<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">My fallback opinion is that these <b>are </b>Photoshop enhancements done with a cloning tool (or equivalent); please show me how Im wrong. neilderosa.........{empasis added}
I am not an expert in photography so I can not do such an analysis. neilderosa<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote"> Fred, in my opinion, these two statements tell you all you need to know. In the first statement, Neil is saying that your pictures <b>are </b>(not "could be", but "are") photoshop enhancements. Aside from this being a slanderous statement (libel-Merriam-Webster online def 2b), it is one that can easily be proven false. In his second statement above, Neil admits that he doesn't actually know anything about this, so you can see how he would make this mistake.
If you were so inclined, or had any real reason to prove that your images <b>were not, in fact, "Photoshopped"</b> that could easily be done using the very experts that you've been dealing with when you were taking these analog pictures in the first place. Namely, the print shops.
Since your images were taken using 35mm film, and developed, you still have the negatives. All it would take would be for you to go to an indepentent, well known, reputable photo lab, and tell them what you want to accomplish. Say for instance that you used the negative for "Lila". Bring the negative and a copy of "Lila" to the lab and tell them that you need to a)authenticate that the negative is a true negative, undoctured in anyway, and b) prove that the negative produces an exact copy of "Lila".
Simply tell them that for professional reasons you need to prove that your images are what you say they are. (again, if you are so inclined. One could certainly understand why you wouldn't want to bother, since no professional in the art world or photography world has questioned them up to this point)
Any good lab (I'm sure the crime labs have done this before) can prove that the negative is undoctored, and then a new copy from the image could easily be proven to be an exact match to the original, in much the same way that fingerprints are "matched".
In this way, you could get a "scientific" seal of approval that your images are not photoshopped.
All that would leave is the question of whether or not some assistants were tweaking the leaves (or holding up make-believe leaves) as you were photographing your white board. But, since Neil has laid down the gauntlet by saying you "are" doctoring them in Photoshop, we can leave out the question of fake or tweaked leaves for the time being.
Also, all (some?, most?) of your negatives show the borders of the whiteboard with the face image as just a part of the whole, so that question would be answered too.
The whole thing might cost you a few bucks, but as your work has become more popular over time, there may be some benefit to having this proof in your portfolio.
Another thing you could do, would be to take some pictures using a digital camera in "movie" mode. Maybe a few seconds at a time. If you manage to capture a face in a clip, you can produce a small frame by frame demo showing the face come into existence from the the previous frames of swirling leaves. I tried this my self with some success. Once you had a good one, you can always save the frame as an image. I know you like the depth of analog better, but an experiment like this might go a long way towards clearing up what you're actually doing to the untrained observer.
rd
