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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!

What then is Photography today?

Tom Yi

New member
.........


TomYi deleted his own post after others had contributed their efforts to this important subject.

In future we will safeguard against such damage to threads.

It is the policy of OPF to not remove photographers' professional posts, as this would be against the very purpose of this forum.

To make this thread coherent, here is my understanding, from memory of Tom's original very strong ideas that lead to this discussion.

Tom, who uses Photoshop Elements, I believe, and only to a limited extent, likes to get out from the cameras file the image with almost no "manipulation". I believe he uses Raw Shooter as his RAW processor. He feels extremely strongly that substantial processing with various layers or combining several shots, moves the photograph away from real photography towards "digital ART". He used the term "slippery slope" which, to me at least, implies that all the layering, local enhancing, multiple shots, repairing and so forth to realize one's mental image and "make the picture" degrade the real photographic truth of the image. Essentially this, IMHO, is dismissive of most of the work of modern professional photography.

This reconstruction of the initial post serves purely to anchor this thread and make it comprehensible. I feel that the efforts of subsequent writers are important. We value them. So please forgive me for any innaccuracy I may have introduced here.
 
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Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Tom,

Let's break out the Pilsner, and go over this. Where is this dichotomy you see between digital imaging and digital photography?

They are the same. One simply captures photons of some particular wavelength in a device that records digitally and the other is what? You capture it in one two or 100 goes doesn't alter the process.

What would you call a scanning back? Not digital photography, since it is many adjacent and perhaps even overlapping images? Would you say that digital imaging in radiology is not photography because the wavelengths are so short?

The only genuine concern one should have is when documenting an event or transaction where shading or lack of it would alter the facts or significance of the matter!

Otherwise, all digital imaginig is photography or if not, none of it is!

Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Tom,

How would you deal with an HP or Kodak Digicam which with one click can image a man in the dark under a tree, a white bird in the sky and a lioness crouched in grass, and all perfectly exposed.

That uses a new Texas Instrument Chip. So all these little kids and grannies using this camera are not doing photography because all the "layering" is in the camera, done automatically on each recognized zone. Then all the zones are puct back together!

That is what we do by hand!

So what is the difference?

Asher
 
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Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Tom Yi said:
It's like pornography. I can't define it, but I know it when I see it.


Tom,

Look at your picture being edited in the Beauty and Eros Challenge.

I made version. I used layers and all the tools you would not call photography, like my own brain, artistic judgment and skill.

Tell me if the picture I made from you files is "mere graphics" as you imply, or photography.

Look at it: photography, photography, photography, photography, that and nothing else!

(ie 4 layers, each a RAW traslation but ay different settings.).

Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Tom Yi said:
No, no,
Remember, I feel that this is all under shades of gray, no black or white, this or that.
I feel more digital manipulations done, more it leans toward digital graphics side.
Tom,

So what about this new conundrum, nothing new has happened. Photography from the outset is a broad term to contain all variant of the art of "capturing light to make an image". It has always been a process not an act.

CAPTURING: Any process using a photosensitive surface of any structure or form or composition to trap some of the energy of incident photons.

LIGHT: any photomagnetic flux that can be captured

TO: Intent of a person

MAKE: as Ansel Adams taught, all images without exception are created, they are never exact, never captured.

There is nothing real inside the image, it is a construct of the mind one builds from the mind with vision, intent, volition, tools, time and technic.

AN: No particular type or form, merely one example of some kind that could exist

IMAGE: A representation of what the mind sees when viewing something whether real or not.

The text string [color=blue"digital graphics"[/color] is no rope to climb out of this uneeded conundrum of greys you have constructed between photography and graphic design or "manipulation" in the computer. "Photo + graph", ie photograph, already covers all the shades of grey one needs.

Graphic Art is for line and arc drawing that make up the mostly commercial output of artist to help commerce.

Digitlal Art involves using programs like Painter and CS2 to permit, with a stylus one to draw and paint with with digital versions of brushes, pencils, charcoal crayons and more.

