Photoshop and Photography: When Is It Real?

By DAVID POGUE

In the March issue of Popular Photography magazine, the editor’s note, by Miriam Leuchter, is called “What Is a Photograph?”

You’d think that, after 73 years, a magazine called Popular Photography would have figured that out. (Ba-da-bump!)

Actually, though, the editorial is about the magazine’s annual Reader’s Photos Contest. This year, in two of the categories, the winners were what the magazine calls composites, and what I call Photoshop jobs.

One photo shows a motorcyclist being chased by a tornado; another shows a flock of seagulls wheeling around a lighthouse in amazingly photogenic formation. Neither scene ever actually existed as photographed.

Now, in my experience, photographers can be a vocal lot. And a lot of them weren’t crazy about the idea of Photoshop jobs winning the contest.

I have to admit that when I saw the winners revealed in a previous issue, I was a bit taken aback, too. I mean, composition and timing are two key elements of a photographer’s skill, right? If you don’t have to worry about composition and timing, because you can always combine several photos or move things around later in Photoshop, then, well — what is a photograph?

The thing is, though, this isn’t necessarily an open-and-shut case. Ms. Leuchter’s editorial points out that photography has never been strictly a “capture reality” art form. It’s never been limited to reproducing what the eye sees.

From the very beginning, photographers have set up their shots, posed people and adjusted brightness and contrast in the development process. So although you may think that some line has been crossed, it might not be so easy to specify exactly where that line sits.

Here’s a list of things people do to and for photographs, ranging from the innocent and traditional to the dangerously artificial. If you were running a photography contest, at what point would you draw the line and say “That’s not photography anymore?”

* You move the camera to get the best possible shot.

* You attach a lens that takes in a much wider or closer view than you would get with your eyes alone.

* You choose a shallow depth of field, providing that sharp-subject, blurry-background look of professional photos, which looks nothing like reality.

* You set up lights to illuminate a scene in a way that nature never intended.

* You bring in a professional crew to transform a model’s skin, clothing and hair.

* You witness a spectacular event, and then ask the people involved to go back and re-enact what just happened so you can have your camera ready.

* In the darkroom, you “burn” and “dodge” to make certain parts of the photo brighter or darker.

* You bring the photo into Photoshop to remove red-eye. (After all, the red-eye wouldn’t have existed if you hadn’t taken the photo to begin with.)

* You bring the photo into Photoshop to make the colors “pop” a little more.

* You bring the photo into Photoshop to shift one element slightly for better composition.

* You combine two or more photographs of the identical scene, taken at different exposures, strictly to produce a better range of lights and darks (what’s called “high dynamic range” photography).

* You combine two or more elements of different photos of the same scene, taken around the same time, simply to get them all in the frame at once (like the seagulls/lighthouse photo).

* You combine two or more elements of different photos that were taken at different times and places (like the motorcycle/tornado photo).

* You use a 3-D modeling program to create a photorealistic scene that never existed anywhere but in your imagination.

Of course, your answer may be something like, “It depends on the purpose of the photo.” If you’re a news photographer, you (and your audience) would probably be O.K. with tweaks to the color and contrast, but that’s it. On the other hand, if you’re an advertising photographer, you and your audience would probably have no problem with anything on the list above.

The question here is, what should the rules be for a photo competition?

Ms. Leuchter suggests that next year, they’ll have a separate category for Photoshop creations. I think that’s a good idea.

But meanwhile, we live in an age where Photoshop jobs are commonplace, reality TV shows dominate the airwaves, and news bites are taken out of context and manipulated. Maybe, these days, the question isn’t “What is a photograph?”; it’s “What is reality?”

******

Excellent analysis, Alan…. Thanks!

Hope you’ll consider posting it in the Comments for my post at nytimes.com/pogue!

Hi Alan! Yes, please do quote or link.. I’d be honored!

–dp
—
David Pogue
Tech Columnist, The New York Times
www.davidpogue.com
www.missingmanuals.com

On 2/25/10 9:17 PM, “Alan Ross” <alan@rossimages.net> wrote:

Hello David,

First, I am a former photographic assistant to Ansel Adams, and have also been a fan of your Mac writing for years – and only recently heard about/subscribed to your NYT e-column.

You posed some very insightful issues relating to photography in general.  It has always been my philosophy that photography is no more bound by reality than the pen.  A bit ironically, that is precisely why my own from-the-heart work is in black-and-white.  By its very nature it is an abstraction of reality and gives me the freedom to express my feelings about what is (actually!) in front of my lens.  Photography, like the pen, can be a simple instrument of recording events; it can be haiku; John Muir or JK Rowling.  Jacob Riis.  A simple family record.

Photography is accessible and part of the daily lives of nearly everyone, and though I am dedicated to my own work with analog photography, there are, indeed, some first class fantasists working with “Photoshop jobs.”  I think the reality here is that photography has fully become more than documentary, hobby, or straight imaging – it has forged its path into Art.

