The Myth of the Unmanipulated Image

A rather quick and somewhat provocative article -- and one that I fully agree with. While one can certainly defensively hold a position that there is a line to be drawn where manipulation takes a photograph beyond truth, it's very difficult to maintain a position in which only images farted directly out of a camera qualify as "real" photographs.

http://www.bhinsights.​com …-unmanipulated-image.html

I recently went to a talk put on by a Natty Geo photographer who went to great lengths to describe how he never digitally corrected any of his images (or cropped them), and how everything we saw on the screen was right out of the camera. His audience of mostly college students ate this crap up. As someone who used to work pre-press, it astounds me how uninformed some top-notch first-in-their-field photographers can be of how an image goes from their developed slide to a magazine spread or a digital projector screen or a digital image on their laptop screen. They get how a camera uses light to create an image on film or a sensor, but after that, they close their eyes and everything is Magic to them That Must Not Be Spoken About. Unless you are holding the undeveloped slide in your hand, the image has been processed. Scanning a slide or a neg requires further processing it by definition; how it is processed is up to the scanning technician and the scanning hardware/software. Getting images to look good even on good a Flexo press printing on heavy slick paper requires quite a bit of post processing -- it's just done by prepress folk, not photographers (who merrily go on their way thinking that their 'virgin' image remains unsullied).

Yeah, bit that is just to get the "result" (print) like the "original" (slide)
More "technical" then "creative" manipulation.

Then again, if I edit an image to reflect more like I (wanted to) see the original, that's kinda the same

So is choosing a specific type of film

We all 'manipulate' every image we shoot, regardless of whether using film or digital. By choice of lens, focal length, framing, filters, &c., each photographer uses the camera to (hopefully) capture his/her vision of the subject. Put 12 photographers at Oxbow Bend on a cloudy autumn evening and you'll get 12 different versions of the sunset - none of which may even come close to how a non-camera-wielding tourist recalls the scene the next morning at breakfast.

Even for those who state that their images are SOOC, there is still a lot of 'translation' that occurs between the 'real scene' and what finally appears on the print or computer monitor.

Lord, save us from the experts...for their ignorance is quite limitless.

GJim wrote in post #11664401
... each photographer uses the camera to (hopefully) capture his/her vision of the subject. Put 12 photographers at Oxbow Bend on a cloudy autumn evening and you'll get 12 different versions of the sunset - none of which may even come close to how a non-camera-wielding tourist recalls the scene the next morning at breakfast.

Exactly, and herein the core of photography lays.

And to to take that one step further, the more the subject of what turned out as a great image was common and uninspiring to most, the higher the value the photographer added.

Yawwnn....

ChasP505 wrote in post #11664874
Yawwnn....

Look who found his way into my killfile.

chakalakasp wrote in post #11665027
Look who found his way into my killfile.

I was only "commenting" on the article you cited. Nothing new there. Sorry about your thin skin condition.

I do wonder however if the OP had the audacity to confront the photographer/speaker in that public forum or was content to bring his argument to these pages.
At my age, being able to confront cretins, is one of the few joys left in my life.

chauncey wrote in post #11665293
I do wonder however if the OP had the audacity to confront the photographer/speaker in that public forum

That would have been inappropriate if he wasn't invited to speak. Besides, he probably would have been stoned by the adoring audience.

I saw a guy giving a talk on vegetarianism one day. One of his pearls of wisdom was that eating eggs makes you sneaky, like a snake, because snakes eat eggs. His already-vegetarian audience was just eating it up!

chauncey wrote in post #11665293
I do wonder however if the OP had the audacity to confront the photographer/speaker in that public forum or was content to bring his argument to these pages.
At my age, being able to confront cretins, is one of the few joys left in my life.

I was actually looking forward to asking the question at the end at Q&A. Unfortunately, the photographer skipped the Q&A. I wouldn't have been an ass about it to him, but I'd definitely have tried to get him to reconcile his "never processed" statement with the fact that he was showing us digital images on a projector, and sometimes digital scans of magazine covers.

The cynic in me kinda thinks that he threw in the "never processed" bit because he's one of Canon's sponsored Explorers of Light speakers -- and saying that everything was straight out of the camera puts more emphasis on the camera and camera/photographer interface, and less on post-processing skills.

I was at a seminar a few years ago where a photog was demonstrating the results he had gotten from a certain camera. He was showing slides and mentioned at one point of the high ISO he had been using. Someone asked him about noise at such a high ISO -- there was a bit of an uncomfortable reply about Photoshop noise reduction...

So, yeah, we all look to capture an image that is "just right" and, hopefully, can put that out with a minimum of post processing, but it still goes through the "digital darkroom" in one way or another.

There appears to be some mythical perception that photography is essentially and inherently different than painting, drawing or any other visual art because of the seemingly objective, pure, (electro)mechanical nature of interpreting and rendering light. The only real difference is the technique - all else is subject to the manipulation of the operator. One could even argue that 10 witnesses to an event, all stationed at the same location and with the same view of the incident, would describe 10 slightly different accounts and interpretations of the event - even if our visual system is considered the gold standard of what is unmanipulated, each of us interpret the stimulus to it differently based on physiology and experience among a whole host of other factors.

I suppose the photographer was touting the purity of his images in some attempt to lend credibility to his superior ability to make technical decisions such as exposure, focus, etc. that he feels need no compensation in post. As others have said, he may be totally unaware of what goes on after the images leave his blessed hands. Ignorance is bliss!

Kirk

I pass the time, commuting, listening to podcasts. I have come to the conclusion that there is a direct relationship between how famous/skilled/success​ful a photographer is and how little they know or want to know about their equipment and how it works.

kirkt wrote in post #11666021
...One could even argue that 10 witnesses to an event, all stationed at the same location and with the same view of the incident, would describe 10 slightly different accounts and interpretations of the event - even if our visual system is considered the gold standard of what is unmanipulated, each of us interpret the stimulus to it differently based on physiology and experience among a whole host of other factors.

I made a suggestion along these lines recently when a poster asked something like "Which version looks more correct?". I replied that the most important thing is YOUR remembrance of the scene. This blasphemous concept riled a few people up.