[pepperberry farm]

for further rumination:

How to Be a Zen Photographer - DIY Photography

[ccc_]

post processing is merely the penultimate step in the digital workflow

I came to photography from an art background not journalism or evidentiary forensics

so this is what I do:
if i'm submitting work that is documentary in usage I correct the image not enhance it
if not I pretty much do whatever I want

photography has been telling stories not the truth for a very long time
most of the time a good story is more entertaining than the truth

as long as you know the difference

as to the phrasing of your question...it is indeed simply a question of workflow philosophy (the how of it)

so after all that, is it okay to remove that obnoxious twig penetrating aunt ruby's head?
sure why not?
she deserves to look as nice as possible.

[sherrvonne]

Quite right, on all points. It's just that when editing is involved then the result is much less about the lens used than it is about the image in many cases. The only thing that differentiates them at that point is... FOV? bokeh? (even that can be digitally enhanced)

This caught my eye because a lady was going through some of my photographs and queried as to 'what program I used to achieve the bokeh (auto correct keeps changing that to bonehead???) in the background'. it was a bird photo shot with the K3 and Sigma 150-500mm. I told her the bokeh wasn't done in a program but it was how the photo was actually rendered by using the lens and aperture, etc... When I took the shot and it was not altered. I'm not sure she believed me or she didn't expect tech speak?

[lightbox]

This caught my eye because a lady was going through some of my photographs and queried as to 'what program I used to achieve the bokeh (auto correct keeps changing that to bonehead???) in the background'. it was a bird photo shot with the K3 and Sigma 150-500mm. I told her the bokeh wasn't done in a program but it was how the photo was actually rendered by using the lens and aperture, etc... When I took the shot and it was not altered. I'm not sure she believed me or she didn't expect tech speak?

If the lady used the word 'bokeh' then she probably understands the concept but maybe didn't know how dramatic the effect could be? I imagine it's frustrating being called out on something like that.

[ccc_]

it was a bird photo shot with the K3 and Sigma 150-500mm. I told her the bokeh wasn't done in a program but it was how the photo was actually rendered by using the lens and aperture, etc...

I know it shouldn't, if you believe that only fast glass produces nice bokeh, but my sigma yields some very pleasant backgrounds as well

[sherrvonne]

If the lady used the word 'bokeh' then she probably understands the concept but maybe didn't know how dramatic the effect could be? I imagine it's frustrating being called out on something like that.

She may of said blur, but her first thought at seeing the photos was that I had used a program to get the effect. I guess with the availability of of phone apps etc, it's the first thing people think of now instead of maybe someone used their DSLR with a specific lens, set on manual, adjusted the ISO, aperture, and shutter speed and distance. Those apps also use the word bokeh and I hear people pronounce it all kinds of ways. It was more amusing than anything that people have no idea of what it takes to actually creat the effect with the camera and lens.

[BrianR]

She may of said blur, but her first thought at seeing the photos was that I had used a program to get the effect. I guess with the availability of of phone apps etc, it's the first thing people think of now instead of maybe someone used their DSLR with a specific lens, set on manual, adjusted the ISO, aperture, and shutter speed and distance. Those apps also use the word bokeh and I hear people pronounce it all kinds of ways. It was more amusing than anything that people have no idea of what it takes to actually creat the effect with the camera and lens.

I had a similar experience with a photo of a frog on a white background. This lady (maybe the same one) was convinced I had 'simply' edited the background with Photoshop. I tried explaining my portable studio (white lunch cooler + a couple lights) and how I'm inherently lazy and doing it with camera & lights & portable backdrop is much less time consuming than doing a convincing job in PS. She was not convinced.

For some, "Photoshop" has become the universal explanation for every camera effect or technique. I guess it's a more reasonable explanation for them than "magic".

