> ends up looking like it couldn't look in real life.

Eyes are subjective. The goal of manual post processing is often to make an image that replicates what the photographer saw, which is rarely possible with the automatic processing the camera does.

(Image data is always processed. No human can see raw photon counts.)

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foxglacier 2 days ago | parent [-]

You mean people's brains selectively enhance the contrast of the mountains so he's trying to reproduce that perception?

In these cases, it's clearly not to replicate what the photographer saw with his unaided eyes because he wouldn't have been able to see such detail so far away. Is it to replicate what he saw through the viewfinder?

A lot of photographers here. Do you guys impose some kind of personal restrictions on what types of processing or instruments you use to make it "honest" or not-cheating? How does that work?

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kqr 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Yes, people's brains selectively modify contrast, saturation, detail, framing, and just about every parameter there is.

When it comes to visual experiences, it is meaningless to talk about "honesty" because they are so subjective. That's one of the greatest joys of looking at other photographers' interpretations of familiar subjects: they see things so differently.

Restrictions on processing make sense, but they are not easy rules, because they depend on the purpose of the image. I suspect the most restricted are people in news -- they operate on similar principles as those who write the articles. In other words, there are no forbidden technical procedures, but the end product must effectively convey a real-world event (from some perspective -- news is always biased.)

	▲	igouy 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		> it is meaningless to talk about "honesty" because they are so subjective. One can still choose to deliberately misrepresent something that is subjective.

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igouy a day ago | parent | prev [-]

> Is it to replicate what he saw through the viewfinder?

The experience is bigger than "saw".

Is it to hint at what they felt?

Later, looking at a purely-2d-visual representation is a different kind of experience than being there.

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foxglacier a day ago | parent [-]

If it's art, to induce a feeling in the audience, then I don't see why you need to restrict it to actual photos of actual things. Once you start tweaking the picture, you can make it feel like all sorts of things that it's not, or appear to be something it's not, so why not go the whole hog and just create an image with whatever tools you can? It seems like photographs some with some sense of legitimacy as being "real" even though photographers can distort how things look to convey some feeling. Susan Sontag's essay described taking many photos of a subject until they showed the right emotion. So you can make anyone look like any emotion by cherry-picking from a huge set of shots.

	▲	igouy 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> I don't see why you need to restrict it to actual photos of actual things. We don't need to, although in that case, we might think of what we are doing as digital painting rather than photography. > some sense of legitimacy as being "real" A photograph is a purely-2d purely-visual representation of what we inescapably experience as 3d and multi-sensory. It can be "a real photograph" but not "real". If what we are interested in is a documentary representation then we are making some additional claims about how the "real photograph" was made. > any emotion by cherry-picking from a huge set of shots Once upon a time, in the age of film photography, photo-journalists did take a huge number of exposures and have someone else process the films, and then select particular frames from contact sheets. Digital reduces that cost. However, when someone looks at a photograph, they bring all of themselves and a little of the photograph.