Photography Finally Got Too Good

[foggymountain]

I have always wanted a Castello, but never saw one I liked. Finally that changed a few weeks ago and I ordered a Castello KKKK panel with a natural finish. The pipe looked so good in the photos that It seemed a steal at $505. When it came, the pipe did not look at all as good as in the photos. The grain was less defined, and less contrasty. It didn't seem to be good enough to smoke much. Additionally it was more than 1/4 inch shorter than specified. The length of a pipe is important to me. I no longer order those under 6 inches. Longer pipes are smoother, to my taste. So I had to return it. The digital photography, + adjustment possible on photoshop or lightroom now may make pipes look better than they are.

 

[lucky695]

good info foggy. Care to mention where you purchased that from to help other would be patrons?

 

[foggymountain]

smokingpipes.com. I do not mean to blame them in any way. It is good supplier and they accepted the return without a problem.

 

[lucky695]

yes I like them as well. Thanks.

 

[philobeddoe]

Photographers have been making models look taller, skinnier, tanner, blemish-free and just generally better than they really are for years. It would seem that pipe photography has finally caught up!

 

[woodsroad]

Everything can look better photographed. It's a temptation that is hard to resist. I was brought up in newspaper photojournalism. If a photographer got caught altering a photograph in a substantial way, they were fired. It was likened to making up quotes or inventing sources. We just didn't do it. Much.

 

[darwin]

For several decades I was one of those poor slobs responsible for how photos looked in a newspaper and it was no picnic to say the least. It's not really that photography is getting better, just look at the generally wretched state of internet images, but that heavy amounts of image processing after the fact is so ubiquitous. There is in general a very wide gulf between professionally shot and processed images, and everyone else's crap cellphone pics, that is not going away anytime soon. The temptation to improve on reality is quite strong when image processing is your job and it can get out of hand in a hurry. What I do is download pics in which I am interested, pull them into Photoshop, and then tweak them until, to my practiced eyes, they look more "normal", more like what one is liable to perceive how the subject in question probably looks in the flesh.
Obviously this combination of experience and software is not available to most people and the process is so filled with variables and pitfalls that I can't really see things getting better in the near future. About the best that can be managed for most these days is to be aware that images from the big web sites may have had reality heightened from just a little to a whole lot and to not be too disappointed when reality doesn't match up.

 

[warren]

The old saying "the camera doesn't lie," is of course not true. Photographers, ever since the invention of the camera have been manipulating photographs. Lenses distort perspective and can resolve more detail than the eye. We manipulated photos in the darkroom and now use computer programs to do the same. Indeed, just because someone has a picture doesn't mean the event occurred.
There's a famous shot of an assassinated politician laying dead on the floor. A shadow in the shape of a cross was added in the darkroom to the shot for publication. Very carefully done to create an emotional impact that otherwise would not happen.

 

[gamxiaoyuan]

Yea. It happens a lot at this age. I fell into it several times too.

 

[condorlover1]

Hey Dan I love your 'War Horse' avatar. Should it not read 'War Horse Tobacco. Kicks like a mule. F*cks like a $10 Tijuana she male!' :rofl:

 

[shaintiques]

I have experienced that before and retuned pipes because of it.

 

[woodsroad]

Darwin, what paper were you at?

 

[darwin]

The Houston Comical, er, Chronicle. Got bounced out in one of their innumerable downsizings seven years ago. About half as many people work there as worked there ten years ago. Typical everywhere in the biz. Can't complain too loudly. Hearst retirement fund is paying off nearly as well as SS.

 

[woodsroad]

I was at the Philadelphia Inquirer for 21 years. Got laid off in'07. Photo staff is now 1/4 the size that it was. You are very fortunate to be collecting anything from your pension. Ours was always underfunded, essentially is was robbed by both the company and the union. By the time that I'm old enough to collect, it will all be gone.
Still, it was a sinking ship, and I'm happy to not be there.
Were you in photo or production?

 

[darwin]

I was in a mini-department inside the larger overall photography department exclusively concerned with color correcting images for print. It's not the case now but at the time, and for a long time before then, photographers did not color correct their own images. I was there at the rather pathetic beginnings of "desktop publishing". I actually used Photoshop 1.0 back in 1990. Figuring out how to correct images for letterpress printing was a learning curve that I do care ever to repeat.
I was lucky to have worked for a Hearst Corporation company and they were apparently a lot less irresponsible in their retirement fund investment strategies than most such outfits so the kitty shouldn't be drained for a good while yet.

 

[lonestar]

That's why all my pics are gauranteed to look crappy... Also, I'm not very good at product photography..

 

[woodsroad]

I figure that I got one hell of an education in newspapers, I was paid to "attend classes" and it's now it's paying dividends insofar as I make a good living with a camera in an era when everyone thinks that they are a photographer.
RIP newspapers.

 

[woodsroad]

Well, Dan Rather predates me. He was also a few pay grades above me. In an entirely different organization. But for the time that I was in newspapers, the truth, and honesty, mattered. Of course, our owners were making enough money to afford us those luxuries. Reporting honestly and well is expensive. Once the money ran out, so did the ethics. It's a common problem, which has always led me to say that ethics are for the wealthy: They can buy all that they need.

 

[darwin]

Woodsroad if you're a pro then you are doubtless using a DSLR and thus have the luxury of a decent viewfinder. My photographic brain and muscle memory date from the sixties and I simply have not been able manage using cellphone or point & shoot screens to compose. Drives me nuts.

 

[woodsroad]

Darwin, I'm with you 100%. Here's what I do about it:
When I use the phone, or the live view function on the dslr, I usually can't see it very well. Either it's too bright outside, or there's glare, or I'm holding the camera too far away from my old eyeballs. I mostly rely on informed guessing: having a vision of what the camera is seeing without actually looking through the viewfinder. Most of the time, I'm in the ball park. That's where digital comes in handy. I keep a rear display loupe around my neck to check detail. I take few Hail Mary's, check the back, regroup, adjust and shoot again. It's also where having shot news on film comes in handy. I can point and shoot without looking.
But, like Gary Winogrand, I still take a lot of lousy pictures.
I just delete those.