet that have explanations of software and technique, but far fewer discussions on the meanings behind our images. This might be because writing a step-by-step process, although sometimes tedious, is not necessarily difficult. You have a starting point, a direction, a goal to complete. I know... I've written them before.
Once we need to discuss how we feel about something, things get murky and more personal. Think about the last time someone asked you why you shot in black and white, or why you shot that dead bird or crack in the wall (after 30 years, my wife still asks me that). Not so easy to come up with an answer, is it? How do you explain how you feel, how you experience? Our images hint towards our innermost sentiments and how we think the world works. They are not to be taken lightly, and as such, can be difficult to explain. Our assumptions about the world move us towards making certain kinds of images, and our feelings change how that world appears. To communicate photographically, we need to see how these assumptions change our images in the process. If I am uncomfortable (let's say its really cold outside while I'm trying to take a landscape shot), I tend to rush so I can get somewhere warm, and end up with less than stellar results. That in turn gets me upset, and things just go from bad to worse. But if I'm wearing a warmer coat and the cold isn't affecting me as much, I tend to enjoy what I'm doing and the exact same scene ends up as a magical moment. My perception of cold altered my view and in turn altered my photography. How do we control our perceptions in such a way as to not color our world? In short, we don't. We will always perceive the world is some fashion... that's what makes our images different from all the other images out there. If we didn't view the world differently, we would see nothing but the exact same portrait angles, the same snowscapes, the same product shots. Sure, sometimes it does feel we are seeing the same images again and again (especially in the age of "look what I'm eating today"), but for the most part we really do see some amazing images out there. And if we look at their backstory, the reasoning behind making the images, we realize they are a view into the mind of the photographer that created them. The problem, as I see it, is the number of images taking up our precious time. Social media -- advertising on multiple cable channels -- the ease of which images may be produced -- all have contributed to our need to walk away from studying what we are looking at. We look at an image for a split second, decide if it is worth our time, then walk away. This isn't really new, of course. I read somewhere that the average time someone looks at a painting in a museum is something under 30 seconds. For some viewers, that might be a generous estimate. Because we are all rushing about, we miss a great deal of the communication going on around us. By slowing down our viewing time, we can connect with the photographer and see how their mind works, how their perceptions color the world. A photograph is not to be viewed in a moment just because it was captured in a moment. Thought and emotion was put into its creation, and those qualities can be transmitted to the viewer if they take the time to let it happen. So what do we do when we take the time to look? We could, for instance, consider the compositional features of a photograph, but I find I tend to stop at that if I don't like what I see. The way I compose an image may not be the way another photographer does, and that jars with my sense of reality, so I ignore everything else. Instead, I would suggest thinking about what emotional responses we have to an image, and by an image, I mean ANY image. We often do not realize we are having a response to an image unless it is something like "oh that's a beautiful landscape / portrait / wedding shot (insert whatever image you happen to really like here)". If the image is something other than that, something we don't get an immediate response to, we fail to realize there is an emotion there, just not as strong or obvious. By taking some time to focus on our emotional response, we can lead ourselves down a path towards appreciating the art we see. That crack in the wall might be a statement of the decay of society; the dead bird becomes a view into the fragility of life; clouds become wild horses, the play of light and shadow the mysteries of things yet to come. Take time to perceive the world through another's eyes. You may be surprised at what you find. If you are a photojournalist, you are concerned with conveying the message that what you photograph is a real event and happening in the moment. Adding crowds at a rally to make it seem more populist or changing the relative position of items in an image would be unacceptable, but minor color corrections would probably not be a problem (unless the color cast is an integral part of the scene). Wedding or product photographers, on the other hand, have a lot more freedom to move and edit items as necessary, as long as it supports their clients needs.