One can add Digital Art or Graphic Art to a Photograph.

If it looks like a Photograph, that's what it is. Does it matter how it was recorded, one shot two shot, three shot four? Joined, overlayed, cut, bent, strung with string? Nope!

As long as it was captured light and can be printed right!


Not complicated.

There is no need for a deep conundrum at all!

Let it go and it vanishes.

Kind wishes

Asher
 
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samdring

New member
..and I have to jump in here with Tom. I would never dream of using PS but readily use all the tools available under RSP (and Lightroom if they worked!). Don't ask me why I have set such an arbitrary boundary; I have and that's it for me.

This forum would be a boring place if we all regularly produced the same results.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
samdring said:
..and I have to jump in here with Tom. I would never dream of using PS but readily use all the tools available under RSP (and Lightroom if they worked!). Don't ask me why I have set such an arbitrary boundary; I have and that's it for me.

This forum would be a boring place if we all regularly produced the same results.

Sam it is not about results or preferences for developing the file from your camera. This is the place to encourage and celebrate differences.

However, differences in experience, training and capability should not be confused with some choice. If one only knows one thing, there is no choice!

The O.T. discussion, which is a new topic, asks the question "What is "photography"?". Tom proposes, that one goes on a "slippery slope" away from photography when one uses layers and selections, multiple captures and so forth. Is that true ?

Photography has always been an evolving process of intent and implementation.

All this was done in the darkroom with different chemicals, timing, agitation of the wet process of the photosensitive media. dodging and burning where the layering, spotting and coloring with hand placed inks where the norm too.

It is no different in the digital age, just, as for the last 100 years the tools have changed. We don't have to breathe in toxic chemicals or poison the water with the spent materials.

We have more sensitive media that doesn't consume tons of silver. The product, is still photography, because we are still, "capturing light to make an image"!

In summary it is a mistake, and one ties one self in knots, to consider one ever "takes" a photograph or that photography is defined by the particulars.

It is always a process. Just the tools evolve.


Asher
 

Alain Briot

pro member
We have to start by defining what each of us thinks photography is. Why? Because photography is different things to different people. For example, in the previous thread, one participant does not believe that photography is communication. Who knows what others believe!
 

Gary Ayala

New member
mmmh ... mmmh ... mmmh

Personally, I've always felt a difference between a photographer and a graphic/digital artist. What you are saying is that there is no difference.

I felt that one of the difference between a photographer and a graphic/digital artist was the beginning and ending point (in regards to manipulation of the media). And you are saying that the starting and ending point is not a difference at all. mmmh ... mmmh ... mmmh very interesting.

I felt that documentary photography followed a different path than other forms of photography ... and ... If one ends up with an image that looks like a photograph ... then it is a photograph ... So, if one ends up with an image which looks like an abstract painting ... is it a painting?

So what is photography? (we're back at the starting point) ... For me, photography is about capturing a slice of time vis-a-vis camera. That slice of time can be enhanced at the camera (lenses, filters, aperature, et cetera) and/or enhanced at the "print" (computer, paper, et cetera). Any manipulations/alterations which takes the image beyond a reasonable (subjective term) expectation of realty at the time the image was first captured crosses that blurry line between documentary photographer and graphic/digital artist.

Photographic/Artistic expression/communication utilizing the camera a tool in the process hasn't any rules. I feel that documentary photography can only be documentary photography if it follows certain post processing restraints.

A lot of food for thought here.

Gary
 
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Alain Briot

pro member
To me photography is an art form that I use to communicate what I perceive, using the visual image created by the camera as a point of departure that I enhance/manipulate in order ot express what my other senses -smell, touch, hearing, feelings-- perceived when I experienced the scene I photographed.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Alain,

I'm impressed how two guys with totally different cultural and educational backgrounds can have such a clear confluence of ideas on our work and why we take photographs. I would imagine many others think likewise and we have no danger of slipping down any slope.

