ok - I need to rant

[American Made]

Always enjoy the Yamma photos and Stay purist!

[Sea Six]

Very nice camera work

[ApexOversteer]

Originally Posted by aerovette

Does the mailman have red hair?

Word for word my exact thought.

[Giraffe (He/Him)]

Go ahead and pick them apart. I don't care...

Cant. You take a nice photo dude.

I will say this, the jump from landscapes and such to shooting people is big. Very big.

[nhlgopens]

Originally Posted by Thomas

Cant. You take a nice photo dude.

I will say this, the jump from landscapes and such to shooting people is big. Very big.

Thanks -

I couldn't agree more... I never did much portraiture. Just a few to get through college.

[Giraffe (He/Him)]

I couldn't agree more... I never did much portraiture. Just a few to get through college.

I had a friend look at my shots of the girl I posted here. He MURDERED me. "You need to think about this, this, this, and WTF were you thinking HERE?"

He DID say a lot of people couldn't do half that good after years of shooting. So THAT was encouraging at least.

[Giraffe (He/Him)]

Originally Posted by TxAg

No matter how good one is at something, there is always room for improvement.

That is a fact.

[BuckyThreadkiller]

I have enormous respect for photographers and photography as an art form.

But I buy it for commercial use. I've spent far too much of my life on photo shots for everything from hazardous waste sites to ice cream cones and I agree with Yamma. Photoshop is an aid, not a means to an end.

And on a personal level might I add that shooting in HDR doesn't make you a better photographer, it just makes thing look stupid.

[Giraffe (He/Him)]

I add that shooting in HDR doesn't make you a better photographer, it just makes thing look stupid.

Meh. I kinda like some of it if it's done in moderation.

[Giraffe (He/Him)]

Some macro. Wont post the watch macros. "Baller" shit and all.

[nhlgopens]

That's some cool stuff!!! My dogs never sit still enough for anything like that.

[BuckyThreadkiller]

Originally Posted by TxAg

Depends on how one does the HDR merging.

If done into one of those abstract looking pieces, then I somewhat agree as they are over done.

However, there are times HDR can actually enhance and bring out the beauty in the scene shot.

I agree Photoshop is a tool. It can either be used as an asset or a detriment. People who dog others who use programs like Photoshop or Lightroom need to get off their high horse, IMHO.

I was a retoucher back when retouching was an airbrush and a set of gamma greys. It took skill and talent and the price paid for screwing up an image was hours down the tube and getting a new print from the photographer. Photographers and art directors spent LOTS of time making sure that an image was right in the camera because you had one sheet of 4x5 and E6 processing was a pain in the ass that took a long time. It wasn't a simple deal to shoot off 25 frames or 250 frames and then spend two hours on a psd file. Even with 35mm the most you had was 36 shots. And film was the cheapest part of the shoot.

Photos used to MEAN something. There was thought and composition and care and lighting - worry over backgrounds and depth of field considerations. If you planned for retouch, you thought it out very carefully because it was hard to do and the really good ones like Raphael in Houston made a fortune.

Now photos are completely artificial - Photoshop is Autotune for the eyes. Don't understand f-stops? No biggie fix it in Photoshop. Can't bother with the right lens to get the depth of field right? No biggie shoot a couple of images for foreground and background and merge them. Can't light something? No problem 'chop it.

If you're relying on Photoshop to make up for what you can't do in the camera don't call yourself a Photographer - you're an digital illustrator.

[Giraffe (He/Him)]

Originally Posted by BuckyThreadkiller

I was a retoucher back when retouching was an airbrush and a set of gamma greys. It took skill and talent and the price paid for screwing up an image was hours down the tube and getting a new print from the photographer. Photographers and art directors spent LOTS of time making sure that an image was right in the camera because you had one sheet of 4x5 and E6 processing was a pain in the ass that took a long time. It wasn't a simple deal to shoot off 25 frames or 250 frames and then spend two hours on a psd file. Even with 35mm the most you had was 36 shots. And film was the cheapest part of the shoot.

Photos used to MEAN something. There was thought and composition and care and lighting - worry over backgrounds and depth of field considerations. If you planned for retouch, you thought it out very carefully because it was hard to do and the really good ones like Raphael in Houston made a fortune.

Now photos are completely artificial - Photoshop is Autotune for the eyes. Don't understand f-stops? No biggie fix it in Photoshop. Can't bother with the right lens to get the depth of field right? No biggie shoot a couple of images for foreground and background and merge them. Can't light something? No problem 'chop it.

If you're relying on Photoshop to make up for what you can't do in the camera don't call yourself a Photographer - you're an digital illustrator.

Dont know PS huh? Thats OK, it's a steep learning curve.

