New Requirements to Photographic Skill

[kinell]

Compared with earlier days, there have been a couple of important changes in the way pictures are taken.

<p>

- Exposure: We can correct exposure at least +/- 1 stop without problem, it's not so important anymore to hit it

perfectly when taking a picture<br>

- Selection: Without additional cost, we can takes 100's of pictures of the same subject and choose the very

best at home. A well thought selection in the field is not critical anymore<br>

- Framing: We have resolutions of 12+ MP. Framing in the field is not so important anymore. It suffices to

have a frame in mind and crop in at home with all the time in the world.<br>

- Timing: With cameras coming up that have video capability at full resolution (!), timing doesn't matter that

much anymore. Just pick the best 1/24 of a second at home.<br>

<br>

All this seems to indicate an enormous shift in requirements from skills in field techniques to post-processing

skills.

<p>

Is the future differentiation between the good and the bad photographer going to happen in front of the PC? How

is it going to affect quality (I expect a further dramatic raise)?

<p>

Please note that the basic skills are still the same. An action photographer for example must pick the very best

fraction of a second. It's just that in near future, he will be able to do so at home.

[petemillis]

What about artistic vision? The camera still can't give someone artistic vision. Whatever the advances, the camera is still some dumb piece of machinery and has no real intelligence or imagination.

[tonmestrom]

Andreas, you're merely being sarcastic. But OK I'll bite,

 

"it's not so important anymore to hit it perfectly when taking a picture"

aprt from the fact that it's always important it's even more important now due to the fact that a sensor reacts very differently to light than a negative does. If you screw up on exposure you've got some leeway sure but you've got to compromise as well. That will show even faster with digital than on negative.

 

"A well thought selection in the field is not critical anymore" any dumbass can get lucky sometimes but it's consistency that marks a photographer rather than a haphazard way of working

 

"Framing in the field is not so important anymore. It suffices to have a frame in mind and crop in at home with all the time in the world"

see the above answer

 

"With cameras coming up that have video capability at full resolution (!), timing doesn't matter that much anymore. Just pick the best 1/24 of a second at home"

life is never that easy

 

As for the rest, I think Pete said it all

[garydem]

sorry strongly disagree.

 

just because we now have a pc does absolve us from shooting properly in the field. nor should it be taken that the user can shoot any old way in the field and do not worry photoshop fixes all.

 

i shoot jpeg all the time. this is after shooting slides for 32yrs. with jpegs or slides the headroom is the same: zero. you overexpose a slide or a jpeg the detail is gone or blown and there is no getting it back.

in the field there should still be the effort to get the properly exposed and composed image. i do this all the time. for me, i simply donot adjust the exposure wb or crop with pp. there is no need to; it was done right when i shot. i spend the time and effort and care composing my image in the field so that there is no need to crop later. this also gives me the full use of all the pixels in my dslr. i am not cropping or throwing out any. i am getting and using what i paid for. what is the sense of buying a 10mp dslr and cropping away 4mps. you now have a 6mp shot, which in a 6mp camera is what you get is you shoot right and pay attention to the composition.

on a trip to nigara falls i shot 190 pics. of them zero were of bad exposure and none needed cropping in any way. what was done was to shoot multiple images images of some scenes. varying the zoom amount or changing lenses or switching between landscape and portrait or moving position slightly. of the group i would keep 1 or 2 and delete the rest. i ended up with about 90 well exposed images that were correct in wb and composed correctly. all 90 ended up on my hard drv. printed about 12.

for me if i come back to the pc and find any that are not right. there is only one person to blame, me. and frankly i will not settle for that level of incompetant performace. i go into the field with my dslr i expect to use all my skil and knowledge of photography along with whatever care time and effort needed to get the good shots. if someone comes back to the pc and find they have to spend all the next day making the pics right, that simply means that they did not do a good workmanlike job in the field with camera. there are far to many users who with the digital camera feel that all they have to do is push the shutter button, and no matter how bad the pic comes out photoshop will fix all. even if the user spends 3 hrs a picture doing the fixing. with my current workflow in the pp software it takes me about 45 seconds a picture, assuming that all my steps are used. mostly all steps are not used and i am done with pp in maybe 20seconds a shot.

 

to a response by someone that the user with great pp skills is now saying yes i don't have to know what i am doing in the field with a dslr my photoshop skills are great. fine. but how much better would the final image be if the image file brought to the pc was very good to start with? long ago a phrase was made about computers which was " garbage in garbage out". i think the same thing applys to digital photography; if you start with bringing the the pp software a image that is already very good then the resultant final image may be great. this cannot be true if the incoming image was barely shot right and has flaws, there is only so much the user can do to save it. the user cannot end up with the great image. a good one yes, but not great.

