No post processing required at all.
Qualification: BY YOU
your films were processed at high speed in a minilab, and then printed at similar speed, with only basic colour correction and exposure adjustments made to the prints
Films HAD to be processed, after, hence 'post,' point of image capture. Ergo, Post Processed. Even if it was 'only' a straght D&P.
The debate has degenerated into a tug-of-war over the goal-posts, over what post processing may be, and where it starts.
but in the context of general professional social photography it (Post Process) was never used
in my experience, very few local social photographers did their own processing
Local-social-photographers? Wedding Snappers you mean? OK so maybe they did Birthdays & Christenings & other events; Maybe the Church Gala for the local paper or something. This is not the be all and end all of photography, though is it? Nor is it, even the main-stream of commercial / proffessional photography.
It may be the closest situational discipline to the ametuer home snapper, clicking away at thier kids birthday cake or christmas concert costume... but, just a small part of the HUGE range of photographic subjects possible.
Yes, in THAT situation, there is probably a lot of merit to clean camera work. Though personally, in that 'sort' of setting, usually more interested in getting interesting candids at such events, rather than formal posed shots; I have tended, as I mentined earlier to shoot to post process to some degree, even if that was merely framing a bit wide to crop in printing.
And your market? What were you selling? Prints from Proof, either for album or mantle-piece framing. Your concern with in-camera clendliness, was apropriate to your 'product' that was the final artifict.
Did you do much product photography? Products from I dont know, small artifacts like jewlery, up to large insitu intalations, like, maybe steel framed industrial units? Where the finished 'product' the customer bought wasn't a print for framing, but a transparency for further processing in reprographics to make a flier, brochure or even a magazine; where in Reprographics the picture might be laid out under text, or with over-lay to decribe features in the picture? What about technical illustration? Or creative Art Photography? Or Commemorative Merchansise Photography? What about Astro-Photography? what about Medical Photography. ALL specialisations of the craft you haven't concerned yourself with.
Ie, the 'discipline' you employed in your photography was apropriate to the subject and finished product YOU were making. It was NOT necesserily an apropriate discipline or practice for ALL photographers, ameteur or proffessional. And a BIG part of your debate hinges on extrapolating what was important to the photography you did, and implying that that was what was important, or should have been important to ALL photographers.
I'm interested to know if others feel some of the craft of photography is being lost.
If you want to critasise Digital for 'killing' that skill, then by rights you ought to similarly critasise commercial celuloid film for 'killing' the skill of having to make your own glass plates, mixing your own emulsions!
I hintimated earlier. If anything ought to be blamed for killing photographic skills, its commercial celuloid film & printing papers, NOT Digital.
It was that 'advance' in the technology that shifted so much of the craft involvement from the photographer, who in top hat & cloak days, HAD to do all the chemistry & Pre & Post-Processing themselves, and was responsible for all from conception fo final product.
Hence re-iteration that there wasn't 'NO' Post-Processing required (in your day); merely that the trends in photography towards reliance on commercial film & paper, and further to 'deligated' post-processing services, was what made 'In Camera' discipline such a big part of photography in your era and arena of experience..... buying in pre-made film, and subbing out it's processing meant it was all many photographers had direct control over; apart from perhaps who'se film to buy and who'se D&P services to sub to.
Commercial Film & Paper... Has been available, what, around 100 years? Since the time of the first celuloid Box Brownie, anyway. That was the camera that popularised the persuit, as well as cemented the foundation for commercial film and commercial D&P; (Original Brownies were 'sealed' like a disposeable camera, and returned to Kodak mail-order for processing, & returned with the prints and a new film in it) Pro's & keener ameteurs, for a long while still made thier own plates; but slowly that was replaced by commercial cut-sheet celuloid film, and many continued to make thier own prints in thier own dark room, but again, with commercial papers gradually replacing home-sized & coated paper.
So we have had, what, perhaps five or six generations or more of photographers, entering a persuit where the main focus of attension, almost to the exclusion of all else, has been on camera handling and clean camera work, who have not HAD to worry about back end processing, UNLESS they have elected to, or whose photography has entered those areas where post-processing is necessary or significantly beneficial.
What you are ruing in the trend away from commercial film, into the digital domain, is that NOW, photographers again, can more easily choose how much of the entire process, from conception, through preparation, to final viewable picture, they wish to put attension into.
And the ire towards digital post-processing over clean camera work, is showing a change in value sets, where an 'old guard' raised in the era of film are often seeing the expanded processing capability of digital, deminishing & de-valuing the 'in camera' discipline & dexterity that was, until digital came along so frequently the main arena of photographic dexterity, and feeling de-valued and threatened in consequence. Hence the accusations of liditism & elitism.
Ie: digital has given photographers BACK the oportunity to practice skills they 'lost' when commercial film & paper took it away from them!
The SKILL in photography is, as it has always been, in utilising the tools at your disposal to make a picture.
Digital hasn't de-valued the value of clean camera work; but it has made it less critical, and it has made it a much smaller part of the over all picture making process. That is all.
