Friday, April 3, 2020

Before And After; Still A Photograph?

Like most of you, I sit at home and try to keep busy.  One of the things I'm doing is going through old image files.  I find it remarkable how many images I have that I had forgotten about.  I saw this image and wondered how it would look re-edited differently.  What you see here is the same image presented in two different forms.

 The top image is as I photographed it with my Fujifilm X-T1 with the 18-55mm f/2.8-4 lens.  Pretty much a straight photo.
Abandoned farm home.  This is a normally edited image. (click to enlarge)
This next image is the same image file, only edited in a combination of Lightroom, Photoshop and Luminar.
Same image file but highly manipulated in Lightroom, Photoshop and Luminar (click to enlarge)
Thinking about the differences I started thinking and questioning.  My questions are, "Is the highly manipulated image still a photograph?"  Is is now a "photo illustration?"  Has it lost its honesty as a photograph?  Is it deceptive?  Is it incumbent upon the photographer to notify his or her audience that what they are viewing is a highly manipulated distortion of reality?  Does the photographer need to say anything at all and let the viewers decide what it is to each of them?

 What are your thoughts?

 Join me over at my website, www.dennismook.com. 

 Thanks for looking. Enjoy! 

 Dennis A. Mook 

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4 comments:

  1. agApril 3, 2020 at 10:00 PM

    Hi Dennis,
    Hope you and the ones you care for are all doing well.
    Funny you should post on this topic. I ran across it on a YouTube channel recently.

    In a book by Ansel Adams (Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs) he is often choosing an exposure that he knows he can manipulate back in his darkroom. And that manipulation is so that he can achieve in his print the scene that he saw. It may not be an "exact" capture of how things looked.

    He printed the image "Moonrise Hernandez" many times, and each time he tweaked it. Most photographers don't print much anymore. I don't think the manipulations done in those days are too far removed from what we can accomplish now. It is art. To each his own of course. But to scoff at post processing seems like a waste of oxygen.

    Just my 2 cents.

    Al

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  2. Dave JenkinsApril 5, 2020 at 12:30 PM

    Well, you know where I'm coming from, Dennis. To me, this one crosses the line from photograph to photo-illustration. That doesn't mean it can't be art in its own right, but. . .don't call it photography! :o)

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  3. Dave JenkinsApril 5, 2020 at 2:07 PM

    The photo of the abandoned house is absolutely beautiful just as it is.

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    Replies
    1. The Wandering LensmanApril 5, 2020 at 2:12 PM

      Dave, thank you. This was very easy to make. I used Luminar and it automatically inserts skies or other objects with almost no effort from the photographer. Too much for me as well.

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