If someone indignantly snorts that your image has been Photoshopped, it's a rather unsubtle way of them telling you they think your image is fake. But really, aren't all our images to a certain degree?
Photoshop has become such a common part of our everyday vernacular that it's morphed its way into becoming a verb, much like Google. When you want some quick information, you "Google it," and when someone wants to tell you in no uncertain terms that they doubt the legitimacy of your image, they tell you it's been "Photoshopped." Even my dear old mum, who, at 73, doesn't actually know what Photoshop is, nor what it does, is never afraid of telling me "I like it Iain, but you've Photoshopped it, haven't you?" When I try to tell her that Photoshop (or other similar software) is to modern photography what a grease and oil change is to a mechanic, her eyes glaze over and she starts playing with the dog again. Her dismissal of my futile pleas are along the lines that it's cheating to use Photoshop and doing so is somehow not real, and therefore not worthy of her full attention or admiration. But this got me thinking, and I have to ask the question, has the finished image of a photographer ever been real? Or has it always been fake?
Was Ansel Adams' Work Fake?
Let's go into one of, if not the most famous photographer across the decades, Ansel Adams. His name pops up in every corner of the globe whenever you hear a photographer talking about their influences, or inspirational heroes. Herein lies our first issue with the debate over what's real, and what's not. Now forgive me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that Ansel Adams didn't see the world, literally, in black and white. I mean, I know of people who are colorblind and don't see colors the way most people see them, but I've never heard of a person, much less Ansel Adams, seeing the world through grayscale glasses. But aren't Ansel Adams' most famous works in black and white, like this image below?
This image is "The Tetons and the Snake River," taken in 1942, and I'm going to hazard a guess and say that this isn't how Ansel Adams saw it with his own eyes, at the time he took this shot. Of course, the natural response to that might be that color wasn't available back in his day and he was only able to work with black and white. In fact, color film became available in the 1930s, so it might well have been available to Adams. I can't be sure, but perhaps it was his deliberate choice to develop his images in black and white?
Adams was known for his incredible ability to work with shadows, blacks, whites, and highlights when he was developing an image. He was the darkroom equivalent of a modern day Photoshop wizard, if you will. So the upshot of it all is that Ansel Adams' images were black and white, even though the original scene he saw was in color. And he pushed and pulled the contrasts and lights and darks better than almost anyone else to get his signature look, even though he might well have had access to color film options. Surely, then, under the criteria of "real" used by my mum (and those of many other non-photographers), you'd have to say Ansel Adams' work was fake, wouldn't you, as painful as that is to even utter?
Is Long Exposure Photography Fake?
Modern cameras and equipment help us to do incredible things. One of my favorites is long exposure photography. It's not to everyone's taste, and as you might expect, my dear old mum hates it, but I fell in love with the dreamy, wispy clouds and the ghostly appearance of water the first time I saw it. Since then, whenever I go to waterfalls or see interesting patterns in the sky, the first thing I check in my camera bag is my Lee Filters Big Stopper. There's nothing I find more enjoyable than setting my camera to Bulb mode and then opening up the shutter for minutes and waiting patiently for that ethereal smoothness to find its way onto my screen. This image below gives you an idea about the effect long exposures can have on moving things such as clouds.
But we have to ask the question again: is it real? The clouds didn't look like that when I was at this location. And the scene certainly wasn't black and white. I mean, I was there, and this is just one, single exposure and not a composite or anything, but it's not what I saw with my own eyes at the time. Does that automatically make it fake? Does that mean if I set the shutter speed to 1/1000th of a second and took a quick snapshot, it would be more real than if I used the same camera and the same lens, but simply opened up the shutter to a minute, or longer? Does the introduction of a filter automatically expel me from the real club and banish me into the hellfire of the fakers?
Is Panning Fake, Too?
So now we come to some other interesting conundrums. I love the effect of panning, where you open the shutter to something like 1/10th of a second and then intentionally move your camera from side to side (or whatever direction you please) so that you get blurry, streaky lines from the scene in front of you. Much like the effect of long exposure photography, I love the soft, smooth, flowing lines that panning can give you. For a better idea of what I'm talking about, check out this image below.
But is it real? I mean the issue here is that if I stood perfectly still and shot the scene in front of me with a shutter speed of, say, 1/200th of a second and then uploaded it to Instagram and used the hashtag #nofilter, then people would most likely accept it as real. But if I stand in the same position, with the same camera, and the same lens, yet just slow down the shutter speed and swivel my hips in a groovy, disco, side to side fashion and get my smooth, streaky panning lines, I have to accept that it's no longer classified as real? And Lord heaven help me here because as you can see, I've actually added a surfer into the scene to really muddy the waters. Panning and blending? Banish me to eternal purgatory now. Watch me double down.
