The Beginnings of Reality and intervention

Example Photograph 1

I was curious to find out more about the complications surrounding digital photographs and their relationship with reality because I had come to realise that it had begun to affect some of my own photographs (even when they weren't post-processed). For example, when viewed by friends or family; especially those not heavily photograph-oriented or from the film-era of photography, they would quite often say: "How did you take that?"  (Example Photograph 1) or, more frequently: "Was that done in Photoshop?" (Example Photograph 2) respectively. This was interesting to me because I hadn't actually processed the first example much (it was just a long exposure) and I had only used a polariser for the second example and it was an unprocessed jpeg. So my friends and family were already questioning the  authenticity of some photos; maybe because of the trend of post-processing in the digital age for photography.

 

Example Photograph 2

   This questioning has actually made me start to ponder my processing; was it too extreme or obvious? Should I have made it more true to the scene? For instance I often overcooked contrast and saturation in-camera when I was capturing photos before starting the course or just beginning it (Example Photograph 3). Although this trend had quietened over time and experience it still was apparent to some viewers. I put this down to all the factors accumulating together in the final processed image rather than one single overriding factor.

Example Photograph 3

 


   So it has been useful experimenting with 'processing the image' already in the 1st and 3rd assignments for Digital Photographic Practice. It has allowed me to pinpoint which areas I felt I was over-processing and hear feedback from my tutor (and also friends and family). Obviously, with the chapter of 'Reality and intervention' commencing, I would find out and begin to question a lot more about the ethics  of manipulating (subtly or aggressively) images I would take and indeed had already taken.

   The aspect I was most interested in though was our perceptions of a photograph; whether it was a 'real' or 'fake' rendition of the world. So merging photographs together or even subtly altering parts were the areas I was looking forward to experimenting with.