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06-22-2015, 07:36 AM - 1 Like   #31
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QuoteOriginally posted by ghostdog Quote
So many perspectives and opinions. I had no idea there would be so many responses. I never meant to stir the pot, so to speak.

I guess we each find our own photographic rhythm, or niche. Mine is to capture intimate portraits of the natural world, taken almost exclusively in low light, flat light and shadow. The GR has proven to be the perfect camera for me, for my intent, and I can capture what I see with ease with the little gem.

Whatever any of us intend with our photographs, I suppose the most important thing is that we are satisfied.
Well, as to your question about wondering if "it was really like that" when looking at a photo? No, you can never know. Or as the above responses have shown, if you think about that very much, you could simply answer always no -- it never is.

06-22-2015, 07:42 AM   #32
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QuoteOriginally posted by ghostdog Quote
Whatever any of us intend with our photographs, I suppose the most important thing is that we are satisfied.
Exactly.. and from my experience, if you like a picture, there will be other people who like it too. Of course there will be more people who don't like it, but you don't take photographs for them. You take photographs for those who appreciate your vision. That holds true until you see someone else's work you like more than your own. Then you might want to reconsider how you do things.
06-22-2015, 09:16 AM - 1 Like   #33
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If you are interested in getting deeper understanding of chemical, biological, physical, digital, artistic and philosophical aspects of photography I’d recommend you to read Bruce BarnbaumŽs book „The Art of Photography - An Approach to Personal Expression“. I think I learned very much reading this book.

Besides nice pictures youŽll experience how the old masters of analog photography worked and even work today - nearly unbelievable! And youŽll learn about the essence of digital. YouŽll understand that what we do today in digital post processing often is mimicking the old chemical technics. But this book is about very much more as I said above - especially about composition and philosophy.

I think NormŽs and the writing of many others is very much in line what Barnbaum says.

Last edited by acoufap; 06-22-2015 at 09:21 AM.
06-22-2015, 09:19 AM   #34
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QuoteOriginally posted by acoufap Quote
If you are interested in getting deeper understanding of chemical, biological, physical, digital, artistic and philosophical aspects of photography I’d recommend you to read Bruce Barnbaums book „The Art of Photography“. I think I learned very much reading this book.

Besides nice pictures youŽll experience how the old masters of analog photography worked and even work today - nearly unbelievable! And youŽll learn about the essence of digital. YouŽll understand that what we do today in digital post processing often is mimicking the old chemical technics. But this book is about very much more as I said above - especially about composition and philosophy.

I think NormŽs and the writing of many others is very much in line what Barnbaum says.
I find in photography, people tend to wander until they find the first good book that inspires them. That book, and the mindset of the photographer conveyed through his writing is a real shortcut to understanding your own vision. I was lucky, I read Richard Avedon and Norman Mailer's collaboration "Nothing Personal" when I was 16, it shaped my view of photography forever. But, it's a very 60s book. You have to find your own. Maybe it would be Barnbaum... who knows?

06-22-2015, 09:21 AM - 1 Like   #35
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QuoteOriginally posted by ghostdog Quote
but having said that, I'm happy with them
That's good enough then, your happy with your photography and puts you leagues ahead of many others.

Myself coming from a journalistic background, where tweaking in most but it's purest form is frowned upon and even forbidden. But I throughly enjoyed the darkroom for my personal stuff and project work. I used to say... I get double the pleasure from the same image, once at the taking and once again in the darkroom.

I continue on in that vein now with digital, jpeg for work immediacy and raw for myself. I reckon that raw images usually need a wee sharpen and a bit of contrast by default as they're per se... raw. I must admit that I do enjoy my time spent with both LR for normal tweaks and PS for the heavy lifting.

As well as the other major for me LR bonus, I can now find stuff in seconds thanks to keywords and the like.

But I appreciate it's very much each to their own, no wrongs or rights, lets just all enjoy our photography.

Last edited by Kerrowdown; 06-22-2015 at 02:28 PM.
06-22-2015, 01:17 PM - 1 Like   #36
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What we see with our eyes and brain is a composite of the individual process of light processed by memory and attention, colored by our emotional state at the time.

I had a very strange experience a few years ago. I was watching a snipe walk through grassy reeds through a lens. It stopped and disappeared. I knew it was there but I couldn't see it until I rebuilt it's shape in my mind. The first thing I saw was the head and neck, then the rest became visible. Then it reappeared in my mind.

