Photoshopping Street Photos Yes/No?

[Roger Hicks]

I do believe that street photography is a form of documentary photography. I don't think I'm alone in that belief.

And I'd argue that you are conflating "documentary" with "imaginary."
Obviously we disagree about 100 percent on this. For me, documentary means "it happened." Maybe that's simplistic. If it is, I'm comfortable with it.

Dear Tim,

Indeed. I suspect, though, that the difference is that while I can see your point of view, you can't (or are unwilling to) accept that there may be other points of view.

Cheers,

R.

 

[johannielscom]

Of course it is existed. The shutter doesn't create reality. It captures it.

But let's say that in the original photo, his t-shirt had a swastika. And that you didn't like the imagery. So you removed it. That would be creating a reality that never existed. It might make a better photo (in the minds of some). But it would be a lie.

If you read my earlier posts, you'll see that I have no issues with portrait photographers tinkering with images. (unless they are part of documentary series, that is.)

To stay with your example: When putting that picture out with the swastika, people would still be creating their own interpretation of the shot. And those interpretations would have nothing to do with reality as such. He might have been a Jewish protester, an Egyptian protester, a neo-nazi. Or perceived as any of these.

Any interpretation of a shot is a lie. It's just people lying to themselves instead of the photographer doing it.

The only way of avoiding such confusion is to put the shot in perspective. But I like this uncertainty that stems from a shot without the explanation. It places my shots somehow outside ordinary reality, and I like this surreal sense that comes from it.
I consider my shooting creative, not documenting. That's just another approach to street photography, that's all.

 

[tbarker13]

Dear Tim,

Indeed. I suspect, though, that the difference is that while I can see your point of view, you can't (or are unwilling to) accept that there may be other points of view.

Cheers,

R.

Maybe so. There are very few things in life about which I have absolute rules. But in documentary photography, I just do not see a place for altering reality. Not if you plan on calling it a documentary photo.
If you want to call it a photo illustration, fine. Do whatever you want. Put the green men in. Clone out the people you don't like. Get rid of trash.

 

[MinorTones]

Make your art your own. If you are documentarian then, no don't change a thing in the scene; but if you are an artist and think of yourself as expressing your art within a photograph then make of it what you will. If that means cloning or going Jerry Uelsmann on it then do so.

 

[peterm1]

I think that removing or adding anything in a picture makes it a bit of a fake. If you don't like some of the things that are in the viewfinder, don't take the picture or move in closer or change your angle to eliminate that which is not wanted. Work the scene and shoot as many shots as you can. You will likely get at least one picture without trash or other undesirable things in the picture. Dodging and Burning are fine I think. I do it sometimes. Just my opinion about how I do my work. Jim

While I understand this point of view I do not adhere to it in my own work. I photograph to produce something of artistic merit (to the extent I am able, with my modest skills.) In short I am not interested in reportage, which is what, I am sure the author of this quote is interested in. I am interested in art.

As such I am perfectly happy not only to crop, but also to generally post process to my heart's content! Color, saturation, change to mono, addition of blur, sharpening of the main subject etc etc are all up for grabs. All that interests me is the quality and interest from the final image.

The only thing I do not do is add in subjects from other images or merge photos. Not because I think its wrong but because I think I can get the results I want without this extreme.

SO THE ANSWER TO THE IMPLIED QUESTION AS TO WHETHER ITS OK TO POST PROCESS SUCH PHOTOS IS AN UNEQUIVOCAL "IT ALL DEPENDS!"

 

[tbarker13]

Photography should be about truth...

then all black and white prints are a lie?
where did the colour go?
is that not leaving out something integral to the image?

No sane person viewing your images will think you are pretending to have stumbled upon a world devoid of color.🙂 And everyone understands that a photo is showing a particular vantage point of an event. It's not a 360-degree look at the scene.
These are things that a reasonable person can figure out simply by looking at an image.

But the viewer is helpless when you monkey around with that chosen image in ways that are hidden.

Maybe you are shooting a funeral and decide that a sunny sky doesn't fit. Is it OK to add a gloomier sky?
Let's say you happen across a small anti-gay protest. Is it OK to make it look more dramatic by cloning in a few dozen more protesters?
Or more simply, you are shooting on your favorite street in Paris and it just happens to be littered with trash. Is it OK to make it look pristine by cloning out all that trash?

