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Details v. Blur: Perception (from thread 653)

This interesting topic developed in the thread on "Putting Megapixels into Perspective"
http://www.openphotographyforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=653
Asher

Asher Kelman said:
Sean,

I'm blury-eyed too, an sometimes even without Pilsner.

For some pictures, perfection and sharp is art.

For others, a blur removes the inconsequential and leaves the shapes, tones and hues to enticew us enough that we participate in all the rest of the image and its story by using our hard-wired circuits, experience and imagination.

I have no issues with selective focus or soft focus filters. I have no issues with dragging the shutter. But just plain blurry photos caused by poor technique without any any interesting compositional detail bore me. I find that about 99.8% of photos that are blurry are artistic failures.

Asher Kelman said:
It allows the viewer to be trusted by the artist, as if to say, I know you understand, because, perhaps, you have been there before.

That makes no sense to me. It is like poetry which I have no use for as 99.8% of it is useless writing. The talk of trusting the reader to fill in the details is sophistry to cover up their inability to clearly communicate.

But I am a detail oriented person and this desire to have details is part of my makeup. A friend once asked me why I always asked questions in response to things rather than saying "that's cool" or other statements. My answer was that I ask questions because I am confused and do not have enough data to integrate the concept into my world view to think it is cool.

Can you imagine a camera manual written entirely in haiku?

When power fail, no picture,
remove battery, replace,
shoot more picture now
It would be a nightmare. For me there is no trust of the viewer, it is simply a failure to communicate on the creator's end.

That said, I would rather see a print from a well exposed, composed, and focussed 3.3 MP camera than a lackluster composition from an 8x10 view camera. But, given a choice between the exact same shot printed at full resolution to a 12x18 print versus downsampling the shot to 1/3 its native resolution and then printing a 12x18 print I would prefer the higher resolution one 99.99% of the time (I can envision the existence of content where pixelation/aliasing might enhance an image but I have never seen such).
 
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Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Sean DeMerchant said:
That makes no sense to me. It is like poetry which I have no use for as 99.8% of it is useless writing. The talk of trusting the reader to fill in the details is sophistry to cover up their inability to clearly communicate.

But I am a detail oriented person and this desire to have details is part of my makeup. A friend once asked me why I always asked questions in response to things rather than saying "that's cool" or other statements. My answer was that I ask questions because I am confused and do not have enough data to integrate the concept into my world view to think it is cool.
Sean, it is, from my view, disingenuous to put an artists serious work in the same bucket as sophomoric Haiku representing useless Camera manuals or poorly crafted poetry.

All photographic art requires that an arc of communication occur between the photographer and the viewer. From that, the creator depends on the viewer comprehending intent. He also relies on the observer finding enough from their own minds to make the art work.

This is unquestionable and basic, not sophistry. The photographer shows that the image will find relevance based on the viewer’s mindset and allowing for the latter to fill in details that CANNOT be shown in the picture.

Asher
 
Asher Kelman said:
Sean, it is, from my view, disingenuous to put an artists serious work in the same bucket as sophomoric Haiku representing useless Camera manuals or poorly crafted poetry.
I can respect that, but do not feel that way. Most paintings I see do next to nothing for me. No emotional draw, no tickling of the eyes with details, nor a compelling enough composition to hold my attention for more that 10 seconds. Most of the "serious" art I see in galleries does little for me. Just because it is a huge platinum print does nothing to improve the lack of content. I am not saying all works fit in this bucket, but I personally do not find many compelling or interesting. I do find some absolutely fantastic, but they are more often than not an exception rather than a rule.

All this said, none of this correlates with what I was talking about. What I was talking about resolution limits and how this affects perception. Consider the following extreme example of what I am talking about where I see people take soft focus too far.

20060813_example_01.jpg


Which one conveys a sense of what was happening? If you had not seen the bottom image, then would you even be able to guess what the top image is? Truth be told, it was a grab shot where I had left the lens in manual focus somewhere close to 1:1.

