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What's wrong with reality

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Well you have to take into account the diverse use of photos.

Sometimes the professional, well polished look is not desired. Sometimes flat composition and normal colors are wanted like in family photos (not formal portrait sessions, but just spur of the moment, like kids laughing, husband and wife kissing, etc). If everything looks too professional, it feels a little cold. Sometimes a touch of unpolished photo techniques help make a photo feel more warm.

It's kind of like with home videos- you don't see home videos of kids with nice out of focus backgrounds. People click and record- it might not look as nice as a professional video, but then again, a home video is supposed to be warm, not professional and polished. Even with modern technology, a lot companies add effects to add an aesthetically pleasing degradation to video quality when they try to implement home videos in their commercials like seen here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ObYRG_Z2kU

The video quality is definitely not professional standard, but it looks good because it feels warm.

So similarly, while some photos and situations are better with candid styles with uncreative, flat image techniques, others look good with unrealistic colors and dramatic editing to achieve a different kind of purpose.

Naturally, I think most people are attracted to over-saturation/big contrast because people see reality everyday- they like to see something different that inspires them, even if it's a little off reality.
 
Everyone has brought up some good points here about why we like to see something different, and also why we might deliberately make our photos lack the realistic look, as well as trying to create art from our photos to instill emotions in the viewer.

This all sounds like a whole new subject matter that we can explore in another thread, so to finalize my findings on how to get the EX1 to reproduce reality for the times when that is wanted, here is my lastest settings after much testing. I was lucky today to get one of the few days when there was not cloud shadows continually crossing the sky causing shifting conditions which make testing impossible.

Starting point for my test is P mode everything default with the following exceptions:
EV=-.3
contrast=-1
saturation=+1

I think these settings create an accurate image with pleasing natural colour and also raises the shadow details a little more while guarding the highlights at the same time.

Here is a composite image of four taken with different zoom on the same scene.





Brian
 
I don't have a great monitor so that may be a factor but I can't really see much of a difference between your two images. I would prefer the image that better communicates whatever you intend to say about the subject however, neither is saying much so in this case I don't think it really matters which processing you use.

As to your more philosophical question - Even without pp'ing photography alters reality - stopping motion, showing motion, macro, lens distortion causing blurred background, perspective distortion... the list goes on and on. Processing is just another element you use to communicate something about the scene.

If you find that people prefer a less than totally realistic image it may be because it gets their attention and communicates more effectively.
 
MaryGierth said:
I don't have a great monitor so that may be a factor but I can't really see much of a difference between your two images. I would prefer the image that better communicates whatever you intend to say about the subject however, neither is saying much so in this case I don't think it really matters which processing you use.
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I admit that I am down to miniscule differences in the examples, but that sky colour difference is the amount I am talking about which makes the difference between the look of reality and something that only approaches it. Of course the sky changes colour all the time, so it would be difficult for someone living somewhere else to imagine the sky I saw.

I think another reason why I find this so interesting is because of how difficult it is to actually get a realistic image, its an incredibly difficult challenge.
MaryGierth said:
As to your more philosophical question - Even without pp'ing photography alters reality - stopping motion, showing motion, macro, lens distortion causing blurred background, perspective distortion... the list goes on and on. Processing is just another element you use to communicate something about the scene.

If you find that people prefer a less than totally realistic image it may be because it gets their attention and communicates more effectively.
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I completely agree, and am also attracted to interesting images.

Brian
 
Actually, no. I prefer it overall. Just stick with it, if that's what you believe in. I am not saying there is no room for the 2nd type image (interpretation), but even so. There is of course always the 'Negative' camera setting. That'll floor the Flickr brigade ;)

Also, unless it's for payment, I photograph for 'myself' if you see what I mean.
brianj said:
Mr Tudor said:
brianj said:
You be the judge of which you prefer, the first one is contrast -1, the second is the EX1 defaults. Both are EV=-.3:
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I think you are saying that you prefer the contrast -1 for most realistic, I agree, that is what I think, but I know that it would attract no interest.
That is my dilema.

