THE DECISIVE MOMENT: APRIL 2015 EDITION 1

The adjacent shot was taken at a religious festival in Malta. In order to get the face of the “High Priestess” exposed in the way I wanted, I came close to completely blowing out the foreground detail of the image. Your eye was automatically drawn to the dresses which were, by far, the brightest part of the picture. I have subsequently darkened the foreground to draw the viewer to the part of the image I found most important.

I don’t believe that process has altered any “truths”.

The tools used to lighten and darken parts of the image are just as important as the use of depth of field to draw the eye. This is not about the “restoration of the appearance of the original scene” but about how, as a photographer, I want to thankfully there is a long line of interpret the scene in front of me. esteemed photographers before me You can’t improve photography by that don’t believe it either. stripping away all its skills. You can’t Do we need definitions? I’m not divorce photography from the art of printing, or what we now call processing. convinced but feel sure that it will all be If the photographer is to be banned from eventually neatly pigeon holed. I’m not bringing anything to the party then sure it will help anyone’s creative photojournalists may as well shoot processes. I think that in Documentary everything on their phones and let the Photography or Photojournalism we just need to recognize when a chips fall where they may. photographer is striving to show their Years ago the Kodak Eastman own truths and dam the process.

Company had a slogan; “you push the Photography is about the final image, button and we’ll do the rest”. This advertising slogan has entered the public it always has been. The notion of consciousness. Consequently, a lot of “pure” photography surely died with the people believed that all you had to do to Daguerreotype. Ever since Fox Talbot the negative/positive take a good photograph was to “just push introduced the button”, and it seems that the PSA process; photographs needed to be may believe the same. Well I don’t. I developed. don’t believe it anymore than I believe that Coke is the “real thing” or that I will be “loving it” if I go to McDonalds, and Page 10