rblaser

<div></div>

<p>In response to Ronald, I should also add - Photoshop's help and tutorial built-in system is excellent! Part of my 'tinkering' process definitely included browsing through tips and tools in the help menu - and as Jim says, it's free!</p>

<p>Fiddle with it!<br>

I started with the book Adobe Photoshop Master Class by John Paul Caponigro - very creatively inspiring from the pictures, but please ignore the text! It's the only book I've read on Photoshop, so I can't really say whether it's better or worse than the others suggested - but it was enough to get me moving (I've owned a couple more technical 'manual' type books, but found them far too slow-moving and tedious). Mostly, I think like other skills photoshop is best learned by doing...tinker, push buttons, slide sliders, see what happens. Have fun! photoshop is awesome.</p>

I'd like to remind you too that the purpose of the photography makes a big difference. Even if we assume that the goal is 'fine art photography for gallery display,' there will be great variation across gallery types. Who do you want to appreciate your work? (consider the differences between Thomas Kincade and Marcel Duchamp, to use two very well-known non-photography examples) Clearly there is room in the gallery world for images ranging from banal technical skills to those with virtually no technique at all. I agree with your premise that a balance of the two is ideal, and specifically would posit that I see technique as necessary but not sufficient for the kind of art I would like to produce (that being different, perhaps, from the kind of art that will sell, or the kind of art that will win critical acclaim). I have increasingly less patience with photographers who see good technique as the definition of a good photograph, in large part because I agree that a monkey, or a computer, can be trained to produce a 'technically' good photo (here i will fail to expound on my suspicions about those who feel most threatened by digital technology....).

 

(random aside in which I wonder whether training a monkey to produce a technically good photograph would accomplish both sales AND critical acclaim....hmmmm....)

 

....heading off to find a monkey....

I always enjoy reading these forum threads back-to-back with similar forums on the sites of digital illustrators (for whom the use of photography in images is often considered 'cheating' by the traditionalists, leading to assurances in the galleries that 'no photography was used!'), and those of traditional painters (who often take heat for even using a photo as a reference - also considered cheating by many). Many traditional artists still consider photography of any kind to be less than true 'art.' Myself, I admire those with the talent to create an inspiring image from elements (whether those elements are paints, pixels, or photons [which certainly includes some photographers who manipulate only filters and shutter speed]) over those with technical skills and good luck. I'd certainly rather make my viewers think 'wow, that's amazing' than 'wow, you were lucky!'

 

I see no ethical responsibility to disclose technique (except, as mentioned above, in non-artistic cases such as court evidence), but neither do I see any purpose in hiding it. Every artist will have critics, for one reason or another, and I think those of any caliber can handle that.