Brian
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When you go see a movie do you pick the most "realistic" one? Is the purpose of a painting to render a scene realistically? When you listen to music, is it "realistic?" Does it have the sounds of the the wind and surf? :) Do you only read "realistic" books? Realistic sculptures? The list goes on and on.

If you take a realistic image of a scene, what have you achieved? You've captured what I would have seen if I had stood there. OK.

Now, to be fair to you, there are people who put too much salt and pepper on their food. People who turn on the bass and treble all the way on their stereo. People who walk through the world wearing sunglasses. So I agree partially. Automatically turning up the saturation and intensity is wrong. But remember. A lot of those winning peoples come because people chose scenes that were interesting and alive to began with, having strong colors and intensities in real life.

I'm very impressed with most of the winning photos. Most look very natural and honest, great photos. A statement without specific links to photos to discuss is hard to argue with.

I think a lot of photographers have a bad case of sorry grapes. My photos are honest and natural, that's why I never win. Hogwash. There's high key, low key, B&W, monochrome. All are good, all are interesting. As has been oft repeated, even Ansel Adams wasn't "realistic"

Bottom line is, I'll challenge you. Show me the links. "Almost every photo that wins a challenge on dpreview is totally manipulated and way over the top in color saturation and contrast and looks nothing like reality". In my opinion you've insulted a lot of great photographers.
 
Mr Tudor said:
Competitions? Pah! I came last in this here 'Challenge'. Try to beat that
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This is just a guess but I wonder whether that photo scored last solely because of the overt and duplicate copyright text. I can see past that text and to the excellent photo behind it. But perhaps many voters either cannot see through to the photo or are peeved by the text. For those who can't block the text out it is sort of like an annoying fly in the viewer's face.

I'm confident that this photo would have scored higher without the text. Much higher.
 
Could well be. Can't say that I am bothered though. Next to winning, coming last is almost equally cool :) Seriously, no sour grapes here.

FWIW, I had others in a couple or so challenges that, unfortunately ;) , came in a bit higher. All clean good fun.
thielges said:
thielges said:
Competitions? Pah! I came last in this here 'Challenge'. Try to beat that
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This is just a guess but I wonder whether that photo scored last solely because of the overt and duplicate copyright text. I can see past that text and to the excellent photo behind it. But perhaps many voters either cannot see through to the photo or are peeved by the text. For those who can't block the text out it is sort of like an annoying fly in the viewer's face.

I'm confident that this photo would have scored higher without the text. Much higher.
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tko said:
When you go see a movie do you pick the most "realistic" one? Is the purpose of a painting to render a scene realistically? When you listen to music, is it "realistic?" Does it have the sounds of the the wind and surf? :) Do you only read "realistic" books? Realistic sculptures? The list goes on and on.

If you take a realistic image of a scene, what have you achieved? You've captured what I would have seen if I had stood there. OK.

Now, to be fair to you, there are people who put too much salt and pepper on their food. People who turn on the bass and treble all the way on their stereo. People who walk through the world wearing sunglasses. So I agree partially. Automatically turning up the saturation and intensity is wrong. But remember. A lot of those winning peoples come because people chose scenes that were interesting and alive to began with, having strong colors and intensities in real life.
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Your right.
tko said:
I'm very impressed with most of the winning photos. Most look very natural and honest, great photos. A statement without specific links to photos to discuss is hard to argue with.
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I'm impressed with them also, but they are not necessarily natural.
tko said:
I think a lot of photographers have a bad case of sorry grapes. My photos are honest and natural, that's why I never win. Hogwash. There's high key, low key, B&W, monochrome. All are good, all are interesting. As has been oft repeated, even Ansel Adams wasn't "realistic"
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I am not complaining that I never win, I do enter competitions just for fun, and I score from very well to extremely poor, I even have a couple of 2nds, so if at first you don't succeed then try try try again. But I would never enter a natural looking photo into a competition as I know that nobody will give it a second glance.
tko said:
Bottom line is, I'll challenge you. Show me the links. "Almost every photo that wins a challenge on dpreview is totally manipulated and way over the top in color saturation and contrast and looks nothing like reality". In my opinion you've insulted a lot of great photographers.
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I don't want to show or criticise anyone's photography, so I will show you a link to my challenge entries, and say up front that they are all maipulated in some way and none are natural.

http://forums.dpreview.com/members/5128303546/challenges

Thanks for offering a valid and alternate view, I am not stuck on the one I presented here, it is just something that I have observed and the trend seems to be increasing as people tire of seeing millions of very good normal images.