Except for me, when I have my tripod too close to a drop off and my mind is on my image and how I'll complete the picture. Now that is frightening!

Asher
 

Alain Briot

pro member
Asher Kelman said:
Alain,

I'm impressed how two guys with totally different cultural and educational backgrounds can have such a clear confluence of ideas on our work and why we take photographs. I would imagine many others think likewise and we have no danger of slipping down any slope.

Except for me, when I have my tripod too close to a drop off and my mind is on my image and how I'll complete the picture. Now that is frightening!

Asher

I run the same risk when close to a drop off! I've even roped myself & my tripod to a tree in one extreme situation to make it sure that if my mind wanders in a creative direction, my body will stay on the ground.

But this put aside, I take it you agree with my definition of photography?
 

Tom Yi

New member
The biggest diff between digital photograhy and digital graphics is where the image is coming from.
If it's from the real world and you use a lens to capture the light onto the sensor and you work with that information that has been captured, that leans toward photography.

However, if you create the image from a computer or cut images and paste them onto another image to create a third image that never existed in the real world that is more digital graphics.

I think layers is somewhere in the middle. I've seen shots of whales flying in space and portraits with backgrounds removed and replaced with virtual ones, to me when one digitally introduces things into the image that never existed, then it's more digital graphics and not digital photography. Things like cloning, layers, and things like that I consider in grey areas.

Now there is nothing wrong with digital graphics, it's a seperate artform in and of itself.
 
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Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Tom, let me respond to what you have just put forward.

"The biggest diff between digital photograhy and digital graphics is where the image is coming from. If it's from the real world and you use a lens to capture the light onto the sensor and you work with that information that has been captured, that leans toward photography."

"However, if you create the image from a computer or cut images and paste them onto another image to create a third image that never existed in the real world that is more digital graphics."

"Digital Graphics" is an undefined and meaningless term. Your "digital art" includes the well defined respected professions of

1. graphic art,

2. retouching of photographs or

3. composite photographs.

The latter two have always been classified as photographs. Where is the need to construct a concept of a downward fall from pure photography, through shades of grey mist, to this poorly defined term of "Digital Art" which wrongly includes the composite and fantasy driven pictures that we create.

You seem to forget that a photograph is an expression of an intent, and the latter depends on the brain of the creator NOT the viewer, (although, if there is congruence, the art might get more market traction).

You can't just define composites as not "pure photography"! If you do, an we acceptr that, then we would have to rewind the movie, pull out some fine works of photography and toss them in a different part of our art collections.


"I think layers is somewhere in the middle. I've seen shots of whales flying in space and portraits with backgrounds removed and replaced with virtual ones, to me when one digitally introduces things into the image that never existed, then it's more digital graphics and not digital photography. Things like cloning, layers, and things like that I consider in grey areas."


This I find the most problematic. All this is the true fruit of digital photography.

We achieve all you object to in either of two ways or a combination of the two.

1. In Camera circuitry or firmware:
Nikon cameras can now finds eyes and faces and correct them, a Thompson videocamdelivers perfect skin, cheap Kodak and HP digicams contain zonally optimizing Texas Instrument chips doing all the things you object to! You can even use strobes to catch a jumper 20 times or take multiple exposures in some cameras to place two people together that are not!

2. In Software: These same processes are reproduced in CS2, but with more control and possibilities

"Now there is nothing wrong with digital graphics, it's a seperate artform in and of itself."

That term itself sounds fine; as a general heading only.

However it doesn't tell us anything useful or specific about photography. A term like B&W photography or Lithography means something specific. Digital Graphics has no such clarity.
Further, "Digital graphics" is not useful here because it is too general a term. All the works covered are jobs for which photographers, graphic designers and artists and others already have more specific names.

Asher
 
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My 0.000002 of the f/stop

I think each person defines such things to his/her own taste.
I could have said that the whole BW is an act of perversion since we do not see the world in BW, unless youre experiencing 10 "g" or so:).