 

if someone thinks that the images you see in magazines and national geo were done in photoshop, and the original image was sloppily done you are dreaming. those images were shot very good to excellent to start with. by someone with the full set of field skills with a camera and puts the time care and effort into the image to make it great long before it ever saw photoshop.

 

my view. gary

[Lou_Meluso]

Hi Andreas: While I agree newer imaging tools not only add capability and versitility that result in different opportunities and workflows, I'm going to disagree on the basic premise you site.

 

Exposure- Precision exposure control and adjustment has been around a very long time pre-digital.

 

Selection- Motor drives have been around for almost as long as SLR's

 

Framing- Medium and large format cameras have had this advantage for decades

 

Timing- Same for high resolution video and film cameras

 

Basicly, these things are equipment-based changes that have nothing to do with image making skill, experience or esthetic sensibility. Naturally, camera makers would just love you to believe otherwise and for the most part, much of the general population tends to buy into it. As serious image makers, we know better.

 

Is the future differentiation between the good and the bad photographer going to happen in front of the PC? How is it going to affect quality (I expect a further dramatic raise)?

 

I'm not sure I know what you mean by quality here, but, all the new technology means is that more people have access to it so more images crowd the mix. New technology or old, the differentation between good and bad photographer will still be seperated by those that work harder,have greater discipline, relate to their subjects on an emotional level, seek to learn more about art and themselves and sharpen their own curiosity about the world. The new technology represents a very nice, very capable hammer used to drive the same old nail.

[saskphotog]

Your original description of "changes" is just wrong. All "photographic skills" are still required.

[Ed_Ingold]

Another "Photoshop vs Photography" thread, reciting all the hackneyed misconceptions. How edifying.

 

It's still important to frame in the camera and to choose the right moment. I recall tripling each group shot with film in the sincere hope that all the eyes would be open in at least one. In other words, it's still important to get it right.

 

Post processing for weddings and events is straightforward - if you get it right up front. It consists of triage, touch up on exposures (usually 1/2 stop or less), assembling and printing proofs (or burning a CD/DVD). Before editing I back up all the RAW images to DVD and finish by backing up all the edits and print files. Lightroom rules!

[kinell]

Pete: In my opinion, artistic vision is going to stand out more, as technical limitations and compromises

diminish. To demonstrate that on the example I made regarding timing: An artist with great vision will be able to

select the very best frame from a sequence during post-processing while a 100 years ago he would have been

limited to a single frame and possibly would have missed the perfect one.<br>

Imagine also a photographer with a great eye but bad math skills in the age before built-in light meters. Clearly

he has a better opportunity to choose the perfect exposure now than he had earlier.

<p>

Les Sarile: No I have not applied any skillful post-processing to those portraits. I can't really judge how

skillful I am with PS. Having learned a lot during the last two years, I realize I still have a long way to go.

Also, I'm in my second year of photographing. One portrait was taken several years before I even had a DSLR, the

other shortly BEFORE I realized there was anything else than full-auto mode :-)<br>

This however has nothing to do with the point I'm making regarding shift of requirements.

[kinell]

Ton Mestrom: I'm not being sarcastic. I will pick out one point you mentioned: cropping. You might call me a

dumbass getting lucky but with the following picture, I had exactly the frame in mind as it appears now. However,

sitting in a safari vehicle, I had mounted the tripod on the roof firmly and was forced to shoot the image

horizontally. I knew I was going to make a vertical crop, but I simply didn't have the time to remount the camera

and thus had empty space on the left side of it before post-processing.

 

http://www.photo.net/photo/7615794

[kinell]

Gary: you dismiss the opportunity to correct expose but take advantage of another benefit I mentioned: Selection.

Out of 190 shots, you keep 12.

<p>

You ask yourself:<br>

"but how much better would the final image be if the image file brought to the pc was very good to start with?"

<br>

I never said that the picture to start with should be bad. But imagine an exposure that on a scale of 1 to 100 is

about 97% perfect. That means you missed by just a little. PS lets you adjust exposure such that it is 100% perfect.

<p>

To support my point, the following picture. It's actually pretty rare to see a Gray Seal eating on the water

surface. I had very little time to take this action shot and underexposed. Even though the picture is still not a

technical masterpiece, I managed to turn it into a decent exposure with clearly visible subjects.<br>

http://www.photo.net/photo/7738606

[kinell]

Louis and Larry: I cite myself:<br>

"Please note that the basic skills are still the same."

<p>

I also believe that you still need the same photographic skills as before. I just think that the ratio how they

are applied in post-processing and in the field is going to shift in favor of post-processing.

<p>

New gadgets and hardware is not going to make a good photographer out of a bad one. But the good one will be able

to take more advantage of the tools he has.

