What the pro-photographers did in the film days were only done by the very few who could afford such dark rooms. I ran a microfilm processing center for 20 years and I knew the ins and outs of national archives, therefore I don't need a lesson on this. With S$ 120 most can get a student's copy of CS5 and if one is savy in this area, I bet his photos are generally better. In the film days, most wedding photographers were extremely good. When my first son got married, I remembered viewing 10 rolls of film negative accompanied with thumbnail prints of these film strips. We were asked to choose what we wanted to print and enlarge. 100% no doctoring. The real test is to shoot in jpec, use all the in-camera processing you want and stop there. Why don't you do that and post a series of photos done this way. If you can maintain the quality of photos you have been posting here, then I will salute you.
so just because more people can do it now, you think they are not deemed to be photographers?
do you deem tan lip seng to be a photographer, in this case?
technology has allowed for greater accessibility to technique, so you are essentially practising double standards here - if you consider film photographers photographers, and digital photographers who use photoshop photoshoppers.
in the past, filmmakers didn't have such powerful tools for making films that they have today. or at least those who did, needed a lot of capital.
are you saying that today's movies are not really movies? today's filmmakers are not filmmakers? am i the only one seeing your loopholes in logic here?
btw, when i shoot a jpg, the camera processes it. when i shoot in raw and run it by photoshop, i process it.
who's the one who cares more about results here, the person who lets a dumb, inanimate machine think for him, or the person who wants some degree of control over what the output is?
you think the latter has less skill? then you have not understood what photography is about, why tan lip seng did all his bais relief, or montages.
so what is the difference between telling the camera to dial it up 3 notches in terms of contrast, or me doing it in photoshop - other than the fact that once again, i retain a greater degree of control? do you really think people spend loads of time photoshopping?