It's all done on computers!
'A plea for honesty and integrity.'
I was watching 'Pirates of the Caribbean 2' the other night. Again. I make
no apologies for this as I think they are fantastic entertainment. Anyway.
I had decided to have a look at the 'bonus' disc to see if it really was
worth paying the extra for. I shall save the 'directors cut, wide screen
edition, bonus disc' debate for another day. The point I am coming to, by
a very circuitous route, is a moment in the 'here's the film again but with
some bloke talking over it' bit where Orlando Bloom arrives on a beach where
someone has rather carelessly parked the 'Black Pearl'. Or rather they haven't.
According to our helpful narrator it's not actually there. Such is the power
of CGI these days. I have to admit I was stunned. I wasn't expecting them
to park a full-blown galleon on the beach, I figured it was just half a
hull supported by scaffolding, so this revelation took me by surprise. It
was just so convincing.
'Where are you going with this Dave?' I hear you ask. 'Yay! for the guys
and girls in Hollywood for being so clever, but we are landscape photographers
so what does this have to do with us?' It has to do with trust my friends.
Technology is a wonderful thing. I love gadgets as much as the next man
and, as you may have read in some of my other articles, I am a wholehearted
convert to the digital way. But ever since the day the first digital camera
crawled from the evolutionary swamp there has been a public perception that
digital images are in some way 'fake'. Everyone has heard the stories of
people having smiles imposed on portraits or figures being erased from images
in some form of Stalinist conspiracy. Worse still, people or objects being
inserted into locations where they have never existed. Those pictures of
me on a night out with Kate Winslet for example. This perception is applied
without fear, favour or understanding to all digital images and this is
where it becomes a problem for us as landscape photographers in a digital
age.
You may well have climbed overnight, through wind and rain, to reach a mountain
peak in time to catch those first glorious rays of dawn light as they illuminate
the clouds with an ethereal glow, but when you display your work you may
well be met with 'That can't be real, it's all done on computer.' Our work
and our efforts are devalued purely because the image was captured on a
digital camera. Where people believe that with film 'the camera never lies'
(if only they knew), with digital they have a tendency to automatically
assume that it must be doctored.
For me, one of the joys of landscape photography is the ability to share
with others locations and images that show the natural beauty of this planet.
But people need to know that what they are looking at actually exists, that
the real world is every bit as spectacular as the latest Hollywood blockbuster.
So please, use your tools to their full extent. Use your lenses. Use your
filters. Use Photoshop. Clone out that bit of litter you couldn't reach
at the time. Adjust your levels and check your white balance. But never,
and I mean never, import another sky. Never change the colour of the leaves
to make a spring day look like autumn. If the elements aren't quite right,
go back another day. Show the scene to it's best advantage, but above all
things be honest. In time people will trust digitally captured images in
the way they, rightly or wrongly, trust film, but it's up to us to convince
them.
As far as digital manipulation goes, to my mind Jeff Goldblum said it best
in Jurassic Park.
'Just because we can doesn't mean we should.'
About the author: David Stanley is a freelance photographer concentrating
on landscape
and travel images. He has growing portfolios of royalty free images
with Alamy
and istockphoto.
For more articles and reviews, along with a selection of his work available
as open and limited edition prints, please visit his website at www.davidstanleyphotography.com.
(If you are reproducing this article please ensure you include the 'About
the author' footer in full on each occasion. Thanks.)
