Straight Out Of The Camera?

Good find Edward! Ansel Adams was similarly detailed in his dodging and burning work, as were many others. I always get a chuckle out of people who talk about "straight photography". What really is straight photography? I don't believe it can be defined because I don't believe it exists.

Bottom line for me.....all those notations were made possible because somebody knew objectively, what is good and bad in the design arena, regardless of the process to make those changes happen, they were part of the meticulous work needed to create the vision.
A great example of sorting out the men from the boys.

Very cool, Edward!! And Marlene's right ... all the technical knowledge in the world won't help if the person doing the editing doesn't have an artistic eye.

its funny how people always reference the old stuff when they say it should have come out of the camera that way and its the right way.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

Speaking of Magnum I have a bunch of contact sheets of work done by Cornell Capa following Eisenhower to the Panama Conference in Panama. Stamped Life Magazine. Very interesting work. These were done in 1956. Got these from the journalist who went with Capa. Let me know if anyone wants to haggle over one or a few. Just a thought

There was a discussion on a Facebook photography page regarding "manipulating" images. One person felt that once you started "manipulating", the photo ceased being a photo and entered the realm of graphic art. No amount of opposing opinion or proof otherwise would convince him that a photograph is a photograph and that all are manipulated to a degree. He also couldn't decipher exactly what was done to examples shown or even if they were edited, yet kept proclaiming he was a "purist".

SOOC doesn't really exist except in snapshots, maybe.

Louise,

We all know those people and some of them are right here on FAA of course.

After reading your comment, an experiment (of sorts) occurred to me. Someone should set up a camera on a tripod, take a picture of a subject, then without moving the camera or changing the settings, take another picture later in the day or in slightly different conditions such as when a cloud comes overhead and changes the ambient lighting. Then take the two pictures "straight out of the camera", and show them to the "purist" and ask them, "Which one was manipulated?". It might be interesting to hear the response(s).

Brian, I know a lot of "those people". There is at least one on every photography site that has a forum.

Your idea is interesting. And a form of that has actually been a subject of discussion on a site I used to frequent. My suggestion to "those people" has been to look at the photography of someone like Gallen Rowell, keeping in mind that his work certainly wasn't digitally manipulated, and ask yourself how he got those beautiful colors and magical tonal range. Most today would assume that his work was digitally manipulated. However, Rowell would scout an area and often return at a different time when he knew the lighting would be different, so that was one part of his method. Filters was another. I don't know what he did in the dark room, but I can imagine that he didn't print straight off the negatives either.

@Louise Reeves - that person probably also believes that photography represents reality.

Wow, that's fun to look at and study. There never was any 'straight from the camera' and a lot of the talk about Great Masters Of Film is baloney. They just used a different technology.

There are several people here that are 'straight out of camera' I've noticed quite a few here in their bios tout SOC and in numerous discussions here. Really though even snapshots are processed by the camera.

OOC is for amateur point and click vacationers, NOT for real photographic artists. Yes, when we know the settings and shoot manually we may get an awesome pic that needs very little tweaking, but that is not the norm.

A good photographer shoots in RAW. RAW cannot be printed - it is like undeveloped film - it has to be converted to TIF or jpg or something else - and those conversions will do their own "developing" automatically. So "out of camera" isn't even an accurate term.

This has been discussed many times. I ignore the silly people who post contests where they require OOC. ... and I put them on my naughty list ... ho ho ho! (wink, wink, nudge, nudge)

December issue of Outdoor Photographer has a great "how to" article on using the many tools in Lightroom for doing exactly what was highlighted in the OP link. The real trick is in know what to adjust!

http://www.outdoorphotographer.com/how-to/shooting/harness-high-contrast.html#.VHN-p8m9d0Q

@John, 'naughty list', ho ha ha!

Alternatively take multiple photos at different exposures - which one is real then?

For those "purists" that are members on "Fine ART America", I would remind them that this is not "Snap Shot America", and that if you are intent on only recording an image then you should look for a site called "Snap Shot America" as an alternative. If you strive to be an ARTIST, then you will no doubt dismiss the restrictions of only recording and instead focus on creating, by putting a little of your own originality into your work.

