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Can we accept modern art filters as just new variants in processing?

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Originally, photography provided a medium to record scenes with detail and lighting far beyond the capabilities of most traditional painters - and then at a fraction of the cost.

Now digital photography has spawned a new generation of inventions - art filters based on studying the methods of working and kinds of decisions made by classical painters.

Only digital "watercolors" printed on genuine watercolor papers approaches so close to the "real thing" that we can say they are a pretty perfect substitution. Oce and Fuji can now print 3D ink layers, reproducing the exact texture of the original 3D scanned paintings. What's missing is connection to new art painting programs and the translucent "presence" of the actual original brush stroke. The built up, printed reproduction is too perfectly even microscopically. The actual brush stroke retains the internal dynamics of the things happening to it during the extended drying process. A ross section of an old brush stroke would show that. The printed 3D reproduction will look identical at first, but on closer inspection, light played on it from different angles would reveal a difference in presence, due to differences in the underlying archaic structure. Still, in a short time, these issues will be solved too. But for new works - transforming a classical photographic portrait shot today to a painting - can we accept that as a variant of modern choices in art photography or is it too radical a departure?

So how can we, steeped in classical photography and respect for Adams, Bresson and Avedon as well as Van Gogh, Matisse and Gaugin, accept and integrate these new processes?

I challenge everyone to think about this impending new print and expression system for photography. Or is it only acceptable in pictures from an iPhone?

Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
My opinion: One needs to be bold enough to take the new medium and then go for broke creating a style that is not restricted by one's perceived limits of classical photograph or the famous vintage paintings. Then it's genuine expression and technique.

Asher
 

Jarmo Juntunen

Well-known member
I know I'll be amongst the last to use new filters but I still find them another useful tool for those know how and when to use them. I don't usually like playing with technology if the content will suffer. But in skilled hands any new invention can certainly be used to create a great photograph.
 

Doug Kerr

Well-known member
Hi, Asher,

Or is it only acceptable in pictures from an iPhone?

There would certainly be no reason to limit the "legitimacy" of the use of these wondrous tools to source material from a particular source. It would be like saying that a sculptor can only legitimately work from rocks he had found, or, at the other extreme, only work from blocks of stone he had quarried to his order. There are only three things that matter in art:

• The work itself (the "result").

• What it helps us to know about something (maybe). ("I never realized that there were those hundreds of little rivets up in the arches of that ceiling.")

• The often fascinating story of how it was done (maybe).

Best regards,

Doug
 

Michael Nagel

Well-known member
Filters and especially 'art' filters can be found in a large number of cameras, for me these are nice to play around, but not the tool of choice, so I keep the RAW every time.

To throw in some pictures, here are three taken using the in-camera filter of a µFT camera:



...and one taken with an APS-C DSLR and some PP.




Light is the subject as most have guessed already.

Best regards,
Michael
 
Asher

Early this morning, I had messaged you about the use of filters and wrote the following and you asked me to share it here.

Here it is, with a few additions, but the gist the same.
---------------------------------------

What I think though is, that by playing around with art filters (such as art history or the ones that Asher used) we are not saying this is still a photograph, but we altered a photograph to become something new ( I call them paint-overs) I find nothing wrong with that. Years ago, I did much work like this but using painter, which does a much more realistic job. People would send in photos that they wanted altered and turned into paintings or aquarelles etc.,

An example would be a little girl dancing on the back deck but there are lots of objects that are distracting etc., and they want her to look like a ballerina. I would first photoshop the image to delete everything not needed, add a tutu, then do a paint-over. The final image would then be printed on a huge canvas and the owner of the company would then paint a thick varnish over it to give it texture. The varnish would be painted on in strokes that follow the direction of the paint. No canvas texture or other was added as it would already be printed on canvas.

So why? Well, it takes a few hours to do this instead of days or weeks of actual painting. The likeness is always perfect (when over painting huge images, you can use very small brushes to get details in the face etc., ) and the customer is able to afford a pretty big canvas for perhaps $500-600 dollars instead of literally thousands.

People get all up in arms about manipulating photographs but don't realize that when they are turning images into black and white and pulling out details in the shadows etc., they are using filters. These filters emulate what was once done in the dark room but they are filters all the same.

Does this mean we have to use these new tools; no, of course not. But it doesn't hurt anyone to explore. Anything you learn is something new to add to your toolbox. Learning to do more things doesn't make us lose what we already know, it just adds to our knowledge and abilities. Why not be open-minded?


