What is a “real” photo?

Chuqui 3.0: All I want for Christmas is Aperture 2.0…:


Though it would seem I would likely disagree with you on the amount and kind of “adjustments” one can make to photographs and still call them “real,” I do agree that Aperture needs to do more.

Erik opens up a can of worms with his comment on my blog…. I tend to agree with him in that a photo really should represent what was seen and captured — not necessarily absolute photo-realism, but in the neighborhood.

But I spent some time last week reading through Scott Kelby’s Scott Kelby’s 7-Point System for Adobe Photoshop CS3, and I found some of the things he was doing in the samples fascinating (and adapted them, via aperture, for that hawk photo a bit).

It made me think. We’re already doing things to “improve” (really save) marginal photos in our workflow that go far beyond anything we could do in a wet darkroom. Many of the images we’re using today would be klinkers in the “good old days”. So where do you draw the line? I don’t honestly know. Or necessarily care. I’m not like some photographers who clone inconvenient branches out from in front of a bird’s face — to me, that’s a bit much (but again, it depends on circumstance; if that’s what I’d need to do to sell an image, I’d do it….). With HDR such a growing force, we can’t even say “well, it was in the camera, we’re just figuring out how to make it show up”, either — we’re now stitching multiple images and exposures together.

The whole photographic world is in transition and sticking to the old values clearly isn’t the right answer. We don’t know yet where the new standards will draw the line. I see this as a great opportunity to instead help figure it out and set those standards. And as I’m figuring this out I’m realizing that the technology is really transforming all of this in ways we need to understand.

but think about this — my standard rig, a D30 with 100-400IS and various toys, when you include the 1.6 sensor magnification — that’s a rig that would make a professional nature photographer cry in the 70′s and early 80′s. today, it’s prosumer gear. There’s a lot more going on here than “just” using layers to improve the blur of the bokeh on a nature shot… Realizing that keeps some of the post processing magic more in perspective for me.

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  • http://profile.typekey.com/iacas/ Erik J. Barzeski

    I’ll plainly admit that my own willingness to “play with” a photo is different depending on the photo. It just seemed to me that your baseline was a little further towards “willing to play around” than mine.
    Perhaps, too, one’s personal baseline depends on the subject.
    I’ll almost never use the clone/stamp tool unless it’s to remove dust spots. I tend to limit myself to hue/saturation, white balance, and a few other quickie things.
    I personally don’t make any judgments about the quality of a photographer by how many adjustments they make – it’s their choice. I may not like their picture in the end, but it’d be awfully silly of me to say that someone is a bad photographer simply because they use tools differently than me. They’re just different.
    I think the “argument” would die down to nothing if people didn’t perceive one method as “better” than the other. And yet they do, and they waste their time worrying about what other people are doing. Photograph for yourself. Whatever makes ya happy…

  • http://profile.typekey.com/ceicher/ Charles

    There is absolutely nothing that can be done with digital tools that cannot be done with conventional analog tools in the darkroom. Nothing. I mean it.
    Sure, it might be almost infinitely laborious or totally impractical, but that doesn’t mean it CAN’T be done.
    So I take a dim view of pronouncements that the digital darkroom is making things possible that couldn’t be done before. I take an equally dim view of the idea that there is some different set of standards for photography because of digital tools. Fundamentally, photography is about recording light, the light hasn’t changed just because we use a different recording medium.

  • http://adampaul.wordpress.com Adam R. Paul

    “I don’t honestly know. Or necessarily care.”
    Amen to that. Reminds me of the over-100-year-old-but-still-going-strong argument about whether or not photography is “art.”
    I don’t understand why folks are so wrapped up in a label, be it “real” or “art” or whatever, except in the obvious cases of PJ or forensic photography, where doctoring a photo could have serious consequences for “real” people.