Too Much Photoshop

Our documentary photography teacher sends us all kinds of links and stories. This is what was in my inbox today, an article about The Photo of the Year competition in Denmark which got interesting when one of the photographers was disqualified from the competition for taking Photoshop processing too far. Altogether three photographers were asked to show their RAW files in addition to their processed images.

Now, the examples in the article are quite extreme. It is clearly visible that some heavy processing has gone on, and the photos do not have a natural look whatsoever.

This is the original RAW image after very basic conversion to JPG

This is the photographer’s processed version.

Now, the processed versions remind me somewhat of some of the HDR photos you see on Flickr – photos where someone’s so enamored with the processing technique that s/he loses sight of what is actually in the image.

Still… I do not think that a RAW image represents reality either. RAW is not comparable to a negative, and handing out RAW versions is not something I would gladly do. My camera is not especially brilliant in getting the white balance correct, even if I select it myself, and I definitely want to correct it when processing. I also usually underexpose half a stop and then add exposure in Photoshop because otherwise I will get washed-out colors. And of course the RAW image is still unsharpened.

I predict that these discussions will become more common now that digital photography is the default. What is reality, and how are you supposed to photograph it? What is too much processing? Are you cheating if you enhance your photos, if the “message” of the photo stays the same? (Or should you forget about documentary and move into autonomous art where there’s more freedom?)

Badly matching body parts and other hilarious stuff

I found a link to a very funny site:

http://photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com

Most examples are naturally from advertising. What’s especially weird is that in many instances it would’ve been a pretty fast and easy job just to shoot a normal photo – instead, they go and do creepy and unconvincing photoshop jobs which take probably hours more time. Like here:

You want a photo with someone holding a plate in a kitchen? Just go and shoot one then, for chrissakes!

But this is baaaaaaaad: A National Geographic photo of cloud reflections – except that … hey, that’s not they way reflections work! How could they have missed this?

(Ahem, the picture seems to have moved or gotten borked or something. Well, it had a serene scene of boats on a lake with huge clouds supposedly reflected from the lake surface – except that they weren’t reflected, they continued. Pfft.)