On the 1st
October last, Ron and I were invited to represent the CRC together
with about 70 other delegates at a seminar held by The Chilterns
Association of Camera Clubs Stoke Pages, to discuss the implications
of digital manipulation, and its uses in club photo competitions,
although this does not effect our club at present, I thought I
should pass on the little knowledge I have gained. You will
appreciate there were strong, divergent views on this subject, and I
am sure it must be fast becoming a worry to photographic clubs all
over the country. Before the discussion there was a slide
presentation given by Jack Casement ARPS who I must mention is a
good photographer in his own right, and in Jack's opening remarks he
questioned whether 'digital imaging is the end of photography as we
know it! or is it the beginning of a new art form' I think both Ron
and myself went into the meeting with the former, but left with the
latter in mind.
The slide
show itself was very impressive and an excellent example slide shown
was the Sydney Opera House, placed on a snowy plateau in a mountain
range, it looked like it had been there all the time, another slide
was a lovely water wind surfing scene with Ayes Rock in the
background the slide was called 'Surfing at Ayres Rock' as there are
no joins or overlaps, as this is not how the manipulation technology
is done, and Jack's arguement is that digital manipulation
commensurate with long-established practices by photographers such
as cropping, burning-in, holding back, use of screens, retouching,
and toning etc. and he made it quite plain that all his manipulation
is only from his own photographs, he has also won quite a few club
and national competitions with his work, and has sold a few of his
photographs, to the main company Coral, and Coral boast that they
have 20,000 photographs on 200 CD-ROM's each CD has 100 photographs
on it, and more are being added all the time, with the photographs
that are sold, the photographer still holds copyright but it is the
digital rights to the images which are used, and when you see what
can be done with digital manipulation and with the amount of
material which is available, is it any wonder that photographic
competition secretaries are becoming so worried.
My own
opinion on this matter, for what its worth, is that this medium is
here to stay, and should be allowed to take place in any club
competitions and also in any section, because a picture, is a
picture! is a picture! in my experience of photographic clubs, and
it is my reason for not being a member of any club other than the
CRC, is that so much of these so called circuit judges talk so much
rubbish and dribble finding excuses for faults because they don't
like the picture, also a lot more work would be submitted,
especially from the younger people who probably have a limited
budget for dark room materials (if they have a dark room at all) and
equipment, but I bet all of them have access, or own computers and
were probably weaned on them, and these young people are the future
older members of clubs, if a club is going to succeed in the future,
it must allowed a place, and the sooner clubs realise this the
better.
I was so
impressed with Jack's presentation and also finding out that he runs
a one day workshop on the manipulation process, and as I am also
interested in computers as another hobby, I booked up and went on
one of his workshops, and what a great day out it turned out to be!
and you don't have to know about computers themselves to enjoy the
day,
the course is run from Jacks
home and he limits the day to 4 people only, so one gets plenty of
hands-on time.
For the people interested in
the PC set up, which I think was very impressive, is a Hewlett
Packard Pentium 90 PC, with 32 megs of RAM, a flat bed scanner with
transparency scan-input, tape storage and a Hewlett Packard high
resolution inkjet printer, getting the material back from store to
film or CD is no problem as there are now companies that will do
this at very reasonable cost, they can then of course be on film for
projection or for use as normal photographic printing method's in
the dark-room, but also as the colour printer now give very good
results within itself and with photographic glossy type inkjet paper
being available, everything looks very impressive, but the main part
is the software package its self, and Jack uses the "Adobe
Photo-workshop", and by golly this is an excellent powerful
package and comes with
all the PC tools included, and to give you some idea of its use,
imagine you have a very nice portrait of your loved one, focus and
exposure are correct (and that I think is the secret with the
finished image) and it also has a nice blue sky with fluffy clouds
but there is a pole or power line a tree or
some other distracting item, out the top of her head, the
shot is then scanned into the PC and with the paint brush tool, and
I think that it can best be described as not so much erasing the bad area but, cloning over the bad
area, so we click onto the sky, and draw this area over the tree a
little part at a time, then click onto the clouds and clone them
over to also blend into the scene, and then by magic, it is as if
the tree or pole was not there in the first place, I feel I must
mention at this point that with digital manipulation, contrast can
be altered, but the output is only as good as the input, a bad under
exposed out of focus picture is still bad even after manipulation,
but a good shot can be made into a brilliant picture. Included in
the price of the course is a very nice buffet lunch, and we had a
quick tour of Jack's dark-room also, (I don't know what Jack's wife
buys the man who has everything for Christmas) and of course there
was the normal tea and coffee's during the day, alas though! all to
soon the day was over, but I am now find this added art very
exciting, and I am saving my pennies to buy the necessary kit, but
even now the prices of this equipment are tumbling. I think though!
that it will some time before film is replaced completely, but I am
also convinced that this technology must eventually take over from
the dark-room in the end, it may not be next year, but it will be
very very soon, so please don't bury your head in the sand, think
about using this technology to your advantage also, its food for
thought isn't it!
So if you fancy having a go,
but I must warn you its very addictive! contact Jack, at Casement
Creative Services, Erin Lodge, Jigs Lane South, Warfield, Berkshire,
RG42 3DR UK, Tel. 01344 302067, the cost of the day is £25.00
including buffet lunch, and please don't forget to mention the CRC.