The good old bad old days. Or, as time goes byte.

“Is digital photography making photographers lazy? Is it bringing in new talent who wouldn't otherwise have a chance to produce great "art" without understanding basic photographic techniques?”

In other words “Has digital made you a better photographer or has it made it easier for you to be a photographer?”

I got thinking about workflow and picture editing recently.

I read on Twitter about a cosmonaut who shot 35000 images during his time in space.

I see Tweets from photographers saying:

“A day of catching up on retouching”

“Catching up on retouching today”

“1300 images down to 107 selects… now to choose the final 10 images”

“Retouching marathon… 24 hours before I fly”

“1600 images down to 110 selects”

.. and so it goes on.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not criticising these very talented photographers, but when I read that they are shooting several THOUSAND images on a job then I get to wondering. Is this a case of "Spray 'n Pray?" I.e. Take loads of pictures and some of them are sure to be OK.

I have never shot that many images on one job but it seems to be slowly affecting me also. I recently shot a friends’ wedding and was amazed afterwards to see that I taken 680 pictures! Granted I had to reject 47 of them due to people blinking or the flash not going off and I’d been photographing constantly for eighteen hours but I’ve NEVER previously shot so many pictures on one job. I guess that this is due to my being raised with film. Previously I always knew that there were only 36 exposures to play with and that they had to be developed and that I wouldn’t see the results until they came back from the lab. This taught me about trying to get it right first time in the camera. I certainly do not want to spend half a day messing about on a computer after a job.

I was reminded of this a couple of weekends ago. I was in the French part of Switzerland and had set up my tripod and composed a photograph for a brochure shoot. I did a last minute check through the viewfinder. All verticals vertical? check. Horizontal lines true? Check. Then I noticed about six metres (about 20 feet) away a white object on the floor. I looked up and saw that it was a cigarette packet. Discarded by some Neanderthal too stupid to deposit it a bin.

I thought to myself. It's barely a speck and will be nearly invisible on the final TIFF file. I can always correct it in post production. Then it hit me. Digital photography is making me lazy. I went and deposited the packet into the nearest bin.
 

I have Photoshop. Version six to be exact. I don't need more as there isn't enough time for me to learn all its nuances. I use it mainly to spot my images, slightly sharpen images that the RAW conversion programme hasn't done properly and to correct converging verticals in photos where I didn't have a tilt and shift lens / camera combo with me on site. ( For that particular feature I use a Photoshop addon called "PTLens" by Tom Niemann)

All these things I used to do in the days when I used a darkroom. Dust would be blown off with some canned air, focus could be checked with the loupe under the enlarger and verticals corrected (somewhat) by tilting the enlarger head or at the taking process by either raising the camera (if possible) or using a tilt / shift lens.

If it’s people photography, then I may retouch a pimple or two but that’s as far as it goes. I’d like to think that the subject likes my pictures because it shows him / her as they really are. I get dismayed when I see the heavily airbrushed magazine covers on the shelves here. Beaming faces with impossibly flawless complexions. 

This image hasn't been 'shopped

I’m really trying with this post, not to sound like some Luddite who is afraid of welcoming new equipment and ideas. I'm not against technology but I use it sparingly.  I love the histogram feature on my camera. It gives me instant feedback and lets me know (most of the time), if I’m over or under exposing. But for most of the time, I shoot with the camera on manual and about half the time with the lens on manual focus. I still carry a Minolta light meter with me for those times when I want to have peace of mind regarding exposure. Granted, the instant preview is also good because now I don’t have to worry if my subject blinked or if a car or other object encroached on the image whilst I was taking it. It’s also good to give feedback to the model about the pose. In the old days, I’d have a mirror behind me (on studio shoots), where the model could see themselves and how the pose looked.

But even if digital went away tomorrow, I'd still be in love with the medium of photography and I'd still be able to limit myself to 36 pictures.


How many of today's current crop of rising star digital photogrpahers could say that?


Tom