----- Original Message ----- From: "E.R.N. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, June 17, 2005 10:44 AM Subject: Re: How to make Good Pictures (Let's Free the Captured Images)
> Shel Belinkoff wrote: > > >I don't mean tweaks, like sharpening, color > >adjustment, and the like, but changing backgrounds, focus, and major > >alterations. The rationale seemed to be that what you'd like to see as a > >final result may not always be in the scene. > > > >IMO, this type of article is a blasphemous shame, and is one of the things > >that's destroying photography and making it more about "image processing" > >than seeing and creating in the viewfinder. Now, just to be clear, there's > >nothing wrong with heavily manipulating an image, and making it into > >something other than a straight photo, but I don't really call that > >photography. I've done it myself, but I don't consider the results to be a > >photograph, and I usually make the photo with thoughts of using it as a > >basis for something else. > > > FWIW, Shel, I completely agree with your points above. > Photography is photography, and > making-another-picture-out-of-bits-and-pieces-of-photos isn't > photography, it's something else. It probably needs a name, and it too > can be a valid form of art (whatever art is -- I don't want to get into > defining it) but it is NOT photography. It's whatever-it-is that uses > photography as part of the process. With the risk of getting into a dumb "definition" argument.... If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and walks like a duck, what is it? "photographers" have been manipulating images to the same extent as today since the first picture was made. changing backgrounds, adding elements, removing elements etc has all been done in the darkroom before the advent of "digital" photography/processing. If the final result is something that includes many pieces and most of those pieces were made with a camera (and perhaps manipulated in a PC or a darkroom ) and it is printed either digitally or in a darkroom, it must be a "photograph" and the process of producing it must be "photography." Photography is an art, whether it is snapshots of your kids or street photography, journalism, nature photography or heavily manipulated collages. They are all done by "painting with light" and there are many ways of producing and interpreting said "art." Really what Shel and E. are saying is that they don't like this FORM of photography; purists that they are. Honestly, as a graphic art, I think it has a place but I don't pursue it as an art form because I'm not interested in the process. But to me, heretic that I am, it's still "photography." Christian
