Question - re: digital touch-ups

The people who would have serious objection to the editing I've done would look down their nose in scorn at wasting film on something as mundane and non artistic as family snapshots in the first place. It's not high art. I'm sorry, but the list of people who I deeply care about what they think of me is already pretty short and getting shorter as I grow older. Life's too short to waste it trying to impress art snobs. The whole culture of art snobishness is based around finding people to exclude.

Is it fundamentally different than using DOF to obscure backgrounds? Burning and dodging to reduce distraction? Cropping?
 
My hand is in with the crowd that believes Ansel Adams would be a PS guru today if he were alive. You could not get work that was more massaged than his and nobody is complaining. If you scan your negs then by default you will have some PS work to do. The biggest trouble is learning not to over do it.

Bob
 
Unmanipulated photographs become appreciated historical documents.

Recently I learned that the photographs of the 1969 moon landing were manipulated for public relations. I have never heard of NASA providing access to the original negatives, but if you look at the pics, you can see some unnatural lighting, which would indicate some kind of manipulation.

I suppose the lesson is this: If no one has access to the original image, you can sell any realistic image as unmanipulated.
 
Kevin said:
Recently I learned that the photographs of the 1969 moon landing were manipulated for public relations. I have never heard of NASA providing access to the original negatives, but if you look at the pics, you can see some unnatural lighting, which would indicate some kind of manipulation.
Click to expand...

How and from where did you learn this?

I'm curious, because there's a whole cult of NASA skeptics (one of whom wrote a book called We Didn't Go To The Moon, which is filled with controversial claims of this sort) who promote this view on the basis of evidence that many reasonable people would consider untenable. (Who, except maybe an astronaut, would know what "natural" lighting on the moon looks like?)

I seem to recall from 'back in the day' that NASA's moon-exploration photographs were shot with Hasselblads loaded with Ektachrome transparency film, which would explain why there's no access to the original negatives -- there ARE no original negatives, only irreplaceable positives. Anyone who's ever lost a valuable original transparency will understand NASA being reluctant to pass them around freely!
 
jlw said:
How and from where did you learn this?

I'm curious, because there's a whole cult of NASA skeptics (one of whom wrote a book called We Didn't Go To The Moon, which is filled with controversial claims of this sort) who promote this view on the basis of evidence that many reasonable people would consider untenable. (Who, except maybe an astronaut, would know what "natural" lighting on the moon looks like?)

I seem to recall from 'back in the day' that NASA's moon-exploration photographs were shot with Hasselblads loaded with Ektachrome transparency film, which would explain why there's no access to the original negatives -- there ARE no original negatives, only irreplaceable positives. Anyone who's ever lost a valuable original transparency will understand NASA being reluctant to pass them around freely!
Click to expand...

Without an atmosphere, reflected light would come only from the ground (rocks and dirt and the spaceship). The info I recieved recently made clear that the original film material was manipulated to improve the images and that this was in fact a mistake NASA has to eventually talk about. Because these pictures are historical documents, they should not have been tampered with. Period.

I know all about moon landing scepticism by the way. If you add up all the risks associated with that kind of early mission, it would have made sense to stage it completely, even at the cost of later embarassment.

Recently a japanese probe went to the moon - I would have loved to see pictures of the 1969 landing site. But alas, I have seen nothing on the net yet. Even the hubble telescope should have given us lots of dusty flag pics by now.

But then again, maybe I would see other manipulated images and not know it.

Let's drop the subject. It's OT and not very PC on this forum.

Kevin
 
You still haven't said where you "recieved" this "info."

But as you say, it's OT and let's drop it. Too bad we didn't think of that earlier...
 
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