Of course it remains photography (if this is really important...).
Back in the Silver Age, I studied books by people like Ansel Adams,
Bruce Barnabaum, Eddie Ephraums, Barry Thornton & c a lot. They all
had a lot of space dedicated to what kinds of darkroom manipulation
they applied, often with spectacular improvements to the original,
shown by "before" and "after" prints, just like the Peter Myers text
that you linked to. Nobody doubted that the result was photography
then, so why should we doubt it now? Doing it in Photoshop is somewhat
easier than doing the same thing in the darkroom, but there is no added
value just in doing things the hard way. After all, we wouldn´t
consider a violinist any better if he played a Beethoven sonata
standing on one leg....
As a technical aside, a "linear TIFF" like the one shown is, and has to
be, extremely dark when viewed on a normally calibrated display; the
essay is not about salvaging an underexposed shot. The info is there,
the exposure was probably correct, only the image is not meant to be
seen in this state, just like a silver negative isn´t what will be
shown to the public.
Per Öfverbeck
http://foto.ofverbeck.se
2005-04-25 kl. 11.19 skrev Andrea Coffey:
To me, it's all about the exercise of the photographer's judgement.
Based on our original photograph, so it's photography.
What do others think? Does it remain photography?
&i (:
