Kokoro - Wandering Through a Photographic Life

Backstage Kokoro

A "behind-the-scenes" look at selected images in my Kokoro project —
Content, photographic notes, EXIF data, creative process, miscellaneous commentary, and original digital captures. And now with additional audio comments about selected images!

From Kokoro #022 - The Chinese Way

There's been so much discussion about Photoshop and photographic truthfulness that I hesitate to raise it here, but I must because of this image. The "truthfulness" of this image is all in the expressions in their faces. It was a fleeting moment that I was lucky to capture.

However, just as I did so one of our traveling partners reached out. In the original digital capture, his hand is visible poking into the frame from the right side of the photograph. It's an obvious distraction that clearly needed to be eliminated in order to make this a usable photograph. I knew I was going to have to crop the original file, too, and that changes the truthfulness of the exposure, does it not? So, a little Photoshop work and, "look Ma, no hand."

This kind of image manipulation doesn't bother me in the least. I'm not making a photograph for historical documentary purposes nor for legal evidentiary use. I'm trying to express an emotional moment, not merely a physical one. This kind of Photoshop manipulation has always seemed to me perfectly justifiable in a personally expressive, intended-for-art photograph.

Original digital capture (downsized for the web)

1/200 sec at f / 5.6, ISO 100, Panasonic DMC-G1, LUMIX G VARIO 14-45/F3.5-5.6, 14 mm

Brooks Jensen

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