"No Editing Allowed"

[David Hughes]

Hi,

It's a matter of the words you use; have you thought that looking through the view-finder, selecting the shutter speed and aperture etc, etc are part of the editing process even before you squeeze the shutter release? (Pre-processing editing, perhaps.)

It's just a question of how much you do before taking the picture and how much you do afterwards. In the old days it was done in the dark room to correct mistakes or to improve the picture etc, etc, which boils down to the same thing.

And with slide film, that I've been using since the 50's, you had no choice but to get them right because there was nothing you could do afterwards. Well, you could shoot 6 x 6 cm and crop to those nice square 2" or 127 film frames but it wasted a lot of film. Rather like cropping 12 mega pixels to 5 which, of course, no one does, do they?

It's really a matter of spending a few more seconds or minutes before taking the picture, rather than afterwards.

Regards, David

 

[Roger Hicks]

Third reason: The photographer uses slide film and projects the slides 🙂

Hmmmm.... Broadly, yes. But do you remember the sheer variety of metal slide masks that Gepe used to make? And still does make, for all I know?

As one of the few people on the forum who actually used to use projected slides professionally (often as twin-projector audio-visuals), I know there were times when we used 'trick' mounts.

Cheers,

R.

 

[willie_901]

I would think the OP's proposal is an useful exercise for improving one's photography.

At the same time refusing to modify a photograph in any medium is setting the bar very high. Getting everything exactly right before you press the shutter is not only difficult, but it limits your subject matter to static scenes. In my case I would have to use a tripos to minimize converging verticals.

I also think rangefinders are ill-suited for this sort of exercise. Precise framing and a large finder would provide more feedback as the uncertainties inherent with even the best 35 mm rangefinders would be eliminated.

 

[Charlie Lemay]

All photography is documentation, but while some images document what we literally see in the world, others document the unique persol vision of the photographer. I gravitate toward the latter and so edit to match my vision rather than reality. Adams had his no cropping rule, but given how heavily he edited in every other way, it makes this rule seem rather arbitrary to me.

 

[David Hughes]

...I also think rangefinders are ill-suited for this sort of exercise. Precise framing and a large finder would provide more feedback as the uncertainties inherent with even the best 35 mm rangefinders would be eliminated.

Hi,

Sorry, but I think the opposite. One of the clear advantages of the RF with frame-lines is that you've a rough idea of what's happening just outside the frame. With the typical 95% view of a SLR you get some ruined pictures at times. Especially if you are concentrating on what's happening in the view-finder. Although there's no legal answer to it.

Regards, David

 

[charjohncarter]

Don't throw away negatives unless they are total losers. I've printed some I took 45 years ago and more. I didn't like them, but now I do. You just never know.

 

[kuzano]

Hmmmm... I tend to make the break this way....

Hmmmm... I tend to make the break this way....

Digital Photography is the practice of capturing images with a digital camera.
Digital camera's at present provide a huge amount of control over the final image.

Photography stops when the image is on the memory card.

Image editing, if you go back just a few years, the software was included in the Graphic Art design world.

Editing the image in a computer is no longer photography. Photography provided a source image. All that comes after is Graphic Artistry.

Works for me, and I don't do the latter. My search in digital photography has always been for the camera that can create a final image... Now you can even crop in many cameras, do HDR, and stitch panoramas to a degree.

I consult on computers for a living. I do not use them much in my personal life, nor in my other endeavors.

Naturally, since I am working about 40% of my photos digital, I must use the computer for organizing, printing, etc. I don't do post processing.

That's Graphic Art, and I am not that.

 

[bugmenot]

Digital Photography is the practice of capturing images with a digital camera.
Digital camera's at present provide a huge amount of control over the final image.

Photography stops when the image is on the memory card.

Image editing, if you go back just a few years, the software was included in the Graphic Art design world.

Editing the image in a computer is no longer photography. Photography provided a source image. All that comes after is Graphic Artistry.

Works for me, and I don't do the latter. My search in digital photography has always been for the camera that can create a final image... Now you can even crop in many cameras, do HDR, and stitch panoramas to a degree.

I consult on computers for a living. I do not use them much in my personal life, nor in my other endeavors.

Naturally, since I am working about 40% of my photos digital, I must use the computer for organizing, printing, etc. I don't do post processing.

That's Graphic Art, and I am not that.

I completely disagree with this. The camera is doing the post processing. I prefer to do it on a more powerful computer than the measly one on-board the camera ...

Heck, it is much more difficult to do RAW manipulation in the newest digital cameras that offer them than to do it on a computer with Lightroom, or the like.

The "purist" view (which is quite ironic, given digital imaging has been available to mass consumers for less than two decades) that JPEGs out of the camera are to be "as is", final and absolute is naive and ignorant at best.

Today, unless you have somebody do your post processing work for you, no photographer can really survive in the industry (given they make money through photography) without certain degree of proficiency in what you call "graphic art". It isn't graphics design if you aren't adding anything new onto your image.

