Digital photography w/light room, photoshop etc....Are we selling ourselves short?

First off, there is no right or wrong answer. This is just a general discussion to get everyone's take on the issue.

Are we selling ourselve's short with the use of stuff in our digital photography like Light Room, Photoshop and other editing software?

Are we fakers because in fact, that is not what the scene/person really looked like?We took out blemishes, added contrast, changed colors, cloned this out or cloned this in, etc,,,,.

I know some of the things can be done with filters. Like make a drab sky blue or warm. Make lights have a starburst. Or use dark ND filters with long exposures to actually make things disappear. So manipulation has always been around.

And Yes, we have to do stuff for our photos to sell. But that is not what this discussion is about. This is not about selling photos.

Have we lost our actual photo taking skills in lou of photo editing skills?

What about that pole that will show up in the photo? Don't worry about it, we'll just take it out later......

I am of the belief that we should take good photos with good photo skills. I understand that, sometimes it is impossible to get the perfect shot. A person may stroll in and so on.

What's your take on it? Let's keep it clean and fun guys and gals please.

Scatterbrained wrote in post #14049790

[GIFS ARE NOT RENDERED IN QUOTES]

LOL....Got me a big ole tub also. I hope this goes well.

I'll give it a go.

Short answer, No.

Long answer, No we aren’t.
I would say that the software that we are using is a replacement for the tools of the analog days. And in a way the software might be safer (okay there is caporal tunnel), and far less toxic than the Analog era. Different films, paper, chemicals, and darkroom techniques have allowed the photographer to do image manipulation for hundreds of years. Look at some of the Photos taken back during the civil war. People were removed from images, and photos were dodged and burned to get the look that the photographer wanted. During WWII some of the color photos taken of Hitler and Stalin were manipulated to remove or add people to the photos for the political gain of what the photographer and the subject wanted in the picture.

This is not to say that some photographers need to work on their basic skills such as exposure and composition but these often can only have so much done in PP to correct them. (An out of focus shot will always be out of focus.)

A lot of PP falls to the level the photographer wants to take it to. A Canon DSLR owner can leave it as SOOC or can use DPP; this is no expense and minimal manipulation. On the other hand the Photographer can download Picasa or Ifranviwew and do a fair amount to the image. Alternatively they can spend aprox $100 for Photoshop Elements and do even more editing including cutting out images and removing wires poles ect. Or they can spend several hundred dollars and get Light room, Photoshop CS, or Corel.

In the end it all falls on the Photographer and his or her artistic desire, audience, or client what gets done.

Yes and no...

Personally, I strive to get things in single shot, without cloning (other than hot pixels and dust spots - I'm the worst about cleaning my sensor). So, in that vein, I like to think my stuff is more real than someone who composites exclusively.

That said, I do enjoy composited work as well, and I have played with things here and there and I will probably continue to do so in the future. I like to keep my roots in single shot, but there's realms of stuff that I would like to explore more and that entails multi-shot, photoshop work.

So, yes and no.

Some are, some arent.

To the OP.

Have you ever seen the work of Jerry Uelsmann? All done with film in a darkroom with large format negatives.
http://www.shutterbug.​com …vesart/0907uels​mann03.jpg

If you don't have a good image to begin with, then all you end up with is an over-processed bad photo. You still have to capture the image properly for any processing to have any meaning. So no, I don't think we are selling anything short. For one thing, any digital image is out of necessity "processed". Unlike film, all the digital camera records is data, not pictures. It must be processed with certain algorithms in order to look like what you pointed the camera at. Processed one way and you have a RAW image, another way and you have a Jpeg, etc.

How much processing should be done is another question. At what point does an image cease being a photograph and become digital art? This is one of those terribly subjective topics that can create a lot of acrimony. I feel that a photograph should portray what the photographer saw, in a mostly realistic manner. If he envisioned slightly more than what was actually there, I don't begrudge him some input from his imagination, as long as it doesn't go over the top. But "over the top" may be something different to me than it is to the next person, and I'm not going to try and define it.