But the fact of the matter is, the whole process of "light recording" (which is a direct translation from photography) is so complicated and contains so many different steps, at all of which the information is mangled somehow, that trying to "pull a purist" (in whichever sense) is akin to requiring that a concrete base should be exactly 18% gray just before you put a whole new layer of asphalt on top of it.

And exactly due to this complication we, the people, tend to come out with some simple rules that are supposed to help us to deal with this complexity. Something like The Ten Commandments.

"Thou shalt not use Clone stamp if you shoot in Beirut for the news agency".
"Thou shalt not inverse LAB curves"
"Thou shalt not remove the dust from your sensor, for it's been sent by The Lord"

I mean - come on, guys! We're all different. So are our pictures, even if we take it of the same subject from the same point at the same angle with identical cameras and withing a few seconds from each other.

And that's how I personally like it :)

Cheers!
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Tom,

I must concede to you one major point. Yes indeed there is one great danger in using digital editing and composites. That is the when the camera is used to document things like crime scenes, surgical operative procedure, interrogation of prisoners, wars and such events where the details have important significance to our society.

If then, someone alters photographs in any of the ways that you worry about, we all should be concerned.

This is already covered in another thread. Dishonesty in such photography is so important and has not been fully addressed by news orgainizations to weed out the very few practitioners of staged and mainipulated pictures, claiming them to be what they are not.

http://www.openphotographyforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=634

Tom, it might well be, that as a professional that always relies on the truth of information, this kind of misuse, sets up a more generalized aversion in your mind. I fully understand this.

You are not the first to be troubled digital imaging!

My late father-in-law, would never touch a digital camera. He felt that a photography required either a Nikon films camera, a Mamiya of Rollei twin lens reflex, a Deardoff 16x20 or a bunch of Pelicans full of Hasselblads, a freezer full of film, a darkroom with an air conditioner and Count Basie music through 16 inch speakers.

If you switched to B&W or platinum prints or even Polaroid and turned in your DSLR's, I'd more than respect you. However, while we are both doing the unthinkable in using pixels and not film, let's not think your photography is less digital than mine! Even if I use composites, swap backgrounds and have, as I sometimes do 20 or more layers in photoshop!

Asher


edited for clarity
 
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For me, "photography" is the process that produces from real world light captured by a photosensitive surface a two dimensional still image representing what I see in my mind.

This definition contains ambiguities, as I believe any definition of photography will. I'd written some explanation, but I'll save those words for later.

Bob
 

Diane Fields

New member
Tom Yi said:
The biggest diff between digital photograhy and digital graphics is where the image is coming from.
If it's from the real world and you use a lens to capture the light onto the sensor and you work with that information that has been captured, that leans toward photography.

However, if you create the image from a computer or cut images and paste them onto another image to create a third image that never existed in the real world that is more digital graphics.

I think layers is somewhere in the middle. I've seen shots of whales flying in space and portraits with backgrounds removed and replaced with virtual ones, to me when one digitally introduces things into the image that never existed, then it's more digital graphics and not digital photography. Things like cloning, layers, and things like that I consider in grey areas.

Now there is nothing wrong with digital graphics, it's a seperate artform in and of itself.

I'm trying to understand how 'layers' enters into this or what is inferred when you say 'leans toward photography'. Have you ever used layers for processing? Layers have relatively nothing to do with cutting and pasting. I'm really baffled by your comments. I think if you are not a PS user and are not comfortable with it, then perhaps when someone mentions post work, you have the idea of 'Photoshopped', i.e., a 'mis'representation. BTW--I'm curious how you process your mono images--processing in PS using a variety of masking, toning, etc. is what most mono printers employ to get the best print. And--if you shoot RAW and use RCs---why is that 'pure' processing and in PS is not? Have you processed in a variety of RCs for instance (over the years I've used 11 that I can think of)---and seen how totally different the final image is and that its terribly difficult to ever get two of them to look the same? That sort of puts the lie to the fact that there is only one way.

