| Author | Thread |
|
|
01/09/2005 05:42:55 PM · #51 |
Originally posted by jonpink:
But don't you edit your images? |
I knew you'd pick up on that! : )
Yes, some are edited, but what I can't demonstrate is too waht percentage they're edited. I don't heavily change the image apart from basics such as adjusting the light pollution in the St Paul's shot. The other techniques you 've listed tend to be very subtle, or noise reduction treatments. |
|
|
|
01/09/2005 05:50:29 PM · #52 |
| I am all for the NO EDIT challenge. Do not get me wrong, Im in this site for the art as well, but untill I purchase a professional photo edit program, I can only enter the NO EDIT challenge. |
|
|
|
01/09/2005 05:54:38 PM · #53 |
Originally posted by RulerZigzag:
I am all for the NO EDIT challenge. Do not get me wrong, Im in this site for the art as well, but untill I purchase a professional photo edit program, I can only enter the NO EDIT challenge. |
There are very good tool available for very little money. You don't need a "professional" photo edit program to get very good results. |
|
|
|
01/09/2005 06:01:01 PM · #54 |
Originally posted by RulerZigzag:
So untill I can shell up 100 bucks for a Neatimage or photoshop I probably am better off not entering these challenges. That is what people base critiques on. The final product. Not the original form of the photo. |
I would encourage you to enter challenges to learn. Part of learning is to practice. Think of the challenges as exercises, or drills, in the craft you want to get better at. Sometimes we get caught up in our discussions and forget the importance of the learning aspect of the site. It's easy to see how someone could get a different impression but learning is really what this site is supposed to be about, why it was started. The competitions are merely a tool to facilitate learning. No one should feel intimidated if they aren't yet accomplished with camera or photoshop, everyone here was a newbie to the site, and to digital photography, at one time. If new users get the impression that the score is more important than the learning, then the site has let them down. The competitions and the scores are what we use to motivate ourselves to keep going in the learning process, and to measure our progress. So jump right in, the water's fine.
|
|
|
|
01/09/2005 06:04:43 PM · #55 |
You don't need to buy Photoshop or spend a lot of money.
There are plenty of very capable, free or cheap options that can easily edit images as required for dpchallenge
//graphicssoft.about.com/od/freesoftware/ for a good starting point.
Photoshop provides me with a lot of features that are unavailble in many of the cheaper products, but these are used for print output in the main. For web photo finishing, most of the free options have all the features you could need.
Message edited by author 2005-01-09 18:05:43. |
|
|
|
01/09/2005 06:12:00 PM · #56 |
You don't need to buy Photoshop or spend a lot of money.
There are plenty of very capable, free or cheap options that can easily edit images as required for dpchallenge
Yes I agree. Maybe Im being a little pessimistic because of all the amazing photo's I have seen on this site and am feeling a little discouraged. I will eventually purchase a good editing program. Untill then...I am a basic member on this site. I love this site. It is amazing. COOLHAR, you are right. In due time Ill learn. |
|
|
|
01/09/2005 06:25:37 PM · #57 |
Originally posted by Imagineer:
Originally posted by jonpink:
But don't you edit your images? |
I knew you'd pick up on that! : )
|
You know me too well now :D
|
|
|
|
01/09/2005 06:40:15 PM · #58 |
Talking of editing proggys ...
I just got sent this link which looks like it may well be worth checking out for anyone without a decent editing package.
I have not tried it though, so can't comment on how good/bad it might be, but it looks promising.
//www.eecs.wsu.edu/paint.net/
|
|
|
|
01/09/2005 07:12:44 PM · #59 |
Originally posted by Gordon:
I would say very little. I think the craft of Photography, particularly digital photography is 50% camera, 50% post processing. If you choose to focus on only half of the skills required, then your images suffer. Certainly on an image by image basis the emphasis on camera or processing skills varies. However, my claim is that both are equally important in general. To ignore one or think the other 'kills the art' is mostly ignorant of the history and current practice of photography. |
If you started with a fairly full knowledge of photoshop and far less of camera, and now have progressed to where you think they are of approximate equal importance, then perhaps time will bring you to a perspective closer to what imagineer calls the "purist". Personally, I'd like my focus to be about 25% on the editing part at the max, preferably less.
