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  • Welcome to the new site. Here's a thread about the update where you can post your feedback, ask questions or spot those nasty bugs!

TIF, The Truth in Photography" movement, how far does it influence you?

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
In this thread, here. Ray West suggested that an interfering horizontal line be removed from David Sommars' photograph of stairs in the shadows, Forgotten Stairs":


nightnov17b.jpg

© David Sommars "Forgotten Stairs"


And in reply David wrote


..........

A quick word about my shots..............:

I don’t setup my shots with lighting and or object placement. 95% of the time I don’t clone out things, If you want to shoot industrial art in the real world you have to live with the balance of having lines on buildings and cracks in windows, trash on the ground etc.... its either that, or don’t go out cause nothing will be good enough to shoot. I like to find ordinary things and make them speak.

I respect your opinion, just prefacing so when you see more shots you will know where I am coming from, I am not trying to hide those "defects" sometimes they make the whole shot for me...

This discussion brings to the fore the concept of Truth In Photography.

We have discussed previously dishonesty in photography by selectively choosing a frame to distort our perception of an event or person or else actually placing objects (dolls, mannequins "grieving" widows or "wounded" to make a news story more compelling. That is not what we will deal with here. Here, we want instead, to introduce to the uninitiated and then to explore the "Truth in Photography" philosophy.

Well it turns out that a number of folk are seriously committed to an approach, "TIF" or "Truth in Photography" to guide and inform and control their work. So David's unwillingness to remove one line that spoils the balance of the composition, speaks to this discipline. After all, what on earth could be so wrong in that? Don't we want the photograph to be more effective in enthralling the viewer?

However, David goes on to write:

Adjusting angle, color brightness is basically how you are recording the scene, you’re still not changing the scene as removing objects. I will on occasion remove small things if they mess up the shot. But as I said, many times I believe they MAKE the shot. (My bolding A.K.) so if you see it there, then it’s on purpose. !!!

Nothing anyone can say will change my mind, I'll make my art the way my minds eye sees it. (My bolding AK)

But, if you adjust colours, lighting, select the view to make it look nice, why not remove or add artifacts to make it 'look better'?

Because - "Better" is a relative term. I adjust as I see fit. Its more about finding something everyone can relate to, something that exists in reality, and not all of the pictures of far off places people will never visit in their lifetimes, that’s my art.

Why try to change me? You either appreciate it or you don’t.



David,

So you are willing to alter the colors and on occasion even remove an object to improve the photograph to present the photograph as you saw it in your "mind's eye".



So this made me think a little more of what I had recently corresponded with Nick Rains, the Australian fine art landscape photographer.

Let me go back a little. Last week I was exploring Nick Rains gallery of his visit to the USA earlier this year. The images are wonderful! I was enthralled and got lost in the scenes of the National Parks. Looking for more, I came across his writing about "TIF", his passion to show things as they really existed and not altered by cloning, hiding, changing colors and so forth.

Nick Rains' work embraces the 'Truth in Photography' or "TIF" philosophy that is beginning to emerge amongst a few serious fine art photographers around the world. "A print of an image is a representation of what the photographer actually saw - no more and no less. A print shows, as far as is technically possible, the scene as the photographer experienced it".


"Truth in Photography' means that the viewer is not being misled by composites or montages, by visual trickery or any other illusions. What you see in a print was completely real, and a human being actually experienced it first hand. You, as the viewer of a print, are experiencing the same sights through the medium of the photographic print.

Belief in the integrity of the photography is of paramount importance to you, the viewer's, appreciation of the image:

"The power of a nature photograph is irrevocably linked to our belief system rather than rooted in the image itself. It truthfully represents a 'real' event that was witnessed by another human being".

Galen Rowell 'The Inner Game of Outdoor Photography' 2001.

Another perspective on the issue of reality in photography can be found here. Michael Gordon in the US considers this question at length in an article on Nature Photographers Online Magazine.

Michael succinctly puts his case that all images need to be 'optimised' for the printing process and whilst some die hards see this as ''manipulation', it is incorrect to view film as the actual final product.

Ansel Adams is quoted as saying "“the negative is comparable to the composer’s score and the print to its performance“.

The confusion lies in the perceived 'motive' for so called 'manipulation', in Michael's case, as in my own, the motive is to overcome the very limited way a film can record a scene. The aim is to show the viewer what the photographer experienced in its entirety, to break out of the boundaries of film and take photography to its fullest potential.

Only the photographer can say if his or her print comes close to sharing the essence of the scene at the time of the capture. The viewer must take this on trust and simply marvel at the glory of nature.

Personally I would like my viewers to look through the print rather than at it, I want my technique to be invisible and for the essence of the scene to shine through making technical questions quite irrelevant.

After all, who cares what type of brush Rembrandt used.

Nick Rains 2006"Source .


The idea is to look not at the picture but rather through the picture to the actual scene as observed by the photographer or could have been observed by any other person then.