<p>

Also, Louis, I did not mention the changes explicitly in relation with digital versus analog photography. I

merely compared to "earlier times". For the sake of the discussion, let's say we compare the last 40 years to the

time before.

[eric merrill]

Andreas:

 

Correcting exposure after the fact has been the case for quite a

white. Can do the same in the traditional darkroom, as well. A

straight Adam Ansels print is pretty boring. His remarkable images

were made in the darkroom.

 

I'm sure the view camera users said the same thing about selection and

indiscriminate shooting about the 35mm users. :)

 

To crop or not to crop has always been an option. That's nothing new.

Shoot medium format and crop whichever 24mmx36mm section you want.

 

The timing point also sounds like something view cameras users would

say about 35mm. Just shoot away at a blazing couple frames per second

and capture everything.

 

 

Eric

[kinell]

Edward: Thank you! Without knowing, you made the perfect point:<br>

"I recall tripling each group shot with film in the sincere hope that all the eyes would be open in at least one"

<p>

If you could take a video with 12MP resolution 24 pictures per second, just go home and pick EXACTLY that frame

where ALL eyes are open. How is that not an advantage in post processing?

[kinell]

Eric: see my answer to Louis: I did not make an explicit relation to digital versus analog. I am talking about a

tendency, a shift in requirements. As stated, for the sake of the discussion we could very well look at the last

40 years.

 

However, digital photography HAS taking post-processing to the next level. Simply because many steps such as

cropping are so much easier now.

[frank uhlig]

And after taking 100 shots of one scene, chances are that all of them are trite and useless. For probability's sake you need to take at least 1 million shots randomly to get at least one usable one.

 

So, as you go rattle off those million shots, don't you tire? How many days will it take a monkey to finish the job? How long will you search the pic pile to find that one beauty?

(I just sat through a 1000 pics of a foreign country 2 hours presentation, where maybe 5 pics were worth seeing, the rest just click-click-click garbage.)

 

And in reality, seldom are more than 3 shots needed if, if you have an eye and know your technique etc. Sounds like cluster bombing/mining a whole town to find one suspect person ...

 

BAAAAD ideas, sir! Enjoy your bad pics, then; all the millions ...

[tonmestrom]

Andreas,

 

OK, so you were not being sarcastic. I stand corrected. As far as cropping is concerned I have nothing against it but there is a difference between working carefully at the time of exposure or merely shooting haphazardly and see afterwards what you can do with it.

 

"An artist with great vision will be able to select the very best frame from a sequence during post-processing while a 100 years ago he would have been limited to a single frame and possibly would have missed the perfect one"

 

While basically true an artist with great vision is more likely to master his craft and apply that to pursue and express his vision. That's somewhat different from what you seem to imply.

 

The basic truths still are still in place and while technology has given us a lot more it's still a requirement that it has to be mastered in order to get good results. It hasn't gotten any easier, just different.

[kinell]

Frank: It seems to me you are forgetting action photography here. I'm not talking about bad photographers getting lucky in the way of the monkey writing a Shakespeare piece. I rather refer to good photographers being able to push their quality to the max using fairly new post-processing tools.

<p>

The following picture is not an action shot, but it was taken in the middle of the night. I tried to make the sculpture stand out by using a weak flash many times all around the sculpture. It is at least a 30 second exposure. Unfortunately, somehow the light went on just to the right of the sculpture, in the building behind it. In any case, I remember having taken maybe 30 to 40 pictures of the scene in order to get the feel for framing and exposure. To me, it was a nice experiment. No way I could have gotten anywhere close without instant feedback or only 1 shot.

<p>

http://www.photo.net/photo/7153172

[kinell]

Ton Mestrom: Rather than sarcastic, I want to be somewhat provocative, in order to get a nice discussion going :-)

<p>

<i>"While basically true an artist with great vision is more likely to master his craft and apply that to pursue and

express his vision"</i><br>

I think I see your point. You imply that an artist with great vision is automatically better at other stuff too.

Like mastering his craft. You connect talent with the ability to pursue a goal and work harder than others. OK,

this could or could not be true, I would probably agree.

<p>

<i>"It hasn't gotten any easier, just different."</i><br>

You nailed it! That, to me, is a shift in requirements!

[garydem]

a k-

you said i shot 190 and kept 12. wrong, try rereading. shot 190 dumped 100 not because they were bad in any way but the compostion was better in the rest. and printed 12. all 190 were done right in the field in terms of exposure and wb. repeat all 190 were done right inthe field with the exposure and wb.

 

in your example you said 97% right and pp can fix the the other 3%. not good enough. rpt not good enough. with today's digital cameras and their metering systems there is no excuse for not getting the basic exposure right in the camera. when i shoot i expect to get 100% exposed right, and am very upset with myself if i have any less that that 100% performance. to me there is no reason not to expect a properly exposed pic. all that is required is to put the effort time care and skill and knowledge into the shot when taken.