The digital world is what is most practical for the average person and virtually every professional.  A family takes vacation pictures and sees the result before they leave the scene.  A photojournalist can cover a breaking event and have the images on his editor’s computer in mere minutes- from the other side of the world.  An advertising photographer no longer has to wait for film to come back from the lab, wondering the while whether he blew it or not – it’s already been uploaded to the Art Director’s agency before the guy walks out the door.  A big worry is permanence – no more shoe box full of tin-types under grandma’s bed…

On the creative side, there is a difference between a magazine page and the Real Thing.  I have never seen an inkjet print that could match the depth of image in a traditional silver-print.  So, like the pen, we need to recognize the difference between use for fact and record, and art.

What is a photograph?  What is Art?  Is it Rembrandt or Magritte?  Dali or Manet?

Thank you for rattling my gray cells a bit.

Alan Ross

When I got my first sample of the Adox paper, I had just finished producing a batch of Ansel Adams’ Moon and Half Dome prints for The Ansel Adams Gallery. Since the negative (made on 120 Adox R17 12/28/1960) was still in my Omega D5500 enlarger, I had a perfect opportunity to see exactly how the paper would perform with a high quality image I had printed many many times.

The first result: an absolutely lovely image. It required no change in the “no filter” setting I usually use with this negative on Ilford Multigrade FB – so “normal” contrast seemed to be right on. It had a beautiful gradation of tonality from blacks to clean whites. It seemed a bit faster than the Ilford, but for the Adox test I was using a higher concentration of Dektol than I had used for the production printing.

The image seemed to show a slight tendency to split-tone in Ilford Selenium toner 1:10 for 4 minutes. The split was not as noticeable as I had seen with its predecessor, Agfa MCC. In a subsequent toning I cut the time to 3 minutes, and that seemed fine.

The surface quality seems to be beautifully glossy.

After such a first informal evaluation, the next thing I like to do is quantify a paper’s contrast range – how far will it go hard and soft? For this test I use a 4×5 Stouffer 31-step test film. With the test negative in the enlarger I first determine an exposure so that with no filter I get a print where I stop getting any increase in “black” somewhere around steps 3 to 5. After the print is dry I then see which step appears to be paper white. I then do the same thing with maximum magenta and maximum yellow filtration. The enlarger and its colorhead are over 25 years old and I now can’t get a filter setting beyond 164 Magenta or 164 Yellow. Even so, this is enough to get contrasts of 00 and 5+ with Multigrade.

With the Adox, “no filter” had almost identical contrast as Multigrade and slightly harder than Foma or Oriental. At 164M it was slightly softer than the Multigrade and identical to the Foma and Oriental – maybe a Grade 5. At 164Y it was off-the-chart soft. I was not able to get either a black or a white from the Stouffer film. At 130Y I got a near-black and near-white.

Summary: The Adox MCC 110 seems to be an absolutely excellent paper. Its paper base is now white rather than the “natural” white of the Agfa version, but the image color seems to be the same slightly-warm as the Agfa. Excellent printing speed, tonal gradation and contrast range.

CompnTemp ® is software rather than hardware and is available for both Windows and Mac computers. I set up a small shelf in my darkroom for my Mac Powerbook and all I have to do to get going is plug in the accessory USB temperature probe and cover the screen with red plastic.

What sets CompnTemp apart from ANY other timer is that is completely user-programmable. if you want your target temperature to be 73 degrees instead of 68 that’s fine. If you want it to count UP instead of DOWN, that’s fine, too.

You can save profiles so you can toggle from one group of settings for prints to another set of preferences for film. It even lets you customize the compensation curves.  It also gives you a continuous read-out of the ACTUAL temperature.

Price is $85 for CompnTemp and about $40 for the probe. Contact: http://www.curtpalm.com/Software.html for more information or purchase!

Probe Clamp

The probe used for the CompnTemp timer shouldn’t be allowed to be completely immersed – so I have started making a specialized little tray clamp to hold the probe (see right).

Flat fee $25 – USPS postage included. To order one from me, contact me!

Katherine Gillis in Lake Wylie, South Carolina has been doing much of my own print spotting and ALL of the spotting on the Ansel Adams Special Edition prints for the last 11 years or so. She used to be here in Santa Fe but for various reasons had to relocate.

She is so good and great to work with that I’ve been FedExing prints to her for nearly ten years. She works on black-and white and color prints and film. She has e-mail but prefers to discuss particular needs on the phone, so if the link above doesn’t get a response, give her a call at 803-631-0117.

For years I had a pair of supposedly “matched” Pentax digital spot meters that were never closer than 1/3 of a stop from each other – so I had to remember which meter I used for film tests and which one I had in the field.  One of these meters had an accident and got sent off to its maker for a rebuild – and came back 2/3 of a stop away from where it had been, now 1/3 higher than the meter it had been lower than!  So I sent the other meter off to its maker and after two months got it back about the same as when I had sent it.  Which meter was right?

I then got a dandy little “Pocket Spot” from Metered Light which sometimes agreed with one Pentax and other times, the other.  The Pocket Spot was the only really “linear” meter of the three, yielding nearly identical densities on a roll of 35mm film exposed randomly on plain targets ranging in brightness from about 1 EV up to 18.  Last spring I had had it with the three-meter dance and decided to finally standardize on the work of a highly competent, pro-savvy company in Hollywood.  Quality Light Metric does the meter calibration for the film industry, and those folks don’t have the time to mess around with equipment that isn’t right.  I sent both meters off to Hollywood. 