I asked him about Bresson taking pictures faster than the eye could see, so how did this fit in with "TIF"? (That also applies to any high-speed photography). I gave other examples of my difficulty in grasping the TIF concept as one that should have overriding guiding value for photography.

Nick answers that TIF is an attempt at the truth.

So here we can see two forms of "Truth", the "Truth in Photography", as any other human would have observed then and there, as claimed by Nick Rains and others versus the more tempered and finessed honesty of David to the vision in his "minds eye"?

So how important is this in our photography and does it matter outside of The News, forensics, evidence, proof and science?

So what's "truth in your own photography.

Asher
 
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Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
So since I posed the question on "Truth in Photography" (and we've excluded hard news, forensics, evidence and regulatory requirements), what's my own guiding principle for "truth".

For me? I have a 3rd honesty. That's to my intent to implement in physicial form and transmit to others:

a set of feelings, beauty, disturbance, order and disorder to externalize the thoughts I have discovered, constructed, deconstructed, reformed, undressed and dressed, posed and bent to shape, colored and nurtured to a compelling life in the "Cathedral" of my mind. That's to me "The Truth". After all, why show what anyone can see for free. What is so unique in that?

I want to add the extra to the "ordinary". I would like to provide images for people to react to so strongly that they might be moved to exercise their emotions and motivate them to wonder and perhaps, occasionally, react so profoundly, so as to reach out and over the boundaries of what's thought to be unmovable and inviolate. For my work, I want to personally experience joy, insight and other reactions that provide a stimulus to reorder and re calibrate appreciation of what was, is, might, should and could be.

So I can clone, hide, distort, duplicate, associate, add or subtract and of my photographs in order to engrave on a final print what's in my own "minds eye".

Asher
 

Rachel Foster

New member
I think the "truth" enters into the equation not so much in terms of image manipulation, but in what one says the image represents. If one alters an image and then says "well, this is exactly the way it was," that's clearly dishonest. Artistic license is or (in my opinion) should be permissible, even encouraged, as long as it's freely acknowledged as such.

The crux of the matter, for me, is intent. Does the photographer mean to create something pleasing, thought provoking, or just interesting? Alteration would be a tool in that endeavor. Does the photographer intend to mislead (for whatever reason)? Unacceptable.

"Truth" is relevant to every form of expression, not just photography. Oil paintings, for example; must they be in the "realism" fashion or is cubism appropriate? I've never seen anything like what Picasso produced. Is that not acceptable? How about fiction? We tend to find it legitimate as long as it's not presented as truth. Why would photography be different?
 

Kathy Rappaport

pro member
Sort of

In people photography, truth is important, but commercially there is a trend to provide artistic, fashion style shots that require manipulation and enhancement; Women over 40 or 50 want "plastic surgery" and de-aging (actually so do men). Brides want to look like fairy princesses and models even in dresses that are strapless and unflattering to their figures; Teens want beautiful complexions too. Not uncommon for portrait photographers in the upper echelon to PS 10 lbs off (One of my programs has a preset called Thinify Tool).

Then we have as an example, a Senior High School Portrait I did on Thursday - the light and image are really some of the best photography I have done. The family picked the location of their backyard. The only suitable light was in a corner of the yard near the pool. The only angle I could get inlcuded an ugly light fixture in the plants which also had a bare spot. The image is a winner but I won't be able to actually sell it as a 16x20 Canvas Wall Portrait unless I clone out the light and fill in the bare spot in the shrubbery (and I am not great at PS). I won't even show it to the client until I have done that.

So while I won't change her hair color or use my thinify tools, I have done some eye bag removal to sell portraits of women my own age and some Gaussian Blur to smooth a bit of skin. We all want a little bit of fantasy. After all, this is Hollywood.

(I just had to have some images of me taken for a book that Kodak is publishing with some images of mine!!!! And I will tell you that I will post them here later on with the Clariol tag line "Does She or Doesn't She?)
 

Doug Kerr

Well-known member
I'm afraid that the concept of "truth" in photography, or in writing, or in behavior, or in life, is so abstract that we can never hope to have a code that hopes to define it.

I shoot a picture of Carla standing in front of a piano in a lovely room in a lovely house.

She wears lipstick and face makeup, so we don't see her skin (lovely though it is) as it is.

And she's wearing a beautiful fox coat, and we think she probably has very stylish clothes on underneath it - but she doesn't (none, in fact).

And the house isn't an entire house - most of it was blown away by a tornado. But we certainly didn't build a fake house. We just tidied up the part we needed to finish the shoot for "Parker County House Beautiful".

And behind the camera is a crew of workers who will, as soon as the shoot is over, tear the rest of the house down.

And the camera, because it uses a CFA color sensor, doesn't really capture the actual color of any point in the scene.

But I picked up the JPG file just as it came out of the camera and transmitted it to the "readers" with no post-processing.

