Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
That (the palm oil people) is one of the hugest problems for the tropics. Huge tracts of rainforest are being destroyed for a simple commodity that we could pretty much do without.
Coincidentally, just yesterday I bought a ludicrously expensive jar of palm oil from Whole Paycheck, the first I’ve ever bought; the label very prominently states that it’s from west Africa, not a plantation, and “orangutan-safe.”
I suppose I should probably research it further if I decide I like it before buying any more….
Just so people don’t get discouraged: many of them have been heavily (and very skillfully) post-processed — though, to be sure, using “traditional” techniques of local changes to brightness (aka “dodging and burning”) and the like, as opposed to compositing multiple images together or editing out undesired elements (“Photoshopping”). That wildebeest photo, for example, is fantastic — but, I assure you, the preview image on the back of the camera looked nothing like that.
That just feels kind of dishonest. Personally if I’m told I’m going to see a photo I expect to see what comes out of the camera. Shouldn’t the skill be at that point, not your digital editing?
The wildebeest picture is amazing. To me, it looks more like a painting than a photograph.
Depends what you mean by “out of the camera”. Most people shoot RAW. That means the camera doesn’t get to decide the colouring, lighting etc. or at least gets to decide these things minimally after you’ve set them as such in the camera. RAW images require processing afterwards.
Also, you could extend your argument to dismiss all use of camera settings other than manual. Most likely the majority of these photos were captured this way because you need to understand depth of field, exposure, aperture speed, etc.
I just don’t understand that position. What do you mean dishonest? What is dishonest about creating an image you find aesthetically pleasing? If you are talking about intentionally deceiving people to cheat them out of money, like before and after magic anti aging lotion, you have a point.
But “Photography” is an art. “Enhancing” photographs has been going on long before the digital age. Like any art the intent is to create whatever is in the mind of the artist.
Even if the goal is merely to produce an image that looks as much like what you saw through the viewfinder as possible, you won’t get that straight out of the camera no matter what your skill level is.
I suspect this comes from the idea that what the camera sees is “real”. Photography gives the illusion of reality and I say illusion because it is the photographer that chooses what you are going to see so the image has already been filtered by the photography by the way he/she chooses to take the picture.
You’ve already gotten a few good responses, but let me add my own.
Most photographers go through a “straight-out-of-the-camera” purity phase. The idea is that, once you press that shutter release button, your work is done and you don’t do anything else.
Sadly, as noble as such a sentiment may seem, it has little actual bearing on reality; in the real world, even such a “minimally processed” photo is still heavily processed. If it’s film, it’s got to go through all the chemical baths; if it’s digital, it has to be changed from a stream of bits into an image file. The manufacturers of the chemicals and the software programmers have defined standardized recipes, but who’s to say that their recipes are somehow more pure than the variations you yourself might come up with? And, considering how radical a departure from “real” reality any photograph is in the first place, why are we obsessing over the purity of a given recipe in the first place?
It actually is possible, though far from easy, to create a workflow such that, for example, one can make a photographic print of an original work of art with no obvious differences between the two — and no human decisions to be made in that workflow. Human interaction, yes; but, just like pressing the button, there’s no creative decisions. You press one button, read a number, twirl this dial so many clicks based on the number, and so on. At the end of the process, you can lay the original and copy side-by-side on a table, and even the artist herself is going to have to stare carefully to spot the differences.
You can adopt many of those techniques to general-purpose photography and get surprisingly good results — but there are limitations. At least with today’s software, “brighter than white” (light sources, clouds reflecting sunlight, specular reflections, certain types of fluorescent objects) gets “clipped” to white. There are techniques to recover those highlights by making them darker, and methods for making the fact that they’re darker than they really were less obvious — but that brings us right back to the same general class of “dodge and burn” manipulations that photographers have been doing practically since the first exposure was ever made.
Where the rubber meets the road, there’s really only one distinction worth making: reportage v art. If it’s a work of art, anything goes, period, full stop. If it’s intended as reportage, either the manipulations (which, by the way, can include stuff such as adding light sources or removing branches or asking somebody to strike a pose before you press the shutter) should be minimal and / or traditional, or they should be fully disclosed. So long as reporters (professional or amateur) are honest with their audiences, there’s no problem.
