Has Photoshop Spoiled Your Ability to Appreciate Great Photographs

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<p> " Seems like there is a purist rebellion springing up, Sanford. Quite the opposite of the feeling about messing around with the original that you are proposing. I can recall the comment " Photoshopped to death, " a few years or a decade back. Now we must assume all-every photo on the net- has been altered in some way from the original. Unless it is to be used in a jury trial or to document a historical event, why is that important to the art and craft of photography. My thought is that it matters not much in the scheme of things. It is a "restoration" to a product of the conceptual frame of the artist who made the photo. So how can we object to the concept of 'restoration.' Such a nicer word than ouch over baked, (which makes for dry, blackened and tasteless.)"</p>

<p>I think restoration is a polite term and it's fine with me. I just try to avoid viewing restoration projects when I can. <br>

Not sure what a purist rebellion is but I am not rebelling. I just do not need photoshop any longer. The camera has it covered to my satisfaction. The Oly has a multitude of adjustments available to give me just the photo that I am looking for. I shoot mostly B/W but if my wife wants color then I shoot color. Anyway I am going to log out and move on as I do not want to talk about photoshop any longer. I do not care about it really. Good luck with your restoration projects. </p>

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<p>I posted once three of the famous CAPA photos from Omaha Beach on Day Day on some forum that equated discussing photography with discussing Photoshop.<br>

<a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=capa+d+day+photos&client=safari&rls=en&tbm=isch&imgil=5dEvmT-Kj0Z7hM%253A%253BhXT_dPAuT8zE4M%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.skylighters.org%25252Fphotos%25252Frobertcapa.html&source=iu&pf=m&fir=5dEvmT-Kj0Z7hM%253A%252ChXT_dPAuT8zE4M%252C_&usg=__2_fy4A0KIpsvsAg9B9W34GNvung%3D&biw=1230&bih=686&ved=0CDIQyjdqFQoTCMXLj_WuhsYCFcE3rAod3gcAQQ&ei=2tN4VcX2KsHvsAXej4CIBA#imgrc=5dEvmT-Kj0Z7hM%253A%3BhXT_dPAuT8zE4M%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.skylighters.org%252Fphotos%252Fhedgehog.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.skylighters.org%252Fphotos%252Frobertcapa.html%3B449%3B300">capa d day photos</a><br>

One poster claimed these photos were poor, they were all out of focus and shaky. Undoubtedly he knew photography as perfectly sharp, color, all "imperfections" removed affair, absent any viewpoint which is subjective, like a computer writing HAMLET II to better the untidiness of the first.<br>

Well, that's what he liked. </p>

<p>Whether it's Photoshop or Stieglitz's techniques in the many Flat Iron Bldg. variations, the effects from post-processing either serve the same artistic vision that produced the raw photo or become an end in themselves and work at right angles from the photo and artistic vision that produced them - which usually sucks life out of the same. Unless the intent is Design with the photo as a starting point, but even that has coherency and the effects serve the vision behind the Design.</p>

<p>I took a very few photos of Auschwitz when there and I didn't touch them after. How can you heighten Auschwitz or have the arrogance to try? I didn't like taking them, it felt sacrilegious but it did good. A woman who was there on her first visit as much older than the girl whose family of 8 were killed there, had no money for a camera. At the end of the tour, in the famous Guard Tower under which the trains came in, she asked me if I could send her some of my few. Of course. And she posed for one shot of herself, standing near one large window, in the background far away though it can't be seen in my photo, were the ruins of the Crematoria, just like the Nazi's had left them blown up when they fled the coming Russians. After, I asked her why she had wanted a picture of herself in such a horrible place.</p>

<p>She said: "I wanted a picture of myself in front of the graves of my family."</p>

<p>For her, that spot was dear. </p>

<p>So, i'm glad I had my camera. I still look at her photo at times when I need help. I think of her simplicity and strength, that she could keep her humanity and have lived the life she did and have no anger, just immense sadness, and could finally face this place and find Peace - and her family.</p>

<p>I've strayed on my own journey from Photoshop, sorry.</p>

<p>Thanks William for sharing that woman's ability to say something beyond words with her simple words.<br>

~~<br>

Was da Vinci satisfied with the color balance of the Mona Lisa, did he declare it to himself as great and perfect? Did he ever declare it done?</p>

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Well, Wiliam, I can understand your position. It is certainly supportable within the perimeter of your values when taking photos. I admire many of Capas's work under harrowing circumstances. As I do other photojournalists and documentarians. I do not revere or pay undue homage or timidity at any sight that permits photography and especially not to the recorded image of that sight even a death camp or graveyard.

