There's a good tutorial written by Steve Paxton on how to use the Dodge and Burn tools in Photoshop to add some dramatic lighting effects to your nature & landscape images. Some may look at this as making a "fake" photograph, but in reality it's no different than what would have been done in a master printmaker's darkroom back in the days of film.
I recently had an extended debate with some friends on this point; many who feel that an image is "fake" if its not "straight out of the camera". That's silly (though they're entitled to their opinions)! My take on it is that you need to accomplish as much in the camera as possible: set yourself up for success. Pay attention to your backgrounds, get your composition right, achieve proper exposure, and above all - capture the moment.
But even after all of that, you can go from good to great by learning how to work in the digital darkroom of today: Adobe Photoshop. PS sometimes gets a bad rap, but just because PS is involved doesn't mean that you're adding or removing critical elements of the scene; painting rainbows across dreary skies! Taking the photograph properly is merely the first step in the process: prints are made in the darkroom.
Perhaps it's hasty to refer to the "Photoshop != Photography" argument as silly. Rather, it may be more misinformed than anything.
To learn more check out the tutorial here: Paxton Prints - Learning the Art of Dodging and Burning
3 comments:
Do these same people disprove of polarizing and gradient filters? Isn't that just another way of achieving some of the same effects? I wouldn't know I haven't played around with them.
Yea - I made that point. Consider an even more extreme example where you're adding some strobes to add artificial light to a subject/scene... they'd be fine with that!
The fairly strong opinion seemed to be that no matter what you went through in the field to create an image - regardless of how surreal the results - those works can be considered "real" photographs one hundred times over before one that's had any significant photoshop work done. Maybe there's just not enough blood, sweat, and tears behind a monitor? For me it's the end result that really matters most.
It's an interesting debate that I don't see as being "winnable". Kind of like a religion thing.
Thanks for commenting!
You will often find that the people resist digital post processing are the same people who have trouble using Photoshop in the first place (or are not very technically inclined). It is always easier to say that "I don't post process my images" than to just learn how to use Photoshop. I have found some resistance -especially with old school film photographers -to going digital when it involves learning how to use complicated programs like Photoshop or Lightroom. Change is always hard. It is incredibly short sighted not to post process your images -especially if you are shooting in RAW format and no in-camera adjustments are being made to the image (such as saturation and sharpening). You simply can't print a RAW image out of camera. It will be flat, dull and lifeless. Unless the photographer is a journalist or a crime scene photographer (and they typically shoot JPEG), I never understood this thinking.
Thanks for the link!
Post a Comment