Brian
 
brianj said:
I am continually facing a problem with my observation of what people like a photo to look like. I notice that almost every photo that wins a challenge on dpreview is totally manipulated and way over the top in color saturation and contrast and looks nothing like reality, and in fact I am also drawn to these images.
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This debate is as old as photography.

In your picture, if let's say you use a polarizer the colors would look more saturated, the sky darker. Would you call this reality? Why not if I wear polarized glasses?

What's also funny about people disparaging HDR to take an extreme example is that if you turn the picture into B&W they say nothing. Is B&W more natural than HDR? If you want to manipulate a picture to death and not being criticized, just use B&W, you'll see.

And then there is the issue of reproduction. A screen or a print is nothing like reality.

Then there is also the intention. In Photojournalism and general documentary photography you may try to be as neutral as possible. In art everything is permitted, the means justify the means. IMHO.

--



http://flickriver.com/photos/ensh/popular-interesting/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ensh/
PPG: http://bit.ly/cQhegL
 
Mr O.

You opine "In my opinion you've insulted a lot of great photographers" on Brian's post in which he mentions that:
  • "Almost every photo that wins a challenge on dpreview is totally manipulated and way over the top in color saturation and contrast and looks nothing like reality".
I think Brian has it right - a photograph is primarily an attempt tp capture a small aspect and moment of reality. Let's agree that "reality" in this context means "the world as normally perceived by the human eye and brain when not stoned or otherwise zonked-out"........?

Of course it is possible to be "creative" using photography. One may even add a bit of "creativity" by deliberately setting camera controls to produce an image not reflecting a normal human eye/brain visual experience. Many will find some art in such manipulation. Personally I feel that such manipulations are rarely creative but rather reflect a certain human inclination to exagerate (colour & contrast, in this instance) whilst pretending that their pointing the camera at some bit of the world somehow creates it. (The solipsist's view).

Just to be clear - I find 99% of the challenge photos to be not just uninspiring but also very wearing on the eyes - all that saturation and garish contrast. On the other hand, I do enjoy viewing what a camera can see and the human eye/brain can't - frozen micro-second action; vastly magnified small stuff.

But fundamentally I enjoy a photographic image that reveals reality rather than one that hides it under some bloke's "art".

Perhaps we should differentiate photography (accurately drawing 2D copies of reality with a light-capturing machine onto some visual medium) from graphic artistry (using various media, including photographic images, with the intent of re-interpreting reality - transcending the normal meaning of a momentary view of the world)?

Personally I detest a camera that itself "re-interprets reality" or "creates" a 2D image that is not fundamentally equal to what I recall of the view I tried to copy. I'm with Brian - contrast, saturation and other parameters of a photographic image need to reflect my human eye/brain rememberance of the associated viewpoint. So no weird colour casts, over-saturated skies or "zoned" contrasty scenes for me thenk yew!

Not that I reject other fellows' creative photo-based artistic efforts - although 99% of them seem like tired cliches and the unavoidable optical attributes of cameras rationalised into "creative skill". That other 1% is still a lot of inspiring and transcendent imagery of course. :-)

SirLataxe, wondering about marketing super-saturation/contrast binoculars with added distortion and 25 "art filters" (no I'm not).
 
ManuH said:
brianj said:
I am continually facing a problem with my observation of what people like a photo to look like. I notice that almost every photo that wins a challenge on dpreview is totally manipulated and way over the top in color saturation and contrast and looks nothing like reality, and in fact I am also drawn to these images.
Click to expand...
This debate is as old as photography.

In your picture, if let's say you use a polarizer the colors would look more saturated, the sky darker. Would you call this reality? Why not if I wear polarized glasses?

