Is it just me or..........

R

Radiovic

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21
Name
Victor
Edit My Images
No
..........having had a peep at the 500px site .... are we now beginning to turn full circle?

The images are lovely BUT have we now reached a stage of such post processing processing (!!) that we're beginning to go back in time and what is now thought off as an excellent high quality shot is now more and more resembling either an Ansel Adams style print or even a painting from 100yrs ago???

I cant help thinking that you could nowdays send a monkey out with a camera as so much now seems to depend on what you can do with the image once you get it into the bowels of your PC!!

Just my thoughts
 
What gets me is when you ask someone what they've done to an image and they say...

"Nothing. It's a straight out of the camera shot. All I did was levels, curves, tweaked the shadows and highlights, boosted the contrast and saturation, created layers and carried out noise reduction on the background and foreground before flattening, added a sky I shot last year and did a selective sharpen. Nothing."

:D

And the most evil thing is HDR.
 
LOL--- yip
Poss i'm just jealous that i'm too lazy to get into the world of processing to that extent --but one things clear........
Alot of these images bear little resemblence to what was actually in front of the lens when the shutter went down!!
 
I went through a phase of getting shots as realistic as possible and as I live Ooop North many shots were in flat lighting with washed out colous and poor contrast and everyone said "dreary." And when I boost the contrast and saturation everyone said "WoW."

It's the world we live in.
 
I deleted my account i really found it pointless on there.
 
It's the end result that matters (to the artist) and that's subject to subjectivness by the viewers. Some will adore, some will hate and some will be somewhere in-between. Life goes on.
 
daugirdas said:
I really enjoy images over there, and certainly not too overcooked. I hope you are not trying to suggest there is something wrong with Ansel Adams photography, etc
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it's not particularly good lol
 
I do find that most pictures on there are over-processed.
 
Radiovic said:
LOL--- yip
Poss i'm just jealous that i'm too lazy to get into the world of processing to that extent --but one things clear........
Alot of these images bear little resemblence to what was actually in front of the lens when the shutter went down!!
Click to expand...

I for one do not like lots of pp.
To be honest I feel that the skill of the photographer is somehow lost when the final image is a manipulation of pixels although at the same time it shows the creative digital art skills within the said same person!
Please don't get me wrong, as already said all art including photogrphy is subjective and there is a place for all of it.
Personally however I take many images on film in a vast array of cameras of varying ages (some very old) and for me the delight is to attain a reasonable image against all the odds of light leakage, adapted film, fungal growth in the glassware, innacurate shutter speeds etc etc...
I too shoot digital and have indeed like most people done some pp although very minimal simply because I like to print and view a photograph as the camera took it!
As for HDR...something that I have only learnt a little about and personally find of very little interest.....again for me it's a form of digital art, some results of which can be pleasing to the eye for those who have a taste for that particular style.
 
POAH said:
it's not particularly good lol
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Seconded.

Good technique is admirable, but what the photo shows is more important imo.

One thing that struck me about the Don McCullin show at the Imperial War Museum is that the prints (most of which were heavily supervised by him) are excellent, and it does really add to subject matter, as opposed to the vintage prints you see (for example some of Capa's work) that look like they were knocked out in about ten seconds without much thought.
 
woof woof said:
What gets me is when you ask someone what they've done to an image and they say...

"Nothing. It's a straight out of the camera shot. All I did was levels, curves, tweaked the shadows and highlights, boosted the contrast and saturation, created layers and carried out noise reduction on the background and foreground before flattening, added a sky I shot last year and did a selective sharpen. Nothing."

:D

And the most evil thing is HDR.
Click to expand...

HDR is not evil, it's a technique that is often overcooked. Used properly it is a very useful tool to increase dynamic range and improve a shot.

The only 'evil' thing is judgmental attitudes.
 
If the light is right you don't need shed loads of PP... there's a lot of turd polishing that goes on. I refuse to start as otherwise I'd never leave the house as I'd be permanently fiddling around with all the poor photos I've taken :)
 
woof woof said:
What gets me is when you ask someone what they've done to an image and they say...

"Nothing. It's a straight out of the camera shot. All I did was levels, curves, tweaked the shadows and highlights, boosted the contrast and saturation, ...
Click to expand...