Things start getting a little trickier when photographing landscapes or working with street photography. It isn't photojournalism, per se, so would some editing be acceptable or is any editing too much editing? To answer this question, we need to think about how editing will affect the final presentation of the image. What exactly are we trying to communicate with our photograph? Are we there to accentuate the scene or record it faithfully? The colors of a sunset on a snowcapped mountainside may not need color enhancement as the whole point is to see the amazing view that the photographer recorded. But what if there was a heavy shadow with a cold blue color cast that detracted from the scene? If a viewer's eye keeps going to the shadow and not the mountain, should it be color corrected? What if a tree was distracting? If removing it completely would strengthen the composition, is that be acceptable? Although many may disagree, if I am at a location to communicate what I experienced, and that experience doesn't include a cold blue cast or a distracting tree, then I can guarantee I'll be busy color correcting and removing distractions from my images! I am there to experience, and I want the viewer to experience the same. My objective isn't faithfulness to reality, but faithfulness to the feelings and emotions I had when viewing the scene. In the end, a two-dimensional image is never real, even if you are a photojournalist. The very act of positioning your camera at a certain angle or at a specific place and time will change the meaning of the image, however unintentional. But it is understood that photojournalists are taking images of events that shape history, be they war or political rally, and by their very nature should be photographed as neutrally as possible on their part. A wedding, the landscape, a street view, however important, do not have that constraint. If editing is necessary to convey the experience, the image will be edited. How much editing is acceptable is really up to the photographer, since it is their image in the first place, and the viewer, because their opinion on the matter may decide if they find the image acceptable. I am not a photojournalist so I have no problems editing an image, as long as I am creating the qualities and emotions I'm trying to convey in that image. Painters add or subtract whatever they need, modify their color palette for effect or completely ignored reality in their attempts to imagine the abstract through their art. There is no reason to think photography can't do the same and it is high time photographers realize the freedom they have to do so. Even so, I do not heavily edit my images by adding a more interesting sky or shifting colors dramatically. It just isn't in me to do so. But that doesn't mean it isn't in you. To edit or not to edit, that is the question. Well, maybe not the only question, but it is a fair question to ask.
Unlike most media, photography is perceived as being a record of reality, and as such, should not be messed with. Many photographers believe their images are untouchable and editing somehow removes the immediacy and reality of the image. And I get that. The reason I love photography is because I feel I'm somehow capturing reality on film... or on a digital media card, as the case may be! Traditionally, photography has been very different from the other arts. A painter, for instance, can decide to ignore an object if it doesn't fit the composition or the idea they are trying to convey. Sculptors create from a block of material, many times without anything to go by. Michelangelo is credited with saying: "Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it." I wish I had great quotes like that! A photographer, at least from the days of film, was limited by what they saw and could capture on film. They had some options as to color bias or even removing color altogether by shooting in black and white, but the scene itself was what it was. Burning and dodging areas was acceptable since it was difficult to record the great contrast ranges of the natural environment, but it was a herculean task to remove a distracting branch or fill in a blank space in the sky with a cloud. When artists like Ansel Adams began created majestic views of the landscape, seemingly pristine and unspoiled, the idea of editing became more and more frowned upon. It just wasn't done. With the advent of digital imaging, it became possible to edit to an extraordinary degree. Movies became special effects wonders (sometimes to the detriment of the story line); photographs could be manipulated to show long dead celebrities in contemporary settings (sometimes to the detriment of history); objects were removed or replaced, lighting effects changed, colors manipulated to show sunsets where there had been none. In many ways, editing is seen as something done for drama but not for "real" images, as it makes them more and more disconnected from the reality associated with the taking of a photograph. So the question is one of degree -- It isn't if we should edit, but how much editing is acceptable. It boils down to understanding what are we doing when we edit an image. For various technical reasons, digital images need sharpening and color balancing. Most would accept this as needed editing since the technology requires it to faithfully record a scene. But what of specific types of photography? What editing is acceptable in these instances? In Part 2, I try to answer this question! I was browsing the Internet, as one seems to do when bored, and found a site for Michael Kenna. He is known for his very long photographic exposures when creating his amazing silver gelatin images — no digital for him! Visiting his site reminded me of a young man, just starting to explore photography, who took a leap of faith and enrolled in a workshop with both Michael Kenna and the much missed Ray McSavaney. Damn, that was a long time ago!
I looked at his work (like "Ten Balloons, Albuquerque, New Mexico"), which got me thinking of my old work, why I first fell in love with the photographic process and why I am still passionate about black and white photography in the era of digital imaging. The memories were so strong, I actually took the time to send an email to him, letting him know how much that workshop inspired me and helped make me the man I am today. And you know what? He responded! I was floored. He spoke of his love of photography and that he was at that moment on the top of a mountain in China waiting for the late afternoon light. Now that's impressive. It seems to me this is what photography is about... the passion of vision, the meaning behind the act. In my mind I see the play of light and shadow, white birch trees standing out from a darkened wood, the texture of a stone filled landscape, the diffused light streaming down the mountainside. And I sing. May the late afternoon light of China sing to you. Composition: the act of combining parts or elements to form a whole.