Every time I see a defensive remark aimed at a creative photographer about how that photography should not be altered, I can't help but believe they are being defensive because they don't want their own photographs to be seen as diminished in some way by comparison. This amounts to nothing more than jealousy in my eyes. Hey, I don't really care if you prefer to only record and get one decent capture out of 100. Just don't tell me I should be content to live with those boundaries myself. Go beyond the settings on a camera. Dare to be original... Dare to be creative... Dare to break a threshold and reach for something more.

You guys are so funny when you get worked up. I love this forum.

@Brian - I know you mean. What they don't understand is that the bar is raised. Snapshots won't cut it when you have competition working at a professional level - quality equipment, post processing skills and a developed vision.

I don't call it "worked up" Melissa, but I'm glad you're amused at only one year here. Life is too short to take it too seriously, but I don't take it for granted either.

Gotta love rant threads.. /popcorn

I ran the b&w department in a commercial lab about 22 years ago in Norwalk, Ct. I can't begin to tell you the amount of manipulating in the darkroom I did for out clients. I still have somewhere all the dodging and burning tools I made in various shapes and sizes from wire hangers and cardboard. I remember one client had a negative of an airplane coming in for landing. He wanted it to appear that the lights of the plane where leaving streaks slicing through the haze. It took a while but I got it done after a long exposure and a lot of dodging and burning with weird shaped tools. They were our version of PS back in the day.

Great thread Edward!

Marlene gets a ditto in this corner.

Design elements from the lenses to the composition to the post processing. Even how to frame it and hang it.
Even the lighting over where you hang it matter to the affect.

Dave

Melissa, help me out here. I'm not seeing any rants. What am I missing?

My pictures are all straight out of the camera! Straight from the camera into Lightroom ...

Time is an issue. Getting it right in the camera or at least nearly right saves time in post. Time is money as Joann can attest.
...
The other thing that is interesting is how much work has gone back to the individual in the digital age. Just as word processing got rid of the secretary pool and forced executives to type their own damn memos, the digital darkroom has put the power and work load of post processing or darkroom work back to the photographer.

And with the vast amount of free knowledge available from experts all over the web, in print, books, videos - there are no excuses for not being proficient in the skills needed to compete. Its just a matter of putting in the hours and hours needed to learn.

Ansel Adams said that 50% of a photo was in the field, the other 50% in the darkroom. So yes, getting it right in camera is critical. No such thing as "fixing it later" and expecting good results.

Yep those days photoshop! so people shouldn't complain so much about PS, image manipulation have always been there, just different tools and techniques. Lots of old timers classic shots are slowly getting revealed. Take the famous world-peace shot where a girl throws her arms around the neck of a sailor/soldier, in later years he confessed it was all a rigged shot. haha.

Chuck, Melissa can't respond right now... she's choking on her popcorn.

Good point Christian. Most of the tools in PS are named after their dark room equivalents. Dodge and burn, masking are a couple that come to mind.

Brian! Shame on you!

adding to the discussion - Purist vs. Artist

I try to get as much right in camera as possible all the time, but like someone else said, all of my photographs are straight out of the camera, onto the computer and into Elements as I'm too poor and tight for Photoshop or Lightroom. I suppose the SOOC guys have to reisize their photos for the web, so maybe there's a differeing levels of SOOC. Even if I could go true SOOC, I'd have to level 75% of my shots. No matter how hard i try, that darn horizon gets me every time, it seems.

Someone else pointed out that if you shoot RAW, you must do some editting, even if just converting the file to a JPG or some such, or you never get to share your photos. But a camera will also "process" a JPG in some fashion, so there should not really be anyone calling themself a "purist" in this age, even if they are misusing the term.

I one time had a guy contact me through Flickr and ask how much post processing I do, implying that I did too much. I gave him the general answer, "Well, every shot is different, blah, blah, blah" routine. He still took me to task and then said, "I don't do any editting to my shots." I replied, "Yeah, I can tell." End of that conversation.

Oh boy, a bunch of school yard nonsense!