So in my opinion, processing is a necessity, not a luxury.

Photoshop, Lightroom and other programs make us think less when we take pictures. we know that we can edit the pictures on the pc later so we spend less time on actually dealing with the elements in the picture (arranging the objects, finding the right focus, etc.) that can be a good or bad thing. it's great for taking pictures of people or animals or any other quick moving objects, we can just take the picture and capture the unique moment.

The darkroom, and the many manipulations to the print and to the negative, have ALWAYS provided the means of after-capture manipulation of the final photograph. Digital simply makes it far easier, and increases the range of things which can be done, by the photographer after capture. In the case of darkroom work, the techniques employed were often outside the range of what the photographer could do, and were left to a specialist following specific instructions of the look to be achieved, unless a photographer also took great effort to learn darkroom techniques in addition to his shooting skills.

Some very interesting thoughts soo far. Thanks

Again, there is no right or wrong here.

I believe in fundamentals in photos. In other words , get it right the first time. I know sometimes that just is impossible.

When I got my first DSLR it came with Elements 2. Which I stil have and use. Have not upgraded for this reason: I found it started making me lazy and I would not pay attention to what I was doing because I knew I could fix it later.....So for now, I am keeping it old school

PeteD wrote in post #14050445
When I got my first DSLR it came with Elements 2. Which I stil have and use. Have not upgraded for this reason: I found it started making me lazy and I would not pay attention to what I was doing because I knew I could fix it later.....So for now, I am keeping it old school

I do think that 'free shot' digital mentality makes for a lot more captured junk...1,000,000 monkeys on keyboards, hoping for a Shakespearean work to result. Spray and pray that one shot out of 25000 is a keeper.

90pae wrote in post #14050273
Photoshop, Lightroom and other programs make us think less when we take pictures. we know that we can edit the pictures on the pc later so we spend less time on actually dealing with the elements in the picture (arranging the objects, finding the right focus, etc.) that can be a good or bad thing. it's great for taking pictures of people or animals or any other quick moving objects, we can just take the picture and capture the unique moment.

Disagree. I'm way better with the camera than I am with Photoshop and Lightroom. The desire to NOT have to "fix it in post" always drives me to make sure the shot is right in the camera.

A specific example: I was shooting some portraits in a friend's house a few months ago, and there was a speaker wire taped to the baseboard in the back of the room. "No problem," I thought, "I'll just 'shop it out later."

It would have taken me two minutes to physically remove the speaker wire, then replace it when I was done. Instead, it later took me two hours to remove it from all the photos using Photoshop.

Something similar popped up in aviation where some newer pilots are becoming overly dependent on computers to fly the aircraft. The more they rely on computers, the farther their basic piloting skills decline.

The same thing can be said about photography imo. If you look at some magazines, you'd think we're in the age of "I'll photoshop that out later". I've even been told by people around me when I'm taking a photo "you can photoshop that later." I personally like to get as much right in the camera, relying on software really on shots that I can't easily recreate. Otherwise, if I can't get a shot right in camera, I take a step back and look at what went wrong. Are highlights clipped? Do I need a GND? Is it overexposed or underexposed? Unless I'm working on an image at the request of someone else who has a specific look in mind, the thought of using software to correct something doesn't cross my mind. It's a tool that gives me some leeway, but at the end of the day, if I find myself putting a fair amount of work to correct for consistent or repeating errors, I need to look at my own basic photography skills and improve. I do have to admit though that it's kind of out of necessity. I'm horrible with computers and only know (and have patience for) the basics, but I have no problem spending the extra time getting the shot as close to right as I can using mechanical/technical skill (i.e. using filters, flash, different lens, different vantage point etc...).

I have to agree that some photos are over processed, and yet people don't understand that is how it came out of the camera