When does a Picture become an Image (PP)

[Roosta]

For some reason me comments have been scrubed? Weird.

[Roosta]

Agreed with JM on Land/Sea Scapes being the biggest offender.

Agreed with Bill on his points, being left over from the old film days.

Questioned Rick as to the "I Would Agree" hoping he's not refering to my suggestion to the name change. LOL ???

And did Rick feel that Land/Sea Scapes is the biggest user of PP?

Is it because the "GENRE' of photographers not able to get what what they beieve to be a good clean shot, Land/Sea Scapes that is?

[Roosta]

I have a 10 min rule with my PP (cos I am old and slow on the computer) - basically I shot in RAW and use the RAW converter in PSE 9 to do a very quick adjustment and then in PSE I do a levels, brightness and contrast adjustment, sometimes a colur curves adjustment and an Unsharp sharpening (I hope that is the right terminology) and thats it.

Sometimes with my underwater shots I will use the 'Dust and Scratches' filter to remove floaty stuff (backscatter) from the water.

I know one guy who will spend an hour min on a photo in PS just to enter it in a comp - not for me.

Karl

I'm with you Carl on the 1 Hr? Seriously, what does this say about the original picture?

[ashey]

You have to do something to your shots especially if you shoot in raw, I use aperture 3 for most of my shots and try to get the shot as close to what I seen at the time. I think the moment you depress the the shutter button you have created the image,picture,shot, photo, what one does after that can be be a bit contentious, but you don't have to like it. Yes some people go to far, I went to an exhibition before Xmas to look at the work of a well known W.A landscape photographer, and there were only a couple of shots that I thought worthy of hanging, the majority of them looked way over processed. But thats his style and you have to appreciate that, but you don,t have to like it.

[Roosta]

QUOTE=Kerrie;967353]Like Kathy said , I want to learn to take good photos that need little pp to correct technical errors on my part...but I wouldn't want my artistic flare quashed if i added to them to make them even more impressive.How people present their photos is the very act of art...and I would not like to lose the art of photography at all...ever.[/QUOTE]

No offence intended, but this says to me in some ways, that you could take an average picture at best picture, and then PP it to death to get an image and be happy?

Would/Is it not best to get the art right in the first place (taking the Picture)?

But I can see what your point is, no problems at all.

Thanks for input.

[terry.langham]

I think photography has changed with the introduction of the digital camera. So long as you start with an exposure (or several), then I would consider it photography. PP is just part of the whole system, some will like a lot of it, others will find even a small amount ghastly. In the end does it really matter how much PP was applied to an image. You will either like what is presented or you won't, and if you don't like it because it looks overprocessed, then that is as valid as any other reason for not liking an image/photo.

There is still a strong group of photographers that are traditionalists, and only like PPing that was available in the days of film. Just like there are those that think that real cars have 8 cylinders and carburettors. Neither view is any more valid then the other, just a matter of different tastes.

[ricktas]

For some reason me comments have been scrubed? Weird.

No they haven't. Nothing has been deleted from this thread.

[Roosta]

No they haven't. Nothing has been deleted from this thread.

Loged out and back in, still can't see anything. Love our IT department, LOL.

[wmphoto]

Here you go, a challenge to see how good you are at picking.

Post your results in this thread:

http://area.autodesk.com/fakeorfoto/challenge

I got 5 right..sheesh!

I got 1

Keep an eye out for some cheap camera gear coming up for sale soon

[Ezookiel]

As a person new to photography, I have to say, some of the images seen on this site are spectacular, but at the same time incredibly disheartening.
You see a fantastic sea/landscape photo on here, and you go out in much the same conditions and time of day etc, and you take a photograph with your camera, and get back home all enthused with how good it's going to look from what you've seen here. Instead you find it is a sad pale shadow of the ones you've seen here, and after several attempts to recreate the quality you see here, you feel you're obviously just not good enough, and get disheartened, and damn near give up photography as a hobby.

You might be lucky. ON one of those threads where you saw the awe inspiring photo, you might get to the end of the thread where someone has asked about how the person took the photo, and what settings they used, and you find it's been worked to hell and back, and bears so little resemblance now to a photograph that it is now closer to a piece of art than a photograph, and that realistically you're never going to come back from your landscape/seascape photo trip with photos that look like that.
So now you don't know whether you're any good with a camera, just because you're not as good with a computer as some people here are.