Oh, and by the way, I may have had the image processing in my Canon 20D set to "Parameter set 2", or maybe I didn't.

Now, whenever I do this, somebody will say, "Or you're just being silly". I'm not talking about makeup"

And then the next guy says, "Well, using makeup is dishonest."

And so forth.

So, struggle as we might we still can't answer the question, "If there were saloons on Mars, would it violate county law if they were open on Sunday mornings?"
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Doug,

Well, you sold me on the shoot! Now where are the pictures: the coat, Carla, the edge of the house and the waiting workman?

That already is evoking a lot of reaction in your readers. So the shoot and the telling of it is, to me at least art. The photograph of it might be the truth of the story even if the story was made up for the purpose of telling it.

The picture, however, might not reach the imagery you have already exported from your mind to us by your writing. You picture might be an ordinary snapshot, just a prop for the story.

At present your story of the shoot lives, it has existence outside of you. The picture? Who knows if it could tell anything at all, never mind the "truth".

Asher
 

David Sommars

New member
I dont think I prescribe to the "movement" persay that finds it bothersome to even change color temperature. Depends on what im shooting. When I do my night shooting I like to leave in things that add character, especially since many of my shots involve urban areas and decaying things too.

Of course sometimes I enhance the colors or dodge and burn a little, im pulling out whats allready there and its stuff our eyes would notice if we were there.

beyond that I feel it kills the mood I like to convey, but on the other hand some people are getting good results with completely staged shots, Ill admit many of them look very interesting to me.

If I ever do that it will be to make something thats got a theme, like "murphys law" or something like that. Not the random scribble I see everywhere, but hey to each his own, and they are thought provocative so they have there place.

When I shoot weddings I stage some fantastic shots and try to make them lifelike at the same time, but I do a fair bit of processing to make them look nice, also take a heck of a lot of un-staged shots too. Everything and every look has its place within photography.

just like a painter has many colors and brushes.

A big pull for me to shoot industrial and night time stuff is that im capturing whats really there.

but im catching it in my own angle and viewpoint. and its more personal and gritty that way (to me) like I said before to each his own. Every style has a strength and a weakness, play to your strength.
 

Doug Kerr

Well-known member
Hi, Asher,

Doug,

Well, you sold me on the shoot! Now where are the pictures: the coat, Carla, the edge of the house and the waiting workman?

That already is evoking a lot of reaction in your readers. So the shoot and the telling of it is, to me at least art. The photograph of it might be the truth of the story even if the story was made up for the purpose of telling it.

Well, of course, this wasn't even a "story", just a hypothetical example (a special kind of "fiction").

The photo of Carla in the fur coat is real (and the wardrobe details), but didn't take place in that "non-scenario". But like Wagner, and Offenbach, and Jarre, and Sullivan, we often reuse media snippets here for various purposes.

So for those who haven't seen it, here is "Red Fox":

Carla_fur_4588R.jpg


Best regards,

Doug
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Back to basics. Consider the types of photography you do for work, family/fun and art. Who feels compelled to record and make into a delivered image:

A. What is.

B. What idealized version with "bad things" and the like removed.

C. What might have been: construct a scene to make a point.

D. What couldn't have been: show some distorted truth, exaggeration or made up world. (Like Magritte or the surrealists for example).


Asher
 
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Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Having had to work all my life to be accurate with the requirement to record "what is", I'm still doing that in much of my street and other photography.

However, in my serious artwork, I photograph in a world, totally metaphorical. Either the scene is staged and objects brought in at my whim and fancy, or else I change objects afterwards without any limit. So I admit, I'm not telling the truth as other people would see it!

Still, I do understand the landscape photographers who have an almost "moral" imperative to show scenes untouched. One such photographer is Nick Rains, also by chance an OPF member. Visit his website! His work is remarkable!

Asher
 

Nill Toulme

New member
My short answer to this is I don't think there's any short answer to it, or any one right answer, probably even to any one given photographer, if he or she really thinks about it objectively.

"Exactly what the photographer saw" is an inherently subjective statement. One does not "see" without interpretation at some level. Heck, my right eye sees cooler colors than my left eye. Which one should I trust?

It seems to me that the most rigorous application of the "TIF" philosophy would exclude black & white photography (unless you're a dog).

I have my own standards, but they tend to be somewhat fluid. I will pick up trash on a field, or move trash cans so they're not in my backgrounds. Is that "manipulating the scene?" I will crop a photo to give the impression that a leaping soccer player is higher in the air than he really is. Is that "cheating?" I will even sometimes clone out the occasional stray foot or hand impinging on the frame — but I won't clone in a ball. Is that the right place to draw the line? It is for me.

Journalism is one thing, art is another, and there's a lot of ground in between.

