Digital Imaging with Hasselblad 25
let outside sources do the rest. While Fine Art fi lm photographers often spend much more time
working on an image in the darkroom than they did or do when creating the image in the
camera, most other fi lm photographers spend most or all the creative time behind the camera.
Digital imaging in color or black and white is also a two-stage process with stage one
taking the picture and stage two working on the image in the computer. As in fi lm photog-
raphy, most digital casual photographers however limit their own work to stage one, taking
the picture in the digital camera and then letting an outside source do stage two. For serious
digital photographers and professionals on the other hand stage two has become the more
important step in creating the image and many serious digital photographers, probably most
of them, spend hours, perhaps days working on an image in the computer while they spend
just a few minutes recording the image in the camera. The entire photographic process in
regards to the time spent in stages one and two is completely reversed from what it used to
be in fi lm photography. Nothing wrong especially since the main enjoyment for many digital
photographers comes not from creating the image in the camera but from working with the
image in the computer, retouching it, improving the quality by making it brighter, darker, or
sharper or by adding a soft touch or changing colors in the entire image or part of it. A new
image with little resemblance to the original photograph can also be created by making the
images more effective by changing the composition or the background, or producing double
exposures by combining different images.
The main interest for these enthusiasts or professionals is creating images in the computer
not in the camera. This is understandable not only because sitting in front of a computer may
be more pleasurable than working with cameras, lenses, and accessories out in the cold, heat,
fog or rain but also because these computer manipulations have created completely new possi-
bilities for creating photographic images, new enthusiasm for photography, and have attracted
newcomers to photography who never before had a serious interest in cameras. These new
developments can only benefi t photography as the work on the computer may develop the
photographer’s artistic capabilities. Before working on the computer, you naturally want to
evaluate the image to determine what changes should be made and to what extent, if any, the
image should be manipulated. I also like to remind news photographers that you need to be
aware that any image manipulations, even minor ones, are frowned upon. News pictures are
supposed to show things as they were when recorded in the camera. If you feel that the image
must be changed even in a minor fashion, you must inform the picture editor.
Since creating the original image still involves a camera, I also hope that digital photogra-
phers will continue to consider the camera and lens, not the computer, the main component
for creating the digital image, unless you like to become recognized as a “computer photog-
rapher” and your images as computer produced works of art rather than camera or photo-
graphic art. Some years from now this separation between camera and computer produced
images may be reduced or may completely disappear and all images may become recognized
as computer photography.
RECORDING A PERFECT IMAGE IN THE CAMERA
This trend toward computer produced images made some photographers concentrate all
their artistic efforts to the work on the computer screen. Retouching and changing the image
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