Originally posted by Gordon:
I just happened to approach it from the post processing side first. I place probably more emphasis on the camera skills than most for a while. The fact that I'm better educated in the post processing aspects just makes it clearer to me how much more I have to learn. If you look at my more popular images, you'll see ones with almost no Photoshop work, yet many instantly think they are created digitally. |
Without looking at your portfolio two images come to mind here, your painting with light entry and the one where you zoomed with the shutter open, Neon wasn't it? Both scored very well, you say neither was heavily processed, but I could argue that neither are "purist", neither has the look called natural at the beginning of this thread. Please don't take it the wrong way but, to me, they are digital art ("Eye Candy" if you will), having popular appeal acheived thru gimmickry rather than traditional techniques.
Originally posted by Gordon:
Until you master both sides, your images will not reach their potential. Art is something that might start round about the time you master the basics like lighting, camera controls or photoshop - not before. (And yes - these are the basics- the fundamentals of photography, using a camera and making a good print - it doesn't get simpler)
The problems occur when you start using skill in one area to prop up or hide a lack of skill in the other. This is particularly common, when people talk about 'fixing' a bad image in Photoshop. You can make it better perhaps, but it is always worse than if it was a good image in the first place. The entry level Photography magazines further perpetuate this myth as well. But this is also true when people who haven't bothered to master the post processing aspects try to deride it as 'cheating' rather than trying to understand what is commonly achieved. On DPC we see many examples of bad, unsubtle, heavy handed use of digital processing and as a result threads like these occur pointing out the terrible damage Photoshop does to photography.
Yet we also see many examples of poor camera skills, bad composition, horrible lighting - perhaps more focus should be applied there ? Does bad lighting and poor camera skills kill the art in some ways ? |
I'll leave it to others to decide when or if my work ever approaches art. I don't think I'll ever be able to "master" all the aspects of digital photography. I have already pretty much decided that I will let pros do the pringing part for me. And also hope I can avoid a lot of the marketing part. I think the problem occurs when people who have invested time in learning photoshop skills (and those who aspire to learn them) have a condescending attitude towards the people who have choosen not to develope those skills, and view them as some how behind in learning digital photography. Doesn't Adobe advertise pretty heavily in those photography magazines you speak of?
The other problem is that we have moved away from our original area of concentration, digital photography, and towards digital art with it's greater emphasis on editing and manipulation. When we added the Advanced Rules about a year ago we were told that this would not occur, or, at least, not very much. But it has, and in my opinion, way too much. We need to get back to more emphasis on teaching the truer, more basic digital photography skills, and let the other sites that specialize more in that area take care of teaching the so-called advanced editing techniques. And we need to do a much better job of teaching new users to address the stated emphasis of the site in their voting. We are neglect in that area.
|
|
|
|
01/09/2005 07:28:16 PM · #60 |
Originally posted by coolhar:
Please don't take it the wrong way but, to me, they are digital art ("Eye Candy" if you will), having popular appeal acheived thru gimmickry rather than traditional techniques. |
I don't take it the wrong way, but it just convinces me more that you are misguided in your understanding of 'digtal art' or 'natural photography' as both were taken using traditional camera techniques. You mention basic photographic skills - panning is one of those. Creative use of light is one of those. You appear to consider both digital art or eye candy.
I'm left confused by what you think natural or traditional means. The landscape work of Ansel Adams would fall under your current definition of digital trickery and eye candy. (in his most famous image, he turned a white sky to black for example) Anything that uses camera techniques creatively is also digital trickery and eye candy. I'd assume just about anything shot on velvia would be unnatural and not purist photography either, so that excludes 99% of the landscape pictures taken. I'd assume anything using a large format camera with the various movements and adjustments to change scale (e.g., David Muench's classic landscape images) would be trickery and not real photography either. Most of the more interesting sports photographs use very high shutter speed to freeze action or use slower speed to pan or blur their subjects. Ends up looking like not much photography is photography when you get down the list.
I'm also a long way from mastery or artistry, just in case you misread or misunderstood what I said. I've spent many years studying and teaching image processing to learn just how little I know and how much more there is to understand.
