Photography forum image of the month — April 2010

May 14, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Every month on our¯¿½ pho­tog­ra­phy forum mem­bers nom­i­nate images that they like. Then at the end of the month I choose an excel­lent image and talk about why it rocks. The photo I choose is not nec­es­sar­ily the best one of the month. I¯¿½ve come to real­ize it¯¿½s not really log­i­cal to pit images from totally dif­fer­ent gen­res against each other. That¯¿½s why there are cat­e­gories in photo con­tests. I just choose a photo that has extremely strong ele­ments that we can learn from.

Some Bugs by OWLP - Click to enlarge
Some Bugs by OWLP — Click to enlarge

I chose this image for sev­eral reasons:

The eye is tack tack sharp and that’s hard to do on a sub­ject this small, because focus­ing (and dof) is a chal­leng­ing task at this size and dis­tance to sub­ject. Sharp­ness is lovely in many places; leg hairs, tho­rax, abdomen. Blurred back­ground shows no distractions.

The sub­ject has a def­i­nite impact on the viewer. It’s likely very creepy for many view­ers, prob­a­bly because of sharp­ness. My eye is focused on one thing, that fly.

Good com­po­si­tion all around which can be chal­leng­ing at this size as well.

Nice high­light con­trol on what­ever the fly is rest­ing on and the over­all expo­sure is well han­dled with sup­ple­men­tary lighting.

For all these rea­sons, this is my choice for image of the month. Since we all have opin­ions, some mem­bers may dis­agree with my choice. That’s cool but THIS thread is not the place for debate over my pick, NOR is it the place to fur­ther cri­tique the image. The pur­pose here is to sug­gest strong ele­ments in the photo that we may learn from.

Con­grats again OWLP for cre­at­ing this strik­ing image!

I¯¿½d also like to include these 2 images as hon­ourable men­tions as they also came so so close to being picked.

Col­or­less Beauty by Kat

Colorless Beauty by Kat - Click to enlarge
Col­or­less Beauty by Kat — Click to enlarge

Din­ner time by Richard

Dinner time by Richard - Click to enlarge
Din­ner time by Richard — Click to enlarge

Power At Sun­rise by Mad Aussie

Power at Sunrise by Mad Aussie - Click to enlarge
Power at Sun­rise by Mad Aussie — Click to enlarge
Filed Under: Image of the month, Photographs, Photography blog entries Tagged With: ,

Toronto Contact Photography Festival — May 1–31 2010

May 10, 2010 By 2 Comments

Last week I spent 2 days gallery-hopping at theToronto Con­tact Pho­tog­ra­phy fes­ti­val. It’s always a treat to see so many pho­to­graphic works being exhib­ited at the same time. This fes­ti­val shows pho­tog­ra­phy work all around the city of Toronto (from local and Inter­na­tional artists) but it’s mostly con­cen­trated downtown.

Heidi Leverty - Tincarnation 13
Heidi Lev­erty — Tin­car­na­tion 13

I go to these events purely to see good pho­tog­ra­phy and to get inspired. I LOVE see­ing work that moves me even if it is out­side what I nor­mally con­sider to be ‘my’ sub­ject mat­ter. As with most pho­tog­ra­phy fes­ti­vals, the major­ity of the work doesnot appeal to me. Pho­tog­ra­phy for the most part is a one frame deal and if I have to look too hard for the deeper mean­ing, or work to see the great­ness of the shot, then for me the pho­to­graph makes me go “meh”. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE sym­bol­ism, I love images laden with themes and I love dou­ble or triple mean­ings in an image but SHOW it to me. Don’t embed the gold too deeply in the image, make the gold shine. Don’t make me go back to a text on mythol­ogy with an obscurely titled pho­to­graph, show me some­thing uni­ver­sal that moves me now.

There were far too many exhi­bi­tions to see them all but I did see a good 20 exhi­bi­tions. I should say that I missed at least 3 shows purely because I could not find them.Her­man & Audrey is a show that I would have LOVED to have seen. I drove to address the on Duf­ferin, in fact I planned part of my day on that show since the gallery opened at 4pm.…nothing there to indi­cate any exhi­bi­tion there folks…and no phone num­ber either.

