[3by2]

Back in the film days I used to spend hours on things like solarisations, bas reliefs, hours honing my dodging and burning techniques with dry runs on the easel before I put the paper in. I spent days on a line print of a cat once, enlarging a 35mm frame onto a positive 5x4 line film, painting it with a opaque substance (name forgotten) and then contact printing it back onto line to make a negative which I then put in an enlarger to make a 10x8 print on.

The funny thing is that a lot of these techniques are now so easy in digital that they're cliches and post processing has changed and digital has brought it's own skills to master, photoshop and layers took me several days to learn, creating panoramas in Hugin several days as well and I've barely scratched the surface of the editing tools I use now, it was ever thus though.

Here's the cat picture I spent days on. All the details carefully brushed in by hand on a lightbox. I've still got the 5x4 negs somewhere. It's a photo of the print, so not the best.

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Last edited by 3by2; 12-30-2021 at 09:21 AM. Reason: Wrong picture

[stevebrot]

Ya, it really disappointments him when his subjects come with makeup on. I remember my days when when I had to ask the ladies at Ryerson to come in and pose for me. They always came in with heavy make up. I guess the ladies don't really like to go with the skin imperfection thing. I also had to try and learn to retouch negatives to remove blemishes.

Showing other people with all their warts and blemishes is a violation of privacy, and makes the camera a weapon. Anyone can make their subject look bad. It takes real skill to take an image that is true to the subject that they will enjoy as much of the viewers. It's not just about what the photographer wants.

Not softening an image a bit in a portrait could be seen as a violation of trust, unless the subject was for-warned as to the brutal treatment their image was about to receive. I guess a portrait full of pores and blemishes shown to the subject before hand with the note "this is what I'm going for" and a signed model release made with full knowledge of the style of photography would absolve one of any guilt or responsibility.

That being said, Richard Avedon was very successful with this style, except, he had a lab tech who retouched and processed the heck out of every image. But sometime imperfections are part of the story.

It did work for some subjects.




Not for others


If you think you are as good as Avedon, go for it. Be prepared for some unhappiness, and sleep with your light on.

Love this comment! You covered a lot of ground with finesse.


Steve

[StiffLegged]

Looks like the OP ran for the hills after the initial post.

Can’t say I blame him/her: talk about dropping a stone in a hornet’s nest …

[ChristianRock]

I have a Soft FX filter and I actually think it does a great job - smoothes skin textures but does not smooth hair too much, not even sure how that works. I have not used it in a while and maybe should be using it again - now that I know that it's not an un-ethical change of reality, lol....

[Wheatfield]

You advocated making a big to-do about it being the photographer's responsibility to inform a client about the "brutal treatment" (a subjective term, but I digress), complete with a model release stating such. I'm saying that isn't necessary, and the portfolio is warning enough. If a client wanting a bright and airy portrait goes to a photographer that has nothing but grungy looking photos in their portfolio, that is on the client for picking the wrong photographer. The photographer has no obligation to inform the client when such is already made clear by their portfolio.

Now if we were discussing new photographers, ones with lacking portfolios, or ones looking to try something new, then I would agree they need to be more up front, but not a pro/established photographer sticking to their usual style.

Well no. The photographer has a responsibility to inform the client that their style, or some other limitation, will not permit them to fulfill the client's desires, presuming the client makes what they want known, which is part of the photographer's job to ascertain.
Otherwise, the photographer is just another scum sucking scammer pretending to be a businessman.

When I was shooting weddings, I had to tell many brides that the photo examples they brought me from various magazines were beyond my abilities as I didn't have the level of studio support required, nor an art department, at my disposal.
There were a couple of really high end shooters in town that were able to do magazine level weddings, and they charged accordingly,
10 times or more what I was asking, and I wasn't selling myself all that cheaply.
Sometimes the clients I referred to them bit the bullet and paid the ransom, but quite often they came back to me. Or they found someone else who they liked more.

It's up to the photographer to ensure he can meet the customer's expectation, it's not up to the customer to meet the photographer's desire.

Having said that, I agree with you that a client who wants something diametrically different from the photographer's portfolio is asking for disappointment with the product, but it was a failure on the part of the photographer to either fulfill the customer's needs or send that customer to a different vendor.

The photographer, like anyone selling a product, is absolutely responsible for qualifying the customer. That is business survival 101 stuff. One has to sell the customer what they want to buy.