There is a school of catch-and-release fishing that doesn't use hooks. If you get the fish to take the fly, you count it as caught. Zen is everywhere, if you just look for it (or don't). ;-)

[/ramble]

Nill
~~
www.toulme.net
 
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Doug Kerr

Well-known member
Hi, Asher,

Still, I do understand the landscape photographers who have an almost "moral" imperative to show scenes untouched.
I understand the concept, but there is still a wide spectrum as to what "untouched" should mean. For example, suppose I have set up to record a beautiful meadow scene, waiting until the light is just right, and as I press the shutter release, the wind blows a piece of newspaper into the scene. Am I being true to "whatever" if I surgically remove the newspaper from the image?

One argument certainly says, strictly, I should not do that - my mission is to capture what is, as it was, when I decided to capture it. And I understand one wanting to hark to that. If a newspaper blew in, well, that's what was.

And was it in fact fair to wait for just that moment in which the light produces a beautifully shading of the meadow? It doesn't "usually" look like that. But of course the airship Hindenburg didn't unusually look as it did that fateful day at Lakehurst (two days before my first birthday).

Suppose I have used a polarizing filter to eliminate some specular reflection from the surface of a pond. A "live viewer" at the camera position would have "seen" the same specular reflection (but maybe not to the same degree). Yet the filter allows the image to capture the pond "as it is". Have I faithfully recorded the scene? The pond but not the scene?

Then, suppose I shoot a picture of a store front in which is reflected an angry mob reacting to increases in the price of rice. But I use a polarizing filter to suppress that in the image, since the photo is just intended to show the store in an article about rice stores.

Next, for an on-location still shoot in connection with a motion picture production, I set up to shoot another store front, and in its window is reflected a vast array of photographic and cinematic apparatus, the craft service table with neighborhood dogs grazing off it, and so forth. I think I had better use a polarizing filter to suppress that. Is this "artistically honest"? And is it honest that we make this shoot on a Sunday, when the store would normally be closed?

Asher, you have recently made a similar point about white balance on a Tuscan sunset-lit scene. But which rendering, delivered on a display viewed under a certain viewing environment, is the most "honest" representation of the scene from a chromatic standpoint? Is it the one that seems most "lifelike" to a viewer of the image who was also present at the time of the shot? And how might we predict what viewing environment such a creature will be in?

The universe, and human perception of it, are such complex matters, at so many levels, that we must be very careful not to adopt naïve notions about the "truth" of existing things, much less about of the truth of their representation. Heisenberg, for example, teaches us that there is no "truth" about (jointly) the location of a particle in space and its momentum. This of course seems so very abstract compared to things as we see them, but so often microcosm is the telltale of macrocosm.

Certainly sentiments such as the one you expressed can serve as general moral or ethical propellants, and there are such chestnuts as "taxation should be fair" (or even, "an unfair taxation system is often the most fair").

But we must be careful not to intimate that there are any absolute scales by which our achievements of those goals can be measured, or described, or even guided.

Best regards,

Doug
 

Kathy Rappaport

pro member
Actually the more I read this thread, what I see is a similarity to religion or politics.

1. We won't ever all agree
2. The road the the end is the same because we are all going to take a different path for our journey.
3. Our individual values affect the result and vision
 

Dierk Haasis

pro member
We are aware that

a) truth can be concrete, as in 'originally Leo Trotzki stood beside Josef Stalin in this photo';
b) truth can be abstract, as in 'there more to this than obvious';
c) truth can simply be a value within in logical systems
d) truth can be overarching, as in 'Objective Knowledge'.

We are also aware that atmosphere and emotion do not have any truth value at all?!

The photo in question is about atmosphere, not intellect, hence truth does not apply. The line in question - the border between the two different wall colours? - can have an impact on the photo's interpretation; if the author wants this disturbance, it should not be cloned out. It can be argued that the line does not add anything to the image* - then it can be cloned out.



*Personally I like it, and I think it adds to the photo. If it weren't there it would just be another 'me too' contest photo [a photographic genre in its own; one I do not like].
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Introducing a concept of context dependent "Essential-truth" in photography.

Nill,

Good shots, BTW! both versions show the same point in time in the game and the girls participation. None of them could readily be seen by the naked eye. So with TIF, these would be views that could be seen with anyone with binoculars or a telescope or if they walked on to the field, except in the latter case the b.g. would have been in focus. The "truth-required" is that the ball was indeed caught as it has implications for the nature of news reporting.

The context of the truth if seven limbs of nearby players were removed, giving the one player unique importance, might well be a serious distortion of the news. However in the context of providing a school sports photographs, this is acceptable and even welcome as it makes each player an hero. No harm is done to society and, like Vogue photographs, we all really know about it anyway.

Keeping in the context of football, this reminds me of the really egregious use of creative change in the website, "Little Green footballs".

20060805BeirutPhotoshop05.gif

Smoke billows from burning buildings destroyed during an overnight Israeli air raid on
Beirut’s suburbs August 5, 2006. Many buildings were flattened during the attack. REUTERS/Adnan Hajj

ittlegreenfootballs.com said:
UPDATE at 8/5/06 5:15:55 pm:

Rob at Left & Right has isolated some repeating elements. Check out his animated GIF showing one section that is very obviously cloned.

