Composites in Photography – Enjoy the Process and Ignore the Critics
To immerse oneself in a beautifully creative mindset and environment: to learn to express oneself: to truly enjoy the creative process and in the end, to come out with something beautiful or meaningful to you – that is the essence of art, to me. Yet, as you’d expect, there is, always has been, and always will be, snobbery in every area of art.
Our photographic community, while close-knit and accepting, is at the forefront of the snobbery war. ‘Experts’ talk about the days of film being real photographic art, while other ‘experts’ remind us that true photography should never require post-processing. The internet, especially, is full of people who ‘know’ stuff and can’t wait to either display their ‘knowledge’ or the high morals with which they conduct their behaviour.
I’m a lover of the visual arts, in whatever form they may come in. The way a person’s imagination can work, and the incredible skill artists can display in their work, is truly magical. It often inspires me.
I consider myself a photographer, first and foremost. I take pictures. I process those pictures to suit my style. It’s a process I love and is very personal. However, someone wrote on one of my recent images ‘Saw the before and after. This is fake. I hate it!’, referring to one of the very few composites I’ve created. On that same image someone replied to this comment saying ‘Yeah, thought it was real. Waste of time’.
I cannot begin to describe to you how alien this behaviour is to me, as an art lover. To take time out of your day to write a negative comment on someone else’s work – why on earth would that give you satisfaction? Is there really nothing more you could have been doing with your life at that point?
When these people are confronted, we are always left with the same uneducated replies we’d expect from a 5-year old – most commonly ‘Just giving my opinion’. Somehow, being spiteful or negative is okay when it’s your opinion.
Fortunately, most of my subscribers share the same creative passion. On facebook I posted the below image last week. Another person had accused me of cheating by using Photoshop. 430 likes, 28 shares and 119 comments later, it became apparent to me that I was connected with the ‘right-minded’ people.
The thing with composites is that they tend to divide the photography community somewhat. Some people say they’re acceptable and some people say they aren’t. Some people claim that if it isn’t a true representation of the real-life scene then it isn’t photography. A lot of these people also live in black and white realities, it seems.
The main point, however, is that it is all bull shit! Every single opinion, including mine, is worthless. I don’t care how many followers you have, how long you’ve been in the game or how good your images are, your opinion means nothing…literally.
True art is a creative process, as free as possible from the limitations and rules of others. We can learn from others, of course, but our art will suffer if we accept their limitations, too.
Some of you may be nodding your head thinking ‘fair enough, I accept that. But let’s make a distinction between photographic art (real life representation) and digital art (photo-manipulation) ‘. I’ve heard this debate countless times. But, again, I will say this – call it what you will. It doesn’t make a difference. It will not change a thing. It might make you feel better, for whatever reason, but it is pointless.
Imagine a world where we were taught to nurture our creative souls, where we were actively told to question the rules pushed upon us, and where criticism was given only when asked for. What a beautifully artistic place to exist, however unlikely. Instead, we live in world where experts tell us what we should and shouldn’t be doing and some people are compelled to exude uninvited negativity.
Over a year ago I wrote an article about HDR photography as an art form and the way in which ‘experts’ tell us what we should and shouldn’t be doing:
“While guidance can help an individual find their true footing in a particular art from, the word ‘should’ seeks only to constrict creativity. When our imaginations begin to fire it is the word ‘should’ that dulls the flame. ‘Shoulds’ are the walls that we surround ourselves in every day of our existence. We ‘should’ go to work. We ‘should’ get a pension. We ‘should’ do our homework.
In art there can be only one ‘should’. We ‘should’ not be bound by the limitations set by others
In fact, only three things can truly inhibit a person’s artistic endeavours; lack of tools, individual skill, and imagination – not the rules of others.”
I know that there are some out there who would like to try composites but don’t know if they’re acceptable or not. Do whatever you want. It’s your art. Ignore the experts.
Here’s the kicker to those of you who really despise composites:
I’ve published two shots that were composites in the last 2 weeks. 1 of them was the top shot on 500px.com for about 16 hours, with a score of 99.9 and received 6,000+ views. The other got to 2nd on 500px (top spot was also a composite) and received around 3,500 views. Both of the images had a link to the before/after comparison on my blog. Across all platforms the images were incredibly well received. I gained literally hundreds of new followers and noticed an increase in revenue in my post-processing courses!
Not only did I love the workflow for each image, from shooting to post-processing, both turned out to be great for exposure and still continue to drive traffic to my site. If I’d listened to some of the ‘experts’, neither of these images would have existed.
