ravens laughter wrote:
does that mean I am not a Good photographer?

does that mean any one that uses photoshop is not a Good photographer?

Damn, some one call David Lachapelle and tell him he's trash...

Carlos Arturo Velarde wrote:
Someone better call the museums and galleries showing Ansel Adams' work... he manipulated his images a lot in the darkroom (which is to film what PS is to digital) therefore he is not truly a master and his work needs to be removed form display!!!

On threads such as these, people have been exaggerating the amount of print manipulation Ansel Adams generally gave his prints, rather implying that dodging, burning, and bleaching, etc were his primary form of tonal control, when in reality the basis of the Adams technique was the Zone System (exposure/development control), and print manipulation (usually minor, sometimes extensive, almost always very subtle) was primarily used to finish an image off. Part of Adams's philosophy was, paraphrased from his own words (I don't have the quote in front of me, but I remember it pretty well), "expressing the exquisite statement of the lens." Group F64 was formed largely as a reaction to, and a shift away from earlier trends in fine art photography where "painterly" quality was the zeitgeist. Adams and Co. felt that photography should look like photography.

Frankly, I don't think any of this validates or invalidates the main point of this thread. I just think Adams is being substantially misrepresented rather frequently in arguments such as this.

RPSphotos wrote:
Good Photographers perfer NOT to use photoshop for2 main reasons.. 1) the photograph that they take is not classified as a photograph after it has been altered in photoshop, therefore making it an image of the actual photo. 2) if the photographer new his basics !! he or she would use professional make-up artists and proper lighting to correct or hide any flaws that would make the picture imperfect. "A photograph is just that not and computerized altered image of one's photo.

They prefer Not to use photoshop...THEMESELFES, because they give it to the professionals! A friend of mine does retouching for THE biggest fashion photographers in the world, so believe me, I know what I'm talking about. Major magazines would never publish a picture ( it doesn't matter who would take it ) without at least small corrections. The problem occurs, when a picture has been retouched over the top and looks very artificial, but that's just a bad retouching.

Dominique de Merteuil wrote:
They prefer Not to use photoshop...THEMESELFES, because they give it to the professionals! A friend of mine does retouching for THE biggest fashion photographers in the world, so believe me, I know what I'm talking about. Major magazines would never publish a picture ( it doesn't matter who would take it ) without at least small corrections. The problem occurs, when a picture has been retouched over the top and looks very artificial, but that's just a bad retouching.

While this is true (and most of my published work has seen a certain amount of Photoshop... by retouchers, not by me), much of the higher end of the fashion camp is rather falling out of love of the perfectly cooked look for the rawer "real photography" look. Much in the same way that the music world incorporates, and swings back-and-forth between a heavily produced sound and a rawer "lo-fi" sound.

Which I'm grateful for.

RPSphotos wrote:
Good Photographers perfer NOT to use photoshop for2 main reasons.. 1) the photograph that they take is not classified as a photograph after it has been altered in photoshop, therefore making it an image of the actual photo. 2) if the photographer new his basics !! he or she would use professional make-up artists and proper lighting to correct or hide any flaws that would make the picture imperfect. "A photograph is just that not and computerized altered image of one's photo.

I think that's a really stuck up and ignorant thing to say that only "good photographers" would not use it. that's more an opnion than fact. It's simply a tool. Some of us don't have wet dreams about sitting in the dark room fooling around with film like it's a fetish or going out of style like an 8 track. AND not all of us can afford fancy cameras that cost upwards of thousands of dollars or make up artists. Photographers aren't limited to those who have money to throw around on fancy stuff to make themselves look and feel important. All artists through history have used the tools they had at hand. Are you going to tell a sculptor that he's not using the right chisel?
GET A LIFE AND STOP BEING SO PRETENTIOUS LIKE PHOTOGRAPHY IS SOME SPECIAL CLUB WHERE PEOPLE LIKE YOU MAKE THE RULES

Marko Cecic-Karuzic wrote:

Hey! Not bad for a blind guess at all!

Off the top of my head (and I'll only include those roughly in the fashion field, won't bother to talk documentary photogragraphers, or filmmakers or painters, etc):

Mario Testino
Juergen Teller
Paolo Roversi
Helmut Newton
Deborah Turbeville
Peter Lindbergh
Terry Richardson
Mario Sorrenti
Horst Diekgerdes (maybe)

Meisel, Bailey, Avedon and perhaps Sarah Moon make the B list, as well as about 20 others. I like Watson, in much the same way I like Penn. Neither has much impact on the way I work or see things. Demarchelier has done some beautiful stuff in the past (if a bit "classicist" for my taste), but I'm not wild about him, he's pretty boring and I think he's been bored out of his mind for over a decade.