I now have the golden trifecta: panning, blending, and black and white. Of course, I'm not trying to pass this off as "real" but where do you draw the line? Both of these shots (of sea and surfer) were taken seconds apart, with the same camera, the same lens, and with my feet barely changing position. This guy was holding his board like that and he was entering the ocean before him. I just used a bit of camera movement and Photoshop to present a different take. Does different take equal fake, and who sets the criteria?
Summing Up
To me, all art, including photography, is about creativity, imagination, and producing something that your mind's eye sees, or what your client wants. I don't care if someone says something's fake or not, or if they think something's been "Photoshopped" because I have no limits. As long as we are honest if someone asks us about how we created an image, what does it matter? As long as I like my finished images and they represent accurately my feelings and my artistic ambitions, then I am happy. And it seems others feel the same way, judging by some comments on my Instagram feed when I uploaded this black and white image you see above.
However, it seems to some people that any image not accurately representing exactly what we saw with our very own eyes at the precise time we hit that shutter button must be fake. So any black and white image is fake, any retouched image is fake, anything with even the slightest bit of change, no matter how infinitesimal, is fake. Or is it? Is there a line that's acceptable as real, even though it's not actually real?
Please leave your thoughts in the comments below.
Try explaining that to his mother. 😁
Lol sure i agree, in many cases its not that deep - I thought about this more though when a while back a friend asked if one of my milky way shots was real, and found myself having to explain that yeah, in order to make it real, i had to do long exposure, stack stars, blend images, and use post-processing - all things associated with 'faking' an image. Because otherwise i would not have been able to create a photograph that shows the very real elements in the sky, whether or not that matters just because the eye can't see them is a different question though, rather than simply adding elements that truly aren't there, this is personally where i draw the fake line.
I enjoy this philosphical question! The idea of where one draws the fuzzy transition of real vs fake depends on many things, not only artistic vision but purpose. I think there would be little argument that using letters to create works of fiction, poetry, or research are all very different processes to some degree, and yet are all bound to alphabet and language as a common 'tool.'
I see photography as simply an extension of this, and again asking if something is fake or not is really not a very nuanced way of getting to the root of the question, but thats not surprising. Documenting visual reality with as much integrity and fidelity as to how a human sees\experiences things is going to be helpful when doing research, or photojournalism perhaps, etc. At the same time, if we based all our rules on that, we would not be studying and photographing the milky way, stars, and anything in cosmology for that matter, which absolutely uses 'light' to understand our reality, beyond what the human experience of it is.
The more relevant and difficult question sometimes to me is, do you understand why you're manipulating an image, and are you ok with ignoring the integrity and capacity of the human eye to accomplish that? Every photograph and editing process does not of course follow the same answer.
Excellent points made. I remember being very naive back when I started out and shot RAW with zero “manipulation” thinking I was being a purist or “true to reality”. After learning the camera doesn’t see what we see helped me get over that delusion, but it is still a struggle editing without overdoing it. Some like Ken Rockwell don’t even shoot RAW and has a saying something along the lines of “get it right the first time.” Someday I’ll get there hopefully. 🤞🏻
thanks and Yeah i agree! Im a hobbyist mostly doing astro and landscape, but its something i take serious and have definitely had to develop my own perspective on over time. Even using our eyes as a measurement of fake\real almost doesn't cut it, because we only see certain light, and not all eyes are created equal either...😵
“Integrity” is a big word in this context. As childlike as it may seem, I like panning and LE just coz I love that look. There’s no ulterior motive for me, I just love those soft, blurry, dreamy lines :)
Great post, I love these philosophical questions about photography. It’s a complicated one but seems to be about context. If the image of a fox jumping over a fence in a seemingly perfectly timed shot is presented as real when in reality it was staged, it’s fake. It’s fake if it’s presented as a real scene and capture but has elements like clouds or birds added to it IMO. In terms of photojournalism it’s much stricter. Cropping can definitely be considered manipulation in that field. I’ve seen a photo of a wounded civilian in a foreign country with an armed US soldier standing next to him ominously, when in reality the photo was cropped to exclude the other soldiers giving the man water and trying to save his life. I agree with others that removing a blemish here and there isn’t too bad, especially in something like landscape photography. Removing a soda can sitting in your shot in post is forgivable, but still not ashamed to admit that it was edited. Some images are only amazing because of the lack of manipulation. Regardless great topic and great post! I’m sending this to my mom! 😁
Ha! My mum’s the first person I go to. Often because photographers look at images through a photographer’s eyes, but regular folk react to an image much more differently. If my mum immediately doesn’t like something then I listen to her. If I can see her point, I think about the next step.
