What a can of worms this is. How far can you torture your pixels before it’s not a photography anymore? What is the Rubicon of an adjusted image to a crazed image of over-everythinged post-processed nightmare?
It depends. What a copout.
This is an image of the famed and incredible Blue Mosque in Istanbul. This is arguable one of the most emotive (spell check didn’t underline that so it must be a word) houses of worship in the world. Istanbul is a magical place that moved me emotionally and excited me at every turn. This was shot at 18mm. I couldn’t have placed the clouds better if I painted them myself. Every element combined into a majestic, celestial rendering of a house of God.
I’m not religious but that’s what it is.
Here’s the post processing part. I processed this in a trial version of Analog Efex Pro from NIK software and Lightroom 5. So here’s the whole Rubicon thing; I’m an emotional person. When things move me visually, they’re moving me emotionally at the same time. The two parts acting on one another are a kind of visual force-multiplier. I’d processed this image before and like it but it didn’t reflect what I ‘felt’ when I originally took in the scene. I used a vintage ‘wet plate’ camera setting but turned off all the screwy crap that makes the image look like a degraded, damaged piece of crap. But I certainly did like the rest of the rendering. It gave me the feel of what I was seeing while retaining the essence of a photograph.
My overall feeling is old school. A photograph must look and feel like a photograph. I do NOT care for the trends of over-processed, flat, HDR or other processes that scream, “Look at me!” That said, since the practical invention of photography in around 1839 or so, there have been many great photographs, taken with a seemingly endless array of equipment, that still stand the test of time. And God help me, it is now possible to simulate, with great emotional accuracy, the essence and the continuum of photographic history.
I’m sure they’ll be more to come on this topic but for now. Hope you enjoy one of my tributes to Istanbul, a city of magic.
Bob Estremera