Ace has been saying for a week that mainstream media is headed for a major meltdown, by outsourcing so much of their reporting to low-paid foreign stringers with highly questionable loyalties and ethics.

(It's worthwhile reading more in the littlegreenfootballsarticle.com and (also many related sources) on compositing and even working with roving bands of "scene-makers" with actors portraying victims and adding props as in the infamous
Reuters Image falsification scandal
.)

So in the case of the girl clutching the football, the images serve an excellent social function. These are all carrying the essential truth but emphasize uniqueness and value of each individual. With the Reuters images, however, this safe beginning has moved down a slippery slope to consciously ALTER the essential truth in news photography on which the society depends for important decision making.

So back to TIF. What about photographing the National Parks, Famous scenes in the Australian Outback, the Mountains and Waterfalls in New Zealand's highlands, what of truth there? What's at take?

Under TIF, even changing the color of the hills and sky falsifies the our understanding. It's as if nature is not good enough for humanity that we have to remold it to our fashion of the day! That I believe is where TIF is important. To me there is value in showing landscape through an image as if through a window. Here, maybe, Nick Rains says the "essential-truth" is simple what nature is at the time the exposure is made.

Asher

P.S. There's an honesty in beautiful landscape and nature photography that I respect. It would seem that for this alone, there's never any moral or socially negative downside. Except of course that the unspoiled beauty might call in thousands of littering city dwellers with ATV's and then chalets and a Macdonalds to serve them!
 

Nill Toulme

New member
And where do the somewhat popular infrared-conversion cameras fall in this scheme of landscape philosophy?

BTW, as far as the "truth" of my two examples above... I honestly don't remember whether she was wearing a dark jersey on a nice day, or a light jersey on a dark and dreary day. ;-)

Nill
~~
www.toulme.net
 

Dierk Haasis

pro member
Under TIF, even changing the color of the hills and sky falsifies our understanding. It's as if nature is not good enough for humanity that we have to remold it to our fashion of the day!

Since photos are not the real thing but just representations of it - René Margritte built a whole body of work on that truth - it is completely nonsensical to not alter photos in order to show what the photographer really saw. An absolute against altering anything in a photo disregards the technical limitations, e.g. atmospheric perspective rendering a ubject clearly seen by human eyes probabyl totally invisible in the photo.

BTW, what 'nature'? Curious how First World Western Civilisation folks talk and write of things that aren't applicable. Even landscapes perceived by us as most pristine are anything but. Humans and other animals [and plants, fungi, bacteriae, don't want to get regnist] transform and have transformed landscapes from the microscopic to the macroscopic and beyond since life began.

Considering humans disparate from nature is disingenuous.
 
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Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Since photos are not the real thing but just representations of it -

To me they are the real thing, ie Magrittes view and thence and through and in that view, at the same time, one "sees" the real thing. I feel Maigritte* showed us different viewing "portals". Magritte's work is not passive seeing, but seeing through and beyond what is put on the paper. Magritte's images are best imagined as signposts to views in a space beyond where we are physically observing and occupying right now.

Magritte asks us to look into and beyond what is there so that his images both interview us and invite us to travel to some place deeper. Sometimes Magritte's humor appears simplistic fun while at other times it has remarkable social or psycho-sexual significance. By contrast, the TIF photographer, just wants you to look through a window, (the photograph), to experience "an essence" of what really was there to be discovered at the time of recording the scene and reinvoked at the time of adjusting and finally making an "as close to true as possible", physical likeness for sharing with the world.

René Margritte built a whole body of work on that truth - it is completely nonsensical to not alter photos in order to show what the photographer really saw.

We agree!

An absolute against altering anything in a photo disregards the technical limitations, e.g. atmospheric perspective rendering a ubject clearly seen by human eyes probabyl totally invisible in the photo.

BTW, what 'nature'? Curious how First World Western Civilisation folks talk and write of things that aren't applicable. Even landscapes perceived by us as most pristine are anything but. Humans and other animals [and plants, fungi, bacteriae, don't want to get regnist] transform and have transformed landscapes from the microscopic to the macroscopic and beyond since life began.

Considering humans disparate from nature is disingenuous.

You, Dierk, are one of the few people on the planet that I'd dread to have to take on in a linguistic and logical argument. Be that as it may, we ourselves differ little I believe in this particular case, So I'm relieved.

I'm not arguing for the TIF philosophy, just trying to understand its possible value to us and to its advocates. I happen to see merit in the TIF approach for some types of work.

Of course, we know that each lens, sensor, processor and post processing choices put additional fingerprints on the image. So of course we may need to bring it back to what we saw "in Nature".