It was a rather dramatic display of how light and patterns translate into what we can see. We try to do the opposite, not hide details but bring them out.
06-22-2015, 01:41 PM   #37
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QuoteOriginally posted by derekkite Quote
What we see with our eyes and brain is a composite of the individual process of light processed by memory and attention, colored by our emotional state at the time.

I had a very strange experience a few years ago. I was watching a snipe walk through grassy reeds through a lens. It stopped and disappeared. I knew it was there but I couldn't see it until I rebuilt it's shape in my mind. The first thing I saw was the head and neck, then the rest became visible. Then it reappeared in my mind.

It was a rather dramatic display of how light and patterns translate into what we can see. We try to do the opposite, not hide details but bring them out.
Sounds like a candidate for a "find the bird in this picture " image.

06-22-2015, 06:13 PM   #38
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QuoteOriginally posted by normhead Quote
And you think yours does?. There is quite a bit here you don't understand. Your image uses only the bottom 2/3s of the spectrum available to the camera. The image is essentially under-exposed, and I'm pretty sure you lost some detail in the dark areas, which fortunately are pretty small. It doesn't matter whether you think that is what you saw. The reason we adjust the image to use the full range of the levels window, is because that's what our eye does. So unless your eye is damaged, and your iris isn't opening and closing, that isn't the way you saw it. I've had this discussion with many students, and I had as one of my first exercises a project where I could demonstrate exactly what I'm talking about. I had a graduated scale with 12 graduations from white to black attached to the bottom of the picture. By having the students try and match the image, I could use the graduated scale to help them understand that when they didn't max out their detail in the scale it also affected how the picture looked. It was just easier to see it on the scale that to talk about parts of the picture.

The contrast range in nature can be as high as 20,000:1. On a film print the highest you could achieve was 120 to one. Think about that for a second There is nothing you can do to match it in print or on your monitor. Every image is a representation of what is out there, not an exact copy. So, no, I can say 100% for certain. Your image is not what you saw. It is a representation of what you saw, with less contrast etc. The camera quite simply doesn't have the ability to capture what you saw. And the sooner you get that out of your head, and realize that what you are portraying is a personally selected subset of what was there, and that there is absolutely nothing you can do to create the dynamics of reality, then you can start working on getting the best representation of what you saw according to your vision. And your vision is clouded by your interest and the way your brain works. So often if there is a person in our frame, we will want it to have special place in the picture, because that's what happens when our brain processes the information. IT focuses on what it's been conditioned by years of evolution.

So what I would argue we are trying to capture is not what's there, that would make for really boring pictures, what we try to capture is what we ourselves saw through our brain's filter, which decides what we see in an image before we even get a chance to tell it different.

But you can train your brain to see reality different. Hunters will see animal signs you and I won't even see, because they have trained their brains to look for them.

So, this is way more complicated than claiming you're trying to make the image as close as possible to what you saw. You aren't talking about what you saw, you're talking about what you remember. You don't see the way a camera sees. Your eye's dynamic range is about 7 EV, but your eye adjusts to light quickly enough you can look at different parts of a scene in isolation fast enough that the impression of your retina is actually way more than that. the camera can capture 13 EV, but it's static not dynamic, so even the way you see can not be duplicated on an image . No one has any record of what you saw, not even you, so it's an impossible standard to work to.

A more appropriate response is to create an image that has the same emotional impact as what you saw... and that has little to do with what was originally there. So, unless you took the picture of that leaf on a grey overcast day that was depressing the heck out of you because there was way too much blue light and it was so dark that your iris was wide open and couldn't get enough like to see properly, that isn't what you saw. Your eye has it's own white balance system that corrected for the blue light thing. It has an exposure meter that adjusts the iris,( it's aperture, ) to get a balanced exposure, and it has the ability to open and close that aperture as it looks at brighter or darker parts of a scene, an ability your camera doesn't even have. So no, that image is not what you saw, not even close. And memory is a funny thing. You don't even know what you saw. You certainly didn't see the narrow DoF interpretation you captured. Your eye doesn't see like that, your camera does.

Your job should you choose to accept it is to take the image the camera records and create the most compelling image you can from it. It may be something that's close to what you saw or it may be an image that conveys what you felt, with certain parts of the image held back and certain parts accentuated for emotional impact. But, don't confuse any of it with some kind of reality. Human reality is way too dynamically fluid to capture on a piece of paper, or a computer screen.

Forget what you think you saw, the camera didn't capture it, and the feelings etc. you had at the time you captured the scene are gone. Work with what you captured.
Wow. That's quite a response.

