Photography: Why It Isn’t All About Photoshop
“Did You Edit It?”
That’s a question photographers get asked a lot these days. It doesn’t have a straightforward answer because, unknown to most people, every image ever taken in the world has been edited in one form or another. While photography is technical in nature and based on observation of events, people often forget that photography is a form of art and expression. It’s about revealing a story that is often overlooked and unseen. It’s up to the person behind the camera to create an image and tell a story.
In contemporary photography, there are three categories of photographers: the Photojournalist, the Storyteller, and the Image Manipulator. It is commonly understood that the Photojournalist cannot set up a scene or reshoot it after an event has occurred, and can only use minimal dodging / burning / cropping to convey a story. Their job is to present the event as it occurred. However, just presenting a story with a certain crop is enough to reveal an agenda.
The Image Manipulator, on the other hand, combines images from different sources to tell a story very much like an architect photoshops people into renderings to convey a sense of what it might feel like in a particular space. Image Manipulators do not need a camera; they can use a much more powerful tool called Google Image Search. I consider this art and not truly photography. That leaves the bulk of photographers as Storytellers. Regardless of the tools available, most Storytellers are able to produce an image worthy of a story.
Celebrity lifestyle photographer Chase Jarvis once said, “the best camera is the one you have on you.” Pictures have always told better immediate stories than words, and with the invention of the cameraphone, Instagram, and image-based social media, there are over 500 million monthly active Storytellers in the world. From Instagram alone, roughly 80 million photos are uploaded and shared daily (and increasing).
But unknown to most cameraphone users, cameras often output an in-camera edited image. The camera will normally produce a RAW file, in which the phone, or camera, will adjust the image’s contrast, saturation, and exposure to produce a “decent” .jpeg for consumption. John Curley, former managing editor of SF Chronicle once said “cameras want to record everything at 18% gray and that’s happy…the photographer would come back and say this was immensely dark and that was blindingly bright.”
The camera is a dumb tool; the photographer on the other hand is smart and has feelings and wants to convey emotions. Technologically, the best 35mm DSLR’s in the world can capture a dynamic range — a difference of the darkest pixel to the lightest you can see — of about 14.5 stops. Your eyes can see roughly about 20 stops and your iris can adjust to let in more or less light, depending on where you are looking.
This allows you to actively see an even higher dynamic range. Experienced photographers know that the camera is incapable of capturing the same range as the eye sees. To make up for this, photographers will use RAW images rather than .jpeg, leverage technology such as glass filters, and sometimes edit multiple exposures to compensate. If the photos you want to produce require a broader spectrum of light to embed certain emotional qualities that you see, tonal manipulation is necessary to achieve better storytelling.
The ease and accessibility of creating photos has created a real disconnect with technical knowledge. There has been a history of finding distaste in a photographer’s work because they have incorporated a certain technology or workflow into their images. For example, the invention of the darkroom allowed photographers to increase or decrease contrast in certain parts of the image (via dodging & burning) and many felt this was not an appropriate tool to use.
Ansel Adams, a pioneer in its use, was demonized for it much like many Photoshop (& Lightroom) users today. But his images capture the essence of what it feels like to be in Yosemite. The majestic lights and the larger-than-life qualities are exactly how one would feel when one travels there. Adams had to understand Yosemite in order for him to produce images that he intended to show why the National Park is worth preserving for future generations.
Likewise, Steve McCurry’s 1983 image of a train porter in red carrying luggage on his head juxtaposed with a first-class passenger and her kid is an excellent image depicting the hectic travel by train and the different castes in India. The image is a very accurate representation of the story McCurry wants to tell. Yet, not many people realize that the image is staged. The suitcases are empty and the first class woman is the sister-in-law of McCurry’s friend. McCurry himself claimed that he is not a journalist, but a visual storyteller.
Richard Pare’s exhibition at the MOMA called Le Corbusier: An Atlas of Modern Landscapes featured many 4’ x 16’ foot images showing the relationship between Corbu’s buildings and their surrounding landscapes. They are well balanced in light and contrast, and show tension in every element presented. Best of all, the images look completely unedited.
However, having spent time shadowing him and seeing his workflow in New York City, I realized that all his images are photostitched from many stills to create an ultra-wide panoramic photo. He combined and edited them in Photoshop. In addition, I spent an entire afternoon with him at a print shop where he worked with the printer, Ben Diep, to adjust the print output settings and manipulated them (+2 contrast, -1 red, +1 green) in order for the colors to display correctly under certain museum lighting conditions. The analog process of printing and adjusting, over and over again was strenuous, but the exhibition, as a result, was amazing.
“You don’t take a photograph, you make it.”
— Ansel Adams
Today, the demonization of Photoshop users has gotten to a point where extraordinary photographers — who recognize the advantages of doing everything without extensive photo editing — have to create documentaries of their projects so that the viewers can focus more on the message of the story rather than getting drowned out by the noise of whether or not the image was photoshopped. “Shark Shepherds” by Benjamin Von Wong is a series of fantasy images created underwater using real freedivers dressed elegantly with actual sharks swimming around them. Von Wong explains that to create meaningful work, he wanted to promote the beauty of sharks as well as to advocate for their protection.
He further explains the idea came from a controversy.
“Sharks are almost always depicted as menacing and terrifying, yet it is humans that are responsible for killing them in the millions just to make soup.”
— Benjamin Von Wong
Upon first look at the image, the criticism is that it is fake, but upon seeing the meticulous planning in the documentary, he is able to prove his process and allow the viewers to focus on the message.
Much of photography is aimed at revealing the unseen; what about things that are impossible to see? For example, much of space photography is about capturing the invisible wavelengths picked up by the telescope’s detectors, including radio waves, infrared light, X-rays, and gamma rays. “False color” is the terminology used to describe the color assigned to interpret colors mapped to different wavelengths. Photo historian Vicki Goldberg describes in the first sentence of a 2001 New York Times article that “Scientific pictures are not decoration but knowledge.” As pretty as the image is, it is not what you would see with your eyes, but the image reveals something you cannot see and did not know existed.
The question, “Did You Edit It?” should really be rephrased because it distills a photographer’s work into one sentence and negates things such as planning, patience, luck, and mastery of technical, emotional and software knowledge. Perhaps one should instead ask whether the image communicates the photographer’s intentions. In the end, the camera is just a tool that captures moments and editing is one of many steps along the way to producing a photo. The question should not be focused on the tools used to make the image but rather on whether or not the image moves you. Does it make you want to do something? Does it make you feel alive or want to see it (the subject) in person?
Don’t question how an image is created, question the photographer’s ability to reveal an engaging story true to their interpretation of the world. The storyteller, after all, has control of the narrative. And in the words of Donald Weber, “You can tell a story, and, most importantly, you can show it to the world.”
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