When Icons have feet of clay

The debate has been around since the inception of digital photography and will probably still be raging long after I'm gone. It centers around the difference in "enhanced" digital photographs versus "manipulated" photographs. It's been written and discussed ad infinitum. I've even written about it in previous blogs but some things have happened recently that put a new twist on it for me.

I'll begin by stating my views on the subject. When I upload an image to my computer and launch it in Photoshop or Lightroom I almost always only perform tasks I did in the darkroom. I'll crop the image if necessary, adjust the contrast, adjust the exposure, maybe increase the saturation, and use minimal sharpening. Some of these are necessary because of my technique and some are necessary because of the characteristics of the RAW format that I shoot in. I consider these images to be "enhanced" and they are always my attempt to render the image the way I saw it. There are 2 images on my website currently that have been "manipulated" using Photoshop magic but I knew when I shot them that I would be creating a surreal image in the computer. But the main thing for me is to present the images how I saw them. Not how I imagined them or how I wish I'd have seen them, but what I saw that moved me to create the image.

In that spirit I've always stayed away from filters that alter the perception of colors. Things like color enhancing filters, warming polarizers, or a combination of the two. The results produced by them just doesn't look real to me. I loved Velvia film when I was shooting film but only used it for certain low contrast scenes because of it's not always realistic reproduction of colors. In short, I tend to shy away from anything that changes the faithful reproduction of an image and I'm not a big fan of folks who produce those kind of images.

I also have no respect for photographers that are deceptive in describing their work. For many years I admired the work of Art Wolfe. His Nature and Wildlife photography was an inspiration to me. Then it came out that some of the images in one of his books were manipulated to the point where more animals were added to a herd of zebras to make the patterns look like there were more animals in the herd. I'd just about gotten over it until recently Outdoor Photographer magazine ran a cover shot by Art Wolfe of the moon showing through Delicate Arch in Utah. After much debate it was disclosed that yes, the moon had been added to the image of the arch. In essence, he was portraying things that simply had not occurred.

Not long ago a photographer was disqualified from a prestigious international competition when it was disclosed that his image of a supposedly wild wolf jumping over a fence was, in fact, a shot of a captive animal obeying it's trainer's commands. Again, deceptive.

Now there's the whole debate over HDR (High Dynamic Range) photo processing. I'm no expert but my understanding is that HDR is used to make adjustments in an image where the contrast is naturally too great to render a usable image. But people are getting carried away with it. Most of the time HDR images look pretty good but a lot of HDR's have a strangely unrealistic look. The colors are too saturated or the image is too crisp for what are professed as the conditions.

A recent image by Tom Till falls in this category. In one of his most recent collections of images Mr. Till displays some HDR images. One in particular is unrealistic to the point of being disturbing. His image looking through the window of an abandoned building near the ghost town of Alma is just downright unrealistic yet he declares that the images were reproduced the way he "saw" them. If he truly saw this image in the manner it's presented I'd really like to discuss his point of view. When I first looked at it I felt like I was having an acid flashback. It's simply too crazy looking.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not the Photoshop police and I'm not out to bust anyone who uses the tool to it's complete capability. All I'm asking is for people to be honest. If you saw 50 zebras in a herd, show me 50 zebras, not 100 zebras. If you didn't see the moon in that particular place in relation to Delicate Arch, don't tell me you did. If you've photographed a captive animal, don't tell me it's wild. And finally, if your vision of a scene is so ridiculously false, don't portray it as how you saw the image unless you're having an acid flashback. BE HONEST with me.

I mentioned earlier some of the actions I use when processing my digital images. The image accompanying this blog is a perfect example. Here's what I did and why I did it. As I said, I shoot in RAW format which does require some adjustments. The image was cropped to a more panoramic format because I feel it suited the subject. I increased the contrast slightly since RAW files tend to be low contrast. The only thing I did after that was to sharpen the image a little since RAW files are always a bit less than optimum sharpness. Basically I made 3 adjustments to this file. One because of the format I visualized when I saw the image, and the other two to compensate for the RAW format. It really does represent what I saw in the field. And if you have questions about any of my images I'll be happy to disclose my work flow and the reasoning behind it at any time.

In the meantime, anyone know of a couple of incredibly talented photographers out there that I can admire?

What...Me Rant? Nahhhhhh

Me? Rant? Never! Okay, well maybe a little, but only on days that end in "Y" and then only if I'm in groups of 1 or more or when I'm by myself or with someone. But never fear, readers, for this blog will only be half a rant.