So here were the shows that intrigued me the most with a brief review:

-Bar­bara Probst — Expo­sures — This was a cool show; 12 cam­eras all set up in dif­fer­ent loca­tions, pho­to­graph the same scene from dif­fer­ent angles. The result­ing large scale pho­tographs all taken at the same moment, are pre­sented in an inter­est­ing and cohe­sive way. 1450 Dun­das St. W — 416–537-3125

-The Skin you Love to Touch — Jodi Bieber, Lau­ren Green­field, Zed Nel­son — I thought this one was very intrigu­ing show­ing the ‘skins’ of very dif­fer­ent peo­ple and their rela­tion to mar­ket­ing, con­sumerism, per­cep­tion and self-perception. 80 Spad­ina suite 310

Ben Ng -Exposed: Per­va­sive Influ­ence — Glad­stone Hotel on the sec­ond floor ( a great venue at 1214 Queen St. W. with MANY exhi­bi­tions). I found Ben’s land­scapes extremely well done and very strik­ing. In par­tic­u­lar the print­ing qual­ity is just fab­u­lous. Most of the images were hand-painted; mean­ing they started off as black and white images and then selected parts were hand-painted. It looked to me like they were hand-painted old school (as opposed to doing this much more eas­ily in Pho­to­shop) which means that you apply paint to the actual photograph.

My fave — Some­times you’ll walk into a Gallery that is show­ing one main artist and other artists intrigue you even more. This is what hap­pened atBau-Xi Photo with their main exhi­bi­tion At this Moment by Zoe Jare­mus, which over­all, I liked. Bau-Xi is located at 324 Dun­das tel # 416–977-0400 and their gallery was my favorite stop of the entire exhi­bi­tion. I dis­cov­ered 2 artists there whose work struck me imme­di­ately;Heidi Lev­erty (whose image is fea­tured in this post) andAnthony Red­path. Heidi’s work is AWESOME and has tremen­dous impact. She only had 2 (large — around 32 x40 inches) images that were exhib­ited but Robyn who works at the gallery showed me some addi­tional work. Her work depicts large scale recy­cled mate­ri­als pre­sented in an abstract yet extremely com­pelling way. Anthony’s work was even larger in scale and his exhib­ited image Trailer Park Party (64.5 x 96 inches) is excel­lent and incred­i­bly sharp. Spe­cial thanks toRobyn McCal­lum for the extra infor­ma­tion she gave me.

My apolo­gies to all the artists whose work I missed. If you are read­ing this and want to send me some links to your work, I’m all eyes. Spe­cial thanks toJoe Cormier who gallery-hopped (lit­er­ally — he has a sore leg) with me on day 1. He also showed some fab work at this fes­ti­val atMoos Gallery.

Filed Under: Opinion-personal-rant, Photographs, Photography blog entries Tagged With: , , ,

Multiple Exposure — Podcast teaser

April 10, 2010 By 2 Comments

I’ve been play­ing with in cam­era mul­ti­ple expo­sures quite a bit lately and I’m really enjoy­ing it. I used to do this quite a bit back in the day with my trusty Nikon FM2 film cam­era. Although the antic­i­pa­tion fac­tor is dead with dig­i­tal, there’s still some­thing spe­cial about doing this in-camera. I’m hav­ing some fun re-experimenting and I plan to share my redis­cov­er­ies in the next podcast.

Inside Isabelle

Inside Isabelle by Marko Kulik

BTW — The sub­mis­sions in this month’s photo assign­ment ‘dif­fer­ent point of view’ are very cre­ative‚ — Thanks to all forum mem­bers for post­ing their fab work! Of course…if you haven’t joined, feel free to join — every­one is welcome!

