Basics of fine-art photography/Creating works in straight (pure) photography



Straight (pure) photography is a photography style, whose supporters adhere to the most accurate, realistic reflection of reality, where the object is always in focus, which allows you to see the details and there are all the qualities that distinguish photography from other forms of fine art.

General information
The movement originated in the West around the 1930s. Landscapes, people, architecture served as the subject of portray; and the distinguishing features are high image sharpness, sometimes maximum contrast and in addition — strict composition, the absence of blurry details, the inadmissibility of any additional transformations (both during shooting and during post-processing), natural richness of tones and lighting specifics.

Ways of implementation
The style is harmoniously combined with genre and street photography, experience in these genres will help you master the art of pure photography.

To create vivid images, you will need to work with lighting, expressive cropping (in order to remove “extra” space, level the horizon line, etc.) and other methods that do not require optical changes in the image.

The concept of direct photography taboos everything that can change the picture, making it less true. You should refuse to use light filters during shooting, and in post-processing — special development and printing processes; do not crop the image, as a result of which the perception of the meaning of what is happening can be changed (distorted).

In other words, the photographic work you create should recreate reality as the human eye sees it, without using staging, blurring or compositing.