Are Any Photos In Magazines " Real" Any More ?

[The Old Ruminator]

Sadly I am looking at caving mags and social media the same way now.

 

[The Old Ruminator]

I was wondering why the subject on the front cover of Descent has a light ring around her .

 

[Beardy]

I was wondering why the subject on the front cover of Descent has a light ring around her .

That will be from one of Martyn's back lights pointing back towards the camera - pretty sure that it is a "real" photo.

 

[The Old Ruminator]

Yes. Nothing meant unkindly about the photographer who is one of our best. The finished image does look odd in that respect though giving her a drawn in appearance but I dont think its the backlight.

 

[Samouse1]

I feel that comparing slightly edited photos (to make them more striking, fix lighting etc) and completely AI generated images as above is a little unfair

 

[mrodoc]

People have been altering photographs since the dawn of the art. They used intelligence - nothing artificial involved! I know for a fact that some Descent cover photos have in the past been skillfully improved by the editor. Probably only the original photographer noticed. Having had an interest in the past in AV presentations using slides I know how clever some proponents of the art can be. In those days ti was using things like tissue paper and re photographing of images, double exposures etc. In fact there was a vogue 40 years ago for underwater images taken using the double exposure technique to produce images that were otherwise impossible to produce.

 

[The Old Ruminator]

I feel that comparing slightly edited photos (to make them more striking, fix lighting etc) and completely AI generated images as above is a little unfair

I hope I am not being unfair as I just asked a question. But we now have the scenario where you cannot tell what is AI generated and anything edited. Its an area that interests me as a photo historian. If you look at photography as an art form I suppose that it does not matter. I do recall from my wedding photo of 1968 that the photographer edited out the gap my wife has in her front teeth. ( I actually prefer her with the gap ).

 

[Graigwen]

I think Oliver Cromwell had the right approach to portraits.

.

 

[Steve Clark]

What’s real? A photo is just the light that hit the sensor/film plus whatever processing gets done to it.

If you assume what the human eye sees is around 28mm focal length (full frame 35mm), almost all cave photos are different to this. You’re seeing more or less cave in the photo at the most fundamental level.

Lighting obviously makes a massive difference. Often a photo is like a collage of all the bits you’re able to see individually with a lamp, all displayed at once.

Personally, I like a photo that represents my experience of the cave in my mind.

I also like wow photos.

 

[pwhole]

One of my many jobs is 'improving' photos for caving magazines, so right from the off there's manipulation involved, as that's precisely what they want me to do. On many occasions I doubt even the original photographer notices, other than they look better, for some weird reason

 

[ZombieCake]

Some manipulation is fine - cropping, dodging, burning, etc. is fine as long as you're not misrepresenting what was there, e.g adding or taking away too much stuff. A lot of wildlife, press, etc. organisations and competitions only want the real photo and not something that's been mucked around with as that usually ends with rejection or disqualification.
Straight up AI is really just cheating if used to represent something it isn't, or pretending it is a person's own work. A lot of companies now seem to be harvesting people's work to feed their AI engine for their own profit.

 

[paul]

Faked photos are not a recent phenomenon - The Cottingley Fairies 1917, which managed to fool Sir Arthur Conan Doyle:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/71/Cottingley_Fairies_1.jpg

 

[Graigwen]

Faked photos are not a recent phenomenon - The Cottingley Fairies 1917, which managed to fool Sir Arthur Conan Doyle:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/71/Cottingley_Fairies_1.jpg

...and The Surgeons Photograph of 1933:
Surgeons photo