Ofad | Office of Fine Art and Good Design

With film almost completely in the history books of photography the digital camera revolution has spawned copious amounts of "photographers" and "retouchers". As times change we all must adapt to new technology but I'm struggling a bit with the digital age of photography. I'm not personally struggling to adapt but struggling to accept half the photography I see these days as even decent. The general attitude of most new digital photographers seems to be, take a snap shot in RAW format and then make the photo in Photoshop. Well that's not a good photo or even photography if you ask me. A photo should be composed and exposed properly at the minimum. Don't even get me started on the state of CGI and how those guys have serious problems comparing their final work to a real photograph. If you need to composite images together to create a photo otherwise impossible I'm all for it, but please attempt to make it look like it could have been real.

I've always thought Ansel Adams subject matter was lame but his dark room skills were incredible, that's how I feel about the current state of new photographers. The problem is, with all the cool tricks, filters and adjustments you can make in post, it still looks like tricks and filters, not good photography. Mike Rusczyk once sent me an email that said, "Car photos are C.A.D. tricks". I tend to agree with him that a good majority of photos out there these days are tricks, but not just car photos. I'm not going to call anyone out because the work is everywhere. Somehow pop culture has gobbled up these over processed images and whole heartedly digested them, to my dismay. Digital has taken out the step of high end drum scanners, $45 scans, $10 rolls of film and that $7 processing fee, forget snip tests or push pull processing and that is great. It has given us the ease of use, control and accessibility through low cost cameras, computers and software photographers only dreamed of pre 2001 and thats where retouching comes in. A good retoucher has to understand photography before they can understand retouching, if they don't it's apparent in their final image. I've been in numerous arguments with art directors, while retouching at agencies, about the realistic look of a photo. It seems that all the new magazines full of over processed and CGI images, not to mention HD video everywhere, has warped people's view of reality. They forget that all they have to do to get it back is quit starring at the internet or Photoshop User magazine and take a look around, outside your door.

I'll jump down off my soap box and show you some of the retouching work I'm proud of. Some of my best work I can't post because of legal agreements but here are a few. These are all car photography. The post work was done with the idea of making the image look more like it did when I saw it, or to create a feel that wouldn't have been possible unless I had endless budgets and time, which to date hasn't happened.