I have occasionally encountered someone who boasts that they use the images right out of their camera, never do any editing to it. I don’t bother to argue the point – you do you.
But I definitely employ my editing software (ACDSee) to process the digital images I select to keep from every photography session, and here’s one perfect example of why.
It’s an egret in flight captured (yes, a lucky shot) at a distance across a field. First, the original photo; second, what I did with it. Mainly cropping, with a bit of sharpening, contrast, and light adjustment.
I’ll bet you’ve got some equally apt illustrations of my point. Would you care to share them?
But seriously, the question is ultimately what the purpose of photography is. Is it purely to capture, as accurately as possible, the exact scene that presented itself at that place, at that time, in that direction? Or is there some artistic purpose beyond that? If the former, then it’s reasonable to frown upon editing, but if the latter, then photo editing is surely just as much of an art form as photo taking.
I’d argue that photography is both and that to edit or not, and how much, depends on why you’re taking the photo. Even for say photojournalism, if some minimal editing helps to clarify the subject of the image being recorded as exactly as possible, then I’d find that acceptable. Obviously, editing out someone from a group photo, as happened under Stalin, is at the other end of the spectrum.
Yeah, bird photography is a hobby of mine. If it weren’t for cropping (and other minor tweaks), my life would be a sad, desolate wasteland .
Bonaparte gull in winter plumage the other day:
I could also have gone farther and edited out the little black blobs of flying insects (that’s what the gull was picking off from the surface). But I usually don’t bother going that clean - I’m not looking to hang things in a gallery.
Wicked cool! The unedited image is very good, perfect timing on the capture (we won’t mention how many other shots were taken before and after, eh?), but the edited version is WOWZA!!
One of my colleagues has a wall display outside her classroom door, “What looks like luck might actually be… Preparation Patience Hard Work Determination Practice Resilience…”, plus a bunch of others.
At what point does it go from being a photo to digital artwork?
Removing one random bystander? 10? hundreds?
Altering the sky so it’s a beautiful blue sky even though it was cloudy when you took the photo?
Adding a previous month’s full moon in because the clouds rolled in just in time to obfuscate this month’s full moon just when it’s over the peak of the building you were trying to shoot?
I know some people who do some fabulous work but they’re spending at hour or two per photo & their finished product does not exist in the real world.
I don’t really see how it matters. Uncropped, unedited is a myth as the cameras all “edit” to greater lesser degree including your decision to shoot just then. It is a continum. Learning to frame I think the most important “skill” and use of time of day ( golden hour ) for satifying photos.
I don’t like highly altered HDR photos but that’s personal preference.
If you want instant gratification.
PhotoLemur 3 can be astonishing. https://www.getphotolemur.com/
Some of the photo storage sites offer decent editing too.
See if you can see these images …still learning the SD quirks.
I am not a good “photographer” but my MFT camera and lenses do a remarkable job of compensating.
I do understand composition, POV and limited lighting alteration…but I do not have time or patience for hours on a shot. 2-3 min normally and that’s usually just cropping and minor tweaks.
Only an occasional shot will justify PhotoLemur…the resulting photos are very large but sometimes breathtaking.
I think that my answer is that it’s the art that matters, not the medium. If, by extensive digital editing, you can produce a better work of art, why does it matter if that better work of art is a “photograph” or a “digital artwork”?
Because at one end you have photography skills & at the other end you have computer/editing skills
Give me a canvas & paint & I won’t give you a Rembrandt or a Picasso; hell, I won’t even give you what a good HS art class student can produce but allow me to do the same thing on a computer & I can produce something worthy of hanging in the Louvre.
I’d say to do photography you need to start out with an eye for the image, how to see and frame in your mind and then through the camera what you want to achieve. Or grab a lucky shot, of course, but even then you need that baseline of the eye for what to do with the image.
Once you’ve got the digital shot [working with film is a whole nother kettle of fish], then how much to process the raw file calls for judgment of what tools to use to get to the final result you want.
I’m going to post three versions of one subject, a scarecrow at a barn where I used to board my horse. The first is barely edited at all; the second has been cropped, had adjustments to sharpness, color intensity, etc., and the third, well, I decided to go wild with a whole lot of tools in my editing software and liked the freaky final product.
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. Luck and patience. The shot after, with prey secured.
