photographer or photoshopper?
Christie queried: What is the line between being a professional digital photographer and being a professional photoshopper?
A person can take 500 photos and pick out 30 that can be salvaged to make 30 presentable photos with photoshop and call themselves a professional....or a person can take 500 photos and pick the very best of those really good 500 photos and do minimal photoshopping.
So is the first person a professional photographer or a profession photoshop user?
This is a tough question to answer since the advent of digital photography has changed the medium so much. Since the dawn of photography, there have always been 3 parts to creating a finished product: capturing the image, processing the film, and making a print. Processing no longer takes place in the darkroom - it takes place on computers. The amount you could 'salvage' an under- or over-exposed image with film technology was limited to what you could accomplish in the darkroom with developing the film using different chemical processes, and printing the image using filters, dodge and burn techniques, different quality paper, and so forth. But of course there were creative shooting, processing and printing techniques developed by adventurous types, who in addition to using creative lighting and filters when they shot the pictures, employed dodging and burning techniques as a means of 'enhancing' their photos, who also fooled around in the darkroom trying things like intentionally using the wrong temperature or mix of chemicals while developing the film, flashing lights on submerged papers during developing, and hand-tinting or airbrushing to make their pictures not look like everyone else's. Even Polaroid technology was abused by people who would scratch and manipulate the images while they were self-developing. So essentially, most of the filters and effects that can be used in photo editing suites have their basis in techniques that were initially developed using film technology, right down to using layers to add texture, which was accomplished in the darkroom by sandwiching negatives in the enlarger.
One of the greatest things about digital photography is the freedom to take a bazillion pictures without it costing an arm and a leg to process them. It's much easier to be 'experimental' when you don't face the expense of developing and printing 27 rolls of film to find 30 that worked. For a complete beginner, this is a godsend, as you can try out all the settings, filters, and options on your camera and learn the effect they have on the image. However, if a person is taking 500 pictures in the hopes that 30 will be close enough to good that they can salvage them using photoshop or whatever, that indicates a need to learn the equipment.
I know one internationally-renowned photographer who takes 4000 pictures to get 500. He will take 3 or 5 or 10 of the same moment, not because he hopes one of them will be OK, as they are all equally well composed and exposed, but so that he can choose the best of that series in support of the artistic vision he has. He then photoshops the living bejeesus out of every single one of them. Other photographers prefer to compose carefully, and shoot once, and call that their finished product. (There's snobbery in both directions...)
I'm somewhere in between, which often gets me in trouble because if I carefully set up a shot and love it so much I decide to shoot it 6 different ways, I then have to decide which of those 6 I like best. And sometimes, if I want to increase the contrast on a picture, and I see that it looks just as gorgeous enhanced as not enhanced, then the number of images I want to keep multiplies exponentially. If I can't pick just one, my clients end up getting all of them, which in turn, creates more work for me since my commitment to 40 images often ends up with me being incapable of getting the number of images I want to include under 75... lol
At the end of the day, however those 30 pictures is arrived at doesn't matter. A skilled photographer won't need to rely on digital editors to 'fix' poorly shot pictures; that same skilled photographer may have a creative preference that involves a lot of post-processing. And sometimes a skilled photographer will get caught up in the moment, and screw up anyways, and be grateful that the technology we have today exists, since asking brides for retakes is pretty tough to do... On yet other occasions, those mishaps turn out to create incredible pictures that despite poor exposure or composition still make striking images. I never take credit for the fluke shots, until and unless I learn how to do it on purpose.
Of course there are some (bad - that's my personal opinion) photographers out there who refuse to learn their cameras OR use photo editing software for any reason whatsoever, and think that everyone should just ooh and ahh their pictures because they went ahead and took them. I have no time or respect for the ones who shoot crap, then claim to be misunderstood artist types. Whatever.
So the quantity of pictures a person takes isn't necessarily what sets the pros apart from the photoshoppers any more than the amount of photoshopping sets them apart; it's whether a person is using Photoshop to 'save' pictures as opposed to making a conscious decision to 'enhance' them. Beyond that, where the line between enhancing and digital art is drawn, is based on each individual's personal preference and/or philosophy, and is fodder for a completely different conversation...
