Photoshopping Street Photos Yes/No?

[capitalK]

Not really a poll, just opinion. I am putting together some images to print and I am going back an forth on whether or not to Photoshop them. They are B&W film scanned by a Nikon Coolscan 4000 and to be printed by an Epson R2200.

I've decided that dodging and burning is fine but I'm just not sure about cloning out distracting elements, telephone poles, distracting signs, etc.

The news photographer in me says NO WAY, NO HOW should I do anything more than subtle dodging and burning but I know many fine art pieces made in studio can be heavily Photoshopped.

So does Photoshopping, or more precisely "cloning", ruin the purity of a street photograph? I'm going to say it probably does but I wanted to get your opinions.

 

[farlymac]

It's fine if all you are doing is normal darkroom type stuff, like removing the C41 b&w color cast, cropping, or popping the contrast a bit. But to start altering elements of the scene defeats the whole idea behind 'street' photography. You've taken a moment in time, and altered it into your own reality.


23) WVACC School of Culinary Arts_2 by br1078phot, on Flickr

Color corrected, cropped to 8x10, Kodak BW400CN

PF

 

[ricnak]

I agree with the above

 

[Paul_C]

It's fine if all you are doing is normal darkroom type stuff, like removing the C41 b&w color cast, cropping, or popping the contrast a bit. But to start altering elements of the scene defeats the whole idea behind 'street' photography. You've taken a moment in time, and altered it into your own reality.

Framing/cropping alone has already drastically altered it into your own reality - for example: http://politicstheoryphotography.blogspot.com/2007/05/eliciting-poignancy.html

I say do what you gotta do to make whatever you're trying to make. If what you're trying to make comes with a delusional sense of "honesty" or invented photographic purity, then by all means restrict yourself to what was done in a traditional darkroom (ignoring, of course, all the major alteration of scene elements that happened in traditional darkrooms.)

 

[apodeictic]

Yeah you wouldn't want to crop your photographs and end up with something like this! 😀

Cloning doesn't make sense to me. But a scan of a 35mm negative isn't going to give you your "photograph." Different films and different scanners will all give you a different product- it's up to you to try and edit it into a what you feel best evokes the original scene.

 

[tapesonthefloor]

Well, HCB was certainly not above "cloning out distracting elements". Check out a later version of Gare St. Lazare:

 

[smile]

Yeah you wouldn't want to crop your photographs and end up with something like this! 😀

Cloning doesn't make sense to me. But a scan of a 35mm negative isn't going to give you your "photograph." Different films and different scanners will all give you a different product- it's up to you to try and edit it into a what you feel best evokes the original scene.

i've already seen this picture here 😀

 

[typhillips]

I also work solely with scanned negs and usually limit myself to dodging/burning, contrast adjustments and the occasional crop.

Cropping seems to be an especially contentious issue. For some photographers this is tantamount to an act of high treason, but as far as I'm concerned you are simply framing in post processing instead of framing in the viewfinder. As I understand it, however, professional photojournalists simply do what it takes to "get the shot". If that means a crop, then so be it.

I'm not above cloning out a small minor distracting element (for example a small piece of litter). But if the alterations become too excessive, then you are, as farlymac says, making something that is less like "street photography" and more like "digital art". Nothing wrong with this, but it's kind of a different genre, at least in my humble view.

 

[ellisson]

If the image reflects the mood or event you envisioned, then anything you do to convey that mood is correct. Where is it written that an unaltered image is a "purer" image?

 

[Keith]

I did remove a light pole emerging from the top of RFF member, P Lynn Miller's head when I took a photo of him when we caught up for coffee a while ago! Sometimes you look at a photo you took and wonder how you never noticed at the time. 😛

In hindsight it didn't look that bad actually!

 

[jsrockit]

I say do whatever you want to do... it's not pure, but who said it needs to be. That said, I think many people get too distracted while looking at images...especially photographers (who are always looking for their definition of perfection). If your eye is drawn to something other than the "subject", it is possible that it could be a good thing...meaning the person looks at the whole photo instead of just one little element (since the whole photograph can be the subject). Sure, poles sticking out of heads etc rarely work, but I'd probably just not use the shot. Cropping is necessary at times, but then why have a accurate viewfinder in your camera?

 

[newsgrunt]

what's the intended use of these images ?

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

All scanned negatives REQUIRE Photoshop work to look good. They're all too flat in contrast straight from the scanner, and once you've adjusted that, most photographs need some dodging and burning to look good as well. I always clone out dust as well as small distracting things like trash on the ground. If there's something big you want gone, you're better off shooting with a different composition.

 

[Vince Lupo]

All depends on where the final shot is going (in a newspaper, etc). If you're working for the AP and you removed light poles etc, you'd be fired. Standard darkroom practices would be acceptable though (burning, dodging etc.). I don't even think they'd allow dust removal.

 

[jsrockit]

I never even remove trash from my photos. What's wrong with trash? 😉

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

I never even remove trash from my photos. What's wrong with trash? 😉

Its ugly and distracting. I'm an artist, not a journalist and I know enough about the history of photography to know that trying to be 'pure' is idiotic because no such thing exists. As has been pointed out by others, just using black and white film abstracts reality to a considerable degree. So does the common practice of using colored filters for BW work to alter tonal relationships. Using wideangle or tele lenses also departs from how the human eye sees a scene. My photographs are MY representation of my world. You want 'reality'? Go to these places yourself and look with your own eyes 😛

 

[johannielscom]

Of course you photoshop your negs from street shots.

Scanning, photoshopping and printing are the modern day equivalent of dark room projecting, filtering&dodging&burning and printing.

So, what's allowed and what's definitely out? Depends!

Check out Nick Ut's news photo of the burnt Vietnamese girl. The original had US Marine news photographers walking along the road, changing the film in their camera. Had he not cropped those off, the discussion would have been on the attitude of the military instead of the misery of the bomb victims.

So cropping is fine, as is filtering&dodging&burning when it comes to documenting and news photography. Anything else is out. Well, maybe a little levelling and perspective correction to avoid buildings from falling over?


OTOH, when shooting from an artistic point of view, anything goes AFAIC. It's all about the image there.

In color street shots I have made layers from people with distracting busy-patterned clothes so I could even out the tones in their clothing before converting to B&W and have them appear in 'plain' clothes. Doing that to the dress of the lady in the back improved this shot:

In the end I did not like it enough to use it for various reasons, but it shows my point. This is why I sometimes shoot color and convert to B&W: you can set tones of individual colors in post-process before converting them to B&W and have a 'calmer' image.

For artistic street photography I feel this is no deadly sin at all while for news shots it would be debatable at times.

 

[Roger Hicks]

If the image reflects the mood or event you envisioned, then anything you do to convey that mood is correct. Where is it written that an unaltered image is a "purer" image?

Exactly.

There are times when you want to say, "This is the way it was" and times when you want to say "This is the way it should have been."

There are always those who will clone things out, etc., and once the possibility of doing so exists, 'purity' is a matter of verbal assertion, not of the picture itself.

Cheers,

R.

 

[gavinlg]

Almost all files should have some amount of editing IMO wether it be wet printing or 'lightroom' adjustments on digital files. Depends on what they're being used for.

 

[newsgrunt]

Simple rule is if it's for photojournalism related purposes ie-portfolio for post secondary or print or web journalism etc., do not touch a thing. Moderate toning is fine but removal of an element is career toast. Doesn't matter how insignificant it is, it doesn't get touched. Period.

re:street photography, I'd be inclined to leave it as is. It's street, you get what you get.