Processing_the_Photograph_as_Art

Jack/Asher,

I was having a similar debate at my local camera club, e.g. the issue of what constitutes digital manipulation. Most photo comps specify this as a rule, but is it enforceable? Only if you see the data verified RAW, but then again has the RAW had any manipulation?

Ok where am I going with this?, 20 years ago we stretched stockings, grad filters and vaseline over the front of our lenses and it was deemed acceptable. Likewise was push processing, dodging, burning and multiple exposures (in the camera or via an enlarger). Yep I confess to photographing objects against dark/light background and putting subjects inside them. It took hours in the darkroom to perfect!

Today we have photoshop tools, cameras which have picture styles, aid in compostion and have myriad of corrective features (crop in camera, NR, sharpening, dust bunny removal etc), so has evolution moved the art line in this context?

What will tomorrow's technology bring? Will cameras give us the ability to extract objects and overlay them in other frames, or even remove unsightly objects?

I suppose the fundamental argument is whether its documentary or not, but equally this is now coming under scrutiny.

So I have to agree with Ansel's quote, a photo is made!

Hence, I would go one step further and suggest its called "digital presentation".

Hi John,

I feel better with the term Digital Representation as more apt. Anything but "manipulation"LOL!

Maybe Digtial Realization is another way of looking at it. However, we're on the right track!

Although I agree with Asher and John in general, I personally do not like the term "digital" in this context. Digitial generally refers to devices that process data using binary principles (i.e. 1s and 0s, see the wiki definition here).

If we are to call pictures/art/whatever "digital representations", this will be by definition wrong since the end product (ie a piece of paper or an image displayed on a screen) is not digital in itself but an "analog" real-world product.

Re. the "digital realization", I have the following issues with it. Unless one photographs with a mechanical camera and prints straight from film in the dark room onto paper using purely optical enlargers (let's say the typical workflow before the 60s), somewhere in this workflow there will inevitably be devices involved that work according to digital principals. In case one uses a "digital" camera, even if one then sticks to printing directly from the resulting RAW without any further manipulations (probably using a computer and a "digital" printer in the process), the resulting image will need to be tagged as a "digital realization" since it was produced mainly using digital devices. But where we draw the line? We started with a discussion on A, we use B to resolve it, and now we start looking for a C to resolve B (LOL, I like loops and recursion. Now, where was that Margritte thread again? ;-)).

In short, I don't like the use of "digital" in this new label we seem to be in search of.

Cheers,

Cem

here I go again...

Digital is a 'buzz' word to many people, a bit like how cameras are rated in mega pixels, and computers in Mega Hz (or bits per second). At the end, people will see what they want to see, never mind what you want them to see. I could put up a picture of my dog, morph it into the mona lisa. Free software can do it, or I could do it by moving pixel by pixel manually. At some stage, a person could say - thats a dog - and another could say - its the mona lisa- . Both could be right, both could be wrong. The same sort of thing has been done differantly by folks with oil paintings. It took Leonardo forty years of manipulating the Mona Lisa image. How long would he have taken with photo-shop? Would he then have been as great an artist? Was he a great artist, or was he something else? Did he worry, provided he got his pay cheque?

If you see a landscape painting, a recent one of a local area (so you can take a photo of the scene, a true image ;-), you will often find the 'artist' has distorted the image, put in points of interest, removed telegraph poles, whatever. That is called art by many, he has composed the image, made it pleasant to the viewer. Just because more of us can do the same thing more easily than before does not diminish the result. However, art has now become mass produced, so the value of 'unique' has vanished. Most people have a sunset photo or two, maybe they have what they consider 'the sunset photo'. It will be a good photo perfect in every detail. Fifty years ago, it could have been of some value, since there were not many sunset photos in your vicinity. Now, the guy next door can produce similar images, within a few minutes, even if there is no sun. On-line libraries of stock images, not so very different than a portrait painter in the 16th century relying on a patron or two.

It used to be oil paints or water colour. Very rarely would an oil painter try and make it look like a water colour. Then along came acrylics. A lot of resistance from the traditional oil colour painters, until they tried it.

Its the same conundrum as someone calling themselves 'a vegetarian', but they eat fish. How are they viewed by omnivores/vegans. What always puzzles me with that, is why do they put the effort into making the vegatable product look and taste like meat? is it a digital vegetarian sausage....

(Why do we use thousand of pounds worth of camera equipment, and decide we want a picture monochrome, brownish in tinge, like something made a century ago, why does it look nice? Which is the fake, which would you want, the original, which will continue to fade, or the new, printed in ink, which won't fade. Conversely, why do you want the latest gadget, when yours still works fine)

Anyway, maybe a true image, a representative image, an interpreted image, a distorted image, graphic art.

Best wishes,

Ray

Guys

We spoke so many times about this...

Earlier (totally analog, film/chemical based) process was simply much longer, much more smelly and allowing much less direct control. An extra gram of a developer component or extra few seconds under enlarger (or a brighter light-bulb would inevitably change the outcome.

Nowadays we simply gain more control over what happens when and more freedom in what we want to do.

I really could care less about the name. In Russia we have a saying "You can call me "pot", just don't put me into the hot oven".

We should finally learn the simple fact that there is no such thing as "true picture", and in fact, it never was... No matter how we capture the light, there will be some changes to the final result due to the myriad of reasons, big and small. Cognitive or not, there will be.

Painters did this. Early daguerrotypists did this. Film photogs did this. Now we're doing it. Brush and canvas, enlarger and light-sensitive paper, CCD and PS - these all are merely tools to help us, humans, to capture what we think we see and express ourselves in showing how we saw it or how we would like it to be seen.

