The Myth of the Unmanipulated Image

I look at it like this.

I am "making" an image.

Not "taking" an image.

Speaking of myths...

Over the weekend I went to a Smithsonian exhibit on pre-Raphaelite English photography and painting and was looking at Henry Peach Robinson's photo "Fading Away" when the guy standing next to me starts going on about how this is "real" photography and not the digital stuff we have today that is more photoshop than photo. So I asked him if he'd read the description on the little placard on the wall. The one that mentions Robinson was known for his use of multiple negatives to construct an image. He didn't seem to make the connection so I explained to him that the print we were looking at had been "built" from 5 different pictures that had been taken at different times and different places then cut and pasted together in a darkroom.

He walked away mumbling something about it not being the same thing...

Sometimes, people believe what they want to believe.

Perhaps...just maybe, you were talking to a brick wall.

Real photographers don't need to edit photos. Only those that know very little about photography resort to editing as a way to cover for their limitations behind the camera.

I've never edited a single shot I believe in the purity of the camera capture. That's what real photography is about and the rest is just pseudo-art collage

yeah Chauncey, that was kinda how it felt.

here's the picture for anybody curious, though the print I on exhibit was in much better condition.
http://en.wikipedia.or​g/wiki/File:Fading_Awa​y.jpg

Even today you can't get enough in-camera dynamic range to expose the indoor scene and the daylight sky outside the window. And they didn't have ND films or electric strobes back then.

luigis wrote in post #11667238
Real photographers don't need to edit photos. Only those that know very little about photography resort to editing as a way to cover for their limitations behind the camera.

There is a long line of highly respected photographers who disagree with you and Ansel Adams is at the top of the list.

Or to quote Robinson (from 1867 BTW): "Any dodge, trick and conjuration of any kind is open to the photographer's use.... It is his imperative duty to avoid the mean, the base and the ugly, and to aim to elevate his subject.... and to correct the unpicturesque....A great deal can be done and very beautiful pictures made, by a mixture of the real and the artificial in a picture."

krb wrote in post #11667306
There is a long line of highly respected photographers who disagree with you and Ansel Adams is at the top of the list.

Or to quote Robinson (from 1867 BTW): "Any dodge, trick and conjuration of any kind is open to the photographer's use.... It is his imperative duty to avoid the mean, the base and the ugly, and to aim to elevate his subject.... and to correct the unpicturesque....A great deal can be done and very beautiful pictures made, by a mixture of the real and the artificial in a picture."

Quote quote but if you edit you are fake. At least I know my photos are real and I sleep well at night!

luigis wrote in post #11667325
Quote quote but if you edit you are fake. At least I know my photos are real and I sleep well at night!

I don't know which I consider more absurd, your opinion of editing images or the idea that anybody would lose sleep over cloning a powerline out of a landscape photo.

krb wrote in post #11667353
I don't know which I consider more absurd, your opinion of editing images or the idea that anybody would lose sleep over cloning a powerline out of a landscape photo.

Whenever you remove a powerline or change a color you are making photography cry, you change reality into an illustration, a photographer needs to be very unsure about his craft to do such a thing. I've never ever done it!

You seem to be under the misconception that photography and reality are inseparable.

krb wrote in post #11667440
You seem to be under the misconception that photography and reality are inseparable.

Of course they are! If you don't photograph reality you are just making a collage, pseudo-art, illustrations you can even be a Bears fan!

This article by Guy Tal my help those that believe photoshopgraphy is the same as photography.
http://guytal.com …ss/2010/10/no-lesser-art/

luigis wrote in post #11667469
Of course they are! If you don't photograph reality you are just making a collage,...

Where is the philosophical line between a collage and a stacked image?

NEVER!!!!

Ok I surrender you are too kind.

I'm on your same wagon (check my website) I'm so tired fighting against self-alledged "purists" that I decided to took the other side to see if its fun.

As Alain Briot says if somebody asks you "do you edit your photos" the answer is "yes" and if that's not enough "yes sir". He has an article about it called "Just say yes"