Not for the squeamish...

Is this company seriously trying to entice costomers with this garbage. Surely NOT. Its ghastly and so obviously Fake.

This is the incredulous thing about it.. the "before" picture is a nice shot of the girl, albeit the arms could have been better positioned. The "after" is truly horrendous. Why on earth would anyone want their little girl made to look like that?

I agree with George on what is allowable (for my own images anyway). If I can't make a shot work using levels, saturation, and a touch of US mask then it wasn't a good shot to start with. Obviously cropping rotating horizons etc, is admissible, as you could do all this before the advent of digital. That doesn't mean to say that I don't do it for some work, as do others here, but your aiming for an effect rather than trying to fake one.. if you know what I mean; and I often retouch photos for friends, evening out skin tone, belmishes etc. removing a beer pump from the top of a head.. (that was last week..) but that's a different matter. I like to use a photo to remind me of a place and a time, and it's the realism that does this.

As a final point, it's not exactly stunning work technically anyway is it? Would you pay someone to do that to a photo? I'm sure I could do at least as well, and without "replacing the eyes".. eugh.

In fact I might have a go later on with one of them..

Cheers

Liam

I am only learning the arts of re-touching my pics and i could do a better job of it than these so called pros. I was so annoyed i e-mailed them with a link to this post. Let them see what people really think of thier work.

Hi Clarky,

If they were pros, and as they seem to think they're at least computer literate with their work, you'd think something a bit more commercial than a subdomain at homestead to showcase the work would be a start. Server space is as good as free, and a domain name is a couple of quid a pop.

Still.. off to work now.

Cheers

Liam

There is an idea that a photograph should be taken as is with no manipulation.

Where does this leave the darkroom and the great photographers who made prints using every darkroom trick in the book to make sure that what was on the negative could be reproduced on the fairly limited dynamic range of the paper. Where does it leave the photographers who combined negatives, maybe just for the simple prupose of using their stock of good skies or maybe for more complex multiple images.

All this is creativity.

Are we saying that this is all somehow "wrong" just because it can now be done on a computer?

I see it as a different set of skills for a common end result. We still need the creativity to make the final image, not take it, a distinction made in the first instance by Ansel Adams.

So I would say that the initial capture is the score and the Photoshop manipulation the performance, again quoting Mr Adams.....

John, thanks for this post. I almost thought I'm the only one giving the photographer/artist a bit more leeway than George et al.

I never had the luck to get introduced to "proper" darkroom work but I suspect that you could do a lot of tricks that when done on the computer wouldn't really find the placet of the purist. So where do you draw the line between pure photography and "photography based artwork"?

We won't solve this as everyone has his/her own opinion.
What we obviously DO agree on that the examples on the original posters link are definitely stepping over the line.

I don't think either I or George is suggesting that.
Totally fine. Note my emphasis.

Burn them at the stake, I say "Stock of good skies"... good grief

That's fine too - they can be fun and interesting in their place.
Agree. But faking it to produce something that wasn't there, no matter how clever and creative, isn't the sort of photography that George was talking about, nor the type that ultimately, I want to get good at.

Not at all. Combining negatives in the darkroom to put something in that wasn't there is no different from on the computer IMO, just a lot easier to do these days.

The image is what the lens made.

The picture may be very creative, in all kinds of ways, and bear very little resemblance to the image. The trouble is, that increasingly, no one seems to care about authenticity any more.

I must say that these images are terrible they are not
what photography is all about they look like baby dolls.

Perhaps you would be better off selling them on e-bay.

Richard

Mine too.
That's sick - they look like dolls!
Here is anther bad one
http://www.naturalbeautiescontest.homestead.com/retouch5.html
Urgh - it's enough to make you feel ill.

Personally, I don't like this sort of thing. However, I can see how it would be very popular in the US especially when you consider the number of "Child Beuaty Pageants" they have.

Kim