Yes or no, a photographic/photographers question

Some random thoughts. (NB – non judgemental, just musings!)

Think you’ve convinced yerselves it’s OK.

Sounds like special pleading to me.

I don’t mind much, but there’s a lot of defensive remarks above.

Manipulating a picture after it’s been taken isn’t the same as framing (what I presume you mean Snapper) while taking it, and dodging and burning aren’t the same as cloning, Phil.

Setting up a shot allows you to record a true (maybe partical and staged) record of what’s there. Cloning alows you to fake something that wasn’t there. As a historical record, both have faults, but the latter is highly dubious. As a printer I used to ‘duff out’ dust and marks, and could do the same for other items if we wanted to.

Another thought is that part of the fun of looking at ‘old’ airshow photos is the clutter; people wearing different gear, the ability to date and locate a picture from internal evidence. That’s going to be wrecked by electronic manipulation.

Keeping a ‘true’ copy is sensible, but bear in mind most historical documents survive by accident. The manipulated one will be more likely the ‘survivor’ when your grandchild goes through your stuff, so it’s fine for the short term, but hardly a full solution.

The most highly rated photographers (Cartier Breson, Avedon, Weegee etc) and the great aviation photographer Charles E Brown made sure they set up the shot (faked on occasion, if you like) so that the minimum post production was needed. If anything, the oportunity makes us lazy (“Oh, I’ll recrop this back at home, so I’ll just bang it off now, never mind that cone.”)

And that’s the difference between the great photographers and the rest of us; bothering in the first place. Avoiding cars on the motorway, or the rape fields when taking air2air, taking time to set up the shot. Sure you can be lucky, but even then…

…my favourite shot of 2003 is MOTF’s Blackburn Monoplane – a quick grabbed shot (lucky by Nick’s own account!) – atmospheric, and nigh on perfect. I don’t think there was any manipulation later, but you could argue that the clothes the men are wearing ar modern and could be changed… So where do you stop?

Just some thoughts to discuss…

Photographers have been dodging and burning photos since the begining of the last century, so whats new?
Phil.

shame about the tractor………lol……i think its individual preferance, if you can do it well enough not to tell, such as the cone shot above (I cant tell its re-touched), then go for it…..I have done it for some of fairford 2k4 to remove some of the building work from the background………

What’s the difference between cropping when out or cloning when home? None.

I tend to keep the originals and if i really like the photo i copy and alter that.

The place that p*ssed me off was mildenhall and those bloody lighting towers,
just had to remove THEM 😡
Phil.

I am thinking more like Rob Ant. It is the choice of the author of the pic, but just keep the original as a backup and possible source of info if some doubts may rise with the modified pic.

Regards,

J.V.

Agree with David Burke, in twenty years, the lack of radar tower might be misleading in identifying the location for future researchers. In this case, you might post a beautiful cleaned, large sized piece of art together with the untouched original.

Unless the picture is completely spoilt by the interloper there is very little point in removing items from the background. It comes down to whether it’s a record of an event or a piece of art!

I do a fair amount of work for severall mags, so maybe I must say that some won’t accept cleaned up pics and go for the inferior shots, while others don’t care or even prefer the cleaned up ones. So sometimes there are severall mags showing the same pics (clean and “dirty”ones) on the same shelves in the bookshop. BW Roger

No problem at all. Technology moves on and so must we,

It’s a matter of “Artistic License”. It’s your photo, do what you want.

But keep the original, just in case you want to make something else out of it.

Easily done.

Difficult to stop.

Same old rule applies though, get the shot as good as possible in the first place, avoid to much ‘post-production’.

As long as it’s peripheral items most people are comfortable with minor changes, but meddling with the central subject is always going to be difficult.

Just my 2d as an editor, writer, and publisher and occasional photographer. 😉

I believe its a case of your photo your choice. I remove unwanted clutter from my pictures all the time.

I don’t think there is a problem with re-touching any photo’s to make them more presentable. It’s not a new technique, it’s just that digital has more capability than film.