Somewhere in Manhattan today.
Instagram: @joeltunnah
It's good, gives a convincing 1950s chrome feel with only the st*rb*cks glasses giving away it being contemporary. The modern car reflection somewhat spoils it though so if you have the same shot with it having passed it might work better.
The car was parked. Such is street photography.
Pretty easy to remoive the reflection, it does distract from a good photo.
I guess this comes down to personal philosophy. I could actually rent a shop or space, hire two models, set up lights, wardrobe, remove any distractions, pose them... and what would I be left with? What would be the point of that image? Would it be “street photography”? Whatever it would be, it most definitely would
not be reality.
I like that I stumbled on this scene and noticed it, and it took place in a real time and a real place, and it has warts, and it’s not perfect, and that’s ok.
Firstly, great shot with a little mystery vibe in the two people seated! If it were my shot, I might also check out how it might hold up as a b&w.
Secondly, 100% agree with you.
Wouldn’t stripping a photo of color and converting to B&W contradict Joel’s philosophy of keeping with “reality” even more than simply removing a glaring highlight?
IMO, no. Converting to b&w still shows the contents of that particular moment, removing color alone doesn't make the moment itself any less 'real'. Removing physical objects is a totally different thing.
So stripping all the color of a scene is “real”, but removing a tiny highlight, as in Joel’s photo, makes the photo a fraud? This seems arbitrary and nonsensical.
Yes, removing color is still 'real', I already wrote why. I also didn't say anything specifically about removing or toning down a tiny highlight. The irony here is that the highlight you refer to is a very minor detail in the first place, hardly 'distracting'. Seems most here want clinical BS for 'street' images.
Again, IMO it no longer is a photo but something derived from a photo. Why not just paint whatever we want to on canvas then?
It’s a matter of degree. We don’t add anything to a photo, but we will sometimes remove or crop some distracting element. This is less invasive to the “reality” of the scene then stripping the color, or enhancing saturation to some garish level as we have seen quite often.
Sure, agree. I wasn't talking about minor edits anyway but even so, compared to going b&w still makes the b&w more 'real' if the objects in the scene are left intact. Color itself isn't any sort of 'keepin' it real' thing, as you may think the image is too warm, Leon may think it's just fine, Joel may think it's actually not warm enough, and I as the photographer gave it a color treatment according to how my mind remembers the event.
And yours, in your belief in not changing after the fact what you’ve seen in the viewfinder?
It contradicts nothing. Sure, color can be an 'element' and sometimes that's exactly what gives an image a fuller context, but otherwise removing color does not remove any objects But my belief that you refer to is more about seeing/composing during the capture vs. fixing things later... I simply don't consider heavy cropping and cloning in/out as representative of what I actually saw, let alone being an example of a 'street' photo.
The camera cannot see what the eye and brain see.
Sure, but it sees what you asked it to see, and if you can mentally estimate how your choice of FL will render everything from foreground to background, then it's seeing what your brain is seeing.
Our photos are interpretations of “reality”, we make decisions, we change settings for exposure, SS to determine the DOF, we use different lenses for different effects, we frame the part of a scene we want to show - and most of us use other tools after the fact to bring out our intent - what we want to present. (We call this post processing). It’s a continual creative process. We create photos, we don’t document “reality”. Every street photographer knows this.
Really? First of all, whatever the camera captures, regardless of FL or exposure settings, is 'real'... maybe you're not understanding the idea of 'real' in this conversation; the 'reality' is that the camera captures the moment, even if it's capturing a subject in motion at slow shutter speed for example... it's capturing movement within a 1/8s of a moment or whatever.
When you use post-processing tools to bring out the intent... aren't you effectively saying "I didn't capture any intent properly in the camera"? Yes, I can understand a little dodging/burning on some relevant areas, a few pixels shaved off an edge or two, removing someone's fingers protruding into the left/right side of the frame; I'm not sure though if you're suggesting more. You often crop to 1:1, you shoot at some pretty low levels... the point though is that the result introduces a kind of doubt to the viewer... was there really any intent at all?
"We create photos" ... well yeah, agree. "We don't document reality" ... sure, I guess our goals as street photogs don't often include a desire to 'document' something but then again you're just altering the argument... no one is saying "reality" is about "documenting".
"We create photos" ... back to this statement for a sec.... photos are created at the press of the shutter. Sure, they often get "finished", even if only to adjust color and contrast which is often a necessity anyways as you can't really fully control that in-camera. Cloning in/out (and btw contrary to what you wrote up above, you certainly have "cloned in" before), excessive cropping... that's not a "photo" anymore, what you've created is something that may have started off as a photo but is by now pretty much something "staged" -- worse than simply "staged" at capture time, which at least still translates to a very "real" moment vs digitally creating a fake reality. "Every street photographer" who actually puts in the effort to keep it "real" and nail it at the moment of capture will disagree with you. You can paste examples of images that have been cropped by famous street photographers but before you do that, think about how many out of every 100-200 of their curated images have had extensive post work.
In another reply in this thread, you stated 'photography is not reality'. It certainly is. The 'lie' is up to either 1) the photographer's skill in framing a scene to create a suggestion that something else is happening, or 2) the photographer needing to manipulate nothing into something in photoshop due to lack of any real experience in getting it right the first time. The former is a photograph; the latter is not.
So your belief is that photographers who edit their photos (even cropping) “need to manipulate nothing into something due to lack of any real experience in getting it right the first time”.
If you're going to counter me on something I stated, please don't alter the actual narrative; I am referring to, and have always referred to, EXTENSIVE cropping and cloning. Now that we've sorted that... the answer is YES!
Another judgemental, presumptuous statement
And so what? Is it just you who is authorized to judge and presume? You started this whole thing anyway. "Not this again."; "I’ve got news for you" ... pushing your own views and not acknowledging others'.
that exhibits, IMO, a limited and unimaginative approach to making photos.
LOL. OK I'll try random pedestrians from the hip next time.
Guess what? There is no “right” or “wrong” to “get”.
Of course there isn't. So why did you disagree with Joel's opinion in the first place?
True. And as I've written, IMO there's a point where the creative process, especially with the 'street' genre (won't even get into doco) becomes an excuse for weak photos. Read into it what you will.
