We arrived at the reception at the Misciagna Family Center for Performing Arts on Penn State Altoona Campus just as it was getting warmed up. Artists from around central PA meshed and rubbed elbows with middle aged pretentious women who had over inflated senses of self. A thrilling moment was when we saw that Tommy Wareham was there, warming up with his guitar. Anything he performed would be a classy touch to the evening.
A bit of background on Toolman Luke is that he has been a professional photographer for more than half a century. He started with his own camera, apprenticing a local studio photographer, did the typical stringer work for local newspapers and secured himself a job with the FBI in the Hoover era. He made a name for himself in DC with his detailed work in photographic investigation and analysis. With a family to support he then shared his talents enhancing the businesses of Emertron, Standard Steel and eventually as senior photographer in the Photographic Department of PSU. Accolades that have been showered upon him are many. He has a great story about the court case in which he was defined as an expert photographer and where he was called upon to analyze photographs for a defense attorney. Ask him about "eggs and grits" sometime, it will blow you away.As a retiree, Toolman Luke still loves photography. His specialty is still conventional black and white photography but the courses he sometimes offers to local photographers cover everything from basic composition and conventional dark room procedures to the new digital techniques. He has built at least one large format camera by hand (but not the lens) and still develops his own negatives and prints. Just this year he decided to enter a few of those prints in some central PA art shows.
We wound our way through the Blair County socialites to view how and where Toolman Luke's photographs had been displayed. They were very nicely hung together on one wall and his award noted by his winning print, "Sun on Eli's Field." We hadn't known which print had won the award until that moment and we had all guessed wrongly. The judge, who was competent, had his own subjective criteria as judges will have. This versatile judge was called upon to jury everything at the show. This included two dimensional artwork, the photography and all three dimensional artwork also.The awards were announced starting with a special recognition of Artistic Distinction that was given to Tommy Wareham. With ease and graciousness, Mr. Warham accepted his honor and gave back to everyone in the room with a tune of kind wishes. The rest of the awards were announced and handed out. All present were received with applause and some with the bonus of familiar hugs and air kisses.
We toured all of the artwork displayed through the three galleries. The most compelling thing I noticed was the broad range of digital enhancement that was considered acceptable on photography. Digital and conventional photography was judged in the same category but some of the work done on the pieces were well beyond what a little dodging and burning or a color filter would have done. The third place winning photographer admitted to Toolman Luke to having used the computer software Photoshop to remove a person that was standing in the foreground of one of her entries (not the award winner).
What drove the above point home was when I walked into the gallery where most of the photography was displayed and overheard a group discussing how they could tell where certain photographs had been altered. "Look here," a twenty-something fellow said with a bit of dismay in his voice, "You can see a tree was removed from this side of the building but they didn't take away the huge shadow it cast."
I hadn't noticed things like that, just the garish texture filters the same print had been run through. When they moved aside and walked on the the next prints displayed I stepped in for a closer look. Sure enough, the shape of a fully leafed maple was cast on the side of the house in the print but no tree existed from the direction of the light source, the sun in this case. How much manipulation could be done on a photograph before it crossed the boundary and should be considered two dimensional artwork? I was wondering this as I heard the same group of critics behind me. They were discussing how an artist could easily take a series of photographs and carefully stitch them together using the same mentioned computer software to make what looks like one long elegant landscape. I turned to see what other photograph that they were demystifying. They were pointing at "Sun on Eli's Field."
I quickly stepped in to correct them. I agreed that many of the photos in the room had some level of digital artistry applied to them but none of the three photos in front of them had been touched. They looked more than skeptical and the younger man questioned exactly how "Sun on Eli's Field" was created. I assured them that the photographer could explain it better than I ever could and thankfully Toolman Luke walked into the gallery at that moment. I stepped aside but watched from across the gallery as the critical group went from rigid grilling to astonishment to rapt interest in everything Toolman Luke had to share with them. In turn, each of them walked back over to me expressed how jaded they had become in viewing a lot of the "photographic" work. They had seen the same pieces in other shows take huge cash prizes and had come to assume that most of the stunning photos that they were viewing that been grossly manipulated.This fueled the main topic of my conversation over the next couple of hours. As we drove home, I asked my family their opinions on what they felt guidelines for photographic entries should be in a juried exhibit. RGBisMe me shared one solution he had seen in the past. Just below the matted photo the negative is also mounted. This would sadly take away from the breadth of the landscape on its own but would lend authenticity to the work. Toolman Luke was interested but unfazed. He knows what work went into his photographs and can sleep well at night knowing that it was his excellence in photography that was recognized.
One example of mediocre stitching with Photoshop can be seen on my Crawford Vista photograph. An example of simple Photoshop retouching can be seen in this example. Retouched photo is on the left and unaltered photo on the right
