However:

In my work for higher education, companies, I always try to frame/compose/time the photo so it appears like there are the most number of interested, attentive attendees there. Is that “real” even if it was a sparsely attended event where everyone’s bored and I capture the one moment where people seem interested/happy to be there? What if I color corrected a warm room to a more daylight balanced room? What if I photoshopped more people into the photo?

Obviously I prefer in-camera tricks in my “purist” desires to altering the photograph by adding things that weren’t there/removing. But one could argue they’re all lies/not reality.

HDR from a single image is ok in my book…it’s the same idea as 0-5 split filter printing but thats a different topic.

some would argue Monet’s of the Houses of Parliament for ex is a more “accurate” documentation of it than a photograph of it would be because it “conveys mood better”. Some would argue a writer’s rendition of the event is more accurate. I’ve heard arguments like that before. Don’t necessarily agree but it’s an interesting argument.

Even in camera with different exposure combinations, apertures, shutter speeds, focus points, we’re kinda like writers and painters in that we “convey mood” with an artistic representation of what was going on at that moment.

well deserved for a very creative and intriguing body of work

good stuff and keep up the good work, very interesting.

DAH this site is burning…in a good way.

ozzy al

(apologies if someone’s already pointed this out…)

regarding “i can’t help but think emotive, story-telling photographers have a command of the same visual vocabulary and if they wish to use the craft to get you to quit smoking through emotive propaganda images or reveal wife beating through emotive documentary images, there is really only a very little change in the author’s creative process, the change is really just taxonomy of the result, more so, just a change to the tag you place on it for your audience.”

I couldn’t agree more with this, the trouble is you have to establish your story telling/photographic skills and style and be true to them and yourself to feel some kind of self worth. The example I gave of myself was I was flickering in the wind bending to my perception of what the client wanted, therefore I felt no pride in the work I was producing with good reason as I was producing nice but bland imagery which left me cold and empty with the work.

There are a number of fairly big hitters out there who are blogging about this at the moment take a look at Chase Jarvis and Doug Menuez, both are commercial shooters who very generously post there inner thoughts online. For me there is a creative itch that needs to be scratched and if that is ignored productivity/creativity/contentment are all compromised.

In fact I am working on a pro bono project at the moment which is allowing me to scratch like mad and it is truly creatively life affirming.

If you have a chance can you drop me a line or skype aitkenimages

cheers

Ian

P.S. Alejandro great job and interesting melding of documentary and creativity, they are in no way exclusive to each other.

http://www.ai-ap.com/cfe/APss/dsp_allimages.cfm?acc=P

and Michael Christopher Brown is in too (do you remember Sakhalin?)

But putting situations together (like Bush and Tatcher kissing on the mouth) and presenting it as if it happened in real time, is a huge lie. It is not interpretation. It is lying.

Alejandro did not lie. He said these images were set up.

And he said these set up images document the way of living of those people. This is an other discussion. I said about that above: maybe in fifty years we will consider and use his pictures as a document about that region (knowing that it is fiction), amongst other documents about that region. But I agree with you: I am unable to see what it documents. And that I can with pictures of the First World War David mentioned.

Wishes