Seriously, you should ALWAYS try to get the best shot you can BEFORE dumping it into PS.

Regardless, it's just a tool. But this:

I don't edit my photos. You know why? Because they don't need it.

I disagree with.

[MrPeabody]

I've always thought that coming up with a pretty good photo was some kind of an equation of how talented you were and how many photos you took. Almost anyone can come up with a good photo if they take enough of them. That's the best thing about digital cameras. It allows the ameteur to take hundreds of photos without the expense of film.

Someone like me coming up with some good shots with a digital camera after taking hundreds of shots is completely different than me standing on the sidelines at a football game in 1968 with a Honeywell Pentax 35mm and getting a great shot when I could only afford to bring one roll of film with me. In four years of high school, I managed once to get that shot of the wide reciever leaping in the air for the ball that was six inches from his fingertips.

With a digital camera, I might get a shot like that at every game.

[nhlgopens]

Originally Posted by MrPeabody

I've always thought that coming up with a pretty good photo was some kind of an equation of how talented you were and how many photos you took. Almost anyone can come up with a good photo if they take enough of them. That's the best thing about digital cameras. It allows the ameteur to take hundreds of photos without the expense of film.

Someone like me coming up with some good shots with a digital camera after taking hundreds of shots is completely different than me standing on the sidelines at a football game in 1968 with a Honeywell Pentax 35mm and getting a great shot when I could only afford to bring one roll of film with me. In four years of high school, I managed once to get that shot of the wide reciever leaping in the air for the ball that was six inches from his fingertips.

With a digital camera, I might get a shot like that at every game.

I remember those days. I still have my 35mm camera - although it's been years since I ran film through it. Thought I was hot stuff when I bought the motor drive. Could fly through a roll of film in about 5 seconds... and still never got anything.

I wish I still had my 4x5 view camera. I could still be doing some fun stuff with it.

[BuckyThreadkiller]

Originally Posted by Thomas

Dont know PS huh? Thats OK, it's a steep learning curve.

Seriously, you should ALWAYS try to get the best shot you can BEFORE dumping it into PS.

Regardless, it's just a tool. But this:

I disagree with.

I've been using Photoshop since it was beta. And Illustrator since version 1.6. back when John Warnock actually came to trade shows.

The first digital retouching I did was in 1985 with a B&W image scanned in on Thunderscan (a module you hooked to the printhead on an Apple Imagewriter scanner) and then retouched in a program Letraset - the presstype guys - called ImageStudio. Somewhere, on a floppy, I still have the image.

[Giraffe (He/Him)]

Originally Posted by BuckyThreadkiller

I've been using Photoshop since it was beta. And Illustrator since version 1.6. back when John Warnock actually came to trade shows.

The first digital retouching I did was in 1985 with a B&W image scanned in on Thunderscan (a module you hooked to the printhead on an Apple Imagewriter scanner) and then retouched in a program Letraset - the presstype guys - called ImageStudio. Somewhere, on a floppy, I still have the image.

Bucky? Say Buckster? Buckman? I was shitting you k?

[BuckyThreadkiller]

Originally Posted by TxAg

Yeah it was a time consuming process back in the day.
We also used to crap and pee outhouses.

Thank God for progress.

Are you saying photo's don't mean anything now? What you describe takes place today as well.

Again, thank God for progress to make the process less complicated (and costly).

100% disagree

Again, 100% disagree.

That's stretching it.

It's not just the lens. And what's wrong with using multiple images to create a beautiful work piece?

Yes because it's just that easy.

Now this I can somewhat agree with.

What I'm saying is photos mean something.

But digitally manipulated, composited, retouched, perfected, glimmering "creations" aren't photos. They are artwork.

[nhlgopens]

Originally Posted by BuckyThreadkiller

I've been using Photoshop since it was beta. And Illustrator since version 1.6. back when John Warnock actually came to trade shows.

The first digital retouching I did was in 1985 with a B&W image scanned in on Thunderscan (a module you hooked to the printhead on an Apple Imagewriter scanner) and then retouched in a program Letraset - the presstype guys - called ImageStudio. Somewhere, on a floppy, I still have the image.

A good friend of mine that's still in the lab industry (doing aerial photo printing) started digital retouching on a SciTex workstation back in the 80's. Never realized how digital imagery would gain such momentum and virtually do away with film and labs as we know it today.

[BuckyThreadkiller]

Originally Posted by Thomas

Bucky? Say Buckster? Buckman? I was shitting you k?

I thought this was a rant thread. I'm rolling on a rant, OK? I'm not really worried about what, I'm just scatting a good rant.


I'll be out of steam here in a bit. Standby.