Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/07/15
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Eric welch sed: >Cropping is fine, tonal adjustment is fine, spotting is fine. >But making Elizabeth Taylor pimple-free is not, because she isn't. Spotting and pimple removal seem kind of similar ... Why spot dust on the negative when it was there in real life? This argument, imho, has holes in it ... There are things that a photographer can do "in camera" (to use this example) to make liz taylor pimple free. The photographer can move the camera, or shoot slightly out of focus, or have her turn her head in a way that the pimples are not visible or are masked by a shadow. I'm not convinced that it's any more "real" than spotting away her pimples in photoshop or with paint and a spotting brush. Photos only tell the truth for 1/500th of a second. Which often times is not the whole truth. I have a photo of a guy playing with his dog at a protest march where the dog's biting his arm trying to get a frisbee but it sure looks like someone sicced a german shepherd on a poor defenseless hippy..... I'm also reminded of the "behind the scenes" DVD featurette I saw for some movie with anthony hopikis, & alec baldwin, when they're fighting a bear. They show the whole "bear fight" scene where the bear's owner or human companion or trainer or whatever is roughousing with an obviously very friendly bear, and this is intercut with shots of hopkins and balwin falling down, waving sticks, shouting, and it looks very convincingly like a ferocious bear is trying to eat them when in all actuality it's not. No photoshop. No spotting. I think truth and photography aren't necessarily related. And I think two photos sandwitched together can be "truer" than either of the origional unaltered photos. Lets fight! Kc - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html