Where are the limits for an adjusted picture to still be "a photograph"?

I was looking at my latest emails and there's one from OnOne Software. They are a creative company making various plugins and filters for photography, once the image is digitized, including relighting and other creative effects.


I noticed this latest pair.




There's no doubt that the filter renders a work that is novel, interesting and demands more attention to it's stylized form. It belongs now in an era or in a class of species that's rather different from the original. But is this just another version of acceptable adjustments or does it leave photography so far behind that we are now in a realm of graphics or creative art or even "art-for-the-masses, now lacking an author.


What troubles me is that the result is obviously attractive.. How do you see this?

Asher

Isn't this particular filter designed to make the result look like an old (analog) photograph? Why chose this particular filter as an example, then?

Asher Kelman said:

I was looking at my latest emails and there's one from OnOne Software. They are a creative company making various plugins and filters for photography, once the image is digitized, including relighting and other creative effects.


I noticed this latest pair.

Original

Creative Filter Effect using OnOne software​

There's no doubt that the filter renders a work that is novel, interesting and demands more attention to it's stylized form. It belongs now in an era or in a class of species that's rather different from the original. But is this just another version of acceptable adjustments or does it leave photography so far behind that we are now in a realm of graphics or creative art or even "art-for-the-masses, now lacking an author.


What troubles me is that the result is obviously attractive.. How do you see this?

Asher

Click to expand...

Bonjour Asher
In general I don't like much "creative" filters. They seem to me made for those who are not creative…
Talking your version, I find it too much looking backwards to the "old good times"…
I spent less a minute on the original :

Without filters, just some level and color adjustments…

Jerome Marot said:

Isn't this particular filter designed to make the result look like an old (analog) photograph? Why chose this particular filter as an example, then?

Click to expand...

Jerome,

Good point. One can say that's all it is. But also it's almost a new species of thing, so different from what we would likely envisage at the time the shutter was released. It's a wonderful result and does seem genuine, but the effect is so overwhelmingly and "frighteningly" good that it seems that the work now has no one as a particular author. Somehow it seems like a fetus derived from 3 parents, the sperm, egg and mitochondria donor: The photographer, camera and the clever folk at the filter company.

I chose the example that the company chose to give today.

Asher

Nicolas Claris said:

Bonjour Asher
In general I don't like much "creative" filters. They seem to me made for those who are not creative…
Talking your version, I find it too much looking backwards to the "old good times"…
I spent less a minute on the original :


Without filters, just some level and color adjustments…

Click to expand...

………..that's better, now I know the parents!

Asher

Asher Kelman said:

It's a wonderful result and does seem genuine, but the effect is so overwhelmingly and "frighteningly" good that it seems that the work now has no one as a particular author. Somehow it seems like a fetus derived from 3 parents, the sperm, egg and mitochondria donor: The photographer, camera and the clever folk at the filter company.

Click to expand...

Have you heard of Instagram? Same thing x 1000. It was the "in" thing to do... last year.

There are millions of people with a camera trying to produce "art" every day. Due to the limitations of the medium, the majority of them will produce similar images (e.g.: how many oversaturated landscapes have you seen today?). Because it all looked the same, some more enterprising photographers tried to use film cameras in the hope to look different again. Then a new industry was born to allow the less enterprising to get similar results with less effort on their computer. In the next round, there are millions of photographers producing instagram-like images, which in turn also all look the same.

We should try to find out what the more enterprising photographers are doing today.

Hi,
Why should the result be not attractiv?
As long as it is not claimed to be an old photograph, it is what it is, and many times it is attractiv.
But: it is no more a photograph, it is a piece of work, sometimes art, based on a photograph.

I prefer the feeling of the original. Looks peaceful and a very enjoyable place to spend some quiet time.The others do not stimulate much of anything for me. My view is that photography is not about tricks or gimmicks it simply about seeing something and how to best capture it. The more one manipulates it the more it kills the image.I think it is more about creative choices and being able to differentiate between finger painting in photoshop and photography.

Hi, Asher,

If we can come to some conclusion as to the answer, what can we do with it?

Will we commend it to the National Association and State and County Fair Art and Craft Competition Intake Officers?

Best regards,

Doug

Doug Kerr said:

Hi, Asher,

If we can come to some conclusion as to the answer, what can we do with it?

Will we commend it to the National Association and State and County Fair Art and Craft Competition Intake Officers?

Click to expand...

Doug,

I take it as a wake up call to be self-aware of the ruts we can fall in created by the march of the masses following the "fashion de jour". If one is going to make decorative art...and put bread on one's table, fine. That's like selling T-shirts or purses that work well with whatever else folk happen to have today.

