The ethics of modern day photography

[Stephen Willard]

I have returned from my fall photographic trip, and I had the privilege of meeting many photographers over the 4 weeks I was away.

After many discussions with the photographers on this trip, I have come to the conclusion that modern day photographers are fabricating images at a rampant level. All photographers I talked with used a digital solution either with a digital camera or by scanning film and printing digitally. No one I meet used traditional photographic methods like myself.

The question I asked was “I was considering switching to digital and what can I do with digital that I can not do with my darkroom?”. Categorically, every photographer who owned a digital camera told me how they fabricated images. Some of the examples were painting in different skies, adding a rainbow, removing park benches, and just about anything you could imagine. All of them admitted that there were people who found this practice troubling, but that did not bother them.

The one large format photographer I met who scanned his film did not admit to fabricating images. However, I did observe him shooting under a blank gray sky the day before I met him and was suspicious. After he had composed his photograph while I was watching the next day, I asked him if I could look at the 4x10 image on his ground glass. I was not surprised to find a giant blank gray sky occupying at least half the image. Either he was a bad photographer or he was going to paint in a different sky once the film was scanned. I concluded that because he was an experienced LF 4x10 guy, then the latter was most likely true.

Am I the only one that finds this behavior unethical or is that just the way it is? Maybe I am just out of touch with mainstream ethics because I am the only photographer that was using traditional methods. The modern day photographer posts his images to world declaring greatness when in reality he is sitting at his computer fabricating images with Photoshop and other AI software.

Some say the general public does not care, so why should I care. Is there a possibility that those who buy photographic art just do not understand the magnitude and scope of the practice? Is it possible that as time marches on digitally generated images will be viewed in a negative light as cheap computer art as fabrication becomes the expected norm? Could this practice undermine the validity and perceived value of digital art in the long run?

What do think?

[ic-racer]

I don't think the type of image manipulation you describe is unethical. Just stupid.

[Marko]

I don't think the type of image manipulation you describe is unethical. Just stupid.

And it has nothing to do with digital either, all those things have been done before.

Digital just makes it easier. Which it is supposed to, simply because making things easier and more efficient is the very purpose of every new technology.

[Marko]

I have returned from my fall photographic trip, and I had the privilege of meeting many photographers over the 4 weeks I was away.

After many discussions with the photographers on this trip, I have come to the conclusion that modern day photographers are fabricating images at a rampant level. All photographers I talked with used a digital solution either with a digital camera or by scanning film and printing digitally. No one I meet used traditional photographic methods like myself.

So, digital has become the mainstream technology. Why do you call it "fabricating"?

[BarryS]

This has nothing to do with ethics and everything to do artistic and aesthetic decisions. From an artistic standpoint, I find a lot of over-photoshopped work to be pure kitsch--sentimental overwrought, and artificial. I accept the fact that this sort of "artistic power" has never been available to those without traditional illustration skills, so we're seeing a lot of overindulgence. I think widespread digital overmanipulation has been driving a good number of people back into traditional and alternative photographic processes--which seem to be thriving these days. As to the "value" of digital art--the cow is already out of the barn. I find most buyers are interested in the artistic vision and less so in the process and materials--unless we're talking about process art, which is still driven by the artist. Is the trend more toxic than the excesses of pictorialism or the dullest incarnations of the latest new topographics? Probably not.

[Paul Bujak]

I think that manipulating a digital photo to do such things as adding rainbows or removing park benches is unethical if the resulting picture is presented as "this is what I saw and this is what you will see if you go there". I don't know of anyone who would spot a negative to add objects , etc. Not even sure if it can be done.

Just as a model may be made more beautiful by, say, putting on lipstick, so may a digital photo, by adding saturation or sharpening, etc. This is what we attempt to do in a conventional wet darkroom. It may not be exactly what the photographer saw at the moment of exposure, but I believe such enhancements are akin to what an artist using oils, acrylics or watercolor might do. These are interpretive enhancements, not outright fraud.

If you are making investigative or forensic photos, then wysiwyg.. If you are making photographic art, then technical enhancements are OK. Adding or deleting objects post-exposure is not.

Just my opinion.

[mrladewig]

What do think?

I think you must need a ladder to get up on your high horse.

[Stephen Willard]

So, digital has become the mainstream technology. Why do you call it "fabricating"?

Simply because they are misrepresenting the original scene and then selling it to world as if its the real stuff. There are many examples of digital images that are fabricated, but it is clearly obvious that the photographer is doing so. It is when the photographer sells the image as real when it is really a fictional piece that I find unethical. If a corporate enterprise were to do such a thing with their products, then people would be quite angry about it. I think there were laws passed about this when the toy industry was misrepresenting their products some years ago on TV.

Here is another way to think about. If I were to try and sell one of my landscape images with a note underneath it stating this image has been heavy modified using my computer to add the sky and rainbow to the scene, then I dought very much if I could price the print for much more than one of those pretty pictures you find at Wal-Mart housewares section.

[Nathan Potter]

There are really no bounds to photographic art. As far as I'm concerned any manipulative technique is game when revealing your artistic vision in an image. We should be celebrating the move away from just straight documentary photography while at the same time still admiring the content of those traditional images.

Nate Potter, Austin TX.

[Frank Petronio]

Uh-oh I am going to Hades.

So... when you move your camera up a little higher, or over a little to the left in order to exclude that park bench or those nasty telephone wires, aren't you just as guilty of "manipulating the image"? Whether you do it in camera, in the darkroom, or with Photoshop, every image is manipulated and "unethical" in some way. Unless you were some sort of cold robot documenting the world in a consistent grid -- and even that would be subjective -- I don't see how a thinking intelligent being could not be editing -- and therefore manipulating and constructing -- the images they make. I'd even call this manipulation "the creative process" and the most important part of making the image!

There is just as much craftsmanship and hard work in doing a good job with a digital image as a precious darkroom print. If your theory that the worth of digital images would be devalued by virtue of the glut of poorly done digital images -- well, the majority of traditional photographs have been poorly done over a nearly 200 year history -- billions of pictures -- so you tell me how that has affected the value of traditional photos?

And finally, I shoot blank skies sometimes. I guess I am a lousy photographer (but in Hades who cares?)

[Stephen Willard]

I think that manipulating a digital photo to do such things as adding rainbows or removing park benches is unethical if the resulting picture is presented as "this is what I saw and this is what you will see if you go there". I don't know of anyone who would spot a negative to add objects , etc. Not even sure if it can be done.

Just as a model may be made more beautiful by, say, putting on lipstick, so may a digital photo, by adding saturation or sharpening, etc. This is what we attempt to do in a conventional wet darkroom. It may not be exactly what the photographer saw at the moment of exposure, but I believe such enhancements are akin to what an artist using oils, acrylics or watercolor might do. These are interpretive enhancements, not outright fraud.

If you are making investigative or forensic photos, then wysiwyg.. If you are making photographic art, then technical enhancements are OK. Adding or deleting objects post-exposure is not.

Just my opinion.

Paul I agree with you. Changing the mood of the expressive image by changing the gray scale or color scale is in keeping with the ethics practiced by many great photographers. However, changing the elements of the optical reality and selling it to the world as a real image is my belief a fraudulent act.

[W K Longcor]

I see no problem with the "ethics" of modern photography. The "art" is in the final print -- to the viewer (not always the artist/ photographer) the means of making he image is not important. The great pictorialists of the 20th century often printed in clouds and skys from other negatives. They often used retouching or art work on paper negatives to remove telephone poles, signs, and other distactions. One of my favorite images, "Green Pastures" by Adolf Fassbender, shows an Austrian shephard with his flock -- the background is composed of Swiss Alps and sky from a different negative taken many hundreds of miles away and on a different day.

When I was in the business of commercial photography, I took great pride in my "special effects" photography. I often made 3, 4, 5 or more exposures on a single sheet of film. I like to think it took a great deal of skill and an artistic eye. Could these same images be made with a computer today? You bet! And with a trained technician at the computer, probably a whole lot easier, too. But that does not make the image worth less to he viewer.

Now when digital photography first came on the scene, there seemed to be a lot of contrived images. I remember an awful lot of awful images of eyeballs and lips floating in clouds. They signified nothing but, "Hey! look what I can do with a computer!" I think ( I hope) we are passed that trite stuff. So three cheers for digital manipulation! And, two times three cheers for the craftspeople who can still do it the "old fashioned" way!:)

[John Kasaian]

Stephan,
You work within the confines of your element because you see a greater value (and reward) in a traditional approach to photography (and a lesser value in digital.)

The problem isn't I think one of ethics. The photograhers you met are artists painting pictures in photoshop and see this as an advancement whereas you (and I) march to a different beat.

IMHO, a better course would be to take confidence in your abilities and the tools you use rather than compare apples to oranges.

I wouldn't want to stir up the film vs pixel gollum but I think we need to recognize that not only the tools are different, but the approaches as well. The attractions many find appealing in digital is contrary to a more mechanical method and vice-versa. What is given as creative freedom in one "camp" is seen as limiting and restrictive in the other.
I think that this is what you may be finding objectionable.
Focus on what you do. The other photographers you've met might control the skies (on their computer screens ) but they don't control what makes you happy.

[John Voss]

I think ethics become an issue only in the case of manipulations that distort or change an image in the context of the expected veracity of photo-journalism.

Painters, pictorialist photographers, and digital photographers who are making imagery for the sake of aesthetic satisfaction have only their own criteria to answer to, so only if you regard yourself as a strict modernist would significant manipulation be a no-no. Even though I personally make photographs that are as nearly "straight" as I can make them, I have no problem with those who go to any length with their own work as far as their ethics are concerned. Only if they are offering an image as representative of a specific place when it actually isn't, would I object.

[rob cruickshank]

I think that manipulating a digital photo to do such things as adding rainbows or removing park benches is unethical if the resulting picture is presented as "this is what I saw and this is what you will see if you go there". I don't know of anyone who would spot a negative to add objects , etc. Not even sure if it can be done.
Just my opinion.

Actually, Ansel Adams painted his negative to remove the initials of the town Lone Pine, which were spelled out in white rocks on a hill, and would have otherwise "spoiled" his photograph Winter Sunrise, Sierra Nevada , From Lone Pine , California .
The idea that photographs are somehow "real" should have been thrown out about a hundred years ago. That said, I choose not to shoot a whole roll of full moons on a roll of 35mm film so that it can be rewound and reshot with a wide lens at dusk with no moon (an idea from a photo magazine I read in the 70s), or to photoshop angel wings onto babies, or whatnot, but I won't say it's not photography. (I will, however snicker and point behind the backs of those who do so)

[arkady n.]

Uh-oh I am going to Hades.
What is the development time for 8x10 tray processing in Hades? I am guessing it will be hard to do temperature control... :D

[Richard Wasserman]

What is the development time for 8x10 tray processing in Hades? I am guessing it will be hard to do temperature control... :D

Wouldn't it depend on which circle you found yourself on? I'm just guessing here, but I would think the temperature might be pretty consistent on each level. I'd worry more about all those flames fogging the film.