But that is an extreme example and not my primary point. My primary point is that there are limits beyond which printing larger looks worse and worse. One can add grain/noise digitally to substiture for lack of detail up to a point. But I find looking at prints where 95% or more of the detail is grain boring. If I wanted to look at grain formation I would use a microscope.

That said, consider the following 3.3 MP image:

SPD62502.jpg



At web resolution or in a 4x6 print this image has lots of detail even though most of it is out of focus.

At 8x10 it pushes the limits of what I consider acceptable quality. At this point details are soft and blurry which is clearly visible in an 8x10 print at arms distance. At noseprint distance the shot is clearly soft and has a lot of chroma noise (the joy of JPEG capture). I could fix the chroma noise fairly easily, but it is not offensive at 8x10 so I left it.

SPD62502_8x10.jpg


At 16x20, the shot is awful. The chroma noise is dreadful. There are no sharp details at all. This is what I am talking about when I allude to writing user manuals in third rate haiku. At 16x20 and a reasonable viewing distance (slightly more than arms reach) it will not look realistic to me.

SPD62502_16x20.jpg






Asher Kelman said:
All photographic art requires that an arc of communication occur between the photographer and the viewer. From that, the creator depends on the viewer comprehending intent. He also relies on the observer finding enough from their own minds to make the art work.
The requirement that the viewer comprehend the implied context without any development of that does not seem reasonable to me. Perhaps in a book or showing where a body of work develops this context I could see asking this of the viewer. But not in a lone image.

I once saw in a gallery a boring photo of a leaf with a dull lifeless composition which had been blown up to 20x30. Making the image bigger and sticking the silver halide crystal structure in my face at a reasonable viewing distance (less than 2 m if one did not block the main traffic route through the gallery). Making a poor image huge did nothing to improve it. The shot was clean, in focus, sharp, but lifeless.

The mushroom above is pushing boundaries as an 8x10 print. I could print it larger, but I would feel like I was stroking my ego while making the image look worse. Others may (and likely do) feel differently about this. I am interested in having photographic prints share the reality or surreality of scene as my interest is the wondrous and interesting things there are to see. Blurring it away removes everything I find compelling about photography.

On an interesting note, I went through a gallery the other day and saw some of the most fantastic painting I have ever seen. The compositions were adequate but not spectacular composition of kitchen items. What was amazing was the painter's technique. The chrome in the paintings actually tickled my eyes the way real chrome does in good light. And I think this summarizes where I come from with my interests in images: how does it feel to look at it? Does it tickle my eyes and give me pleasure or am I left with just a composition without the magic of vision that I find compelling?

The second question that comes to mind is how does the composition make me feel? But, without the first element drawing me in and engaging my feelings (vision is a feeling) the content is unlikely to connect with me unless it is absolutely superb.

This is all me. No one else need subscribe to my viewpoint (and I reserve the write to change my mind at any time).



Asher Kelman said:
This is unquestionable and basic, not sophistry. The photographer shows that the image will find relevance based on the viewer’s mindset and allowing for the latter to fill in details that CANNOT be shown in the picture.
And what I find missing in too blurry a print is the very details that engage me and make me care enough to think about it. Most, but not all, paintings fail me in this fashion. They lack the visual character that creates the visceral connection to bring the image within my mind and go beyond just glancing at it.

In short, what I have said and the context all have said should be taken in, is that printing an image too large if you do not have the resolution will make it look worse and be less likely to engage the viewer emotionally from my perspective. There are limits to what is reasonable in a print and these limits will vary from viewer to viewer.

Hopefully this clarifies what I have been trying to communicate. And I apologize if I have offended anyone for that is not my intent.

enjoy,

Sean
 
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Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Sean,

I get your points. There is no offense perceived!

You like detail and technique in pictures that is immediately understandable to you and gives your senses a "tickle". You have no interest in overblown images with little detail.