I paint and sculpt in real life with traditional materials (not much anymore, since I've been doing photography) but I still don't see a reason to be snobby about using a computer to create as I also paint and do illustrations digitally without the aid of any photographs. Doesn't mean everything we do digitally is good , but everything we do with traditional materials may not be good either. But the need for creativity in an artist's life is essential, be it with traditional or virtual tools. And with every stroke, we grow, we learn and we breathe.
 
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Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Filters and especially 'art' filters can be found in a large number of cameras, for me these are nice to play around, but not the tool of choice, so I keep the RAW every time.

To throw in some pictures, here are three taken using the in-camera filter of a µFT camera:



...and one taken with an APS-C DSLR and some PP.




Light is the subject as most have guessed already.
l


Michael,

These are awesome attractive effects and wholly respectable! But how did the pictures start out? Did it add the effect of crepuscular light and is this change just in the jpg or in the RAW too?

Asher
 

Tom dinning

Registrant*
Is this a discussion about photography in general or just arty farty photos. We're still getting the hang of this photography gig. It's only a couple hundred years old. The other arts have been around a shade longer and the ethics have been worked out, mostly. Digital stuff is only 20 years old. My grandson is older than that. So plug away, guys. Your not coming up with anything new, just rediscovering another way of getting there.
Acceptance is difficult for new things. Some never make it, thank your Lord. I'm a stick in the mud old fashioned bloke and wouldn't consider pissing on a paint filtered print even if it were on fire. My wife loves them. Who am I to argue with her impeccable taste? Time and our patience will play its role. I'm still getting used to lens flare. What hope have I got with brush strokes ?
Each year the kids at schools around Australia display their art, which, of course, includes photography, in prestigious galleries. It's part of showing the world what they can do and what is coming. Go visit if you can. And brace yourself. Their work is foreplay for the future and we are about to be ****ed over.
Yeh! Bring it on.
 

Wolfgang Plattner

Well-known member
Hi,
Sure I can use filters in any way I like to, but a filter on a photograph never substitutes a painted picture for it is not a painted picture.
As long as I agree to this - no problem.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Hi,
Sure I can use filters in any way I like to, but a filter on a photograph never substitutes a painted picture for it is not a painted picture.
As long as I agree to this - no problem.

Wolfgang,

Well, I have to propose an adjustment to that view for folk like Maggie Terlecki have the skills to "Paint-Over". I just painted in a moving flame to go with the birthday picture for my wife, where my grandson age 4 did the blowing out of the candle but the flame came out as a dot. The resulting flame is "painted" and is no different than what Ansel Adams did with his, sometimes, extensive fine drawing and painting on to the negative. So that then remains in the realm of photography with manipulations that we have gotten away with for a century.

However, "Painting over" when printed, might rival the real thing in the hands of a real water color painter like Maggie, when printed on watercolor paper and all the evidence of photography is avoided. So there, just in this narrow example, it could very well be that photography with digital "painting" can, in expert hands, replace actual water color painting in real materials.

For oils, acrylic and charcoal, although the digital versions can be remarkable and vert art-worthy, they do not, as yet replace the originals as there are lucency issues remaining.

Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
OK, we can do a good job with watercolor in Painter™.

Let me point out another tack. Why not embrace the medium and not use "brush strokes" but points, dots, smudges or any shape that fits the nature of the work. That way, it does not pretend to be something else!

No one using charcoal and chalk tries to pretend they are working in oils!

Surely we can just stick to "photography" and invent a a term akin to "Chromogenic Print" - made pigment prints more gallery-fit!

When 3 D printing can go from Painter™, Photoshop™ or DXO™ to a textured print, with no pretenses, then we'll have a new era in photography to enjoy.

Asher
 

Michael Nagel

Well-known member
Asher,

These are awesome attractive effects and wholly respectable! But how did the pictures start out? Did it add the effect of crepuscular light and is this change just in the jpg or in the RAW too?
The light was always there, it was just a little (or a little more) enhanced.

Best regards,
Michael
 

Lee Tracy

New member
Interesting discussion. I personally have no issue with creating art in whichever way you prefer, but ... I do think there is a point in the process that the image stops being a photo (image taken with a camera using light as the medium) and starts being a digitally created image.

BTW using a photo projected onto the canvas to be 'painted over' is a technique that has been used by artists since photography was invented. Doing so digitally is just updating the technique.
 

Doug Kerr

Well-known member
Hi, Asher,

Well, now that this thread has been "novated", I'll go back to its original premise.

