People are free to do whatever "trips their trigger" but there are times when I personally think Photoshopping is just plain silly. One example is TTV photography.
Through The Viewfinder photography is pointing your digital (or film) camera at the waist level viewfinder in a TLR or psuedo-TLR like a Kodak Duaflex or Argus Super Seventy-Five and recording the resulting image. You get a square image with rounded corners, odd distortion around the edges and whatever texture in the form of grit or dust is inherent in the old camera's viewfinder system. Examples taken with my Pentax digital: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pixelsmithy/4149215384/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/pixelsmithy/4146636149/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/pixelsmithy/4147376607/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/pixelsmithy/4167390892/ I find the effect quite fascinating and each old camera is like a different TTV "filter" through which to see the world. Now this effect can mostly be DUPLICATED in Photoshop. One can take any image and put a mask around it to simulate the rounded cornered square format. They can throw any sort of texture over the top of the image and blur the perimeter. But all they have done is create a counterfeit of a genuine TTV image, in my view. They've missed all of the fun of the process and the use of a vintage camera to again create interesting images. Everything has been done from the chair sitting in front of their computer. I feel the same way about Photoshop recreating "lith printing". It's not lith printing if you did it in Photoshop. It's a counterfeit attempting to imitate the look of a process - one which by its very definition has a tough time making two prints from the same negative with exactly the same results. I'd say the same for imitating the looks of most of the Alternative Processes from cyanotype, to Van Dyke brown, to Salt Prints, etc. The problem with my attitude is that it's not consistent. Where do I draw the line? Because any time I convert a digital print to monochrome using the great Silver Efex Pro 2, I'm doing the same thing. I'm creating a counterfeit of an analog process that few practice today. Or if I use a cross-processing filter on a color image, I'm simulating a process that used to exist in the days of color film processing. Even if I opt to enjoy such "counterfeiting" I have to admit that the ingredient that is missing is the element of Wonder and Surprise that was an essential part of analog film and darkroom work. There is no digital equivalent to that feeling you get when you see packet of prints delivered of your last roll's images - no sense of the magic of seeing that image appear from nothing in the tray of developer. The end product may be indiscernably different to the viewer, but the process of getting there was definitely different for me as the creator. Different does not make something necessarily better or worse but something is lost (and perhaps other things are gained). Let me get another cup of coffee and then I can resume gazing at my navel... -- “The Earth is Art, The Photographer is only a Witness ” ― Yann Arthus-Bertrand, Earth from Above -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