As the say, "it's not the camera, it's the photographer"

John, Cem and Nikolai,

We still need a name. I see descriptors of the work as chromogenic print or archival pigment ink and so forth. No one ever said archival oil painting!

We need names to overcome the word "merely" IOW the guy next door has a digital camera, so how worth buying is this print?

"Digital" or "manipulation" are best avoided.

Maybe just using the final print process as "Pigment ink on Cotton paper" and the like. Then it sounds like one is getting art!

Asher

If you want a name to describe the activity, then something along the lines of

Anyway, maybe a true image, a representative image, an interpreted image, a distorted image, graphic art.

Click to expand...

Maybe finer divisions. If you want the equivalent of the material - 'oil on wood panel', 'tempera on canvas', then that is a different issue, and I do not think it was the one that jack was asking about.

Best wishes,

Ray

With a bit of lateral thinking i've stumbled upon the term:

"processed impressionism", but didn't like the word "processed" as conjours up thoughts of governance, so revised it to "progressive impressionism"

I know the purists will say that impressionism in an art context refers to a school of painting whereby emphasis is given to tone and effect of a subject rather than elaboration of detail, but it strikes me as being quite apt when preceded by the term "progressive", especially in an evolving technology context.

Ok, tell me if i've lost the plot!

Terms already exist:

- Graphic Design
- Graphical Art

Heisenberg Principle in Photography

As a general comment in this context:

I think the Heisenberg Principle (originating in Physics, perhaps one of the more "pure" of sciences) - seems relevant to me. The original context is that, by definition, we can know the precise position of an electron, or its velocity, but not both. The very act of measuring alters what is being measured. In the opinion of many (including me), the net effect is the final death of "objectivism" or "positivism."

The application to photography is that the idea of a truly "objective" image is simply fiction. No matter what instrument is used, there is no completely independent "objective reality" and any image is a product of the interaction between what is being photographed and the photographer with his instruments. By definition.

In film, the specific properties of the chemical emulsion, the development fluids, the optics of the camera and lens, etc. all combined to produce a specific type of image which is often naively seen as more "objective" than what we produce now with digital technology. It can thus be seen that even shooting "Raw" offers no magic solution to this problem - the specific properties of the camera's sensor, the internal processing routines, the optical system, etc. produce a specific kind of image, but this is no more, nor less, "objective" than film.

Basically, all images - film, digital, etc. - are manipulated, by definition. People will just have to (arbitrarily) define where lines are drawn to define what is acceptable for any given purpose. These lines will continue to move as technology changes, people changes, purposes come and go, etc.

I imagine most of you already see and understand this, but I thought it might be helpful to add this perspective explicitly to this thread.

Dierk Haasis said:

Terms already exist:

- Graphic Design
- Graphical Art

Click to expand...

Dierk,

I have no issue with those terms for the Graphic Design and Marketing industries. For selling photographs to clients and collecters, they expect to have something more than the equivalent of "comrade steel worker" of the Soviet days!

The market for photography is starting to bloom again, we need to name the roses. While a rose, by any other name would smell the same, names are needed!

Photograph is great! However, we need terms for art derived from photographs too!

"Manipulated", "Graphical Art" and the like, just don't appear to cut it!

Now if it was an any Warhol, one could call it anything and it would sell today!

Asher

Well, if I take Nikolai's art as a starting point ... I don't quite see why his images should be called 'photography' - provided we agree upon the vernacular and not the purely technical definition. Just because the source of his electronic painting is phots does not make his art photography. He is a graphical artist, an illustrator.

There's an obvious difference between combining two or more photos to create a panorama and what Nikolai has done, for instance, with his Oz picture. The former tries to recreate reality while the latter goes for a [dreamy] vision. The same applies to several others of his images I have seen here, like imitating Frank Miller's style, compared to retouching out technical deficiencies [dust spots].

Just because we work in a continuum does not mean we do the same. It only menas we do not have a clear cut boundary ; it's the old problem of defining a heap - 1 rice grain is definitely not a heap, are two, or three, do I need 11? Anybody in need of a term can make up his own, your ironic citing of Andy Warhol is quite right: art makes its own name.

If you need a marketing term, some phrase that sells, anything we come up by committee [less sarcastic: we agree upon] is bound to not work. People may grasp it immediately but as quickly forget it. From an experienced copy writer and creative director for advertising agencies take this advice: Make your own category!


[Sidenote]
I am quite astonished - and that may utterly my fault - how people want to pidgeonhole themselves. Sure, with photography I am best with landscapes but I don't see myself as a landscape photographer. To the contrary, my life would be that much worse for it if I am just a ... photographer, or jst a ... writer [insert any kind of sujet you like for the ellipses]. I like to learn something new every day - and I like to offer my clients new things.

I think Dierk is the only one that gets my point.

Artists like Jerry Uselmann and John Lund both refer to themselves as "photographers" -- pause here and check out their sites -- yet one glance at their work makes it is pretty clear (at least to me) it is something different...

For some reason, this thread seems to have been split in two, and what I thought was here is not, it maybe lost, or in another thread. I thought it was possibly Jack, who mentioned about technology in future being able to leave out something like telegraph poles, in the camera, as compared to manually removing them in post.

Just today, I saw a magazine advert for the fuji finepix s6500fd which has what they call 'face detection technology'. It recognises up to ten faces in the frame, and focusses on them, not the background. I have recently thought, that one high resolution image, really high resolution, could be cropped into a number of different images, either manually, or by means of some software algorythms. So, go somewhere, wave your camera around, it selects the shots, and away you go....

Best wishes,

Ray