* Wednesday C&C "No Theme" Thread #851 / Revived #071 on 2024 08 07 *

Kumsal said

"The red color overwhelmed the camera, it looks totally overexposed and unnatural."

Grammatically, the "it" in his sentence refers to the red colour and so it is the red colour he is saying that in his opinion looks overexposed and unnatural.

I'm not attacking Kumsal. The car itself is deliberately over the top and unnatural. My shot tried to convey that in what I took to be the concept of the car as an artwork. The paintwork was part of the effect and I can't imagine a redder red. What I am attempting to discuss, in a polite manner, are concepts behind our aims in image making.

That's fine but your initial reply to him suggests to me you are struggling to cope with his opinion that the red colour in the car looks overexposed and unnatural to him.

These are amazing automobiles in perfect condition for showing in a museum or showcase event. They are sharply captured, with rich color and detail. I am sure you made the best you could have shooting them through and around the protective barriers and bars and in a showcase environment. The bars do bother me a bit visually. I would probably use the new tools in LR to get rid of the bars (I posted a museum image of a carriage recently where I chose to do that), but that choice is of course yours to make.

My point of view is: if someone looks at my photos, he/she should see what the conditions are like in the Sinsheim Technology Museum.
Nobody should think that you can sit in such beautiful old cars without any barriers and want to take photos of yourself.
AI will very soon do everything better than many self-proclaimed Photoshop artists, so I prefer to stick with authenticity.

That's fine because it depends on whether someone wants to make the conditions inside the museum a significant priority, as you chose to do, or make the cars the main priority.

In situations like that museum I would have wanted to make the cars the main priority and excluded the bars either when taking the photo, if possible, or in post.

Imo, the bars covering parts of the cars make the images look somewhat amateurish.

Like I said earlier, each to their own 😊

I understand and agree. If we have the abilities / tools / desire to edit out such things then that is a valid choice. Are the barriers a distraction? To some degree yes. But when I see images like this I just ignore the distractions and take in the subjects. It is clear in this case the museum is pushed for space. The exhibits are fairly close together and there are plenty of other unavoidable so called distractions - so I focus on the design / colour schemes of these intriguing old vehicles.

Looking at the flared mud guards of the 3rd image, I wonder if they are designed to deflect as much muddy water as possible onto unsuspecting pedestrians...

OK. I see and respect what Kumsal is saying. Photography is a tool. It can be used in many many ways and there are different technologies within photography. Anyone can set for themselves their own aims, interests and chosen technology within photography. I get it that Kumsal (I hope I am being accurate here) wants to make images that as closely as he can do it, resemble the world as he thinks it is seen by the human eye. Fine.
What I was getting at was the use of "natural." I'm suggesting that while trying to replicate an image as seen by the human eye is valid, it isn't the same as "natural." As soon as any lens is involved, for example, you can argue that the result is no longer "natural." The human eye doesn't see the outside world in the same way that many other animal eyes see the world. What about Black and White photography or infra red photography? etc etc.
From my point of view, it all depends on the purpose of the image and there can be many purposes. One of the things I like most about this forum is that over many years it has helped me to broaden my appreciation and deepen my understanding of a wider range of images.

You need to define the criteria you use to determine whether an image looks natural or not to you.

For me, if an image looks very close to what I would have or could have expected to see at the time with my eyes within the functionality and any limitations of the equipment used to make the image then the image looks natural to me.

In the case of your red car, Kumsal posted saying in his opinion the red doesn’t look natural.

That's fine as it is his opinion but to me the red in your car looks natural.

We all have varying criteria for what does and does not look natural to us.

Removing the bars in post could still be argued as maintaining authenticity because since the bars were put in place after the cars were positioned the edited images could be interpreted as authentic representations of the scene prior to the bars being there.

I largely agree but it will take some time to explain and I'm sure you and others will want to comment and then I'll want to comment back etc. Understanding each other on this topic will take time. I wont have the time until some where in October.
A PS and a thanks Dan. Remember the emu photo? My work is currently on display in a gallery. When I posted the emu shot here I did it very quickly as I needed a post that week. After your comment on the red markings, I fixed the image and looked at it more seriously again. I liked it and put copies with some of my small prints and it has sold well. I'll post a copy of it in the gallery shortly.

So I'll take that as meaning you can't define the criteria you use to determine whether an image looks natural or not to you.

I posted the criteria I use and that won't change. If your criteria is different, that's fine. We all have varying criteria for what does and does not look natural to us.

