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11/21/2014 08:34:05 PM · #1 |
...but it's pretty clear that if you don't have the PS chops, you don't have a freakin chance. Started off in a challenge with a high 6s score, now barely scraping past 6.
Just further proof imnsho that DPC never was about photography. It's all about the pp. It doesn't matter how good your concept is, or how solid your lighting and photography skillz. If you don't have a whole shitload of pp skills under your belt, you may as well be dead in the water. No. As a matter of fact, you ARE dead in the water.
And I am fucking sick of being dead in the water.
And as a mature woman who is essentially autistic, and finds the learning of even so-called basic pp skills to be akin to climbing Mount Everest without several oxygen tanks and ropes....yet I know my photography has improved tremendously over the years. Coming second in Best of 2013 with a score just shy of 7.5 proves that I can fucking shoot.
But now, as challenge entries continue to shrink, what does it matter? As the number of entrants per challenge diminishes the more the emphasis is placed and put on those whose pp skills are all that matters.
So. In all likelihood, as I near my 48th birthday, I will simply bow out of here and be no more. Oh I can and will continue to shoot - having about $8k sunk into gear and software over the years, I'm not gonna waste it.
But just don't expect to see much more of it here.
That is all. |
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11/21/2014 08:41:54 PM · #2 |
Chin up!
Look at your scores of the last hundred entries (I didn't go further). All but 4-5 of them beat your average.
It's all a golf game... beat your handicap and you win.
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11/21/2014 09:14:00 PM · #3 |
| Lydia's right - you have some pretty darn good stats. You have four 6s in your last ten, three of those are top tens AND top ten percenters. Two of those are 6.7+ scores; the last time I had one of those was February, and before that - 2012. Granted, comparing to me is worthless, as I can't photoshop either, but just thought I'd let you know that in MY eyes, you're kickin' some serious butt. |
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11/21/2014 09:16:28 PM · #4 |
Originally posted by Lydia:
It's all a golf game... beat your handicap and you win. |
 Interesting you would pick that analogy ... this is my one ribbon-winner in 1400+ entries, and any score of 4.8 or above will raise my overall average, so I guess I can empathize but not exactly sympathize with  snaffles ...
For me, it's about the challenge (in my case often just to find something to shoot I haven't already entered) and the community, not the score ...
I will be happy to help (anyone) with any post-processing questions, though I mostly use older and simpler software and techniques. |
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11/21/2014 09:23:18 PM · #5 |
What's more important to you? Creating photographs that you're happy with? Or impressing an audience that you're convinced has their priorities backwards (I don't entirely disagree)? With a couple special exceptions, nothing I've entered over the past several years has gone farther than my RAW editor for processing. I don't even own Photoshop. Yet I'm building a body of work that I'm not only happy with but happy to share. A few people here get it, and that's enough for me.
(My son is also "essentially autistic." I understand.)
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11/21/2014 09:29:12 PM · #6 |
What is this "photo shop" you speak of?
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11/21/2014 09:55:20 PM · #7 |
Originally posted by Yo_Spiff:
What is this "photo shop" you speak of? |
The grown-up version of your paint shop, I suspect :-)
But surely you can't in any meaningful way separate "photography" from "post-processing", Susan. It's all part of the process from vision to image. Your own particular form of image-making is not deficient on the PP front, you just do a much more subdued decorating job than the usual DPC ribbon-winner. So what?  bvy hit the nail on the head. Why hang your expectations on a task you're not comfortable with? Be proud of what you are, and keep sharing it. Anyway, you have 3 stars in your last 10 challenges. I have ONE :-)
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11/21/2014 10:02:44 PM · #8 |
Originally posted by Bear_Music:
The grown-up version of your paint shop, I suspect :-) |
Grog like fingur paneting.
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11/22/2014 04:22:20 AM · #9 |
Originally posted by bvy:
What's more important to you? Creating photographs that you're happy with? Or impressing an audience that you're convinced has their priorities backwards (I don't entirely disagree)? With a couple special exceptions, nothing I've entered over the past several years has gone farther than my RAW editor for processing. I don't even own Photoshop. Yet I'm building a body of work that I'm not only happy with but happy to share. A few people here get it, and that's enough for me.
