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Fabricated Weather Pics Published?

Mike Hollingshead said:
ST needs a "groundhog's day" section. This topic could go in there along with lightbars, chaser safety, etc etc etc. Each year they make a bit less sense to bother with lol.
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I guess I should own up that my response was copied and pasted from the last thread on this subject. I've done this no less than 10 times in the past year. I need to just keep a text file with those ready to copy/paste into the repeat threads. Better yet have the forum detect repeat threads and automatically re-post what I've posted before. There's a feature I'd use!
 
If we stopped recycling old topics what do you think we'd be talking about? Until the next great hubble discovery we won't have anything new for a while yet.
 
If the saturation/contrast/color/etc etc isn't to your liking, well that's what Nature gave you.
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With all due respect, IMHO you are starting from an incorrect assumption that there is some pristine "real" images that can be produced from a scene. Between your Nature-begotten scene and your photograph was some technology. In a digital camera that technology consists of some pixels, some colored filters, a CPU and some algorithms all working on some analog data of simple brightness that tried to reproduce something close to what your eye/mind combination perceived. Two separate cameras shooting the same scene (side by side, with the same exposure, no post-processing, etc.) will likely give you two different saturation/contrast/color/etc. Which one is "real"?

Bottom line, I think we agree that all photography is "art", but I think people may mean different things when they say "art". Art doesn't have to mean artificial or interpreted. (After all in paintings there is "realism" as opposed to "impressionist", for example.)

I think we all have lines that we draw as to where things become "Photoshopped" to excess (in our minds). If a photog want to produce an in-camera JPEG and do no post-processing, that is fine with me. But I'm not under any illusion that it is more of a "real" photo than one where the white balance was corrected, or the dynamic range was adjusted to fit the output device (for just 2 examples).
 
D. Hayes said:
If we stopped recycling old topics what do you think we'd be talking about? Until the next great hubble discovery we won't have anything new for a while yet.
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It just gets funny after a while, that is all. Usually like arguing about religion. And I'm not even talking about the original intent/post here either. Just the routes that are always gone down. You see a topic and right away know the path it is going to take. So yes, recycling is what we all do, at least for a while.
 
ST needs a "groundhog's day" section. This topic could go in there along with lightbars, chaser safety, etc etc etc. Each year they make a bit less sense to bother with lol.
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Perhaps some of us need to spend more time on ST and less in photoshop :D

btw. great job 7.13
 
I don't guess I've read another thread on this topic, maybe one... not much on looking up old stuff. Enjoyed these thoughts:

Darren Addy said:
With all due respect, IMHO you are starting from an incorrect assumption that there is some pristine "real" images that can be produced from a scene. Between your Nature-begotten scene and your photograph was some technology. In a digital camera that technology consists of some pixels, some colored filters, a CPU and some algorithms all working on some analog data of simple brightness that tried to reproduce something close to what your eye/mind combination perceived. Two separate cameras shooting the same scene (side by side, with the same exposure, no post-processing, etc.) will likely give you two different saturation/contrast/color/etc. Which one is "real"?

Bottom line, I think we agree that all photography is "art", but I think people may mean different things when they say "art". Art doesn't have to mean artificial or interpreted. (After all in paintings there is "realism" as opposed to "impressionist", for example.)

I think we all have lines that we draw as to where things become "Photoshopped" to excess (in our minds). If a photog want to produce an in-camera JPEG and do no post-processing, that is fine with me. But I'm not under any illusion that it is more of a "real" photo than one where the white balance was corrected, or the dynamic range was adjusted to fit the output device (for just 2 examples).
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I guess what bothered me most about the photo I mentioned earlier is where it was... in a big book amongst a bunch of other nature photos that were all true to life.

I was showing some lightning pics with numerous strikes to a member of my family, and she said something about being amazed I was able to get all of those strikes at one time. I then explained it was a long exposure, and how it worked... She immediately said..."but that's cheating". I was like that's cheating... you should see what others do. My photos all the sudden became not so impressive to her, haha. To her, I'm sure changing filters during a long exposure would definitely be cheating then :)
 
Believe it or not, photo manipulation has been going on for over a century. I remember seeing at least three photos in Significant Tornadoes that were 'doctored', all from around the early part of the 20th century. Apparently, the shills who peddled those pics back then had to make them more 'marketable' by changing clouds, landscapes, etc. The downside to that is the large probability that it gave folks who weren't 'weatherwise' the wrong idea of what to look for when severe weather approached.

Interesting thread though...and IMHO, I do find highly altered photos very irritating. A little tweaking is fine, but some publishers go for too much sensationalism and less realism.
 
I think Shane is right, there is photography and there is art. What comes out of the camera is photography, but any photographer that actually makes a living with his or her camera produces art. All of the photographers in the advertising industry produce art. National Geographic photographers produce art. Etc... Even Ansel Adams produced art. In fact, he wrote a book about it: http://www.amazon.com/Print-Ansel-Adams-Photography-Book/dp/0821221876 Adams was a master of dodging and burning his film in a lab.

Photography is fine, but it belongs in a family photo album. Film (or sensors) never perfectly reproduce what the human eye sees, and a lot of people see the world in different ways.

As for just straight out false manipulation (such as that "oil rig" scene) I suppose it depends on the purpose. If it's for advertising/marketing then no big deal. If its to purposely say "this is a photograph that was taken on ...." then that should be called out. Of course I doubt the writer/publisher was smart enough to note the difference in the false image.

-Brian Barnes
 
Just a little side story about photoshop:

During a Jim Reed presentation here in DC, he talked about a photo that he had of his (then) chaser partner. She was wearing a rain coat and short-shorts, so it looked like she didn't have any paints on. Someone (I forget the book/magazine) wanted the photo, but said they wanted it only if they could photoshop pants on. That was funny as hell.

My personal opinion is: for myself, I'll sell anything if it means money, especially right now. However, I prefer to get the proper shot, and compose and expose the shot to capture the natural lighting as it is shown in nature.

Oh..and I really need to go back to B/W film shots....nothing cooler than that....not even digital is cool enough for that.
 
Oh..and I really need to go back to B/W film shots....nothing cooler than that....not even digital is cool enough for that.
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I miss the tactile loading the film onto the developing reel and the smell of the darkroom chemicals and the wonder of seeing that image begin to appear under the safelight in the tray of Dektol developer. However, I also was never really able to get a handle on the really good B&W techniques (Zone System). And I do think that well-done Black & White images have a certain aesthetic that color can sometimes lessen.

So one of the things I'm interested in, at the moment, is doing B&W with a DSLR. There are multiple ways to do it, some better (and more time consuming) than others. And actually digital is cool enough for that: There is a plug-in for Bibble called Andy that allows you to reproduce the look of your favorite old B&W film with your favorite B&W paper (or try combinations you never got a chance to in real life). How steenkin' cool is that? That could probably be a whole thread of its own.

(Gee, there's something that has never been mentioned on ST before. I guess repeat threads can have some value, particularly for those that can discern the difference between a repeat topic and a replayed recording.)
 
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FWIW, I think digital still shots are beautiful, as they are done in today's chasing world. I was just saying that I personally catalogue them as art, not photography.
 
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