Photographer's rant...when someone says, "nice pics, you must have a good camera!"

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I don't care if they think I have a good camera or not. I like to take pictures, I like the way the turn out. I've sent many to the printers.

I have my own photography hanging in my home and I have thousands of images on the Internet.

Oh, I use a cheap point and shoot camera.
 
Location, Location, Location
 
There is a big difference in fabricating a pic (putting your buddy in, making someone less chubby, etc) and correcting a pic. Using Photoshop to correct color or even backscatter is just that, a correction of an error (the one that happened when you took the pic and it didn't come out like your eyes saw). If you can get the pics without Photoshop, good for you, but having the attitude that Photoshop is cheating is pretty antiquated.

I am old-fashioned. I think there is some aspect of cheating when I take a picture and there is, say, an unwanted pillar in it. Say, I think the fishies look better grouped together with just the stems of grass and the nice grouping of rocks, so I crop out the pillar. Very simple maneuver (so simple I can even manage it). Yet, not natural as in water I could not find one angle where one of the dock pillars (or other distractions) did not show in the pics where the composition was just right.

There is a huge amount of pictures that are absolutely awesome where the background seems devoid of interfering, logical 'stuff'. It always makes me suspicious because 'stuff' always make their way into my pics. Composition looks too great to have been done in water - cheating!
 
All good, if you're shooting a scorpionfish or a a sea cucumber, but in a situation involving a moving subject and the perfect moment to shoot it there should be a little tolerance re editing. The vast majority of us take pics for themselves, in my case I work with very basic cam and editing equipment and just try to adjust, based on memory, the characteristics not accurately captured by the cam. My goal is achieving an end result pleasing to me, ie, if I deem cropping necessary for a better compositional aspect, so be it. Positive comments on stuff that I find worth posting are nice, but not the purpose of the exercise.
 
You see it or you don't . . .

the K
 
piikki:
I am old-fashioned. I think there is some aspect of cheating when I take a picture and there is, say, an unwanted pillar in it. Say, I think the fishies look better grouped together with just the stems of grass and the nice grouping of rocks, so I crop out the pillar. Very simple maneuver (so simple I can even manage it). Yet, not natural as in water...

I'm new school and I agree with you. If you are trying to make a nice ictirr you shouldn't move, shrink, add, delete objects... If you do that's ok but I would call it a digital composistion. I do think it's ok to take out backscatter and adjust light and colors and still call it a photo though.
 
You see it or you don't . . .

the K
Same shot... different camera settings... minimal editing... both have pluses, both have minuses... neither is sent to the printer for printing, and some would kill for the "shot opportunity" ...

seahorse0912232.jpg


seahorse0912234.jpg


But... For Internet publishing, both were worthy of note. I can't remember what editing was done to what, but I can say it wasn't much...

On the other hand, I have had distance images that won't happen again, that were not perfect, but did capture the moment (better than other pictures) and required deeper editing than most... I don't own photoshop, so all 2000+ images I have posted must be sub par for my point-n-shoot camera and editing...
 
But Doubler.. imagine what a little photoshop can do!:wink:


Holy crap man....what a great shot.....you must have an awesome camera :wink:
 
While folks do sometimes get good shots with a cheap camera, the right equipment (and knowing how to use it) increases the probability of getter a better shot. Certainly, there is an artistic element that is the photographer's eye, but any good photographer will tell you that they take lots and lots of pics and that also increases the chance of getting great shots. You can have the best camera, know how to use it and be an amazingly skilled photographer; but still some of what you shoot will be just crap! Those pics are just not going to be the ones you'll see unless you've paid someone to do a shoot for you!

Photography is an art form and artists are only go to, generally, share their best work.

I would just focus on and enjoy the first part of the compliment and cough the rest up to ignorance.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/swift/

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