(My son is also "essentially autistic." I understand.) |
What Brian said - please yourself rather than trying to please the masses, relax and enjoy your own work.
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11/22/2014 07:18:48 AM · #10 |
I'm happier when I get cooments from people i admire and respect here then when i ribbon. I'm happier when i get posthumous or other respectable blings hehe
I am happy when i share images from places that i am thankful i can visit and others can not...
After 500+ challenges ribbons don't matter
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11/22/2014 07:20:14 AM · #11 |
Precisely what the site needs are people who have their own vision, those who won't "learn" to do it like everyone else. There is no "one correct way" -your own personal experiences and sense of humor would be missed.
Message edited by author 2014-11-22 07:21:00. |
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11/22/2014 07:32:31 AM · #12 |
I recognize your words and thoughts. Your sentiments about DPC have been transiently mine from time to timeâ€Â¦especially on days with interminably long, dark nights and cloudy, snowy, windy days. The medical people in my family immediately diagnose my malaise and melancholy as Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). I'm not saying anything about your condition, because I don't know you and it's none of my business.
DPC remains a pretty good photography site. But, for a while now, the Photoshop painting fad has been running rampant. Let the fad run its inevitable course and stay committed to improving your photography skills, which are already substantial.
When we shoot in RAW format, the resulting image is, by definition, flat, dull, undersaturated, unsharp and low in contrast. A certain amount of post processing is necessary to bring a RAW image up to a compelling, attractive status. (You already know this!) You don't need a bloated Photoshop for this. Lightroom or Aperture, with Nik Software plugins allows you to produce eye-pleasing images.
Stay true to yourself and do what pleases you. For, at the end of the day, nothing else matters. |
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11/22/2014 10:08:44 AM · #13 |
I'm not sure I get what you're griping about Susan. This sounds like a diatribe from some newbie who's only ever been on FB or flickr, who hasn't reaped the benefits of hard work and the help of this community. I've "grown up" as a photog here with you in the past eight years......yah, and I'm still a proud member of Team Suck, but certainly you remember the thrills we used to get when we broke 6.0. Your crowning piece on your profile page is a 7.4xxx, and garnered a red ribbon in the best of 2013. That shot is what you're all about, in my mind. How much PS did you use on that one, huh? Who the heck is ever going to get a shot like that???? Yeah, Judi, but she's also a photog/horse jock like you.
Things is, you're just not going to see the bar being raised on yourself the way you did at the beginning because you now ARE that good photog that you had hoped to be! For God's sake, woman, what do you want!!!! LOL!!!
Relax and enjoy the fact that you know very damn well what you're doing with your camera in your world, and that when you go for the shot, you *get* it, and on so many levels. There will always be folks that can do things that you can't, but then look at what you *can* do, and do damn well!
Quitcherbitchin', you'll give the n00bs a complex if they think a photog of your caliber isn't happy with herself's skills.
Love ya!
ETA: Whazzis????
Message edited by author 2014-11-22 10:17:53.
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11/22/2014 07:59:41 PM · #14 |
Thanks so much to everyone who answered. I went AWOL for a whole day (spent some of it shooting horses) and when I logged in this evening didn't see this thread up. So I thought SC had chosen to not post it.
Anyway...I do want to stay true to myself and my subjects. I just find it incredibly ironic that the images that I enter in FS and Best of's do better than those in the much smaller challenges - I honestly figured my current entry for a TT if not better, but seeing other peeps' flexing their pp muscles - which will show in the top 3 - just really gets under my skin.
I have Asperger's syndrome, so that means I have to learn things in a very specific way, or things won't stick. I can't just watch an online tut, go home and replicate what I've just watched. Most online tuts work off the assumption that you already have a certain amount of pp knowledge. Hell, I have PS CS5 for Dummies, and find the book so badly written (at least for me) that I can't follow what I'm supposed to do. So I get frustrated and end up resorting to old tricks, instead of learning new ones, because I have trouble grasping the new unless it's very clearly laid out.