A person can take 500 photos and pick out 30 that can be salvaged to make 30 presentable photos with photoshop and call themselves a professional....or a person can take 500 photos and pick the very best of those really good 500 photos and do minimal photoshopping.
So is the first person a professional photographer or a profession photoshop user?
This is a tough question to answer since the advent of digital photography has changed the medium so much. Since the dawn of photography, there have always been 3 parts to creating a finished product: capturing the image, processing the film, and making a print. Processing no longer takes place in the darkroom - it takes place on computers. The amount you could 'salvage' an under- or over-exposed image with film technology was limited to what you could accomplish in the darkroom with developing the film using different chemical processes, and printing the image using filters, dodge and burn techniques, different quality paper, and so forth. But of course there were creative shooting, processing and printing techniques developed by adventurous types, who in addition to using creative lighting and filters when they shot the pictures, employed dodging and burning techniques as a means of 'enhancing' their photos, who also fooled around in the darkroom trying things like intentionally using the wrong temperature or mix of chemicals while developing the film, flashing lights on submerged papers during developing, and hand-tinting or airbrushing to make their pictures not look like everyone else's. Even Polaroid technology was abused by people who would scratch and manipulate the images while they were self-developing. So essentially, most of the filters and effects that can be used in photo editing suites have their basis in techniques that were initially developed using film technology, right down to using layers to add texture, which was accomplished in the darkroom by sandwiching negatives in the enlarger.
One of the greatest things about digital photography is the freedom to take a bazillion pictures without it costing an arm and a leg to process them. It's much easier to be 'experimental' when you don't face the expense of developing and printing 27 rolls of film to find 30 that worked. For a complete beginner, this is a godsend, as you can try out all the settings, filters, and options on your camera and learn the effect they have on the image. However, if a person is taking 500 pictures in the hopes that 30 will be close enough to good that they can salvage them using photoshop or whatever, that indicates a need to learn the equipment.
I know one internationally-renowned photographer who takes 4000 pictures to get 500. He will take 3 or 5 or 10 of the same moment, not because he hopes one of them will be OK, as they are all equally well composed and exposed, but so that he can choose the best of that series in support of the artistic vision he has. He then photoshops the living bejeesus out of every single one of them. Other photographers prefer to compose carefully, and shoot once, and call that their finished product. (There's snobbery in both directions...)
I'm somewhere in between, which often gets me in trouble because if I carefully set up a shot and love it so much I decide to shoot it 6 different ways, I then have to decide which of those 6 I like best. And sometimes, if I want to increase the contrast on a picture, and I see that it looks just as gorgeous enhanced as not enhanced, then the number of images I want to keep multiplies exponentially. If I can't pick just one, my clients end up getting all of them, which in turn, creates more work for me since my commitment to 40 images often ends up with me being incapable of getting the number of images I want to include under 75... lol
At the end of the day, however those 30 pictures is arrived at doesn't matter. A skilled photographer won't need to rely on digital editors to 'fix' poorly shot pictures; that same skilled photographer may have a creative preference that involves a lot of post-processing. And sometimes a skilled photographer will get caught up in the moment, and screw up anyways, and be grateful that the technology we have today exists, since asking brides for retakes is pretty tough to do... On yet other occasions, those mishaps turn out to create incredible pictures that despite poor exposure or composition still make striking images. I never take credit for the fluke shots, until and unless I learn how to do it on purpose.
Of course there are some (bad - that's my personal opinion) photographers out there who refuse to learn their cameras OR use photo editing software for any reason whatsoever, and think that everyone should just ooh and ahh their pictures because they went ahead and took them. I have no time or respect for the ones who shoot crap, then claim to be misunderstood artist types. Whatever.
So the quantity of pictures a person takes isn't necessarily what sets the pros apart from the photoshoppers any more than the amount of photoshopping sets them apart; it's whether a person is using Photoshop to 'save' pictures as opposed to making a conscious decision to 'enhance' them. Beyond that, where the line between enhancing and digital art is drawn, is based on each individual's personal preference and/or philosophy, and is fodder for a completely different conversation...
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