Daddy’s Photo Policy

To just see my policy please zoom on down to the bottom of the page.

For an explanation of it, read on…

Image via Wikipedia

I’ve always been a keen photographer, taking photos of varying quality on cameras of same for most of my adult life.

One of my first cameras was a second-hand manual only Rollei 35S compact, complete with Carl Zeiss lens: a design classic & a thing of great beauty. When I could afford to I moved onto SLRs & I bought a Ricoh, a lot of money for me at the time, & kitted it out with a few extra lenses, including a 24-80mm zoom & a 180 degree view Fisheye. I even had an early, very bulky, auto-focus lens.

Image via Wikipedia

For anyone  – *gasp* – really young these cameras used roll film. You couldn’t delete a shot you didn’t like, & when your roll of 24-35 pictures was finished  you had to take it off to the photo shop or chemist, wait a week & pay – yes pay – to get your pictures. So for a hobbyist wanting to take lots of pictures, it was expensive.

How times have changed!

Digital photography of course has revolutionised photography. Like so much of the communications / digital revolution it has brought increased democracy. Now anyone with a basic mobile phone or cheap compact can take quality photos & as many they like, chuck out the ones they don’t like & publish the good ones immediately to a potential audience of millions. I was slow to adopt it. I had a very good compact when it took off, & I hated the shutter lag of the early models; something that still annoys me. Since becoming a devotee of web 2.0 I of course have now embraced it whole-heartedly, & am hoping 1 day to be able to afford a good DSLR.

Image via Wikipedia

The second ‘game-changer’ in the world of photography, in my opinion, is Photoshop. Now your photos can be improved, tweaked, altered to your heart’s content. It’s even changed our language: “photoshop” is now a recognised verb.

For me it’s a mixed blessing. Maybe because my background is pre-digital for me photography is about fidelity: capturing a moment in time & freezing it in visual form. I want my photos to reflect exactly what I am seeing when I press the shutter button.

With Photoshop you take out things you don’t like, add things that weren’t there, alter shapes, colours, pretty much anything you like until – in theory – the end product can bear no relation to the original shot.

We probably see this most in the fashion industry.  It’s almost unheard-of for a ‘photo’ of a model not to be Photoshopped to a certain extent: blemishes removed, skin tones altered, legs lengthened, boobs enlarged – it’s all been done. Virtual plastic surgery!

A closer to home example is where I gave a photo of my son when he was very young to a friend who had photoshop. At the time he had a protruding herniated belly button, not uncommon in young babies, not a health risk & something that goes away with time – which it has. I later found out that they had photoshopped it out. Although it was well-meant, & I know that this friend dotes on the babies almost as much as we do, it upset me a little. It was part of who he was & I didn’t like his image being altered to make him something he wasn’t, even in a small way.

I’m not knocking it; the greatly increased flexibility can give rise to a whole new level of creativity; you could even say a new art form. And yes, photos have always been altered; you’ve always been able to do quite a bit ‘in-camera’ by filddling about with shutter speeds & apertures for instance, which I sometimes even do if I’m feeling technical & creative enough. Digital photography & Photoshop have just made it relatively quick & easy.

So what’s brought this on? Firstly, a while ago I was shocked to learn that 1 of my fave bloggers  – a celeb in the blogging world – regularly photoshops images of themselves on their blog. For them not to do so was a really big deal. The thought would never have occurred to me!

Secondly, I recently subscribed to a photo blog that runs regular competitions. I thought I might be in with a chance. Then I saw some of the winning entries: absolutely stunning! Probably the work of professionals using top-of-the-range gear. I then however read a post from them asking which of the various Photoshop programs the contributors used to alter their images. I realised that the images were also being altered & perfected on computer screens: no wonder they were so good!

To my mind this is cheating. It’s not photography; it’s photography plus digital image manipulation. When you alter an image from what was originally photographed for me it stops being a photo. A picture: yes; a photo: no.

I would like to see disclaimers attached to images that have been photoshopped to the extent that they are not a realistic recreation of the scene originally photographed. It’ll never happen of course: it’s too subjective & there are too many grey areas.

Which brings me to the point of this Page:

My Photo Policy.

Until relatively recently my images were not editted in any way, they were all published as is, even with red-eye. Why? Basically, I didn’t know how to.

In recent months I’ve discovered – thanks to the ever-helpful folk of twitter – Picasa, Google’s free photo program. I also discovered that Windows Photo Gallery is very good for removing red-eye.

So now I do alter my images. But only to bring the image as close as possible to recreating the scene that was being photographed. So I’ll remove red-eye, & often tweak shadows / highlights / fill light due to my camera’s tendency to mute them.* Apart from watermarking & cropping: that’s it. My aim is photos that are WYSIWYG: nowt taken out, no artificial additives, organic & good for you!

You can see an example of this tweaking by comparing the image of me holding my newborn twins in the recent post “The Gallery: Children” with where it was first published in “What a Day!“.

OK? Just so you know.

* I’d also like to correct out-of-focus shots, but that’s 1 I don’t know how to do yet.

Related Articles

• Learn How to Use Photoshop (brighthub.com)
• Ann Taylor Apologizes For Photoshop Horror [Photoshop Of Horrors] (jezebel.com)
• Amazing Pictures Not Photoshopped (neatorama.com)
• 27 Beautiful Photos To Believe That Are Not Made in Photoshop (smashinghub.com)