When does a photo cease to be a photo and turn into CGI?

Gary...LFC

Gary...LFC

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Gary
Edit My Images
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I am new on here and fresh to "real" camera photography rather than smartphone or point and click. I have been browsing peoples photos and to me some look so doctored with photoshop or similar editing software they seem more computer generated images rather than a moment in time captured on a camera. I personally like the photos taken with obvious care and attention to detail of something real not something edited after to make it something it wasn't.
I understand the need by professionals that are making something look better than it really is for a brochure, wedding photography or trying to get something published.
I have edited photos myself but I do not have a single edited photo hanging on my wall as I like to remember the moment as it really was.

I know this is probably a can of worms and i will get ejected from the forum but I can't be the only one that feels this way....or am I?
 
I'm sure this has been done to death and everyone's perspective of what point a photo is no longer a photo will be different and has little merit discussing.

Some examples of the photos you've been looking at would be interesting to see. HDR in general tends to look 'false' in my opinion.
 
Gary...LFC said:
I am new on here and fresh to "real" camera photography rather than smartphone or point and click. I have been browsing peoples photos and to me some look so doctored with photoshop or similar editing software they seem more computer generated images rather than a moment in time captured on a camera. I personally like the photos taken with obvious care and attention to detail of something real not something edited after to make it something it wasn't.
I understand the need by professionals that are making something look better than it really is for a brochure, wedding photography or trying to get something published.
I have edited photos myself but I do not have a single edited photo hanging on my wall as I like to remember the moment as it really was.

I know this is probably a can of worms and i will get ejected from the forum but I can't be the only one that feels this way....or am I?
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Examples of which photos you've been looking at that appear over doctored would help. It may even be the case that they have had far less work done to them than you think, and it may be techniques that you're unaware of that have resulted in the final results.
 
Craigus said:
I'm sure this has been done to death and everyone's perspective of what point a photo is no longer a photo will be different and has little merit discussing.

Some examples of the photos you've been looking at would be interesting to see. HDR in general tends to look 'false' in my opinion.
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I don't want to upset anyone on here by highlighting their work as it's probably better than I'll ever be, I will look online and find something I mean and hopefully not step on anyone's toes.
 
Gary...LFC said:
I don't want to upset anyone on here by highlighting their work as it's probably better than I'll ever be, I will look online and find something I mean and hopefully not step on anyone's toes.
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You should be safe as long as you only link to photos that have been posted in the critique section, as they have been posted their to get other's opinions.
 
Orangecroc said:
Examples of which photos you've been looking at that appear over doctored would help. It may even be the case that they have had far less work done to them than you think, and it may be techniques that you're unaware of that have resulted in the final results.
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Not fair really to start bitching about other people's work here.

To @Gary...LFC . CGI? Common Gateway Interface? If yes it does not mean computer processing as you use it here but nevertheless.
 
Orangecroc said:
You should be safe as long as you only link to photos that have been posted in the critique section, as they have been posted their to get other's opinions.
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They should really be discussed where they have been posted so the author is aware of what is being said if s/he cares.
 
kuCBWYOr.jpg Something like this which looks like a good photo but the colours don't look real.
 

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TLR-330 said:
Not fair really to start bitching about other people's work here.

To @Gary...LFC . CGI? Common Gateway Interface? If yes it does not mean computer processing as you use it here but nevertheless.
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No I mean c.g.i as in computer generated images.
 
38e38948b5b3bc91de1442366aa2868f.jpg

I think the original image isn't bad but to me and in my own opinion the second one is no longer the image photographed.
 
Might not be a photograph, but the art form is still photography
 
Just as I used to do back in the days of film, when I developed and printed my own photos, I deliberately take my photographs in such a way as always requires some post-processing to make it look closer to what I saw. I do that because I have found that good as my camera is, with appropriate settings, at taking quite good photographs straight out of the camera, and very much better than any of my old film camera were, the results are nevertheless rarely as close to what I saw as I can get by careful processing of the image afterwards. I can give myself more latitude in processing the image afterwards if I deliberately shoot with settings which increase the processing latitude. Doing that results in images which straight out of the camera don't look quite as good.

However, if I'm in a hurry to produce images, and shooting a lot of images, such as at a sports event, too much of a hurry to be able to afford the processing time afterwards, then I will set the camera up for best out-of-the-camera images, and do no more processing than junking the bad ones and at most several seconds of processing on the good ones. That sometimes affects not just the choice of camera settings but also the choice of lenses. Some of my best lenses require processing to get the best from them, and produce distinctly inferior images straight out of the camera.
 
Gary...LFC said:
View attachment 108470

I think the original image isn't bad but to me and in my own opinion the second one is no longer the image photographed.
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Apart from the replaced sky, there's not a lot wrong with the processing. Digital cameras don't have the dynamic range of your eyes or film, and the processing to lift shadows just helps to replace the missing range.
 
Personally don't see the issue, tools and techniques have long been used to enhance the photo to make it more visually pleasing. It's up to the artist how they want their image to finally look. It's one of the things that distinguish one photographer to another.
Final look is subjective, some will like it and some won't. Some like a certain type of processing and some like none. The final objective of a photograph isn't to make a true representation of what was pictured, it can contribute but it's not necessary.
 
amer369 said:
Personally don't see the issue, tools and techniques have long been used to enhance the photo to make it more visually pleasing. It's up to the artist how they want their image to finally look. It's one of the things that distinguish one photographer to another.
Final look is subjective, some will like it and some won't. Some like a certain type of processing and some like none. The final objective of a photograph isn't to make a true representation of what was pictured, it can contribute but it's not necessary.
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There is a 'line to be drawn', IMHO.
To photograph is to paint with light, so any image captured onto a light sensitive material is a photograph. Manipulation of that image including mixing it with other actual photographs, is still definitely photography.

