of photos. The photographer is not adding anything fake, just omitting things that make the composition less.... well, nice for want of a better word. Smooth, integrated, not sure what other words. The power lines jar, so does tha scaffolding in the background of the other photo.
Who hasn't seen something stunning, and snapped a photo, only to get it back from the lab and discover the stunning thing has been translated into something drab?
Yes, exactly. Human perception is a funny thing; the eye and the brain can focus on the subject and just not-see all the distraction around the edges. The camera can't do that. I see the kind of editing you're doing here as bringing the photo image into congruence with what the eye would see and the brain remember. In that sense, you're making it more real, not less.
Part of it has to do with how the flatness of the image changes the relationships of the objects. Landscapes are really hard because the things about them which make them stunning are the whole, but the whole doesn't translate, so we have to isolate the aspects which most clearly represent the whole.
It's a hard thing to get. I'm just starting to have a handle on it.
I see photography and photoshopping as two different artforms. One is a composition - I take what's there, but I take only that. The other is an amalgamation of different things - I take what's there already, but I can add to it and substract from it and shape it away from its own reality.
In the first picture you posted, yes, I would have edited out the lines if there had been no other way to take a picture of that statue. In the second image, however, I would have walked around the statue and played with angles and positions until I had an image that contained no distracting elements. If all you have is one image, then yes, you might need photoshop to improve it. But if you are standing in the street opposite your motif, particularly if it's a statue that isn't going anywhere, then I think it induces a certain lazyness to say 'I'll take this, I can always photoshop it.' I might do that anyway, just for reference - but what I really want is to get it right.
Walk around the statue all you like, that image of Hetman/Гетман can't be gotten anyplace else. It's in a plaza, at the angle of a corner. Behind me is Sofiskaya/Софиская Move to the right, and I have a bunch of ugly buildingsbehind and his mace (which a placed out of the frame by how I set this shot) intruding in front. The subject becomes the horse's nose.
Move to the left and the image is different again, the figure is leaving the frame, perhaps I could get to just the right place and find an image which was of him charging down the street, more likely I'm just showing a horse's ass and a bush.
It's arrogant to impose your perfect idea of what ought to be done, and it's foolish to assume the artist wasn't carefully getting the placement, and context, desired for the main subject in a photo which has distracting elements.
For what I was trying in this picture (an heroic image, with strong leading lines, which can be interpreted as the spirit of the past motivating the present; and his face in the frame) I got just what I wanted, and it was cluttered with things I couldn't work around on the ground.
To address the purely practical, the powelines aren't avoidable. They are between me and the statue. The only hope to avoid them is a head, or tail, on vertical shot. That's not what I wanted, so it't either accept the distraction, or go into Photoshop
The main choices made by the photographer occur while choosing the point of view and the extent of the frame. Those choices far overshadow anything that can be done with any software - and they are entirely up to the photographer's imagination.
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I don't have a problem with that kind of editing
Date: 2008-11-27 04:12 am (UTC)That is one of the best things about Photoshop.
no subject
Date: 2008-11-27 09:22 am (UTC)Yes, exactly. Human perception is a funny thing; the eye and the brain can focus on the subject and just not-see all the distraction around the edges. The camera can't do that. I see the kind of editing you're doing here as bringing the photo image into congruence with what the eye would see and the brain remember. In that sense, you're making it more real, not less.
no subject
Date: 2008-11-27 04:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-28 11:16 pm (UTC)And some stuff still gets through.
no subject
Date: 2008-11-28 11:57 pm (UTC)It's a hard thing to get. I'm just starting to have a handle on it.
no subject
Date: 2008-11-27 11:43 am (UTC)In the first picture you posted, yes, I would have edited out the lines if there had been no other way to take a picture of that statue. In the second image, however, I would have walked around the statue and played with angles and positions until I had an image that contained no distracting elements. If all you have is one image, then yes, you might need photoshop to improve it. But if you are standing in the street opposite your motif, particularly if it's a statue that isn't going anywhere, then I think it induces a certain lazyness to say 'I'll take this, I can always photoshop it.' I might do that anyway, just for reference - but what I really want is to get it right.
no subject
Date: 2008-11-28 11:16 pm (UTC)Move to the left and the image is different again, the figure is leaving the frame, perhaps I could get to just the right place and find an image which was of him charging down the street, more likely I'm just showing a horse's ass and a bush.
It's arrogant to impose your perfect idea of what ought to be done, and it's foolish to assume the artist wasn't carefully getting the placement, and context, desired for the main subject in a photo which has distracting elements.
For what I was trying in this picture (an heroic image, with strong leading lines, which can be interpreted as the spirit of the past motivating the present; and his face in the frame) I got just what I wanted, and it was cluttered with things I couldn't work around on the ground.
To address the purely practical, the powelines aren't avoidable. They are between me and the statue. The only hope to avoid them is a head, or tail, on vertical shot. That's not what I wanted, so it't either accept the distraction, or go into Photoshop
no subject
Date: 2008-11-29 12:16 am (UTC)The main choices made by the photographer occur while choosing the point of view and the extent of the frame. Those choices far overshadow anything that can be done with any software - and they are entirely up to the photographer's imagination.