I figure that I need a PS tutor, but can't afford one.
But in the meantime I'll just continue to muddle along.
Thanks all again for your kindness and support.
Susan |
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11/22/2014 10:18:42 PM · #15 |
It's the opposite for me. I always do MUCH worse in "best ofs" and and free studies. I think it's because REAL photography... not dependent on processing skills... always wins out... without regard to anyone's learning styles or difficulties.
I need to learn to shoot my images clean... so they work straight out of the camera... and not need to process them so much.
If I would learn that, I'd take MUCH less time processing my clients' images and could take more and process less... and make more money.
REAL photography is the way to go. It used to be done... before we had so much technology. I know it's done much more easily WITH digital technology. It's a matter of learning our CAMERA... not our PROCESSING.
Do I LOVE messing around with Photoshop? Yeah. I do. *sigh*
But... not on every zit... on every face... ad nauseum.
Yet... it's money. |
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11/23/2014 05:09:50 AM · #16 |
Yes DPC is a photography site, but it's not really about photographs. At least for most participants.
That's not necessarily a bad thing. Certainly it's not a perverse thing. Most participants are committed photography enthusiasts, and are really more interested in their own photography than in other people's photographs, or in photographs at all. Witness the regular 'How do I get this look?' forum threads, and the 'In the style of' challenges. Given the enthusiasm for being photographers, and the desire to get better at it (better meaning more acclaimed, more popular), it's understandable. It's reasonable.
'Stunning!'
But to stun is to render insensible.
Awfully glad this is a rant thread. |
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11/23/2014 06:49:43 AM · #17 |
It's a digital photography site, and all the better for having snaffles in it.
Between the shutter action of a digital camera and the arrival of a picture in screen is post processing.
That processing is always to some extent taken care of by the in-camera software, after which further processing is your choice.
The learning process embraced by Grog's cave chums - burning and staining walls and seeing what looks good - seems to me to be the better way to treat pp. Keep trying stuff, flex your muscles on new tricks if you can, then do what you want.
Running Bear has spoken, which is odd, really, because bears don't really run and they certainly never speak. |
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11/23/2014 10:55:58 AM · #18 |
Originally posted by ubique:
But to stun is to render insensible. |
Where's that like button?
I always try to remember that winning on this site is about popular appeal and just a good photo will not necessarily hit that. I often enter stuff seeking strong appeal for a narrow crowd, and expecting to get slammed by everyone else.
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11/23/2014 12:48:42 PM · #19 |
To me it seems like minimal editing challenges would satisfy what you're asking for. They are a level playing field, for the most part (some cameras have more settings than others...)
Personally I use PS on most things I shoot, but most of my photos try to be something other than a 100% literal portrayal of the scene in front of the camera as viewed by the naked eye.
Most of the time I would be able to get fairly close to the end result I want by manipulating in-camera settings, but not all the time.
As far as broad appeal, I can't judge that worth a damn - if I enter something I'm thrilled to have created it's usually a crapshoot between it getting low 4's and mid 6's, I can't really predict either way. So I try not to worry about it and just create something I like, usually incorporating a new technique because I still have a lot to learn. |
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11/23/2014 07:20:12 PM · #20 |
Oh I use pp, all right, but at such a basic (or even minimal) level that I've been told that where my pp ends off is where others tend to start. Most of my adjustments are global, and in Advanced which is now the default setting here, I toss in some dodge and burn and cloning if it needs it.
My inspiration as a child and even now was, and to some extent continues to be, National Geographic from the 70s-90s. The photogs who shot wide-angle images, with barely any pp used except the most basic - ie crop, straighten, dodge and burn...and there they are, published in what was to me THE most prestigious magazine any photog could ever hope to see their images in.