By "in Nature" we use a pragmatic class of images which cover scenes of the world which do not have the obvious scarring of human presence. So the landscape photographer in a desolate mountain range would be photographing the natural world. however, if one would sample the snow, no doubt it's all contaminated, at least whatever fell in the past 5,000 years.

I do like and appreciate that a photographer announces and gives notice of the way in which he/she approaches imaging. So if someone declared "I do not alter the color of the trees, this is how you would have likely seen them!" and if I believe them, I will look to their work to see what a tree looked in a National Park sometime in 2007.

YosemiteUSA_366.jpg

Photo by Nick Rains http://www.nickrains.com
Images are available singly or part of collections at his website.

That is worthwhile to me. That tells me that there is a chance that if I were to go to such a place under those or similar conditions it's possible that I might also see such a tree.

This TIF approach also puts pressure on the skills of the photographer to choose and compose captivating scenes that do not depend on adding what one could not actually see at any time unless one started a series of oil fires or something else equally startling.

To me the TIF approach might separate the careful and industrious photographer from the casual shooter who will composite whatever might work to create his/her landscape. Now while that image might be worthy art, it might not help the observer know more about that landscape. Or just maybe it would be even better?

Asher

* René Magritte's work fascinates a lot of us and for me his art has become a major interest. Because of that, his paintings and approach influence my own work. However, beyond my admiration and enthusiastic following, I do not, of course, pretend even for for one moment, to match anything he has accomplished.
 
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Dierk Haasis

pro member
To me they are the real thing

You can smoke tobacco with Margritte's representation of 'une pipe'? You can grab and feel the green grass of home in the song [or photo]? You can have [consenting] sex with Marylin from her famous Playboy photos?

I happen to see merit in the TIF approach for some types of work.

True, and I excluded those types/genres by focussing on the initial photo in question. One that has no overt truth value at all; it can be argued [successfully, I think] it shows a 'deeper truth', something about the nature of humanity, the essence of the worlkd or simply about perception and emotional response. Nevertheless, this kind of truth falls under my observation b) in the first post by me in this thread.

It might be helpful to use such a nebulous concept to find out ore on what we are and how the world around us functions in regard to our capabilities. Unfortunately it makes the debate about truth in photos moot as it hands itself to any - I repeat: any - definition suiting the individuals discussing.

By "in Nature" we use a pragmatic class of images which cover scenes of the world which do not have the obvious scarring of human presence.

[...]

To me the TIF approach might separate the careful and industrious photographer from the casual shooter who will composite whatever might work to create his/her landscape. Now while that image might be worthy art, it might not help the observer know more about that landscape. Or just maybe it would be even better?

Examples of nature: North Sea Coast, particularly the Western Frisian area forming the Netherlands; Germany's Lüneburg Heath, Bavarian Forest, Thuringian Forest; Czech's Bohemian Forest [hope I don't offend the Czech Republic or Slovakia by mixing the countries]; Normandy, Brittany; large parts of Montana [flatlands as well as mountain regions]; Northern Africa's Sahara; Greek's and Spain's nearly treeless plains/hills etc.

Some of these are relatively close to an undisturbed natural state, most look like pristine nature, many are protected as national parks [in the sense of nature, not garden]. They are, however, all the product of relatively recent human intervention, from deforestation to reforestation over the past 3000 years to land reclamation, mining and grazing.

The problem lies with the romantisised view of nature going back much further than the Romantic period in the 19th century, which developed the lasting impact we still have in our discussions. Just because it is a small lake in a meadow surrounded by wide-standing trees with dark woods and high, snow-capped mountains in the background does not make it nature opposed to men. And that's my point: We are part of nature. We form it just like fungi, bacteria, plants, ants, termites and beavers.

What you mean is probably 'the scene' or 'on site'.

As for TIF, if people delude themselves to think their photos are in and of themselves true, pristine, without manipulation that is bad enough. Nill's example clearly shows why we need to manipulate our photos; granted, he used it for a different effect, neverteless, the technology is unable to reproduce the scene, it can only represent [part of] it.

Any compositional decision, any colour decision, i.e. colour or b/w or using a polarising filter, is a manipulation of what's in the scene to elicit an emotion in the viewer. Reminds me that books are intellectual, films emotional and photos somewhere in between. The latter two have the big disadvantage that they can only use our intellectual senses - eyes and ears - to convey something that hopefully triggers emotion.* From this it follows that we have to do something to our photos to make them images, thus rendering them effective. Otherwise they are only documentary pictures, which should in no case be manipulated such that they convey the wrong impression of what has happened at a specific time at a specific place to specific objects.**

Curiously the infamous - and very badly done - photoshopping incident on the bombardment of Lebanon some time back was wrong if the picture was documentary [which it proclaimed to be] but it could be defended if the intent was to show devastation in war as a universal, that is, if it was a work of Art.





