Who's the boss?

[ptpdprinter]

Post processing is completely subjective. What you think needs improvement could be perfect to someone else. I mean, look at the high contrast b&w Japanese photography vs. the grey & more grey currently popular in the US art world. Both are considered great photography.

I am not really of the "I think my images could be improved but I'll just post/print them as-is because somebody else may think they are perfect" school of photography. That sounds like a memory card dump to me, a strategy not unknown around here.

I am not familiar with the high contrast black and white photography in Japan or the grey and more grey photography in the United States you are referring to, although I might recognize such photographs if you showed them to me, and I do not know who considers such photographs great photography or why.

 

[Saganich]

Today we have jpegs that are very good. You might theoretically be throwing away data, but if all you have is a great photo in jpeg form, nobody is going to care. It is still a great photo. Nobody is going to wonder what could have been if it was RAW. In film we had minox, 110, polaroid, holgas, 3200 speed film etc. None of these were exactly high fidelity. Yet someone out there has made beautiful photos with all of them.

Ah, a new question: Can postprocessing cause a photo to become "great" or "iconic" when otherwise it would have been forgotten? that may be difficult to answer as we wouldn't know what work went into those iconic images, whether in photoshop or the Magnum darkroom. My gut says not likely.

 

[Vince Lupo]

Ah, a new question: Can postprocessing cause a photo to become "great" or "iconic" when otherwise it would have been forgotten? that may be difficult to answer as we wouldn't know what work went into those iconic images, whether in photoshop or the Magnum darkroom. My gut says not likely.

If you consider 'post-processing' to include work done in the darkroom, then I'd say yes.

Likely the best example of all: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_Ar5ZPuKUM

As another example, Gene Smith's famous photo of Albert Schweitzer was extensively altered (though it's possible that photo would still have been considered 'great' even without the manipulations). Aubrey Bodine was known to use separate negatives of skies and incorporated them into other images of skipjacks and watermen, thereby creating some of the most 'iconic' photographs of the Chesapeake Bay. And if you want to go back further in photographic history, consider the work of Henry Peach Robinson and Oscar Rejlander. The Photoshoppers of the 19th century, to be sure -- in particular, Henry Peach Robinson's most famous work, 'Fading Away', is made up of five separate negatives.

 

[kbb]

Because I want the picture to reflect what I saw. With my eyes and brain I can concentrate on that part of what is in front of me that interests me.. When I print or make a screen image I can increase the the contrast or brightness of what is important and suppress it in what I consider unimportant. (And with Lightroom’s new “select subject” tool this can be very easy and quick.) I can even crop out what I think is unimportant. I can make a print bright and cheery or dark and dramatic, with a full range of tones or a limited one. All in all, I can make the picture mine. Sometime the camera and I agree on what we saw. More often, not so much. Is it egomaniacal to think my adjusted and personalized raw files are “better” than my camera’s jpgs? It’s a good camera, but I paid for its computer, and I pay to keep it in freshly charged batteries. It works for me, not me for it. We’re going raw.

Your thoughts?

Assuming that the image I shot is adequately interesting as a prospective print, I want the picture to reflect what I think a print should look like. Modern JPEGs are pretty good and have some flexibility in processing, but raw gives the maximum flexibility. Why suffer in post?

 

[jsrockit]

Ah, a new question: Can postprocessing cause a photo to become "great" or "iconic" when otherwise it would have been forgotten? that may be difficult to answer as we wouldn't know what work went into those iconic images, whether in photoshop or the Magnum darkroom. My gut says not likely.

As I stated earlier I use RAW and love post processing. It is important for me to achieve the look I want. However, my point about using jpegs is that if the person makes a great image using a jpeg and it looks great, then is anyone going to care if they didn't use RAW? Are we really going to be worried about pixels that could have been? We need to ask ourselves if we think people who used slide film thought they were using an inferior product at the time. I think we are saying the same thing two different ways.

There are many examples to support a good image becoming great through darkroom work and post processing. There are many examples of people using slide film or jpgs and just getting it right.

 

[jsrockit]

I am not really of the "I think my images could be improved but I'll just post/print them as-is because somebody else may think they are perfect" school of photography. That sounds like a memory card dump to me, a strategy not unknown around here.

Huh? are you intentionally being difficult? I do not think I said any such thing. My point is that you can only make your images to your taste and not to everyone's taste. You seem to be confusing this with laziness.

