Month: July 2010

Photography Tutorial – Getting the Shot

I have what I think is a fun idea that can lead to an interesting discussion.  Let me explain.

I often think of art in general and photography in particular as involving two very important elements – creative vocabulary and interpretive decisions.  Creative vocabulary is the knowledge, skills and techniques we use as artists and just like our verbal vocabulary, we use the ‘words’ in our creative vocabulary to express ourselves.  As we grow as artists our creative vocabulary grows and we are able to more fully and richly communicate our thoughts and feelings.

Interpretive decisions recognizes the fact that each of us has a unique world view and a unique thing to say.  When creating a work of art we make numerous decisions, decisions that shape the way we interpret our subject and thereby communicate what it is we have to say about it.

So, this leads to my fun idea.

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Honesty in Photography

I just read a great email from Brian Peterson, founder of The Perfect Picture School of Photography.  He ran an unscientific opinion pole on whether photographers felt it was OK to dramatically alter photographs in Photoshop.  Now, by ‘dramatically alter,’ Brian means to add major elements to an image that were not present in the original scene or make other major changes that alter the content of the image.

He has a provocative blog post with the title that starts, “Every photograph is a ‘lie,…’,  In it he raises the excellent point that even those photographs that aren’t altered in Photoshop are still an abstraction of reality and thus a ‘lie.’  I recommend you read it.

What were the results of his opinion pole?  Brian reports that 41% of photographers felt that it is OK to dramatically alter images in Photoshop and NOT tell anyone unless asked.  And if asked, some would say, “It’s none of your business.”  The reason photographers felt this way boiled down to two words – Artistic License.

I have my own thoughts on “artistic license” and would like to share them with you.

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Lightroom Tutorial – LR 3

Lightroom 3 came in the mail yesterday (along with CS5) so today I’m trying it out.  There’s not a lot of new functionality like there was when LR2 introduced local adjustments.  But there are some new things I’m really excited about.

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