The calibration was done in two days at substantially less cost than the “other” place, and both meters now agreed exactly with each other, and while they were still 1/3 stop different from the Pocket Spot, they were now, at least, perfectly linear.  The final answer?  I sent the Pocket Spot and one of the Pentaxes off to Metered Light and had them tweak the PS to match the Pentax.  I now have three meters that all read the same!

My students, naturally, have all varieties of meters in their kits.  Sometimes they agree with mine and sometimes not.  We can tell pretty quickly whether their gear is linear, and if it is then we know they can rely on the readings, they’ll just have a different film speed than I use.  But they’ll wind up with the same exposure!

If you have multiple meters and want to put an end to calibration frustration, just have them all set to the same standard, and make that your own.  Contact George Milton at Quality Light Metric, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood CA 90028.  323-467-2265.  If you Google them, you’ll come up with a bunch of different addresses and phone #s.  This is the current info for mail order work.

In the last year and a half I have had the opportunity to make three international trips with 4×5 camera gear and TMax 100 film. Italy via Frankfurt; Scotland; and China. In Albuquerque and in Florence, when connection times allowed the time, a hand inspection (with wipedown) was done without objection, but other times and places made it practical or obligatory to send the carry-on film through the scanner.

On the China trip, my ISO 100 film got “zapped” six times (they even do this at train stations in China). The net result? No trace of fog.

On the Italy trip last year I made three identical exposures on TMX 100 Readyload. I put one sheet in my checked baggage, one in my carry-on to be x-rayed, and one which I requested hand-inspect. The two carry-on films were perfect, but the film in the checked bag showed definite scan lines. The scan lines were probably Zone I or below so didn’t “print,” but the net reccommendation from all of this is:

• Don’t put ANY film in your checked baggage.
• Carry-on film is probably fine with multiple security scans.

Update: November 2008. I just returned from my fifth trip to China with TMax 100 4×5 Readyload film. After, I think, six scans through passenger security machines there was no trace of fog.

This film was the foundation for the “graduated burn” masking techniques described in masking article #2, and unless some other similar material is brought to market those masking techniques are no longer possible.

Certain Photoshop techniques seem now to be the most practical alternative, and I am currently writing an update article for ViewCamera magazine later this year.

In the meantime, here’s a hint: to make a top- or corner-burn mask paint a WHITE gradient into a transparent layer placed on top of a black layer. Since the white prints as clear on a transparency, you can use the opacity slider on the black to make it any shade of gray you want and thus tweak how much burn the corner gets.

If you have been one of my students and would like something better than the xerox copies of the articles you got in your workshop binder, contact me. I’m offering the Variable-Contrast CD for $30. I’ll even sign it! It’s a single CD with a pdf file which has daisy-chained the four articles together.

Lastly, the illustration photos in the pdf file seem to print a bit on the mushy side with some printers. I suggest printing a single, sample page such as p.23 or p.24 and adjust the contrast and brightness settings on your printer until the images print satisfactorily.

Since 2004 or so, however, I’ve been thinking more and more that it makes more sense to calibrate to Zone IX, with a target density of about 1.45.

True, Zone VIII is supposed to be the high end of the “textural range”, but then Zone II-1/2 to III is generally considered the low end, and we don’t use THAT as a film speed point.

For me, Zone IX prints on a “medium contrast” paper as not quite a paper white. THIS is the end of “normal” photographic scale and I think it’s ultimately the most useful calibration point, in the same manner that we use Zone I for film speed (0.07 to 0.10 above Fb-F).

The Zone IX calibration point calls for more modest changes in development time and/or dilution to get useful Plus and Minus development. There also is less tendency for Minus development to “block-up” values which fall higher than Zone IX.

If you’d like to see a larger version of these theoretical curves showing why I like this idea, or if they don’t display on your browser, email me and I’ll send a pdf pdq!

I quit drymounting prints sometime in the mid 1980’s, or at least I stopped mounting them in the conventional fashion. I print with a minimum of a 1″ margin between the image and the edge of the paper. Prints 11×14 and smaller I don’t mount at all. I flatten the air-dried prints in a mount press and then put them in a presentation/handling mat. A properly sized bevel overmat is hinged to a backing board, and the print is then positioned in the window and then corner-mounted to the backing. 16×20 and 20×24 prints are mounted onto a sheet of 2-ply museum board to stiffen the print and make it flatter, but they are corner-mounted in a handling mat in much the same manner as the smaller prints.

Anecdotally, I’d like to note that I have been called upon to restore several Adams prints, which had become partially or entirely separated from the original mount board. I have had to carefully remount the prints to the original, sometimes damaged or foxed board because Ansel’s signature was on the mount! Additionally, I had several prints come back, from a gallery that should know better, with wine stains on the mats and backing! The prints themselves were fine, so I just put them in new mats!