Analysis of comments by Marc Adamus loving MORON Stephen Penland on Photo.net

Analysis of Stephen Penland comments on Photo.net

Stephen Penland seems to be a diehard Marc Adamus lover & supporter. We find his delusion & falsehood filled posts everywhere on Marc's portfolio. Let's look at his comments on the "Mountain Mountain" image (yes, we will soon be moving to new images, we promise):

Stephen Penland comment:	Our analysis:
Marc, we’ve had a lot of discussions here recently regarding digital manipulation.	Of course they have. Losers like Stephen do nothing but praise Marc Adamus and argue about trivial stupidity like “how much can we Photoshop before people cry fake” on forums like photo.net. Anyone who does this is a fraud and no photographer.
I’ve been on the so-called “purist” side…	A lie, pure and simple, considering that he goes on to create a straw man argument of what does and doesn’t construe digital manipulation.
Some photographers use digital manipulation to make the decisive moment irrelevant; they create the necessary elements digitally.	True. Marc does this (not what he meant, but still)
As a result, many people (photographers and non-photographers) are asking “Is it real?” whenever they see a compelling photograph.	A valid question to ask in today’s fraud-based photography environment, made so by charlatans like Marc Adamus. The answer to the question, by the way: Was the photo taken by Marc or some moron who loves him or links to him? In fact, was the image taken by a non-pro? It’s probably fake.

They want to know if the beauty and grandeur represented by the photo was actually witnessed and therefore represents a real experience, or whether the beauty and grandeur was created by tweaking a base image on the computer to create something that essentially was not witnessed but instead arose out of the creative mind of the photographer/digital artist.	The question is certainly valid. The irony is that the latter part describes Marc Adamus to a T.
I think there’s a real difference between digital manipulation and digital processing.	Of course he thinks that. This is where the straw man is being set up.

Digital manipulation creates something that wasn’t there.	Marc Adamus (and we assume, Stephen) does that all the time.
I view digital processing as overcoming the inherent limitations of a camera and the light-capturing device (whether film or digital).	Lie. Today’s camera has few limitations for the real photographer. For example, Chase Jarvis doesn’t spend any time combining exposures or messing with HDR. In fact, Chase Jarvis made an entire book with the iPhone camera. Fake photographers will always be blaming their camera for their failures, and messing with blending, “intelligent HDR”, or other forms of photography fraud, instead of admitting they’re no photographer and are charlatans instead.
[referring to Marc] You’ve also used to address the limited range of light that can be captured in a single exposure.	Limited range of light? What about film, which serious photographers are still using? It has a far more limited dynamic range than any digital camera ever designed. And again, real professional photographers are not “using digital processing to address the limited range of light….”. These kind of conditions usually indicate that an exposure may not be worth taking. The excuse here is always the sign of a particular weak photographer, who’s in a hurry to get famous on Flickr and can’t wait for “mother nature to deliver” the light show he expects.
So while I’m generally in the purist camp regarding digital manipulation.	Lie. If he was in the purist camp, he’d be condemning Marc’s Photoshop adventures instead of glorifying them.
Unfortunately, too many photographers (IMO) are advertising their digital manipulation as a real photograph, as a real capture of what they saw.	That’s exactly what Marc does. Nowhere on Marc’s main website (Marcadamus.com) is there a disclaimer saying that many of the images are combinations of multiple exposures and heavy manipulation. What a preposterous, arrogant double standard!
To pass it off as such is dishonest.	Unless you’re Marc Adamus, in Stephen’s opinion.

I wouldn’t classify this as computer-based art, but rather as photography that has used digital processing tools in ways that were not possible a decade ago to make up for limitations of the camera.

Dishonest lie. Today’s digital camera’s can’t be honestly described as having any significant limitations. Excellent photographs were being made long before digital manipulation, and continue to be made without this manipulation. An excellent photo is the result of the inspired juxtaposition of compositional elements and light. The best photos rely on strong, simple compositional elements that are immediately recognizable. They have nothing to do with Photoshop, blending, HDR, camera limitations, or any other excuse. Anyone who says otherwise is a shill for frauds or a fraud himself, like Marc Adamus.

Personally, I don’t even consider this to be equivalent to a digital darkroom in the way that Ansel Adams changed the B&W tones of his images in his chemical darkroom.

The sheer dishonesty of this statement is utterly staggering. Losers are constantly trying to paint Ansel Adams as some extreme manipulator or as a man who would have surely embraced Photoshop wholeheartedly. Let’s review that again: Marc combining seven different exposures into one image: not manipulating or a digital darkroom Ansel Adams changing the tones of a black and white image with the limited analog tools at his disposal: serious manipulation that clearly exceeds Marc’s limits. The dishonesty stinks like a rotting corpse. This Stephen character is a simpering sycophant as few have seen in the history of the world. We imagine he’d basically say any lie, no matter how absurd, to stay in the good graces of Marc Adamus.