But once you're painting in aliens, or other creatures from your imagination, that's digital art. That's not to denigrate that as an art form, it just ceases to be photography.

As discussed elsewhere recently, the instant we choose to isolate what we can see into a view in the viewfinder, we are skewing reality, but if an image contains something that wasn't captured using a 'photographic' process, it's not a photograph.
 
I rarely use photoshop (mainly use lightroom), but the other day I did add a new sky to a photo. The original sky was a complete white wash, with no detail in it. The sky I added was one from a different photo I had taken. I personally would not add something to a photo that I hadn't taken myself. If others do, I don't have a problem with that, just something I won't do. I would feel it's not my photo anymore if I used part of someone else's photo.
 
Gary...LFC said:
I like to remember the moment as it really was.
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That struck me as the important part. Yes, that's one use of photography, to record something as accurately as possible. Like crime scene reporting. But it's not the only use, just a subset of photography. But if that is your aim, and assuming that the camera is actually capable of recording the moment (didn't it have a temperature, smells, breeze?) then everything's fine and if you don't like the results from people with different aims, no problem.
 
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StephenM said:
That struck me as the important part. Yes, that's one use of photography, to record something as accurately as possible. Like crime scene reporting. But it's not the only use, just a subset of photography. But if that is your aim, and assuming that the camera is actually capable of recording the moment (didn't it have a teperature, smells, breeze?) then everything's fine and if you don't like the results from people with different aims, no problem.
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I never said I didn't like them just when does it really cease to be the same image. I like looking at almost all photo's and can see them for their own merit.
Someone posted this photo earlier and it's what I want to be able to achieve with some practice and this would be on my wall already.
36542224346_4167f325b6_b.jpg

Sorry Dave for posting your photo here and if you want me too I will delete it?
 
Apologies for misinterpreting - I was influenced more by the post, with the comments about "like" and "feel" than I was by the bare title. My opinion on that is pretty much the same as @Phil V . My own preference is for photographs that look natural - however unlike the subject they are. But a photograph would still be a photograph even if (e.g.) the HDR was appalling. Whether I'd regard the creator as a photographer in these cases is another matter :D
 
I'm no photographer yet but I have taken some nice photos and mainly on my camera phone buy they just dont pop like from a real camera.
 
Gary...LFC said:
I'm no photographer yet but I have taken some nice photos and mainly on my camera phone buy they just dont pop like from a real camera.
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They don't 'pop' from a 'real camera' either!

Creating images that 'pop' is down to either light, lens, pp or a combination of them (more importantly, it's down to the photographer understanding how to use those tools)
 
I mean photos with depth that "pop" off the page, not they just pop out of the camera with ease.
 
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Craigus said:
They've added a completely different sky. I think anyone would agree that is no longer a photograph.
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Well that could have been done in a darkroom too.

Edit.
And since that is done using a photosensitive process that would still be a photograph so...........(n)
 
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Gary...LFC said:
I mean photos with depth that "pop" off the page, not they just pop out of the camera with ease.
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That's what I meant, re-read my post.

'Cameras' make very little difference.

Light, lenses, composition and indeed processing is what makes images 'pop'
 
Gary...LFC said:
I never said I didn't like them just when does it really cease to be the same image. I like looking at almost all photo's and can see them for their own merit.
Someone posted this photo earlier and it's what I want to be able to achieve with some practice and this would be on my wall already.
View attachment 108491

Sorry Dave for posting your photo here and if you want me too I will delete it?
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Happy for you to use it Gary - it has been processed to some extent though.

It has been through both Lightroom and Photoshop for various adjustments.

I am also a fan of taking multiple photos over a short period of time from a fixed position and then blending the images to get a final image. I still see it as photography and enjoy the images I get from it.

Dave.
 
So blending images for a HDR makes the end result not a photograph?
Then how about blending images for focus stacking?
 
well, as with pretty much everything, my answer is "it depends..."

It's possible that images can have a crap-ton of work done on them and still look fairly real-life...



To save victimising anyone else, I'll use one of my shots...

On the face of it, a pretty standard looking still life arrangement...

Old Master Trial 2 by The Big Yin, on Flickr

wouldn't imagine that there was much work done on the image from that one would you... bit of a tweak to the contrast to get a "old-master style look" and thats it...

no, not really. Play spot the difference with this one...

Old Master Trial 1 by The Big Yin, on Flickr

the first one is a composite of 5 images (well, 4 images and one cloned section of the original) - the second is still a composite, this time of two images.

Thing is, they don't jump out at you unless you play with the forward and back tool in flickr (they're consecutive images in my photostream)

Now, IMO, I don't think that the first image posted is particularly deserving of the epithet CGI, though, it does only really exist on computer. The work that went into photoshop was in making it look realistic, not in making it look strange and exotic.

(I'll try and find the original raw and post it up later, just to show how much work it took to get to this...)



ETA: here's the straight version...StraightOutOfCameraStillLife.jpg

doesn't really "pop" does it...

(I did get a bit better at sorting my lighting and props over the next few months of experimentation, and as I got better, the amount of photoshoppery decreased at a corresponding rate...)
 
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