No it won't 😀

I already understand what does and does not look natural to me and the reason behind it as described earlier.

Your criteria is clearly different to mine and that is fine. How other people define what looks and does not look natural to them does not influence how I see an image.

A STORY ABOUT WHAT THIS THREAD CAN ACHIEVE

Without diving into the discussion here, let me tell you a short story about what this thread can achieve to enrich different photographers' lives, and the story gets triggered by seeing these images of cars in a museum.
This happened many years ago, when the thread was still on DPR.

I had been a contributor for years (actually, from day one), and Andrew from Canada was another regular contributor.

I am a so-so photographer with (hopefully) a slightly above average eye for human interest and documentary photography and a focus on composition.
My postprocessing skills are mediocre: I can crop, level and correct distortion and I know about levels, saturation, contrast etc.
My skills in invasive PP (expanding the frame, cloning and healing, object removal etc are next to zero.
I can enjoy looking at a vintage classic car but I boast no knowledge of brands and history.

Andrew was (and is) a photoshop wizard who is also an avid aficionado of classic oldtimers (like, really into it).

One day many years ago, we visited the Louwman Museum near Den Haag in the Netherlands. It is a treasure trove of classic vehicles.
I liked the visit and snapped a few shots of cars I really liked, trying to get an OK image. I quickly gave up because of distractions (bars in front of the vehicles, background overlap between vehicles, etc. I decided to concentrate on "fun" stuff, like looking for visitors who resembled the cars, shooting a family portrait in a shiny chrome hubcap etc.

But then it occurred to me that Andrew would have loved the cars in that museum.
So I retraced my steps, went back through the collection and shot several dozen (I think even 100-200) shots more, just of the cars.
I did not shoot with my eyes, but with what I imagined Andrew's eyes would be.
I aimed to get shots of the cars with minimal distortion and just correct exposure with some leeway, and distractions be damned.
(For the previous shots I had moved e.g. very close to shoot over a barriers, but that required extreme wide angle.
For the "Andrew-shots" I stepped back, did not worry about the barrier and shot the car with as little distortion as possible).

Back from our Holland trip, I wetransfered the whole bunch of RAW files to Andrew for his enjoyment.
I have not even looked twice anymore at any of those RAWs.
Over the course of the next months, Andrew posted from time to time an image that he had miraculously made of my RAWs, showing the cars all perfect and shiny, with distractions removed and sometimes even in a completely different setting. I was blown away by some of his results. I trust that he enjoyed it. I did for sure.

The point of my story?
This thread brings people together with the most varied of photographic interests.
Some of us, when visiting a car museum, will at best try to document the experience (even with barriers).
Others hunt for shots of cars that they can have hours of Postprocessing fun with (removing barriers etc).
Ideally, we can help eachother and make eachother's adventure in photography a more rewarding one.
For that, we need to "remove the barrier" of our different views on photography, or just learn to live with it and respect eachother.

Although we advertize "C&C", meaning Comments and Critiques, it is actually not so much about Critique as it is about helping.
And in helping the other participants, our own skills (in photography and in civilized conversation) improve.

Such discussions are hard to have with flat view forums like this but worth attempting.

Whether the red color looks natural or not is one way of discussing your image. Whether you intended it to look natural or not is another. What you hoped to accomplish with how you chose the color values is still another. Whether you achieved your goals is still another. (I may have missed some possibilities). We can fall off the discussion train at any point where we make an assumption. Sharing what we personally like, or what we personally might do with a given image is a valid way to share ideas, but there are quite a few more. I think some of those others may be what Mike wants to talk about, and I'm all for it.

I sometimes tell you folks a good bit about one of my submissions when I'm sure what I'm seeking technically or artistically and want to know if I'm on the right track. Other times I'm experimenting with something new or unfamiliar and I just throw it out there to see what people think of it. Occasionally I put something out there to see if an unmentioned flaw is obvious to everyone or if I've mitigated it sufficiently. I once put together an entire gallery show based on online opinions (not just likes or positives) - I made up a little scoring tool based on certain criteria in comments that weighted interest and curiosity more than approval. And if I got several comments that the offering looked like a painting, it went right to the print shop because that was one of my main goals. All this to say, we can get lots of different kinds of help from each other here, as long as we are open to different ways of considering imagery.

I saw the red car as a playful, fun, in-your-face kind of image that wasn't trying to fit into "reality" but an exaggeration thereof. Art of all genres has always had a wide range from ultra realitistic to abstract. When we narrow it down too much we lose some of the joy of it.