Or what constitutes ‘real’ photography? This is a hotly debated topic in the landscape photography community. The short answer is ‘yes’, in the sense that I believe that what I am presenting are ‘real’ photographs. But this is a lazy answer ;-)
The photographs I make intend to convey meaning. They are intended to be more than mimetic representations of the scene, and more than simply a historical record of my experience. I want to communicate what I saw and how I felt to you the viewer.
A more relevant question might be ‘do I manipulate the photos I make?’, or ‘do I use Photoshop?’. Yes, I use Photoshop frequently in my photographs. And when I use Photoshop, I use it to more clearly communicate what I saw and how I felt. And like words, Photoshop can be used to deceive. My father use to say ‘deceit, is when you give a person enough information to lead them to the wrong conclusion’. I do not mean to deceive with my photographs. This is very subjective, and I am sensitive to the fact that we will all have very different views on what could constitute deception in photography.
The Natural Landscape Photography Awards website has a ‘golden rule’ that I will adopt for the purposes of this topic;
‘The integrity of the subject should be maintained’.
I will use the following 3 photographs as an example of how I use the tools in Photoshop to communicate what I saw and how I felt about an experience I had in Utah:
This is the original capture, a totally unedited image with no camera profiles applied. This is what the camera ‘saw’ and ‘felt’. It apparently can’t see straight as the image is slightly crooked ;-)
I saw it differently ;-) This is how I remembered what I saw when I processed the image. I saw the vibrant color of the orange/red sandstone in contrast with the brilliant blue sky. The colors have been exaggerated a bit to reflect what struck me at the time. Are they accurate? Probably not, but it more accurately represents my experience than the first photograph.
This can’t possibly be an accurate representation of the subject as we don’t see in black and white. And I have chosen to use more appropriate ‘words’ to communicate what I saw and how I felt. The contrast of the textured rock against the sky, the likeness to a towering skyscraper. The conversion to black and white to better communicate the age and timelessness of the subject.
“It isn’t what a picture is of, it is what it is about” – John Szarkowski
My interpretation/experience of the scene is probably different than how others would have seen this had they been standing in the same spot at the same time that I was standing there. And they might have a different story to tell of their experience. I would invite the viewer to be curious, spend more than 3-5 seconds to simply determine if you ‘like’ it or not. What do you see? What do you feel?
What the camera saw, my experience when I made the photograph, your experience when you view the photograph, they’re all real.