Exhibition photography... or "exhibition photoshopping"?

[davidc]

I've dipped my toes into the world of photography salons and some of the work receiving awards is truly eye opening... and I don't necessarily mean that in a good way.

What surprised me is that a huge number of images won awards or commendations that were clearly more photoshop than photograph and, to my eye, very clear, poorly constructed composites.

This surprised me a huge amount so I did some research, looking for any online community that was discussing this topic. I only actually found a couple and there seemed to be a highly polarised split between those who didn't care for this type of image, believing a photography salon should emphasise the quality of photography over the photographer's skill in compositing or photoshop, and the other camp who believed the final image is the only factor - who cares how it was created, the final look is what is important.

My personal position? I agree the final image is important but I believe photoshop should be a seamless compliment to an image. If something is "well-shopped", as it were, but still looks clearly fake/composited, in my opinion the final image has failed.

Enough intro - here are some examples of award winning images from recent exhibitions. Author names withheld to keep this impartial though I've linked to the exhibition sites in case anyone is particularly curious. For me, these are all examples of photoshopped images where I feel that, despite some skill in photoshop, the end result is either uninteresting or just looks like a complete fake to the overall detriment of the image.

<- I'm really not sure what the point of this one is?

<- personally this looks like someone has taken a very average shot then used PS to make it look like a drawing. I'm not sure what the end result is trying to achieve but for me it doesn't work.

<- the combination of an overly contrasty portrait (looks like the Clarkson effect on a person, urgh!) overlayed over a picture of a house. I think the portrait element is actually good, just overprocessed, and yet the end result just looks contrived?

<- for me, this looks like an EXTREMELY lazy cut and paste!

<- what surprises me about this one is that all the individual elements look well taken, e.g. nice sky, reasonable landscape, nice portrait, but combined as they are the image just looks completely fake and immediately makes me wonder why they didn't just try and shoot an actual scene like this?

<- does anyone think the "man" looks like Microsoft clipart from the 90s?

<- really not sure I can find anything positive I like about this

<- like the image of the lady above, personally I think a straight up portrait of the sweep, ideally on location, would be much more effective - the photoshopping here is blatant and like so many of the others gives me the message "well I had this idea for a shot but couldn't shoot a sweep on a street so I faked it".

<- again, two characterful portraits were possible here but 'shopping them into this scene just feels contrived.

<- so much processing here it looks like an illustration rather than a photograph. In the sense of "telling a story" it's not bad, but it's like the photographer pushed the contrast sliders to the max and added a background they couldn't agree to get the model to go to in person

Here is an example of something clearly photoshopped/composited but where I think the end result is actually effective in building the final image.



What do people think? Remember that all of the above images have won awards at the highest level of photographic exhibitions. Does anyone have experience in salons to know if this is a passing fad/phase? While I admit these examples are absolutely not to my tastes, there is a degree of skill in their creation and it's something I'd like to try my hand at. I'm not arguing that the end image is more important than any "purist" sense of getting it right in camera, I'm not a luddite, it's just these for me are examples where the final image has so many obvious artefacts or flaws the end result simply isn't effective. Definitely interested to hear what others think and what a camera club judge would make of them.

Maybe I'll try a series of them for the 2014/2015 season

[davidc]

Oops, links to the relevant exhibitions

Dingwall - http://photoexhibs.com/photoexhib/dingw ... allery.htm

Frome & Wessex - http://photoexhibs.com/photoexhib/frome ... allery.htm

[Paul Heester]

Have to admit I havent heard of photography salons before and finding an explanation Im still not sure its purpose. So its a competitions of sorts but there is no cash prize, its more about awards? Is that right?

Based on the images you've shown I guess its an attempt by photographers who are also interested in art and trying to meld the two styles together?

[davidc]

Basically, my understanding of it is that you have club photography, like what we engage in, at the "bottom level" of those who take photography seriously - note I'm not saying the standard is bad, just trying to construct a relative standing. The next level seems to be national salons. A salon is basically an invitation to submit work to the organisers who are seeking to find the best work available. The "acceptances" and award winners then form the salon exhibition. A parallel is our own exhibition; the judging night could be seen as the salon although in our case every image entered is accepted. The difference with national/international salons being the volume of entrants and the standards required to be accepted - in essence, you pay a nominal fee (from £10-£20 in my experience, depending on the number of categories like colour, mono, nature, travel and so on).

International salons seem to be the next level up though from what I've seen the difference in standard between national and international exhibitions is very small. In fact, I've seen a lot of the images in national exhibitions also in internationals too.

I'd say the inter-club competitions such as what we participate in with SPA and PAGB are still club level and more of an aside, an extra type rather than level of competing.

There are national and international organisations who then award exhibition success with accreditation, medals and certificates. http://www.britishphotographicexhibitions.org.uk/ is a UK body that rewards entry into many of the national salons and FIAP is the worldwide body responsible for patronage of many international ones. There's also the PSA that sits alongside FIAP but is more for North Americans.

All of that seems straight forward and to me seemed like a logical extension of the club photography I've been working towards hence I looked into it entering myself.

What surprised me is that the types of image that are consistently seen and rewarded are a) far from club photography in style and b) almost seem to be adhering to a "meta-competition" where photoshop composites & extreme manipulation are, perhaps currently, the norm. Though I can understand someone having vision, an image they want to realise, and building it themselves artificially, the examples above are for me cases where either the initial vision is poor/mundane and more often than not, the execution is lazy/poor or flat out unrealistic. Yet still, they are winning medals...

Although I'm not against the concept of taking a dozen images then blending them in PS to construct the image you want the viewer to see, I thought "the top end" would be much better & more realistic, or much more interesting. I'll be trying this myself and in some respects it's been enlightening and an eye opener, I just found it so surprising that I thought I'd share and see what others thought!