Gestalt: a pattern with specific properties that cannot be derived from the summation of its component parts. I've written before about "the other", and I wanted to link this concept to photographic composition. As you can see above, I've added some definitions that I found online that I think need a little explaining. Composition is pretty straightforward, mostly about bringing things together. Photographically, we speak of composing elements in a scene to create an image. Gestalt is a little more obscure. The word comes from a German word for shape or form, but was also used to describe a type of psychology that got mistranslated enough times to make it difficult to define properly. The way I am using the word is based on bringing things together, so it seems appropriate. There is also a phrase associated with gestalt that is often mistranslated as "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts". A better translation would be "the whole is other than the sum of its parts". Greater implies something better, and that is not always true. Other also implies something else has happened when things are brought together, and this is how I tend to use the word. It ties in well with the concept of "the other". So what does all this have to do with photographers composing images? Glad you asked. Whenever we compose, we are looking for patterns in the things we see. We search for something that unifies a scene in a way that pleases the eye or makes a statement. But how is something unified? Is it something we impose on a scene that is related to human perception? If so, is it not really there? Is the rule of thirds a myth or the use of leading lines something viewed only by the human observer? Or could there be something more, something other than the flowing river, the green landscape, the textured rocks? I believe the answer is a little of both. There is something imposed by human perception, while at the same time there is something other than what the individual parts of a scene seem to suggest. We as humans impose our views all the time. When I say we impose our views, I'm speaking photographically. We all have ways of seeing the world and tend to create images that support that view. I'm not big into mountains and hills and other large bumps in the landscape, but I love green foliage and flowing water. I also like human constructs, especially the old and ruined kind. So what do you see in my images? Not mountains, but towering skyscrapers and dilapidated structures. Not desert, but verdant trees and river rapids. You may see the hustle and bustle of the city, the interaction of people celebrating their lives, the complex studio set up of a product or model. These are the elements we compose with because this is what we are predisposed to see. I remember when I was young we moved to a two story house that had a single window looking out towards a big snow topped mountain in the distance. I would stand on a stool and look out that window for what seemed like hours, just enchanted by the view. I could see nothing else. My parents, on the other hand, were worried that their little son was looking out a bathroom window. When I pointed out the mountain (remember it was really big!), they were shocked that they hadn't noticed it before (you know... the mountain... that was really big). Their perception, their composition of that view, did not include the distant mountain (the really big one), however big it happened to be (did I mention it was big?). They saw the backyard, the street, and the electrical wires above, but no mountain. As a young boy, I had lived in a very flat land before moving to this house, and a mountain was something new and fresh and wondrous to experience. I was ready for something new, and that mountain was it. I was predisposed to view the other, while my parents saw what they expected to see. The way we view the world determines how we arrange its elements. We look at a scene; we impose what we think the scene should look like; we never really see. By removing distracting elements to concentrate on what we expect to see, we focus our attention on what we want to look at. How many times have you photographed your family while traveling, only to realize later they are so tiny in the image they're barely recognizable. You distinctly remember them being prominent in that image, so what happened? You looked at what was important to you, not at what was there, and it affected your composition. Instead of combining the disparate parts of the image so they related to each other, you lost them in the blend. When we compose, we need to arrange the parts of the scene in such a way as to create a sense of structure. Each part, although remaining a separate entity, must also connect with all the other parts to create a unified whole. The image must transcend its bits and pieces and become something other than what we are looking at. This is the other we want to see and experience — that elusive something that isn't easily defined nor readily categorized and placed into a nice simple box. This is the difference between a driver's license picture and Steve McCurry's "Afghan Girl" or Edward Weston's "Pepper No. 30" and an add in a grocery store. The other is what sets images apart — the photographs we keep coming back to time and again. Art critics write extensively on these images, vainly trying to explain the unexplainable -- the passion, the flow, the gestalt of a work. They try to show there is something greater in the artwork when what they really experience is the other. I have never found an image that is truly greater than reality, but have found many images that are other than reality, that move me and make me feel a connection. When we photograph, we engage ourselves in the moment, we concentrate on bringing out the other in our work, and in so doing, stop taking photographs and start making them. What’s Interesting? That is a good question, especially when we go out with our camera and start creating images. What is interesting depends on so many factors. We are passionate about certain things — travel, family, landscapes, composition, color, emotion — the list is endless. So how do we decide what we should shoot?
