im glad to see that you made this into an article. im still on your side

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It's Business Time Baby!

"there may be trouble ahead".........

good luck with that, Im off to shoot some RAW bracket stuff to layer later in PS and blend using some naff sotware and call it art.

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We are passengers on this rock. Respect that.

Your journal gave me a good laugh and I certainly sympathise with what you say here. However, I want to add a word of caution, as there is a danger that post-processing in general will be shunned if this line is taken too far. I voiced this concern in my own journal recently ([link]).

This is really just a philosophical point about the need to be liberal. I do regard bad use of hdr and the sort of cheating that was discussed in your journal to be quite an unfortunate feature of dA.

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Philosopher, Photographer, Procrastinator.
More photos and other content at [link]
Founder of =MountainShots

I don't know about saturation...and over-editing is probably debatable. I totally agree with bad HDR though. Way too many of them around.

But yeah I'm kind of losing dA. Don't spend as much time here or upload as much anymore.

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dA Gallery | Flickr | A Day in the Light

I dont know that I completely agree with this...

I think you are not leaving many people room to experiment with new facets of photography. I think that many would categorize me as one who takes some "RAW bracket stuff" and I would call it art. I know what you are getting at but that eliminates so much of what photography is. You want to talk pure photography... you dont shoot film, and many purists would argue that you dont qualify as a real photographer either. Just how far back do you want to go as far as judgment goes?

HDR is a method of photography that takes some different talents and perspectives and if you discredit that as actual photography, you are just stifling the progression of what photography can really do. It comes from the same image and it is not "doctoring" an image from multiple images or going beyond the limits of a singular image really... I am a fan of HDR (considering I do them) and I am proud of what I have done with it.

As far as popularity goes...do you think you are really going to change their minds by this statement and do you really think you are the first to say it. I have learned to be humble when it comes to dA crusades because who are you to really define art. I love a lot of your pieces but many purists would say they are shit because you have used photoshop or some other level of post production to enhance them. Are you going to roll over and say "yeah...you got me..."

Remember where you are and what the argument was toward your style of photos about 5-10 years ago (ish), when digital was really making a splash.

I know where you are coming from, but it is not leading to a good place. It can be applied to you too...

--
I thank god for bitter irony,
The happiness felt through lustful gluttony.
The very things sent to condemn me,
Are the things in life that make me happy.

to busy taking cat photos to comment

My cat will take over the world


ps, your journal made me laugh,,,,lots

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*****all the children are insane*****

*****only those who attempt the absurd, achive the impossible***** Albert Einstien.

[url=[link]

I understand your viewpoint and opinions here and respect a lot of what you are saying. Here is what I think. I may have to post this on my own journal seeing as it's turned into a massive piece.

1. I think HDR is only being slated where it is pushed so far from reality that it could no longer be regarded as a representation of the world. HDR, as you have said to me, has it's place (I use it).

2. Digital or film, no matter how far we go back in history has always been manipulated to one extent or another. Filters have always been used to manipulate light levels so as to "fit" them all onto the format being used. Filters have always been used to balance or enhance the colour of that light. Darkrooms have always been a place to have a final "play" with what is recorded on the film and enhance it to make a print. Photographers would manipulate the tones here with dodging and burning techniques or change the exposure levels entirely for "artistic effect". Some photographers went further still and "cut and shut" negatives together to combine elements of different images which they felt would work together. Photographic limitations have always encouraged people to change aspects of the work which they produced "through the lens".
All that has really happened (and here for me is the real magic) is that all of those techniques including many others have been made available to anyone willing to learn them within the realms of Photoshop or other software packages. We no longer need to spend half our lives in the lonely darkness of the processing lab.

3. One needs to bare in mind that the digital image (at least in it's RAW state) is exactly that, raw, unprocessed. And without running it through software it is infact almost useless as a finnished print. This is, of course, why the industry designed firmware (which is technically processing software) to make those Raw files into visibly more dynamic pictures within the camera. They then put this firmware into all of the compact and not so compact digital cameras on the market (in various forms). What infact that firmware is doing to the image is changing it from a captured series of tones into a pleasing image. This is what film manufactures did when designing different types of film. The films available on the market are not just to use in different levels of light but to use for different effects and ways of recording that light. Photographers (or the more professional amongst them) would use one film type because of it ability to record skintones accurately or another because it saturates the colours within a landscape and so on. Great photographers would know which film types to use for the greatest effect in all kinds of different photographic situations.

We now have a Raw image file (instead of a negative) to work through Photoshop, used as a darkroom, to create a photo visible in the way we want. We have the ability to change the parameters of that image into all manner (an infinite list) of differing "film types" to achieve the effect we desire. The Curves palette within processing packages is a way (one of the many but arguably the most powerful) of switching between film types. Manipulating the contrast curve of the original file into something extra. This is exactly what film manufactures were doing with differing film types but we now (with digital) have them all and more at our disposal.

This is where the problems comes in and I believe what is being hit on in this article.
Many "photographers" now with their digital format cameras and their dodgy copies of Photoshop have the means to make changes to their images. Though they have the means, they don't neccersarily have the skills/experience to make the changes which they are attempting or would be permitted. They can change the parameters of their images into all kinds of weird and wonderful forms but to be able to create a realistic, balanced representation of the world is a very different matter.
So, some think, why bother. I can make people look at this picture which was not neccersarily that good photographically by making some ill thought out but dramatic changes to it. I can make an audience for myself (my images) by appealling to those who are fascinated by the extreme rather than by photographs "within the traditional realms of photography".

Through all this, I believe that the fave's culture for these kind of over-cooked images is a local phenomenon. In that I believe that photography, if done well, is still the only thing which appeals to professional photographers and the "true" photographic industry on the whole.

So if you can do it well or are willing to learn/teach yourself/listen/practice then your work is still going to be extremely relevent where it really matters.

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Jake Spain.

Light waits for no man. You're either out there, or you miss it. Forever.

Blimey....Couldn't have said it better myself. Now sit down and take some deep breaths

By the way Jake, have you read Galen Rowell's Inner Game of Outdoor Photography?
It doesn't actually have a lot of photographs in it, but it does have a large collection of Rowell's articles which are a fascinating read.
He talks about the cognitive sciences, and you find yourself putting down the book and thinking "What actually is colour?" He has a pop at Newton's theory of it being only reflected light on different wavelengths, and talks about how a significant aspect of colour is entirely based on how our brains have been trained to interpret those particular wavelengths. This makes it something different for most people. What you interpret as deep scarlet, may infact be brighter for me.

He also talks about how our brain automatically filters out things in a scene that we don't want to see, but how the camera of course picks them up, and as out brain interprets a photograph differently to the way we see the real world, those things we didn't see at the scene become visible in an image.

If you're interested in this kind of thing, it's a great book and really well worth reading.

Nice post by the way

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More work at andymumford.com

Thanks Andy, I needed to say that stuff. Things are never simple.

The book you are refering to sounds fascinating and I will definately look into buying a copy. I have been "colourblind" all my life but have never had the usual symptoms and have never had my own "condition" explained to me. I just get confused between some colours and other but only at certain times or in certain situations. It's very strange and seemingly very unusual. It seems like the writings you refer to are suggesting that everyone eyesite for colour is slightly different so I better check it out as this is something I have always felt.

--
Jake Spain.

Light waits for no man. You're either out there, or you miss it. Forever.

I've just ordered a copy!

--
Jake Spain.

Light waits for no man. You're either out there, or you miss it. Forever.