of photographic energy. Just in time to get tasked with sitting down
with the arduous task of going through all my digital files from the
last ten years.
While going through them, I came across this set of images that has
bearing on a conversation I had with some young guns this weekend. The
issue was about manipulation and the truth.
I will agree I am not the purest of the bunch. I manipulate images to
make them look good... When the assignment is commercial and calls for
it. But when it comes to editorial images and perception in the news
media, I stick to the principals passed down and approved by pretty
much every news outlet. Dodging, Burning, cropping, etc.
A few years ago, I was doing a weeklong story on the Dolphin Trainers
in San Diego. The day was calm and dreary (and I still got seasick).
The fog was nice and eerie and I knew what I was after when I started
to see this dolphin coming up and swimming by the boat. I composed my
shot and kept shooting until I got the right angle from the dolphin. I
nailed it on the fifth shot. A slight crop and rotation to fix my
horizon, and an adjustment in the color contrast and I was done. This
is about as untouched as it gets.
The problem. It is too good. Every single person I have ever met that
has seen this photo automatically discounts it as a cool trick in
photoshop. Even the judges at the military photographer of the year
judging that year thought the same way. Isn't that sad?
Who knows what people will think of us 20 years from now.
1 comment:
Hey, great shot, I spoke toi a friend of mine who is a military photographer, with their competition you have to send in the raw file in, digitall, i think you had a winning entry there, it is a fantastic shot.
It does not matter what other people think of your images it is how it makes you feel.
Rich
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