Hello PQ,
Before Photoshop I used my hands under the enlarger light, as did Ansel Adams, see his contact prints and the final image.
He was at the
'cutting edge', making his own enlargers, working out the Zone system etc. By your own words this would count as art, what the camera saw was not what AA printed.
Ansel Adams and Photoshop, he would have taken to it like a Duck to water, got the source code (from Barney Scan) and wrote his own version. And then written books about it and made a tidy sum on the side selling the software.
It's what people at the
'cutting edge' of things have always done, it's in their DNA. Photoshop is the easiest, quickest photo editor ever, anything you can think of doing you can. AA would have said,
"The file is the score and the edit the performance".
I would encourage anyone to make a start on Photoshop by beginning to use it as AA would have done with his hands under the enlarger light.
Hello MH,
I agree about the light, walk the same path for years having taken all the postcard stuff, find the gems that the light reveals, where you've walked past 100's of times.
Cheers - J
[edit] I forgot to say that Photoshop is the greatest fun
In my humble opinion photography should be; 0.1% camera, 50% imagination and 49.9% Photoshop, that's where the fun lies.
I agree Photoshop (PS) is the digital darkroom.
I personally don't miss all of the chemicals (And the environmental and associated health risks) or spending hours to pull a perfect print and then trying to repeat it.
Using card board and my hands to burn in and doge the difference parts of an image.
Yep that was the way it was done in the old days along with a ton of filters.
When I started doing color commercial photography for print one had to shoot large format 4x5 or 8x10 chrome transparencies. There was no scanning the film to fix it in photoshop or darkroom tricks to fix poor lighting, composition, exposer or other problems. What you shot was what you got. Thank God for polaroid proofs.
There was manual retouching with air brushing but that was expensive and an art department specialty.
Shooting large format was time consuming, cumbersome & expensive and unforgiving.(still is)
But when you got everything right it was magic.
If one is dependent on photoshop to make great images.
I question if one is a photographer or a digital artist.
I have zero problems with photoshop, it is a tool that allows one to do wonderful things.
But agin that falls under the heading of digital art IMHO.
But PS just like ProTools in audio now allows just about anybody to be a recording artist.
One doesn't need to sing or play in tune or in time.
Don't worry auto tune and beat detective will fix it...but when they have to play live they can't hide what was fixed in the studio.
I don't have to worry about exposer ,focusing or other technical stuff .
Now the camera does it all for me and I can fix it later with PS.
You would be surprised how many professional photographers can't tell you what an f/stop is.
Has the digital darkroom and camera automation made the skills that used to be necessary obsolete?
I say yes.
Does the person looking at a final print or listening to finished song care about the process that when into creating an song or image? Most likely nope not one damn bit.
All they care about is does the image or song move them.
Do they connect with it on some level?
In the long run that is what matters.
The finished product is the bottom line not the creative process used to make it.
Just my thoughts I could be completely wrong.
PQ