Friday, October 13, 2006

The Online Photographer: October 2006

"Ctein" on The Online Photographer wonders Who's in Charge? You or the Camera?. He laments that most digital photographers take the image straight out of the camera and post it without any manipulation whatsoever. He calls it "a profound artistic mistake".

Some of the commenters on his post argue that there is a scale of photography, ranging from "what the camera saw" to "what I want the image to portray", with varying levels of image manipulation in between. It's the range between reality and art. With a tip of the hat to Carrie from "Sex in the City", I can't help but wonder... is a highly-Photoshopped image, that bears little resemblance to the original, still the same photograph?

For the record, I save the original JPG from my camera on my hard drive. Any images I post have been manipulated in some way, usually just cropping and resizing. Occasionally I will adjust the brightness and contrast if needed. I'm aiming more for documentation of what I saw, so I feel a light touch on the manipulation is what is called for. Your Mileage May Vary!

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