[RobA_Oz]

This thread contains the same sorts of arguments as those that were raging in photographic circles during the 1920s and 30s, between the Pictorialists (who drew on the painters' traditions by heavily manipulated images to give the same appearance) and the proponents of Pure Photography, who presented images of objects as they were. In that case, the technologies used by the opposing camps for printing were different, whereas now we use much the same set of tools, regardless of philosophy. By and large, the Pictorialists lost the battle, in the public mind, at least, and now most people have heard of Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, but few would recognise names such as William Mortensen.

Nonetheless, photographers like Man Ray and Moholy-Nagy straddled the two schools successfully. My view is that we should adopt whichever stance suits our purpose. An image isn't reality, even if it purports to be a faithful representation of it.

[gifthorse]

Unemployment clerk: Occupation?
Comicus: Stand-up philosopher.
Unemployment clerk: What?
Comicus: Stand-up philosopher. I coalesce the vapors of human experience into a viable and meaningful comprehension.
Unemployment clerk: Oh, a bullshit artist!
Comicus: Mutter...
Unemployment clerk: Did you bullshit last week?
Comicus: No.
Unemployment clerk: Did you try to bullshit last week?
Comicus: Yes!

[WPRESTO]

Philosophers:
1) provide answers to questions that have none;
2) never agree on what those answers are;
3) only tackle questions that other approaches - especially science - cannot answer;
4) claim that their answers have informed all other disciplines, including science;
5) have been rendered largely obsolete by other disciplines, especially science;
6) nevertheless, they talk on (and on, and on).

[RobA_Oz]

Philosophers:
1) provide answers to questions that have none;
2) never agree on what those answers are;
3) only tackle questions that other approaches - especially science - cannot answer;
4) claim that their answers have informed all other disciplines, including science;
5) have been rendered largely obsolete by other disciplines, especially science;
6) nevertheless, they talk on (and on, and on).

Spoken like a true philosopher!

Seriously though, practical philosophy (Alain de Botton is a good read and his work is useful in untangling modern-day life, for those who give a damn) can help provide some consistency of thought and action, and help us make sense of an increasingly complex world ("complex" - what a great non-judgmental word; I really mean "post-truth", which is a philosophy of sorts, I guess).

[wildman]

bullshit artist!

Is there any other kind?

Eloquent BS can be an art form in it's own right - ask any corporate PR man or politician.

[WPRESTO]

Spoken like a true philosopher!

Seriously though, practical philosophy (Alain de Botton is a good read and his work is useful in untangling modern-day life, for those who give a damn) can help provide some consistency of thought and action, and help us make sense of an increasingly complex world ("complex" - what a great non-judgmental word; I really mean "post-truth", which is a philosophy of sorts, I guess).

There are worthy, even indispensable systems or methods of thinking that may rightfully be claimed by philosophers as their invention. Logic comes to mind. But I've heard philosophers try to take credit for the scientific method as their creation, and heard one claim that science was worthless because it cannot even provide consistent, precise values for distances to remote stars and galaxies. Philosophers also like to claim the "eternal questions" that science is incapable of addressing, such as: 1) what is justice; or 2) what is beauty. And indeed the latter are purely the realm of philosophy because "justice" and "beauty" have no objective reality. They are purely creations of the human mind, so the mind can mold, mangle, dissect and define them any way it pleases, but they cannot be addressed by the scientific method because they are not "things" or "processes" or "events," they are just concepts with no more substance than a lecherous thought.

[RobA_Oz]

... concepts with no more substance than a lecherous thought.

...and not as pleasurable, although generally far less troublesome, too!

[clackers]

But I've heard philosophers try to take credit for the scientific method as their creation

Don't know about that, but empiricism is an ancient thread in philosophy. The 'scientific method' is an example of inductive reasoning.

Likely all the early science pioneers would have been educated formally in the discipline.

'Science' itself was called for a long time simply 'natural philosophy'.

There were no formal barriers between them. Newton happily did experiments in optics at the same time as he pursued studies of numerology, the occult, etc.