Most often I just chuckle along with her and keep things as they are but non-photographers are great starting points, especially if you’ve made some changes to an image
Hopefully some day we’ll produce images even our own moms are proud of. 😎
I think there are as many opinios as there are photographers. It's not just black and white ( no pun intended), but good and bad - definitely. To me the 'photoshopped' term is bad when used in commercials, in media, in a way to manipulate perceptions and opinions.
It's annoying when it's used by total amateurs shooting on Auto mode to call themselves photographers. Or along that line...
But for the art? That's a whole other argument. Why should it be bad to create an artistic effect that would enhance the feel of the photograph?
Speaking of which, the black and white surfer pic - ok incredible! So much more powerful than the colour option.
It’s interesting, often I love black and white, but in this case with the surfer, I much prefer the colour version. For you, the polar opposite. Without Photoshop, we couldn’t both be satisfied ......
There is definitely a line that can be crossed and that line is on a sliding scale. It's different for different types of photography.
Being an extreme sports photographer i very rarely manipulate photos. Though if i do it needs to be something that does not make the athlete appear to have more skill. Like if theres a distracting bottle on the ground that has absolutely nothing to do with what the rider is doing. That to me is fine to take out.
The philosophically difficult questions to answer are: where is the line drawn? who sets the sliding scale? What measurements are used on the scale?
The line is drawn when the photographer attempts deception.
If I've photographed a politician making a speech and select the shot taken while he was blinking--which makes him look dim-witted--that is an attempt to deceive even if the image is "straight out of the camera."
Interesting....if you think “politician X” is a dimwit and you are covering a speech he/she did and you took 1,000 shots in bursts and captured one with him/her looking particularly “dimwitted”, why is that deception? Who’s to say if that politician is a dimwit or not? On one side you’ll have people say X is a dimwit, on the other said they’ll say X is a great leader.
In that case, any image presenting politician X as loving, caring, and kind might be seen as deceptive, even if it was SOOC....?
It's only deception if your intent is to pass off that one frame as he (the politician) is dim-witted.
I left out a word. I fixed it.
"If I've photographed a politician making a speech and select the shot taken while he was blinking--which makes him look dim-witted--that is an attempt to deceive even if the image is 'straight out of the camera.'"
Yes. That is correct. It is the intent behind the act whjch is most important. Thank you.
I watched a documentary on TV about paparazzi recently, they were photographing Judy Finnegan or someone sat outside a restaurant and just kept shooting on continuous until they got a shot of her with eyes half shut... then the Monday tabloids ran a headline of her looking ratted after an all day booze session, she had a soft drink with her but they left it out.
To me the sliding scale is set by multiple things mainly ones ethics.
Personally I can only add the view from and action sport photography perspective. I have no say at all on other types of photography. Its just not my place.
One thing that I can say is that I in my opinion an image is heavily photoshopped or manipulated such as a composite image to me isn't actually photography. To me it is digital art. It's amazing stuff but not quite photography.
This concept of "you manipulated the photograph so it's fake" seems to come out of the same philosophical error as the extremes of other issues like cultural appropriation. And it's not a whole lot different from, at its every worse, the Cultural Revolution in China.
Well, for me anyway, anything goes, as I said in the last paragraph. I don’t tend to see anything as fake, really, because if you print something and it becomes an object to hold onto in your hands, that’s pretty damn real for me. As far as “manipulation” goes, I’m good with anything. If someone asks: “was the sky really like that?” I’ll say no, and explain that I used a filter or whatever. If they don’t ask, I don’t say anything.
With the ability of software these to do so much, it’s almost a crime not to use it
By this definition, B&W film or monochrone digital is fake. People should stop hyperventilating about stupid issues by breathing into a bag.
Did you read the article? That’s exactly what I said...
Personally I think the idea of fake photographs needs to be turned on it's head. The mantra should be more akin to "all images are fake but some artists/manufacturers try to achieve realism." Just like in the painting world we are going through a 'realism' movement where a sizable portion of artists believe the art needs to reflect the reality. I'm looking forward to seeing a surrealism movement with composites being more the norm.
Funny you should say that because composites is where my photography is heading more and more these days....
Ansel Adams edited his shots too...in the dark room. Oh my GOD.....that means HIS photos are fake! What is this world coming to? Jesus Christ people...get a grip.
So......I’m guessing you didn’t read the article?