Actually, I have to thank you. You helped clarity something for me. I have almost no interest in photography. I didn't understand that until I read your post. I am interested in the beauty and wonder of the natural world, and I am interested in bring that beauty to the attention of others, but photography, as represented by your very thorough post, not really.

That being said, I do enjoy the GR very much. I can do exactly what I want to do with it, and I always have it with me. It's a truly brilliant camera for capturing the intimacy of life, and in the hands of some, amazingly vast and sweeping landscapes.

So thanks.

Exit, stage right.
06-22-2015, 06:29 PM - 1 Like   #39
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QuoteOriginally posted by ghostdog Quote
I didn't understand that until I read your post. I am interested in the beauty and wonder of the natural world, and I am interested in bring that beauty to the attention of others, but photography, as represented by your very thorough post, not really.
The thing you're missing is that I am capturing the beauty and wonder of the natural world. Where do you think my images come from?

My world in review....





























Don't delude yourself. Using images right off the camera doesn't help you capture the natural world, it impedes it.

The fact that I understand the technical limitations of the camera , and know what I have to do to correct them in no way means I'm not capturing the beauty of the natural world. It means I'm giving my viewers a chance to see it like I do. It usually requires quite a bit of enhancement to do that.

Last edited by normhead; 06-22-2015 at 06:39 PM.
06-24-2015, 10:06 AM   #40
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QuoteOriginally posted by ghostdog Quote
So many perspectives and opinions. I had no idea there would be so many responses. I never meant to stir the pot, so to speak.
It is a recurring discussion that has a parallel in other aspects of visual art. I have found that viewing the camera (film or digital) as a tool for expression rather than for documentation helps a lot. After all, as noted several times above), what even the best camera is capable of capturing is a small subset of the visual information that was actually present at the scene.


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06-24-2015, 11:14 AM - 2 Likes   #41
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QuoteOriginally posted by ghostdog Quote
Wow. That's quite a response.

Actually, I have to thank you. You helped clarity something for me. I have almost no interest in photography. I didn't understand that until I read your post. I am interested in the beauty and wonder of the natural world, and I am interested in bring that beauty to the attention of others, but photography, as represented by your very thorough post, not really.

That being said, I do enjoy the GR very much. I can do exactly what I want to do with it, and I always have it with me. It's a truly brilliant camera for capturing the intimacy of life, and in the hands of some, amazingly vast and sweeping landscapes.

So thanks.

Exit, stage right.
I hope that we haven't offended you. Norm comes on a little strong at times, but I think whatever your take is on it, the images your produce are photographs and are certainly worthy of being shared with others and (hopefully) us, here on the Forums.

I think the most important thing is "above all to thine own self be true." Whatever your vision is of your photos, meet that. You will be happier and there will be plenty of others who appreciate your vision as well.

If you take photos and process them in such a way that Norm or me, or anyone else is happy and you are not, then that is a problem.

Know as well, that people change over time and you may like different sorts of photos in five years than you do now. That's part of what keeps photography fresh and keeps people shooting over time.
06-24-2015, 02:45 PM   #42
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QuoteOriginally posted by Rondec Quote
I hope that we haven't offended you. Norm comes on a little strong at times, but I think whatever your take is on it, the images your produce are photographs and are certainly worthy of being shared with others and (hopefully) us, here on the Forums.

I think the most important thing is "above all to thine own self be true." Whatever your vision is of your photos, meet that. You will be happier and there will be plenty of others who appreciate your vision as well.

If you take photos and process them in such a way that Norm or me, or anyone else is happy and you are not, then that is a problem.

Know as well, that people change over time and you may like different sorts of photos in five years than you do now. That's part of what keeps photography fresh and keeps people shooting over time.
Thanks for a very nice post.

All I am after in any image is an honest record of what I saw, what captured my attention. Several of my photographs are about to be published in book form, as part of a presentation of what could best be described as a guide to noticing, or perhaps the art of noticing. The body of text has nothing to do with photography. The photographs are meant to inspire the reader to begin to notice nuance of detail, subtlety, the overlooked, the small. An attempt to encourage a slowing of one's pace through life, and an appreciation of the inexplicability of anything, everything. As such, I wanted to provide images that could be seen and appreciated in anyone's daily life, so they had to be as realistic as possible. That's why I shoot the way I do, trying as best I can to capture exactly what is in front of me.