Clearly there are different degrees of alteration here - some less acceptable than others. I just think it's a dangerous path to go down without giving every change some serious thought.

 

[Keith]

Apparently a ****load of major US newspapers at the time of the Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton fiasco, removed her from images taken by their journos where she was standing a little too close to the pres at a particular major public adress!

I heard this reported by a lecturer at a US university who had been a photographer at the time and was pleased that the publication he worked for chose not to go this route. One statement he made during his lecture that really stuck with me was ...

"The two most dangerous things in the world at the moment are governments and digital imaging."

 

[tbarker13]

I have this fascinating book at home that details the way that Joseph Stalin's regime systematically erased people from images during his reign. They have all these amazing pictures (shown over time) where you'll have a group of a half dozen or more political leaders. By the end, there's just one or two people left. The others have simply been erased.
Some of it is incredibly sloppy - there are a few instances where you can see where the retouchers literally drew in clothing that had been blocked by the person who was being vanished.

And now we have Photoshop.

Here is a related exhibit at the Newseum in Washington D.C.:
http://www.newseum.org/berlinwall/commissar_vanishes/

 

[anitasanger]

One of the greatest things I like about film is that it's honest. When you see a negative or a silver print, there's no wondering how real or fake certain aspects of the photo are. Celluloid captures historical moments in time, just the way the lens saw it happen. It's organic and pure.

The aforementioned reasons are what's drawn me even closer to film in this technological age of synthetic manipulation. I realize that Photoshop is digital photography's equivalent to the antiquated dark room. It is a great tool for many applications - and can be tastefully used with digital photographs.*

When I use my D7000, I treat it like a film camera. Perhaps this a foolish mentality, perhaps not. I find that the camera is very capable of creating stunning color photographs without needing any post production. If I were to manipulate the image to make it look differently than the way it came out of the camera, I'd feel like I was cheating. Don't get me wrong, this is only a personal philosophy - I do not cast this same judgement upon others. I take photographs for fun. I'm not getting paid to do it, I don't have a boss to answer to or industry expectations to meet. I'm just a mediocre hobby horse who doesn't like Photoshop.

When film is concerned,*I believe one should maintain it's integrity and keep it honest. Dust and scratch removal with the occasional levels adjustment are all the postproduction celluloid needs.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

One of the greatest things I like about film is that it's honest. When you see a negative or a silver print, there's no wondering how real or fake certain aspects of the photo are. Celluloid captures historical moments in time, just the way the lens saw it happen. It's organic and pure.

Organic and pure, and a fat load of horse****.

Study the work of Jerry Uelsmann, Man Ray, William Mortensen. Not a bit of 'truth' in any of their work and its all 100% 'pure' film and traditional prints. The stone cold fact is that the camera can lie, does lie, always had and always will. Even a completely un-manipulated photo is a half-truth because the photographer takes things out of context by framing and lens choice, exposure, depth of field choices, etc. Ansel Adams. the king of 'straight photography' heavily manipulated his photographs in the printing stage by extensive dodging and burning and he often used deep colored filters to alter tonal relationships.

People who know nothing about photography insist that photographs are the truth. Amateurs do too, and thats sad because they should know better. Talking to photographers with such attitudes, I get the impression of people who think if they stamp their feet and shake their fists enough at something they don't understand, it will go away. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Even documentary photography is just art in the service of an idea.

I'm really not trying to offend or put down anyone here; I'm trying to make you think. If all your work stands on is some notion of 'truthfulness', it will not stand the test of time. Do something significant, you only get one life. Don't waste it fighting a fight that cannot be won and shouldn't be allowed to win even if it could.

 

[tbarker13]

People who know nothing about photography insist that photographs are the truth. Amateurs do too, and thats sad because they should know better. Talking to photographers with such attitudes, I get the impression of people who think if they stamp their feet and shake their fists enough at something they don't understand, it will go away. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Even documentary photography is just art in the service of an idea.

I don't mean to offend you either. But this argument is one that applies to everything in life viewed by a human being. We can never know the real truth about anything. Even if we took the camera out of the equation - and plopped the viewer into the scene, they would still only get one point of view.

