I have read quite a bit about S.O.O.C vs Altering pictures on 365 and for me I try to shoot and present everything I take as it came out of the camera. At most I might push an enhance button which in most cases doesn't really alter my photographs that much, bar brightening them slightly. This with some Cropping is as far as I go. We all have the tools now to be able to manipulate a Photo so that it looks nothing like it did when it was taken. There are may occasions when a Photograph I have taken looks a bit plain or ordinary and its possibly down to me and how I set my camera up in the first place or when I have just set it to Auto and fired away.
Im not against anyone or any picture which has been manipulated and I have seen some beautiful pictures on websites and other displays.
Like Films which we see on television and in the cinema these days the 'Special Effects ' can sometimes ruin the story because in the back of our minds we know whats real and what is not. So, to conclude I feel seeing Pictures which are as true to how they looked if you were actually standing there and taking them yourself are the best photographs because they are real.
@stephenfox. I think the commentary to your photo of 23 June is very telling: "This is one of the photos you take and , hope it looks the same as what you saw, to make you want to take it.".
When we look at a scene, our brain processes the information collected by the eyes and presents us with an image that will incorporate all of our previous experiences and our current state of mind - the camera can't do that so there is often a discrepancy between what we remember and what we see when we look at the photo we took at the time. For me, post-processing is not 'altering' an image, it is applying the same processing to the photo that my brain employed when creating my memory of the event so that my memory and the recorded vision are homogenous. (I'm ignoring for the purposes of this discussion the processing decisions made by Mr Canikony when he programmed the processor inside your camera!)
And finally, your comment to your post of 2 June seems at variance to your philosophy and practice as explained above - "The sky behind was bland and grey, using Picmonkey I have sneaked in a better looking one behind."
@vignouse Thanks for your comments and to quote from what I wrote
" Im not against anyone or any picture which has been manipulated and I have seen some beautiful pictures on websites and other displays."
And yes the picture I took on June 2nd did have the sky altered , but I made a point of sharing this in my comments about the photo, rather than allowing people to think the sky actually looked that way. As quoted I'm not against anyone altering any images, but maybe there are occasions when the viewer needs to be informed the picture has been altered rather than let them think its a S.O.O.C picture.
@stephenfox I suppose I'm a little puzzled as to why you started your thread just 11 days after this one - http://365project.org/discuss/general/25732/sooc-silly-or-over-confident - which seemed to have explored in some depth this subject. I quite liked Arthur's @wordpixman alternative wording for SOOC because there are folk who label their photos SOOC like a badge of honour. As I hinted in my first reply, in reality SOOC actually means AsPIC - As Processed in Camera - or, 'I have chosen to let the camera manufacturer decide what my picture looks like rather than making the decision myself.' Either is a valid choice I think but the resulting image needs to be judged on it's own merits not solely on how it was produced.
Were we to be having this discussion about photojournalism however, I would certainly be arguing for no intervention at all, including 'picture styles' and cropping, but I have assumed that we were talking about 'art' images such as those which are posted on this site.
@vignouse Richard it's just my opinion, I've looked at your Pictures, they are excellent and whether you have altered them or not the end results are a pleasure to look at. All I'm saying is that in today's increasingly Virtual World where we are surrounded by artistically created images on film and in photographs that I like to be able to see and take photographs which have had the minimum amount of post processing carried out on them.
@vignouse ... couldn't agree more Richard. In art or hobby photography anything goes , call it whst you will, (A rose by any other name) but the manner in which it isused should preferably indicate some knowledge of what it means and not just applied as an accolade.
Photojournalism, in which I spent most of my working life should as you imply be "untouched by human hand" insofar as content is concerned, but even then there is almost invariably a good deal of tone control and essential cropping to fit the column width and image depth, so even that is not sacrosanct, and I can make a good case for airbrushing out a distracting background as long as the information content of the picture is not altered, but having said that, there are plenty of cases, especially in certain areas of the popular press where blatant faking is a daily occurrence.
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When we look at a scene, our brain processes the information collected by the eyes and presents us with an image that will incorporate all of our previous experiences and our current state of mind - the camera can't do that so there is often a discrepancy between what we remember and what we see when we look at the photo we took at the time. For me, post-processing is not 'altering' an image, it is applying the same processing to the photo that my brain employed when creating my memory of the event so that my memory and the recorded vision are homogenous. (I'm ignoring for the purposes of this discussion the processing decisions made by Mr Canikony when he programmed the processor inside your camera!)
And finally, your comment to your post of 2 June seems at variance to your philosophy and practice as explained above - "The sky behind was bland and grey, using Picmonkey I have sneaked in a better looking one behind."
" Im not against anyone or any picture which has been manipulated and I have seen some beautiful pictures on websites and other displays."
And yes the picture I took on June 2nd did have the sky altered , but I made a point of sharing this in my comments about the photo, rather than allowing people to think the sky actually looked that way. As quoted I'm not against anyone altering any images, but maybe there are occasions when the viewer needs to be informed the picture has been altered rather than let them think its a S.O.O.C picture.
Were we to be having this discussion about photojournalism however, I would certainly be arguing for no intervention at all, including 'picture styles' and cropping, but I have assumed that we were talking about 'art' images such as those which are posted on this site.
Photojournalism, in which I spent most of my working life should as you imply be "untouched by human hand" insofar as content is concerned, but even then there is almost invariably a good deal of tone control and essential cropping to fit the column width and image depth, so even that is not sacrosanct, and I can make a good case for airbrushing out a distracting background as long as the information content of the picture is not altered, but having said that, there are plenty of cases, especially in certain areas of the popular press where blatant faking is a daily occurrence.