 

i repeat what i said in above reply. there are far to many users who think that all they have to do with a camera is to push the shutter button a 1000 times a day and somewhere in that 1000 will be a good photo. all that is then required is to spend many days cropping and pping the 1000 to get the 10 shots that are worthwhile. sorry, i prefer to take 50 shots that are properly composed and exposed and then keep all 50 and print the 10. that is the same 10 the other guy took a 1000 to get. that is not just sloppy it is the fact the guy didn't know what he was doing in the first place in the field with camera. he wasted a lot time taking the unneeded 950 shots and then far more time fixing them in the pc. when all that was needed was to take them right in the first place.

 

if you for a second think that the pics that appear in national geo are done sloppily in the field then built in the pc, think again. those guys are shooting superb pics then working with that already good or great shot.

 

to get the really good shots you have to be fairly competant in the field with the camera. this is necessary to give the pp software a proper well shot image to work from.

[tonmestrom]

"You imply that an artist with great vision is automatically better at other stuff too"

 

Andreas, you're twisting words. An artist is considered an artist because he has mastered his craft and expresses a coherent vision.

[photobiscuits]

Not sure what you're getting at here. I'm reading what we already know, and that is that things can be fixed up in pp. Nothing new or especially revealing if I am reading your statements correctly. All of this was possible long before photoshop.<br>

Sure, if you took 30 or 40 pictures of a rock in a pond, and at some point an unwanted light turned on, you could combine one of the pictures without the light with one of the pictures with the light and have...a rock in a pond. In pp you could even selectively expose the rock to be lighter, or more saturated, or clearer (the list goes on and on) than the background. This is nothing new, you could do all of this in the wet darkroom. And still all you have is a rock in a pond.<br>

Yes the 'requirements' with digital are different than the requirements with film. But imo if you are looking to make silk purses, why waste time photographing pig ears? Get it right in camera and keep the time on the computer to a minimum.<br>

I guess it depends on your own style, if you like to machine gun with your camera and sort through the carnage later go nuts, I see nothing wrong with that approach either as long as you enjoy the massive amount of computer time.

[kinell]

>> "You imply that an artist with great vision is automatically better at other stuff too" <p>

> "An artist is considered an artist because he has mastered his craft and expresses a coherent vision."<p>

Ton: I see no contradiction here. I also believe that by definition an artist has mastered his craft - that is,

he is automatically better than just a guy with talent but nothing more. Else he wouldn't be an artist. As I

said, I think I agree with your statement.

[kinell]

Gary: In my opinion your argument misses some logic. Consider this:<p>

I never said it got easier now, or people could be sloppier. But:<br>

You say you prefer to take 50 pictures and keep all 50. Ok, so after twenty sessions, you will have 1000

pictures. Now, why shouldn't you select the top 20 pictures out of those 1000?<p>

By doing so, you do the exact same thing: You select 20 out of 1000. And guess what: On average, those 20 will be

better than the rest!<p>

What does that show us? You still have the same level of quality in the field, but now you also have to show your

capability to select the very best 20 out of 1000 after the shooting. Thus, the requirements have shifted

somewhat towards post-processing even for you.

[Ed_Ingold]

An hour of 4K video (12 mp/frame) occupies several terabytes of disk space. Nonetheless it is very likely that high-definition video will replace still photography for sports, news and possibly events in the near. The Olympics are a perfect example - practically every still shot close to the action was extracted from video. You can shoot a lot of clips, typically 10-15 seconds, in an hour's worth of tape (more likely, P2 memory and/or wireless feeds). Red One has introduced such a camera, or will do so shortly.

[kinell]

Mike: "Not sure what you're getting at here"

<p>

My point: The more technical help we get from great hardware, the more focus lies on the artistic virtue of the

photographer.

<p>

My second point: This artistic virtue can now be applied in post-processing more than ever before.

<p>

To prove my point, let's play the following mind game:<br>

We all know that a photograph taken at the same spot with the same camera model still varies greatly between

different photographers. This fact shows us, that every image contains some of the personal interpretation of the

photographer taking the picture. The application of that interpretation is made in the field.<br>

Now let's make an experiment and mount a camera on a tripod, take a picture of a scenery from a specific spot and

give the very same picture to 10 photographers, requesting them to crop it. Most likely, the crops are going to

look quite different.<br>

By doing this experiment, we have shifted the integration of the personal vision from the field to the

post-processing.

<p>

Cropping has been done forever, you say. So let's add a new dimension to the experiment and instead of only

taking a single shot, we take a 60 second high-res movie of an animal and ask the photographers to pick a

specific frame. Here you go, it's new and it's a shift from the field to the post-processing!