Words Candy G. Villanueva
For my birthday, a friend presented a photo of me basking like a fool in the strong arms of everybody's favorite British Spy. Hair carelessly tossed, sparkling white smiles, adoring eyes only for the other. We were the perfect picture of star-crossed lovers. It was a picture fit for the front pages of the Hollywood tabloids. It was also a picture digitally manipulated by a friend who is adept in Adobe Photoshop and has too much time in her hands.
Although it looked almost real-at least I wished it was real-it wouldn't hold up as evidence in court. You have but to zoom in a little to notice the color discrepancies and the jagged pixels where my rounded cheeks meet with Pierce Brosnan's chiseled ones. I had the healthy sepia tone on my face while Pierce sported a creamy complexion. No matter how amateurish, this proves one point: with technology, fantasy and reality can be merged. Sometimes, it's hard to distinguish between both.
Over 80 years ago, two schoolgirls had the same idea, working with crude technology, cunning mischief, and a love for the magical. They constructed and cut out fairy figures, secured them on a bank of earth with hatpins, and took their pictures using a Midg quarter-plate camera. The result is a series of photographs later called the Cottingley Fairies which took the print world by storm. The photos were so convincing that even Sherlock Holmes creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, who investigated the case for an article on fairies, was almost fooled. Today, with the latest in digital technology, photographs can be so cleverly and seamlessly faked that they can fool even Sherlock Holmes into saying, "Not too elementary after all, my dear Watson."
FROM DARK ROOM TO DIGITAL WORLD
"The film is the score, but the print is the performance." - Ansel Adams (American photographer, advocate of Pure Photography)
In the dark room, the process starts with a developing agent followed by a stop bath. Images are controlled with the choices of films, chemicals, papers, and processes. In some instances, the processing is manipulated by blurring up the images or playing with the colors and grains to make them look like a painting.
In the digital world, the traditional dark room is a computer system. The photo editing program provides a dizzying choice of films, chemicals, papers, and processes. Minus the romance of the tradition and the laundry pins, photo editing is actually more economical, practical, and effective. With the lights on, the prep time is replaced by the start up time (which is really almost immaterial nowadays with faster-than-fast processors).
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For full stories, grab a copy of Speed's SEPTEMBER 2006 issue in bookstores and newsstands near you.
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