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This entry was posted on Sunday, September 15th, 2013 at 4:22 pm
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Jimmy, well written thought. I couldn’t agree with you more. World would be much better if the trolls didn’t have access to the internet :).
Spot on. I am also befuddled by those who feel the need to deride someone’s choice of technique publicly — especially when that technique is so well executed (as it is here).
Post processing part of photography. Whether it is simple tonal adjustments, BW conversion, HDR or compositing, it is a means to achieve your vision.
In the end it is about the destination, not the journey.
Keep up the great work.
Well said jimmy. We can’t limit ourselves because of someone negative opinion. I started following you, Blake Rudis and Serge Ramelli about 6months ago. I bought 3 of your courses. And subcribe to your YouTube channel. Since then I’ve had my work in a photo exhibition and a restaurant is interested in buying digital rights for 6 of my pictures. And they want to fly me to other locations to take pictures in my style, which is the style you Serge and Blake taught me. If I didn’t expand my work creatively none of this would have happened. I takes more energy to be negative than just to say “Nice work but its not for me”. I think all the negative people maybe just don’t understand the creative process and the endless results that you can achieve from a RAW file. I will forever be greatfull to those of you who take the time to teach us new ways to process our images and expand ourselves in ways that seemed unreachable before.
So in closing I’m a photographer, an Artist, a Photoshop & Lightroom user, a photo manipulator and a cheater. And proud of it.
Thanks for all of your tutorials and look forward to the next one.
nodding head in agreement. I gave up calling my fun-stuff “photography” years ago and now just call it either an image … or … photography based digital art. That seemed to quell the beasties’ furor. I like it. It’s fun to do. And it sells.
“Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.” ~Henry Ward Beecher
Read more at:http://skinnyartist.com/150-amazing-quotes-to-feed-your-creative-soul/ Spread your artistic wings and soar Jimmy. Don’t let the nay sayers on the ground turn you from your passion. Your appreciative and growing fan base is an excellent indication of the positive response your exceptional work is garnering in this field of photography. “To infinity and beyond!” Oh, and keep those great blogs coming too please, I rather enjoy them as well. 🙂
Just remind them that composites are nothing new, and they go back to the beginning of Albumen prints. Gustave Le Grey(1820-1844) Created composites to capture a large tonal range that no other photos at the time did.
Well written, I think your negative feedback/comments are from people that also have jealous tendencies
Art is an personal thing. Making or taking a photo is the difference. Like or not. POINT. Great writing Jimmy 🙂
Hi Jimmy!
First of all, I would like to thank you for sharing your processing methods and congratulate you for your global work. I am not a big fan of long processing, preferring spending most of my time behind my camera than my computer, but I have found many tips in your tutorials than can be helpful.
I have read your HDR magazines and I would like to give you my point of view concerning a comparison you did in one of your first articles. In this article, dealing with “purist photographer” (that explaines why I am leaving a comment here 😉 ) and their contempt for manual blending, you said that in your point of view, using filters was the same thing that using manual blending or HDR.
Again let me say that what follows is just my opinion, I’m not trying to convince you that I’m right and you’re wrong, this is just a difference of perception of photography (and I am not a frustrated purist 😉 ).
I try to practice photography following its first definition: drawing with light. In this metaphor, the light is the ink, the sensor is the paper and between them, there is the pencil: lenses, flash, filters. These devices modify the properties of light before it marks the sensor, and so before the photography is created, contrary to processing which appears after the photography is created. With processing you can just develop the photography or go deeper and create a full image with graphic tools. In this case the photography becomes a mean to obtain a picture, and not an end.
Taking this into account, images created by using HDR or DRI, or with important processing modifications, are not comparable for me with more conventional photographies using filters and which are just developped. And so there is no reason to say that one is better than the other, there are no different levels, there is just a different perception of photography, where the photography is an end or just a step to another end. Both of them can create beautiful results, as you show us, and this is the most important.
Inspiring words, Jimmy. In the end, expressing yourself through art is what matters, not the means of expression. Art is personal and cannot follow uniformity rules.
Firstly Jimmy, BRAVO!!!!!!!
Secondly, something very similar has just happened to myself. I wrote a post on Facebook stating i was going out to capture the autumn colours to which someone replied “try taking a photo that doesn’t require photoshop”. Raging would be an understatement!!!!! How dare a person write such a pathetic comment on my post. I nearly wrote out an entire essay to this idiot and was going to state the obvious about shooting RAW and all RAW images need editing of some kind and i stopped myself and just thought why lower myself to this idiots level!! To finish off his comment he even wrote that as i use photoshop then i should be giving the makers of photoshop some credit for helping me create the image………. Ok………. so when this person makes a pie in his oven does he write on Facebook “Just made an awesome pie but big up to my HotPoint oven for baking it at 180 degrees for 30 mins”????? I kinda doubt it some how!!! I now realise there are people out there who’s sole aim in life is to try and annoy other people so i have now made it my duty to avoid these people like the plague!!