Message edited by author 2005-01-09 19:55:55. |
|
|
|
01/09/2005 07:28:37 PM · #61 |
Harvey, are you saying that a picture such as "Fantasia" is "eye-candy" because of the method by which it was achieved? IMO that is just plain ridiculous. Wouldn't it be perfectly normal for a film photographer to experiment with light, long exposures, stuff like that, which is how that picture was done? Film photographers don't just sit there trying to make everything look "natural". That's silly. That's like saying to a sketcher, "You can draw all you want, but only with HB pencils - the rest are not natural." OK, so that's not the best analogy.
What's this "look of natural" anyway?
|
|
|
|
01/09/2005 07:38:44 PM · #62 |
Originally posted by coolhar:
Without looking at your portfolio two images come to mind here, your painting with light entry and the one where you zoomed with the shutter open, Neon wasn't it? Both scored very well, you say neither was heavily processed, but I could argue that neither are "purist", neither has the look called natural at the beginning of this thread. Please don't take it the wrong way but, to me, they are digital art ("Eye Candy" if you will), having popular appeal acheived thru gimmickry rather than traditional techniques.
|
harvey, i apologize in advance if i misinterpret your point here. i guess i am just confused as to what you mean by natural and purist, especially when associated with in camera techniques. the reason i dont understand is this: earlier this year i had two of my most basic pieces (peek and by the sea) in an exhibition in an art gallery. not far from my stuff, was the work of a photographer who was chosen for her amazing painting with light work. she was strictly a film photographer, never having touched digital. we spoke a bit, she was surprised at the quality of my digital prints--and i was amazed that such gorgeous work could be done with film. i guess my point is that i fail to see how you see gordon's painting with light piece as digital art, when it is apparently a tried and true tradition in film--even so far as to make it into a 'purist' art museum. |
|
|
|
01/09/2005 08:28:44 PM · #63 |
Can anyone check one of my small photo collections and determine which ones were tampered with, and which are straight from my Memory Stick ?
|
|
|
|
01/09/2005 08:30:11 PM · #64 |
|
|
|
01/09/2005 08:42:09 PM · #65 |
Originally posted by Gordon:
I don't take it the wrong way, but it just convinces me more that you are misguided in your understanding of 'digtal art' or 'natural photography' as both were taken using traditional camera techniques. You mention basic photographic skills - panning is one of those. Creative use of light is one of those. You appear to consider both digital art or eye candy. |
Just because we don't agree on the definition of the terms we use does not make me any more misguided than you are. I am trying to keep this on a level above that of personal attack. You invited readers to look at your pictures and I told you my impression of a couple of them.
Originally posted by Gordon:
I'm left confused by what you think natural or traditional means. The landscape work of Ansel Adams would fall under your current definition of digital trickery and eye candy. Anything that uses camera techniques creatively is also digital trickery and eye candy. I'd assume just about anything shot on velvia would be unnatural and not purist photography either, so that excludes 99% of the landscape pictures taken. ... |
Maybe this will help. By natural, I tend to mean that which tries to achieve a reproduction of what was in front of the lens at the time the shutter was opened. What the photographer's eye saw, not his mental vision of what it could be made to look like. In a way of speaking, I value what nature's vision higher than a man's. Maybe someone else can say it better than me.
Neither of the images I am thinking of were seeable by a human eye, except perhaps over time under manipulated conditions, but we don't see like that. (I'm talking about the one where you "painted with light" lines leading to the end of a paint brush, and the one where you zoomed your lens while the shutter was open picturing a sign on the roof of a restaurant.)
Unless I am mistaken Velvia reproduces what is in front of the lens in very vivid colors, which may be possible to see in the right light conditions, etc. Maybe Velvia strays from a strict definition of totally natural but not by much.
Who said you had to use photoshop to produce eye candy? Did Adobe trademark the term? If eye candy were only available with the heavy use of editing software there would be none in the Basic Rules challenges, but there is.
What is your definition of eye candy?