[eddie]

i understand what steven is saying.....

i do not do PS manipulation for a number of reasons. one being i do not agree with putting in or taking out parts of the scene (i do not agree with the idea that moving your camera is the same thing as PS out a park bench either). but this is just me. other people are doing it and will do it.....i do not. another reason is i do not have the skills to do this with PS (and i do not wish to spend my time learning such things. i have other stuff i would rather spend my time doing).

i shoot in my style cause i like it and i gain huge satisfaction doing it my way. personally i enjoy the reward of setting it all up metering and waiting for the perfect moment. i also find it relaxing....maybe others simply do not have the time or the desire to wait for the "perfect" moment....maybe that perfect moment requires a computer and PS knowledge.....

people say that it is the end image that is important not anything up to that point. again, i disagree. but this is my opinion and no one needs to do anything the way i think it needs to be done.....except me!

personally i have greater respect for images and photographers that can do it in camera without PS manipulation. BUT again this is only my opinion! i can appreciate other photos that were "enhanced" (many times i do not even know!) but i do not strive to emulate them. i do strive to emulate photos that have not been PS by an "artist/photographer"

eddie

[John Kasaian]

Actually, Ansel Adams painted his negative to remove the initials of the town Lone Pine, which were spelled out in white rocks on a hill, and would have otherwise "spoiled" his photograph Winter Sunrise, Sierra Nevada , From Lone Pine , California .
The idea that photographs are somehow "real" should have been thrown out about a hundred years ago. That said, I choose not to shoot a whole roll of full moons on a roll of 35mm film so that it can be rewound and reshot with a wide lens at dusk with no moon (an idea from a photo magazine I read in the 70s), or to photoshop angel wings onto babies, or whatnot, but I won't say it's not photography. (I will, however snicker and point behind the backs of those who do so)

Hogwash. If photographs can't represent the truest image available of what is real they wouldn't be allowed as evidence in court and all the historic archives, and identification cards, along with text book illustrations and aerial mapping would be for naught.

[Greg Miller]

If I were to try and sell one of my landscape images with a note underneath it stating this image has been heavy modified using my computer to add the sky and rainbow to the scene, then I dought very much if I could price the print for much more than one of those pretty pictures you find at Wal-Mart housewares section.

It depends on your artistic vision and how well (or not) you execute your modifications.

And by the way, putting a new sky over a landscape that was shot under a heavily clouded gray sky most likely will not look natural. And that may be the intent. But adding a new sky and making it look natural can take quite a bit of skill.

I also wonder about how many serious representational photographers are Photoshopping objects in/out of their images. It happens, but it isn't that common with the people that I know.

[Marko]

Simply because they are misrepresenting the original scene and then selling it to world as if its the real stuff. There are many examples of digital images that are fabricated, but it is clearly obvious that the photographer is doing so. It is when the photographer sells the image as real when it is really a fictional piece that I find unethical. If a corporate enterprise were to do such a thing with their products, then people would be quite angry about it. I think there were laws passed about this when the toy industry was misrepresenting their products some years ago on TV.

Here is another way to think about. If I were to try and sell one of my landscape images with a note underneath it stating this image has been heavy modified using my computer to add the sky and rainbow to the scene, then I dought very much if I could price the print for much more than one of those pretty pictures you find at Wal-Mart housewares section.

Stephen, I'm afraid you misunderstood me. I am not questioning why you perceive such grotesque image alterations as fabricating. Not that I couldn't question that notion too, but that's another, much wider story.

You see, I just visited your website and I find your photos really impressive. But - please forgive me for being blunt - realistic they are not. Colors like those simply do not exist in nature without some - make that a lot - help from Velvia, polarizers and other traditional tools of the trade.

I don't see how choosing a film and filters to exaggerate (or eliminate) color or even just framing a picture as Frank noted is not a form of resulting image manipulation, not to mention using various chemical processes to further "enhance" one's vision.

After all, the kitch you mention - artificial skies, moons and rainbows - was invented and done with abandon back when even Jules Verne could not imagine digital.

So, back to the point, my question was: why are you equating digital photography with fabricating?

[Jim Galli]

What's humorous is that no one wants these pretty pictures with or without the park bench. One more grand pano with or without the clouds..........who cares? The other day I was at Nehalem falls in Oregon and the Salmon were jumping. I had the 5X12 set up on a fish ladder, no tripod, tilted to see the stream and the shutter set to stop action as the fish jumped. Heroic? Idiotic? Doesn't matter really. No one really cares about pictures of salmon jumping in 5X12 format. I had fun so that makes it worth it. No expectations of art or my name becoming a household word. My daughter was next to me with the D200 set for cloudy light asa 640 5 frames per second. Those are the good pictures. No one cares about them either.

[Marko]

Hogwash. If photographs can't represent the truest image available of what is real they wouldn't be allowed as evidence in court and all the historic archives, and identification cards, along with text book illustrations and aerial mapping would be for naught.

True, but that type of photographs does not hang in galleries nor does it hang on anybody's wall (other than related offices, of course).

In other words, there is a very clear distinction between documentation and art. Or at least it should be. If there isn't, something must be wrong with either documentation or with art. Or perhaps with both. :)

[Daniel_Buck]

I was not surprised to find a giant blank gray sky occupying at least half the image. Either he was a bad photographer or he was going to paint in a different sky once the film was scanned.

So let me get this straight, because you saw him photographing a scene with an overcast sky, you automatically assumed he was either a bad photographer, or was going to be replacing the sky with something else? :confused: I'm not quite sure I see that jump in logic.

[Stephen Willard]

Part of my question is with your own personal ethics and each has their own standards. The real threat may lie not in what I think, but rather in what those who buy photographic landscape images think.

Currently when I visit a gallery, I ask the question is this a digital image, and the sales person immediate response is yes, BUT they quickly note the photographer has taken great care in replicating the original scene. My question is what happens if the patron comes to believe otherwise that most digital images may be fabricated. Will he or she be willing to pay a far amount of money for something that is not real? Are they looking for gifted photographer who discovers amazing images in the field or is a gift geek acceptable?

Most of Mangleson's newest work is landscape photography, and 60% of all his sales now are from panoramic landscape images. All of his landscapes are done using traditional optical printing methods. Why is that? All of his wildlife images are digitally printed so he has the means to digitally print his landscapes, but he has chosen not to. Why is that?

By blatantly engaging in making significant changes to the original scene, you digital guys may be shooting yourself in the foot in the long run. Its not what I think, but rather how the market will react to digital images that are sold as the real thing, but perceived possibly as fakes.

[Bruce Watson]

I know where you are coming from. But it depends almost completely on the purpose and representation of the image.

Put bluntly, art is not required to be documentary. Art is more about trying to convey a feeling or set of feelings about a scene. How the artist goes about doing this is highly individual to the artist in question.

Photographic artists do a lot that isn't documentary. For example, they may move their camera position a bit to avoid including bits in the frame that they don't want in the frame, like power lines or trash cans. They may "groom the scene" by picking up trash, or cleaning pine straw off a rock. They may clean up their view by tying back branches (I've carried nylon rope for this purpose for years and used it exactly three times, none of which have made it into my portfolio).

Worse, they frame and crop to show just what they want to show within the broader context. You can completely change how people view a scene like this. Then, they might choose to abstract all those distracting colors and make a B&W photograph. Now that surely isn't documentary. They make a two dimensional representation of a three (or four depending on what you are doing) dimensional scene. I'm just saying that it's the nature of photography to abstract the scene. It can not be avoided.

Just about any artist will tell you that you can go to a particular scene and hold up the artist's photograph of it and scratch your head wondering about how different they look. Ansel Adams hammered on this point. Others have too.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What digital does for photography is improve control. Just one example: I used to go through as many as a dozen sheets of photopaper in the darkroom to get my over all contrast just right. Now I use curves in Photoshop to put my overall contrast exactly where I want it. I used to get very close. Now I'm spot on.

Basically, digital editing and printing lets me present my best vision as created on my best day. No excuses.

This is a good thing.

[Kirk Gittings]

Originally Posted by Stephen Willard View Post
I was not surprised to find a giant blank gray sky occupying at least half the image. Either he was a bad photographer or he was going to paint in a different sky once the film was scanned.

Prior to the invention of panchromatic films it was a common practice to substitute skies, because the earlier blue sensitive films blew out the skies.

I also find it interesting that you seem to be unable to conceive of a strong landscape image that does not have dramatic skies as if there is only one viable landscape aesthetic.

Are you going to try and tell me that your prints are not highly manipulated? I haven't seen colors like that in the landscape since the 60s.

http://www.stephenwillard.com/gallery/gallery.php?retailid=SAW

[Allen in Montreal]

.....

photographers are fabricating images at a rampant level. All photographers I talked with used a digital solution either with a digital camera or by scanning film and printing digitally. No one I meet used traditional photographic methods.........


The one large format photographer I met who scanned his film did not admit to fabricating images........


Am I the only one that finds this behavior unethical........


What do think?


Any practioner of the photographic arts is open to use any and all the tools made available to him or her.

What is unethical however, is to market an image in a manner that lies as the method used to achieve it.

Let them Photoshop the skies all they wish, and be honest about their art, as may you remain a purist!

[W K Longcor]

An addendum to my earlier comments. In the 1970's and early 80's I was doing a bit of "industrial" photography. On a number of occations I was asked to produce a "glamour" shot of some rather plain looking, but new, industrial buildings. The were often 200+ feet long and one story high. There was usually fresh sod and one or two newly planted twigs that would someday be trees. When producing a 4x5 transparency, I would pick a bright day with blue sky. More times than not the sky was cloudless - and the building had little if any charm. I learned to carry a pair of brush cutting shears and a light stand. After picking my view, I'd stroll off to a nearby woods and cut a branch. That would be fastened to the light stand and positioned to "frame" the building and add some interest to the blank sky. Was this a true representation of the scene? Nope! But the customer didn't want a true image of the ugly building. They wanted "glamour!" Was this wrong? My bank account did not think so. Having done this by conventional means, I have trouble faulting the digital guys.

[Frank Petronio]

LOL, didn't Ansel the environmentalist carry a saw in the car to cut away "distractions"?

Stephen, I just looked at your extremely saturated website and I see you're selling prints at bargain prices already. I can understand your concern about Photoshop-using photographers lowering the prices because then you'd have to give the prints away!

At that retail art level are the buyers sophisticated enough to really care?

Maybe those Photoshop-devils like Wall and Gursky will help raise your prices? Afterall, their "Photoshop Paintings" start in the mid-five figures.

[Stephen Willard]

Again it is not what I think, but rather how the buying patron will react should they perceive digital landscape photography as highly manipulated fakes. Of course, this may never happen, but there is a very real possibility that it could. I just believe that digital landscape photographers are treading on thin ice.

