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?)

Pulitzer Prices

This year’s Pulitzer Prices have been given out in the U.S. The New York Times swept five, including the price for photojournalism. Damon Winter’s A Vision of History is, of course, about the Obama election. It’s a good series, although some of the crowd photos are not that interesting. This I kinda like:

Here’s who I’d want to be

I’ve been working on my part-time job (photo editor at Ydin magazine) and ran into Laura Junka. Her career is something I’d really want for myself: she has managed to succesfully combine academic studies in international politics, journalism and photojournalism. So at the moment she is finishing her dissertation, writing, and photographing in the Middle East. (And she is one year younger than I am. Grrrr…)

World Press Photo 2008

The jury has made its decision; the best press photo of the year is Anthony Suau’s black and white photograph about a police officer in an American home after the eviction of its inhabitants.

Without seeing the other contestants, I have to say I like this choice. The image is strong and definitely important; the current economic crisis is playing havoc with normal lives on both sides of the Atlantic.

What this image does need is a caption or a story to accompagny it. Otherwise you could end up thinking that it is about a drug bust, or an antiterroristic operation, or whatever. I don’t think that the necessity of the caption makes the image any weaker, though – but then, I have always been for the cooperation of text and image. The picture does not need to tell the whole story in itself. How could it?

Agnes Dherbeys & Nepal

I’ve been following the political turmoil of Nepal somewhat; read a couple of books about the strange history of the Nepalese royal family and tried to understand the problems of the country in the larger context of being tucked somewhere between China and India.. Agnes Dherbeys is a photojournalist who has been following Nepal’s chaos.

I like the classic black and white photojournalistic style and her tones.. perhaps not that contemporary but still looks pretty damn good to me.

Kent Klich

Kent Klich is a psychologist, a photographer and a former Magnum member (he apparently left Magnum in 2002). I found his series Out of Sight somewhere.. it seems to be about homeless people, who he portrays in closeup portraits with their eyes closed – hence, out of sight. Out of sight, out of mind.

Then he prints the portraits large and puts them in public spaces and photographs people paying no attention to them.

An interesting project. His site has lots of other projects as well, and some beautiful photography…

Jessica Dimmock

The Ninth Floor project. Hurts to look at, but still..

There’s also a film, a video snippet of which can be viewed here but not embedded..

D’you know what’s fucking scary? The way hard drug addicts start to sound like each other. During the last year of her life, when my friend was calling me, I did not recognize her voice on the phone. She didn’t sound like herself. She sounded like the woman on that video.