IMHO, Ansel Adams is irrelevant to this discussion. I don't go to that church.
|
|
|
|
01/09/2005 08:42:12 PM · #66 |
Originally posted by RulerZigzag:
Can anyone check one of my small photo collections and determine which ones were tampered with, and which are straight from my Memory Stick ? |
Edge of NYC, Kill Bill, Stare, Goethals and After the Rainstorm look fairly unedited. The rest seem to have at least some degree of color editing, unless they were shot in B/W mode on the camera. I could be very wrong. After the Rainstorm may have had some raised saturation levels or the camera possibly could be set for high saturation. |
|
|
|
01/09/2005 08:44:32 PM · #67 |
Originally posted by coolhar:
Neither of the images I am thinking of were seeable by a human eye,
|
You just never took the right drugs dude. |
|
|
|
01/09/2005 08:53:56 PM · #68 |
| thanks nsbca, for taking time to look. I was puzzled by your opinion. But your opinion does prove my point. After the Rainstorm was untouched. Normal Sat. set on my camera. The rest all had color editing. I think my edit program does not help my photos at all. |
|
|
|
01/09/2005 08:55:44 PM · #69 |
| seeable?? Not in my dictionary |
|
|
|
01/09/2005 09:07:32 PM · #70 |
I must confess that I am at a disadvantage when people start comparing things done in film. I have only a modest film experience and it is about three decades in the past. The terms I use are intended to be relating to digital photography, and pretty much in the dpc context.
ursala- would you call that one natural? And if so, please help us by sharing your thoughts on the definition.
Alecia- to me, whether an outcome can be produced from film isn't very important in determining it's definition, or it's value. Just as the woman in the show was ignorant of what you could do with your digicam I am ignorant about film. Sorry, but I just don't know much about film.
|
|
|
|
01/09/2005 09:15:40 PM · #71 |
Originally posted by nsbca7:
You just never took the right drugs dude. |
You mean I missed some?
Thanks for lightening this thread a bit, I got a chuckle out of that remark.
|
|
|
|
01/09/2005 09:27:14 PM · #72 |
Didn't you ever scrunch up your eyes to create a star-filter effect, or pull your eyelids to create weird shapes and multiple images?
What can be "seen by the human eye" can have a broad or narrow definition. If you wanted to be strictly "natural," you'd have to shoot everything with a fixed 50mm lens ... no IR filter or polarizers, surely no telephotos, no microscopes, no underwater housings or shots from space -- none of these can be observed by the unaided eye.
Ultimately there's no right or wrong here ... people should take photos they like with equipment and techniques they can afford, and be willing to accept that some people won't like them. Compliments are really nice, but to me, one of the best comments might be "I don't like this, but you did it well." |
|
|
|
01/09/2005 09:28:07 PM · #73 |
Originally posted by coolhar:
ursala- would you call that one natural? And if so, please help us by sharing your thoughts on the definition.
|
Do you mean, do I call "Fantasia" natural? I don't know. If I understand what you're saying, a "natural" picture for you is something that could be seen by the eye? And, since Fantasia is a time exposure, it wouldn't work for that definition, right?
I guess I don't think about pictures in that way. I don't think of them as natural or not, and even though I try to think about the idea behind a picture, the emotion that goes with the picture, usually I just enjoy them for their sense of beauty. Does that make sense to you?
If I were forced to define "natural picture" what comes to mind is people and NeatImage. And here I'm doing a reverse definition by saying what I think a "natural picture" is not. A young, beautiful girl with her skin all plastified from NI would be "not natural". Sort of like Kosmik's example,
This, on the other hand, would be "natural" to me (even though it is a relatively long exposure, and has movement):
But, as I started out saying, that is NOT the way I think about pictures.
Hope this helps :) |
|
|
|
01/09/2005 09:29:25 PM · #74 |
Originally posted by coolhar:
Originally posted by nsbca7:
You just never took the right drugs dude. |
You mean I missed some?
Thanks for lightening this thread a bit, I got a chuckle out of that remark. |
I've never taken drugs, yet I can see all sorts of stuff in my imagination :) |
|
|
|
01/09/2005 09:36:54 PM · #75 |
Originally posted by coolhar:
Alecia- to me, whether an outcome can be produced from film isn't very important in determining it's definition, or it's value. Just as the woman in the show was ignorant of what you could do with your digicam I am ignorant about film. Sorry, but I just don't know much about film. |
i mentioned film specifically because you said *digital art and eye candy* in the same sentence. i assumed that you meant if it wasn't digital, then you must mean film--and i was speaking of in-camera techniques v/s editing of any sort. i suppose i see where you are coming from in the naturalist point of view, but i also find that a bit confining...limiting our world to what is literally right in front of our faces, and giving no credit to the infinite possibilities of imagination. and anyway, just because you can't specifically see it, doesn't mean it isn't real--they did eventually figure out that crazy idea that the world isn't flat, afterall. ;) |
|
