I've been following this situation ... what do you say... whilst landscape photography has always had slightly more latitude in touching up the image than wildlife photography - it begs the questions which have dogged wildlife photography for years - at what point does the image change from a photograph to a piece of digital art? Is it the 1st. second or third or xth blade of grass you clone from the extremities...
T
Oscar - what do you do to your kit!
Posted by Neil Burton on November 3, 2012 at 3:02 PM
I like the admission he makes on TP "I did not read the regulations and certain editing such as adding clouds and cloning out small details are not allowed" ... such as adding stuff? I would never dream of adding stuff to a photo, landscape or otherwise.
Indeed Neil - of the few comps I've entered, these rules have always been standard. I'd still like to know what the judges were thinking ........
Posted by John Robinson on November 3, 2012 at 7:46 PM
Its like some of the suggestions on this forum about levels - curves- drop the blues - up the reds- selective this -selective that - colour picker this - colour pick that - blur this- sharpen this etc etc it goes on and on. Is that any worse than the landscape bloke was doing ? As Tom says- where do you stop.?
There should be a forum where pics are as they come out of the camera. Very often the people suggesting all the "photoshopping "(hate that word)" -should be paint shopping !-dont, embellish us with many examples of their skills .
We seem to be drawn into this school of thought where people want us to make the shots look like what they want to see which are often so far from the natural. I for one want no part of it.
Cheers
A very old dissillusioned photographer
Bring back film !!!!!
JR
Posted by Andy Astbury on November 4, 2012 at 6:03 AM
Using simple techniques such as knifing and tinting I've been "photoshopping" (sorry John ) images since the late 70s.
I've been masking and matting multiple medium and large format images since way before digital and before most of the guys 'n gals at 10 West were out of nappies or indeed even born.
So take my word for it, there's nothing new here, and 'the days of film' were just as 'sinful'.
Removing blemishes on the face of a model was, and still is, an industry standard practice; and remember, we didn't have dust bunnies on sensors in the days of yore so we are talking 'changing reality' here.
So what's the difference between knifing a pimple on a 16x20 of the face of Marie Helvin (shows how old I am!) and cloning out a bit of dead grass - NONE.
Today we think nothing of shooting a 5, 7 or even 9 frame exposure bracket to cope with high dynamic subject brightness ranges in landscapes and producing an exposure blend.
But if the shot shows poor results in the sky due to rapid cloud movement, is it wrong to then replace said faulty sky with the best exposed sky from the original exposure sequence???? After all, the sky is 100% contextual to the scene.
This is something I and many others will freely admit to doing all the time - it enables me to fit the proverbial battleship into a shoe box with regard to large subject brightness ranges and the comparative smallness of my cameras dynamic range. I have the skill level to do the job and do it well, and I for one have no moral problem with doing it - though doubtless some folk will.
Why do I do it - simple - because I am wanting to CREATE a good looking image; the best looking image that I can. It also has the added bonus of matching what my eye sore originally, simply because my eye has a far greater dynamic range than my camera!
As long as every element within the final image existed in the original framing and composition for the duration of the shot I have no problem with it whatsoever
Now if we take it one step further and replace the sky with another one taken 6 months earlier and 200 miles away, do we now have a problem??
If the perspective and lighting marry perfectly, in other words the viewer of the image would never guess in a squillion years, is it wrong??
Well, for me at least, I'd have reached something of a fork in the road; it would be a definite deviation from reality for sure. From a purely creative PoV, if the image looks better than with the original sky for whatever reason then I'd have no problem with it.
Why? Simply because for me it's all about the finished image and making it look epic - if the original sky is bland and featureless and the image looks better with a sky full of clouds then so beit.
Would I be hood-winking anyone - personally no I wouldn't, because I'd say! Seriously I would, if for no other reason than making myself look like a Photoshop guru!
Having said all that it wouldn't happen now though because if the sky looked like a bag of spanners I'd just walk away from the shot!
Would I employ the same techniques on a wildlife shot? Well no, not really, simply because wildlife images are for the most part portraits; close, intimate, narrow field of view images that put the viewer in closer visual contact with the subject than they would normally experience. Wildlife imagery is all about the detail, not the big stuff as in landscapes, and if you think about it there's a lot less going on in the frame - it's all about isolation of the subject and framing perfection. Anyone who's been out with me and Mark Davies, or Danny G. and Mark S. will know and testify to how long we procrastinate about angles, backgrounds and light.