I can see most of the guys on your list with the exception of Terry Richardson. I honestly believe that if Richardson had been alive during the Renaissance, he'd have set art back 200 years.

MMDesign wrote:
I can see most of the guys on your list with the exception of Terry Richardson. I honestly believe that if Richardson had been alive during the Renaissance, he'd have set art back 200 years.

Ok, the quick and lazy answer is that I feel that Richardson is one of the most relevent, if not THE most relevent fashion photographer, maybe one of the most relevent voices in all media, for the current zeitgeist. "Best" is debatable, and I think not. But effective in our time, and very very relevent TO our time.

I don't think the Renaissance nor any other time period would've produced a Richardson. He's a product of and a (very effective and amusing) reaction to the age of reality TV, prosumerism, DIY celebrity, the sometimes insane celebrity worship that precipitates it, media oversaturation, "upscale" mall fashion, etc.

He's influential to me in how he deals with the themes I mentioned above, which are big aspects of the cultural landscape in which I live and must work. Much more so than the look of his stuff or his nihilism or narcissism, which I'm not really keen on following.

Marko Cecic-Karuzic wrote:

Ok, the quick and lazy answer is that I feel that Richardson is one of the most relevent, if not THE most relevent fashion photographer, maybe one of the most relevent voices in all media, for the current zeitgeist. "Best" is debatable, and I think not. But effective in our time, and very very relevent TO our time.

I don't think the Renaissance nor any other time period would've produced a Richardson. He's a product of and a (very effective and amusing) reaction to the age of reality TV, prosumerism, DIY celebrity, the sometimes insane celebrity worship that precipitates it, media oversaturation, "upscale" mall fashion, etc.

He's influential to me in how he deals with the themes I mentioned above, which are big aspects of the cultural landscape in which I live and must work. Much more so than the look of his stuff or his nihilism or narcissism, which I'm not really keen on following.

I'm not saying you're wrong. I was just stating that from my personal perspective. His work reminds me of Wolfgang Tillmans, or maybe vice-versa, except Richardson's work just seems very poorly done regardless of the commentary.

Marko Cecic-Karuzic wrote:
On threads such as these, people have been exaggerating the amount of print manipulation Ansel Adams generally gave his prints, rather implying that dodging, burning, and bleaching, etc were his primary form of tonal control, when in reality the basis of the Adams technique was the Zone System (exposure/development control), and print manipulation (usually minor, sometimes extensive, almost always very subtle) was primarily used to finish an image off. Part of Adams's philosophy was, paraphrased from his own words (I don't have the quote in front of me, but I remember it pretty well), "expressing the exquisite statement of the lens." Group F64 was formed largely as a reaction to, and a shift away from earlier trends in fine art photography where "painterly" quality was the zeitgeist. Adams and Co. felt that photography should look like photography.

Frankly, I don't think any of this validates or invalidates the main point of this thread. I just think Adams is being substantially misrepresented rather frequently in arguments such as this.

Carlos Arturo Velarde wrote:
The point is that he DID manipulate the images in the darkroom, and PS is nothing but a digital darkroom for digital images.

And contrary to what a lot of anti-PS photographers say, a truly bad image cannot be made into a great image in PS or the darkroom... it can at best be made a good image after a lot of work, and after a certain amount of manipulation it will be obvious to most of us that the image was manipulated no matter how good the PS work is...

Point #1: To an extent, true. Though the way people here sometimes champion him as a filmic figure of photo manipulation is misguided, as manipulation was not was his work was about. If anything, his intent was quite the opposite, he was something of a "purist" in one sense. He was also a major control freak, however. Ansel never met a control he didn't like, I feel.

Point #2: I quite agree, to the point that I think a lot of people are fooling themselves with what can and can't be done in post, and it's hampering more people's growth and expression than the opposite, those who are proud of their shoddy unmanipulated work simply because it's unmanipulated. Those who think that simply fixing in post is equal to shooting well aren't looking very closely. Not only from a technical standpoint, either.

Dominique de Merteuil wrote:
They prefer Not to use photoshop...THEMESELFES, because they give it to the professionals! A friend of mine does retouching for THE biggest fashion photographers in the world, so believe me, I know what I'm talking about. Major magazines would never publish a picture ( it doesn't matter who would take it ) without at least small corrections. The problem occurs, when a picture has been retouched over the top and looks very artificial, but that's just a bad retouching.