We could consider traveling to exotic locales to see the rare or the unusual… always seeking something to capture the imagination, to see the other. Or we might find ourselves at home, fascinated by the falling leaves and the pattern they make on the snow covered ground, seeing the other right in our backyard. In the studio, we could arrange the model or the product just so, creating a path for the eye to follow, making the subject stand out, be different, be the other. I keep using that term, “the other”, but what is it? Oftentimes, we walk around in a kind of haze — everything around us is common, the same, not the other. We are stuck in a rut of looking at the expected, and the expected becomes boring. We’ve been there, done that, so what’s the point of photographing it? *Sigh* I’m getting bored just writing this. I quite often find myself in a state of ennui, a feeling of listlessness, of dissatisfaction, what Buddhists might call Dukkha. I have a sense of unsatisfactoriness, where things are not quite right, and unfortunately, this leads to being disconnected with the moment I find myself in. Somehow I expect to go out and find that magic image, that thing that I can capture that makes the day worthwhile. When I don’t find it, I think my time is wasted, and that is one horrible feeling. We all do this at some point… we can’t find a challenge or a spark or a moment of insight, and we just stop, close down, become disappointed that nothing is going on. The reality is, everything is going on, 24 hours a day, all week, all year. We just don’t notice most of it. Our expectations get in the way of our seeing. There is a cloud in front of us, a fog of doubt or fear that makes us demand something interest us. When we go out to create an image, whether that is in the studio, on the street, or in the middle of the desert, something — anything — must pop up and amaze us with its photographic possibilities. The world doesn’t work that way. It isn’t there to pop up and astound us with its beauty, its rarity, its uniqueness. It’s up to us to see the world as it is — to see the beauty in a fallen leaf, to find the rarity in the eyes of a smiling child, to realize the world itself is one freakin’ unique place. I have been playing around with my iPhone recently… you might have noticed I now have a “Smartphone” folder with a few images in it. I was sitting in my back yard, night had fallen, and I could see the clouds moving swiftly in the sky. I thought, what the hell, and popped out the camera phone and started shooting. Needless to say, images were dark and difficult to see, but there was something there. At the time, I couldn’t tell what, but I was intrigued. The next day, I looked at those images, but was still unsure of what I was looking at. What the hell WAS I looking at? Dark images of clouds. Really? Was I just pretending that I shot something interesting? Was I just fooling myself, thinking that if I shot it, there must be something meaningful there? I couldn't tell what was going on or why I was playing with my damn phone. I had to get to a point where I was letting go of what I expected to see, let go of how I was supposed to create images... and that was one hard step. I remembered that you could modify images in the iPhone — lighten them, change colors to prearranged settings, crop and change angles. Well, I said to myself, these are ‘just’ iPhone images… they have no importance, so might as well alter them to my hearts content. Notice what happened there… I decided that if an image had no importance I could experiment and rip it to shreds and nothing would be lost. How wrong I was — not that something could be lost — but that the images had no importance. ALL images have importance… we just don’t see it and so disregard this importance, ignore the images, throw them away. But what I found was those simple editing settings enhanced what I knew was there instinctively… images that made a statement, communicated, were important. It didn’t matter that I was letting software make these edits… what techniques you end up using aren't the important bit. It’s the journey itself, the journey of discovery that makes life interesting. So “the other” isn’t a specific place or an important event, it isn't a masterful studio setup, a hard learned technique or purchased software driven automation… it’s the magic of realizing that each moment in time is different from another, and this difference is meaningful. Instead of trying to seek out and capture somewhere else, some other way, something totally different from what we are used to, instead of getting bogged down or depressed or stuck in the common events of our lives, we need to realize these events are unique to our perception, and the simplest things, a rose recently planted, the aisles in a grocery store, the dog just sitting there, are all important in their own way. If we start seeing the world as unique, each moment becomes unique, and that opens up the possibility of communicating that moment in our images in our own unique way. There is no such thing as a photograph that is real. Every image is just that… an image, not the reality. It is a representation, a likeness, a reflection on reality. Why do I harp on something that is so obvious? Because, apparently, it isn’t so obvious.
Time and again we hear photographers say how they did not “manipulate” their photograph, as if somehow that makes it more real. Aside from the obvious — light emitting from a computer or reflecting off a print is not the real tree or person or building you took a photograph of — the choices you make before you press the shutter have already altered reality. It doesn’t matter if you choose a lens that has the precise field of view your eyes have or shoot only RAW images, it isn’t a faithful record of what’s in front of you. The image you see on your camera screen is a JPEG interpretation of the ones and zeros that make up the RAW file so you can have an idea of what your final result may be. If you shoot JPEG instead of RAW, the camera processes the image depending on the software in the camera, giving you even less control than with a RAW file. And what of your camera choice in the first place? If you choose a camera that has an ISO range of 200 to 12500, that has already limited your choices. And which ISO setting most faithfully records the scene? What lens doesn’t alter the view by its very design, its glass coatings, its number of elements? What about white balance settings or choice of f/stop and shutter speed? All of these choices have changed reality in some way — there is no “true” rendition of reality to find. Don’t think that it was somehow “better” before digital photography either. Our choice of film brand and film speed, the chemistry we chose to process the film, the paper we chose to print on, all of these choices had effects on the final interpretation of the image. The only difference is digital imaging gives us more ways to interpret and remove ourselves so much more from what we perceive as reality. Ultimately, we make these choices because of the way we see the world. The issue is not that we alter and manipulate our images. Every choice we make does that. The question is how much manipulation we find acceptable to create the final image. The digital file is only a starting point, one that is interpreted by the photographer and colored by their view of the world. Those choices create the final image, long before a scene is even considered photographic. |
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