Bringing detail out in post processing and emphasising visual depth in a wildlife image by visually pushing backgrounds further away are all viable techniques, simple and very quick enhancements that give just that little bit more impact in places; but for me it's just a case of emphasising what I was doing at the shooting stage; NOT departing from reality, because there's no need to.
But at the end of the day it's all about personal preferences - for some, like me, the final image is all important; for others it's the visual accuracy of record that floats their boat - and quite honestly, neither party is either right nor wrong.
To get back to the matter at hand, DB "created" a stunning looking image if you ask me, but the operative word here is created....
The circumstances of his submission are irrelevant; he knew that the original capture looked only vaguely like the the finished image, and common sense should have told him to check the rules.
But we come up against this big grey area of what is and is not allowable in open competition - some of the rules are obvious, but others are somewhat more ambiguous - just exactly how much cloning or healing is allowable? The rules need to be overhauled to remove said ambiguities and to create a level playing field - one set of definitive rules that apply at all levels of competition.
How do I get around the ambiguities - I just don't enter competitions, that's how!
In a nut shell, for me, no matter what I'm photographing, I'm always visualising the finished image. I shoot the composition I want and capture all the tones that I need to complete that finished image, knowing the tools I have at my disposal.
Would I remove OoF peanuts from the foreground of a Red Squirrel shot - yes I would.
Would I pick the squirrel up with the new content aware move tool in CS6 and move him to the opposite side of the frame - no I wouldn't, that's just a necessity of poor compositional skills and you should be summarily shot for doing so in my book!
If I wanted or needed a seascape image for a client with fog banks in it but couldn't find the fog would I shoot the seascape and add the fog in post - yes I would; and as long as the client was happy with both means and outcome then my morals would only be focussed on my new hobby - collecting money!
I see photography as a visual art form, some see it purely as a reportage medium; each have their own merits but one cannot act as arbiter of right and wrong on the other.
Tom, it's fixed now! I hadn't done anything to me D300s, I think it was just general use! The same cannot be said for my 200-400; I dropped it It was covered under insurance though
Oscar
Posted by Neil Burton on November 5, 2012 at 11:15 AM
Messing with colours, converting to mono... lets face it, in the old film days people chose film to fit the occasion, so we have always messed with colour, saturation etc, simply chosing film. Now we don' have that choice in sensors, but we can make those pixel do what we wanted. As to adding stuff, like clouds (he did not say sky just clouds) means it was not the same sky but only bits of it. Cloning small stuff out, kind of became the norm due to dust spots (and you lot would have me cloning grass, moss, twigs and all sorts out :p )
First thing to do do is always read the rules and never lie about it. "Is the wolf wild sir? Yes of course, why wouldn't it be?" or "How many wild lynx's did you photograph in amazing forest scenery?"
Discussion
8 repliesand more here;
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/9652485/Photography-competition-winner-disqualified-for-too-much-Photoshopping.html
With such a large prize fund at stake, I'm surprised this was allowed to get as far as it did.
Oscar
T
Oscar - what do you do to your kit!
There should be a forum where pics are as they come out of the camera.
We seem to be drawn into this school of thought where people want us to make the shots look like what they want to see which are often so far from the natural. I for one want no part of it.
Cheers
A very old dissillusioned photographer
Bring back film !!!!!
JR
I've been masking and matting multiple medium and large format images since way before digital and before most of the guys 'n gals at 10 West were out of nappies or indeed even born.
So take my word for it, there's nothing new here, and 'the days of film' were just as 'sinful'.
Removing blemishes on the face of a model was, and still is, an industry standard practice; and remember, we didn't have dust bunnies on sensors in the days of yore so we are talking 'changing reality' here.
So what's the difference between knifing a pimple on a 16x20 of the face of Marie Helvin (shows how old I am!) and cloning out a bit of dead grass - NONE.
Today we think nothing of shooting a 5, 7 or even 9 frame exposure bracket to cope with high dynamic subject brightness ranges in landscapes and producing an exposure blend.
