Photography Philosophy
Being an outsider to the photography world, I would like to pose a question:
Where does the artistry of ‘photography’ lie? Being able to take a great picture? Or being able to utilize post-production tools to make a good photo great?
Or are they part of the same overall craft and, regardless of where a person’s expertise lies, the final product is all they should be judged on?
I guess what I’m getting at is, how do you define a ‘good photographer’ and does that definition include their post-production skills? What if someone excels at the post work but can’t take decent photos? Are they still a ‘photographer’?
I know that’s a lot of questions in a small amount of space, but I’m curious what others think about any (or all) of these queries.
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That is a pretty good question. My thought on that topic has to be that it includes a little of both. To take a good photo, you have to know about composition and be able to capture what it is that you see and capture how you see it. Once you capture your subject, those of you that shoot can probably agree, it doesn’t always come out exactly the way we thought it would. Maybe it was underexposed or some of the colors are a little washed out, whatever it may be. That’s were the post production comes in. We know how that picture should look, let’s face it, we were there capturing that image. The post production process allows us to take that photo and and bring it back to life. Correct the exposure, correct the colors.
That’s just my $.02, I would like what others have to say.
-Big Al
As a photographer that shoots with a DSLR, my opinion would be the artistry lies with the well composed, focased, & “exposed” image. I only use post production to tweak, which was being done at the lab during the printing process anyway. I personally dislike photographers that rely upon post production to create their image, as the skill there relies upon computer skills vs. actually being an artist-that is IMHO.
But, Phil, that would mean that only photographers are artists. That would be like saying only people who use oil on canvas are artists. I’ve seen some amazing digital artwork that had nothing to do with photography. Trust me, those people are artists.
Digital photography programs aren’t magic wands. If we start with a bad photo, a computer program will only allow us to improve or enhance it, not recreate a bad shot into a good one.