On the last point, most would share your view.

The eyes, BTW, are unintelligent sensors behind a lens, just like a CMOS chip.

Eyesight is not a feeling, but a sense.

If you like the brush strokes that become shining chrome, great. I can like that too.

That, however, does not in itself constitute art.

Neither detail nor blur makes art.

Still either or both, might be essential for a particular work of art to succeed.

Even to fully understand a work of art that merely intended to be documentary, such as a surfing picture, the photographer has to assume a basic education of the viewer.

If you don't know what a wave is or a man is, or have no concept of sport or fun, then the relevance of all that carefully included detail is lost on the viewer.

So all art, even clear, detailed, perfectly rendered art, depends on the viewer’s preparation.

So if something doesn't move you, that fine. However, it might just be that you are not set up to appreciate it yet or else, perhaps everyone agrees that the "Art" isn't!

Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Obviously Cartier Bresson, "Mr do not crop", was right, but he had a better trained brain!

The problem is that few reach Monsieur Bresson's ability. In the informal shots at events, I do my best to compose as I would print. Still that's such a long way from Paris!

Asher
 

Alain Briot

pro member
Asher Kelman said:
Obviously Cartier Bresson, "Mr do not crop", was right, but he had a better trained brain!

The problem is that few reach Monsieur Bresson's ability.
Asher

Indeed. However, this does not preclude that it is possible to create a perfectly composed image without cropping.
 

Dierk Haasis

pro member
Sean DeMerchant said:
Most paintings I see do next to nothing for me. No emotional draw, no tickling of the eyes with details, nor a compelling enough composition to hold my attention for more that 10 seconds.

And then there are myriads of people having the exact opposite experience. Nothing proven, nothing gained.

We should always be aware that our individual experiences are not a good basis to judge something in principle (= drawing universal conclusions). I really like William Turner, since almost nothing in his paintings is in focus you may not like him. Neither of these personal responses to his art work can claim any kind of universality.

I will always concede personal dislike, I usually really want to hear the reasons behind it. For instance, I find most of Stanley Kubrick's movies way overrated, particularly his dreadful "masterpieces" 2001 and Clockwork Orange; part of my dislike is his disingenuous use of static photographic techniques for a moving picture. without me being able to pinpoint what I dislike there is no way to discuss it with other people. The same holds the other way round: I have yet to find a good reason to think George Lucas' second [production time!] trilogy of Star Wars is worse than his first - I find it is superior in every single category.

Consider the following extreme example of what I am talking about where I see people take soft focus too far.

It's not an extreme example of what you was talking about, it is a specifically created illustration to prove your point. The unsharp sports shot was not intended to be blurred, it wasn't even coincidentally something more than just blurry.

David Hamilton (and for a time Gunther Sachs) used blurriness to very good effect, rarely was their anything sharp in his photos of the mid-to-late 70s. This formal stunt fit his subject matter, it became art instead of just some novelty trick.

This is all me. No one else need subscribe to my viewpoint (and I reserve the write to change my mind at any time).

This excuse sounds so nice, nobody's hurt, just like the, additionally ugly, phrase 'agree to disagree'. In reality it is nothing but a subterfuge. Either you are convinced your point is valid, then you should show why [up to the point of convincing others], or your argument is hollow [phrased less burdened: private], then it's no argument.*




*Don't take that personal even if it sounds like it. Your utterance just triggered in me a point I needed to make for some time. Whenever someone comes up with 'agree to disagree' or similar catchpharses it sounds patronising to me. These are kill pharses, too, making any kind of discussion impossible, as if there is no real world just ones internal, self-created interpretation of a reality - the postmodernist drivel I had hoped would be dead by now.
 