Yes and no. I originally read just the title and commented. Then I went ahead and read it. I chose to keep my comment as is for a reason. As a former photojournalist, I never used click-bait titles. They were always to the point of the theme of the article. Then...writing for Russian agencies, I guess it was what was expected there. But I kind of understand why it's done here. Sorry
Photography is art. End of story. Whether you manipulate in Photoshop, or through artificial light/reflectors, etc, or the dark room, or long exposure, or dare i say fast exposure (Cause motion blur exists in reality), (insert whatever other technique you enjoy) oh, almost forgot my favorite thing, thinned out fog for volumetric light effects. Everything a photographer does to achieve their vision is manipulation of reality to a certain degree.
Loved this article. Very refreshing departure from all the articles about gear and depth of field. XD
Coming right up: “the best gear for depth of field”
Great article! Yeah just pick up a magazine and show me one photograph in a magazine that wasn't edited in some way. Even back in the film days images were edited. Unless your job as a photo journalist who ever said that an image can't be edited and even then...? We like images because of their pleasing value and who cares how we get to that pleasing value. People that say that image was edited or photo shopped are Idiots and have no clue what the business is about. When I went to photography school....college ....people used to say how can you go to school for 4 years just to learn how to take pictures. 🙄
Yeah I'm in the same category - who cares how we got to the final image? Do I like it: Yes or No? Do other people like it: Yes or No? That's all that matters to me
To me, the author's examples of what's real and what's fake miss the mark. Would you say that if an oil painter chose to create a painting of the Eiffel tower in black and white is fake because color paint exists? Or if he chose to draw it rather than paint it? He's only using different mediums to express himself. None are fake. Many of the alterations that are done in PS are the same that can be done in film development. The issue here is what is fake vs what is altered. Alterations in photography go way back, from fixing blemishes, dodging, burning and cropping. Is part of the art of photography. However, adding or removing people or objects which can greatly alter what was originally seen with the eye is what can raise the question of the fakeness of the picture. There is nothing wrong with greatly altering a photo if the photographer is honest to the viewer. What is wrong is if the photographer is trying to pass his heavily altered image for what he or she actually saw in order to fool the viewer. There is nothing wrong with Photoshop art, but it must be categorized as such. A real photograph should retain most if not all of the original elements that were there when the photograph was taken.
One point in which I think people fail is in the photographer's intent to deceive the observer. For example, the composite image of the girl holding the koala with a fire in the background. The photographer never called it a photo, she referred to it as an image. Nonetheless she was attacked, while I think she was trying to present a concept, an idea, not the real thing.
I only came for the comments. And I wasn’t disappointed! Very interesting reading all the opinions.
pass the popcorn please
This debate is useless to begin with becase every picture is just a representation of reality, so then every picture is fake. Photography is an art in which we don't just take pictures, we create images. A picture and an image are not the same. People take pictures with a cell phone, they don't create images. An id picture is just that, a picture,
not an image. An image is much more than that. Photoshop, Lightroom, or any other image processing software are a tool used to process the data taken by another tool, a camera, to finally produce an image that represents a reality seen through the photographer's eyes and mind. Picasso and Van Gogh created images representing reality in the very same way a photographer does. So now we are going to say that their paints worth millions of dollars are fake because their representation of reality was a distortion of what their eyes saw? Our eyes are another tool to bring visual data to our brains, which finally process that data and make a mental picture that can be enhanced by our imagination to create a final image. I think people should educate themselves about photography before judging an image the same way we should before judging a Van Gogh or a Picasso because it's not just about if it looks realistic or not.
Whilst I agree with a lot of your points, are you flat-out refusing to acknowledge that something taken with a cellphone can't ever be classified as an "image"?
Oh no, of course it can. I was referring more about the snapshots that somebody with no photography knowledge takes. But nowadays if that person knows what he is doing, including editing with a cell app, sure that great images can be taken
When photography becomes art, then anything goes.
This is a clever bit of logical fallacy. The central idea is that photo manipulation is a spectrum, so if "real" photos and "fake" photos are on the same spectrum, how can you say that real and fake photos are different?
The magic trick at play is two fold. First is a some all none fallacy. The implication is that if some manipulated photos aren't fake, than no manipulated photos are fake.
The second is a subtle definitional dodge of conflating the concepts of "manipulated" and "fake". This is probably best revealed by analogy. Colors exist on a spectrum. If you adjust the color frequency of a blue light lower by a few degrees, it doesn't become red, it's just not as cold of a blue. Does this mean that shifting the frequency doesn't make light red in a more general sense? Of course not. If you shift it enough it's solidly red. You can argue about exactly when it becomes red, but you can't argue that the concept of red is flawed .
