Bruce Dayton wrote:
I ran across this exchange recently and it caused me to do
some thinking:
http://photo.net/wedding-photography-forum/00SlvT
I have many of the same feelings as this guy presented. When I look
at much of the current work being shown, especially on photo.net
galleries, I see heavy handed manipulation being the norm and also
being judged very positively.
Anyway, some interesting fodder for discussion for those who care to
take a read. The thread discussion improves further down than near
the top -but you do have to read the initial post.
--
Best regards,
Bruce
Interesting read. As others have pointed out, manipulation is nothing new.
Here are some pre-digital examples:
When Fujichrome and later Velvia came out, some photographers derisively
referred to it as "Disneychrome" due to its saturated colors.
In a pre-digital article in Outdoor Photographer back in the 1990's, Galen
Rowell described using stacked ND gradient filters to achieve more than 10
stops of gradient in an image. If that's not HDR imaging, I don't know what
is!
Lith printing and toning (selenium, gold, etc.) are chemical forms of image
manipulation.
Black and white is manipulation in and of itself, since it involves
converting color light into a monochrome image.
Ansel Adams used darkroom manipulation to wipe out a giant white "L" put on
an Alabama Hills slope by the students at Lone Pine high school in the
following image:
http://www.anseladams.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=1858
The whole Pictorialism movement (dating from the 1880's) was all about
manipulating images to obtain "painterly" effects.
etc.
I personally find a lot of the manipulation that I see today really
annoying, particularly garish HDR and odd sharpening effects that seem to be
in vogue. Even worse is the body sculpting and image distortion that
fashion magazines use to turn models into cartoons with unattainable body
shapes. As a father of two daughters, that really bothers me....
--Mark
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