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| Peggy's Point Lighthouse at Peggy's Cove in Nova Scotia, as I found it. This image is straight out of the camera (Olympus E-M1 Mark III). However, this image does not represent what I wanted to photograph. I wanted no people in my photo. (click to enlarge) |
The autumn before the pandemic my wife and I took a road trip to Nova Scotia. One place we visited was the much photographed, iconic and extremely popular Peggy's Cove. I knew it had been photographed a million times and it would be crowded but I wanted to see it for myself.
It was very crowded with many tourist buses, parking lots full and hundreds of people walking around. Still, I managed to make some nice photographs of the place. You can see many of them here in this blog post from October 18, 2019. What you won't see, however, is my photograph of Peggy's Point Lighthouse. Why? There were a lot of people milling around and to try to wait until everyone was gone from the scene, would have been fruitless. So, I made the record shot at the top of this post and moved on.
Jump to today. We have editing tools we did not have in 2019. I was rummaging around in my photo library looking for something and happened across the Peggy's Point Lighthouse image. Hmmm. I thought. I wonder if I can now edit this using the tools in Photoshop to change it to how I originally envisioned it. That is exactly what I did.
Below is the result of about 10 minutes work in Photoshop. I used the "Remove" tool to paint over and remove all of the people present as well as the barricade that was in front of and just to the right of the lighthouse. I then used the "Clone" tool to clean up a few spots. That was it.
Here is the result.
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| This is the same image as above but after I removed all of the people as well as a barricade from my scene suing Photoshop's "Remove" tool. I also did some slight editing before sending the file to Photoshop. (click to enlarge) |
I then sent the image back to Lightroom Classic and did some additional editing as I would if I had originally made the image without the people in the scene. Finally, I cropped it a bit to my taste and the image below represents my final image.
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| This is my final composition and photo as I had wished it would have been when I was present. Ethical? Art? (click to enlarge) |
I am amazed at the tools we now have at our disposal for editing, improving, changing or otherwise achieving our original vision for the scene in front of us. Of course, this ability raises the typical ethical questions about whether or not what we change or modify is appropriate. As far as I am concerned, the photographs I typically post are my 'art' and my 'art' represents my vision and I can modify my files to fit that vision. The exception for me is my bird and wildlife photography, which I keep close to what was recorded in the original image file. Now, if I were a documentary photographer, photojournalist, forensic photographer, etc., I would not make these changes as we depend upon those kinds of photographs to represent reality as it was found.
Also, this is another reason not to delete your your images as I have said before—you don't know what we will have when it comes to editing tools in the future which can take a photo that is not satisfying, publishable or otherwise worth sharing and allow you to create something worthwhile
Your thoughts?
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Thanks for looking. Enjoy!
Dennis A. Mook
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Nice job on the editing. I think that it is ethical to edit the photo any way you want. Like you said, it's your art. As long as an image is not misrepresented as something it's not there should be no issue with it. I love going to Peggy's Cove, my sister lives nearby so I have been many times. Sometimes there is hardly anyone there! It's a great place to photograph in a storm, as long as you stay well away from the water's edge.
ReplyDeleteGord
Gord, thanks for sending your thoughts and kind words. I would like to get back there one more time and see if I can make additional images.~Dennis
DeleteThat's a remarkable transformation of the scene! It's ironic that we have these powerful editing programs at a time when a photo's subject is becoming the sole determinant of its value, with composition and technique being shoved to the sidelines. It's understandable I suppose, since photos can be uploaded moments after being taken, but I'm really getting tired of seeing photos that need cropping, straightening, color adjustment, or exposure/contrast control. I realize not everyone is a photography enthusiast, but these are just basic edits that can transform a weak picture into a compelling photo. Take pride in what you post!
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment. I agree. There is a lot of junk (that doesn’t have to be junk) being posted. My opinion is that now, in the digital era, editing is just about as important as the taking. ~Dennis
DeleteHey, Dennis, first thought is how useful this tool would be for the Loretto Chapel in Santa Fe and also the Santuario de Chimayo. Pretty tough to get an image without people at both places.
ReplyDeleteMike
Mike, good to hear from you. Yes, those two locations would be interesting. ~Dennis
DeleteImpressive editing, but to be honest I find the original far more interesting than the postcard you made out of it. The SOOC colors are more realistic as well. Maybe you could use some more detail in the sky, but that's about it. In the original I can smell the sea.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment. ~Dennis
DeleteMy Peggy's Cove images had the same people problems. I'd tried removing them in Lightroom but quickly gave up. Your post spurred me to try again in Photoshop-it was a piece of cake! Thanks.
ReplyDeleteGood for you Bob! This kind of technology is game changing. ~Dennis
DeleteDennis, you did an amazing editing job on this, really well done! I personally find Photoshop quite difficult, and mainly use Lightroom to do most of my editing, which I find very intuitive. However, having seen this, I will at least have to learn to use the remove tool in PS. I have no problem with using such tools to remove people, or man-made distractions from artistic images. Creating the image itself, or adding elements, would cross my personal line, and I always *prefer* to get the image as clean and close to my vision as possible in camera, but there are times and places that its simply not possible. Recently, some friends visited me in London and wanted their photo taken on the Abbey Road crossing, which is near to where we live. So i obliged with the photo. Of course, its famous, it was mid-summer holidays, so very busy, and the photo necessitates standing in the middle of a busy road, in gaps between the traffic. Combine those elements and it would have been impossible to achieve a clean shot in camera without crowd, and traffic control. I did use photoshop (not as well as you have) to remove some cars and people, though, and my friends were very happy with the results.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your very kind words. Like you, I try to get everything ‘right’ in-camera but, as you are aware, sometimes that is impossible. I hope you Photoshopped the shoes and socks off one of your friends who crossed Abbey Road. It wouldn’t be the same if they all had shoes. I don’t know your age, but I remember very well when that album came out and having no shoes was another sign that Paul McCartney was actually dead as was the rampant rumor at the time. Playing the album backwards seemed to produce a sound that sounded like someone was saying, “Paul is a dead man,” or something similar. Conspiracy theories were everywhere! 🤣 ~Dennis
DeleteWhat’s wrong with people? We don’t live in a people-free world. My choice would have been to crop out the foreground to make it a more panoramic shot. It has a certain dynamism to it like that. I would then have tried for a closer shot taken from a different vantage point.
ReplyDeleteEach of us, as photographers, have different visions and different purposes for our images just as we use different cameras, different sized sensors, film and different focal length lenses. We photograph and create to fulfill our individual visions. This post was primarily about the new technology available for editing digital images. A technology now available to help other photographers achieve their vision, if necessary. If I wanted people, a panoramic crop or wanted to move closer to change the way this image looked, I would have done that. But that’s not my vision. That was not the purpose of this image. I don’t mean to be critical but I don’t believe I solicited for anyone else’s vision for this image. But thank you for taking the time to comment.
Delete