Should we post-process?

What I find so irksome is to have an idea that something is a good shot, get the technicals right, get home and find that it's a damp squib 'artistically'. Frankly my disk is full of them and so is my flickr site which is silly but I value any comments I might get as they do move me on.

Mike

I'm sure that's true.

I would agree that some adjustment is necessary to make the image look like what you saw. If you want an image that isn't like what you saw, then perhaps you should take up painting?

G

Which....how ironic, is exactly the thing HCB did after his relative short career as a photographer.
He started as a painter and ended as one.

Well, you do have "form".

G

He was a photographer for 40 years. Not that short.

Anyway, do you think we will see the emergence of post-processors as a trade? I can't see why not. It would potentially add a lot of value to the mundane job of simply printing pictures.

G

Interesting discussion.

I would have thought that there is no right and wrong. As the object of our photography is to enjoy expressing ourselves with image making, does it matter as long as we are doing it the way we want to?

It already has. Its called Digital Imaging. And there are some real artists out there. They co-operate closely with product and advertisement photographers. All those beautiful fast car pictures against those futuristic backgrounds? A perfect example, I think.

BTW....I just entered two pictures in the my photos section.
The first (the fern picture) needed a lot of PP before it looked like I had pre visualized.
The second just splashed of the screen and only needed a slight levels tweak and output sharpening.
I'll guess I am saying. Alway be prepared to work on a image. Its the outcome that matters.

Damn! Just yesterday I visited a webpage of a photographer etc. who advertised his post processing skill with before/after pictures of female models.

I don't see why some people shouldn't be interested - it is not all who wants to buy Photoshop and spend a couple of days learning how to do it. And like photography manipulation requires You have skills (being able to see possibilities in the pictures). For some small and not so small companies it might make sense as well. Some years back I worked at a ministrys communication department and that involved preparing pictures for the web. However, the other departments couldn't always rely on us doing the work for them so a lot of web related work was simply outsourced. Cheaper than having people on the payroll.

Edit: Damn once again. Beaten to it by the Dutch guy.

It already has. Its called Digital Imaging. And there are some real artists out there. They co-operate closely with product and advertisement photographers. All those beautiful fast car pictures against those futuristic backgrounds? A perfect example, I think.But could you imagine leaving that process to somebody else?

G

Slippery blighters. You have to watch them carefully.

G

In my case......No ! I outsource my printing to a pro lab, who do a wonderful job. ( its a matter of economy, for me.)

But I think there are some who will, probably. But I sincerely ask my self, if they are still enjoying the process of picture taking.

To go back in time. There is proof of Rembrandt out sourcing some of his work to his students, and still sign them of as his own.
Michelangelo on the other hand started with a lot of assistants to work on the Sistine Chapel, but very soon dismissed all of them to finish the project by him self after four long years.

Yeahhh Ask the Scottish if you don't believe that.

My joy is in taking the photo. What PP gets done gets done by me on my computer. When I have a photo I want printed, I take it to the same lab every time and they follow my instructions for what I want.

If I were a commercial photographer generating a lot of prints, I might get into printing but I don't.

It's much the same in other fields. I've known painters who stretched their own canvases and insisted on making their own frames. Others didn't. People would be shocked to know how much of some famous paintings were done by assistants. Then their writers who have editors, and even fact checkers, and virtually none get involved in the printing.

Last year, the US magazine Digital Photopro devoted a page in the Sept/Oct edition to this very subject. Their conclusion was that the professional photo-lab has been reinvented, and that many of the old labs are now offering extra services like web hosting and order processing. The old labs that have not kept up-to-date have mostly folded. Of course, that's the US for you and we do it differently (or do we just copy a few years later.

It is a very good question you rise, George. And I totally agree that one should make an effort to get the image right already in camera. Digital photo tends to make us lazy, because it doesn't cost anything to snap a picture.

On the other hand, I wouldn't like going back to the old darkroom with its chemicals and all that stuff. So I am happy to have my copy of Photoshop Elements, making the necessary adjustments to get a presentable image.

Printing is different, though. There are so many pitfalls with paper jam, clogged ink nozzles, etc., that I prefer to leave printing to the professionals. I also think it's more economical, what with the cost of ink and paper (at least in Norway).

I think the answer to George's question depends on how good you are at editing, and how much money you have to spend.

You might take a fantastic picture, but not be skilled enough to edit it to get the best out of it. If you could afford it, it would make sense to have a PhotoShop expert do it. Obviously, you'd make your creative intention clear to them, and if you didn't like their services you'd sack them and hire someone else.

It's no different from D&P in that respect. In the good old days, I didn't like Max Spielmann, so I tried Bonusprint. I didn't like their enlargements much, so I sent my best negs to Colab. I never did any B&W.

The main difference now is that we all have a computer, and the entry barrier to digital PP is so much lower - there's no need for a darkroom, or expensive chemicals and paper. So we have a go, and improve to a level where we can do most of what we want reasonably quickly, and if we muck it up, we just chuck it away and the only cost of another go is time.

I think it's much the same debate as digital photography versus film. For the majority, a reasonable level of skill is much more accessible than it used to be, and I think that applies to PP too.