But if the shot shows poor results in the sky due to rapid cloud movement, is it wrong to then replace said faulty sky with the best exposed sky from the original exposure sequence???? After all, the sky is 100% contextual to the scene.
This is something I and many others will freely admit to doing all the time - it enables me to fit the proverbial battleship into a shoe box with regard to large subject brightness ranges and the comparative smallness of my cameras dynamic range. I have the skill level to do the job and do it well, and I for one have no moral problem with doing it - though doubtless some folk will.
Why do I do it - simple - because I am wanting to CREATE a good looking image; the best looking image that I can. It also has the added bonus of matching what my eye sore originally, simply because my eye has a far greater dynamic range than my camera!
As long as every element within the final image existed in the original framing and composition for the duration of the shot I have no problem with it whatsoever
Now if we take it one step further and replace the sky with another one taken 6 months earlier and 200 miles away, do we now have a problem??
If the perspective and lighting marry perfectly, in other words the viewer of the image would never guess in a squillion years, is it wrong??
Well, for me at least, I'd have reached something of a fork in the road; it would be a definite deviation from reality for sure. From a purely creative PoV, if the image looks better than with the original sky for whatever reason then I'd have no problem with it.
Why? Simply because for me it's all about the finished image and making it look epic - if the original sky is bland and featureless and the image looks better with a sky full of clouds then so beit.
Would I be hood-winking anyone - personally no I wouldn't, because I'd say! Seriously I would, if for no other reason than making myself look like a Photoshop guru!
Having said all that it wouldn't happen now though because if the sky looked like a bag of spanners I'd just walk away from the shot!
Would I employ the same techniques on a wildlife shot? Well no, not really, simply because wildlife images are for the most part portraits; close, intimate, narrow field of view images that put the viewer in closer visual contact with the subject than they would normally experience. Wildlife imagery is all about the detail, not the big stuff as in landscapes, and if you think about it there's a lot less going on in the frame - it's all about isolation of the subject and framing perfection. Anyone who's been out with me and Mark Davies, or Danny G. and Mark S. will know and testify to how long we procrastinate about angles, backgrounds and light.
Bringing detail out in post processing and emphasising visual depth in a wildlife image by visually pushing backgrounds further away are all viable techniques, simple and very quick enhancements that give just that little bit more impact in places; but for me it's just a case of emphasising what I was doing at the shooting stage; NOT departing from reality, because there's no need to.
But at the end of the day it's all about personal preferences - for some, like me, the final image is all important; for others it's the visual accuracy of record that floats their boat - and quite honestly, neither party is either right nor wrong.
To get back to the matter at hand, DB "created" a stunning looking image if you ask me, but the operative word here is created....
The circumstances of his submission are irrelevant; he knew that the original capture looked only vaguely like the the finished image, and common sense should have told him to check the rules.
But we come up against this big grey area of what is and is not allowable in open competition - some of the rules are obvious, but others are somewhat more ambiguous - just exactly how much cloning or healing is allowable? The rules need to be overhauled to remove said ambiguities and to create a level playing field - one set of definitive rules that apply at all levels of competition.
How do I get around the ambiguities - I just don't enter competitions, that's how!
In a nut shell, for me, no matter what I'm photographing, I'm always visualising the finished image. I shoot the composition I want and capture all the tones that I need to complete that finished image, knowing the tools I have at my disposal.
Would I remove OoF peanuts from the foreground of a Red Squirrel shot - yes I would.
Would I pick the squirrel up with the new content aware move tool in CS6 and move him to the opposite side of the frame - no I wouldn't, that's just a necessity of poor compositional skills and you should be summarily shot for doing so in my book!
If I wanted or needed a seascape image for a client with fog banks in it but couldn't find the fog would I shoot the seascape and add the fog in post - yes I would; and as long as the client was happy with both means and outcome then my morals would only be focussed on my new hobby - collecting money!
I see photography as a visual art form, some see it purely as a reportage medium; each have their own merits but one cannot act as arbiter of right and wrong on the other.
So John, don't be disillusioned matey
I apologise for the lengthy diatribe
Oscar
First thing to do do is always read the rules and never lie about it. "Is the wolf wild sir? Yes of course, why wouldn't it be?" or "How many wild lynx's did you photograph in amazing forest scenery?"