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

I'm begging you Mike..
Many of Roel's photos are wide angle photos and you are full of praise.
My photos with 28 mm are supposed to have so much distortion that they shouldn't be posted here like that?
I can't believe that!

I am talking about what we mean by normal and natural and the nature of photographic images. This gets into the same territory as our the other current discussion I have postponed. It can be left as you think this and I think that (and I find that position superficial) or we can probe into the meanings of things like "natural" when such statements are made.
Re my use of a plural pronoun when discussing an image. Yes, one might choose to regard it as speaking for everyone but that is not the way it is correctly used in the context and most people would recognize it as such. This kind of nuance is one of the glories of the English language. I thought we had already dealt with it.

As long as it is clear people are speaking only on behalf of themselves then it is very clear that the something does not look natural to them.

It still might or might not look natural to other people.

But not all of us agree with your opinion.

Ambiguous use of "we" allows people to interpret for themselves whether you are speaking for yourself only or attempting to speak for everyone else.

"Overwhelmed" and "totally overexposed" are very much an exaggeration imo when I look at the histograms of the jpeg data.

I doubt you have a copy of the raw file so I assume you are not referring to the raw data for which you would need something like RawDigger to look at the histogram of the actual channels' raw data.

Yes, a tiny number of pixels in the red channel in the image's rgb data have been clipped but the reds certainly did not overwhelm the camera.

Of the 2,567,600 pixels in the red channel only 110,087 (4.29%) are in the 253-255 range on the histogram.

The luminosity histogram also shows there is very little clipping of data in the image.

Of the 2,567,600 pixels in the image only 8601 (0.33%) have a luminosity in the 253-255 range.

I suspect most, if not all, of those 8601 (0.33%) pixels are from the blown out background behind the glass or doorway behind the car.

So there is very little clipping of data in the image.

What data are you basing your opinions of "overwhelmed" and "totally overexposed" on?

You are misunderstanding me Kumsal. Let me try to explain it further.
I have no argument at all with your use of wa. As I said in my first reply to this image, I like the wa and angles for the cars you have used in these pictures. The wa distortion emphasizes the lines of the cars. That's a photographer's choice made with good reason. What I am saying is that photography is not reality. I'm responding to your thoughts that my shot doesn't look natural. What photographic images show is always a distortion of reality. A photographer can just press a button and accept whatever they get or a photographer can control the variables to produce the result they want.
Or think about the car I photographed. It isn't meant to be a real car. It may have begun as a real car but now it is an art object making a statement about cars. The maker is exaggerating some aspects of cars for the point he wants to make. My photo tries to deliberately play with what I felt was the concept. Whether I succeeded or not depends on how the viewer sees my photo. Incidentally, the colour isn't an exaggeration. The artist wanted the red to be as red as possible.

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.