Likewise, at a certain point, manipulating photos becomes deceptive. One can argue exactly what types and degrees of manipulation count as deceptive, but not against the concept of deceptive edits.
I thought about the EM spectrum before I got to your second paragraph. We can go a bit further. Microwaves are on the same spectrum as red light rays. Microwaves can kill you; red light won't.
Sorry... But looks like someone is having mommy issues. Photography has always been fake. The first ever photograph had an exposure of over 8 hours.
All photographs are fake. They are simulations of reality. I mean, if you look at the base definition of simulation, you'll see it is defined as "the action of pretending; deception". Can you eat the apple you photographed? No.
If you are taking photographs to please your mum, then stop panning, stop taking long exposures. You've known her your whole life, you should know what she likes/doesn't like.
Your job as a photographer is to provide your client the image they require. If that is a long exposure, the provide them with that. If it is a highly retouched glamour shot, provide them with that.
The problem isn't that some photos are fake and others are not, it is that people care so much for what the Instagram community says about your photos.
To sum up, all photos are fake. Do your job, if it is a job. If it is a hobby, do it for yourself, not you IG followers.
This is total click bait...but we all fall for it and we all want to chime in with our 2 cents worth of opinions.
1. Your surfer photo may not be fake, but it's not a photo! It's digital art. But let me explain.
2. We cannot define what is real and what is fake based upon this notion of what we perceive with our eyes. Our eyes are a lie. Our eyes contain imperfect sensors that our brains decipher into an image. The sensors in the middle are called comes and they mainly see colors of the rainbow and rods on the periphery that sees mainly in black and white. Imagine a camera sensor that funky like that! Our brain put this information together is form a picture. The brain will take information out and it will add information to the picture. Kind of like Photoshop. So our vision is like Photoshop! Imagine our lackluster 3 cone sensor compared to that of mantis shrimp who have 12 different color receptors. They can see into Infrareds and ultraviolets. Imagine what we're not seeing with our 3 sensor eyes!
3. Our perception of what is "real" and what is "fake" will change with time. I imagine people who lived in the times of the Renaissance would say those paintings look damn real. And some Instagramers would argue that Ansel was "fake news" because he used dodge and burn techniques in the way he printed his photos. We shouldn't listen to them.
4. In my opinion now in 2020 (and remember it's not worth anything) is that your picture should be defined as digital art because you added the surfer. You can Photoshop a picture to a degree, taking stuff out and adding stuff in, but when the subject was added to a photo, it's no longer a photo, but digital art. I also realize that it's SUPER subjective and I only know that you added the surfer because you told me. Have you ever seen that YouTube video of the model and what they do to her picture before it goes on a billboard? I would call that digital art too. Somewhere in stretching her head, it looses the authenticity of a photo.
4. I've yet to touch upon the subject of bokeh. We all love it and shell out ridiculous amounts of money to get our lenses to do it. But phones do it now automatically in portrait mode. But does our eyes ever see bokeh in real life?
So you just think your particular method of fakery is morally superior to anyone else's method of fakery.
What’s the difference between your image and someone mirroring the image in photoshop?
Same damn result.
Funnily enough, I was looking at the image above wondering if it had been mirrored or not. Hard to see where the tree actually stems from. That's not to say it was mirrored, I have no idea, but as you said, it's pretty much the same result as if it was mirrored. What difference does it make if it has a positive impact on, and reaction from, viewers?
There was only one camera that captured real images, every camera that came after produced fake images, let me explain. Back in the very early days there was an individual named Fred Flintstone (those old enough might remember him) and he had in his possession a very simple yet amazing Camera. The camera didn’t rely on sensors, film or even light to capture an image it was truly remarkable indeed. The device was made out of stone, shaped into a cube and hollowed out. There was a small door located at the front of the device and inside sat a small yet powerful little bird, a very rare Slatepecker. When Fred or his pal Barney ( who sometimes borrowed Freds camera ) pushed a button on the top of the box the door would pop open and the little bird would come outside standing on a magical sliding rail. The bird would then look over the scene and start hammering down on a piece of slate with its extremely strong beak and in the process it would create the scene exactly how it viewed it, no manipulation done at all. Unfortunately it wasn’t long after that that the bird ( the Bedrock Slatepecker ) became extinct and that part of the camera industry shut down. Many cube stone carvers and Slatepecker trainers were put out of work as a result of the birds demise but they banded together and formed the company now known as Kodak firm in their believe that the new company would last forever. The rest as they say is in the history books.