Last weekend I went on an overnight trip to Steamboat Springs for a quick visit with some of the in-laws. Not a bad deal, right? Spend the night in Steamboat Springs, a wonderful mountain town. I'd get a chance to visit with some of the favorite relatives and there was a chance I'd be able to photograph some wildflowers based on reports I'd read on some of the photo bulletin boards. So off we went.

On the road about 1:30 Saturday afternoon and almost immediately I should have known how the weekend was going to go. About 20 miles out I had a vision: I left not 1 but 2 tripods at home. Can't shoot wildflowers without a tripod so we turned around and headed back to the house. An hour wasted. But not to worry, we're on the road. The rest of the drive was uneventful and we made it to Steamboat in a little over 3 hours. Let the adventure begin!

Second issue (and a portion of the rant): We pulled up to the hotel just before 4:30 and I went to the office to check in. Check in time is 3:00, right? So I tell the desk clerk who we were, he checks the computer, then gets on a walkie talkie and starts talking in some foreign language for about 3 minutes. He gets a reply and tells me our room won't be ready for 20 minutes but we can wait in the lobby if we want. Now the burn begins....so back to the car, sit there for 20 minutes then go register and get our suitcases all settled into the room. Then back in the car and off to the condo where the in-laws were staying.

After a bit of conversation we figured my brother in law and his kids weren't going to be arriving for a while so me being me, I decided to head up the hill to Dumont Lake to look for wildflowers and found a Bonanza. To quote Richard Landis, "...sweet flowers in profusion.." (if you remember that song you must be really OLD) but I did have a wonderful 90 minutes of shooting before the light faded. I wondered why it was getting so dark till I looked at my watch and saw it was past 8pm. Guess I better get back down the hill for supper.

We had a grand supper, Mike and the kids finally arrived, and we had a good visit before heading off to the hotel for the night and there we ran into the second hotel snafu. I tried to utilize the free wi-fi only to discover the password had expired. Another trip to the desk where I was told "yes, we know. The password always expires about this time on Saturday night." Grrrrrrrrrrrrr But I got it going before hitting the rack for a few hours of sleep. Up early the next morning and back up the hill for some sunrise light on the flowers. It was overcast so I had unlimited shooting time but I only played for about an hour before heading back to town to wake the family and have breakfast. On the way back I detoured up the Buffalo Pass road for a ways and was surprised by 2 big bull moose grazing in a meadow. I've seen lots of moose before but these were the 2 biggest bulls (and only big bulls) I'd ever seen. Of course I had a wide angle lens on the camera and they headed into the woods before I could change lenses. Note to self: (again) when traveling with cameras in wildlife habitat, keep the freakin telephoto on the camera ya bonehead! I missed the shot but I now know where to find them. But on with the story.

I got the gals awake and dressed and we took a peek at the breakfast area at the hotel. It was very small and very crowded so we decided to head to the condo for breakfast. Good meal, more conversation. Finally, we decided to head home...at 1pm. I knew we would hit the heart of the "coming home from a weekend in the mountains" traffic but had no choice. Sure enough it took us over 5 hours to get home. Arrrrrggggghhhhh.

But now the rant begins. I'm really fired up at the human race, specifically the rich ones who build huge homes in the woods and expect others to protect them from natural disasters. You know who you are and the pine beetle devastation is YOUR FAULT! I'm not delusional enough to believe that this is the first time the forests have suffered this malady but before there were no megahomes to protect. Mother Nature controlled the pine beetles by burning their little behinds out. But now we can't do that. We HAVE to protect property and structures. Don't we? I say NO FLIPPIN WAY.

The conifer forests of Colorado have been raped..abused...pick your term and the farther north you go the worse it is. North Park and the area around Steamboat Springs exhibit the worst beetle kill areas I've ever seen. I get so depressed when I see that I can't even begin to express it in words. My creativity was challenged when shooting the wildflowers because I couldn't find a backdrop of conifers that wasn't full of brown ugly beetle killed trees.

I know it will never happen but I sure wish we could utilize Mother Nature's way of controlling beetles. If we could just have a few major forest fires and back off from supressing them. If we could just let them burn...I truly think that's what it would take. But the toll on personal property would be enormous and for that reason I know it will never happen. We'll never just let the fires burn. And that, my friends, is a travesty worse than the beetle kill.