Read enough online stuff about photography and you eventually begin to recognize certain “common knowledge” assumptions about photography that are frequently repeated, quoted, and stated as truths. Unfortunately, quite a few of them are, at best, personal opinions rather than facts, and a good number are just plain wrong. I have a couple of ideas for a series of posts on this blog, and I’ve felt that occasionally dealing with some of these myths and platitudes might be one such thread. So, here goes — a new series: “Photographic Myths and Platitudes.”
I’ve seen writers attempt to draw distinctions between “photographers” and “photoshoppers” – in fact I just saw another today. The underlying assumption seems to be that if you are really a “photographer” you’ll be able to do everything perfectly in-camera and won’t have to do anything in the “post-processing” stage, and that “photoshopping” is a form of non-photographic cheating or tweaking that only has the purpose of making a poor photograph less poor. Further, quite a few who hold this view attempt to build their case on photographic history, often suggesting that “Great Photographer X” fully and accurately “pre-visualized” the image in its finished form, carefully calculated composition and exposure in such a way that the final print would be inevitable, pressed the shutter release, and captured a perfect image that could not be improved in any way by further work.
Of course, with the exception of a few genres of and approaches to photography, this is generally nonsense both as history and as a practical description of how photography is done.
A first problem with this notion is that it is an incorrect and invalid notion of how photographs have historically been made. While it is certainly not my point to suggest that careful work at the time of exposure is unimportant — I am confident that the opposite is actually the case — even a cursory familiarity with the working methods of a few “great photographers” reveals that almost all of them viewed the “post-processing” phase of work in the chemical darkroom as an integral part of the process of creating prints that fulfilled their creative vision. Since he is so often held up as an example by the “photographers versus photoshoppers” folks, Ansel Adams is a fine example of just how wrong this notion is. There are quite a few examples, but the “Moonrise, Hernandez…” photograph serves well, both in terms of the story of how it was “captured,” and in terms of the extensive post-processing necessary to achieve Adams’ vision of the print. The contact print looks almost nothing like the final print. Bottom line: It is entirely a myth that great photographs come straight from the camera and do not rely on post production work.
Along these lines, it is also critical to understand that visualizing a photograph at the time of exposure includes more than thinking about the subject captured in camera. It also fundamentally includes thinking through the potential post-processing path that might lead to the printed photograph that the photographer has in mind. In fact, I would argue that not thinking about the post-camera process might suggest that one is actually less of a photographer in at least some cases! Often the photographer recognizes ahead of time that achieving the final image will require certain work in post, and decisions about how to expose at the time the photograph is captured are based on these assumptions about the post-processing phase. (The “Moonrise” negative is a great example of this, from what I understand.) For example, if a scene contains a larger dynamic range than the film/sensor can capture with the desired quality the photographer may realize in advance that the most effective print will be the result of some planned post-processing work and will adjust the method of shooting accordingly. Rather than trying to avoid being a “photoshopper” the best “photographer” will understand how to use the potential of the “digital darkroom” and expose accordingly. It isn’t a matter of “if I screw up maybe I’ll be able to get something out of this in Photoshop.” Instead it is a matter of, “How shall I best expose this so that I can achieve the photograph I visualize using the resources of the initial exposure phase and the post-processing/printing phase?”
This article is part of my Photographic Myths and Platitudes series.
- Photographic Myths and Platitudes — Diffraction Limited Aperture
- Photographic Myths and Platitudes — ‘Landscape Photography Lenses’ (Part I)
- Photographic Myths and Platitudes — ‘Landscape Photography Lenses’ (Part II)
- Photographic Myths and Platitudes — ‘Photographer’ versus “Photoshopper’
- Photographic Myths and Platitudes — Primes Make You a Better Photographer
- Photographic Myths and Platitudes — New DSLR? Why You Do NOT Need a 50mm Prime
- Photographic Myths and Platitudes — No Post-Processing!
- Photographic Myths and Platitudes — That Noise is Awful!
- Photographic Myths and Platitudes — The Very Best Camera! (Part 1)
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
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This is probably true about just about every human endeavor! :-)
You think photography suffers from myth and opinion presented as fact? The world of classical piano is even worse … and the myths are propagated by text books, by private teachers, and by long established conservatoires as well as by bloggers and opinionated web sites.
Guy, I have a funny story about the “abandonment” idea. My academic training (and my day gig!) is in the area of music composition and theory. I recall a conversation with my mentor and graduate advisor that we had after I had finished my degree and gotten my own teaching position. We had gotten together socially and we were talking about the things we were up to. To paraphrase the conversation:
Me: Allen, what have you been working on?
Allen: I finished a new piece last Thursday. I finished it again yesterday, and I think I may finish it again next week.
Dan
Dan, going back to the art argument, a couple of additional thoughts. The first by Paul Valerie: “An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons it.”
The other is about the inherent arbitrary nature of statements to the effect that film (or painting, or any other medium) is somehow more artistic of pure than digital photography (or photography in general) by mere virtue of its limitations. By that logic film is “better” than digital, glass plates are better than film, brushes and canvas are better than glass plates, ink and scrolls are better than brushes and canvas, minerals on ceramic jars are better than ink and scrolls, and the one and only true art is hand-painted pigment on cave walls.
Why arbitrarily draw a line at film? If you’re a true purist – go find a cave :)
Guy
Thanks, Ivan. Not only do these people often not understand the typical digital photograph workflow – as it is used by virtually all photographers – but they often don’t really even understand the chemical photography workflow that they like to think is their point of comparison!