[Analog6]

To me it is a 'real' image while it is the original, even if you perform PP with adjustment layers etc, and nothing is added. It becomes a fake when extra images are layered in that have no relation to the original. So if you bracket your shots so you get a usable sky and a usable foreground, that's OK, it's making the most of what you have.

But if you add in a sky you shot someplace else entirely, with no relation to the subject whatsoever, that's a fake.

Still, by my criteria, lots of Frank Hurley's photographs are fakes, as he was well known for taking images of a scene over several days and sandwiching them for a final effect.

Darkroom print specialists used to do lots of adjustments too, you know. Ansel Adams was famous for it - one example of his darkroom technique I saw on a video had a worksheet planning the 24 steps he was going to take creating an image (print) from his original negative. It took him FOUR DAYS to get it right! So don't be so quick to dismiss PP as a new thing.

[ricktas]

As a person new to photography, I have to say, some of the images seen on this site are spectacular, but at the same time incredibly disheartening.
You see a fantastic sea/landscape photo on here, and you go out in much the same conditions and time of day etc, and you take a photograph with your camera, and get back home all enthused with how good it's going to look from what you've seen here. Instead you find it is a sad pale shadow of the ones you've seen here, and after several attempts to recreate the quality you see here, you feel you're obviously just not good enough, and get disheartened, and damn near give up photography as a hobby.

You might be lucky. ON one of those threads where you saw the awe inspiring photo, you might get to the end of the thread where someone has asked about how the person took the photo, and what settings they used, and you find it's been worked to hell and back, and bears so little resemblance now to a photograph that it is now closer to a piece of art than a photograph, and that realistically you're never going to come back from your landscape/seascape photo trip with photos that look like that.
So now you don't know whether you're any good with a camera, just because you're not as good with a computer as some people here are.

I think that is the time to organise an AP member meet and make sure some of the 'experts' (a word I dislike) come along. There is a lot you can learn from AP, and there is a lot you can learn standing next to someone and have them show you. We even had a couple of Post Processing meets here in Hobart. Good way to learn new techniques, improve your own. etc. Whilst reading on AP and learning is a wonderful tool, there really is nothing like practice..and practice..and practice.. to improve both your photography and your processing skills. If you can get the assistance of someone more skilled whilst doing this practice, it certainly makes it a faster learning curve.

I think the difference is between good and bad/over post processing. If done well, and to improve on the limitations of our gear, then viewers often don't even think about the processing and get absorbed in the photo. As soon as a photo stands out for being almost too 'perfect' we start to wonder how much processing went into it. I think land and sea scapes get this a bit especially the sunrise, sunset ones cause it is easy to over saturate the colours in the sky, so that, whilst they look great, they are beyond what we have seen in real life. There is a fine line between well-done and over-done, bit like a sausage on the BBQ.

[steve812]

Excellent comment. I agree.

[Ezookiel]

I can't get that fake or foto site to work with either IE or Firefox.
Especially the plane photo which won't load at all.

[Ezookiel]

We had an experienced photographer along with us on the 4WDAction Photography Trip, where a bunch of 4wd enthusiasts, who also like photography, decided to do a trip together where no one would complain if we stopped every thirty seconds to take a photo. It helped heaps to have him alongside doing a session on how to do "Light Painting"
I'd seen the concept described here, but probably wouldn't have tried it out if it wasn't for him taking a bunch of us out about midnight to give it a go, and then be insipired by each other's results.
I imagine that would be the same result if we had an AP meet.

[Mat]

You might be interested in this link... He did in the darkroom what we do now in PS

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/1...analog-dreams/
It is a good read.


I got 7

[Kym]

This had minimal PP... The sky was that for about 1 minute.


Red sky at night... by cypheroz, on Flickr

[Mark L]

You might be interested in this link... He did in the darkroom what we do now in PS

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/1...analog-dreams/
It is a good read.

A quote from the interview in Mat's link, "If I have an ultimate goal, it’s to amaze myself."
Does it matter if it's a SOOC or heavily processed? Does it matter if it's a photo or an image?
Which ever way you go, try and amaze yourself.
Probably easier said than done.