I hope you have seen the flag raising and the falling soldier - they are famous photographs.... ;-) Not paintings.
We all "know" that Cartier - Bresson took some very spontaneous looking images . Actually he was often standing on a ladder somewhere - for hours - just waiting for a good composition. He "created" his images using "decisive moment"and never used any "post processing "
HCB actually not only didn't manipulate his images in the darkroom - he didn't even process nor print his images. He also did not allow his technicians to crop any of his images and even had the negative carrier filed out so a black border would print so he could be certain his images were not cropped.
And he managed to get everything just right because he was patient. Perhaps a lesson for us all.
What about Eisenstaedt?
These great masters were very creative in many ways - they could not do much modern post processing. They used something else - even brains.
The golden era of photojournalism was the interwar period through the 1970's. Part of that was what was happening - part of it was photographs were how the world was brought to our living room. As Henry Luce once said - he brought the world to the American living room through the lens of a camera. The guys that produced images for Life in that era - developed and honed the skills of their craft. When you are following a platoon of Marines on an island in the Pacific in WW II you have to have an inane instinct not only for an image but how to get the image without getting killed or injured. The advent of television that bought the Vietnam war to the American living room in near real time - changed the dynamic.
The concept of "cheating" is quite ridiculous with these artists. As it is with modern story tellers. They wanted to show something important and made the image important - now we have some famous classic images.... Perhaps the famous kiss was not so real - but it looks more real than most kisses. He was not just documenting kisses.
Eugene w. Smith did quite important work in Minamata and some of his shots are very carefully done and the composition is perfect - can somebody call that cheating ? He almost got killed... not because he was cheating, but because he was telling the world what had happened to the people in Minamata. Things that were not very popular in Japan, nobody wanted to see bad things .
Nowadays we are often looking at some HDR images that have exceptional dramatic colours - most of it done carefully at home with the PC. And too often they are just boring.
I have an artist friend who uses modern cameras , scanners, all kinds of equipment and software to create seriously - but the premeditation and planning is hard work . After 3 weeks work and hundreds of images there are possibly 1-3 that can be shown in an exhibition - images that people will also buy. One of them especially. And then there are weeks without anything...
I have never sold anything - to me this hobby is just a hobby
The trails and tribulations of your friend are common. Many photographers give clinics, teach, etc. as part of their work. Some work at art institutes and universities where production of original work is expected and they receive tenure, promotions, etc. based on it.
To keep my sanity while in graduate school in Baltimore, I attended a nearby art institute. I audited a course in photography and one day in a conversation with my instructor, he said why don't you just become a real student. All your undergraduate courses in general education will transfer and all will need is the required general art and photography courses. He agreed to take me on as a "student." So I did and finished my PhD (mathematical physics) and my BA in fine arts at the same time. My mentor was a very interesting person. He studied under Minor White at the recommendation of Eugene Smith and he and Eugene Smith were close friends. Richard also at that time had a censorship case before the U. S. Supreme Court - in the 1960's and 1970's the U. S. Supreme Court seemed to be the censor board of last resort. His work was very thought provoking to say the least.
At first I spent a lot of time in both fields. A group of us with formal training in photography started a photography program at a large Army based between Baltimore and Washington DC. That base also has a large Defense Department Civilian agency so there was a need. We got the course work approved by the art institute in Baltimore so the students would get credit. The Army gave us a building and funded nice darkroom facilities for the program. We gave night courses in photography which were quite popular with both Army personnel and civilians working at the agency.
However, eventually my work as a mathematician and travel sucked up too much time so I scaled back the photography from a second profession to a hobby. I did sell works in galleries over the years. What I found is one has to kiss a lot of frogs to find a princess - that is one in a 100 shots you take might actually be worth pursuing further and I was picky in my shot selection - no spray and pray here. I might print one in 10 negatives (fewer with a 35 mm and more with a medium format and even more with large format ) but of those after looking at the prints - one in 10 of those were worth the additional work to turn it into a final product. The final print could take hours and hours to produce. I had to often sit it aside for days to weeks and come back to it with a fresh eye and fresh attitude.
That was after going back multiple time to the same location and more often than not coming away empty. Ansel Adams used to pack his equipment on a pack mule and hike up into the Sierra high country and camp out for multiple days waiting for the "light to be right." More often than not he never took a shot. He would have to go back and back to catch the right moment. HCB would stake out a location waiting for "the decisive moment" to develop. Often it didn't and he went away empty. Smith in his "Dream Street - The Pittsburg Project" kept missing his publishers deadline because he was not yet satisfied. That's the name of the game - the same as a painter getting half way finished and then starting over.
If you don't feel for the subject and promote your passion in the image - no one else is going to feel for the subject and see your passion. If no one feels your vision and passion - it wouldn't sell in fact no gallery will take it to take up wall or bin space. I think it is very important to have a group of good friends with some artistic background who will be brutally honest with you and your work. There is nothing like a class room environment where you slap you work on the wall and everyone takes it on. The Internet is clearly not the place for that. It is difficult to produce meaningful art in a vacuum. It is even more difficult to produce art that will sell in a vacuum.
I absolutely agree a lot of "over manipulated" images we often see on the Internet which are a product of more and more S/W tools that render such work fairly easy to perform and harken back to the late 1800 when the Pictoralist dominated photography are basically boring. However, if one is pursuing photography as a hobby for personal satisfaction - the only person that needs to be pleased is oneself. If one likes the heavily manipulated look - that is what one should pursue.
If one is pursuing photography as a means to convey their vision and passion to others - such tricks tend to conceal that vision. As my mentor once said - more time understanding the history of the art and looking at the images of the masters - the better artist you will be. After all we all stand on the shoulders of the masters - people like Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, Minor White, M. Richard Kirstel, Alfred Eisenstadt, W. Eugene Smith, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Dorothea Lang, Robert Adams, Minor White, Gary Winogrand, Paul Strand, Nancy Newhall, etc. Richard also recommended that the first thing I do was subscribe to Aperture - a subscription I still have. It's not inexpensive but it is worth every penny. I often go back and re-read the Daybooks of Edward Weston. Every time I do - I learn something new and I have had these Daybooks for over 40 years now.
One good story we should all keep in mind about "telling the story" as Eisenstaedt, or HCB's " Decisive Moment" or when we fail to get the shot the want and have to walk away is the story of Ansel Adams' "Moonrise."
http://anseladams.com/ansel-adams-anecdotes/
http://www.hctc.commnet.edu/artmuseum/anseladams/details/moonrise.html
While Adams did spend a lot of time in the dark room making up for the marginal light - contrary to some earlier claim in this thread - the moon was not added after the fact. In fact the presence of the moon was the only thing that allowed Adam's to take the image because he knew the reflectivity of the moon and place it in Zone VII.
See the original contact print here.
http://www.kevinshick.com/blog/2013/4/revisiting-hernandez-nm
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Truman
www.pbase.com/tprevatt