This may be kind of like mortgage loans and credit card practices the banking industry has engaged in for the past eight years. What goes around can catch up with you guys and completely undermine your discipline. I am not saying it will, but there is a real possibility that it could. Personally, I hope it does not because if that happens, then it would have a negative effect on all photographic landscape art which includes me.

[Brian Ellis]

Simply because they are misrepresenting the original scene and then selling it to world as if its the real stuff. There are many examples of digital images that are fabricated, but it is clearly obvious that the photographer is doing so. It is when the photographer sells the image as real when it is really a fictional piece that I find unethical. If a corporate enterprise were to do such a thing with their products, then people would be quite angry about it. I think there were laws passed about this when the toy industry was misrepresenting their products some years ago on TV.

Here is another way to think about. If I were to try and sell one of my landscape images with a note underneath it stating this image has been heavy modified using my computer to add the sky and rainbow to the scene, then I dought very much if I could price the print for much more than one of those pretty pictures you find at Wal-Mart housewares section.

Do you think the result would be different if I tried to sell one of my landscape images with a note underneath it saying "this image was made using Velvia film, which is why the color is highly saturated beyond anything you'd see in the original scene, and I used a polarizing filter on the camera to make the sky appear bluer and darker than it really was and also to remove reflections from the water. Then in the darkroom I dodged the clouds so that they'd appear whiter than they really were. I also burned down those distracting bright lights in the background and I dodged the crest of the waves to increase the contrast between them and the dark sea?"

Or how many portraits would I sell if I attached a note saying "you don't really look anywhere near this good in real life. I used a filter on the camera to soften the lines in your face and make you look 20 years younger than you really are. I also retouched the negative to remove the wrinkles in your neck and hide that scar on your left cheek. And of course I posed you and used lighting in such a way that your double chin isn't noticeable."

And what would you say about the 19th century landscape photographers who routinely moved skies from one photograph to another and sold them as "the real stuff?"

The fact is that photography of the kind we talk abut here isn't now and never has been about simply reproducing the original scene as faithfully as possible. And that's true whether the materials used were dry plates, film, or a sensor and whether the print was edited in the dakroom or the computer. The only difference beween traditional methods of manipulation and digital methods is that at the extremes it's far easier to do digitally so you see more of it. But that's a difference of degree, not of ethics and morality.

[Curt Palm]

Prior to the invention of panchromatic films it was a common practice to substitute skies, because the earlier blue sensitive films blew out the skies.

I also find it interesting that you seem to be unable to conceive of a strong landscape image that does not have dramatic skies as if there is only one viable landscape aesthetic.



Yosemite had an exhibition a few years back with photos from muybridge and others, large camera folk. These people hauled around 16x20 cameras.
Several of the prints had the exact same clouds - I'd guess they had a few negatives of clouds that were really good. Without the prints being side by side I probably won't have noticed, and maybe not even then except it was pointed out and explained in the notes by the photograph.

[rob cruickshank]

Hogwash. If photographs can't represent the truest image available of what is real they wouldn't be allowed as evidence in court and all the historic archives, and identification cards, along with text book illustrations and aerial mapping would be for naught.
And the hills would be hopping with jackalopes, and the lochs swimming with monsters.
:)

[Stephen Willard]

Hogwash. If photographs can't represent the truest image available of what is real they wouldn't be allowed as evidence in court and all the historic archives, and identification cards, along with text book illustrations and aerial mapping would be for naught.

John, I believe (but not 100% sure) photographs are NO longer considered as admissable evidence in the court room.

[Merg Ross]

Perhaps photography is an unethical practice. All images are in some way manipulated and are distortions of reality.

[Frank Petronio]

There are ~digtial~ cameras with locked GPS and time information that are "locked" and their photos do serve as evidence.

Of course this wouldn't be as secure with traditional film and chemistry ;-)

[Stephen Willard]

I would like to make it clear here that the issues I am raising and the language I have chosen to use for this thread is not inappropriate, and could be the very perceptions that the photographic patron may adopt as digital finds it place in the art world, for better or worse.

Fakes, fraudulent, Wal-Mart art, geek art, and unethical may be labels that will be realized from the very practices I am questioning. The questions I am asking are very controversial, and there are no easy answers, but it something we must all consider on our journey as landscape photographers. I personally believe the behaviors that digital photographers are engaging in are risky and not without consequences.

You make not like what I have to say, and you may make personal attacks on me and my art, but that will not change the fact that there may be a time bomb ticking here.

[Stephen Willard]

There are ~digtial~ cameras with locked GPS and time information that are "locked" and their photos do serve as evidence.

This is off topic, but frankly Frank, it is not possible to lock anything in digital land. I could write a Unix script and dump the entire content of the digital binary in octal format and pipe into a text editor and find and edit that information very quickly. No big deal.

[domenico Foschi]

It isn't an issue of ethics.
I retouch my negatives and my prints if I see something that doesn't fit in my negatives.
The real intent is not a faithful reproduction of reality but a faithful reproduction of the mood I intend to convey.
Looking at your images, Stephen, I see quite a bit of manipulation in your images as well at the point of the result being untrue to the real scene.
If what you are trying to say is that PS now makes things too easy in a way, that is true, but it takes a a skilled and trained eye to know when to stop and to understand that less is more in many cases.
But mind, this is true in everything and traditional photogrpahers are not aware of that either.
That maNY people buy some monstrous images is another issue that raises mainly the questions that not everybody should have eyes, or walls to hang such pictures, and these people are the same who probably value the flavor of a cake by its bright colors.

[QT Luong]

As long as you don't state that the images are unmanipulated, I don't see why it would be unethical to manipulate them.

That said, the premise of your question that is interesting to me is why unmanipulated images should be considered superior ? I often see in the marketing statements of *color* nature landscape photographers that they insist that their images are true to the original scene and unmanipulated. Some of those photographers are amongst the most successful in that genre: Peter Lik, Ken Duncan, Rodney Lough, Michael Fatali, so it appears there is some support for this idea in the buying public.

Of course, we are talking about color landscape photography here. In the "Art World" (which hasn't really included color nature landscape, but this is material for another thread) some of the most prominent players use digital manipulation as an integral part of their work.

[Struan Gray]

There are a lot of assumptions in your original post Stephen, but perhaps the biggest one is that people value literal truth. Others have already pointed out that this is certainly not true at the exalted levels at the top of the art market. My impression from poster shops and the tourist memorabilia on sale at scenic locations is that it is even less true at the bottom end of the market.

People want an exemplar, not an example. That's why they lap up the golden-light super saturated versions of reality sold by the commercial landscape photographers. That's why they want wildlife photos which simulate closeness, while claiming to show an undisturbed wild. That's why almost nobody photographs birds in eclipse, grey days in the mountains, or houses that are twenty years old. How often do you see a photo of the interior of the Taj Mahal?

This is nothing new. Over the top etchings, sketches and prints were as common two hundred years ago as over the top photographs are today. The attached file actually isn't too bad (I've seen far worse), but something very odd has happened to Les Drus.

[willwilson]

Interesting thread. I enjoy discussing these types of issues, but I must say I don't believe they matter with respect to the value of photographic art. Art is art because of the artist. An artist's work should stand for itself without some statement of creation.

If your vision leads you to replace a sky or clone out a bench...then you should do it. I'm not sure doing so could really be the thing that pushes your work over into greatness but you never know.

Ethically, I think its fine as long as you don't mislead anyone about how you created your work. For instance, someone asks you how you get such dramatic skies in all your prints. You respond that you collect photographs of amazing skyscapes in order to allow you to combine them with your landscape images to fully express your artistic vision for the scene. I think that is fine if you are honest about your methods.

I personally print traditionally but as others have stated it doesn't really matter whether you are printing digital or silver, image manipulation has always been apart of photography.

[roteague]

So... when you move your camera up a little higher, or over a little to the left in order to exclude that park bench or those nasty telephone wires, aren't you just as guilty of "manipulating the image"? Whether you do it in camera, in the darkroom, or with Photoshop, every image is manipulated and "unethical" in some way. Unless you were some sort of cold robot documenting the world in a consistent grid -- and even that would be subjective -- I don't see how a thinking intelligent being could not be editing -- and therefore manipulating and constructing -- the images they make. I'd even call this manipulation "the creative process" and the most important part of making the image!

You are confusing "presentation" with "content". Presentation is primarily about compositional elements. The issue isn't with composing the image, rather it is about adding or subtracting elements that are not present within the composition. Yes, some of these things were done in the darkroom in the past, but, two wrongs don't make a right.

[Stephen Willard]

As long as you don't state that the images are unmanipulated, I don't see why it would be unethical to manipulate them.

That said, the premise of your question that is interesting to me is why unmanipulated images should be considered superior ? I often see in the marketing statements of *color* nature landscape photographers that they insist that their images are true to the original scene and unmanipulated. Some of those photographers are amongst the most successful in that genre: Peter Lik, Ken Duncan, Rodney Lough, Michael Fatali, so it appears there is some support for this idea in the buying public.

Of course, we are talking about color landscape photography here. In the "Art World" (which hasn't really included color nature landscape, but this is material for another thread) some of the most prominent players use digital manipulation as an integral part of their work.

QT, I hope and pray you are not a lawyer because your first sentence is what a lawyer would say, and indeed everything the banking industry engaged in the past eight years is was also legal, but far from ethical. I would like to think that in the art world, we artists rise to a higher standing than sleezy CEOs. There is something to be said about the ethics of transparent truth in our images.

As practice by Adams, that truth lies in preserving the optical reality of the original scene. When a photographer crosses that then line things are different. If the composition is contemporary or abstract in form, and it is clear the image is not real then the ethics of transparent truth is preserved, but if he crosses that line and then displays it as the real thing, then it becomes a lie and is not worthy.

I do believe it is okay to practice the standards employed by Adams of minipulating the gray scale (and color scale) to alter the mood of the composition to express the artist's emotional state of mind when he created the photograph. My images are in many cases expressive in nature, and thus, are a construction of what I saw and FELT. In fact I borrow from fiction, using a story thematic approach to creating an expressive image. My narratives on my website are the story and the theme lies in the symbols I give to the elements and colors in the composition. I do to color photography what Adams did to b&w photography and perhaps more in methods only. I only wish I was as good as he was in his art.

My website is still a prototype, and that is why I do not end my postings here with my website because it is incomplete. My intent is to have lots of discussion about all of this on my website so that I do not mislead people. And for the record, if you view my images on a flat screen they will look pumped up when in fact they are not. I have tried to address that problem with the Adjust Viewing page, but it has not worked as well as I hoped.

Crossing the line and altering the optical reality of the imaging with photoshop and then hanging it in public as a real live image, I beleve will backfire on you guys. At that point the photograph becomes nothing more than a cheap fake.

[Rick Moore]

Are you going to try and tell me that your prints are not highly manipulated? I haven't seen colors like that in the landscape since the 60s.

http://www.stephenwillard.com/gallery/gallery.php?retailid=SAW

I thought I was having a flash-back for a second.

