Where to find unaltered photos?

[tholte]

"so they have no choice but to bastardise the photo afterwards." "But it just feels "purer" not to alter it." And I thought I was a neo-luddite.

[bluphoto]

I personally love shooting in Mono, more than anything else. I can't explain it, I just like it.

 

I don't believe it's possible to get a mono shot from ANY modern digital camera without some post processing (without also applying JPG compression - which in itself changes the image).

 

I'd also like to know what difference it makes whether you desaturate IN camera, or OUT of camera. I take it that the "post" in post processing refers to "post capture" and not just "post download".

 

For that matter, if it's okay to desaturate completely, is it okay to desaturate so that there's just a hint of colour left, or conversely, increase saturation slightly, or to unreaslistic levels.

 

In summary, I don't think anyone can draw a line and say before this line everything is unprocessed, and after it, all is post processed.

 

Even scanning of slides is post processing, as obviously you're going to set your scanning software up to get the best out of the image, as opposed to what is already there - dust, scratches and all!

 

For that matter, would adding an old Cokin starburst filter, with a gold/blue grad and maybe a polariser constitute a good representation of the scene as it really exists (although I concede that this would probably be considered "pre-processing") Even a UV filter to get rid of haze would fall into this category.

 

Of course, just because a modifier is fitted to a lens, doesn't mean that this is the only way you can modify reality. Imagine what a studio shot would look like with NO artificial lighting, or what a lansdcape photographer would come up with if they paid no attention to the time of day or weather conditions - all concious decisions made to produce the best image, albeit this is stretching the concept of "processing" to its limits.

 

For better or worse, Photography is an ART, meaning that it is an artistic interpretation of a scene by an ARTIST. Obviously, tools are required to produce ones art and although some art looks fantastic straight from the camera, to look at other works at this stage is to look at an unfinished piece.

 

All we have done in recent years is replace wet darkroom tools with "digital darkroom" tools.

 

Of course, in years to come, cameras will "know" how we want our pictures to turn out, and I'm certain that the Adobe DSLR built fifty years from now will essentally have Lightroom and Photoshop "built-in". Of course, with the variety of inks and papers on the market even now, there will still be choices to be made at the printing stage.

 

Lastly, I recently had a figure shoot where the model had scratched her leg the previous day while stumbling through a rose bush. The scratch does show up in some of the images, and many people (including the model) have said I should simply airbrush it out. For now I've left is where it is, but I do think it detracts from the image.

[lex_jenkins]

Tim gets thirty lashes with a wet Luddite.

[saskphotog]

Guy in a bar walks up to a woman and asks, "For one million dollars, would you sleep with me?"

 

The woman thinks for a few seconds and answers, "For a million dollars, yes, I would."

 

Guy asks, "Would you sleep with me for $25.00?"

 

The woman indignantly says, "Twenty-five bucks? What kind of a woman do you think I am?"

 

Guy says, "Well, we already established that; now we're just working on price."

 

Same thing with "altering photos". It's just a matter of how much.

[don_e]

""so they have no choice but to bastardise the photo afterwards." "But it just feels "purer" not to alter it." And I thought I was a neo-luddite."

 

Even luddites have their lunatic fringe -- yow! owee! owee! owee!

[matt_needham]

You probably want to look for photography described as photojournalism. Manipulation of reality occurs, but there are rules as to what sorts of manipulation and how much is allowable.

 

There are no rules in art. People try to impose them all the time, but artists just keep on doing whatever they like.

 

Read up on the history of photography. The debate about whether there is such a beast as a straight or unmanipulated photograph has been going on since the beginning.

 

Edward Steichen's comments from about 80 years ago...

 

"In the very beginning, when the operator controls and regulates his time of exposure, when in the dark room the developer is mixed for detail, breath, flatness or contrast, faking has been resorted to. In fact every photograph is a fake from start to finish, a purely impersonal, unmanipulated photograph being practically impossible. When all is said, it still remains entirely a matter of degree and ability."

[michael_trezzi]

Photography is an art. The art can be in a documentary type of unaltered photo, in the way the reality is pictured as well as in a manipulated photo expressing myself by emphasizing or suppressing certain feature of a picture, or both. From here it is just a small step to combine several pictures into one, into one, which better reflects what I want to say. Therefore I can hardly judge if it is good or bad, as well as I cannot judge a painter, when that his/her picture does not exactly reflect the reality - by mistake ? or intentionally ? Therefore I would rather look for unaltered photos, as Matt says, among photojournalists who want to document the reality.

[steven_moseley1]

""so they have no choice but to bastardise the photo afterwards." "But it just feels "purer" not to alter it." And I thought I was a neo-luddite"

 

...it is really amusing how so many digital diehards assume (mistakenly) anyone who dislikes horribly over processed digi prints is some kind of victorian head-in-the-sand luddite. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

 

The problem today, is so many average (at best) photos are butchered in photoshop to try and make them much better, like this is going to magically improve the central theme, or the subject matter, or the composition....

[don_e]

"All those changes are ok and I won't consider them post processing."

 

Ok, then, except for a few that are split-toned, mine are "unaltered".

[Spearhead]

<i>The problem today, is so many average (at best) photos are butchered in photoshop to try and make them much better, like this is going to magically improve the central theme, or the subject matter, or the composition....</i><p>So much worse than the old days when people couldn't do anything with their machine prints. Yes, how pathetic that they actually try to improve something on their own. Bring back automated lab prints that nobody could do anything with and the world will be a much better place.