 

I will take my shoes off in a Buddhist Temple or shrine. Wear a head covering in a place of Jewish worship. Not use flash where a priest forbids it during a mass....

 

But here is where I think we part company:The photographic result belongs to me and my own sense of propriety. I will not lie via post processing, to the point where someone can say "Gerry is intellectually dishonest."I will say this about Photoshop and its like. And is not a well tuned manifesto, if such exists in the arts ...

Looking at the past and what has changed to give a similar result, what we all say is what counts, huh?.

When I shot Tr-X or Plus X or Ilford B andW and wanted a sepia or bronze print what did we need to do... You know. A bleach bath and a toner, not a big deal but a deal and more chemistry to keep fresh.

Now it is a matter, ( see ross b) to either choose the color wheel veia an art filter or- better yet,- shoot the photo in color, dupe it, then convert to monochrome and tone it on the computer to taste. Is one better than the other, of course not. . Does it expand choice and options. I think so.

 

Does it satisfy the ritual of a dark wet lab. No. What is lost, I guess the alchemy and the seclusion and the hands on in the wet..

(Just stainless tanks safelight, sometimes water cooler if hot water like here, radio turned way way way up to could it we call it a man cave. Or a woman cave, without spousal company for a change. I exaggerate,yet I suspect it serves a primal purpose and is not to be dismissed. It gives a connection to Ansel's favorite printer and his persnickety feeling about printing).. I guess as things become casual,they lose their personal touch.

I still have the Opemus II enlarger. I still have the Graflex timer, the Nikor tanks, the Kodak test wheel, and the changing bag. Two El Nikkor lenses. I keep them as I would relics of a bygone time, like a cap and ball pistol from Civil War.

 

When the revolution comes, or the power grid goes, maybe I my need them. But I have lost the skill so I am a victim of the digital world. Even as I curse this blamed machine.

 

But to answer Sanford directly and wordily, no I do not look at images with the idea of tweaking them. That would be irreverent or worse. At least presumptous. I only feel that way however about images I can look at more than one time and that have stood the test of time. Not ones submitted for real honest critique.

<p>I like colorized versions of Mathew Brady photographs as much as the originals. <a href="http://www.smithsonianmag.com/us-history/the-civil-war-now-in-living-color-19317683/">http://www.smithsonianmag.com/us-history/the-civil-war-now-in-living-color-19317683/</a></p>

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<p>I must say that my photos are as I want them and I am proud to say I shoot JPEG, touch up with PhotoScape and I do not have nor want Photoshop!</p>

<p>I have no problem with what other people prefer, but I prefer images that are minimally processed typically. It's only a matter of degree because when things look overcooked it's worse to me than an image that looks plain or bland. So no, usually I like something processed enough to look good, but still within the realm of reality.</p>

<p>"<em>Has Photoshop Spoiled Your Ability to Appreciate Great Photographs</em>"</p>

<p>Photoshop hasn't spoiled my ability to appreciate great photographs but photo websites where thousands upon thousand are images are posted daily surely has...</p>

 

<p>No. Just like a camera is a tool.</p>

<p>A photograph speaks for itself regardless.....</p>

<p>Pictures are just arrangements of marks on a surface that people interpret as a representation of something. And there are many many ways of arranging marks and making pictures.<br /><br /><br />Pictures made purely out of light sensitive substances have the property that their constituent marks have a physical connection to the subject matter they represent. Every mark in such a picture has an obligatory one to one correspondence with a specific place in the subject matter. This is a remarkable and impressive characteristic of photography as it was invented and named back in the 1830s.<br /><br /><br />Fabricating pictures in Photoshop enables picture-forming marks to be taken away, added, re-arranged, or freely modified however the Photoshop worker desires. The marks in a Photoshop picture no longer have any particular correspondence with places in original subject matter. But this facility matches exactly what people have been doing for thousands of years when they produce paintings and drawings: the marks go where the picture-maker wants, not where the subject matter says.<br /><br /><br />I appreciate great photographs as a thing apart from all other picture-making methods.<br>

I look at Photoshop pictures in a different way. I see them as paintings and drawings just done with different tools. And there's nothing wrong with paintings and drawings. Remember, virtually all of the famous treasures of Western Art are paintings and drawings of one kind or another.</p>

 

No, Photoshop has not spoiled my appreciation of good photos, but I do think Photoshop has depreciated photography. Cropping, darkening or changing paper selection are photography, any other attention is picture making. Photographs are not pictures IMHO.