But just because it is impossible to achieve perfection, that doesn't mean you stop trying to get as close to it as possible.

As someone who has spent more than 20 years reporting news, I am painfully aware of how difficult it is to tell a story that everyone agrees is 100 percent accurate.
Everyone sees things differently. Two people watching the same conversation often walk way with entirely different interpretations of what was said.
But I do not use that as an excuse to knowingly distort what I learn through my reporting. I don't make up quotes or put words in people's mouths because it would create a more compelling story.

Regarding documentary photography, surely we can agree that there is a world of difference between dodging and burning and in using Photoshop to build a new sky or to erase unwanted people.

 

[anitasanger]

Chriscrawfordphoto, I'm rather glad that I offended you. If not, I wouldn't have had the pleasure of amusement from your raving, hostile attack.

Now if you may, (but doubt you will) please take a deep breath, step down off your high horse and try to calm down.

I'm sorry that my reference to objects in a photo being "real or fake" confused you so. I guess I should have broken my thought process down into simpler, easier to digest terms so that you may have understood. Allow me a do over kind sir.

What I like about film is it's finite quality of preserving what the lens saw without the threat of anything being added or removed from the negative. After a negative is exposed and developed, what is there will remain unchanged throughout the duration of the celluloids existence. You can't slim up a fat gal's thighs on a negative and you can't magically add in a compelling UFO flying overhead. What was exposed - is what will remain. Period.

I never said that a camera is incapable of manipulating thought, evoking emotion, exaggerating or lying. I also never alluded to anything related to these "stone Cold facts" as you so eloquently put it. Not once did I mention a camera's ability or inability to alter perception, this is ludicrous. Every photograph taken is represented in the context of the photographer's vision. No rational human would refute thus. How you've deduced such a notion is flawed logic beyond my comprehension.

Your rant about film's post-production processes are also unfounded. When did I say that negatives cannot be manipulated in a dark room? I didn't. This is yet another preposterous assumption by you.

Perhaps the ultimate irony is in your closing statement when you disclosed that you are not "really trying to offend or put anyone down here." Well, for the sake of argument, I'm going to assume that you are a basic social misfit who's completely inept in any form of communicative skills. Here's a tip. In the future when you are not really trying to offend or put anyone down, it's probably a good idea not to start your first sentence with another man's quote followed by you calling it "a fat load of horse****."

I get the impression of people who think if they stamp their feet and shake their fists enough at something they don't understand, it will go away.

This line of gibberish makes no sense. You get what impression of people who think if they stamp their feet and shake their fists enough at something they don't understand, it will go away? I'll assume you meant to form a coherent thought by substituting the word that in place of "of." And in this case, you've described your own post perfectly. You've exhibited lots of fist shaking and feet stamping - heck, you even threw in a little cursing for good measure. So tell me, did it go away?

Post Scriptum

Thank you for attempting to give me a lesson on the techniques of Ansel Adams. But I hope you won't mind my saying - It was much more compelling and effective coming from him.

Luke


ansel by saveamerika, on Flickr

 

[ampguy]

if you're serious about photography

if you're serious about photography

I'd abandon the photoshop and removal of objects in photos.

No set of rules or guidelines are perfect, but here are some reasonable guidelines that make sense to me for photography, from the tedx.com site:

***
Photography and video tell the story of your TEDx event. Below, we've compiled a list of best practices for wrangling photos and video. By adhering to them, you help us at TED share the story with the world.

Photography

Standards

Resolution: Shoot and upload photos in the highest possible resolution. (For JPEGs to be considered "high resolution," they must meet or exceed a minimum of 7x5 @300 dpi.) If large file sizes cause problems having to do with bandwidth or storage, contact tedxpostevent@ted.com.
Unmodified photos only: Do not modify photos -- e.g., do not adjust contrast, color balance, apply filters or airbrush.

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.
***

If you want to do collages or art projects that involve photography, scrapbooking, knitting or what have you, that is fine, but it is no longer photography, it is "shopped", IMHO.


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.

 

[peterm1]

We folk on this forum are like an old married couple - always having the same old argument over and over.

"Why do you always leave the toilet seat up?"