Dierk Haasis said:
I am near-sighted, too (r: -6.25, 2.50, 160; l: -4; only the left eye is completely correctable by glasses). It doesn't change anything I wrote, nothing of which has any bearing on what I outlined. It's a bit like arguing that the world to me is flat because I don't experience it as an ellipsoid. This is very obvious when we compare Sean's way of dealing with hie nearsightedness and mine.
While to me a blurry image lacking in detail is the flat earth view. Why you say, because while I can see the ship sailing off into the horizon in the blurry one, in the sharp one I can see the sinking mast of the ship that is even further out to sea. Most people have known the earth was not flat long before Christopher Columbus was born.

But on the same note, I favor 500+ page novels to 150 page novels 90% of the time (the other 10% are exceptional writers who hit visceral tones with their prose). I like details most of the time, but my favorite authors either create great detail or they craft prose that brings in the visceral sense of interpersonal relationships as the foremost element of the tales (tales of people).

I once tried to read Dracula and was bored to pieces by the Victorian era travelogue style prose. Too much writing was spent trying convince me the tale was real rather than telling me the tale. Whereas my visual interests are the opposite.

I can still remember the moment the photography bug bit me. I took a horrible out of focus photo of this incredibly beautiful yellow crystaline fungus out hiking using a junky fixed focus camera. It took 4 years before I bought a decent camera with a sojourn into computer vision in between. But it was my inability to capture and share that wondrous beauty I saw that created the desire to craft photos. Since then, it has run off on its own path.

Dierk Haasis said:
The solution to this - crop to the detail you want to view and enlarge it - was also given.
This does nothing for me. I am not interested in the crop. What intrigues me is getting close and filling my peripheral vision with the image while I look at the details. This is about the interrelationship of the details to the whole rather than being about the detail itself.

One simple solution to this is to simply print larger. But again, the issue of size limits come up for the image as a whole in macro work as DoF can be a limiting issue.

Dierk Haasis said:
A lot can be said about getting the techincal side just right, having enough headroom to work with in order to express what one wants to express. Anybody taking any hobby or profession serious will go through a phase where certain technicalities have to be mastered. The end of this phase is characterised by focussing very strongly on technique; in the next phase (if one reaches it) one inevitably gets over it, not thinking about technicalitoes anymore but putting them to use.
Technique is a means to an end, not an end unto itself. Technique is how you get the shot, it is not the shot. With some subjects technique is all I concentrate on as there is no time for anything else. I may take 40 or 50 shots of a wasp to get one decent one. Or I may only get 5 shots of an action. Sometimes I get no photos but still have the joy of witnessing a wasp take its prey and fly off.

I will admit to taking photos of things with the only emotion of interst to me 95%+ of the time being to try and capture the beauty I see before me. I still have much to learn to expand my compositional techniques to capture non-technical relationships. I suspect my training has forced me onto highly rational paths as without a rational tie in to my feelings/intuition of the world around me I am lost and confused.
Dierk Haasis said:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sean DeMerchant
Most paintings I see do next to nothing for me. No emotional draw, no tickling of the eyes with details, nor a compelling enough composition to hold my attention for more that 10 seconds.


And then there are myriads of people having the exact opposite experience. Nothing proven, nothing gained.
I agree, it is just the reason for my obstinancy.
Dierk Haasis said:
We should always be aware that our individual experiences are not a good basis to judge something in principle (= drawing universal conclusions). I really like William Turner, since almost nothing in his paintings is in focus you may not like him. Neither of these personal responses to his art work can claim any kind of universality.
I agree. This all began with my obstinant assertion that there is an upper limit of increasing print size before realism in a photo is lost. That is my view and I am more than happy to stand by it. But I will not deny someone else's feeling differently. And while I can respect other views, they may not always be comprehensible to me.
Dierk Haasis said:
I will always concede personal dislike, I usually really want to hear the reasons behind it.
I agree. There is so much to be learned about greater understanding by splitting hairs to get to the root cause of a difference than by simply accepting disagreement. At times, it may be the chosen definition of a word (sounds simple, but a high levels two people may speak opposite sounding statements when they simply disagree of a single tiny detail).
 