[willwilson]

cheap fake

Aren't all photographs cheap fakes to some extent? I think the more important questions are is the work moving? Does a particular photograph have a voice beyond color, line, form, contrast, etc.

Stephen you mentioned Ansel; I'm sure most of us that have seen his prints can agree they are breathtaking. I personally don't care that clearing winter storm did or didn't exist as printed, although its pretty neat that it is a real place in Yosemite Valley. That's about as far as it goes for me, neat. Its not good because of its optical purity. It is good because it is one hell of a print made by a master of his craft. It's interesting to learn how Ansel created his work and his motivations behind it, but none of those details make it art. Those details just add to the work's story.

I have to agree with QT if you don't misrepresent your digital or traditionally modified and enhanced work then it is perfectly ethical.

[Donald Miller]

All photographs are conventions that attempt to convey experience. They fail miserably in that attempt but they are as near as we have come to date.

There seems to be a "purist" mentality inherent in some of those who are by and large representationalists. That does not make them artists...nor does it make them particularly "pure" in my view.

To engage in a creative endeavor would seem to indicate a creation of something that did not exist. I would go so far as to say thanks to digital we have more tools available to be truly creative.

[domenico Foschi]

All photographs are conventions that attempt to convey experience. They fail miserably in that attempt but they are as near as we have come to date.

There seems to be a "purist" mentality inherent in some of those who are by and large representationalists. That does not make them artists...nor does it make them particularly "pure" in my view.

To engage in a creative endeavor would seem to indicate a creation of something that did not exist. I would go so far as to say thanks to digital we have more tools available to be truly creative.

Donald, I like you so much better now that you have cleaned up your act. :)

[Scott Davis]

Again it is not what I think, but rather how the buying patron will react should they perceive digital landscape photography as highly manipulated fakes. Of course, this may never happen, but there is a very real possibility that it could. I just believe that digital landscape photographers are treading on thin ice.



You're talking about the same audience who thinks Thomas Kinkade is a great artist, "the painter of light". Who somehow manages to paint images of an Earth with three to five different suns in different locations in the sky at the same time.




This may be kind of like mortgage loans and credit card practices the banking industry has engaged in for the past eight years. What goes around can catch up with you guys and completely undermine your discipline. I am not saying it will, but there is a real possibility that it could. Personally, I hope it does not because if that happens, then it would have a negative effect on all photographic landscape art which includes me.

That's a rather arrogant statement.

[W K Longcor]

OK time to throw one more fly in the ointment. A few decades back, noted (and very controversial) photographer, Robin Perry stirred things up while judging at a national exhibit of professional photographers. The 16X20 color photo in question was a beautiful view of the Grand Canyon. Mr. Perry's comment -- 10 points to GOD for the great subject -- 8 points to Kodak for the great film -- 8 points to the lab for good processing and printing -- but the photographer ----2 points at best. The photographer didn't manipulate or add anything other than to have stood where many had stood before him and made an proper exposure ( as would be the least expected of a professional). It made quite a stink at the time -- all the other judges were upset.

I guess it comes down to -- if it is for art -- anything goes. If it is for an ad for the "vacation spot" -- it darn well better look just like it is.:D

[Nathan Potter]

Amen, Mr. Longcor. Well said. But that dosen't mean I don't enjoy looking at a superbly rendered straight landscape.

Nate Potter, Austin TX.

[Marko]

As practice by Adams, that truth lies in preserving the optical reality of the original scene. When a photographer crosses that then line things are different.

Adams practiced nothing of the sort. B&W does not and never did represent "the optical reality of the original scene". The reality of the world around us is color.

And by "color" I do not mean super-saturated world as seen by Velvia through Singh-Ray gold-and-blue warming polarizer either.

Photography is all about subtracting things that are present in the scene through framing, focusing and exposure - and processing! - as opposed to painting and other visual arts which are all about adding things to a blank frame. A photographer, any photographer inevitably crosses the line you set by the very nature of his/her endeavor because it results in representation of photographer's vision of reality, not of reality itself.


I do believe it is okay to practice the standards employed by Adams of minipulating the gray scale (and color scale) to alter the mood of the composition to express the artist's emotional state of mind when he created the photograph. My images are in many cases expressive in nature, and thus, are a construction of what I saw and FELT. In fact I borrow from fiction, using a story thematic approach to creating an expressive image. My narratives on my website are the story and the theme lies in the symbols I give to the elements and colors in the composition. I do to color photography what Adams did to b&w photography and perhaps more in methods only. I only wish I was as good as he was in his art.

So, your images are "expressive in nature" and "are a construction" of what you "saw and felt". To accomplish that, you "borrow from fiction".

Which is all fine, but how exactly is that any better or more accurate representation of reality than someone else's, who chooses to use Photoshop instead of chemistry?

If what we are doing is "expressing the artist's emotional state of mind in when he created the photogrpah" does reality matter at all? And if so, whose reality should that be? Adams'? Yours? Mine? As this thread shows, our individual realities can differ rather significantly.


Crossing the line and altering the optical reality of the imaging with photoshop and then hanging it in public as a real live image, I beleve will backfire on you guys. At that point the photograph becomes nothing more than a cheap fake.

Once you cross over the line, or should I rather say over the top, how you got there is irrelevant. It's been less than 10 years since the first commercial DSLR hit the market and look how far it already got. Give it another 10 years at this clip and discussions like this will become even more irrelevant, at least as far as technology is concerned. Kitch is another matter altogether, just like it always was.

[lecarp]

If it is for an ad for the "vacation spot" -- it darn well better look just like it is.:D

Not so, I live in an area that is nothing more than a beach front vacation and shopping area. Artificial towns on various themes ( we call the residential theme parks ). The digital photography being done to promote the area in magazines etc. is so heavily manipulated It is often hard to recognize places I pass every day. For example inserting huge unspoiled views of the beach between condos that are really only a few feet apart.

[Brian Ellis]

Again it is not what I think, but rather how the buying patron will react should they perceive digital landscape photography as highly manipulated fakes. Of course, this may never happen, but there is a very real possibility that it could. I just believe that digital landscape photographers are treading on thin ice.

This may be kind of like mortgage loans and credit card practices the banking industry has engaged in for the past eight years. What goes around can catch up with you guys and completely undermine your discipline. I am not saying it will, but there is a real possibility that it could. Personally, I hope it does not because if that happens, then it would have a negative effect on all photographic landscape art which includes me.

Digital photographs have been selling and selling well for quite a few years now and not because buyers have been tricked into thinking they're getting the "real thing" and not a "fake." People buy photographs for a lot of reasons but often just because they like them, not because they think they're getting some sort of purist duplication of the scene exactly as it existed when the photograph was made. If that was the case why would people have bought and continue to buy black and white photographs, which obviously are as far removed from "reality" as one can get? Or getting closer to home, why would anyone buy your photographs? The ones I see on your web site don't even vaguely resemble anything I've ever seen in nature, they're super-saturated and every bit as manipulated as the photographer who uses Photoshop to move a bench out of the print.

[Maris Rusis]

If I'm looking at a surface that was penetrated by light that initiated chemical changes that caused marks that form a picture I'm happy. This is a photograph. And modern day photography, olden day photography, and future photography are the same thing.

Out of a myriad of processes that are capable of making realistic looking pictures of the external world photography is the only one that uses light, photos, to make marks, graphos, where it hits. Everything else, painting, drawing, and digital, uses a multi-element sensor (eyeball, CMOS chip, whatever) to collect information about a lens image. This information, raw, modified, or fabricated is then used to control a mark making device (artists hand/brush, ink-jet printer, whatever) to place marks that form a picture.

Because the two worlds, "photography" and "everything else", are so different they offer a different relationship to subject matter and a different relationship to the discerning viewer. One system is not inherently superior to the other.

If Gene Smith had fabricated his Minimata pictures from a mental or electronic image file their impact and credibility would be diminished. After all, anything imaginable or file-able can be pictured. The Chisso Chemical Company might have got away with the mercury pollution.

On the other hand if we only had photography, and painting, drawing, and digital were never invented, them we would miss the glories of the Sistine Chapel ceiling and the startling special effects of Star Wars.

It is the continuing bane of "modern day photography" that it forgets the treasure embodied in its fundamental and irrevocable identity with the photographic process itself.

[Frank Petronio]

You mean those ferro-cyanide-ographs that Gene Smith made from his silver prints using bleach on Q-tips? ;-)

Oh dear, then all those earnest Magnum-type photo-journalists using digital cameras in war zones and ghettos are just wasting their time?

Seems to me that people manipulated "truthful optical photography" quite successfully since the get-go -- Potemkin village and the like... Heck even Robert Capa's falling Spanish soldier is suspect -- and nobody needed to resort to any darkroom tricks to pull that off.

Thanks for the entertaining thread. It's almost as funny as the old lounge!

[Alan Curtis]

Do not dodge or burn...not real. Very few LW users are photojounalists, it's hard to get the bank robbers to wait while we make camera adjustments. We all are trying to capture the emotion we feel in some subject and if we over expose or over develop to get there, that is our method. Hopefully, it is art that someone likes.

[Rick Moore]

As I recall, Gene Smith was a master print manipulator in the dark room, using reducers, intensifiers, bleaches, redevelopers, etc., applied directly to small areas of the print with small brushes to achieve the exact result he wanted.

Digital cameras use photons to excite electrons in the sensor to record images. Analogue cameras use photons to excite electrons in the silver halide molecules in the film to record images. In the end, it's photons being reflected or absorbed by the print (either analogue or digital) exciting electrons in the retinas of our eyes that generate the actual images in our brains.

It seems to me there is a lot of holier-than-thou hair-splitting going on here.


P.S. Frank, if I could type faster I would have seen that you said pretty much the same thing.

[domenico Foschi]

Did someone mention the old Lounge?
Where is it?

http://i33.tinypic.com/adzw9k.jpg

[h2oman]

Time to spin the Subterranean Homesick Blues...

[Greg Miller]

Ansel Adams: Some major artists have no patience with those who work in other fields or take other approaches to their own field, a "fundamentalist" attitude that merely indicates a closed mind. (emphasis mine)

Quoted from Ansel Adams: Examples - The making of 40 photographs. Page 146 in my copy, from the section "Edward Weston: Carmel Highlands, California, c. 1940".

[Turner Reich]

I've hear that the heavy retouching, outlining and drawing on news photographs held back "straight" photography for years.

[jnantz]

photographers have been making composite images and retouching
since the dawn of photography. it is just easier to do it ... not that
it is easier to do it well.

smokestacks, factories and mothers walking babies in a stroller by the boardwalk
were all PRIZED drop ins at the turn of the century in postcards.

as for digital image makers and the banking crisis ..
i don't really understand the comparison. it seems to me that
most of the folks in the general public couldn't care less how an image was made
they just like the image ...