Still, we should have insight to where we are walking and ask oneself whether this satisfies one's own creative needs in photography or is it merely a seduction that works just for now, like a band-aid for a sore that hurts.

I have used filters a few times where they brought me closer to the atmosphere I was trying to create. Still, I'd rather imagine a photograph made just from the elements of the subject and how I choose to line up my sight to it and with what lighting might be possible. That's what I'd rather do.

The before and after pictures from OnOne software company, gave me a jolt, like a warning, that I should keep to my own path in making pictures as much as possible, listening to ideas that come from strangers but keeping in mind that my journey has to be my own. If one gives in to "fashion" then one might be giving up connection to one's children!

Asher

Hi, Asher,

Asher Kelman said:

Doug,

I take it as a wake up call to be self-aware of the ruts we can fall in created by the march of the masses following the "fashion de jour". If one is going to make decorative art...and put bread on one's table, fine. That's like selling T-shirts or purses that work well with whatever else folk happen to have today.

Still, we should have insight to where we are walking and ask oneself whether this satisfies one's own creative needs in photography or is it merely a seduction that works just for now, like a band-aid for a sore that hurts.

Click to expand...

This is a very important issue., which well deserves thoughtful treatment here.

But we cannot deal usefully with it by casting it as the need to have a firm definition of what is or is not a "photograph" (or what activity qualifies as "photography"). It's is like trying to alert ourselves to the abuses of dishonest and misleading public writing by trying to decide what is or is not an "article".

Many FCC regulations are based the naïve notion that TV newsreading is "journalism". Some sage once said that this concept was forever discredited when Connie Chung married Maury Povich.

Best regards,

Doug

Asher Kelman said:

I was looking at my latest emails and there's one from OnOne Software. They are a creative company making various plugins and filters for photography, once the image is digitized, including relighting and other creative effects.


I noticed this latest pair.

Original

Creative Filter Effect using OnOne software​

There's no doubt that the filter renders a work that is novel, interesting and demands more attention to it's stylized form. It belongs now in an era or in a class of species that's rather different from the original. But is this just another version of acceptable adjustments or does it leave photography so far behind that we are now in a realm of graphics or creative art or even "art-for-the-masses, now lacking an author.


What troubles me is that the result is obviously attractive.. How do you see this?

Asher

Click to expand...

Generally speaking in all arts, unnecessary information can ruin the piece of art by attracting the recipient's attention from the subject... As such, it must be removed... Removing colour from a scene if it distracts attention from the subject for example, is one of the actions usually taken by photographers to emphasise on the "codes" they use to communicate the subject better... From this point of view, the use of special software that the use of may help to achieve the result, may be very welcome indeed... However, art is always a process that demands the existence of visualisation to be achieved, ...hence, the use of the software must be included when visualising the final print... I have no objection if the above terms are full filed... In other words, if the photographer has the filter in mind when he directs the scene and "sees" (visualises) the final print in his mind, it is only a welcome part of achieving the goal.

Another thing to add... I find the choice of photograph to promote the filter, very successful from OnOne.. It is the kind of scene that one may shoot having in mind to print the filtered outcome... I notice that the information removed from the original scene is exactly what would destruct attention and thus, the filtered outcome has much more emphasis to the subject... The "old" look, I also find it to underline the subject, I find it to change the time of the environment and synchronise it with the rotten woods in the water for which time remains constant.

Theodoros Fotometria said:

Generally speaking in all arts, unnecessary information can ruin the piece of art by attracting the recipient's attention from the subject... As such, it must be removed... Removing colour from a scene if it distracts attention from the subject for example, is one of the actions usually taken by photographers to emphasise on the "codes" they use to communicate the subject better... From this point of view, the use of special software that the use of may help to achieve the result, may be very welcome indeed...............



In other words, if the photographer has the filter in mind when he directs the scene and "sees" (visualises) the final print in his mind, it is only a welcome part of achieving the goal.

Click to expand...

Theodoros,

I had that feeling underneath my objections, "What if we imagine the changes brought on by that filtering process in our workflow when we compose the image? We already do that in B&W photography, where the screen can be set to preview in B&W instead of color.

So, yes, in the example you give, where the filter has already, in the mind of the photographer, transformed the scene, at the time of creating the exposure, then it seems more integral to the process. Still, one can start the creative process anew at the screen. This is where we depart from classical photography since there, what we pre-visualize "wants" to become the picture that's printed or shared with others.

What muddies up the chain of custody of the initial creative intent, is when we start, de novo, at the computer screen, as if the file of the image is just some "uncooked material" to develop expression of what we are feeling right now, now, irrespective of how we felt, last week, when the image was recorded!

Asher