photoshop, not photography?

Question

do you think photoshop and pc editing is destroying the skills of photography or do you think it is only about the end product of the image and it dont matter how you get it?

Answer 1

I like to sit and watch TV on occasion. I enjoy what I'm seeing and hearing. But I don't give a rats behind how the image is transmitted and converted etc etc. All I care about is the fact that it happens and I can enjoy it.

I think all of these 'older' photographers need to get over themselves, quite frankly. As a pro photographer, my clients don't care how I create my images, they only care whether I can give them what they're after. And to be honest, the less time spent on setting up lighting etc for the shoot, the less they have to spend on my time. Where it would take 20 minutes to set up a rig and then pull it all down again, I can create the same image - if not better - with some photoshop adjustments in 2 minutes. Why spend that extra time?

Answer 2

Photo editing has existed before photoshop came along. Have you ever heard of burning and dodging? And no, not the "tool" kind, but the darkroom kind. Simply capturing the photograph is not the only thing that makes it a good photograph, processing them in different ways, whether on film or digitally will always be part of photography, art or not. Questions like these are irrelevant and argumentative at best. I wish people would stop obsessing about skill over artform already. Art is subjective, who cares how it is created? If you don't like it, move on.

So to answer your question, no I don't.

Thanks for asking.

Answer 3

I think to some degree it is hurting the skills, but so are these mega pixel point and shoot cameras. You can use a Photoshop like program to fix most of your errors.

It was fun, but a lot of works to play with a photo in a darkroom.

Still, the skill is get a well composed shot, and you have to have a trained eye for that. I am a hobbyist, but upper end. D80 Nikon and Photoshop cs. I am proud to say that when I took some shots for my daughter, and made one her 8x10 for a audition, several people asked for the name of her photographer. You still need the eye.

Answer 4

I think it's a little of both. It's one thing to enhance a picture but I see pictures now and i doubt all of them because there is the thought that they are photoshopped and hence "not real" in my mind. No doubt photoshop can produce some truly amazing things and it takes a great deal of talent to produce some of them but there is still something so great about a naturally taken picture that speaks for itself without enhancements.

Answer 5

ah..a purist... d'you know how rare you are?

i learned my trade in a smelly old darkroom and studio... i spent days never seeing anything BUT the safety lights...

and i was good at it... but what a pain... and it was so time consuming...

nowadays i use an E500 olympus and i havent been in a darkroom for years... i use painshop pro x1... and i can do more, with less effort, in a shorter space of time, than i ever could traditionally... i specialise in wedding reportage.. 8hrs with the bride... average used to be around 10 rolls (360 pics) nowadays my average shoot is 1800 images... and it only takes me 3 or 4 days to rotate them, crop, burn, or mask them and... i dont have to print them... the customer takes em to Colab... for professional prints..

they dont care how they get there, theyre only interested in the end product... and for us, as photographers, we try to do 99% of it in the camera anyway...