TRUE

Photographers are not the art director of the magazine/client, and therefore in the spirit of visual continuity for what is desired by the client, they should not do the retouching. Many magz have color themes. It can be very subtle, but if you look at many, you will see it. Vogue loves some pale greens, W loves yellows, Cosmo likes hot reds and yellows, Allure goes for reds, maxim loves blue with orange... now this is often a result of post production to match one shoot to another with colors.

edit: photoshop like a darkroom is a tool, taking the initial picture is the most important and not living on planned obsolesence by making you edit/delete countless images to get to the good ones. If it is part of your artistic vision and you shoot for post production that is one thing, but too many guys use it to save their behinds and there is the seperation.

I hired a photog from here to shoot a modeling school. his exposures sucked, but his response was to fix it in photoshop and did nothing to correct taking the images in the first place. what a pain in the ass.

Aphotic Recess wrote:
AND not all of us can afford fancy cameras that cost upwards of thousands of dollars or make up artists.

Who said anything about fancy/expensive cameras?  My current film shooting arsenal consists of a pair of Canonet 28 rangefinders [total cost: $60.00] and a plethora of antique/toy cameras [total est. cost: $100.00 -- maybe].  It's not about what you have or what it costs, but what you do with it.

Look, if photoshopping images is what makes you cool with your work, great.  Go for it.  The fact remains that photography was here a long time before Photoshop -- what you make of that fact is strictly up to you.

RPSphotos wrote:
Good Photographers perfer NOT to use photoshop ....

Ok, then what do the GREAT photographers use?
Film choice, filter choice, lighting choice, location...., etc, are all elements (tools) that photographers use.  ALL photographs are altered from the beginning, whether we like it or not.  PhotoShop is just one tool that can be used.
Sceniro: A client hires a photographer (camera for hire), said photographer shoots subject requested, but to his/her horror discover, upon reviewing the images a slight, but noticable flaw is in each image.  What to do?  Reshoot (at who's expence?, if it can be done at all) OR do some 'touch up' with Photoshop?  The client want their product delivered in a timely and acceptable manner.  Get real folks!  Those that postulate "No Photoshop" screams to me that they are incompetent or lacking skills to deliver on time.

Beach Photography wrote:
More often than not, "digital" people respect what goes into creating an image the traditional way.

If that were true, this thread wouldn't exist.

Dudley Watson wrote:
Ok, then what do the GREAT photographers use?
Film choice, filter choice, lighting choice, location...., etc, are all elements (tools) that photographers use.  ALL photographs are altered from the beginning, whether we like it or not.  PhotoShop is just one tool that can be used.
Sceniro: A client hires a photographer (camera for hire), said photographer shoots subject requested, but to his/her horror discover, upon reviewing the images a slight, but noticable flaw is in each image.  What to do?  Reshoot (at who's expence?, if it can be done at all) OR do some 'touch up' with Photoshop?  The client want their product delivered in a timely and acceptable manner.  Get real folks!  Those that postulate "No Photoshop" screams to me that they are incompetent or lacking skills to deliver on time.

So how did deadlines get met before digital?  Just curious.

The fact remains that photography was here a long time before Photoshop -- what you make of that fact is strictly up to you.

Photography was here 400 years before film, with the camera obscura. Do you still draw your images by hand on a wall?

Louis Daguerre's and others' work with fixing photographic images was met with derision and fear by artists who saw their painting livelihood being supplanted by technology.

As it caught on, there was a debate among painters as to whether or not it was acceptable to use photographs as an aid to painting.

This quote from Man Ray puts some things in perspective (pardon the pun):

    "There are purists in all forms of expression. There are photographers who maintain that this medium has no relation to painting. There are painters who despise photography, although in the last century have been inspired by it and used it. There are architects who refuse to hang a painting in their buildings maintaining that their own work is a complete expression. In the same spirit, when the automobile arrived, there were those that declared the horse to be the most perfect form of locomotion.

    All these attitudes result from a fear that the one will replace the other. Nothing of the kind happened. We have simply increased our range, our vocabulary. I see no one trying to abolish the automobile because we have the airplane.