Dierk Haasis said:
For instance, I find most of Stanley Kubrick's movies way overrated, particularly his dreadful "masterpieces" 2001 and Clockwork Orange; part of my dislike is his disingenuous use of static photographic techniques for a moving picture. without me being able to pinpoint what I dislike there is no way to discuss it with other people. The same holds the other way round: I have yet to find a good reason to think George Lucas' second [production time!] trilogy of Star Wars is worse than his first - I find it is superior in every single category.
Interesting. I enjoyed A Clockwork Orange, but that was for the social commentary of the tale and some of the visualizations of the costuming. 2001 I found to drag on and be rather dull. I have not watched either since I developed an understanding of photographic composition so I cannot comment on that element. I may get a copy of A Clockwork Orange from the library and watch it again (I will not bother with 2001).

A film I very much enjoyed for the photography was Gladiator. I very much enjoy the finely crafted precisely rendered surreal vision of worldly perfection out of Hollywood. But again, this fall back on my interest in capturing beauty. I have not seen it recently enough to have a reasonable grasp on the composition, but the tecnique tickled my eyes.
Dierk Haasis said:
Quote:
Consider the following extreme example of what I am talking about where I see people take soft focus too far.

It's not an extreme example of what you was talking about, it is a specifically created illustration to prove your point. The unsharp sports shot was not intended to be blurred, it wasn't even coincidentally something more than just blurry.
Truth be told, my gut reaction on first seeing the blurry image was I could see all the energy of it. But that was my being there and not a reality of the image. This is why I shared it as an extreme example (it was also handy).

And while I can appreciate soft focus (not blurry, just soft) in portraiture due to its flattering affect on the subjects, I have little use for it in landscapes (natural or urban) nor in nature images (bees, wasps, plants, fungi, other animals, ...).
Dierk Haasis said:
David Hamilton (and for a time Gunther Sachs) used blurriness to very good effect, rarely was their anything sharp in his photos of the mid-to-late 70s. This formal stunt fit his subject matter, it became art instead of just some novelty trick.
Truth be told, I like photography, I like art, but I am more likely to pick up a technical book on animals or plants than a book of photos. But that is how I learn to see my subjects better and hence craft more enlightening images of them. But my goal is to share visions of reality, not to tell stories per se (that is what captions are for0.
Dierk Haasis said:
Quote:
This is all me. No one else need subscribe to my viewpoint (and I reserve the write to change my mind at any time).

This excuse sounds so nice, nobody's hurt, just like the, additionally ugly, phrase 'agree to disagree'. In reality it is nothing but a subterfuge. Either you are convinced your point is valid, then you should show why [up to the point of convincing others], or your argument is hollow [phrased less burdened: private], then it's no argument.*
When talking opinions, it is not an excuse as I know I am right. But other things may be right for others. And in the end, it is less an arguement than an expression of opinion as you note.

Dierk Haasis said:
*Don't take that personal even if it sounds like it. Your utterance just triggered in me a point I needed to make for some time. Whenever someone comes up with 'agree to disagree' or similar catchpharses it sounds patronising to me. These are kill pharses, too, making any kind of discussion impossible, as if there is no real world just ones internal, self-created interpretation of a reality - the postmodernist drivel I had hoped would be dead by now.
Well, we can agree to disagree about this. ;) Truth be told, there are a few people I have met in my life whom I have respected enough socially and intellectually to comfortably agree to disagree. Most of the time it is more of a cop out to avoid confrontation as you note.

And in the end I like to argue (not fight, but argue).

enjoy your day,

Sean
 
Asher Kelman said:
I get your points. There is no offense perceived!

Glad to hear it. Sometimes my rhetoric goes beyond what I inted.

