Glen wrote: > > At 01:35 AM 11/25/2005, Ann Sanfedele wrote: > > > > > > > FWIW, your picture wouldn't qualify as a nature print in our club and > > interclub competitions. > > > >And even with digital, a nature stock agency won't > >take manipulated stuff... at least mine won't. > > If all that was done, was to remove a single vapor trail from an otherwise > perfect sky, how on earth will the stock agency, or anyone else for that > matter, ever know about the retouching? Even if they did know, I don't see > why they would care at all. (This is assuming a flawless retouching job was > done.) > > take care, > Glen
Well I'm not thinking so much about a jet trail in the sky when I'm talking about stuff for a nature stock agency that sells a lot of stuff to Scientific publications. I will say that I think (maybe I'm wrong) that anyone who is really photoshop savvy (not me) can probably instantly tell if something has been "cleaned up" extensively. It isn't that working on images in photoshop is inherently evil, just that it is more interesting and impressive if you know what you are looking at hasn't been worked over in either the darkroom or photoshop. Otoh, I do like to "play" in photoshop and do totally abstract stuff and such, making entirely different things out of what started as a photo or a scanned piece of fabric or the like. I'm not very good at it, but I think it is fun, much as I thought it was fun to make paper negs in the darkroom and solarize stuff even played with double exposures and such - but it is all like a tour de force of technique and not much to do with substance. I want to capture what I saw and point to it with my prints or jpgs, so there is no joy in it for me if I were to be out in the field shooting and thinking "well, I wish that guy in the red jacket wasn't there but, oh hell, I can take him out in photoshop." What I do like about the computer is the priints i get from just my old 820 Epson in color and the way the color stuff of mine I like the best looks on the screen. I don't think the medium is the message, and someone mentioned that what mattered was the skill or talent or whathaveyou of the photographer, not whether or not that person is shooting digital, using a toss away camera, shooting with a large format or a polaroid sx-70. so there :) ann