Hi,

Sorry, but I think the opposite. One of the clear advantages of the RF with frame-lines is that you've a rough idea of what's happening just outside the frame. With the typical 95% view of a SLR you get some ruined pictures at times. Especially if you are concentrating on what's happening in the view-finder. Although there's no legal answer to it.

Regards, David

I believe the chances of errors in framing with a RF are at least equal, if not greater than a SLR, even one with a 95% coverage viewfinder.

The Red represents a 100% of a 35mm film frame.

Not much can go wrong here ... but with a RF, other than the framelines, which are approximations at best, you have less of an idea what exactly will be in the frame.

But hey, that could be half the fun 😀

 

[swoop]

Editing is 1/2 the art of photography.

People just tend to confuse working on an image using a computer vs in a darkroom. But they are basically the same. Computers just offer a lot more options. As a photojournalist, I strictly limit my photo editing to the capabilities I'd have if I were in a darkroom. Exposure, contrast, color, dodging/burning, spotting, cropping. Those are just about the only techniques I ever use on my images.

 

[David Hughes]

http://i.imgur.com/AHQfJ.jpg[/IMG]

The Red represents a 100% of a 35mm film frame.

Not much can go wrong here ... but with a RF, other than the framelines, which are approximations at best, you have less of an idea what exactly will be in the frame.

But hey, that could be half the fun 😀

Hi,

I meant idiots marching into the frame, suddenly jumping up and so on. With an SLR you know about it as you take the picture. With frame lines you get some idea of what they are up to.

I don't worry too much about accurate framing as there's just too many other steps that will ruin my careful plan. Like printing 5" x 7" for example, slide mounts and A4 printing paper...

Apart from 4" x 6" and A3+ with a margin you never get the camera's frame at the edge of the picture. And many scanners and enlarger frames just add to the problem.

Regards, David

 

[DNG]

Umm...
To have "No Editing" in wet printing.. Or, the least needed to achieve a print.

• Pinhole lens cap for exposing a scene for a few minutes.
• Stand developing
• Contact Print of negative
• 6x6 camera or larger will give you a contact print that you can look at without a need for a lope to view it.

😀

 

[KM-25]

When on earth did this stupid habit of calling processing a photo start being called editing? You never went to a lab and saw "Editing" services on the list of offerings. It is called PROCESSING or PRINTING. Editing is what you do to either cull out less than ideal shots or identify and or select the good ones...

In the motion picture industry a film editor is not cloning out power lines in a scene, he is editing the clips together to make a film. When I edit my photos, I am looking for a keeper. When I decide what that photograph is, I either scan it and do pre-press processing to make it ready for publication or a take the negative in my darkroom and print it, not "Edit" it.

And for what it is worth, I do real photography, get it right in camera, not invent things that never happened after the fact or fix a broken photograph. That goes for my fine art too by the way....

I get that some form of manipulation has been going in photography since day one, but that was before everyone had a signature that includes a Flickr stream and billions of garbage photoshopped fake-O-Rama computer graphics filled the internet. Now it is a crutch that most use to overcome either lack of a good shot or outright lack of talent...often pure crap with a pure crap excuse....

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

Also — throwing away negatives...bad idea or good idea? I figure I'd only keep the "keepers" and pitch the rest.

Discarding photos is a kind of editing. There are some who are religious about editing: everything must be cropped, not cropping is a sign of mental and creative laziness. Others are religious about being "pure": any sign of editing is a sign of a lack of creative genius (or, shall we say, innate mental and creative laziness).

In the wet darkroom, contrast filters, choice of papers, dodging/burning, processing chemicals...it is a kind of "editing". Things don't happen like magic, like on TV series where people just type randomly on the keyboard and the computer does exactly what everybody was expecting it to do. Everything you do, from the framing on-camera, the use of lens and/or focal length, the film or camera w/its sensor and its customized settings, is a kind of editing.

Understood, the general concept of photo editing is "modifying after capture". To some it means any tweaking at all of the tone, color, contrast, image area, etc. Eggleston shot many photos with a specific processing and printing in mind. HCB shot his and let someone else do the processing and printing.

You can strive to pose yourself this goal or challenge of not getting "in the way" along the long road from captured image to printing/publishing, but any bit of thinking and conscious decision-making when photographing is editing - which is why the same scene with two different photographers can result in very different photographs of the same reality.

Personally, I think that all options must be considered as such: options, and not dogmatic rules.

True, the most creative people have some degree of obsessiveness, and that obsessiveness manifests itself as absolute rules to follow, absolute behaviours throughout the creative process, and anything outside of that is just unthinkable (and to the dogmatic, highly reproachable).

I prefer to work by this guideline: "learn the notes, then forget the notes".

 

[edge100]

And for what it is worth, I do real photography, get it right in camera, not invent things that never happened after the fact or fix a broken photograph. That goes for my fine art too by the way....

I completely disagree with this sentiment.

Ever use camera movements or a TS lens to alter perspective or shift the focal plane? Ever use a larger or smaller f/stop to alter DoF? Ever use a slow shutter speed to show motion blur, or a fast one to stop movement? Ever use flash?

