Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I quit editing photos

jamesbaker.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 160 posts

Re: I quit editing photos

#121

Post by mcdeltat »

chromacity wrote: post #34

I don't want to dunk on people who are discovering the charms of retro tech, but as someone who started with film and spent a fair amount of time in the darkroom, I was delighted to discover the hassle-free simplicity and dependability of digital photography, so it is a bit mind-boggling that people want to go back to the old way of doing things for their everyday snaps. It reminds me of people buying vinyl, using VH…

On the point of film, I agree, although I won't say it's necessarily a bad thing overall. Just a bit silly when people try to claim film is somehow "superior" or whatever.

Film is absolutely a cultural experience for many people shooting it today. The main argument I have to confirm this is to consider that most people's photos are not good, to start with. (Talking about the average joe, not pro photographers.) So any comment about film's technical capabilities is moot. You can take bad photos on film or digital. Also you can take good photos on film or digital! Unless you're really doing some good experimental photography, you gotta admit that the film motivation is vibes.

Also on editing applications, Lightroom does have pretty good all round features , which is hard to find elsewhere. For example Darktable technically works, but the UI is poor, the performance is poor, and it's generally slower to achieve the same results. If someone wants to make an open source Lightroom clone, I'll be all for it!

Re: I quit editing photos

#122

Post by tartoran »

dpark wrote: post #117
tartoran wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, financially doesn't make much sense to go from digital to film. Film costs, absolutely. But you end up shooting less, thinking more, waiting for the right shot and so on. You also move sliders/tweak less and mistakes teach you lessons that you quickly learn from. Sometimes there are happy accidents as well. Taking a shot becomes a deliberate action since you don't have unlimited frames. It's a different experien…

> Taking a shot becomes a deliberate action since you don't have unlimited frames. It's a different experience. It’s a very different experience. Whether you enjoy that depends a lot on why you are engaging in photography. Do you prize the ritual, the act of taking photographs in the moment? Then you might love film. Might also love working in a dark room and doing your own development and prints. Personally I don’t…

I used to do that when I was a teenager and it was truly wonderful. I had my own darkroom and was even developing my own film (BW only). As tech evolved I moved on to digital but took so many photos that somehow I stopped caring about photographs at all. It even became a bit overwhelming to look at photos and to some extent it still is to this day. I took on many other hobbies so it's not a huge loss for me. But I can totally get why some folks would get back to film from digital, they're going for the experience and not the end result as photos, which I agree would be more efficient to process digitally. But same goes with other arts. Why are people still painting? All can be done digitally in Krita or some other software and a lot more efficiently and faster and so on. And yet people pay money for canvases, oil paints, brushes, and spend hours and hours painting.

Re: I quit editing photos

#123

Post by fenykep »

chromacity wrote: post #34

I don't want to dunk on people who are discovering the charms of retro tech, but as someone who started with film and spent a fair amount of time in the darkroom, I was delighted to discover the hassle-free simplicity and dependability of digital photography, so it is a bit mind-boggling that people want to go back to the old way of doing things for their everyday snaps. It reminds me of people buying vinyl, using VH…

> someone who started with film and spent a fair amount of time in the darkroom

This is a very important part of your message. You did have the opportunity of "being thought by the slow medium" simply by those being the default. Taking the "teachings" of more limiting, analog (in these cases) technologies became part of your process, your underastanding of the core principles, your motivation, your subjects and something deeper about photography.

In a time where basicaly limitless technologies are the default, for generations that were born into a world where decision fatigue is a bigger issue than scarcity artificial limitations are still a great path to learning something meaningful and having fun.

There is zero intrinsic value to taking pictures, listening to or making music or any of the activities that see a revival of their "retro" versions - analog or otherwise.

I was born when digital photography was the default and my first cameras were digital. I have had way more fun taking my efficient in every way but -eapecially as commercial photography is dying out to AI - if we strip the commercial element of things that humans are doing for shits and giggles - the analog/retro/slow/whatever version of these activities might prove to be better at serving the basic human needs (the shits and the giggles).

Re: I quit editing photos

#124

Post by mcdeltat »

arvinsim wrote: post #14

My process is to take a lot of photos, then ruthlessly cull them before I do any editing. I usually keep around 10% of the total photos for editing. After that, I do another round of culling and keep only the best. I also follow a philosophy of "good enough". If left to my own devices, I would probably endlessly edit photos. I edit a single photo for around 3 minutes. That way, I will not feel stuck.

I used to take a lot of photos and then cull them afterwards before editing. It worked, although I was often loving shooting and dreading editing, because before doing any actual editing, I'd have 200 photos to sift through.

After a lot of practice, I became better at culling in my head, before even taking the photos. This has shifted my relationship with photography to more of a cognitive exercise, with a different set of enjoyments. I take far fewer photos overall - often I go out with a camera and don't even take a single shot. Editing is more enjoyable because there's less to do and I already know what edits I want. It's less naively fun but more contently fulfilling.