What's also funny about people disparaging HDR to take an extreme example is that if you turn the picture into B&W they say nothing. Is B&W more natural than HDR? If you want to manipulate a picture to death and not being criticized, just use B&W, you'll see.
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HDR is an interesting case study, because what I am seeing often labelled as HDR is not what I would define as HDR. The human eye sees with high dynamic range, and what it sees looks nothing like what people are presenting as HDR, which is often garish and extreme.

In my opinion HDR should look exactly lke what we see if it has succeeded. Non HDR photography often suffers from a lack of DR, causing blocked shadows and clipped highlights, but proper HDR solves this, just like the Smart Range setting, samsungs implementation of HDR.

So I would agree that what people commonly call HDR looks horrible, but proper HDR looks more real than a limited DR standard photo.

Brian
 
Vidago said:
There is nothing wrong with reality, but we do not all see it the same way.

For example, I like the way the VPK Meniscus Achromat see "reality", but most people can only see lack of detail.
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Very mystical, but maybe not suitable for every shot.

This has all got me thinking that we need a style for each photo that matches the inherent mood of that scene, that should convey the maximum data to the viewer.

Brian
 
I agree with most of what you have to say about HDR and its two applications. There's certainly a lot of garish use of HDR as a blunt instrument out there these days and much of it looks terribly gimmicky.

However I have seen some "unrealistic" HDR that I feel was done skillfully and imparts a good quality to the resulting image. I'll try to dig up an example or two of that.
 
Yes, indeed it can not be used in all situations, but can be excellent to convey an emotion or state of mind.

I think that photography, like other art forms, and must pass mesagens and emotions, there is more than one way to achieve this.
 
My eyes! they are burning. Well someone had to make the sacrifice. I just toured the single RAW HDR pool on flicker and wow, is there ever a lot of terrible stuff being posted. It is like hanging out in a guitar shop while stream of punters try out the "distort" pedals. To 11, dude!

Still I found a few examples of what I was trying to describe as using HDR to go beyond the human range of vision without being gaudy and crass. I feel these "extra-human" images are elegant products of skillful HDR use. They range from an image subtly and barely beyond the human range to one that is wildly beyond but still pulls it off.

Here's a subtle example: http://www.flickr.com/photos/9201324@N03/2346878713

...and more obvious: http://www.flickr.com/photos/shaysapir/3518236525/

I like this one because it renders how the mind pieces the mental image together: http://www.flickr.com/photos/markjayne/5720072488/

This one uses major local tone mapping, so much that it looks like an illustration. But zoom in and you'll see that it really is a photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/heiwa4126/2111167098/

Work like this gives me respect for mega-HDR. Don't be discouraged by the other 99% who just push the "make HDR" button for their ubersnapshot.
 
thielges said:
Still I found a few examples of what I was trying to describe as using HDR to go beyond the human range of vision without being gaudy and crass. I feel these "extra-human" images are elegant products of skillful HDR use. They range from an image subtly and barely beyond the human range to one that is wildly beyond but still pulls it off.
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They are interesting, but not something I could stay interested in if every picture looked like that, I would soon tire of the strain
thielges said:
...and more obvious: http://www.flickr.com/photos/shaysapir/3518236525/
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This one fails at being a HDR to me because it does handle the high DR content outside the room windows, the maker seems to start with an image where the scene outside the windows is already blown away. How can that be HDR?
thielges said:
I like this one because it renders how the mind pieces the mental image together: http://www.flickr.com/photos/markjayne/5720072488/
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This one is good.
thielges said:
This one uses major local tone mapping, so much that it looks like an illustration. But zoom in and you'll see that it really is a photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/heiwa4126/2111167098/
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I've played plenty of computer games that look like this, its quite pleasing in that environment.
thielges said:
Work like this gives me respect for mega-HDR. Don't be discouraged by the other 99% who just push the "make HDR" button for their ubersnapshot.
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As artistry its fine, but it is far from pure photography, but who says we can't go there, I have no problem with it, but I would be concerned if all we saw in the future looked like that and was called photography.

Brian
 
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