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography blog entries Tagged With:

Same subject different point of view

April 3, 2010 By 2 Comments

This month, again, we have a very cool assign­ment on our pho­tog­ra­phy forum.
The goal is to shoot a sub­ject from a dif­fer­ent point of view. We just started this assign­ment and already have many cool posts. Here’s one from forum mem­ber Bambi that rocks. If you are lurk­ing on our forum — we’re a friendly bunch so feel free to reg­is­ter for free and let’s see your creativity.

The Dogs view of the trail by Bambi - Click to enlarge

The Dogs’ view of the trail by Bambi — Click to enlarge

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography blog entries Tagged With: , ,

29 other things to buy after your first DSLR

March 23, 2010 By 1 Comment

I recently did a pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast on buy­ing your first DSLR. In that pod­cast I sug­gested NOT spend­ing a whack of cash on your first cam­era body, and sav­ing it for lenses and acces­sories instead.

Speak­ing of all those accessories…member masp from our pho­tog­ra­phy forum started this thread list­ing other items you’ll need to go with that first DSLR if you want to get seri­ous about pho­tog­ra­phy. It’s a big list for sure but it will give new­bies in par­tic­u­lar a feel for what many advanced shoot­ers con­sider to be essen­tial gear, acces­sories and must have gadgets.

So hat tip to masp once more for this list! Feel free to add your own sug­ges­tions in the com­ments if you feel any­thing is missing.

Here’s a par­tial check­list I’ve put together from my own research and lis­ten­ing to the pod­cast. I’m sure I’ve prob­a­bly left some­thing impor­tant out here or there, so please let me know if you spot any omis­sions or use­ful things I should include. Aster­isks denote the stuff that is more impor­tant or cheap enough to buy first.

A. CAMERA PROTECTION
* 1. UV fil­ter ($10 to 30 to $60?)
* 2. Padded cam­era case
3. Cam­era armor?
* 4. LCD screen cover if not included. (Included for Nikons)
* 5. Viewfinder cover and mag­ni­fier
6. Fancy cam­era strap, like the Black Rapid straps?
* 7. Lens hood for any lenses that lack one. (Also keeps stuff from bang­ing into your lens)

B. CLEANING
* 8. Microfiber cloth and a “huff of breath” (Can’t be more than a few bucks)
9. Air blower. Marko says to buy from a cam­era store, but Ken Rock­well says a $5 air blower from a drug store may suf­fice. Any rea­son to dis­agree with Rock­well here? (I’m kinda cheap )
* 10. Also con­sider a blower brush or lenspen. ($5–10)
* 11. Sil­ica gel — it eats mois­ture in humid con­di­tions (A few bucks)

C. PHOTOGRAPHIC TOOLS
12. Polar­izer and ND fil­ters
* 13. Tri­pod ($50? — $140 + + No rea­son not to buy used though, I think)
14. Maybe a mono­pod for porta­bil­ity, but a tri­pod seems more use­ful.
15. Flash (con­sider buy­ing the most expen­sive one)
* 16. Reflec­tors maybe, or just a cheap piece of card­board wear­ing white cloth­ing.
17. Light meter. Use­ful for stu­dio work mainly.

D. COMPUTER STUFF
* 18. SD or CF reader. Can you go with a cheap one here? As long as is a high speed one, I *think* it’s okay, but I’d hate to cor­rupt my data.
19. Photo printer. Pict­bridge?
20. A decent mon­i­tor that isn’t exces­sively blue, con­trasty or bright (refer­ring to cal­i­bra­tion pod­cast)
21. Mon­i­tor and printer color cal­i­bra­tion tools.
22. Pho­tog­ra­phy soft­ware (I’m going to stick with what’s free for now, but I sup­pose I’ll even­tu­ally buy some soft­ware when I fig­ure out what’s most stan­dard)
23. Color cal­i­bra­tion equip­ment ($400-$1400?). Some may be avail­able for $200 or under. Con­sider buy­ing one before you start doing a lot of editing.

