Umesh Bhatt

I have written about post processing once before. What prompted me to write one again was a recent forum posting by someone that said – “I dont like Photographers who use Photoshop, Photographers are supposed to capture the best image in the camera not in post processing”

Back in the old days (film days that is) – Photographers (at least professional ones; and artsy types) did their own processing. This involved dark dinghy rooms and being accustomed to seeing things in strange red/orange glows, dealing with strange chemicals and formulas, enlargers and other such huge equipment, weird paper cut-outs for burning and dodging and other strange things.

In fact, the popular photographer Ansel Adams – did a lot of post processing work. His prints were very specific and his notes included exactly how he came up with each print (what paper, which size burn, where, shape etc – it sorta looked like a modern day meta data equivalent).

The best ones usually were both scientifically inclined as well as artistic/creative.

Nothing has changed today. You still need to do both – You just do it differently. So, i have no idea why people complain about “minimal processing” and such.

My thoughts about these folks are that these are the people that probably used P&S cameras and gave their films for development/printing at Walmart. They are no-doubt good quality, but thats not what “Photographers” did/do.

Taking that image is not the end of it (i recently heard someone famous photographer say, all he did was to act like a monkey clicking the button – the rest was done by his assistants), one needs to either (a) make it the way your eye saw it or (b) make it the way your heart saw it.

I mostly see with my brain – but thats a different thing. I am nether here nor there – being logically inclined, i have fewer options – but thats my problem.