NZPhotographer Issue 34, August 2020

white balance settings I have selected. One can
therefore argue that these, too, are forms of editing
reality.
TO BE ARTISTS, WE MUST CREATE
“To create something, we must bring it into
existence.”
An image is not a true representation of reality,
but it doesn’t need to be. Being a creative
photographer requires creation, which is to bring
something new into existence, rather than simply to
present what exists already. As discussed, even “unprocessed”
photographs do not present a scene as
is – we control so many factors that make the image
what it is. If we leave out an electrical pylon, for
example, the viewer will never know it was there.
The choices we make in the field (using telephoto
lenses to compress distance between objects or
using wide-angle lenses to create distortion etc)
are acts of artistic deception, just as much as the
choices we make in post-processing.
Processing is a valuable tool we can use to
challenge the viewer with our art. In my own work,
I want to challenge the viewer while maintaining a
sense of “realness”, so my processing boundaries
are set by the question “does it feel real?”. Not all
photographers work this way, however; you may
wish to present your own work with highly saturated
colours not found in nature, or to highlight detail
to an extreme extent using HDR. Choices such as
these will not create a feeling of “realness”, but
this does not make them wrong. It can take just
as much time, technique, and vision to create a
surreal aesthetic as a realistic one, and neither style
lessens a photograph’s artistic value.
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NZPhotographer