ALL of these things are altering reality. Not to get too philosophical about it, but even what we see is just the human brain interpreting reality; consider that visible light is a tiny fraction of the EM spectrum, and most of the spectrum is completely ignored by the brain (or isn't sensed at all).

So if you use movements, open your aperture, make your shutter speed faster or slower, or use flash, those things are somehow ok, because they're done "in camera", but cloning out a bird, or dodging and burning, etc, etc is not ok because it's done in a computer (or a darkroom)? Give me a break.

I get that some form of manipulation has been going in photography since day one, but that was before everyone had a signature that includes a Flickr stream and billions of garbage photoshopped fake-O-Rama computer graphics filled the internet. Now it is a crutch that most use to overcome either lack of a good shot or outright lack of talent...often pure crap with a pure crap excuse....

Read this.

 

[BMacW]

Everybody should watch this video segment of Ansel Adams explaining his view on this exact topic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWhQGU2RYuM&feature=my_favorites&list=FLCXjDYcbDjND3O-8xJB4P_g

Negative is the score, the print(including darkroom editing) is the performance.

I don't think anyone could've said it any better.

 

[thomd]

I'm really shocked by all the replies and very grateful to everyone who took the time to give advice. You've all made a lot of points that never crossed my mind...just where does "composition" end and "editing" actually begin, for instance. I suppose in a sense my question was almost too broad...the more I think about everything you all have said, the more I realize I'm almost asking "Should I try to improve my photo-taking so that it requires less editing later on?" And the answer to that is...of course, and isn't that just the same thing as saying "Ought I try to improve my photography skills?"

Often, for instance, I find myself scanning something and then saying "Oh, the composition is a bit off...if only that table weren't at the edge of the frame" and then I crop it. But I think the thing I'm bothered by is that my _initial_ composition was based on having that table in the viewfinder, and so when I crop it, it's almost like there is some phantom "me" that took the photo. Perhaps something in the angle, or where I stood, or so forth. Maybe some of this has to do with experience: knowing what is going to look good later on when it's scanned or printed based on what I actually see in the viewfinder.

But if that's the case, it's almost like learning how to best translate a language that you're inventing as you go along! I guess that's where the "lifelong" aspect comes in, as well as the sometimes ambivalent desire to have some rules to follow and yet recognizing that there are always exceptions, and that what works best for the image always has to come before some rote adherence to "the right way" of doing things.

I guess it comes down to experience, practice, and experimentation. That's something that, to me as a newcomer, is both a really exciting and daunting prospect! These forums seem like a great place to learn more, though.

 

[Roger Hicks]

I'm really shocked by all the replies and very grateful to everyone who took the time to give advice. You've all made a lot of points that never crossed my mind...just where does "composition" end and "editing" actually begin, for instance. I suppose in a sense my question was almost too broad...the more I think about everything you all have said, the more I realize I'm almost asking "Should I try to improve my photo-taking so that it requires less editing later on?" And the answer to that is...of course, and isn't that just the same thing as saying "Ought I try to improve my photography skills?"

Often, for instance, I find myself scanning something and then saying "Oh, the composition is a bit off...if only that table weren't at the edge of the frame" and then I crop it. But I think the thing I'm bothered by is that my _initial_ composition was based on having that table in the viewfinder, and so when I crop it, it's almost like there is some phantom "me" that took the photo. Perhaps something in the angle, or where I stood, or so forth. Maybe some of this has to do with experience: knowing what is going to look good later on when it's scanned or printed based on what I actually see in the viewfinder.

But if that's the case, it's almost like learning how to best translate a language that you're inventing as you go along! I guess that's where the "lifelong" aspect comes in, as well as the sometimes ambivalent desire to have some rules to follow and yet recognizing that there are always exceptions, and that what works best for the image always has to come before some rote adherence to "the right way" of doing things.

I guess it comes down to experience, practice, and experimentation. That's something that, to me as a newcomer, is both a really exciting and daunting prospect! These forums seem like a great place to learn more, though.

Wow! A MAGNIFICENT summary. Thanks.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Gumby]

Editing is 1/2 the art of photography.

... and cropping is the other 1/3.

 

[Gumby]

... both of which can be done both in-camera and in post.

 

[Paul Jenkin]

I went to see an exhibition of Ansel Adams' photos a few years ago. One photo had been produced as a "straight" print from the negative with no burning or dodging. It looked okay but nothing special. The one next to it was stunning; almost 3-D.

Ansel Adams said he regarded the negative as the "score" whilst the print was the "performance" and I must agree with him.

We get the negative as correctly exposed as we can - given our ultimate intention for that scene (high key / low key, etc) and then enhance it - whether in a chemical darkroom or via a digital post-processing software.

This is not fake, it's just part of getting the best out of the negative / digital file created. the only exception I can think of is where the photograph is to be used as forensic evidence and tampering with it might be construed as tampering with evidence.