Re: I quit editing photos

#125

Post by mcdeltat »

CarVac wrote: post #56
SoftTalker wrote: post #51

I went one step farther and quit taking photos. And this is after many years of hobbiest photography in the film era, had a darkroom at home, SLR with several lenses. Early digital cameras were underwhelming, basically the equivalent of a 110 film snapshot camera. By the time they got good I had started to reflect on the fact that I almost never went back and looked at any of the photos I'd taken, so I just stopped.…

It really depends on the person. I do not take photos for the memories, I take photos for art and I do go back and look at them.

Same! For me this has had the unfortunate side effect of ruining non-art photo-taking. Someone shows me a regular phone photo and the photographer part of my brain is thinking "why did you even take this...?" Yes I'm a terrible friend

Re: I quit editing photos

#126

Post by mcdeltat »

ageitgey wrote: post #46

The dark truth no one wants to say out loud is that 'real' cameras are dying to cell phones not just because phones are more convenient to carry, but because phones take 'better' photos for 99% of people than they can manage with any other camera - and that's without any editing. It's all software. Yes, enthusiasts here are spending hours editing RAW files and most think cell phone pics are over-HDRed messes. But pho…

I don't even think you're necessarily wrong overall, but damn does the photographer in me want to strongly disagree with this:

> But phone software is so advanced now that it takes real talent and skill to replicate the perceived quality of what users get with their cell phone's software automatically

I don't know man, what you get out of a DSLR/mirrorless is just on another planet compared to a phone camera... The raw quality, detail, and richness of a photo captured with a big sensor and big lens is something special.

Phone photos can look superficially good. And for some photo styles this is enough. But when I look at a phone photo, I'm often left lacking a "draw you in" factor, because so much of the detail and lighting is more or less faked through software. There is no ambience, no mood.

Re: I quit editing photos

#127

Post by dpark »

tartoran wrote: post #122
dpark wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Taking a shot becomes a deliberate action since you don't have unlimited frames. It's a different experience. It’s a very different experience. Whether you enjoy that depends a lot on why you are engaging in photography. Do you prize the ritual, the act of taking photographs in the moment? Then you might love film. Might also love working in a dark room and doing your own development and prints. Personally I don’t…

I used to do that when I was a teenager and it was truly wonderful. I had my own darkroom and was even developing my own film (BW only). As tech evolved I moved on to digital but took so many photos that somehow I stopped caring about photographs at all. It even became a bit overwhelming to look at photos and to some extent it still is to this day. I took on many other hobbies so it's not a huge loss for me. But I ca…

For sure. I’m not dismissing others who want that experience. It’s just not my focus when I’m taking pictures.

I do agree that going through hundreds of photos is not a process I enjoy. I’ve been trying to train myself to weed out more efficiently. The newer AI tools help some, though I still go through the AI rejects to make sure it didn’t cull something I would keep.

Re: I quit editing photos

#128

Post by jareklupinski »

chromacity wrote: post #34

I don't want to dunk on people who are discovering the charms of retro tech, but as someone who started with film and spent a fair amount of time in the darkroom, I was delighted to discover the hassle-free simplicity and dependability of digital photography, so it is a bit mind-boggling that people want to go back to the old way of doing things for their everyday snaps. It reminds me of people buying vinyl, using VH…

vinyls have secret songs on them ;)

Re: I quit editing photos

#129

Post by marssaxman »

chromacity wrote: post #34

I don't want to dunk on people who are discovering the charms of retro tech, but as someone who started with film and spent a fair amount of time in the darkroom, I was delighted to discover the hassle-free simplicity and dependability of digital photography, so it is a bit mind-boggling that people want to go back to the old way of doing things for their everyday snaps. It reminds me of people buying vinyl, using VH…

I started out with film and took my camera all over everywhere with me for years. I switched to digital as soon as I could, before it was really even practical, fully embraced it, and ran with it for a long time. But I eventually got bored, and stopped carrying a camera at all for while.

Last year, though, I got back into film, and I'm having a ball! The point of the retro process is not that it's better, it's that I'm enjoying the time I spend with it. The constraints are interesting. The technique is challenging. It's not so much about the photos as it is the photography: I enjoy the practice of making images, and dealing with the challenges of vintage equipment is part of the skill I'm practicing.

It doesn't actually matter whether I take any of these photos or not, you know? I'm not a professional; I'm not making unique art, or documenting historic events. I'm doing this because I enjoy watching the light, looking for interesting frames, and trying to capture them. Right now, the most enjoyable equipment for that purpose happens to be an all-mechanical, medium-format film camera.

Re: I quit editing photos

#130

Post by patrakov »

Here is my take, as a person who attended multiple photo editing courses from professional award-winning photographers:

* Shooting intentionally for further processing is not the same as shooting for the best out-of-camera look.

* One needs to critique a photo before editing it. This YouTube video comes with a good-enough checklist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0tQB6BVpc4

* ART (https://artraweditor.github.io/) at this point, if the AI masking and denoising one-time setup has been done (see https://artraweditor.github.io/AItools), is so good that many Lightroom courses apply almost 1:1 to it.

Post reply on HN