*It's taste and especially smell that directly elicits emotion. For good evolutionary reasons I might say.
**Hence the difference between objects in a photo and the subject; it depends on the intent, not the essence of the pictured thing [which may be a human].
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
You can smoke tobacco with Margritte's representation of 'une pipe'? You can grab and feel the green grass of home in the song [or photo]? You can have [consenting] sex with Marylin from her famous Playboy photos?
Yes, yes; .........yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!


Examples of nature: North Sea Coast, particularly the Western Frisian area forming the Netherlands; Germany's Lüneburg Heath, Bavarian Forest, Thuringian Forest; Czech's Bohemian Forest [hope I don't offend the Czech Republic or Slovakia by mixing the countries]; Normandy, Brittany; large parts of Montana [flatlands as well as mountain regions]; Northern Africa's Sahara; Greek's and Spain's nearly treeless plains/hills etc.

Some of these are relatively close to an undisturbed natural state, most look like pristine nature, many are protected as national parks [in the sense of nature, not garden]. They are, however, all the product of relatively recent human intervention, from deforestation to reforestation over the past 3000 years to land reclamation, mining and grazing.
Dierk,

The point is that some of us place high value in thriving rich and diverse and balanced ecosystems, even those you cite, rather than rivers with no fish because of arsenic waste or valleys covered with concrete. There is a spectrum from biospheres to innanimate chemistry and garbage of our overstocked populations and their debris.

In the end, we will lose and who know, vertebrates may never bee seen again! In the meanwhile, having a desire to illustrate the parts of the landscape that appear unspoiled is not merely a conceit. I believe it has merit in showing what we might want to conserve. Is that romanticism, for sure. That or any other persuasion would work well for me.

There is more too it. Some people refuse to remove garbage or ugliness from their pictures, as doing so would, to them, violate some "truth" of what was seen by the camera. That is one way of viewing things that, to me at least, can give rise to socially and artisticly interesting images.

Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Who has actually read Nick Rains article "Truth in Photography"?

Has anyone seen the front cover of "The Great Central Valley"?

SJGCVcoverwithinset.jpg

Source.

Note the litter in the right hand lower corner! This is discussed below:

"Steve devotes an entire chapter to these considerations of "Photography and Truth" in his new book, "Stephen Johnson on Digital Photography" (reference added A.K.).

"In the book,Steve considers the history of photo-manipulation, which is of course as old as photography itself. He even recounts his own personal story of finding a paper cup in the foreground of this beautiful image he used for the cover of his book about California's Great Central Valley. (The cup is in the lower right-hand corner; you can see it on the actual book if you know what you're looking for.) As it was coming off the press, his publisher remarked about how easy it would have been for him to have "gotten rid of" the cup. But where is the line? Steve notes that the cows, fences, and even the grasses in the shot weren't "native" to that particular landscape either. Should they have been Photoshopped out as well?"Source.

I would really like to know if most people just dismiss the TIF ideas as a pseudo-truth, a conceit or else something admirable? I belong to the latter group!

So who has actually made the effort to read the very short Nick Rains article "Truth in Photography"?
 
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Will_Perlis

New member
"...most people just dismiss the TIF ideas as a pseudo-truth..."

IMO, it's a somewhat naive idea, and I've thought so for decades, ever since I saw some TV coverage of a KKK demonstration in Birmingham, Alabama, circa 1970.

My family and I happened to see the actual event, near the library, and in reality there were a few listless demonstrators and many more counter-demonstrators and police around. The TV coverage that evening was mostly low-angle and on a diagonal to make the KKKers appear far more menacing and numerous.

I've never totally trusted any news coverage since, no matter what the subject might be. I'll accept a photo as "provisional truth, subject to change and re-interpretation".
 
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Dierk Haasis

pro member
Since every single one of us is only capable of seeing [and recording] a tiny part of the truth - I usually call that 'perspective' - no single photo, no single photographer can show the truth. Only the [uncoordinated] combined effort of every human being ever in existence will create Objective Knowledge, which can be seen as the truth.

That is actually the reason we collect culture in museums, libraries and archives.

If a handful of people think it wise to call for 'Truth in Photography' by which they mean a very specific way to do photography, forsaking other paths to knowledge/truth, they should go forth. But do not expect me to applaud ...
 

Michael Fontana

pro member
Remember Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon?


We all do perceive reality differently, so I quite enjoy different truth.

As a archi photographer the shots balance between the poles of documentation and interpretation; non of them is more true than the other one; true is the moment, when you feel that you captured it right = something more than just the obvious in front of the lens.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
I think in all cases,

"truth" is better considered as truth to a, "custom", a "dogma", a "notion", a "style", a "purpose", one's imaginary concept or "Intent" or else a more rigorous and scientific, unbiased and ethical collection of "evidence" in news, scientific, medical study, engineering or forensic photography. For brevity, I'll touch on only 3 classes of photography where "truth" might be important. I have chosen Forensic Photography, Wedding Photography and TIF, Truth in Photography to fully cover the main possible views of truth we might discuss in this context.