"For the same damn reason you always overcook my steak dammit!"

And so on

Cant we all just kiss and make up?

:^)

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Chriscrawfordphoto, I'm rather glad that I offended you. If not, I wouldn't have had the pleasure of amusement from your raving, hostile attack.

Now if you may, (but doubt you will) please take a deep breath, step down off your high horse and try to calm down.

I'm sorry that my reference to objects in a photo being "real or fake" confused you so. I guess I should have broken my thought process down into simpler, easier to digest terms so that you may have understood. Allow me a do over kind sir.

What I like about film is it's finite quality of preserving what the lens saw without the threat of anything being added or removed from the negative. After a negative is exposed and developed, what is there will remain unchanged throughout the duration of the celluloids existence. You can't slim up a fat gal's thighs on a negative and you can't magically add in a compelling UFO flying overhead. What was exposed - is what will remain. Period.

I never said that a camera is incapable of manipulating thought, evoking emotion, exaggerating or lying. I also never alluded to anything related to these "stone Cold facts" as you so eloquently put it. Not once did I mention a camera's ability or inability to alter perception, this is ludicrous. Every photograph taken is represented in the context of the photographer's vision. No rational human would refute thus. How you've deduced such a notion is flawed logic beyond my comprehension.

Your rant about film's post-production processes are also unfounded. When did I say that negatives cannot be manipulated in a dark room? I didn't. This is yet another preposterous assumption by you.

Perhaps the ultimate irony is in your closing statement when you disclosed that you are not "really trying to offend or put anyone down here." Well, for the sake of argument, I'm going to assume that you are a basic social misfit who's completely inept in any form of communicative skills. Here's a tip. In the future when you are not really trying to offend or put anyone down, it's probably a good idea not to start your first sentence with another man's quote followed by you calling it "a fat load of horse****."



This line of gibberish makes no sense. You get what impression of people who think if they stamp their feet and shake their fists enough at something they don't understand, it will go away? I'll assume you meant to form a coherent thought by substituting the word that in place of "of." And in this case, you've described your own post perfectly. You've exhibited lots of fist shaking and feet stamping - heck, you even threw in a little cursing for good measure. So tell me, did it go away?

Post Scriptum

Thank you for attempting to give me a lesson on the techniques of Ansel Adams. But I hope you won't mind my saying - It was much more compelling and effective coming from him.

Luke


ansel by saveamerika, on Flickr

You have no idea what you're talking about. At all. I can make a neg with a UFO added quite easily. The fact that you don't know how doesn't mean it cannot be done. As for the rest of what I've said, I have a formal education in art history, which you would do well to acquire. Instead of attacking someone who is trying to help you, you should try reading what I wrote. It wasn't meant as an attack on you personally, but a reaction to all the hardcore purists here and an attempt to make them think about something that they don't understand. I'm not the pope giving infallible truth; you can disagree, and I may be wrong, but think about what I said first.

Check out the photographers I referenced. Adams did the least manipulation of them, but his work was not pure at all. I've seen more than his books, I have seen a few hundred of his prints in real life. Moonrise is a perfect example. The most famous version, which is printed in the books you have, shows a black sky (in the original print. I think it looks slightly lighter in the book) with bright clouds. I have seen prints he did soon after making the photograph and the sky is totally different. The early prints are more closely aligned to the negative, with a lighter sky and less dramatic look to the clouds. He burned in the sky considerably in the later versions of that print, which gave a completely different look. The experience of seeing and getting to know original prints is the foundation of scholarship in art history, and it is very eye-opening. Adams' reputation an a straight photographer is a manufactured one having little to do with the reality of an incredibly gifted artist who used every tool and technique available to manipulate his prints to produce images that were often quite different than the negative. He also manipulated the negatives considerably, which I'll talk about because you referenced the neg being something sacrosanct and infallibly true to the scene photographed. It is not. Adams used a dark red filter on "Monolith, the Face of Half-Dome" to darken the sky and increase contrast in the tones on the side of the mountain. That manipulation was built into the negative, an untruthful rendering of the scene.