If you have read Ansel Adam's 'The Negative' and 'The Print', it would be difficult to see how one can be opposed to things like dodging/burning, masking, etc. Our 'tools' are PS--instead of chemicals in a darkroom. A large number of darkroom printers have embraced Photoshop to do the same thing they were doing in the chemical darkroom--but it is safer, both for the printer and the environment, more precise---and has the ability to allow you to try a variety of techniques---and undo or redo them.

I know there is a group of photographers who feel that if it doesn't come out of their camera 'as is' it isn't photography. However, I would bet a large number of them did not shoot transparencies---and never did darkroom work of their own. Digital capture has changed things--but processing was and is part of the photographic process. Our cameras, if in jpeg particularly, do their own thing--and certainly using any of the tools in an RC is doing similar (or a lab). Each of us can have our own opinion, of course, but on a forum that is devoted to encouraging the best image through a workflow that includes RAW processing and post processing to the final print its difficult to understand opposition to postprocessing. If photography isn't a creative medium, I'm not sure what it is.

I did want to add that I am assuming we aren't talking about documentary photograhy or photojournalism here--which would be an entirely different subject.


Diane
 
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Diane Fields

New member
Alain Briot said:
I run the same risk when close to a drop off! I've even roped myself & my tripod to a tree in one extreme situation to make it sure that if my mind wanders in a creative direction, my body will stay on the ground.

But this put aside, I take it you agree with my definition of photography?

I have to say that your definition comes as close to what I believe as anything I could come up with--sowon't try.

Diane
 

Kathy Rappaport

pro member
This is interesting

If photography is an art, it is also a medium of communication. As the artist, I am free to manipulate what I see into what I can vision. My tools are not only my camera, but, my darkroom - digital or chemical.

I am beyond the age, where I learned photography initially in a dark room, with large format and paper and chemicals. I clearly remember using the enlarger and superimposing images from more than one photograph onto the paper. And then altering the image with chemicals such as sepia tone. No different to that using Photoshop to change an image. Different tools with which to do that. Also, with film, you could take a double photograph by re-exposing your film with another image. It was a creative art. Again not really any different. All about artistic vision.

If I am using those photographs to tell a story, that is non-fiction, then I do not have the artist license to change the truth unless I am revealing to you that the intent is such to put artist license into the image. Not telling the truth is the ethical dilemma.

For me, my photography is about captuing many moments as I see them in my minds eye. An expression of places that I have seen, people that I have known or the beauty that has been created. My photography allows me to share and communicate that with others.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Kathy Rappa said:
If photography is an art, it is also a medium of communication. As the artist, I am free to manipulate what I see into what I can vision. My tools are not only my camera, but, my darkroom - digital or chemical. ............

For me, my photography is about capturing many moments as I see them in my minds eye. An expression of places that I have seen, people that I have known or the beauty that has been created. My photography allows me to share and communicate that with others.

These sentiments effectively confirm the previous statements I have put forward and that Alain states too.

I spoke to Gary earlier today about this and he confessed to being a teacher of the goal of "photography without a lot of "manipulation"

Of course, my reaction was to ask him not to use a negative word like "manipulation for a process I see as image processing. Eventually I discovered the root of the objections. It came from his wish, he admitted, to not damage the mental vision of the picture he was envisioning at the time of that particular shot.

Then I realized we are in fact talking about the same thing. We actually have the same view of photography requiring fidelity to the artist’s vision and intent. The key differences are, however, not in the post-processing, (although that may indeed be different). The fundamental difference is in intent vision and purpose.

Gary likes to record real things as he sees them, part of his photojournalism background and maybe just the way he is!

My vision is not bound so much by the things I see in front of the camera as I'm as much informed by what I imagine too. I therefore can in my mind invent a vision of what I perhaps could never see.

So when I photograph a model I see her image as just one fulfilled figure in a scene I am assembling. Now when I drop out the b.g., I'm true to that vision and not "manipulating". Final assembly from 6 separate images, is just the normal part of my workflow.

However, doing the same to Gary's one image file, removing the context, might very well destroy the whole intent of it.