Evidence on a crime scene requires a special rigor and discipline for the photograph to be deliver an unbiased documentation the authorities, victims and accused can rely on: the photographer must cover the scene from sufficient angles and perspectives, adding markers and rulers so that afterwards, in deducing information from the pictures, nothing in that chain of image making (neither the photographer, light,choice of lens or perspective, inclusion or exclusion of other objects or conditions, not the fingerprints of the camera, RAW processor or presentation of the file alters the "reality" of what could be seen if our eyes could see as well as the camera.

For a wedding. The truth is wrapped and modeled by fantasy. The bride's mother, the bride and her friends what that day memorialized as a crowning achievement, a family treasure of a time when love and commitment peaked like the childhood stories came true. The groom, of course, generally want's his side to look good too, but that's usually not so important. So "truth" here is what great technique, makeup, clothes, flowers, location and an array of expected shots can deliver to a book of memories. This grooming and staging is not a lie. The people did look like that, although most often the look has little in common with the individual bride and groom's individual lives.

TIF, Truth in Photography: This is a style of photography that claims some virtue in truthfulness to the moment of pressing the shutter. From then on, the contents and colors and tonalities must be delivered without removing or adding.

This style gives satisfaction to it's adherents who have reacted against the apparent simplicity by which photographers use photoshop image "manipulation" (I HATE that term since it's in itself derogatory!) to "rescue" lousy images and make up for lack of basic photography technique. Even a worse sin, perhaps is the changing of colors and tones to enhance the impact of an otherwise lackluster image or even a great picture. I do enjoy seeing such work by Nick Rains. I have followed his landscape photography for many years and enjoy his style. I know what to expect and the sharing with me, the viewer, of his own feelings helps me read into and through his imagery as to what he has enjoyed and a rough clue as to what I might possibly find should I retrace his steps. Still the term TIF, or "Truth in Photography" has a useful function for me, as it selects a class of photography distinct from works where free edits in landscape is acceptable.

Still, there are in practice real shortcomings of TIF. Unlike evidence purposed scientific or crime-scene photography, TIF, lacks objective truth to the extent it has fingerprints of the follow choices:



  1. The choice of camera, recording material: A photograph taken with a large format camera, a soft lens and a large sheet of film might carry to the viewer a different description and representation of the scene than a Leica M8 or a Cynotype 1/4 plate camera or an albumin print. A pinhole camera would show the scene still differently depending on the curvature of the film plane and the choice of film.

  2. Limited coverage of the scene selecting just a single view from among countless others, so that the light recorded to "tell" the "Truth" of that moment is merely a photographer bias that gives a perspective from just one biased angle, at one short moment, chosen to maximize the esthetic will of the photographer to be embedded in his/her photographic print.

  3. Post-"light-recording"/image capture": Processing chemistry or RAW processing choices.

  4. The Print: The same file or film can be rendered as a print in thousands of ways. Just altering the size, choice of paper, inks, chemistry and matting already give me 10,000 ways of making one print! Each set of choices must deliver the content of the image differently. So the "facts" can never reproduced but should at least have some of the "feelings' that the photography experienced. That's the only "truth" I can really identify with. The idea that "another person would have the same view and experience at the time of the press of the shutter button" is to me preposterous as we are each so entirely differently programmed by genetics, culture and experience.


So where do I stand now? I accept that Nick Rains has dedicated himself to bring to us, a close as possible the impression he obtained. I must presume that all the many choices made my this experienced and talented photographer are impacting his work as as I have just suggested applies to all photography.

Still, when he feels his work is done and presents it for sale, I believe it represents his best effort to embed in an image for us his impression of that moment when the photograph was recorded. To that extent, it's the truth. In any case, his prints are worth looking at and even having on your wall.

Asher
 

Dierk Haasis

pro member
[...] to [...] deliver an unbiased documentation [...]

TIF, Truth in Photography: This [...] claims some virtue in truthfulness [...]

One - the documentary category, by Asher singled out as the forensic subcategory - tries to deliver an unbiased document. How difficult this is can be seen from the very different procedures in various fields of documentary photography. Photojournalism, for instance, has some rather loose, often just agreed upon but not universally accepted let alon written down guidelines on how to show what. Forensic and scientific photography has very rigid rules and procedures to follow. Even then many photos are open to interpretation, an enterprise lawyers love.

TIF sees some virtue in what they do. In effect they claim they do something others do not even though they could and should. Eventually they are touting some artistic decision, something that is always personal, as a virtue and a movement. Sorry to say, but that's a bit of hybris, 'Oh, I show the truth; I do not beautify the world ...'. No, you may actually make it look worse than it already is.


[Edit to include examples]

rhino01.jpeg


rhino02.jpeg


These are two different photos taken a few seconds apart. Which is true?


zweig01.jpg


zweig02.jpg


Again, two different photos, same object, which is true?
 
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