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It is all about the Image, not the effort


Bill Brooks

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I agree with this author.

 

https://fstoppers.com/originals/just-because-it-was-hard-shoot-doesnt-make-it-good-photograph-157312

 

This author is reinventing the wheel, and has that common disease "Fear of Photoshop"

 

https://fstoppers.com/bts/atlas-sun-most-complicated-photo-ive-ever-shot-157200

 

 

 

 

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I totally agree with the title of this thread!

 

I agree about the fear of Photosshop with regard to second link. It struck me straightaway but the subject's right hand looks wrong, it is open with the sun behind it, it might have worked if the palm had been turned away. As it is it looks like a badly executed composite, exactly the opposite of what he intended!

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van Oosten’s images are spectacular because he spends the time and effort, and he has talent. So I agree with you Philippe. 

 
My post is about clients making a purchasing decision. Clients will buy van Oosten’s images because they are spectacular. Full stop. Clients only care about the image. Not the effort.
 
The sun photographer spends too much effort, and only comes up with a so so image. I can see a photo editor’s eyes glazing over if a photographer tries to sell a so so image based on the effort involved. I can see an assignment editor being terrified that the sun photographer would not be able produce a simple image on time and on budget. 
 
There are a lot of, how to shoot a simple image in the most complicated way, stories on the internet. This is one of them. They are usually published on a site trying to give newby photographers an inferiority complex, so they will buy the instructional tutorials for sale on the site. Note the sidebar on this site “Featured Tutorials”
 
There is also a lot of good advice on the internet, and on the site in question. I use the KIS yardstick. Keep It Simple (as possible).
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2011 SURYA NAMASKAR - Anton Jankovoy

India, Maharashtra, Paradise Beach, 2011 | 1/250 sec, f/11, ISO 200, FL 600 mm

 

wim

 

 

Much better shot than the one by Mr Complicated.

 
Pose is better, lighting looks real, Gradient on disc of sun interesting. Room for type.
 
I think both shots would have been much better if the sun had risen until it was in the vertical centre of the image well above the figure. 
 
That way it would look like a sun worshiper, rather than someone holding a beach ball.
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I don't have "Fear of PhotoShop". It's a remarkable tool for creating concept images. However, I get alarmed when photographers use PS to embellish the content of documentary images -- i.e. the software itself is neutral, it's how it gets misused that can be scary.

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Not photoshopped documentary photography is embellished all the time.

 
Documentary images are embellished by selecting a lens, point of view, subject matter, and ignoring other aspects of the subject that do not fit in with the photographer’s world view. Then the embellishment continues onto selecting the one photograph, amongst many contradictory photographs, to display.
 
We have to guard against changing historical fact, but every documentary image has an axe to grind. Think of documentary filmmaker Michael Moore, and the anti Moore documentary “Manufacturing Dissent: Uncovering Michael Moore”. I point this out only to suggest that exaggeration has always had it’s place.
 
 
My approach to camera work and then post processing, is to employ exaggeration to get the facts across to a bored audience inundated with images. If the image becomes fiction, then I declare that it is digitally manipulated.
 
Speaking of fiction, some of the greatest society changing literature has been fiction based on fact. Photography is no different.
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And at the other end of the scale is Galen Rowell's shot of the lynx that he took from inside his car. Its here on Alamy. Galen went very far and wide to get his superb portfolio together, but would his picture of the lynx have been better if it had been the result of a 6 hour hike? Nope.

lynx-in-alpine-flowers-teklanika-river-a

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He certainly was for me. I changed from a keen photographer to a passionate one when I started climbing and hiking in the French and Swiss Alps at the end of the eighties. My reference handbook all through the nineties was the gorgeous Mountain Light. I read that book so many times, for the insights as well as technical information. Even now, his photos are packed with so much colour and saturation, his exposure was spot on - no LR or DxO to pull under/over exposed shots out of the bin. It was a sad day when he died. 

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