    I was very fortunate in starting my career as a painter. When first confronted with a camera, I was very much intimidated. So I decided to investigate. But I maintained the approach of a painter to such a degree that I have been accused of trying to make a photograph look like a painting. I did not have to try, it just turned out that way because of my background and training. Many years ago I had conceived the idea of making a painting look like a photograph! There was a valid reason for this. I wished to distract the attention from any manual dexterity, so that the basic idea stood out. Of course there will always be those who look at works with a magnifying glass and try to see "how", instead of using their brains and figure out "why". A book was once published of twenty photographs by twenty photographers, of the same model. They were as different as twenty paintings of the same model. Which was proof, once and for all, of the flexibility of the camera and its validity as an instrument of expression. There are many paintings and buildings that are not works of art. It is the man behind whatever instrument who determines the work of art."

    "Some of the most complete and satisfying works of art have been produced when their authors had no idea of creating a work of art, but were concerned with the expression of an idea. Nature does not create works of art. It is we, and the faculty of interpretation peculiar to the human mind, that see art."

So, in the end, it's "same debate, different day".

commart wrote:
"Photoshop is the digital equivilent of dark room enhancements."

Actually, it's quite a bit more, not only providing convenience and ease-of-use unknown to any darkroom rat but also porting capabilities long familiar to graphic artists to all who use it, including photographers.

One of the historic mysteries in the culture of photography may be the willful reversion to earlier forms.  Only last year, Sally Mann in Deep South published a book full of bona fide collodion process prints.  There was not one picture in it that could not be equally messed up using Photoshop, lol, but it wasn't created in the field with state of the art equipment (she used a wooden box) or gamed into its state from the photographer's studio (it was however, finally, printed and bound in 21st Century fashion).  I thought the book awful when I cut through the shrink-wrap, but . . . it's turning out a prize.  In the 1950's, Paul Strand also did the retrograde thing, walking around France with a tripod and a box (when he could have been shooting with a Leica too).  What I get from them, not to mention the likes of Don Nelson and others here at MM who shoot film and meticulously work up conventional prints or digital ones to match the characteristics of the conventional to the extent possible, is the valuing of the authentic and organic or romantically human in reality and having that define their methods.

Voodoo?

Sure it is.

It's the difference between a violinist playing through a song in an empty room and a MIDI programmer controlling a sample through the same notes and applying -- and these days, it's done in close enough to real time -- an appropriate reverb to the same effect. 

Who needs the violin, the violinist, and the room?

Answer: no one, no more than we need, say, live concerts when we've got kick-ass sound systems in our cars and everywhere else.

Answer No. 2: we may be getting other than music from the violinist or the concert.

I may be a little different from others here, but I don't think the best an artist can do is entertain an audience but rather entertain himself first and enjoy the gift as well as the joy, freedom, and fulfillment that comes with making an art of it.  Call it an indulgent model--who cares?--but with it, the audience merely gets to peak at the experience and process of the work through a sampling of artifacts released from it.  It's the artist who gets the experience of living with and through the making of the art, which is motivation and reward enough for many.

By the way, someone mentioned the difficulty of getting E6 processing, and here in this tiny crossroads of a mountain town, I haven't the slightest difficulty getting that done.  However, one of my local vendors is selling Kodachrome 64 for about $10 per roll but not taking it in for processing.  That's a problem of sorts (but I may stock a few rolls anyway and hope CVS has a deal with whoever's left to do the work).

I believe K-14 process is only being done by Kodalux in Texas. That's what the old timers here at UCLA tell me. A&I in Hollywood ceased processing it some four or more years ago.

Beach Photography wrote:

Photography was here 400 years before film, with the camera obscura. Do you still draw your images by hand on a wall?

Not recently, but I have.  My MFA thesis was to make the same image using a number of historical photographic methods.  Looking at the same still life for an entire semester is probably why I have no interest in shooting product.

All rhetoric aside, I do use photoshop.  I'm just proud of the fact that I don't need to use it for much more than the most basic functions.  I find the resizing tool works pretty well.

jonathan ledeux wrote:

we all know mr adams as a photographer but in realality he merley documented what he loved the same as all the shooters here

Is this the statement of someone who merely records what he sees?

"Simply look with perceptive eyes at the world about you, and trust to your own reactions and convictions. Ask yourself: "Does this subject move me to feel, think and dream? Can I visualize a print - my own personal statement of what I feel and want to convey - from the subject before me?"
Ansel Adams

and:

"When I'm ready to make a photograph, I think I quite obviously see in my minds eye something that is not literally there in the true meaning of the word. I'm interested in something which is built up from within, rather than just extracted from without."
Ansel Adams

Hardly.