…and, frankly, there are often times when artists (not reporters) should deceive the audience. That’s a big part of the point of art, after all. What’s the point of Salvador Dali or Escher if not to confuse and bewilder, and to delight in the bewilderment? And why shouldn’t a photographer get to join in that type of fun?
To me, it looks more like a painting than a photograph
If I had to guess I would say that it was some kind of HDR-Imaging. HDR-Images have a reputation to look like a painting when it is taken to extreme levels.
Although I am wondering how the photographer was able to capture multiple images with different exposures of the same scene. Either he has a camera that can shoot very fast or he extrapolated the different images later.
HDR only works with static subjects. This is good old fashioned dodging and burning.
…of course, that’s really all that HDR is, anyway, only with the multiple exposures to expand the tonal range one has to work with (and often theses days lots of automation).
Well, there is certainly a large subjective component to this, and maybe black & white photography is not as appealing these days. I wouldn’t say it is a great picture, but I think it is pretty good, and interesting.
But, in the mid 70’s I got into black & white photography fairly seriously for awhile, so I might be biased. I miss working in the dark room with all the equipment, and the smells.
The wildebeest photo reminded me of the paintings of the American West by Frederic Remington. That the animals were wildebeest rather than bison was initially jarring. And I had to do a double-take to realize that it was in fact a photo rather than a painting.
Incredible pictures.
What us to have good cameras and opportunities to use them
I looked the mantises best and also the trains because you don’t know what they are at first; they look like jewellery.
I also like the emotional bride one. Probably there is something wrong with me.
Love the baby orangutan. I have recently began giving to a rescue organization. They are being decimated by the palm oil people.
That (the palm oil people) is one of the hugest problems for the tropics. Huge tracts of rainforest are being destroyed for a simple commodity that we could pretty much do without.
Coincidentally, just yesterday I bought a ludicrously expensive jar of palm oil from Whole Paycheck, the first I’ve ever bought; the label very prominently states that it’s from west Africa, not a plantation, and “orangutan-safe.”
I suppose I should probably research it further if I decide I like it before buying any more….
b&
Ben, go to redapes.org. It’s the NY organization that’s doing good work. I adopted two young ones this week.
Thanks. I’ll check them out.
b&
On another visual note, do people know that squeaky baby sloths are about as cute as slothily possible?
On the subject of sloths – a woman who ended up looking after 200 sloths (with video). http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26734289
Love the mantises. What? You haven’t been paying attention to arthropods? Damn, child, you don’t what you’ve been missing.
Lots of great stuff.
Just so people don’t get discouraged: many of them have been heavily (and very skillfully) post-processed — though, to be sure, using “traditional” techniques of local changes to brightness (aka “dodging and burning”) and the like, as opposed to compositing multiple images together or editing out undesired elements (“Photoshopping”). That wildebeest photo, for example, is fantastic — but, I assure you, the preview image on the back of the camera looked nothing like that.
Cheers,
b&
That just feels kind of dishonest. Personally if I’m told I’m going to see a photo I expect to see what comes out of the camera. Shouldn’t the skill be at that point, not your digital editing?
The wildebeest picture is amazing. To me, it looks more like a painting than a photograph.
Depends what you mean by “out of the camera”. Most people shoot RAW. That means the camera doesn’t get to decide the colouring, lighting etc. or at least gets to decide these things minimally after you’ve set them as such in the camera. RAW images require processing afterwards.
Also, you could extend your argument to dismiss all use of camera settings other than manual. Most likely the majority of these photos were captured this way because you need to understand depth of field, exposure, aperture speed, etc.
I just don’t understand that position. What do you mean dishonest? What is dishonest about creating an image you find aesthetically pleasing? If you are talking about intentionally deceiving people to cheat them out of money, like before and after magic anti aging lotion, you have a point.
But “Photography” is an art. “Enhancing” photographs has been going on long before the digital age. Like any art the intent is to create whatever is in the mind of the artist.