E. MISCELLANY
24. Spare bat­tery ($10 to $30 on Ama­zon, more for brand name)
25. SD or CF card ($20 to $40 depend­ing on desired size)
26. Extra lens and body caps (los­ing the orig­i­nals may lower the resale value of your gear?)
27. Plas­tic trash bags to cover your gear bag if it’s not water­proofed and it starts rain­ing. White ones may dou­ble as reflec­tors if you don’t mind look­ing unpro­fes­sional.
28. Zip lock bags for hold­ing your clean­ing sup­plies and other stuff maybe.
29. Base­ball bat for when some guy on the street tries to grab your cam­era. J/K J/K I don’t con­done vio­lence, except for the Three Stooges variety.

Filed Under: Opinion-personal-rant, Photography blog entries, Photography tips Tagged With: ,

1 bloody good reason to try the camera before you buy

March 19, 2010 By 6 Comments

The answer is PAIN.

I recently upgraded cam­eras and pur­chased a Nikon D700. It’s an awe­some cam­era and I love it except for one thing…it does not feel great in my hand. In fact, after using it for a month it has been caus­ing me a good deal of pain in my shoot­ing hand.

SHAME ON ME.

I should know bet­ter, I coun­cil peo­ple to try before they buy and yet I did not fully lis­ten to my own advice. Here’s what hap­pened — I actu­ally tried the D700 for a week­end 4 months ago. On that week­end I shot with the D700 for two peri­ods of about 1 hour and my hand felt fine. I did notice that it was a heavy cam­era but I felt fine so I fig­ured all was good.

SHAME ON ME.

I mean when I go out to shoot nor­mally, on a gig or for plea­sure, I USUALLY shoot for 3–4 hours (plus plus). So test­ing on 2 peri­ods of 1 hour was a huge mis­take. But I was in a “rush” to test the cam­era as it was only on loan for the weekend..and week­ends are often busy.

PLEASE LEARN FROM MY ERROR.

Before you spend a whack of cash on a cam­era, test it for the length of time that you nor­mally shoot with. Try­ing it in the store or for an hour is bet­ter than noth­ing but it’s not an accu­rate test. Rent the cam­era you intend to buy for a week­end espe­cially if it is an expen­sive cam­era. Many larger brick and mor­tar cam­era stores will deduct the rental price off your new cam­era if you end up buy­ing it. For my own case, I think adding a bat­tery grip will solve the prob­lem as it will take the excess weight off my shoot­ing hand and divide it more evenly.….but this could have been avoided if I had fully fol­lowed my own advice.

Filed Under: Opinion-personal-rant, Photography blog entries, Photography tips Tagged With: ,

Photography forum image of the month ‚” Feb. 2010

March 5, 2010 By 2 Comments

Every month on our pho­tog­ra­phy forum mem­bers nom­i­nate images that they like. Then at the end of the month I choose an excel­lent image and talk about why it rocks. The photo I choose is not nec­es­sar­ily the best one of the month. Ižve come to real­ize itžs not really log­i­cal to pit images from totally dif­fer­ent gen­res against each other. Thatžs why there are cat­e­gories in photo con­tests. I just choose a photo that has extremely strong ele­ments that we can learn from.

Message delivered by Michaelaw - Click for a larger version

Mes­sage deliv­ered by Michaelaw — Click for a larger version

This month’s choice Mes­sage deliv­ered is by Michaelaw.

I chose this image for sev­eral reasons.

First off look at the great mood Michaelaw has cre­ated here. This is no acci­dent; it’s a prod­uct of Michael’s atten­tion to the the light­ing. This mood helps cre­ate the story that ‘makes’ this shot. What IS the story? That’s up to the viewer, it’s helped by the title, but there is a story here. The bot­tle is with­out a clas­sic paper mes­sage in it, it’s empty save for some water. Who sent it, why? Maybe the beer bot­tle itself IS the mes­sage — “hey I’m on a ben­der; that’s my mes­sage”. Maybe the shot is really about the envi­ron­ment and Man’s lack of con­cern over it. But there IS a story here, you just have to choose it for yourself.