Asher Kelman said:
You like detail and technique in pictures that is immediately understandable to you and gives your senses a "tickle". You have no interest in overblown images with little detail.
No interest is a touch extreme. I do greatly enjoy and appreciate the exceptional image. But without true greatness, I need more to hold my attention. Hence my point that there is an upper limit to acceptable print sizes based on the application. For all the the richest of us, homes are finite spaces. And as a print gets larger the viewing distance gets respectively/proportionally less as most people do not have space to get 5 m of viewing distance in a home (many large homes simply do not have rooms that large).
Asher Kelman said:
On the last point, most would share your view.

The eyes, BTW, are unintelligent sensors behind a lens, just like a CMOS chip.
Here I disagree. From what I have learned of engineers and physiologists study of the vison (I am still a neophyte) is that there is much more to vision than just eyes and sensors. Are you aware of the distribution of rods and cones in the retina? Are you aware that the human mind then takes the RGBL (Red cone, Green cone, Blue cone, primative but hyper sensitive luminosity data from the rods) and then mixes this data together via a neural network into new forms? This is a moderately complex process using and the data is greatly modified from what the rods and cones sense before it reaches your conscious mind. Are you aware how highly correlated the spectral response of the 3 types of cones in the eye are? Are you aware of how wide of an arc of sharp vison the average eye has and how this is what leads to shifting content into the thirds points (placing a region of interest/subject far enough into a frame such that the linear border is outside ones arc of sharp vison allows the invocation by the viewer of suspension of disbelief so they can be absorbed into the "reality" of the image)? Human vision is not a simple or trivial thing. It is not just a lens and a sensor. The sensor itself is complex and non-uniform. The measureable circuitry behind that lead to the conception that we do not see in RGBL although the eyes capture data in RGBL.

The first step of human vision is to generate an opponent model of the red and green data (a difference model) while the blue data is retained untouched at the first stage. Some evening while out shooting watch your perception of luminosity after the sun has set and the world turns blue. Note how it still seems bright enough to see easily outside with your eyes while your camera is stuggling to focus. Have you ever walked in the dark and seen your moonshadow? Have you ever been in the dark and had to rely soley on you rods for night vision? Nothing is in focus whatsoever. But even with nothing in focus my rods allow me to track a heron in flight at 20m. And what your rods sense ties in very tighly to your feelings. This ties in very tightly with primal fear. These tie ins of our vision is part of why our species survives before streetlights. It is part of why some children fear the dark.

The human visual system is a complex thing that ties in intimately with our feelings and emotions. Have you seen any of the commentary of why certain colors of paint on walls lead to statistically verifiable changes in human behavior. The human mind is not simple. The human mind is a complex collection of different systems doing many things simultaneously. Our consciousness is simply a bubble/excerpt of feelings at the top of this. Conscious perception and reality are not tightly correlated. The human mind works by leaps and bounds and our perception can completely miss the reality of what it feels/observes. There are many interesting phychological experiments that document this.

Beyond the physiology, when I say a vision tickles the eyes, what I mean is that it strikes my pleasure circuits and makes me feel pleasure. It feels good. But I am very visual and I like to watch (most of the contributors here probably share this feeling ;) ).

This is far beyond hot, cold, pressure or other things we feel with our skin. What the eyes create is a feeling just a real as love or anything else we feel. In fact, what the eyes feel is very much a real feeling.

There are also mechanical aspects to vision too. I have watched two copies of a plane fly across the sky on a dark night because I was seeing it in the peripheral vision of one eye and the sharp focus of the other. And that left me feeling wondrous.

Heck, just thinking over these ideas and concepts has left me in a state suffused with joy as the world is a wondrous thing to experience.
Asher Kelman said:
Eyesight is not a feeling, but a sense.

If you like the brush strokes that become shining chrome, great. I can like that too.
It was not that the brush strokes evoked chrome, but that what I saw was clearly different while feeling the same as the visually different reality that amazed me.
Asher Kelman said:
That, however, does not in itself constitute art.

