i don't enhance my photos. and it really bothers me when other people do. photography is an art form--a perspective representation of the world and how an artist views it. to distort and maim the photograph is to lie to the viewer. i hate looking at a photo and not trusting the photographer because the beauty of the photo may lie in the the skill of the photographer, but more likely lies in their particular adeptness in photoshop. get real. i mean really. get real. there is nothing like taking a beautiful photograph and knowing that it came to be through the magnificence of nature/people/events and your photographic eye--your artistic perception. THAT is art. those are the photos that deserve appreciation. not the photos that were concocted in a second and doctored in photoshop for ten minutes. sometimes they turn out better--there's no denying. but they lose the essence of a photograph--the snapshot of a moment in time that will never return. by changing the moment, we lose it altogether. photoshop creates a moment that never existed--therefore making it surreal and untrue. no moment is captured, rather it is distorted, along with the personal and photographic memory of that moment.
think back to the world war photographers. they captured moments in time--horrific ones--that were immortalized. they showed the world what it was unable to see and shared the terrors of war. in a sense, they made it real--something that seemed like a far away, bad dream. if they could do so much with cumbersome cameras, equipment and relatively little knowledge of the art of photography, then why can't we? why MUST we adjust and shift and change and ruin what already works so nicely?
i love my camera. i love the archaic quality that the film brings to a photograph, the scratches on the lens and on the film that make characteristic squiggles on everything i see. i love taking my time with each shot, careful not to waste film, and seeing the results afterward. i love composing shots and seeing the possibilities of what i can put in the frame to make something new. capturing light as it slips below the horizon, or someone in motion when they think you aren't watching--and seeing all these as they were in the moment; being reminded of the times they represent--good and bad.
photoshop is like plastic. it looks good at first, but it ruins the essence of what is real. i just wish everyone would stop forgetting the magic of film and the beauty of a real photograph. let it remain an art--go poison something else.
2 comments:
ooh, girl. touchy subject! you've never used photoshop before? i think there's room in this world for both types of photography, and more, wouldn't you say? not to mention that famous/ controversial war photographer out who positioned fallen soldier's bodies in order to create a more appealing image.
naturally, i agree with you on capturing pure, natural moments as an art form... but hard to say that photo manipulation isn't art in itself, and that it hasn't always been a form of art either.
your thoughts are like lightning. keep them comin!
i have used photoshop--did a course in intermedia: illustrator, indesign, flash and p.s... my comment is more on the way people take a mediocre photo--without talent--then doctor it--enhancing saturation, contrast etc. and call it wonderful. i find it deceptive and lackluster.
as far as staging goes, it's an extension of artistic intention, so while dishonest, like a film, it doesn't compromise raw talent, just moment of interception....
you were in my dream last night. we had fun!!
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