Com­po­si­tion­ally I like this very much. The curved pat­terned for­ma­tions in the sand add inter­est to the shot. The diag­o­nal slant of the bot­tle with spec­u­lar edge high­lights really give my eye some­thing to cling to. The focus also works very well for me here and I’m dig­ging the back­ground blur. My eye is skill­fully guided along the bot­tle toward the slanted water level col­lected at the bot­tom. At bot­tom of the bot­tle we see the sun’s reflec­tion and it grabs you.

Expo­sure is han­dled very well here with a good range of tones and excel­lent high­light control.

For all these rea­sons, this is my choice for image of the month.

Since we all have opin­ions, some mem­bers may dis­agree with my choice. That’s cool but THIS thread is not the place for debate over my pick, NOR is it the place to fur­ther cri­tique the image. The pur­pose here is to sug­gest strong ele­ments in the photo that we may learn from.

Con­grats again Michaelaw for cre­at­ing this beau­ti­ful image!

I’d also like to include these 2 images as hon­ourable men­tions as they also came so so close to being picked.

Behind the mask by Chantelle

Day 3 — Banff‚ by casil403

Day 3 - Banff

Filed Under: Image of the month, Photographs, Photography blog entries Tagged With: , ,

Photography forum image of the month – Feb. 2010

March 5, 2010 By 2 Comments

Every month on our pho­tog­ra­phy forum mem­bers nom­i­nate images that they like. Then at the end of the month I choose an excel­lent image and talk about why it rocks. The photo I choose is not nec­es­sar­ily the best one of the month. I’ve come to real­ize it’s not really log­i­cal to pit images from totally dif­fer­ent gen­res against each other. That’s why there are cat­e­gories in photo con­tests. I just choose a photo that has extremely strong ele­ments that we can learn from.

Message delivered by Michaelaw - Click for a larger version

Mes­sage deliv­ered by Michaelaw — Click for a larger version

This month’s choice Mes­sage deliv­ered is by Michaelaw.

I chose this image for sev­eral reasons.

First off look at the great mood Michaelaw has cre­ated here. This is no acci­dent; it’s a prod­uct of Michael’s atten­tion to the the light­ing. This mood helps cre­ate the story that ‘makes’ this shot. What IS the story? That’s up to the viewer, it’s helped by the title, but there is a story here. The bot­tle is with­out a clas­sic paper mes­sage in it, it’s empty save for some water. Who sent it, why? Maybe the beer bot­tle itself IS the mes­sage — “hey I’m on a ben­der; that’s my mes­sage”. Maybe the shot is really about the envi­ron­ment and Man’s lack of con­cern over it. But there IS a story here, you just have to choose it for yourself.

Com­po­si­tion­ally I like this very much. The curved pat­terned for­ma­tions in the sand add inter­est to the shot. The diag­o­nal slant of the bot­tle with spec­u­lar edge high­lights really give my eye some­thing to cling to. The focus also works very well for me here and I’m dig­ging the back­ground blur. My eye is skill­fully guided along the bot­tle toward the slanted water level col­lected at the bot­tom. At bot­tom of the bot­tle we see the sun’s reflec­tion and it grabs you.

Expo­sure is han­dled very well here with a good range of tones and excel­lent high­light control.

For all these rea­sons, this is my choice for image of the month.

Since we all have opin­ions, some mem­bers may dis­agree with my choice. That’s cool but THIS thread is not the place for debate over my pick, NOR is it the place to fur­ther cri­tique the image. The pur­pose here is to sug­gest strong ele­ments in the photo that we may learn from.

Con­grats again Michaelaw for cre­at­ing this beau­ti­ful image!

I’d also like to include these 2 images as hon­ourable men­tions as they also came so so close to being picked.

Behind the mask by Chantelle

Day 3 — Banff  by casil403

Day 3 - Banff

Filed Under: Image of the month, Photographs, Photography blog entries Tagged With: , ,

Let your skills rock the everyday scene

March 1, 2010 By 1 Comment

As admin of a grow­ing pho­tog­ra­phy web­site I look at a good 20–100 pho­tographs most days of the week. The qual­ity of work that I look at (both on our site and other web­sites) nor­mally ranges from pho­tog­ra­phy enthu­si­ast to pro.