[Wayne Lambert]

I still maintain that we wouldn't appreciate Moonrise nearly as much if it had been cobbled together from eight images on a computer.
Wayne Lambert

[Marko]

I still maintain that we wouldn't appreciate Moonrise nearly as much if it had been cobbled together from eight images on a computer.
Wayne Lambert

If you could tell it's been cobbled together, on the computer or traditionally, it would only mean it's not been done right.

If it's done right, what does it matter how it's done?

Come to think of it, it matters even less if it's not done right...

[Wayne Lambert]

Something about the skill of the photographer I guess...

[Marko]

Precisely. It's not about tools, it's about skill.

What is it exactly that would prevent you from enjoying the digital Moonrise if it had been done skillfully?

After all, Ansel himself foresaw the emergence of digital and expressed very favourably about it. I have no doubt he would use it with the same skill and aplomb had it been available to him.

[Wayne Lambert]

Marko,
I guess for me it has to do with what's real and what's not, and we know where that will lead us...
But more importantly, I'm a photographer and I'm interested in photographic skills; not computer skills.

[Marko]

Hey Wayne,

Personal preference is one thing, trying to set it as an absolute for everybody to follow is quite another.

It is very simple, really - if it was real enough for Ansel even before its time came, it is definitely real enough for me.

[Wayne Lambert]

Marko,
My words seem harsher than I intended. You are right; if all that matters is the final image (as Stieglitz himself said) then there should be no difference between the analog Moonrise and the digital Moonrise. But we are photographers, and Ansel's Moonrise represents some highly skilled picture taking. Most of us, I know I would have, would have botched it. So I respect that image a great deal. All I'm saying is that Ansel's analog Moonrise somehow deserves more respect, appreciation, honor, whatever you want to call it, than a digital Moonrise cobbled together from disparate images. If we were computer artists, not photographers, then perhaps we would honor the digital Moonrise more. But again, if all that matters is the final image, then there should be no difference between the analog image and the digital image, re art.

[Frank Petronio]

Wayne just made the most coherent argument for pure photography in this thread and he is making me rethink myself. Adam's Moonrise is a great example especially since so many stock photographers add moons to their nature photos... and if Adams had added the moon in post (digital or in the darkroom), it just wouldn't be anywhere nearly as great a picture.

So the experience -- Ansel's story about guessing the exposure in his rush -- adds to the picture's value. It is a good story....

Hmm.... so maybe it comes down to whether the picture was "experienced" or created as an illustration. I can accept that.

But I would still probably clone out that distracting park bench, even if I experienced my own Moonrise.

[Joppino]

About this point I think that looking at a picture without knowing anything about how it has been conceived and captured (and possibly adjusted, digitally or not), it is like reading the summary of a book: you can get the sense and the general feeling, but you don't really LIVE it and you don't learn much from it!

(Especially if you are not very experienced and you don't have lot of immagination...)


Marco

[Joseph O'Neil]

From the point of view as somebody interested in preserving history so it can be re-told accurately some day down the road, I have always had a terrible problem with re-touching photographs, in any medium, wet darkroom or computer. To often history is re-written in a revisionist mode to suit a particular cause.

For what it is worth, the left is equally guilty as the right, as is the atheist to the religious. No hands are clean in this effect. I find the most accurate versions of history are those that insult almost everyone, which is perhaps why you almost never hear it. :)

I think the practical difference here is what took an expert with years of experience and expensive equipment (even used, and Adams re-touching machine was never cheap), now a 12 year old with free software off the net and a used $250 computer can do.

It is sorta like comparing a man with a sword who practices a lifetime to master the weapon to a novice with a machine gun The potential is far greater in unskilled hands if we are using photography for historical reasons, or say in a court of law.

I have a friend who is an artist, water colours, that sort of thing, and to him photography is just another medium to produce an image. But the difference is with him, and i think many other artists, they are up front about what you are getting from them.

The thing that scares the living daylights out of me is that I see many programs that automatically download images off a digital camera onto a computer - which is what most of the public tends to use - these programs have "automatic fixes" or similar names built into them.

The software "fixes" redye, contrast, balance, etc, etc, etc. Well what if the picture is of a crime or accident or something as serious? Can we trust these images in a court of law?

Before you all say "oh, and expert can figure or point it out", let me say in *real life* - (and yes, I have been there and I hope none of you have to be there ), not TV land, try and find an expert; try and find an expert who has better credentials than that of the "other side"; try and find one you can afford; and try and find one who will take time to appear in court.

When you get into a situation like that, pulling out a negative and holding it up and saying "look, there it is, no digital manipulation there!" is a huge difference.

joe

[Frank Petronio]

Unless you output that negative from a LVT laser, in which case it would look just like film exposed in the field....

[Marko]

Marko,
My words seem harsher than I intended. You are right; if all that matters is the final image (as Stieglitz himself said) then there should be no difference between the analog Moonrise and the digital Moonrise. But we are photographers, and Ansel's Moonrise represents some highly skilled picture taking. Most of us, I know I would have, would have botched it. So I respect that image a great deal.

But...

You seem to equate picture taking with print making. It is the same camera, same lens, same shutter, same lightmeter and same physics. All that differs is the medium behind the shutter. It would take equal skill to take it right on either medium. And Ansel would have taken that picture on digital or on film all the same. The medium behind the shutter should not matter at all to the real photographer because real photographer would take his/her time to understand that medium and all its characteristics and capabilities, as well as shortcomings, and he would then use that knowledge to make the most out of it.

As in all other arts and crafts, a tool does not a master make. It is the other way around. Only poor practitioners blame the tools.


All I'm saying is that Ansel's analog Moonrise somehow deserves more respect, appreciation, honor, whatever you want to call it, than a digital Moonrise cobbled together from disparate images. If we were computer artists, not photographers, then perhaps we would honor the digital Moonrise more. But again, if all that matters is the final image, then there should be no difference between the analog image and the digital image, re art.

But...

Why "disparate images"? Why "cobbled together"? A skilled photographer wouldn't produce botched images no matter what camera he uses and a skilled print maker, no matter which technology he uses does not cobble things together.

After all, to those of us who perceive photography as an art of representing artist's feelings and vision, then of course it is the final image that matters! Everything else is just craft. Nice, solid traditional craft or nice solid digital craft, doesn't matter either. The craft may be a source of pride for some but it is there only to support the vision expressed in the final image.

Weston is no less Weston for having others print his images.

[willwilson]

Speaking of LVT... I bet Ansel wished he could of scanned and corrected moonrise instead of rolling the dice on using selenium to intensify the foreground. I for one am glad he didn't screw it up, lol. Digital is just a tool. Ansel would of made great prints no matter what his capture medium or post exposure process, granted the new technologies we are privy to may have affected his images in some way but they still would of been great, because he was a great artist. In the end it is the artistic vision that makes a work "important." The story behind it often adds significant interest, especially with great stories like moonrise.

[Stephen Willard]

"I was not surprised to find a giant blank gray sky occupying at least half the image. Either he was a bad photographer or he was going to paint in a different sky once the film was scanned."

Steve, you are an arrogant Ass.

It is entirely possible you were seeing the image he was going to develop and print. Your 'assumption' shows more about your prejudices than anything else.

Why the worry about what people are photographing, how they are doing it or why? Bruce Barnbaum has been manufacturing scenes for years and doing it well. He will continue to do it. He also takes straight images and works magic in the darkroom.

Some of us shoot LF work and contact print in silver and alt processes both. No tricks. But, if some of us decide to use 'digital tricks', what skin off your ass is it?

As to what digital/pixelography can do that traditional film can't? Newspaper work on on deadlines from remote locations is the easiest example. There are many others where pixelography has the advantage in many ways.

Let those who want to combine images do so as they wish. Be content to do your work and leave them to it. Your images may well be about 'truth and ethics' but photography is not. It is about images. 'Truth and ethics' has little to do with it.

Dakotah, I am NOT saying that people who fabricate images by piecing together a lot of different images is a bad thing. In fact, I think digital MAY become the tool known for allowing photography to move past a reality based image into a fictional based image which is a absolutely wonderful.

My complaint is how that person chooses to display the fictional image to the world. If he exhibits it as a fictional piece or an illustration then I will honor and admire his skill and his artistic vision. However, if he presents it to the world as a real life experience, then he is being misleading and not truthful, and thus in my sad opinion the image has been degraded into a "cheap fake". You have to be transparently truthful with your patrons, and to be otherwise, is not right.

[jnantz]

stephen:

i don't think any photography is non-fiction.
it is all a reinterpretation.


pre-visualization, placing things in zones, burning and dodging, retouching prints, negatives
lighing, toning, lith printing .. none of it is the truth, just a shadow of the truth.

[Stephen Willard]

stephen:

i don't think any photography is non-fiction.
it is all a reinterpretation.


pre-visualization, placing things in zones, burning and dodging, retouching prints, negatives
lighing, toning, lith printing .. none of it is the truth, just a shadow of the truth.

jnanian, you are absolutely correct. However, I am using fictional here to mean images that are a composite of a number of images pieced together and is no longer a "real life experience" as used in one of the previous responses. That is all.

[Marko]

I think the practical difference here is what took an expert with years of experience and expensive equipment (even used, and Adams re-touching machine was never cheap), now a 12 year old with free software off the net and a used $250 computer can do.

It is sorta like comparing a man with a sword who practices a lifetime to master the weapon to a novice with a machine gun The potential is far greater in unskilled hands if we are using photography for historical reasons, or say in a court of law.

[...]

The thing that scares the living daylights out of me is that I see many programs that automatically download images off a digital camera onto a computer - which is what most of the public tends to use - these programs have "automatic fixes" or similar names built into them.

Long before digital came to be, you could walk into any supermarket and buy one of those plastic little cameras that you only had to point and click. Then you would drop it in the mail and a week or two later, your images would show in the mail.

I asked my father what happens there and how do the images so magically appear. He told me it was a bunch of little elves sitting in some lab somewhere who would perform their magic on my little plastic camera and turn the film within into shiny, colorful pictures.

I guess the elves have since abandoned those far away labs and moved into that software you can download for free onto your $250 computer so you or your 12-year old don't have to send the camera away and wait for pictures but get them right away.

Or was it the trolls, can't quite remember now, it's been a long time since I was a kid and believed in fairy tales. I have since learned that those little shiny images had as much to do with Adams then as they do now.

;)



When you get into a situation like that, pulling out a negative and holding it up and saying "look, there it is, no digital manipulation there!" is a huge difference.

joe

Sure, only a bit of ND grad to darken the sky, a bit of polarizer to kill reflections, a warming filter to attenuate the blue, then push or pull development in a developer of choice, intensifying, bleaching, maybe even some flashing, perhaps even a bit of USM somewhere along the way...

But no sir, no manipulation there whatsoever.

Yeah, right, and the Santa's coming to town soon too... I mean, if you're still scared of little elves or trolls or whatever, you must believe in Santa as well...