I am not familiar with the high contrast black and white photography in Japan or the grey and more grey photography in the United States you are referring to, although I might recognize such photographs if you showed them to me, and I do not know who considers such photographs great photography or why.

It is hard to miss this type of work if you truly are looking at what has been going on in photography over the last 20 years. Who considers it great? Galleries, museums, book publishers, magazine editors, etc.

 

[Dogman]

Dropping in again I would like to point out that, although I use JPEGs, I'm not preaching that everyone should. I guess my point here is that JPEGs are perfectly valid and deserve to be considered as such. I'm not a great photographer but I've done some pretty nice photos using JPEG only.

It's all about the photo, however you make it.

 

[ptpdprinter]

It is hard to miss this type of work if you truly are looking at what has been going on in photography over the last 20 years. Who considers it great? Galleries, museums, book publishers, magazine editors, etc.

There has been a lot of high contrast black and white photography which has been coming out of Japan for decades. I didn't think it was anything new. I googled "grey and more grey photography" and google returned two links, one of which was your post above, and the other to a branding company which featured a lot of color photos. Perhaps it goes by a different description.

 

[jsrockit]

There has been a lot of high contrast black and white photography which has been coming out of Japan for decades. I didn't think it was anything new. I googled "grey and more grey photography" and google returned two links, one of which was your post above, and the other to a branding company which featured a lot of color photos. Perhaps it goes by a different description.

Yes, that's true...for 70 years. However, it gained international attention in more recent decades. Grey and more grey was just my description. I'm talking about B&W photos with a huge grey scale, but not much white or black. Low contrast and very grey.

 

[Oscuro]

Caro Bill,

How is (unmodified) JPEG different from colour transparency? Kodachrome. I think Allard, Maisel, Harvey, et al.. (But not Pete Turner!)....

 

[ptpdprinter]

How is (unmodified) JPEG different from colour transparency? Kodachrome. I think Allard, Maisel, Harvey, et al.. (But not Pete Turner!)....

You don't throw away a significant amount of information the camera captures with a transparency like you do with a JPG. At the time, Kodachome was considered the highest quality capture medium available.

And before everybody has about two hemorrhages apiece, for the umpteenth time, yes, you can make a great photograph with a JPG.

 

[Bill Pierce]

Caro Bill,

How is (unmodified) JPEG different from colour transparency? Kodachrome. I think Allard, Maisel, Harvey, et al.. (But not Pete Turner!)....

Pete duplicated his Kodachromes, often on Kodachrome itself, which increased contrast and saturation. But, within the duping process, there are controls over the degree of the effects. As to everybody else - you bracketed your Kodachrome exposures and picked the slide you liked best. Additionally folks often used mild warming or cooling filters on the camera. And, of course, when you printed, be it Cibachrome, dye or whatever, there were subtle controls you could exercise. But, yes, transparencies in general were a pain in the butt. Kodachromes were among the best of the color films and certainly quicker to edit than negatives. But they probably were the jpgs of color film, and the creative controls, for the most part, were exercised when you were shooting which could be a real problem in some quickly changing situations.

 

[willie_901]

Caro Bill,

How is (unmodified) JPEG different from colour transparency? Kodachrome. I think Allard, Maisel, Harvey, et al.. (But not Pete Turner!)....

A JPEG is similar to a transparency film in several ways. The image rendering style is decided before the image is made.[1] Second, compared to using a raw file, making significant changes in perceived rendering is limited. The scope of hue and contrast changes is limited. Even a dramatic change - such as rendering a color JPEG images as a monochrome image - is limited. This is unavoidable because the JPEG lossy compression step reduces the image's information content. You can't know what information is useful if you never have access to it. An image rendered from a raw file and output as a JPEG file has less information content as well. However, once the rendering is optimized, the discarded information is not important.


Of course, one can change the rendering of an in-camera JPEG using LR. But this raises a question. If one is gong to the trouble of transferring the image to an other device and invest time modifying in-camera JPEG rendering, why not just use a the raw file?.[2]

1. This is not always the case as some cameras offer the option to render an in-camera raw file using many different presets or any combination of user customized parameters. This can be done in-camera. Some brands offer the option to display the in-camera rendering on an external device (phone, tablet or computer.

2. There are several reasons. For instance a sports photographer can transfer JPEGs wirelessly to a photo editor who can publish an image electronically minutes later. This is one of the few cases where limiting file size is relevant. Wedding/event photographers can display a slideshow before the event is over.

