4 ms·

The picture looks unnatural. Whether this was achieved with props or post-processing is not relevant - what is relevant is that it won a competition for realist

• coldtea 13y ago
  It wasn't a competition for "realistic photos" it was a competition for real photos. Photojournalistic work. The difference is important. A photo can look as "unrealistic" as can be, as long as it's real, it's OK. So a picture doesn't have to "exhibit realism" to win such a competition. It just has to be real. If it looks uncanny, all the better. The line is draw at actual image manipulation. Compositing people in, changing a face, removing elements etc. As for color adjustments and light fixes, those are sometimes frowned upon, other time totally accepted in journalistic work. Anytime a photo editor gets a jpeg from the camera RAW, some work of that kind has already been done. Including the camera letting you pick several options, from sharpening to color balance (and more traditional stuff like bokeh, depth of field and shutter speed, each having it's own artistic effect. Does a 1 sec photograph of a running river look "realistic"?) I've seen pictures made on an iPhone with stuff like Instagram in Afganistan/Iraq by photojournalists that won many awards, despite looking totally unrealistic with regards to neutral tone/color coming out of a camera. E.g: http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/iphone-photos-afghanistan-war http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/iphone-photos-afgh...