[Mooncatt]

A bunch of stuff

I think you and I mostly agree. The POV I was coming from is that of a client picking a photographer based on their portfolio. I.e. "I totally love your work, so I want to hire you to take a photo that is nothing like your other works!" (Exaggerated for effect.) If I had a perspective model/client come to me with examples of other people's work I absolutely would tell them if I could or couldn't do it.

[normhead]

The photographer has no obligation to inform the client when such is already made clear by their portfolio.

If in fact it is made clear by their portfolio what the final product will be like, and the photographer gets all possible money up front. No one ever lost money making someone else look good. The market will look after itself.

A friend's father who owned a Toronto Ad agency once commissioned Avedon for an image. $2000 (1980) money up front, no retakes. He said it wasn't worth it, but the image was hanging on his wall. You can never anticipate what a specific client might want or enjoy.

What you suggest sounds like it would work at Walmart... I suspect many other photographers get creative every now and then.

[filmmaster]

What many miss, is that editing has always been done. But there is a difference.

If you dodge or burn a print, your doing it to control the light or lack of light in that spot. thats not an issue at all, as some want to see a little more detail on that horses ear, etc, then the idealized printing time would give.

But when you get to digital cameras and digital images, you have software that has gone beyond reasonable usage levels. I mean software and software add ons that give you more power then the folks at Industrial Light and Magic had when they did the Star Wars special edition back in the mid 1990s.

One software program lets you control lights anywhere... take a photo of your room and it lets you turn each light on or off in the photo, lets you change the light bulb/light emitting from each light fixture, by intensity and COLOR... and changes the room shadows for you.

Other programs let you take a photo of a heavily freckled red head, and give you a photo of a blond haired girl with alabaster skin that looks painted on.

I looked at a facebook group on photography, the main page had an advertisement for a guy from india sell add on program scripts for photo shop. He showed a before image of a typical indian bride in a wedding dress. Then he showed what his automated script program could do,,, the ONLY, and i mean ONLY similarities between the before and after photos were a woman in a wedding dress.

everything changed, the wedding cake, the flowers she was holding, the patter and style of the dress, her face changed in major ways, went from looking like a normal indian girl say pareeniti chopra
Parineeti Chopra

and turned her into Kalki Koechlin

[Mooncatt]

But when you get to digital cameras and digital images, you have software that has gone beyond reasonable usage levels. I mean software and software add ons that give you more power then the folks at Industrial Light and Magic had when they did the Star Wars special edition back in the mid 1990s.

One software program lets you control lights anywhere... take a photo of your room and it lets you turn each light on or off in the photo, lets you change the light bulb/light emitting from each light fixture, by intensity and COLOR... and changes the room shadows for you.

Other programs let you take a photo of a heavily freckled red head, and give you a photo of a blond haired girl with alabaster skin that looks painted on.

I looked at a facebook group on photography, the main page had an advertisement for a guy from india sell add on program scripts for photo shop. He showed a before image of a typical indian bride in a wedding dress. Then he showed what his automated script program could do,,, the ONLY, and i mean ONLY similarities between the before and after photos were a woman in a wedding dress.

everything changed, the wedding cake, the flowers she was holding, the patter and style of the dress, her face changed in major ways, went from looking like a normal indian girl say pareeniti chopra
Parineeti Chopra

and turned her into Kalki Koechlin

And then there's this.

Youtu.be

Youtu.be

[slubill]

Looks like the OP ran for the hills after the initial post.

No I did not head for the hills. Just enjoying reading the responses. But I do just see it as strange that we set the aperture, ISO, shutter speed, and focus just so and we watch our composition and then spend hours redoing it all at the computer. We worry about having the best camera and good glass but then use the image captured as a rough draft. But I a couple of comments were about the same, whatever makes you happy. But I asked for opinions and I enjoyed reading them. Thank you all.

[Rondec]

No I did not head for the hills. Just enjoying reading the responses. But I do just see it as strange that we set the aperture, ISO, shutter speed, and focus just so and we watch our composition and then spend hours redoing it all at the computer. We worry about having the best camera and good glass but then use the image captured as a rough draft. But I a couple of comments were about the same, whatever makes you happy. But I asked for opinions and I enjoyed reading them. Thank you all.

I think there is a broad range of post processing that is done. Some is fairly aggressive and turns a normal image into digital art. Some is relatively gentle -- a little sharpening in spots and dodging and burning. The important thing, I suppose, is that the photographer is in control and is achieving the vision that they desire. More than that is hard to say. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and what one person judges as overly aggressive another finds perfect.