Beach Photography wrote:
yeah Ansel Adams, like many artists, sought to present the world not as it actually was, but how he FELT it was. Or, maybe more accurately, he wanted to present an image that made the viewer feel the same way he felt when he made it. And he used every tool at his disposal in that effort.

That's my argument for photoshop in a nutshell. Not that everyone HAS to use it, but that for me it's the tool that best allows me to make the image I want to make.

"Help, I'm in a nutshell!"

I believe it was Ansel who said: "Raw file is the score, Photoshop is the performance"

I don't complain that many photographers are opposed to Photoshop - I'm glad they are.

Melvin Moten Jr wrote:
So how did deadlines get met before digital?  Just curious.

Beach Photography wrote:
yeah Ansel Adams, like many artists, sought to present the world not as it actually was, but how he FELT it was. Or, maybe more accurately, he wanted to present an image that made the viewer feel the same way he felt when he made it. And he used every tool at his disposal in that effort.

That's my argument for photoshop in a nutshell. Not that everyone HAS to use it, but that for me it's the tool that best allows me to make the image I want to make.

"Help, I'm in a nutshell!"

Melvin Moten Jr wrote:
So how did deadlines get met before digital?  Just curious.

Carlos Arturo Velarde wrote:
Darkroom photomanipulation. Same tools except if you make a mistake you have to start over instead of just clicking on "undo"

So basically people just made a point of knowing what they were doing.  Is there some reason that method is no longer workable?

Beach Photography wrote:
The whole debate rages because people believe that photoshop is only used as a lifeboat for people who botch the job in the first place. That's a belittling position to those who make the program sing, and shoot based on its capabilities and what they plan to do with them.

Or you could say the debate rages because people believe that not using photoshop is a sign that one has run out of ideas and that the only way to make an image that speaks to people is by purely digital means.  That's a belittling position to those who have spent much time and effort mastering the tools of their choice and making images based on the capabilities of those tools...most notably their eyes and creativity.

As usual, this is a two-way street.

ravens laughter wrote:
I have seen a few images on here that have pimples and red areas and scratches... and the photographer proudly announces "No Photoshop!"

Why is this worn as a badge of honor?

Is it that so many people think that if you use photoshop that you don't know how to shoot? And that if you post pictures with obvious flaws that could be simply corrected that that in and of itself means that you're a better photographer than those who use photoshop to correct those small flaws (or like me actually insert flaws)?

they and even i do do this simply because there are those other 'photographers' who use photoshop as a "fix all" tool instead of an image enhancer or an artistic tool.  we don't like this...  i've even been paid by a few of our MMers here to FIX their images, and by fixing I mean editing out the freakin sync cord from the picture, taking out their laptop from it, getting rid of things that you should have been aware of that shouldn't have been in the shooting area in the 1st place. there are also those that i've had to fix the images' complete lighting in!!!  i mean, sure, when i edit it and hte finished product comes out it is absolutely and completely different then what they sent me and it looks phenominal  but when they send it to me to edit i get so disappointed that they do things like that and simply expect a retoucher to fix every little thing for them. i'm not going to say for whom to save face but there are those people there that think that you can just use it to fix things and like i said, not using it to enhance the image in any way possible.  people like this just need to pick up a book or go to a class.  i only use photoshop to enhance my images and for any artistic things that i would like to do, but never to "fix" the entire image.  don't know if you understand where i am coming from.  but that's why i stick it on mine   i mean, sure, if you need to use an airbrush on something sure go ahead!!!  but don't use it to try and take out the strobe which you didn't want in the shot but had in the shot to begin with...seriously.

Melvin Moten Jr wrote:

So basically people just made a point of knowing what they were doing.  Is there some reason that method is no longer workable?

RPSphotos wrote:
Good Photographers perfer NOT to use photoshop for2 main reasons.. 1) the photograph that they take is not classified as a photograph after it has been altered in photoshop, therefore making it an image of the actual photo. 2) if the photographer new his basics !! he or she would use professional make-up artists and proper lighting to correct or hide any flaws that would make the picture imperfect. "A photograph is just that not and computerized altered image of one's photo.

Any flaw in the photograph and I will almost guarantee it will not hit the stands in a publication.  Please anyone who says photoshop should not be used has not published a thing.  A good make up artist and good lighting help hide flaws, they do not eliminate them.  Photoshop can come down to pixel by pixel manipulation, that is something that is a great plus.  Now can photoshop be misused, of course, that is another story, it makes the photographer lazy, "Oh I can photoshop it later".