Neither detail nor blur makes art.

I agree. I tend to define art simply:

Art is expression.

Short, simple, and leaving the door open for expression and interpretation by the viewer/perciever.

One of my favorite musicians is Bebel Gilberto as I love her voice. Her voice is so pure. Listening closely one can hear not just the note but half a dozen harmonics of it sinking down her throat. (I do so love clear clean vocals.)
Asher Kelman said:
Still either or both, might be essential for a particular work of art to succeed.

Even to fully understand a work of art that merely intended to be documentary, such as a surfing picture, the photographer has to assume a basic education of the viewer.

If you don't know what a wave is or a man is, or have no concept of sport or fun, then the relevance of all that carefully included detail is lost on the viewer.

So all art, even clear, detailed, perfectly rendered art, depends on the viewer’s preparation.
Excellent statement/example. Very Californian (choosing surfing). Truth be told the only surfing here in the PNW is on the Pacific Coast and much of that is on nasty beaches in very cold water from the hearsay I have heard (I have never seen it, but have heard about the weather watchers who leave work early to drive to cast to surf a storm surge).

This image is another rarity in the region: skimboarding. Sandy beaches in the greater Puget Sound region are uncommon (too much shore stabilize to protect rail lines). Here on Whidbey Island is the only place in the greater Puget Sound region that I have seen such activity. The launching into air is a mixture of human motion, a strong inbound tide, a triad of outbound ships to create decent waves close to shore. I would not expect most people to be aware of this.

But, the misinterpretation (which is reasonable) brings to the forefront the viewers context. Mine is very technical and I studied computer vision years before I picked up a camera seriously. Truth be told it took me about 4 years to overcome my background and truly see an image for the first time. And I first seriously picked up a camera a little over six years ago. For context, I am young (33) and finished grad school about 8 years ago so I clearly still have much to learn and my tastes may change with experience.

Truthfuly, I expect my tastes to radically change in a decade as my understanding of images seems to evolve to a new level every 6 months. But even radical change is unlikely to change my emotional attachment to details.
Asher Kelman said:
So if something doesn't move you, that fine. However, it might just be that you are not set up to appreciate it yet or else, perhaps everyone agrees that the "Art" isn't!

I agree. 200 years ago the fictional novel was unheard of or very new thing. They began as travelogues and were respendent in detail to immerse the reader in the reality of the thing while rather sparse in narrative moving the story forwards (Brahm Stoker's Dracula is a good example). While painting is likely 15 or 30 thousand years old as an art. And including the oral narrative, we have the fact that both the novel and the photographic image are young aspects of ancient arts. But, ancient or not, they are always filtered through the perceptions of the living and what they have experienced. I do not retain being unable to tell if a house's trim is a 6 or 12 inches wide a block away (150 m) as part of my visual history. Instead, those early years before I wore glasses are lost as visual history beyond arms reach for me. And I have always been fascinated by looking closer.

This is not to say I do not appreciate a great composition regardless of the media. But for the 99.8% of what is out there that is not trancendentally fantastically composed I need more than that. And reality is a great source as mother nature seems to be one up on any human creation nearly without fail.

enjoy,

Sean :)
 

Jon P. Ferguson

New member
Maybe.....

....we should have a forum on "photographic philosophy".

Many threads on this site seem to either gravitate or result in esoteric discussions of the OP's offerings.
 

Dierk Haasis

pro member
Sean DeMerchant said:
Here I disagree.

No, you don't. The eyes are mere (unintelligent) sensors developed over time [Evolution] to bring those data into our brains we need to get a proper rendering of those aspects of the world we need to survive and proliferate. Just like you describe it.

The brain then processes all these data into information. It essentially works like MPEG, processing only the changes in the overall picture, the static elements are filtered such that image No 2 reuses what image No 1 already had plus the changes. which is why we have relatively less trouble recognising movement but a lot remembering and describing detail of the static elements of our image. Curiously the metaphor usually used to make this visible is the one of an image with a very small clear and sharp center and a very large blurred area.
 