:rolleyes:

[Joseph O'Neil]

Sure, only a bit of ND grad to darken the sky, a bit of polarizer to kill reflections, a warming filter to attenuate the blue, then push or pull development in a developer of choice, intensifying, bleaching, maybe even some flashing, perhaps even a bit of USM somewhere along the way...

But no sir, no manipulation there whatsoever.

Yeah, right, and the Santa's coming to town soon too... I mean, if you're still scared of little elves or trolls or whatever, you must believe in Santa as well...

:rolleyes:

-snip-

I see your smiley faces, so I'll take your comments in the good humour they are intended to be. However, I am deadly serious. perhaps the two occasions in my life will illustraite this.

the first occasion having an actual negative in a court room - totally for real here - was about 20 years ago when my wife was falsely accused of theft but instead of criminal charges, she was sued in small claims court.

To boil down a very long story, it was me pulling out pictures - prints I had made in my darkroom that showed she was innocent - that I was accused of manipulating the image. I then pulled out the original negative, and it ended all arguement right there - almost like a moment out of a bad Perry Mason episode.

Thing was - this was over 20 years ago, long before the age of digital manipulation.

The second time was just last year. My sister was charged with murder. Made the front pages of the newspaper, TV, radio, etc, etc. A year ago next month, the headlines in the newspapers read "Exonerated!" Thank God.

I will not go into details, but one of the turning points in our favor where digital photographs. Again, long, long long details, but I cannot more honestly relate to you or anybody who is listened and has the time to take this to heart - it may be all acedemic to you, perhaps even something to laugh about, but when one your immediate family is falsely accused of murder, and fate swings on a digital photograph and the ability to prove that NOTHING has been altered in any way, all these "minor" details become the very existence of your life.

I mean no dis-respect, arguement, harm or ill feelling towards anyone here, only to point out, until you walk in my shoes, you have no idea, just no idea of what it's really like, and I pray to God none of you ever do.

joe

[jnantz]

jnanian, you are absolutely correct. However, I am using fictional here to mean images that are a composite of a number of images pieced together and is no longer a "real life experience" as used in one of the previous responses. That is all.

i guess i understand what you are saying.
but i don't think composite images are less less-real than unreal real-photography ..
whether the composite is made in a darkroom, in camera or on a screen ...
the final image is just as fabricated as anything else that is captured with a camera,
film, paper, glass, tin, polished metal ...

i guess if the person selling or presenting the images suggests that they are anything
more or less than they really are, maybe that is something to get upset about.
(did the people you chatted with suggest that their final prints were anything more than
"pretty pictures" ... ? )

as for me ..
i like unreal real life images of less than real fabricated realities.

[Kirk Gittings]

From my point of view the actual scene consists of a kind of factual bone structure on which I build an image. On editorial photographs or HABS reports I simply try to reveal that factual bone structure in the most technically proficient way. On my art photography or allot of my advertising/architectural photography, I envelope that bone structure (more or less) a kind of expressive flesh that more represents my feelings etc. about a scene. This is done primarily by manipulating tone, tonal relationships and color. I do not introduce elements though I oftentimes remove distracting elements. This is true regardless of printing method though I have far more control in digital printing. I have never replaced a sky, though I have so heavily burned and dodged some that most people would consider them manipulated, which they are. In all cases I try to give the viewer an enhanced experience of the scene that expresses what I see and feel beyond the visual facts. But my work is about places so the original scene is important. But seeing to me is not a one dimensional representation of the visual facts. It is the difference between art and documentation. I deeply respect people who can do it all in a truly straight photograph (AA was not a truly straight photographer but maybe Cartier Bresson?), but I need more tools and effort to get my point across.

[Richard M. Coda]

I can't believe I read 9 pages of this and no one mentioned Jerry Uelsmann. What would your opinions be of him? Just curious. He did ALL this stuff before Photoshop was even an idea.

I personally use digital as a tool to accomplish specific tasks that cannot be done in a darkroom. By that I mean "precise" burning/dodging/contrast adjustments and removing defects (perfectly placed dust, etc). And to rescue bad negatives of good images. I have also used it on one occasion to make a silver negative from a DSLR file. It's the flag on the main page of my website. That was from a Fuji S2... it was the only camera I had with me at the time. Photoshop allowed me to individually work on the red, white and blue in that image, and then precisely convert it to B&W. Then I had a 4x5 LVT negative made and printed it traditionally in the darkroom. It is a beautiful silver print.

I have a friend who admits he is a LF/film bigot (he hates everything digital). He loves that print, but he can't get over the fact that it started as a digital file.

[Merg Ross]

I immediately thought of Uelsmann yesterday when this thread began. However, his work is so obviously manipulated that it leaves little suspicion to the contrary.Great work though, well ahead of his time for sure.

[Barry Trabitz]

Kirk,

Thank you for your definitition of what makes a photograph art.

Barry

[Bruce Watson]

From my point of view the actual scene consists of a kind of factual bone structure on which I build an image. On editorial photographs or HABS reports I simply try to reveal that factual bone structure in the most technically proficient way. On my art photography or allot of my advertising/architectural photography, I envelope that bone structure (in more or less) a kind of expressive flesh that more represents my feelings etc. about a scene. This is done primarily by manipulating tone, tonal relationships and color. I do not introduce elements though I oftentimes remove distracting elements. This is true regardless of printing method though I have far more control in digital printing. I have never replaced a sky, though I have so heavily burned and dodged some that most people would consider them manipulated, which they are. In all cases I try to give the viewer an enhanced experience of the scene that expresses what I see and feel beyond the visual facts. But my work is about places so the original scene is important. But seeing to me is not a one dimensional representation of the visual facts. It is the difference between art and documentation. I deeply respect people who can do it all in a truly straight photograph (AA was not a truly straight photographer but maybe Cartier Bresson?), but I need more tools and effort to get my point across.

Well said!

[Marko]

Hey Joe,

Yes, what I said was intended to be in good humour. It did come with just a touch - make it a few touches - of annoyance, though. :)

The good humour is because I do respect your preference and your manners, and the annoyance is strictly caused by the apples-to-oranges-to-bananas comparison you tried to pull there...

Now, seriously myself, comparing a kid with freebe software on el cheapo Windows box to Ansel Adams no less is not even apples-to-oranges, it's more like apples to cinder blocks. That kind of argument is expressly designed to end the discussion by derision and I am pretty sure you didn't mean it that way, otherwise I wouldn't be wasting time replying.

Bottom line is, we either have serious discussion or we move the circus to The Lounge so people can ignore it.

The other no less serious aspect - the bananas part, if you will - is the forensics you mention. Your family (mis)fortunes aside, we are either talking photography as an art or photography as a documentation/forensics tool. Those are two totally different sets of requirements and you can't use one to put the other down.

Marko

[Stephen Willard]

From my point of view the actual scene consists of a kind of factual bone structure on which I build an image. On editorial photographs or HABS reports I simply try to reveal that factual bone structure in the most technically proficient way. On my art photography or allot of my advertising/architectural photography, I envelope that bone structure (in more or less) a kind of expressive flesh that more represents my feelings etc. about a scene. This is done primarily by manipulating tone, tonal relationships and color. I do not introduce elements though I oftentimes remove distracting elements. This is true regardless of printing method though I have far more control in digital printing. I have never replaced a sky, though I have so heavily burned and dodged some that most people would consider them manipulated, which they are. In all cases I try to give the viewer an enhanced experience of the scene that expresses what I see and feel beyond the visual facts. But my work is about places so the original scene is important. But seeing to me is not a one dimensional representation of the visual facts. It is the difference between art and documentation. I deeply respect people who can do it all in a truly straight photograph (AA was not a truly straight photographer but maybe Cartier Bresson?), but I need more tools and effort to get my point across.

Kirk, I concur with what you are saying, and that is were I park my camera some of the time. However, many of my images are an accurate replication of the actual scene as best as I could remember it. I do make small changes to the negative in terms of both the gray scale and color scale to compensate for the short comings of color negative film. In those cases, I felt the simple spender of what I saw is all that was needed and decided not to intrude on the beauty of nature. I am fully aware that you think my work is pumped up, but a lot of that is from lack of standards for computer screens. Flat screens tend to overstate the color and contrast of my images on the web and is something I just found out.

In other cases, I will resort to manipulating both the gray scale and color scale to achieve an expressive image of what I saw and FELT and change the mood to reflect my state of mind. I do not alter the optical reality of the original scene in anyway because I want all of my images to be grounded in a real life experience. However, the types of changes I make to the mood of the print are not drive by some obscure unclear magical transformation of inner feeling to a final print. Instead, I have started to borrow from fiction that uses story, theme, and symbolism to communicate with my viewers. This approach is far different then most people do in the visual arts and is a process I am still experimenting with and perfecting. I have applied this approach to only some of my newer work. The narratives that are posted with each of my images on my website become the stories, the composition embraces the theme, and the elements and colors I choose to include in the composition are the symbols. Note, I do all my editing in the field by changing lenses, perspective, and format, and thus, I must have a clear understanding of the story I am trying to tell before I even take the photograph. My newer expressive images are thus highly confessional in nature and tell an explicit true story about myself that is way beyond the literal rendering of the print. I hope to introduce a new thread about what I am doing some time in the future to help me gain clarity and insight about this process. As always, I am sure the thread will be passionate and controversial in nature. Its my style, but that is when people are at their best and the greatest clarity of thought is achieved.

From this thread I hope to develop some standards of ethics of modern day photography and actually apply them to my website so as not to mislead my patrons and also to establish some boundaries of behavior for myself. I am considering labeling my images to identify which ones are documentary in nature and which ones are expressive nature on my website and actually writing about many of the things that were discussed here on this thread.

[Alan Davenport]

This thread hasn't presented anything we haven't heard and rehashed a hundred times already. Although Stephen didn't couch his original post as being strictly a "film vs. digital" debate, this seems to be what it boils down to: straight wet-room photosensitive prints, versus anything done using a digital workflow (where, presumably, the output must be assumed to be a false representation of the original subject.)

To the argument that wet/analog photographs are somehow more honest, "real" representations of the world, I say "Bull." No man-made image in the history of the universe, be it a photograph, a painting or scratches on a cave wall, has ever or will ever be an accurate representation of the real world. And a digitally-processed image can be every bit as honest or dishonest as a wet print. Photographers have been changing skies, adding objects and in general remaking the negative's image to fit their vision, for almost as long as photography has existed. I gotta say though, that compared to Kodalith masks, pin regisration easels and all that goes with them, digital sure as hell is a lot easier. Aside from the fact that the film itself imposes its own interpretation and restriction on the image it records, the photographer cannot help but add his/her own biases and preconceptions to the print he/she makes. Ansel Adams likened the negative to a musical score, and the print to the performance; a print is always influenced by the interpretation of the performer.

And since the OP also brought St. Ansel into the game, a few choice AA quotes:


"As his work evolves, the photographer should plan to alter and refine his equipment to meet changing requirements."


