jeremymerriam said:
That's why I said I believe the most one should edit is CameraRAW. No editing is impossible - but all that Photoshop "stuff". -> if I want a fake image I'll ask for a computer simulation.
And Photoshop - I don't have the patience to spend ages on an image - in CameraRAW I'm normally done with it in less than 1 minute. Yes, I do end up shooting the odd HDR - and that's a deviation from my "normal course" but not that many, and then I try to make them look as normal as possible.
Oh, and I don't have the time to spend on figuring out all the depths of Photoshop.
I still call an image that has taken a lot of editing, especially in Photoshop a fake image.
So by your standards, the fact that I shoot film makes me a better artist/photographer than you? Do you even realize that how you are defining art, you are essentially contradicting yourself? Arguing whose art form is more "real" in a digital vs digital discussion, lol.
It's pretty ignorant to see any form of art better or worse than the next form. Painting, drawing, sculpting, photography are all just different forms of art with different ways of expressing ourselves. Some might be more difficult, some might need more patience, and a different mind-set, but none of that makes one really better than the other. That all just depends on if the artist has a true vision of what he is after
Digital vs film is like comparing painting vs watercoloring. They both require different techniques to get to the same result: YOUR VISION. Personally, I do not enjoy overly digitally enhance shots and half the time I think the work looks mediocre at best (crappy art), but it is still art!
Someday, you will figure this out and appreciate art as a whole
You do have a point - however, in photography the art should be in the action of taking an image.
-> Right now you can take a rubbish image, if you post process it enough it'll look like "something" - but it's no longer photography.
Film had a natural limit to what most people could do. Yes, people have been removed from images (Soviet times) but normally it wouldn't be done.
Now you shoot a rubbish picture, edit a lot in Photoshop and voila, you have a result.
It is no longer the quality of your photography work that counts, it's the quality of your photoshop work.
If you want to show of your photoshop work, then do it separately and don't claim it's photography.
With respect to film - the issue I'd have with film is cost - but overall I'd say that provided film is able to capture a scene (I don't think you can get usable ISO 6400 film) then that's real photography.
And obviously, not everybody can afford the cost of developing a lot of film - so CameraRAW in a way replaces it, additionally, it does give you some control, but does not allow you to modify an image so that it is no longer photography. In CameraRAW you can only do "so much" - the same is true for film.
With Photoshop you can do anything - and then it's no longer photography.