When I read your comment about RAW not looking anything like what your eyes see, many thoughts came to mind. One was the parallel with how the film negative looks even less like the thing we remember seeing. How many of those who think that, bizarre as it sounds, we should work with “unprocessed” RAW files would simply display an “unprocessed” film negative!? ;-)
Dan
Dan –
I fully agree with your post. I’ve also noticed that most comments about “was this photoshopped” come from people who generally don’t understand how digital photos today are made and processed.
I for one post process all my photos because I shoot 100% in RAW, and raw files look nothing like my eye sees. In fact, even jpegs are too limited and generally leave me disapointed. I think with time, perhaps even in our lifetime, digital sensors will catch up and we’ll get there, but since we’re not there there, other technology must compensate.
Another point – all movies today are post processed, yet very few complain.
Excellent post, Dan! It is interesting to note that Adams sometimes revisited and reprinted his images decades after capturing them before he was fully satisfied with the print. I remember a few examples of original vs. final prints shown at the “Ansel Adams at 100” exhibit. I do think it would be a stretch to say he visualized a print as he would make it 30 years later.
Creativity can strike at any time. There needs to be a “there there” to plant the seed but interpretations may vary any number of times before one feels a work is complete, and in some cases it never is.
Guy
Thanks for writing, Guy. When I was in Alaska a few years ago I saw an exhibit that included two of his prints of the famous Mt. Denali photograph made many years apart – the differences were striking! And recently I visited the wonderful, though modest, Early Works exhibit at the San Jose Museum of Art. Among the photographs displayed here are two versions of the “Monolith” Half Dome photograph that are remarkably different – you’d almost think they were two different photographs. One is very dark and you hardly see any detail on the face of the dome. The other is much lighter and the detail is far clearer.
One thing that bothers me so much about some of the silliness that people write about the ethics and techniques of photography is that a good portion of it is just plain nonsense, and it is frequently based on wrong information, guesses, or misinterpretations of what someone said or wrote. Sometimes one can see the final print before the shutter is clicked; sometimes the image is “seen” by the photographer before even arriving on the scene. However, there is so much in the world we photograph that is simply beyond our capacity to predict (not to mention fully comprehend) that I think it is dangerously egotistical to think we “know it all” at the point when we make the exposure. We often believe that the image will be good; sometimes we are almost certain that it will be. On occasion we are even correct. But on other times we are taken by surprise and our trained and practiced instincts (derived by making many thousands of mediocre or worse photographs, along with a much smaller number of successes) allow us to work quickly and instinctively and even somewhat close to correctly – and when it all falls into place this may result in something very special. Like “Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico.”
Take care,
Dan
Brian, thanks for posting.
Iif I take your statement in a completely literal way I think I can agree. We are always, I think, looking for an “optimum capture” that comes very close to the composition we want and which avoids the typical “nasties” of over/under exposure, overlooking distractions in the frame, and so forth. The remaining issue is that there are quite a few situations in which we cannot get all that close to the intended print in-camera – but we can envision how to get to that imagined print if we focus on a capture that lends itself to that goal.
(In my own photography, I probably cover the range from “almost there in the camera” to “shoot this with a plan to fully realize the image in post.” In other words, sometimes I may barely do more than convert from RAW and do a bit of sharpening, while in other cases I might have 20 or more layers in Photoshop. The odd thing is that you might not be able to tell which is which from the prints… ;-)
One obvious, but often overlooked, example is shooting for black and white print with a DSLR. Back in the day, when shooting with this old stuff I head they referred to as film, one might need to imagine what the result might be if color filters were added during capture. However, today almost no one would stick a red filter on their DSLR – instead we capture the full-color RAW image with the intention of doing very careful and precise conversion to black and white in post. And here we have some abilities that previous photographers would have given their entire set of filters to access – for example we can adjust contrast independently in different areas of the frame, we can apply different filters and in different amounts to areas of the image, we can try a particular type of filtering and “take it back” and try another if we want.
So, I’m basically in agreement, I think, that we try to capture the most scene data in the best possible form. If it is possible to create an outstanding photograph from this with minimal post work, that is wonderful. On the other hand, if work in post increases the power of the photograph and brings it closer to our vision of the subject then we will as readily apply the power of the “digital darkroom” as Adams dodged and burned and, it is said, even removed the occasional cloud.
Take care,
Dan
I think the goal of any photographer is to get ‘as close as we can’ IN camera…and reduce the post processing.
Patrick wrote: “… this means getting as much data as you can so that you can make up for the limitations of the camera in post processing.”
This is a key concept, and it doesn’t seem that different from what people did when they exposed film in similar ways so that they would have the best potential image in their shot, with the idea that the final print would only emerge after darkroom work. To use the example I mentioned in my post, here is a link to a contact print of Adam’s “Moonrise….” photograph – yuck! :-) But within this sort of “accurate” capture lies a potential print of great beauty… once the post-processing has been applied.
Another example is on my mind. I recently saw the Irving Penn “Small Trades” show at the Getty. Penn’s platinum/palladium and gelatin silver versions of many prints are shown side by side. The differences in the final prints are striking… and most definitely the result of post-processing choices. (Photographers and photography fans living in or visiting the LA area should definitely take an afternoon to wander through this show.)
I agree. And in the digital world, this means getting as much data as you can so that you can make up for the limitations of the camera in post processing. The RAW file never looks like it did to your eye. Dynamic range etc. are too limited even with today’s best cameras. So I see nothing wrong with trying to get back what you saw with your own eyes. And to do that, you really need the best photo you can get in-camera.
If you wish to go further and make something else with it, that is fine as long as you let people know!
Patrick