I'm not objecting to you choosing to do unmanipulated work. That's fine. What I object to is the notion that its immoral to do anything but unmanipulated work. That is clearly false, at least if the history of the medium is a guide. I used to feel just like you did, and I looked down on anyone who retouched photos or did stuff like Uelsmann does (this was way before photoshop, though Uelsmann is still doing all darkroom work, no computers!). I worshipped Adams. I still love his work, but studying him seriously and studying the history of photography as a whole in a scholarly manner for so many years opened my eyes. I lost that slavish worship of the straight, unmanipulated photograph as a documentation of absolute truth because I learned that there is no such thing in photography.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Regarding documentary photography, surely we can agree that there is a world of difference between dodging and burning and in using Photoshop to build a new sky or to erase unwanted people.

I agree. Here's the thing, changing the sky or erasing someone changes the meaning of the photo. Removing a candy wrapper some lazy person tossed on the ground does not. That's the sort of thing I do, to clean up the photo. I'm not talking about a street with a lot of trash strewn about; in that case the trash is an important part of the scene. I am removing random stuff that isn't a part of what's going on and is simply ugly and distracting. I could just pick the stuff up and throw it in a trash can before shooting, and I do if one is available, but out in the country in the middle of nowhere you can't always find a garbage can.

 

[Sparrow]

The problem here is simply people make the assumption that because they understand the concept of editorial there must be an opposite of editorial opinion around somewhere.

Sadly there is no antonym of editorial, it's all opinion, folk may dress it up in new cloths but it's the same old tart underneath. It's only one persons view however one looks at it, Adams is no different to Mortensen, in that respect.

Anyway it's my film and camera, why would it end up anything other than my truth?

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

The problem here is simply people make the assumption that because they understand the concept of editorial there must be an opposite of editorial opinion around somewhere.

Sadly there is no antonym of editorial, it's all opinion, folk may dress it up in new cloths but it's the same old tart underneath. It's only one persons view however one looks at it, Adams is no different to Mortensen, in that respect.

Anyway it's my film and camera, why would it end up anything other than my truth?

Agreed, 110% 😀😀😀

 

[Roger Hicks]

The stone cold fact is that the camera can lie, does lie, always had and always will.

Dear Chris,

Especially in the hands of Henry Peach Robinson, 1830-1901, famed for his combination prints.

The trouble is that this argument always descends into extremism, often via a 'slippery slope'.

No-one can deny that the photographer chooses where to point the camera and when to press the button, though some pretend 'objectivity' even there. After that:

Colour or B+W?

If colour, super-satuirated, 'normal' or faded?

If B+W, are filters allowed?

What about cropping?

Dodging and burning?

Spotting the print? (Even the 'purists' seem happy up to here, except perhaps with cropping)

Removing a spot on someone's skin?

Personally, I'd be disinclined to go any further with manipulation in reportage, though equally, I can't get excited about pulling out a bit of someone's elbow in the corner of a picture, rather than merely cropping it. But the OP wasn't asking about reportage. 'Street' can be anything you like.

So, I believe, can 'documentary'. Look at the German and Russian collages of the 20s and 30s. These are far more impressive documents of their time than yet another dull, straight street shot. Yes, some people have very rigid interpretations of 'documentary', and it's true that 'documentary' can be useful shorthand for 'straight, unretouched', but 'unretouched' is far more concise and meaningful than 'documentary'.

Long before WW2, the word 'unretouched' often appeared in newspaper captions and even in advertisements, perhaps because in those days people were rather more fully aware that B+W pictures can very easily be quite spectacularly altered between shooting the original picture(s) on film or plate(s), and making a final print.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Roger Hicks]

The problem here is simply people make the assumption that because they understand the concept of editorial there must be an opposite of editorial opinion around somewhere.

Sadly there is no antonym of editorial, it's all opinion, folk may dress it up in new cloths but it's the same old tart underneath. It's only one persons view however one looks at it, Adams is no different to Mortensen, in that respect.

Anyway it's my film and camera, why would it end up anything other than my truth?

Dear Stewart,

I'm not sure that I do understand 'editorial', the way it is often used to describe an illusory 'objectivity' -- which, if I understand you aright, is exactly what you're saying.

Look at the current Libyan crisis. Would 'objectivity' require attributing equal virtue (however you define 'virtue') to Gadaffi and the to rebels?

Cheers,

R.