Commenting on the two "Still Pond" images (above) in the "Editing Headaches" post, Joe Holmes wrote:
"That's a tough edit. I like each image for a different, simple reason. I like the round clump of trees in the upper left in the first image, and it's a shame to cut it off. But I like the foreground framing grass in the second image.
Composite image by Joe Holmes from files by Mike J.
"So here's what I would do, and, in fact, did with your two examples: In Photoshop, I brought both images together as layers in one file, manually lining them up and then using a mask to combine the two (which is easy in this case because the pond water disguises the line where they join). It took me less than three minutes. This results in an image that's not going to fit any stock frame or mat because the aspect ratio is now odd, but who cares? It combines the best of both originals.
"Now let me say that I'm not addressing your concern about editing, taking multiple shots, etc. That's a different issue, and my Photoshop solution would not work for most issues, like your wrestlers. But still."
Joe's version is better (in that it's likely to be more pleasing to more people) than either of my two alternatives. I confess I chose these shots because I thought they'd make good fodder for discussion, which they did, but I also confess I didn't anticipate this refinement—which also means I didn't see the possibility Joe saw. This neatly illustrates one of the ways in which the process of editing has changed conceptually. These days we can effortlessly construct digital images according to our desires (limited, as Joe mentions, by the opportunities afforded by the specifics of the images—and, I would add, by the skills of the post-processor person—this, for instance, is beyond my Photoshop skills), without leaving any telltales behind. It complicates the process, because editing is no longer a binary choice, a choice between "all yes" (warts and all) or "all no," between "print it!" and "rejected." Now we can say, in effect, "yes, if this is added or changed."
Where photography started for me conceptually was with the primacy of the lens image—what you saw on the groundglass of the view camera, for example. The integrity of the image cast by the lens was paramount. The print was just trying to "fix the shadow," i.e., provide a record or report of the lens image. Attempts to combine or blend different exposures were illegitimate on their face, although it was done throughout history here and there—the Baltimore pictorialist A. Aubrey Bodine used the same sky negative in different prints, for example. But in Joe's example above it's just a fix, a post-hoc creation of a more thoughtful composition than I managed to see at the scene in real time.
Mike
(Thanks to Joe)
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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:
Curt Gerston: "This topic creates some interesting conflicts in my brain. I think if I made an image from a composite like yours above, I'd have a hard time framing it on my wall...I would always look at it as inauthentic somehow. It would bother me. It wouldn't last long on that wall. I don't think I could give it as a gift, put it in a book etc. And yet, I think if it was a single image, but there was a can of Coke floating in the middle of that pond, I'd have no problem cloning it out. I can't explain why I draw that line, it's just a feeling I have about what's okay and what isn't for my own work.
"I have nothing against what Joe did, by the way...looks great, and if he or you are happy with it on your wall, all the better. It's really interesting to see where people land on image manipulation. As I point out to my students, photography isn't truth, but I think we all try to express some kind of truth in our art. What feels true to us is personal."
Doug Thacker: "Re 'Where photography started for me conceptually was with the primacy of the lens image—what you saw on the groundglass of the view camera, for example. The integrity of the image cast by the lens was paramount.'
"The key words here are 'lens image' and 'integrity.' Photography, up until recently, at least, is about the capture of something from life, that something being the lens image. Having captured it, we may dodge here and burn there, but it remains an image cast at a given moment onto your recording substrate by the world at large. It was you, the photographer, who isolated this moment from the endless flow of time by fixing it as an image, you who chose the framing, deciding what to leave out and what to include, and you, lastly, who selected this particular image to show versus all those you don't show. Implicit in this image was its integrity: the viewer relied on the fact that you saw this moment and isolated it as a picture. This is what it meant to be a photographer, and what it meant to be the viewer of a photograph. The integrity of the image was, as you say, paramount, and pity the poor charlatan who was found to have violated it. (Case in point: Steve McCurry.)
"But now comes digital imaging, which is something altogether different. Here, the captured image is merely raw material, elements of which are combined with other raw material to create an image that the 'photographer' sees only in his mind's eye; the image capture is merely a preparatory step, with all the action taking place in so-called post production.
"This can only mean that photography as most of us understand it is dead, to put it bluntly, and those who still practice it in the former way are merely indulging an anachronism—one for which we must take them at their word, for what that's worth.
"'Photo-based illustration' might best describe where the technology has led us. That's not better or worse, necessarily, than what we call photography, but it's definitely not the same thing, and more akin to painting. Painting with light, in this case."
Mike replies: Okay, but then how do you and Curt feel about this?
