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One man's photoshop is another person's dodge & burn

MGrayson

Subscriber and Workshop Member
Thanks, Graham!

I always loved the contact prints of Clearing Winter Storm and Moonrise Hernandez. They are hugely different from the famous images.

--Matt
 

Shashin

Well-known member
You mean that what we think as just being possible with Photoshop is not actually true? For example, the 1857 (no typo) photograph The Two Ways of Life by Oscar Gustave Rejlander that is a combination of 32 separate glass plates. Or how 19th century photographers collected cloud pictures so they could burn them into their landscapes. And retouching negatives was common. Let not forget airbrushing prints--does anyone really think fashion photography in the past was more honest?

But that is the problem with history--it was so long ago.
 

250swb

Member
The illusion goes much further than Photoshop with a new generation of photographers. Many believe that the image quality they are looking for should come directly out of the digital camera and match the classic prints, based on the same assumption that before Photoshop no manipulation was possible. Hence so much agonising over tone and colour balance and if this camera can't do it then buy another camera. I shudder every time I hear 'I only adjust contrast and brightness' made as a boast.

Steve
 

Shashin

Well-known member
At the print stage maybe, but if you messed up the developing or damaged the beg it was 'now what the heck do I do?' ;)
That is what reducers and intensifiers were for. Certainly airbrushing could add and subtract lots of stuff. If you really were having problems, you could hire a stripper. You could do all kinds of stuff then...
 

GrahamWelland

Subscriber & Workshop Member
Hey, I was a stripper.
Me too - it's amazing what you can get away with at an institution for the blind :ROTFL: (you wouldn't want to see that!!)

On a serious note, I'm always in awe of what people manage to do with analog film materials, be it spotting or reconstruction, multiple exposure blending plus obviously creative performance art when dodging & burning. I collect Christopher Burkett prints and his cibachromes are the result of multiple correcting contrast and colour masks that put photoshop layer techniques to shame in terms of how simple our life is today digitally.
 
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