<p>The thing that would have depreciated photography all these years would have been people who weren't forward-looking, people who couldn't see into a future very different from the past and present. One of the things that's significantly helped photography is a person like Stieglitz who didn't become tied even to his own vision, who first heralded and then rejected Pictorialism, who could move on from what he knew and was comfortable with, who could actually reject what was already established in order to keep breaking new ground.</p>

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<p><em>“The whole point of taking <strong>pictures</strong> is so that you don’t have to explain things with words.”</em> ―Elliott Erwitt</p>

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<p><em>“When people look at my <strong>pictures</strong> I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a line of a poem twice.”</em> ―Robert Frank</p>

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<p><em>“To consult the rules of composition before making a <strong>picture</strong> is a little like consulting the law of gravitation before going for a walk.”</em> ―Edward Weston</p>

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<p>I find myself talking very much the way Erwitt, Frank, and Weston talk about photos . . . as pictures.</p>

<p>The OP title, emphasis added: "Has Photoshop <em><strong>Spoiled</strong> </em>Your Ability to Appreciate Great Photographs"</p>

<p>Sanford's example of a photograph that for him photoshop has spoiled is "<strong><em>The Steerage</em></strong>" by Alfred Stieglitz. Spoiled is a strongly emotion laden word, and the effect of the affect is to spoil something for Sanford. Photoshop hasn't spoiled Sanford's ability to appreciate great photographs. But what has? An affective element attaches to the object, a photograph, of its own free will, enters into Sanford's perceptual field to comment on his viewing experience by offering commentary that devalues the viewed object. For example, "bad color balance in the Mona Lisa".</p>

<p>One fact I note is that Stieglitz in his "The Steerage" was documenting his own personal depression. With that photograph Stieglitz photographed what he felt. "I saw shapes related to each other. I saw a picture of shapes and underlying that the feeling I had about life." <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Steerage">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Steerage</a> ,quote in Description section. The feeling Stieglitz had about life at that time was a depressed feeling, a withdrawal of emotional value from what had been his emotional <em>values</em> as exemplified by his pictorialism. In "<strong>The Steerage</strong>" he documented his depressed feeling about life. "Although Stieglitz described "an inclining funnel" in the scene photographs and models of the ship (see below) show that this object was actually a large mast to which booms were fastened for loading and unloading cargo. One of the booms is shown at the very top of the picture." [Wikipedia same]. In other words, what was clearly a mast by his depressed feeling was transformed into "an inclining funnel". Perhaps his depressed feeling saw the inclining funnel as swallowing people.</p>

<p>Was Stieglitz's depressed feeling his muse? His muse's take on pictorialism may have been that those pictorialist products were but "lies agreed upon", as Napolian is said to have defined 'history'. Following that seminal photograph was a new direction in Stieglitz's creative life.</p>

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<p>When editting gets in the way, it ruins a shot. I view a shot within its context, I think we all have to. When I see a shot of the first Le Mans winner, I'm looking for composition and a good basic exposure. If I am viewing "National Geographic Portraiture Awards 2015" I expect to see something else, most of which is un-necessary, most of which results in a hyperrealistic con and most of which is totally missing the point. And as for cloning, bleeuuuchhh!</p>

<p>Sure, why not. When someone builds a table from scratch out of beautiful wood that wont pop unless you use some type of clear coat, stain, varnish or whatever, you have to know how to do it the right way.<br>

Reading some of the answers here shows me that so many are still ashamed of admitting they may use photoshop, while others don't know how to use it so they knock it. <br>

It goes to show that photoshop itself is an art that not many can perfect. Its not an easy program to learn, and its not just about saturation of colors and contrast.</p>