It's a stitched pano made from five vertical shots of the view from my family's former lake house. Is what Joe did really any different, or do stitched panoramas also make you uneasy? By the way I'm just asking, not challenging.
Rob de Loe: "I too started with the 'primacy of the lens image.' I'm becoming less conservative about this as time goes by, but cautiously. For a recent project I finally broke down and used focus stacking because tilt and depth of field alone were not giving me the results I needed. I like the results, a lot, but it bothers me deep down that the final picture is not traceable back to a single exposure. It's not rational. But I feel like I've passed through a portal and can't go back. Is this what it feels like to become a 'made man' in the Mafia? ;-) That which I have done cannot be undone.
"Anyway, I predict that in a few years—once we've moved fully into the realm of computational photography—this whole conversation we like to have about 'how much manipulation is OK?' will seem ridiculously quaint!"
Joe Holmes: "Re '...a more thoughtful composition than I managed to see at the scene in real time.' Or than was possible with your lens and where you could stand. It may have been physically impossible to frame the image as in the composite. So there's another wrinkle in this discussion: creating a new image that was impossible to shoot in a single frame. That kind of compositing was being done long before digital photography, but now it can done so easily and quickly that we can perform these tricks routinely."
Mike replies: No, I can't claim I couldn't have gotten what you've created. I just liked the second of my two shots better when I was at the scene. It wasn't a matter of not being able to get something close to your composite in one shot, it was that that wasn't what I arrived at when I worked the scene. I checked, and I shot 11 pictures at the scene, all quite different, and I figured I'd gotten what I wanted with the second shot I presented here.
Here are two more of the rejects from the 11:
As you know there are an infinite number of pictures even within a very limited subject or scene. It's not like there's ever just one picture there and our job is just to find it.
Henning Wulff: "I'm definitely in two minds about this stuff.
"For many years I worked as an architectural/construction/commercial photographer. The final image and what it represented were all that mattered and had to suit the requirements of the client. I did all sorts of manipulations, editing and rephotographing as required (and as was possible with film and masking). When Photoshop came out, I did whole projects with version 0.72 or so, as I recall from numerous crashes. For nearly 10 years I was the best in my area and specialty, and made lots of money. Photoshop was just the digital perfection of what I had been doing for decades.
"For my personal photography, it's been more the opposite, with 'honesty' and 'integrity' throughout. It's in quotations because there really is very little true integrity and honesty in all of this, as so many artistic decisions override the integrity and honesty. However, I try to be true to the found image. Maybe that's why I shot most of my commercial stuff with SLR's and view cameras and most of my personal stuff with rangefinders. The 'seeing' is essentially different between the two camps.
"As for the panos; again, if I was shooting for work, stitched photos with massaging would have been ideal if available. As it was I shot Horizon 150's, possibly stitched and Roundshot 120's, because that was what was available, and then worked hard to 'fix' things after the negative was produced. Now for any intense personal purpose I still shoot those, even though the iPhone or even any digital stitched can get you panos with a lot less hassle, and you can always 'fix' things. The Horizon and Roundshot images I don't fix, and don't think about fixing while producing them.
"In the end, if you're doing it for money you have to produce the images your client likes. If you're doing it for yourself, that's the person you have to satisfy. There are no other rules.
"By the by, the 'aspect' intolerance thing is one area I'm gobsmacked about. The square format was invented so that cameras you couldn't turn on their side were usable. I've shot 17x6 vertical to square to 6 cm high and about 40cm horizontal on my Roundshot, and they're all reasonable formats. Different images need different formats. Shoot what makes sense. They're all good."
Rod S.: "Historically, a photograph has always meant a single exposure.
"That definition embodies a critical aspect of photography: That the photographer was right there at that spot and succeeded in overcoming the technical hurdles of making the exposure successfully, and did both in that moment.
"It's these momentary aspects of photography that makes photography special. And challenging. The photographer has had to capture the image in that moment. The photograph is painted with light, not painted with software. Consequently, it's 'accurate'—and widely acknowledged as such—in terms of the appearance of objects within the frame.
"It's these momentary aspects of photography that separates photography from, say, painting, or digital illustration, because those other art forms involve a lengthy process of creation or manipulation, and we intuitively understand that the appearances of objects in the image has changed.
"So Joe's composite pond image and Mike's stitched pano are not 'photographs.' Each image is a 'composite image.'
"Why is this unambiguous terminology resisted so much by some digital practitioners?
"Digital practitioners who continue using the word 'photograph' to describe their composite or manipulated images are trading on the public's regard for photographs (sadly, now damaged) as single images made in the moment, which reliably show how things looked at that moment."