Alain Briot

pro member
Jon P. Ferguson said:
....we should have a forum on "photographic philosophy".

Many threads on this site seem to either gravitate or result in esoteric discussions of the OP's offerings.

Philosophy is inherently part of art. The real question is "which philosophical approach do you embrace ?"
 

Alain Briot

pro member
Sean DeMerchant said:
Can you imagine a camera manual written entirely in haiku?

When power fail, no picture,
remove battery, replace,
shoot more picture now
It would be a nightmare. For me there is no trust of the viewer, it is simply a failure to communicate on the creator's end.


Or it would result in very different photographs, or in people reading the manual, or in redefining what a manual can be, or in the product being bought by those who like Haiku, etc. !
 

Dierk Haasis

pro member
Alain Briot said:
Philosophy is inherently part of art. The real question is "which philosophical approach do you embrace ?"

Could well be I am the culprit ...

To answer your question: In my case the Scottish philosopher (Hume for instance), Bertrand Russell, Sir Karl Popper are a major factor. Not to forget the theoretical and empirical developments of the past 30 years in biology (specifically Evolution); Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker, Ernst Mayr, E.O. Wilson etc. To sum up, I know we live in a very real world any creature evolved to fit best into a certain niche - including humans.
 

Alain Briot

pro member
Dierk Haasis said:
Could well be I am the culprit ...

To answer your question: In my case the Scottish philosopher (Hume for instance), Bertrand Russell, Sir Karl Popper are a major factor. Not to forget the theoretical and empirical developments of the past 30 years in biology (specifically Evolution); Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker, Ernst Mayr, E.O. Wilson etc. To sum up, I know we live in a very real world any creature evolved to fit best into a certain niche - including humans.

It is definitly more helpful to state your philosophical approach, or quote passages from your favorite authors. Naming authors is nice, but besides the fact we may not have read them, there is also the issue that we don't know which part of their writings you are referring to.
 

Roger Lambert

New member
Alain Briot said:
Or it would result in very different photographs, or in people reading the manual, or in redefining what a manual can be, or in the product being bought by those who like Haiku, etc. !

And if Canon manuals went to Haiku, it would increase owner comprehension by a factor of 5 . :D
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Dierk Haasis said:
Could well be I am the culprit ...

To answer your question: In my case the Scottish philosopher (Hume for instance), Bertrand Russell, Sir Karl Popper are a major factor. Not to forget the theoretical and empirical developments of the past 30 years in biology (specifically Evolution); Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker, Ernst Mayr, E.O. Wilson etc. To sum up, I know we live in a very real world any creature evolved to fit best into a certain niche - including humans.

Alain commented, of course, :) It is definitly more helpful to state your philosophical approach, or quote passages from your favorite authors. Naming authors is nice, but besides the fact we may not have read them, there is also the issue that we don't know which part of their writings you are referring to.

I'd love to hear a few extracts or derivations from among the names authors that inform you as far as your philosophical approach to art. This is not because I disagree with anything said. No, I'm just interested in the opportunity to learn something new.


Asher


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Tom Yi

New member
Hmmm,
Generally for most moving objects, I prefer things blurry to convey a sense of fluidity of motion and time.
While shots where everything is frozen are interesting to look at, I think they lack more of a "feel" for the event by excluding the flow of time.

I never shot cycling prior to this and almost all the shots were around 1/60 or so with long telephotos, a shot of a guy frozen on a track just didn't do much for me.
74696206-M.jpg

74696237-M.jpg

74696222-M.jpg
 

Alain Briot

pro member
Roger Lambert said:
And if Canon manuals went to Haiku, it would increase owner comprehension by a factor of 5 . :D

And make them more interesting. People may actually read them. Not just Canon.
 
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