6 ms·

When has professional photography ever represented itself as a strictly truthful, unambiguous, and simply decipherable medium? What I mean is, who told you all

When has professional photography ever represented itself as a strictly truthful, unambiguous, and simply decipherable medium? What I mean is, who told you all those photos were of wild animals in the wild? Who doesn't know that models in the cover of Vogue are covered in makeup? Is the dress blue or gold? But unfortunately there is a cross-cutting of two unrelated problems here: the populist view that art should be nothing but a strict representation of the real world, coupled with the elitist view that photography is not real art. Journalists choose words and cherry pick quotes to create an impression they want. Painters have literally zero external constraints. But involve a mechanical contraption literally designed to bend light and suddenly we ask people to not bend light.

vijayr 10y ago
Apples to Oranges comparison. If something says "wildlife (nature etc) photography" (vs "my pet dog's photos") then it is natural to assume it wasn't staged, right? Technically the title might not be a lie (maybe they shot it in one of these parks) but at minimum it is misleading. But Vogue probably doesn't claim "naturally beautiful" or whatever (not a Vogue reader, just guessing). Understand the sentiment though.
- Broken_Hippo 10y ago
  It might not be Vogue, but women's magazines often present folks as natural beauty. It is obvious (to me) that it means they have light makeup and/or the photo has been touched up, but the text will rave about how beautiful someone is without makeup. It gets worse with tabloids, who like to say someone is beautiful/ugly when they wake up. Diet and exercise can be the same - sure they look good and have a good diet and workout routine. They also have personal chefs preparing their meals, a personal trainer, and sometimes are naturally thin even without those things. I'd really just like folks to be honest about this sort of thing. They could just say they got the picture at a nature park instead of acting like it was a lucky shot. It doesn't change the wonderfulness of the picture.
ortuna 10y ago
This type of article might be the step to demystifying photography. But the story I get told over and over again (not directly, but by exposure) is about the photographer that traveled miles and waited days to get that shot.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
iamatworknow 10y ago
This sort of thing comes up all the time in the photography communities I follow. In particular, the idea of post processing. There are some purists who think that no photo should be Photoshopped because there's some sort of loss of integrity there. You didn't capture the moment, you made the moment. But post processing has existed long before Photoshop. People who shot film did (and still do) alter their developer times, or do stand development over agitation, or dodge or burn prints. And every modern digital camera does some post processing in camera as well. White balance, color correction, or even more fancy stuff like film emulation modes...those are all forms of post processing. I know a lot of photography contests require the submission of an unedited raw file in order to enter, but that's not what people want to see in the end. They want the Photoshop look without going into Photoshop, and that's very, very rare to pull off. So where do you draw the line?
- Mendenhall 10y ago
  "Purist" photography is lot more impressive to me, if there is such a thing anymore, as you mentioned in camera effects etc. I enjoy a good photoshop job as well though. I think where it matters to me is when you are saying something is "authentic". Lets say someone is taking pictures of a beach for a resort advertisement. One could photoshop the sand to appear as some sort of rare pink color, but when you arrive that color will be nowhere to be found. Same thing if a news article has "beaches are more polluted than ever" and tint the beach to look green. That to me is akin to false advertisement. I also agree people like and want photoshopped images since almost all photos benefit from a little tweek to saturation and brightness. Just my 2 cents because I agree with all you said. Sidenote if someone says "wildlife photography" and its not in the wild, its not wildlife photography.
  - TheGRS 10y ago
    While I don't think he was airbrushing or anything, even Ansel Adams did quite a bit of work in post processing to achieve the effect he desired. All of that work has simply moved over to Photoshop where you can get the desired effect much more quickly than you could in a dark room.
  - 10y ago
bdamm 10y ago
> populist view that art should be nothing but a strict representation of the real world I had no idea.

vijayr 10y ago

Apples to Oranges comparison. If something says "wildlife (nature etc) photography" (vs "my pet dog's photos") then it is natural to assume it wasn't staged, right? Technically the title might not be a lie (maybe they shot it in one of these parks) but at minimum it is misleading. But Vogue probably doesn't claim "naturally beautiful" or whatever (not a Vogue reader, just guessing). Understand the sentiment though.

Broken_Hippo 10y ago
It might not be Vogue, but women's magazines often present folks as natural beauty. It is obvious (to me) that it means they have light makeup and/or the photo has been touched up, but the text will rave about how beautiful someone is without makeup. It gets worse with tabloids, who like to say someone is beautiful/ugly when they wake up. Diet and exercise can be the same - sure they look good and have a good diet and workout routine. They also have personal chefs preparing their meals, a personal trainer, and sometimes are naturally thin even without those things. I'd really just like folks to be honest about this sort of thing. They could just say they got the picture at a nature park instead of acting like it was a lucky shot. It doesn't change the wonderfulness of the picture.

ortuna 10y ago

This type of article might be the step to demystifying photography. But the story I get told over and over again (not directly, but by exposure) is about the photographer that traveled miles and waited days to get that shot.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

iamatworknow 10y ago

This sort of thing comes up all the time in the photography communities I follow. In particular, the idea of post processing. There are some purists who think that no photo should be Photoshopped because there's some sort of loss of integrity there. You didn't capture the moment, you made the moment. But post processing has existed long before Photoshop. People who shot film did (and still do) alter their developer times, or do stand development over agitation, or dodge or burn prints. And every modern digital camera does some post processing in camera as well. White balance, color correction, or even more fancy stuff like film emulation modes...those are all forms of post processing. I know a lot of photography contests require the submission of an unedited raw file in order to enter, but that's not what people want to see in the end. They want the Photoshop look without going into Photoshop, and that's very, very rare to pull off. So where do you draw the line?

Mendenhall 10y ago
"Purist" photography is lot more impressive to me, if there is such a thing anymore, as you mentioned in camera effects etc. I enjoy a good photoshop job as well though. I think where it matters to me is when you are saying something is "authentic". Lets say someone is taking pictures of a beach for a resort advertisement. One could photoshop the sand to appear as some sort of rare pink color, but when you arrive that color will be nowhere to be found. Same thing if a news article has "beaches are more polluted than ever" and tint the beach to look green. That to me is akin to false advertisement. I also agree people like and want photoshopped images since almost all photos benefit from a little tweek to saturation and brightness. Just my 2 cents because I agree with all you said. Sidenote if someone says "wildlife photography" and its not in the wild, its not wildlife photography.
- TheGRS 10y ago
  While I don't think he was airbrushing or anything, even Ansel Adams did quite a bit of work in post processing to achieve the effect he desired. All of that work has simply moved over to Photoshop where you can get the desired effect much more quickly than you could in a dark room.
- 10y ago

bdamm 10y ago

> populist view that art should be nothing but a strict representation of the real world I had no idea.