One of the things that sep­a­rates ama­teurs from advanced amateurs/pros is the abil­ity to cre­ate the image rather than wait­ing for some­thing spec­tac­u­lar to hap­pen or find­ing it through serendip­ity. Get­ting to this level involves 3 key things that are 100% attain­able with a few months of reg­u­lar practice.

1 — You need to under­stand basic expo­sure.
2 — You need to under­stand basic com­po­si­tion
3 — You need to under­stand basic lighting.

A per­son that prac­tices all 3 of these things can cre­ate great shots from oth­er­wise mun­dane scenes. IF they are wait­ing for some­thing to hap­pen (like wait­ing for great out­door light),‚ they make sure they are wait­ing at the right time.

Sunset landing by Michael Wollen

Sun­set land­ing by Michael Wollen — Click to see larger version.

The image above by forum mem­ber michaelaw (real name Michael Wollen ) is a great exam­ple. How many times have we looked up at the sky to watch a plane land in the dis­tance. Likely many times. It’s a com­mon scene. Some might even call it banal. But take a look at THIS image. It is care­fully crafted — NO acci­dents here.

Look at the beau­ti­ful light in the sky. Michael waited for this light. Look at the posi­tion of the plane in the sky. Michael waited to freeze the plane in that exact spot. Look at the land­ing pad at the lower part of the image, look at the foliage and shim­mer­ing water in the imme­di­ate fore­ground. They are there on pur­pose. They are there, because Michael put them there. Because Michael put them there at the right time,‚ in the right place, and exposed the image cor­rectly — This pho­to­graph sings and is a plea­sure to look at.

Prac­tice the 3 basics listed above and you too will be armed with the skills needed to cre­ate great pho­tog­ra­phy from com­mon­place scenes.

Filed Under: Photography blog entries, Photography tips Tagged With:

February 2010 forum assignment — Photography and Song Titles

February 9, 2010 By 2 Comments

This month we have one of the best assign­ments we’ve ever had in our pho­tog­ra­phy forum; images that sug­gest a song’s title. There are already many extremely cre­ative and well done images in this thread. If you are still lurk­ing on the forum but have a cre­ative idea, now would be a great time to join. Click here to reg­is­ter for free.

Here’s 2 images from the thread. First one is by mem­ber Bambi — Sun­rise, Sun­set (Fid­dler on the Roof Cast). Sec­ond one is mine; Hazy Shade of Win­ter by Simon and Gar­funkel. Who is the cutie in the frame? That’s yours truly taken in the early sev­en­ties when the song was still popular.

Sun­rise Sun­set by Bambi (T. Alexander-Arab)

Hazy Shade of Winter by Marko Kulik

Hazy Shade of Win­ter by Marko Kulik

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography assignments, Photography blog entries Tagged With: ,

Photography forum image of the month — Jan. 2010

February 5, 2010 By 1 Comment

Every month on our pho­tog­ra­phy forum mem­bers nom­i­nate images that they like. Then at the end of the month I choose an excel­lent image and talk about why it rocks. The photo I choose is not nec­es­sar­ily the best one of the month. I’ve come to real­ize it’s not really log­i­cal to pit images from totally dif­fer­ent gen­res against each other. That’s why there are cat­e­gories in photo con­tests. I just choose a photo that has extremely strong ele­ments that we can learn from.

This month’s choice The Con­ver­sa­tion is by casil403.

I chose this image for sev­eral rea­sons.
First and fore­most, I was drawn in by the unusual angle and point of view of this shot. This angle works very well for me! I love how just above the left statue’s head the office win­dows are nicely lit. This gives me the feel­ing of a well-told story, bet­ter than the sim­i­lar story told by the straight on shot seen many, many times. The story is office politics/or work talk etc.

