At best it will be partial as you are deciding where to stand and what to include and exclude all of this without cloning. Photographers apart, why would anyone want to read what you have done to an image. Six photographers visit a location, would you expect them to produce six near identical images? I would be disappointed if they did, would you be? Ken
Thank you Ken for taking time to comment. In my opinion there is a balance to be had and it raises the question, that cannot really be answered, when does photography become art! I feel that if someone radically alters a scene in post processing by adding things or swopping the sky etc., that is not a true representation of the scene and if they are saying it is, say in a holiday brochure I have a problem with it. If someone is just changing their position and dodging and burning to adjust the light and cloning out minorish items I don't have a problem with that. They may go further than I would but we are all individuals and all see the world differently and all have a different goal in their photography. My goal is to capture nature in all its glory to the best of my ability using software to enhance the light and colour but in my world to not remove items that are integral part of the scene even if not as pretty as I would like. Maybe that is why I struggle in competitions. This discussion has gone on for years and will carry on for years to come.
Indeed it will David. I do not set out to reproduce a place accurately, if I do then it is an accident. I seldom add or remove things that change the nature of the scene, stray twigs, tufts of grass or crisp packets are likely to be removed. If the purpose was reportage then everything would remain but I hope that my images are art and art, for me, has no purpose. If you are happy with your images then that is far more important than competition success which still rests with cut and paste images that never actually happened or could happen.
Congrats on your 200th video! You won't be surprised that I have some thoughts on this. How much one may clone out or manipulate one's image depends on two main factors: a) why are you taking the image? and b) who is it for? If one's goal is documentary in nature (which is how you characterise your approach), rather than artistic, then cloning out objects would not satisfy one's goals. Documentary photography is aimed at *recording* the world, not *interpreting* it. If one's goals are artistic, however, then one can clone out whatever the hell one likes and manipulate it however one likes, because art is not a recording of the world "out there", it is an expression of the world "in here". The goal is to creatively express, not merely record. The answer to the second question is where declaring such things as blending are important. If your images are just for yourself then you can do whatever makes you happy. If your images are being consumed by others then you have a general duty to not deliberately deceive them. But that is relative to the understanding and expectations of the audience. For example, if we share a black and white image, that is not deceptive, so long as the audience understands that the world is not black and white. The conceit of documentary photography is that it is presenting the world “as it really is” or as someone would experience it were they standing next to you when you pressed the shutter. But that is actually an illusion. It doesn’t even document what you experienced when you took it. Consider the fact that your waterfall images “freeze” the motion of the water. We do not and cannot experience that because we experience the water in motion. The same is true for the silky smoothness of the water in a long exposure.
Me personally I will not clone s*** out of my damn photographs I will make it work somehow somehow it will work Unless it's water spots and dust then I will try to clean those up as everyone else would do
The small building is a turbine house for a run-of-river hydro scheme. The pipe will be the flow return to the river, and there will usually be a flow from this pipe unless the river is low, in which case they will not be permitted to abstract upstream (in order to protect the ecology in the river). The building looks sympathetically constructed in the vernacular style, but the metal steps do look out of place - clone away, it looks much better without the steps! The image in-camera is simply a "negative" to do whatever you wish with. I agree that AI images should be declared.
Thank you for the information about the building. I can see that this subject has a variety of views. Yours being the second comment and the second view.
Hi David it will come as little surprise to you that I do not see landscape photography as a documentary discipline. Ken
At best it will be partial as you are deciding where to stand and what to include and exclude all of this without cloning. Photographers apart, why would anyone want to read what you have done to an image. Six photographers visit a location, would you expect them to produce six near identical images? I would be disappointed if they did, would you be? Ken
Thank you Ken for taking time to comment.
In my opinion there is a balance to be had and it raises the question, that cannot really be answered, when does photography become art!
I feel that if someone radically alters a scene in post processing by adding things or swopping the sky etc., that is not a true representation of the scene and if they are saying it is, say in a holiday brochure I have a problem with it.
If someone is just changing their position and dodging and burning to adjust the light and cloning out minorish items I don't have a problem with that. They may go further than I would but we are all individuals and all see the world differently and all have a different goal in their photography.
My goal is to capture nature in all its glory to the best of my ability using software to enhance the light and colour but in my world to not remove items that are integral part of the scene even if not as pretty as I would like. Maybe that is why I struggle in competitions.
This discussion has gone on for years and will carry on for years to come.
Indeed it will David. I do not set out to reproduce a place accurately, if I do then it is an accident. I seldom add or remove things that change the nature of the scene, stray twigs, tufts of grass or crisp packets are likely to be removed. If the purpose was reportage then everything would remain but I hope that my images are art and art, for me, has no purpose. If you are happy with your images then that is far more important than competition success which still rests with cut and paste images that never actually happened or could happen.
Congrats on your 200th video!
You won't be surprised that I have some thoughts on this. How much one may clone out or manipulate one's image depends on two main factors: a) why are you taking the image? and b) who is it for? If one's goal is documentary in nature (which is how you characterise your approach), rather than artistic, then cloning out objects would not satisfy one's goals. Documentary photography is aimed at *recording* the world, not *interpreting* it. If one's goals are artistic, however, then one can clone out whatever the hell one likes and manipulate it however one likes, because art is not a recording of the world "out there", it is an expression of the world "in here". The goal is to creatively express, not merely record. The answer to the second question is where declaring such things as blending are important. If your images are just for yourself then you can do whatever makes you happy. If your images are being consumed by others then you have a general duty to not deliberately deceive them. But that is relative to the understanding and expectations of the audience. For example, if we share a black and white image, that is not deceptive, so long as the audience understands that the world is not black and white. The conceit of documentary photography is that it is presenting the world “as it really is” or as someone would experience it were they standing next to you when you pressed the shutter. But that is actually an illusion. It doesn’t even document what you experienced when you took it. Consider the fact that your waterfall images “freeze” the motion of the water. We do not and cannot experience that because we experience the water in motion. The same is true for the silky smoothness of the water in a long exposure.
Thank you for your comment. I agree with you that it depends who the audience is.
Me personally I will not clone s*** out of my damn photographs I will make it work somehow
somehow it will work
Unless it's water spots and dust then I will try to clean those up as everyone else would do
Thank you for giving me you view on this matter. It is much appreciated.
The small building is a turbine house for a run-of-river hydro scheme. The pipe will be the flow return to the river, and there will usually be a flow from this pipe unless the river is low, in which case they will not be permitted to abstract upstream (in order to protect the ecology in the river). The building looks sympathetically constructed in the vernacular style, but the metal steps do look out of place - clone away, it looks much better without the steps! The image in-camera is simply a "negative" to do whatever you wish with. I agree that AI images should be declared.
Thank you for the information about the building.
I can see that this subject has a variety of views. Yours being the second comment and the second view.