 

[Dogman]

Just shaking head, walking away....

 

[Oscuro]

Pete duplicated his Kodachromes, often on Kodachrome itself, which increased contrast and saturation. But, within the duping process, there are controls over the degree of the effects. As to everybody else - you bracketed your Kodachrome exposures and picked the slide you liked best. Additionally folks often used mild warming or cooling filters on the camera. And, of course, when you printed, be it Cibachrome, dye or whatever, there were subtle controls you could exercise. But, yes, transparencies in general were a pain in the butt. Kodachromes were among the best of the color films and certainly quicker to edit than negatives. But they probably were the jpgs of color film, and the creative controls, for the most part, were exercised when you were shooting which could be a real problem in some quickly changing situations.

Caro Bill,

Oh dear...

I am not trying to polarize. But this is my point in making. One - all of us - work within the constrains of the form even if we don't like or recognize that. Even if you shooting Tri-X in large format or APS-C RAW and heavily post-process one is still constrained by the limitations of the form. Regardless of what the form(at) is. We (dear husband and I), always think of how the cameras we use react with certain colour/light combinations. We often think of the printer gamut when we are shooting. Perhaps not directly or consciously, but the way it prints (whether or not you "manipulate" in PS) is a boundary in the form. We work, consciously or unconsciously with the limitations of what we are working with. And we work. We don't bracket as much as we did with slide film but we still bracket.

PTPDPrinter said "throw away" information in JPEG. He is right but transparency colour also throws away much. It throws away dynamic range. A lot of it! Everything compared to the human eye is a compromise, a constrainment, a limit. If you want dynamic range, shoot B&W neg stock. If you want colour, you can't look at black and white neg stock. None of this changes the basic photographic problem which is that the content requires a soloution within the form in order for it to be presented in the way that the photographer wants.

KoFe says it right: Content is boss. OUr job is to represent what we see within these limitings of the form. It doesn't matter how "much control" you have in process. Because there are always limitations. One chooses the form (or format) and works with awarness of the limitations of that form. Mr. Maisel once pointed out that B&W is often more about content than form. Often is the important word. But even B&W can't represent anything accurately because it is, well, black and white. Often in the universe, colour is involved. The same argument is made against colour because of limits in dynamic range.

So I don't think it is the form that is at fault. It is the practitioner. And there are good photo editors and terrible ones, yes. Even in the days of all film work. It remains the photographer's intent that determines whether something is a valid approach.

Mme. O.

 

[Oscuro]

Dear Bill,
A last thought. If you immerse yourself in a digital camera system and you shoot jpegs (that's me - my husband goes back and forth) you will find that it takes a lot of shooting to gain the necessary awareness of how the camera behaves in different kind of light and colour etc such that you can acheive the look in the jpeg you want. But once you are there, I find that it is almost the analogue of the transparancy on an aesthetic level. Almost. But because we spend a lot of time shooting and editing (not post pro..."selecting," is what I hear the young photojournos calling it) that is where the practical analogy of the jpeg to the slide occurs. The edit is binary. It's either yes or no. Sometimes maybe. And yes, sometimes the same subtle corrections you referred to in duping. But husband and I are journos and maybe that's why we are answering "photographing" rather than "photograph" as our preference.

(We print digital colour in house. But in the field we often use little Canon Selphy or, yes, the "drugstore" for quick prints to try layouts on the run. No "subtle corrections" there.)

Mme. O.

 

[MrFujicaman]

At chris Crawford's? Sneaky!

 

[Pál_K]

At chris Crawford's? Sneaky!

You will notice, though, that Chris’ photos of Sneaky and environs is excellent. The color in his photos is beautiful.

 

[Oscuro]

Are there any advantages to jpgs other than they are smaller in size and more convenient to post directly to social media? Does anybody make prints from jpgs, and if so why?

Dear ptpdprinter, yes, I do. It is because the files are far past good enough. Also and more important, I do edit digital photos exactly like slides: yes or no (sometimes "maybe" but it becomes yes or no at the end). I do not spend time adjusting. I don't have enough time left and I would rather shoot the picture and see it. And then the next picture. And the next one. So my selects are printed this way, yes.

Ciao,
Mme. O.

 

[Out to Lunch]

....and most, if not all stock photo companies accept jpg's, only. Cheers, OtL