I totally get your point @Achtung, when you see thousands of images on instagram, facebook etc that have been completely fabricated in photoshop, its easy to think that all fantastic images are the same. With most of the major photography competitions (particuarly in the UK, less so in america), there are quite rigid guidlines as to what is and isn't acceptable.
British Wildlife Photographer of the Year, World Wildlife Photographer of the Year, Landscape Photographer of the Year etc, and pretty much all Press photography comps you are seeing genuine photographs. Some of them have categories where some manipulation is allowed, but in those instance you have to declare it, and that is made clear in the books they usually bring out
Before the digital era there was a saying: "The negative is the score, the print is the performance". I think a similar principle applies to digital imaging. I always adjust my photos with computer software (Luminar) to enhance the appearance of picture but without altering the "truth" of the image. For example, most images need to be cropped. Most pictures also benefit from adjustments to the brightness, contrast and colour saturation, as well as making the detail sharper (or softer) and selective dodging and burning. The final image is the important thing, not accuracy, because no photo will ever look the way the scene looked to the eye.
We don't get to see them though sadly. A lot of the awards publications list the equipment used but never say more than 'levels adjusted in Photoshop/Lightroom' or similar.
You wouldn't want to see them to be honest. If you shoot in Jpeg as most people do, then the cameras software adjusts all these for you, and you get an image where the camera has chosen the settings. Its usually less realistic if anything as takes no account of the actual condition, other than sunny, landscape, sport etc.
The main difference is shooting in raw, which most high end photographers shoot in, is the cemra basically just captures all the data. They are invariably flat looking, lacking in contrast and sharpness, and generally look a bit washed out, not an actual representation of the scene. You then do those adjustments yourself, which enable you a lot more control over things like levels (ie contrast), and allow you to get a much truer deptiction of the scene (you can also of course choose to make your greens red if you so wish, that comes down to taste I guess.)
Before the digital era there was a saying: "The negative is the score, the print is the performance". I think a similar principle applies to digital imaging. I always adjust my photos with computer software (Luminar) to enhance the appearance of picture but without altering the "truth" of the image. For example, most images need to be cropped. Most pictures also benefit from adjustments to the brightness, contrast and colour saturation, as well as making the detail sharper (or softer) and selective dodging and burning. The final image is the important thing, not accuracy, because no photo will ever look the way the scene looked to the eye.
precisely. At the end of the day it comes down to taste. I think the problem arises when people present falsified images as real (either by deception or omission of saying its false).
I've tried RAW and really like using it but I don't have the time to mess about with it. I was just getting a backlog of unprocessed photos. I've found my current camera's software does a good enough job with Jpeg especially in full manual mode, good enough for my purposes anyway. I edit a lot of my phone photos though and use HDR photo-merging techniques for work purposes.
You can imagine the time some of these photos took to produce though. Research, set-up, waiting endless hours for the animal to turn up or get in the right place, processing the shots afterwards. Plus all the failures and photos that didn't turn out how you wanted.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
I've tried RAW and really like using it but I don't have the time to mess about with it.
Thats what I always teach people really. Raw gives you much more control, but only if you have the time and skills (or time to learn the skills) to process all your images that way. Otherwise, jpeg gives you a far quicker result, that most of the time will be just as satisfactory. The main advantage of raw is you still have all that data, so when you shoot jpeg the camera discards all the data it doesnt need, and theres no recovering that. So if you want to make your image lighter for instance, you wont be able to recover the detail in the shadows on a jpeg.
You can imagine the time some of these photos took to produce though. Research, set-up, waiting endless hours for the animal to turn up or get in the right place, processing the shots afterwards. Plus all the failures and photos that didn't turn out how you wanted.
That is how they have got such amazing looking images without photoshop!
I am not seeing vast amounts of special effects and editing in these pictures to be honest. They are very graphical (which I like), but this is probably skillful creative use of shutter speed, focal length, aperture and clever framing. The wood anemone one could be a multiple exposure.
"What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour".
It looks to me like all the silhouettes are just shot against the light, with perhaps the exception of the Bison, which may have been darkened as you suggest. The mouse has a flash behind it giving that highlight around the edges by the look if it
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British Wildlife Photographer of the Year, World Wildlife Photographer of the Year, Landscape Photographer of the Year etc, and pretty much all Press photography comps you are seeing genuine photographs. Some of them have categories where some manipulation is allowed, but in those instance you have to declare it, and that is made clear in the books they usually bring out
The final image is the important thing, not accuracy, because no photo will ever look the way the scene looked to the eye.
The main difference is shooting in raw, which most high end photographers shoot in, is the cemra basically just captures all the data. They are invariably flat looking, lacking in contrast and sharpness, and generally look a bit washed out, not an actual representation of the scene. You then do those adjustments yourself, which enable you a lot more control over things like levels (ie contrast), and allow you to get a much truer deptiction of the scene (you can also of course choose to make your greens red if you so wish, that comes down to taste I guess.)
That is how they have got such amazing looking images without photoshop!