I think I specialize in environmental portraits, and use pp to the bare minimum. I recently did a portrait shoot with a young farmer (he's 37 but looks about 13) while out walking the fields with him, catching his enthusiasm, passion for his work and incredible amounts of energy. Yesterday I caught a Standardbred trainer concentrating as he worked a 2-yr-old filly.
And just today I was bartering with a flea market vendor, as he had several tintypes that I badly wanted but didn't have the $$ for. So I offered him $20 and a portrait. After a minute's thought he went for it, and I now have a collection of fantastic tintypes from the 1800s, and I now have portraits of a fantastic face to play with :-)
And in all of the above portrait *sittings* I pretend I'm Yousuf Karsh and my subject is Winston Churchill, and that I have 5 minutes to capture the essence of who they are. And there is no cigar to snatch from their hand. And, once I get the shot, I keep the pp to a bare, bare minimum.
Sorry for going off topic, streaming consciousness here. |
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11/23/2014 11:53:29 PM · #21 |
| Yousuf Karsh was renowned for the quality of his printmaking, his darkroom work. That "look" was carefully crafted, even obsessively crafted... |
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11/24/2014 08:33:47 AM · #22 |
Originally posted by Bear_Music:
Yousuf Karsh was renowned for the quality of his printmaking, his darkroom work. That "look" was carefully crafted, even obsessively crafted... |
I know he was a darkroom wizard, I'm not trying to compare myself to Karsh on a pp level. I'm just using how he captured Churchill as an example of how I like to shoot my portrait sitters. Not that I often shoot them actually sitting, let alone in a carefully lit studio! I shoot them where they are, where they are the most comfortable, dressed in the clothes they like, and as much as possible talking about what they do - what they are passionate about.
ETA @ MadMan2K...actually I do look forward to, and often do finish well, in Minimal challenges for that reason alone - because there is so little pp allowed. My last Minimal entry, in Red, TT'd. I think a couple others have also TT'd or HM'd.
Message edited by author 2014-11-24 08:35:55. |
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11/24/2014 10:06:57 AM · #23 |
| make your own style and be happy with it. if you are trying to please the masses here you are wasting your time. |
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11/24/2014 11:18:05 AM · #24 |
Do it for yourself. Do everything for yourself. It's your artwork. Create what you want to create. Ubique says this is what people are doing. There's time to be selfish. And there's time to go back out and start experiencing others again. It's the combination of the two that makes a genius. What the heck, maybe by the time we're 98, we'll have hit all the cylinders and get there!
I had the same feeling when I first started here. I would get irritated at the people who did too much pp. How can I compete with that? I want my photos to be real. To be representations of life. Their photoshop creations weren't real. How could life compete with that?
But then most of the challenges seemed to be setup shots. Seriously? SPAM? you're not exactly going to get a "real life" shot of SPAM. I had to start making creations. I didn't want to. But it did give me some more experience. So I kept going, doing things I really wasn't interested in.
But things changed as I went. I started having a vision. The photography was close to it, but I realized that I could complete that vision in the post processing. I could get the shot close, but never perfect. Why should I settle for less than my vision? And I'm not talking about expert editing types of skills -- but brighting some areas, bringing down other areas. Toning a little different than nature.
Suddenly, I was creating art. Well -- not art in the true meaning of the word -- I still don't have that skill. But I was creating my vision. It has all come together to be one package: An idea, getting as close as I can in the camera, putting on the finishing touches in pp.
Regarding learning photoshop. I've done some of the tutorials, trying to learn, but even though I don't have Aspergers, I don't have the patience and more. If it bothers you, and if you want to branch out in the processing, get the Nik suite.
I just play. I actually go through almost every option in color efex and in silver efex and watch what it does to the image. I take the parts I like, discard the others and create my vision. After awhile, I have an idea of what parts I'm going to do. But I still go and look and see what the other things do.
Play. Simply play. It's the best way to learn what you're really happy with.
Message edited by author 2014-11-24 11:19:27. |
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11/24/2014 12:17:34 PM · #25 |
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