The opposite of this, which is equally annoying, is that a lot of people think a good image "must have been shopped" and shots just don't seem to be trusted as straight out the the camera anymore.
 
Personally I enjoy images for whether or not they look great, not how that look was accomplished, provided there's no serious deception (ie elements removed or added into the image beyond tonal adjustments).
 
srichards said:
If the light is right you don't need shed loads of PP... there's a lot of turd polishing that goes on......
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Asha said:
.....To be honest I feel that the skill of the photographer is somehow lost when the final image is a manipulation of pixels ......
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I've written about this subject on my blog today after a conversation elsewhere on TP prompted me.

It's one of those endless debates; film or digital, you're always capturing something via a machine and through the use of films and devving, filters, sensors and settings, the image changes. Nothing is as it actually is - we're just creating representations of what we saw.

To be fair, just had a look at 500px (never seen it before) and some of the images are stunning in the editor's picks section. Real top drawer stuff that I would love to have shot....
 
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As Pat said, straight out of the camera doesn't equal what was there anyway. Thinking you're keeping it real by not touching the image is, in my opinion, a lie. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesnt. There isn't one truth.

I think pp can almost always improve a shot and bring it closer to what you "saw", it more often than not spoils a shot too as we have too many tools and not enough quality control.

The thing which has put me off 500px is anonymous disliking. People going around knocking images too help promote thier own.
 
i like 500px, loads of quality stuff there. Not as good as TP though, obviously
 
If you want an antidote to 500px...
Check out DPChallenge
They strongly discourage heavy PP, and enforce their standards.
All the creativity happens in-camera.
Their weekly newsletter arrives every Wednesday AM and lifts my mid-week blues no end...

P.S. I also subscribe to 500px and enjoy browsing, but knowing the images on DPChallenge are 'real' really makes me sit up and go 'WOW'.
 
Not every image on 500px is over processed rubbish, properly presented images are not necessarily over processed.
 
ding76uk said:
The same thing always happens. Did you think Ansel Adams was a straight print? Hours in the darkroom to get the final image. It is just the same as it always has been, minus the smell of chemicals.
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Never a truer word spoken.
Anyone that thinks that 'back in the days of film there was none of this processing' must be thinking of polaroid right?
In the days of film 'straight out of camera' would b the end of that image as the ambient fogged your film.
 
Lots of truly fantastic stuff on there, but the overall look of a lot of them is a little false for me. I'd still love to be able to produce such images though. I very rarely use PS on my pictures now, but do a fair bit of tweaking in LR usually.
 
I do often wonder why people spend 100s if not 1000s on a camera just to change it beyond all recognition in PS, you may as well use a £50 compact.

Thing it no one will ever agree so the thread is really a bit pointless.
 
SAVA9E said:
I do often wonder why people spend 100s if not 1000s on a camera just to change it beyond all recognition in PS, you may as well use a £50 compact.

Thing it no one will ever agree so the thread is really a bit pointless.
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Not many images are that over processed though.
 
As quoted in my sig from Sly Arena

I'm a photographer not a retoucher.


I know we hear all the time "they did it in the dark room back in the day" but did they really add 30 layers of adjustment back then.:thinking:
 
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DuncanDisorderly said:
If you want an antidote to 500px...
Check out DPChallenge
They strongly discourage heavy PP, and enforce their standards.
All the creativity happens in-camera.
Their weekly newsletter arrives every Wednesday AM and lifts my mid-week blues no end...

P.S. I also subscribe to 500px and enjoy browsing, but knowing the images on DPChallenge are 'real' really makes me sit up and go 'WOW'.
Click to expand...

:plus1:

But you are allowed a lot of PP if it's an advanced editing challenge.
Been a member for years, and only every had one shot get a good score.:(
 
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whiteflyer said:
But you are allowed a lot of PP if it's an advanced editing challenge.
Been a member for years, and only every had one shot get a good score.:(
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True...
But even in the current Edgar Allan Poe competition which is for Expert Editing;
you get gems like this.
The photographer has declared he only used Basic Editing; which changes my impression of it from 'cool image' to 'WOW, Blimmin Heck, What a top photographer'. The pre-visualisation needed to get that shot is exceptional.

What's nice about DPChallenge is that the editing levels are defined, set for each challenge and often declared by the photographer if they used a lower level than demanded by the challenge.
'Basic Editing' is really basic!
 
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