I had no idea what I was asking of this community. It ended up feeling like I had asked a conservative Christian community what they thought about the teachings of Buddhism. Wrong group, wrong question. There were, like you, some very kind, inclusive, and thoughtful responses. And then there were the true believers.
06-24-2015, 03:07 PM   #43
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QuoteOriginally posted by ghostdog Quote
Thanks for a very nice post.

All I am after in any image is an honest record of what I saw, what captured my attention. Several of my photographs are about to be published in book form, as part of a presentation of what could best be described as a guide to noticing, or perhaps the art of noticing. The body of text has nothing to do with photography. The photographs are meant to inspire the reader to begin to notice nuance of detail, subtlety, the overlooked, the small. An attempt to encourage a slowing of one's pace through life, and an appreciation of the inexplicability of anything, everything. As such, I wanted to provide images that could be seen and appreciated in anyone's daily life, so they had to be as realistic as possible. That's why I shoot the way I do, trying as best I can to capture exactly what is in front of me.

I had no idea what I was asking of this community. It ended up feeling like I had asked a conservative Christian community what they thought about the teachings of Buddhism. Wrong group, wrong question. There were, like you, some very kind, inclusive, and thoughtful responses. And then there were the true believers.
The whole point of post processing is getting the image to look what you want it to, and that includes a "honest record". If you want to get it to look like that out of the camera, you'll have to tweak the JPEG, wait for it, PROCESSING settings. Or, you know, not, if the default presets work for you. Food for thought: I'm including two files. One is a preset, the other is an in-camera raw conversion of the same shot with that preset tweaked to resemble the scene.

As for your last remark... I'll let you figure that one on your own.
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06-24-2015, 03:35 PM   #44
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QuoteOriginally posted by normhead Quote
The thing you're missing is that I am capturing the beauty and wonder of the natural world. Where do you think my images come from?

My world in review....































Don't delude yourself. Using images right off the camera doesn't help you capture the natural world, it impedes it.

The fact that I understand the technical limitations of the camera , and know what I have to do to correct them in no way means I'm not capturing the beauty of the natural world. It means I'm giving my viewers a chance to see it like I do. It usually requires quite a bit of enhancement to do that.
Norm, I make every effort not to delude myself. It's a regular practice of mine.

Your images are impressive.

Your vision, as expressed through your skill with a GR, or in your examples perhaps a different camera, and your skill with PP, is dramatic and eye catching. They have a clarity about them, a heightened realism, like a vivid dream. I imagine that many, many people enjoy them.

Last edited by ghostdog; 06-24-2015 at 04:35 PM.
06-24-2015, 04:03 PM   #45
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QuoteQuote:
Your vision, as expressed through your skill with a GR and your skill with PP, is dramatic and eye catching. They have a clarity about them, a heightened realism, like a vivid dream. I imagine that many, many people enjoy them.
No I'm shooting with a K-3. The question was not camera specific to my mind. ( You do know that all forum posts come up when you go to the "The Latest" menu and select new posts.) I'm not sure that my images contained heightened realism though, in that most of my images were much more dramatic when I saw them, especially the sunsets and reflections. I guess maybe I just see things more vividly than you do. My theory has always been, find something spectacular, and then try and portray it so people have a sense of it. But, usually my portrayals are somewhat less spectacular than what was there. That's just not possible with a camera. Something I've been trying to explain. Nothing you can capture with a camera even approaches what you see in nature.

My only answer to people who claim I'm augmenting things is... come stand beside me while I'm working. See what I see. Maybe here the issue is just you don't go where I go and see what I see. What your commentary says to me is that you take pictures of the mundane and do a realistic capture of that. Which is kind of like the opposite of what I do. A different approach. Finding the beauty in the ordinary. I'm just a thrill seeker at heart. If I can't pass on the thrill I felt looking at the scene I saw, (because I'm seeing something that is both in a beautiful place, and a scene of unusual beauty based on available light and time of day, even in that place) ,I'm not a happy man.

At least , that's the way I'd phrase it.

But just as a helpful hint, describing yourself as honest, implies that others are somehow dishonest.
And describing my work as taken in a vivid dream, well reality is like that sometimes. You can't pick and choose different parts of reality and claim one is more "real" than the others. They are both equally "real". I can go out on a two week trip and take 90% of my photographs in a 45 minute span, because I insist on having that magic moment. And that magic moment is just as much a part of reality as the every day stuff. It's just not as common.

Last edited by normhead; 06-25-2015 at 05:27 AM.
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