So we at least can agree how intent is important. Original intent may evolve as the photograph is developed. However, I for one try to first complete the original intent as a print I can look at before executing other intents that erupted on the way.
 
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Tom Yi

New member
I'll say this about layers. I use it from time to time, and as I've said before, we are talking about shades of gray. Not a black and white thing where things are either photography or graphic art. In my view, to say anything done with a digital camera and Photoshop is photography or to call it digital graphics is a very simplistic way of looking at life. Rarely in life do I think things are either this or that. Perhaps with the exception of death and taxes. :)

Let's say for example I use layers to select the eyes in a portrait and lighten someone's eyes. To me that's more photography than graphic art/design. Let's say I use layers to remove a background and make from the computer a blue mat background. To me, this latter falls more into the digital graphics side. Let's say you use layers and use the distort feature to correct for distortion that the lens has introduced (such as barrel distortion). Would this be more digital photography or digital graphic art? I'm not sure, it's somewhere in the middle for me. How about if someone uses a brush filter and makes the photo look like a painting? Is this digital photography or is it digital graphics?

For me, if you use the computer to introduce something that was never there in the original image, wheater it's a whale, a sky, ground, object, background, or what not, this falls more on the side of digital graphic/art of the spectrum.

However, if you are using a computer to either enhance or de-emphasize the data that is there, then it falls more on the digital photography/imaging side of the spectrum.

As I've said from the beginning, both are digital art in different forms. I consider this on two ends of a spectrum, not as two distinct entities.

I get the feeling that some have interpreted things to feel that somehow graphic design is less of an art form than photography.
This is not my intent. I actually consider coming up with a moving image from one's sole imagination and hands much harder than photogrpraphy.
 
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Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Diane,

You mentioned difficulty adding something to an existing post. Try pressing the advanced tab and then it should open a new box from which you can add the changes you want!

Asher
 

Mike Funnell

New member
Tom Yi said:
Let's say you use layers and use the distort feature to correct for distortion that the lens has introduced (such as barrel distortion). Would this be more digital photography or digital graphic art? I'm not sure, it's somewhere in the middle for me.
I agree (or can see your point of view) with most of what you say, then this comes out. And it confuses me. Because to me you describe correction of an equipment-introduced artifact not present in the original scene. And that's firmly on the photographic side of things, to my mind. I don't see any element of graphic art in that at all. So IMO that accords with alterations I think might even be admitted within the standards demanded of, say, photojournalism and certainly, to my mind, would fit under the broader category of "documentary" photography.

Maybe I'm missing something, or maybe we just have very different ideas here.

...Mike
 

Tom Yi

New member
Mike, that is my whole point. That there is no specific point where (for the lack of a more conscice definition) digital photography become digital graphics.

Photojournalism stands much toward the photography end while those that introduce more digital effects tend to be at the graphics end.

As I've said in my second post, I have my personal decisions/line on where one begins and ends. It's a line not fixed in stone, but more on a spectrum or in shades of gray. It's not the law or fact, but as I've stated before, just my view, "nothing more and nothing less."
 

Mike Funnell

New member
Tom Yi said:
Mike, that is my whole point. That there is no specific point where (for the lack of a more conscice definition) digital photography become digital graphics.
Tom, I completely agree. Perhaps I was just mis-interpreting your words when you said "somewhere in the middle". That, to me, implied that a purely technical correction (the example being barrel distortion) was quite a long way towards the graphic arts side of things, where I see it as maybe, just barely, outside a "super-purist" definition of fully photographic.

Sometimes it's no easier to determine a writer's intention from his words than it is a photographer's from his photographs.

...Mike
 

Diane Fields

New member
Asher Kelman said:
Diane,

You mentioned difficulty adding something to an existing post. Try pressing the advanced tab and then it should open a new box from which you can add the changes you want!

Asher
Thanks Asher. I didn't remember doing that before when editing. I've now incorporated what I wrote in my previous post and deleted the second.
 
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