There were even people who purchased pictures of Elvis on velvet, so there is that...

[filmmaster]

I think there is a broad range of post processing that is done. Some is fairly aggressive and turns a normal image into digital art. Some is relatively gentle -- a little sharpening in spots and dodging and burning. The important thing, I suppose, is that the photographer is in control and is achieving the vision that they desire. More than that is hard to say. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and what one person judges as overly aggressive another finds perfect.

There were even people who purchased pictures of Elvis on velvet, so there is that...

many levels of post processing alterations.

correcting a small issue like a focus problem, or a sun flare is ok. But when we get to the arena and level of what is used to make a scene from a transformers scene,, or your least favorite comic book movie,,, you have to ask yourself simple things..


Like, is it even photography?

And then consider that many "professional" photographers who are advocating and reselling editing software and plug in modules for them,,, can you call them a "professional photographer" if they NEED to use a 200$ piece of software to remove sun flare and reflections in windows, etc when all they need is a 10$ lens hood and a 60$ CPL?

[luftfluss]

No I did not head for the hills. Just enjoying reading the responses. But I do just see it as strange that we set the aperture, ISO, shutter speed, and focus just so and we watch our composition and then spend hours redoing it all at the computer. We worry about having the best camera and good glass but then use the image captured as a rough draft. But I a couple of comments were about the same, whatever makes you happy. But I asked for opinions and I enjoyed reading them. Thank you all.

Welcome back! I thought maybe all of our babbling had driven you away.

The reasons I shoot RAW and post-process (RAW+PP):

- The camera's tone curve is pretty harsh, and often nearly crushes blacks and blows out highlights. RAW+PP allows me to recovering the highlights and rescue details that seem to be lost in the shadows.

- With RAW+PP I can manage detail vs noise reduction with far greater granularity than my cameras can. In high-ISO situations, modern software can get me both more detail and less noise than straight-out-of-camera JPG.

- RAW files are my "digital negatives". I like having those. If you sent your film out to the lab to get processed, you want them to send back the negatives too, right?

[slubill]

My point is that to me, the art or science of photography (again, I am pure armature here) is trying to capture a scene or memory. I keep trying to understand the camera and setting, finding an interesting subject and getting a well composed photo. My favorite photo I have ever taken in my eyes is flawed. I have a horizon line that is a degree or two slanted. I have an slight intruding object that I thought was out of the frame but the wind picked up. So I think that these are post process fixes that should be made. But to make these changes, crop the image down, get rid of a shadow that was in the hut, brighten up the ship in the background because a large cloud placed a shadow on this ship, and increase the softness of the waves, etc. And I do actually shoot RAW now so that I have that digital negative should I want to do more than just straight convert to JPG for sharing with my family.

And so the reason for my original question is do I try to improve my technical skills with the camera and spend more money on a newer camera body and lenses that are better than kit or mid range or do I need to now spend more time and money in editing software skills and programs. I think I want the skill with the camera / lens as I am thinking about breaking out the old ME Super again some day.

I was just curious if I was alone in my belief that having a better quality "digital negative" and only use post processing for small enhancements. I hope I did not offend anyone but I got what I thought I was going to get in this conversation. Some people saying that post process is just part of the process, one or two saying it was taboo, and most somewhere in the middle.

But at least none of my photos will end up in the "Photoshop Fails" conversations!

[Mooncatt]

And so the reason for my original question is do I try to improve my technical skills...

Always

...with the camera and spend more money on a newer camera body and lenses that are better than kit or mid range...

Upgrading your gear can make a world of difference in the right hands, but you can still take a horrible photo with $5,000 worth of gear. Work on technique first, then upgrade if and when you find a technical limitation of your existing gear, and then start planning long term instead of getting something to improve an immediate need.

...or do I need to now spend more time and money in editing software skills and programs.

You can get free editors that are very capable, if not overkill already at your skill level. The more you work on the above, the less reliant you'll be on this. It's good to know some basic editing techniques, but not worth stressing out over as if you must be well versed today to be taken legitimately. Take your time and learn as you go. I didn't follow any set process to learn. Once I got the idea of the exposure triangle, I went from there. As I ran into new challenges, I would then go research them as needed.

I was just curious if I was alone in my belief that having a better quality "digital negative" and only use post processing for small enhancements.

Not at all. I think most everyone would agree you should strive for getting it as close as you can with the initial shot, even if it's only because it makes the editing process that much easier.