"I eagerly await new concepts and processes. I believe that the electronic image will be the next major advance."

and my personal favorite:


"Only the print contains the artist's meaning and message."

Which brings us back to the original guestion. Which wasn't about the public buying "photographic reality," but "photographic art." The print-buying public is not particularly influenced by whether (or not) the image is an accurate representation of the subject. Maybe they simply buy what they like.

As in all previous such discussions, the bottom line for the Luddite position is an attempt to retain (or add) value to work being done with non-digital processes. Usually not stated, but nonetheless the driving force behind the Luddite position, is simple fear: fear of processes not mastered, fear of change, and mainly fear of loss of income as more and more non-Luddite image makers shift the market away from Luddite-processed photographs.

[Joseph O'Neil]

Now, seriously myself, comparing a kid with freebe software on el cheapo Windows box to Ansel Adams no less is not even apples-to-oranges, it's more like apples to cinder blocks. That kind of argument is expressly designed to end the discussion by derision and I am pretty sure you didn't mean it that way, otherwise I wouldn't be wasting time replying.


-snip-

Hi;
I would agree with you on that point, but dealing with the general public, I have found that many people out there do not.

First off, I was thinking of an el-cheapo linux box, just to split hairs. :D

Seriously though, desktop publishing and graphic arts is a small part of my day to day bread and butter. I'll have somebody bring in an abomination of an image and when you tell them the rates of cost of having it "cleaned up" they go through the roof.

I've given up the number of times I've been told "my kid can do better than that for a free!"

The answer of course is always for them to go ahead, but my point is, while you, I and others here feel it an apples vs oranges debate, the general public very often does not.

There are a lot of highly educated "professionals" in non-art and non-photographic areas of employment who don't see it that way either.

Be it art, commercial use, historical research or forensics and the law, I have found out, first hand experience on several occasions, that the reality of the world is many people do not see any difference.

My apologies if I am wandering off topic or overreacting (likely true on both counts :) ) over what should be a simple, pleasant "what is art" type of debate. Years ago I would of never seen myself taking this position or saying the things I do, but life teaches you some interesting lessions, often on the hard end of things.

For example, the picture that saved or butts in small claims court many years ago was taken as an art shot. Seriously. I had zero forbearance that image would end up on the forensic side of the fence. In that case, quite litterally I would say, the judge turned the apple into a cinder block. :)

Just something to bear in mind, in case any of you end up there. do whatever you want with your images, but take my advice, always keep one, untouched original. You just never know.....

[Tim Hyde]

"This may be kind of like mortgage loans and credit card practices the banking industry has engaged in for the past eight years. What goes around can catch up with you guys and completely undermine your discipline."

Um, Stephen....It might be a wee bit of a stretch to say there is a bubble in landscape photography right now. In fact, last time I looked, the cheap fakes at Wal-Mart are more expensive than the prints on your site. This market doesn't have far to go if it crashes.

[Stephen Willard]

Which brings us back to the original guestion. Which wasn't about the public buying "photographic reality," but "photographic art." The print-buying public is not particularly influenced by whether (or not) the image is an accurate representation of the subject. Maybe they simply buy what they like.

As in all previous such discussions, the bottom line for the Luddite position is an attempt to retain (or add) value to work being done with non-digital processes. Usually not stated, but nonetheless the driving force behind the Luddite position, is simple fear: fear of processes not mastered, fear of change, and mainly fear of loss of income as more and more non-Luddite image makers shift the market away from Luddite-processed photographs.

Alan, many of things you have noted may not be true. Here is are some things to consider:

1. Digital photography has not impacted my sales. My sales as of the end of August are up 400% for the year, and I sold a bunch of stuff in September and October so it could be more than that.

2. The photographic patron sees a photograph and assumes it is a photograph, and therefore, they conclude it must be an image of a real live experience, and then they buy it. The effect of this behavior leads one to perhaps falsely conclude that they do not care if it is real or not. I suspect that if you properly labeled the photographs that hang in galleries to illustrate the extent of changes that are made, then you might just see a different consuming behavior.

3. Mangleson's biggest sellers now are panoramic landscapes. I was just at the Denver airport where his most profitable gallery is located. All of his wildlife images are digitally generated because that was the only way he could produce sharp 30x40 prints from a 35mm slide. However, all of the landscapes are optically printed. The sales person I talked with made a big deal of this fact when I was looking at one of his landscapes to buy. She said that their patrons are gun shy of digital prints and want traditional prints because they are the real thing. The general buying public I think is smarter than you realize and they already begun to view digital in a negative way for the very reasons I have discussed here, and from where I sit, it is getting a lot worse.

4. This is not about digital or film, but simply ethics and gaining some clarity into what that means.

[Paul Kierstead]

I'm guessing the OP must consider painters to be total frauds.

As to commercial success ... well, McDonalds is the most successful restaurant in the world.

[Stephen Willard]

I'm guessing the OP must consider painters to be total frauds.

As to commercial success ... well, McDonalds is the most successful restaurant in the world.

Absolutely not because their art form does not imply a real life experience in the same manner as a photograph does.

[jnantz]

Absolutely not because their art form does not imply a real life experience in the same manner as a photograph does.

i think this is what i don't really understand.

not all photography tries to imply real life experience.

there is always the OPTION to make a photograph as true
to the original scene as possible .. unless it is as straight as
a print / camera work can be, that is not what most photographs tend to be.

it is the difference karsh's portrait of churchill with and without cigar ..

[Donald Miller]

What I don't understand is why some of us think that our counterfeit copies (read that to say all photographs...traditional or digital) of our personal experiences are so darned important...come on lighten up we got to quit reading our own press!!!!

This whole matter has gotten to the point of being ludicrous...Maybe it's my age and point in life but I don't see anything that makes me so damned important that would indicate that my personal experiences or their record are particularly noteworthy...never have been and most likely will never be.

[Drew Wiley]

Some people think Denny's is a great restaurant. Some people think Kinkade is a gifted
painter. A lot of people think that all those hyped up honey-and-jam on top of sugar
cube colors they see in digital prints everywhere are remarkable photography. Never underestimate the bad taste of the public. That's not the fault of the medium, however. Digital just makes it more efficient to pull off. But I wouldn't confuse
corny creative license with ethics. What I do consider unethical is someone like Fatali
claiming he waited for days on end for special light, when it's perfectly obvious to
anyone but a tourist that certain scenes were concocted in the darkrooom, using
two or even three different transparencies. People have been assembling nonrealistic
images long before the word "digital" or "Photoshop" ever existed. That's their prerogative. But this becomes dishonest once it becomes marketed as something
someone clalims to have actually witnessed with their own eyes.

[Tim Hyde]

Here is a photographer, Sze Tsung Leong, who shoots 4x10 with much of the image "blank gray sky." He may be a "bad photographer" according to the OP, but his gallery recently sold the last one in this edition (of 5) for $25,000.
http://www.szetsungleong.com/image/0701-098_Canale-della-27825.jpg

[Stephen Willard]

i think this is what i don't really understand.

not all photography tries to imply real life experience.

there is always the OPTION to make a photograph as true
to the original scene as possible .. unless it is as straight as
a print / camera work can be, that is not what most photographs tend to be.

it is the difference karsh's portrait of churchill with and without cigar ..

jnanian, those images that have crossed the threshold and the optical reality of the original scene has been altered AND it is appearent that is what they ar doing, then no explanation is needed. It is clear that they are not trying to sell it as a real life experience. However, for those who alter the optical reality of the original scene and then pitch as the real thing whether its implied by just hanging it on the wall or explicitly delcared to be the real thing, is where the problem lies.

Crossing the line and altering the optical reality of an image has not been done to the unprecident levels that digital photographers are engaging in that practice today. My opening statement said is was rampant, and I still stand by that statement. You digital guys are in uncharted waters, and I believe the ice is thin where you walk.

It is like the banking scam. It is legal, but it is deceiving and lacks truth in advertizing. When you guys get caught, and you will get caught, it will not show up as an economic melt down like the banking industry has caused, but rather your sales will simply decline or stop altogether.

So if your sales are not so hot, declining, or do not exist at all, it may be because you are shooting digital, although there could be many other reasons as well. There is one saving grace that LF digital photographers have over the digital camera guy, LFers can prove their prints are a real life experience by simply allowing the original negative or slide to be inspect by any customer. I intend to anounce on my website that I am willing to make all negatives available for inspection. Of course, I will be the only one who handles them. Simply call and make an appointment and bring your print. If you felt that you have been mislead in any way, then I will refund your money in full including any shipping charges incurred.

[Donald Miller]

jnanian, those images that have crossed the threshold and the optical reality of the original scene has been altered AND it is appearent that is what they ar doing, then no explanation is needed. It is clear that they are not trying to sell it as a real life experience. However, for those who alter the optical reality of the original scene and then pitch as the real thing whether its implied by just hanging it on the wall or explicitly delcared to be the real thing, is where the problem lies.

Crossing the line and altering the optical reality of an image has not been done to the unprecident levels that digital photographers are engaging in that practice today. My opening statement said is was rampant, and I still stand by that statement. You digital guys are in uncharted waters, and I believe the ice is thin where you walk.

It is like the banking scam. It is legal, but it is deceiving and lacks truth in advertizing. When you guys get caught, and you will get caught, it will not show up as an economic melt down like the banking industry has caused, but rather your sales will simply decline or stop altogether.

So if your sales are not so hot, declining, or do not exist at all, it may be because you are shooting digital, although there could be many other reasons as well. There is one saving grace that LF digital photographers have over the digital camera guy, LFers can prove their prints are a real life experience by simply allowing the original negative or slide to be inspect by any customer. I intend to anounce on my website that I am willing to make all negatives available for inspection. Of course, I will be the only one who handles them. Simply call and make an appointment and bring your print. If you felt that you have been mislead in any way, then I will refund your money in full including any shipping charges incurred.

It would appear to me that there are some photographers who equate pure representation as creative art...that is simply not true. I don't care how you package it, purely representational photography is simply doing what anyone with the same tools and the same knowledge could accomplish. Representational photography has it's place...advertising, portraiture, forensics to name a few. If you or I want to consider ourselves as a photographic artists than we had better be prepared to do something that only we can do. That would probably amount to doing exactly what you find to be distasteful to your sensibilities.


I will raise the question that I posed to myself awhile back. What makes you think that I or anyone else should care whether you had an epipheny while experiencing some "real experience".

If you want to classify your photography as pure representation that is one thing...but artistic creation it is not. Anyone who thinks that recording something with the greatest amount of fidelity as being creative is missing the boat by about three universes.

[Kirk Gittings]

If you felt that you have been mislead in any way, then I will refund your money in full including any shipping charges incurred.

Will "misleading" include oversaturated color?

[Stephen Willard]

It would appear to me that there are some photographers who equate pure representation as creative art...that is simply not true. I don't care how you package it, purely representational photography is simply doing what anyone with the same tools and the same knowledge could accomplish. Representational photography has it's place...advertising, portraiture, forensics to name a few. If you or I want to consider ourselves as a photographic artists than we had better be prepared to do something that only we can do. That would probably amount to doing exactly what you find to be distasteful to your sensibilities.