Originally, photography provided a medium to record scenes with detail and lighting far beyond the capabilities of most traditional painters - and then at a fraction of the cost.

Now digital photography has spawned a new generation of inventions - art filters based on studying the methods of working and kinds of decisions made by classical painters.

Only digital "watercolors" printed on genuine watercolor papers approaches so close to the "real thing" that we can say they are a pretty perfect substitution. Oce and Fuji can now print 3D ink layers, reproducing the exact texture of the original 3D scanned paintings. What's missing is connection to new art painting programs and the translucent "presence" of the actual original brush stroke. The built up, printed reproduction is too perfectly even microscopically. The actual brush stroke retains the internal dynamics of the things happening to it during the extended drying process. A ross section of an old brush stroke would show that. The printed 3D reproduction will look identical at first, but on closer inspection, light played on it from different angles would reveal a difference in presence, due to differences in the underlying archaic structure. Still, in a short time, these issues will be solved too. But for new works - transforming a classical photographic portrait shot today to a painting - can we accept that as a variant of modern choices in art photography or is it too radical a departure?

So how can we, steeped in classical photography and respect for Adams, Bresson and Avedon as well as Van Gogh, Matisse and Gaugin, accept and integrate these new processes?

I challenge everyone to think about this impending new print and expression system for photography. Or is it only acceptable in pictures from an iPhone?

The result is always art. Like any result, it can be good, or bad, and how that is adjudged depends on many parameters, including "what was it intended to do".

In any art milieu there are many tools and techniques. I'm sure that many students of "classical" art were aghast at the techniques of "more modern artists". Some were aghast at the techniques of Ansel Adams.

And of course many were aghast at the temerity of those who sought to do important photography with a "toy-size" (kleinbild format) camera.

I think we would be gravely pompous to decide whether or not to "accept" any tool as a "proper" part of post-processing. The notion of "acceptance" only comes about when an artist brings to us a work we have commissioned, conditionally, and we decide whether to take it and pay for it.

Best regards,

Doug
 

Michaela Taylor

New member
I think it depends on how you are useing them...I don't think that art filters should be include in photography as it changes a photo from a photo into art, that is what they are made for. But if you are useing them for digital art they open up new ways of incorporating different medium's into one piece. They also can allow you to see what somthing would look like in a specific style before you start painging it- this can be a great time saver or you can use them to add that extra bt of something to Multimedia art. They have their uses...
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
I think it depends on how you are useing them...I don't think that art filters should be include in photography as it changes a photo from a photo into art,




Well, Michaela,

Does that mean that the photograph can't itself be art from it's very inception? I'm sure you don't think that, LOL!

If we take art as any of the following:

  • Work exhibited in Art Galleries or Museums as Art.
  • The export to a physical form from the mind with the intent to evoke emotions or thought as Art.
  • Work collected as "Art"

then much of photography is directed to one or more of these end results. So without filters, Photography, outside of documentation can often be art and likely as not, even pictures taken originally as documentation at crime scenes or for insurance purposes might end up collected and treasured as art, as we repurpose things.


The most famous example of such repurposing is Duchamp's "Urinal"



T07573_10.jpg


© Succession Marcel Duchamp/ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2015




and then we question what we do as in Magritte's "Pipe".

ma-51791545-WEB.jpg


The Treachery of Images (This is Not a Pipe)
(La trahison des images [Ceci n'est pas une pipe])

René Magritte (Belgium, 1898-1967), 1929
Oil on canvas© René Magritte Estate/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris

So now whether from the outset, or later by repurposing, a lot of photography are or can be "Art". I think the more important questions could be, Does it move me? Do I want to treasure it? Can it survive?

"How it's made", "with or without filters or special techniques" are questions of lesser consequence, don't you think?

Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
  • But if you are useing them for digital art they open up new ways of incorporating different medium's into one piece.

  • They also can allow you to see what somthing would look like in a specific style before you start painting it-

  • this can be a great time saver or you can use them to add that extra bt of something to Multimedia art.


Great points, especially as an "exploration" for what is possible, in either painting or photography, prior to setting up to do that work!

Mostly, for me at least, they are entertaining and open my mind to endless possibilities I have never considered!

I like it when a filter reveals what kind of "glue" in textures and color might hold the disparate elements in a composition together better.

I myself plan to try to use what I have discovered with my experiments with filters to make a new picture, from scratch, informed by the nuances and insights I have discovered playing with filters. I'd like to get what I imagine in one single shot!

Asher
 
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