Even if the goal is merely to produce an image that looks as much like what you saw through the viewfinder as possible, you won’t get that straight out of the camera no matter what your skill level is.
I suspect this comes from the idea that what the camera sees is “real”. Photography gives the illusion of reality and I say illusion because it is the photographer that chooses what you are going to see so the image has already been filtered by the photography by the way he/she chooses to take the picture.
You’ve already gotten a few good responses, but let me add my own.
Most photographers go through a “straight-out-of-the-camera” purity phase. The idea is that, once you press that shutter release button, your work is done and you don’t do anything else.
Sadly, as noble as such a sentiment may seem, it has little actual bearing on reality; in the real world, even such a “minimally processed” photo is still heavily processed. If it’s film, it’s got to go through all the chemical baths; if it’s digital, it has to be changed from a stream of bits into an image file. The manufacturers of the chemicals and the software programmers have defined standardized recipes, but who’s to say that their recipes are somehow more pure than the variations you yourself might come up with? And, considering how radical a departure from “real” reality any photograph is in the first place, why are we obsessing over the purity of a given recipe in the first place?
It actually is possible, though far from easy, to create a workflow such that, for example, one can make a photographic print of an original work of art with no obvious differences between the two — and no human decisions to be made in that workflow. Human interaction, yes; but, just like pressing the button, there’s no creative decisions. You press one button, read a number, twirl this dial so many clicks based on the number, and so on. At the end of the process, you can lay the original and copy side-by-side on a table, and even the artist herself is going to have to stare carefully to spot the differences.
You can adopt many of those techniques to general-purpose photography and get surprisingly good results — but there are limitations. At least with today’s software, “brighter than white” (light sources, clouds reflecting sunlight, specular reflections, certain types of fluorescent objects) gets “clipped” to white. There are techniques to recover those highlights by making them darker, and methods for making the fact that they’re darker than they really were less obvious — but that brings us right back to the same general class of “dodge and burn” manipulations that photographers have been doing practically since the first exposure was ever made.
Where the rubber meets the road, there’s really only one distinction worth making: reportage v art. If it’s a work of art, anything goes, period, full stop. If it’s intended as reportage, either the manipulations (which, by the way, can include stuff such as adding light sources or removing branches or asking somebody to strike a pose before you press the shutter) should be minimal and / or traditional, or they should be fully disclosed. So long as reporters (professional or amateur) are honest with their audiences, there’s no problem.
…and, frankly, there are often times when artists (not reporters) should deceive the audience. That’s a big part of the point of art, after all. What’s the point of Salvador Dali or Escher if not to confuse and bewilder, and to delight in the bewilderment? And why shouldn’t a photographer get to join in that type of fun?
Cheers,
b&
If I had to guess I would say that it was some kind of HDR-Imaging. HDR-Images have a reputation to look like a painting when it is taken to extreme levels.
Although I am wondering how the photographer was able to capture multiple images with different exposures of the same scene. Either he has a camera that can shoot very fast or he extrapolated the different images later.
HDR only works with static subjects. This is good old fashioned dodging and burning.
…of course, that’s really all that HDR is, anyway, only with the multiple exposures to expand the tonal range one has to work with (and often theses days lots of automation).
b&
Thanks for sharing these amazing images
Interesting pictures, but what’s so special about the last one? It doesn’t interest my eye at all. Am I missing something obvious?
Well, there is certainly a large subjective component to this, and maybe black & white photography is not as appealing these days. I wouldn’t say it is a great picture, but I think it is pretty good, and interesting.
But, in the mid 70’s I got into black & white photography fairly seriously for awhile, so I might be biased. I miss working in the dark room with all the equipment, and the smells.
The wildebeest photo reminded me of the paintings of the American West by Frederic Remington. That the animals were wildebeest rather than bison was initially jarring. And I had to do a double-take to realize that it was in fact a photo rather than a painting.
Beautiful composition.
Kewl pictures. I particularly like the baby orang.
LOL…the trains remind me of images of DNA sequencing I have seen.
thanks for re-posting this for us!
“Praying” mantises? I think not! Atheist mantises, surely!