I very much like the lines of the building’s roof and the lines cre­ated by the win­dows. I’m lov­ing this inter­est­ing com­po­si­tion. The way that ‘roof-line’ cuts out of the scene to cre­ate an isosceles-like tri­an­gle at top left (hey I dug geom­e­try) is fan-friggen-tastic. It adds inter­est to this scene and makes it dynamic.

The sky is beau­ti­fully con­trolled here. It adds flavour to the shot with­out over­whelm­ing it in any way.

The black and white is very well con­trolled here and works for me with this sub­ject mat­ter. If I had one teeny nit, I might bring up the high­lights in the stat­ues’ faces and hand.

Thou­sands of peo­ple pass these stat­ues every day and scores of tourists are likely snap­ping away daily… and none of them are likely to lie down on the ground or get on their knees to get this superb angle.

For all these rea­sons, this is my choice for image of the month.

Since we all have opin­ions, some mem­bers may dis­agree with my choice. That’s cool but THIS thread is not the place for debate over my pick, NOR is it the place to fur­ther cri­tique the image. The pur­pose here is to sug­gest strong ele­ments in the photo that we may learn from.

Con­grats again casil403 for cre­at­ing this beau­ti­ful image!

Filed Under: Image of the month, Photographs, Photography blog entries Tagged With: ,

Fed Up With Fake Photography ?

February 4, 2010 By 8 Comments

Whether an image is “too” pho­to­shopped, or overly retouched is a huge issue for both pho­tog­ra­phers and non-photographers. We’ve talked about it many times on our forum. It’s an issue for pho­tog­ra­phers because our medium is in the midst of a dra­matic change. Pho­tog­ra­phy has gone dig­i­tal. Every­one has a dig­i­tal cam­era. Every image is fod­der for manip­u­la­tion. Many pho­tog­ra­phers over-manipulate.

The prob­lem is that there is no con­sen­sus on how much manip­u­la­tion is too much. Some pho­tog­ra­phers say over manip­u­la­tion occurs with any­thing over and above basic edit­ing (con­trast and tonal con­trol, crop­ping and some dodg­ing and burn­ing). Oth­ers say we are crafts­man and that Pho­to­shop is a tool like any other tool, so there is no limit. (Per­son­ally I don’t buy this for a second).

Cer­tainly when you look at a photo, you often can­not tell what level of manip­u­la­tion was done and nowhere is the level of manip­u­la­tion revealed. Some­times though, you can EASILY tell when an image is over-retouched or manipulated.

This is less of a big deal when you are cre­at­ing a pho­to­graph for artis­tic rea­sons, but it’s damn seri­ous when young girls want to look like mod­els that don’t exist. The mod­els exist of course but their images are over manip­u­lated to the point of fraud. Impres­sion­able girls want to look like these mod­els hawk­ing beauty-cream. They feel bad/sad when they can’t look like these mod­els. Here is just one recent Newsweek arti­cle on this over-manipulation (hat tip to AcadieLi­bre from our forum). If this trend con­tin­ues, it won’t be long till we’ll be sell­ing anti-wrinkle cream to ten year olds or freckle remover for red headed babies.‚ All it will take is a cou­ple of‚ before and after pho­tos show­ing the ‘improve­ment’ in their appear­ances. Even babies and ten year olds want to feel ‘bet­ter’ about themselves.

But peo­ple are catch­ing on, they are get­ting fed up with this manipulation/fraud/cheating. This week in Lon­don Eng­land, Con­ser­v­a­tive party leader David Cameron was blasted for a cam­paign elec­tion poster where he looks 20 years younger than he does. Here’s the orig­i­nal poster, a spoof poster and what Cameron looks like on a nor­mal day.

Over manipulation in photography

Over manip­u­la­tion in photography

So what say you? Are you fed up with fake pho­tog­ra­phy.….….?‚ Or am I just whin­ing because I have no Elvis hair to style?

Filed Under: Opinion-personal-rant, Photography blog entries Tagged With: , ,
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