Your work is amazing Jimmy and don’t ever let anybody tell you any different 🙂
The before image is what everyone would have seen through the lens. The after image shows what YOU seen and it also shows us your soul and emotions. It takes my breath away. Photoshop enables me to try and show my emotions and soul in what I saw and felt at that particular moment in time. Artists use paint to show us what they and saw and felt, and not necessarily what reality looks like. People who are negative about Photoshop probably don’t have any digital editing skills. You do need to have some form of interest in digital editing to really appreciate the ability PS has to express creativity through technology. Photoshop has given me an outlet for my creativity, and I find it very therapeutic and satisfying to edit my photos. I am no expert photographer, I use my camera as a sort of ‘sketch’ tool.
I am grateful to all my negative comments. They made me better, they forced me to develop; positive comments – never!
Thanks for writing this one, Jimmy!
Absolutely right Jimmy! I can’t help but think the naysayers are just driven by jealousy. An awesome image is just that – AWESOME, no matter how it was created.
Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and your work with us.
I fully agree on what you wrote and I have the same experiences. Sometimes I show my photos to others before I publish them. Like some weeks ago. I showed a colleague a photo and explained a bit on how I made it. The response was also: so it’s fake. Then I published it on 500px and it got 2nd with a maximum pulse of 99.8.
If I would have listened to the negative comments I sometimes get regarding photoshopped work, I would probably never have done any post processing (though that is a bit hard in case of RAW files 😉 ). But these negative comments are exactly what you said: opinions. The main problem is that some people state their opinions as facts. Or as rules that everybody should follow. And indeed: if you listen too much to opinions of others and actually see them as rules that should be followed, it will hold you back. Though I would not say an opinion is worthless. On the contrary: I would say it is very important to have an opinion. Having a (strong) opinion can help you ignoring negativity. But that is just an opinion. 😉
Keep up the great work and thanks for sharing your experience with us.
Absolutely right on the nose Jimmy. I couldn’t agree more. Photograph is art. We capture an image and present it in a way that tries to get across how we felt when we took the photograph. Some aspects are emphasised and others de- emphasised. It’s the scene portrayed as it made is feel at the time. Wheather it’s selecting the right aperture to blur out unwanted detail, or selecting exposure to emphasis movement or using post processing tools afterward. Using the camera and all available tools to get your message across takes many forms. The straight shot is just one of those forms and is not more or less valid than any other.
No one ever criticises a black and white image because the original scene was in colour! Similarly, no image is criticise for being in a frame when the original scene had no frame!!! There are no limits nor should there be.
Totally agree. I belong to a camera club where we run competitions where images are scored by an invited (paid) external judge. The comment we often get is “it looks like the author has done some …”. The implied criticism is not that work has been done; it’s that it can be seen to have been done. THAT’S the difference. Change, recompose, clone, dodge, burn, whatever but make sure that it doesn’t show. The art is in choosing what to change and how. The skill is doing it in such a way as to make it natural and non-noticable. Everything else is just personal opinion.
I just like that you are honest about your techniques and you don’t try to hoard what you know and monopolize your skills. You share them with others, mostly at no cost at all, for which I personally thank you!! Some people do intentionally try to deceive a viewer to believe something was taken as reality, and will not admit to using 2 separately shot photos. Again, you are excellent at what you do, and kind, and honest as well! Thank you and sorry for your hecklers! They’re just jealous! I have faced adversity myself in some of my shots and I am nowhere near prolific like you. You wouldn’t believe, but one day I was ecstatic to discover I had received an award with a sunset photo, only to be bombarded and harrassed by chem-trail groupies who cussed at me and said how ugly my picture is and how it only shows cancer and all kinds of other harsh things, accusing me of being braindead and all sorts of other atrocities– and not one of them even asked me if I believed or didn’t believe in their conspiracy theories; they just jumped on me. For crying out loud, I was just trying to show a colorful sunset photo– you’d think by some of these people’s reactions, that I shared a photo of dead kittens or something! (Shaking my head.) It really was a bit of a killjoy for the award I had one with the photo in the first place and made me think I really had to judge the sky before I bothered with shooting a sunset photo again. The world is full of critics. If only there were more people like you!