I will raise the question that I posed to myself awhile back. What makes you think that I or anyone else should care whether you had an epipheny while experiencing some "real experience".

If you want to classify your photography as pure representation that is one thing...but artistic creation it is not. Anyone who thinks that recording something with the greatest amount of fidelity as being creative is missing the boat by about three universes.

Donald, this thread is primarily about landscape which can be representational or expressive.

The only creativity that resides in pure representational photography is the lens you choose, the perspective you choose, the format you choose, the composition you create, the placement of gray scale values, and in your willingness to wait for the right light. Come to think of it, that is quite a lot.

Let face it, there are representational photographers who always seem to be at the right place at the right time and who construct amazing images in the field that none other can do. In my opinion they are fine artist, but there are also other forms of photgraphic art as well.

All I am saying is that you better be truthful with your patrons about what you are doing. A full disclosure in our artist statement is a good thing to do.

[roteague]

Will "misleading" include oversaturated color?

You are taking a bit on yourself, aren't you Kirk. Do you really know how Stephen sees colors naturally? Or, are you just ASSUMING that no one can see colors in a saturated manner? Or, perhaps you are using it just to minimize his technique/film choice because you can't (or won't) agree with his viewpoint?


By seeing, I DON'T mean seeing photographically, I mean physically with the eyes.

[roteague]

It would appear to me that there are some photographers who equate pure representation as creative art...that is simply not true. I don't care how you package it, purely representational photography is simply doing what anyone with the same tools and the same knowledge could accomplish. Representational photography has it's place...advertising, portraiture, forensics to name a few. If you or I want to consider ourselves as a photographic artists than we had better be prepared to do something that only we can do.

What role would you consider the element of time to have?

[Kirk Gittings]

You are taking a bit on yourself, aren't you Kirk. Do you really know how Stephen sees colors naturally? Or, are you just ASSUMING that no one can see colors in a saturated manner? Or, perhaps you are using it just to minimize his technique/film choice because you can't (or won't) agree with his viewpoint?


By seeing, I DON'T mean seeing photographically, I mean physically with the eyes.

No, but you sure are reading allot into a simple question. I am asking a question to clarify his use of the term misleading. By looking at his website and reading his posts his use of the term seems to only refer only to misleading content based on what is in the negative. Why stop with content? Why not just a straight print with no tone or color manipulation? Why show the client a negative (I seem to remember he makes C prints so maybe he only shoots color negatives?). What except content will a client see in a negative? Why not show them a straight print so one can show them the artistry in the print? Or better yet just show them a a video of the scene? I would suggest all art is misleading from the point of view that it is creative, personal and an interpretation of reality.

[Marko]

You are taking a bit on yourself, aren't you Kirk. Do you really know how Stephen sees colors naturally? Or, are you just ASSUMING that no one can see colors in a saturated manner? Or, perhaps you are using it just to minimize his technique/film choice because you can't (or won't) agree with his viewpoint?


By seeing, I DON'T mean seeing photographically, I mean physically with the eyes.

Do you put on your sunglasses because you see the light as too dim or too bright?

Do you crank up the volume on your stereo because you can't hear it well enough or because it's already too loud?

Do you add spices to your food because it's too spicy or too bland?

Do you think any of the above would represent manipulation of the natural state of light, sound or food?

[Donald Miller]

Donald, this thread is primarily about landscape which can be representational or expressive.

The only creativity that resides in pure representational photography is the lens you choose, the perspective you choose, the format you choose, the composition you create, the placement of gray scale values, and in your willingness to wait for the right light. Come to think of it, that is quite a lot.

Let face it, there are representational photographers who always seem to be at the right place at the right time and who construct amazing images in the field that none other can do. In my opinion they are fine artist, but there are also other forms of photgraphic art as well.

All I am saying is that you better be truthful with your patrons about what you are doing. A full disclosure in our artist statement is a good thing to do.

Thank you for your response. I will say that you are approaching this from the position that you most often deal with this...or at least I assume that to be true. I would imagine that you photograph primarily landscapes. However there are a number of us who do not engage in landscape photography for a variety of reasons. For some on us landscape photography becomes boringly unfulfilling in it's practice. Why??? Because there have been enough landscape photographs to satisfy the world at large for at least the next five hundred years. Thus I will say that purely representational photography is no more creative than building a house from plans that an architect has drawn. The act of creation, in that example, would be the architectural vision as expressed in the plans for the construction. Everything else in the act of building the house is not creative.

Now please understand that if pure representational photography is what lights your jets then by all means do it to your heart's content. But I would ask you not to attempt to denigrate those of us that use a variety of tools to accomplish something that is totally new and unknown in objective reality.

I have spent a fair number of years doing landscape photography shooting everything from 4X5 to 12X20 and I did that until I realized that there was absolutely nothing that was creative about what I was doing. I came to the stark realization that I was doing the equivalent of building a house from someone else's plans. At that point I made a move into something that allows me much greater latitude and provisions of creative input than landscape photography for the purpose of making photographic still images.

Beyond that I know for a fact that collectors of photographic art could care less what has been done in creating a print. They only care about the print; the creative impetus of the artist. "Pure" photography does not sell on it's basis of "purity" alone.

[Donald Miller]

What role would you consider the element of time to have?


Time is a nebulous construct of the human mind. To truly depict the aspect of time in photography one needs to move into something apart from still photography. It is for that reason that I am doing time lapse photography along with video in a preponderance of my work today.

[PaulRicciardi]

I would suggest all art is misleading from the point of view that it is creative, personal and an interpretation of reality.

Agreed
Honestly I don't know why we are even having this discussion-all photos are interpretations and abstractions The very act of snapping the shutter is inherently "misleading" because you are compressing a 3D scene into 2D nevermind all of the filters, film effects, developer choice etc etc etc.

Frankly I think that some people are overreacting about what consumers want. Most people care more about the image than the process. People who are doing hack-jobs in photoshop probably aren't going to sell many prints because it's obvious something is "wrong" with the photo. Nevermind such trite digital crap like the aforementioned "eyes in the sky".

If you're going to be a photographic "artist" then just do whatever you want. Express yourself. That's part of the beauty of artistic photography. I make a living as a photojournalist-I go to my assignment, I take my photos and give them to my editor. The photos see the press and I see the money. My LF work is personal, expressive, and not very representational.

I guess what I'm getting at is do what you want, see the way you want to see, make the photos that make you happy and for the love of all photographic get the hell off of your high horse. I'd rather not hear how I'm "unethical" and "wrong" because I manipulate my artistic images to make them different. I tend to have a very loose, dream-ish way of seeing as an artistic photographer and I couldn't get that in my photos without oddball methods of exposure and development. By the way I do my manipulations in camera-but they're still manipulations. And I like it that way-the photos are not representational documentary photos and they are not meant to be. They are a means of relaxation, enjoyment, and expression which are all things I don't get at the job.

I swear this debate reminds me of two similar but different religious groups arguing over who is "right" when there is no concrete answer to the question. Just coexist, enjoy the image making process, keep trying to make a few dollars, and enjoy the other LF photographers in the world. Perhaps instead of being concerned with the ethics of image making we should be more concerned with the ethics of simply being nice people. But what do I know, I'm 19 and idealistic.

[phaedrus]

One of the difficulties with the original poster's question and this subsequent discussion going on here is that ethical and aesthetic values don't mix well. Art is unethical. Granted, it can be shanghaied into supporting one set of ethical values or the other. And it certainly can have more or less aesthetic refinement and depth, a value call that is not only in the eye of the beholder.
It is my impression that we're seeing more and more work done with digital capture or output devices that has plenty of these last mentioned qualities. But still, it's dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants.

[jnantz]

stephen

if i use a lens that is custom made and i shoot landscapes the same way you do,
same film, same filters, same lab, same everything ... and the processed film looks nothing like yours because of the lens i use interprets
the scene in a different way, would i be in the same boat as the people who have
"crossed the threshold and the optical reality of the original scene" ?

just wondering ..

john

[John Kasaian]

Stephen, part of the problem I see with your rationale is that it takes responsibilty away from the photographer. Even a "straight" shot of the landscape isn't void of the talents of whomever is behind the lens.

I feel if the purpose is to document, then the straighter the better, but if it is to create art then there's a whole different ball game and if it is to sell prints to a target audience, then you have additional considerations to deal with. All these are manifest in the choices a photographer must make.

None of this is without precedence! Your digital friends are successfully selling images which the image buying public wants.
That's honest work IMHO.

You're doing what is important to you. What does it matter what the digital image buying public wants? Certainly there are venues that can appreciate "straight-er" photography just as there are venues that appreciate bokeh swirlies and alternative processes.

Don't sweat over what others are doing but rather spend your energy on your own journey. Have fun! :)

[Wayne Lambert]

It would appear to me that there are some photographers who equate pure representation as creative art...that is simply not true. I don't care how you package it, purely representational photography is simply doing what anyone with the same tools and the same knowledge could accomplish.


Donald, your comment raised a question in my mind. Would you, or anyone here, consider Strand's portraits in Tir A'Mhurain art? What about Weston's Manual Hernandez Galvan Shooting? Or I could also use as an example the portrait of Byso on my website's home page (thus my particular interest in this matter). I have always thought of these examples as both representational photography and as art. If I understand you correctly you are saying that if they are representational then they are not creative and, by extension, not art (most of us considering art to be a creative process). I just returned this week from Phoenix where I saw the Weston show which included Galvan Shooting (which by the way was my favorite print in the show). The show was in the Phoenix Museum of Art. How do we reconcile this?

[Filmnut]

I won't go too far into this, except to say that I agree that almost all images get manipulated to some extent or another, but where do you draw the line? It depends on you, and what you are doing with your images.
I'll tell you what I did a few years ago. I did a nice view of a mountain with a spectacular late day sky above and a bit behind it, so I shot it straight, no filter, and then with a red filter, as the sky looked like it would need some help to bring out the best detail.
When I processed the film (Fuji Acros in Xtol), and made contacts, I had a great shot of the mountain, with a mediocre sky, and a great shot of the sky, with the green of the trees covering the mountain lacking detail. So I scanned the film, and dropped the good sky into the shot with the great mountain and bad sky, then it was digitally printed onto fibre paper using a Durst Lambda, courtesy of my friends at Elevator in Toronto, one of the first to offer this kind service. It then looked like I wanted it to in the first place!
So, I mixed and matched digitally, but just to get the look of what I saw when I first shot the picture, but it would of been very difficult, or impossible to do as good a job traditionally, as I was a printer for a professional lab for about 25 years, until digital took over, and then I learned the new stuff.
In closing, I do traditional photography for my own work, but do use the digital workflow when it makes sense for me to do so.
Keith

[Kirk Gittings]

Wayne, one point to consider. B&W images of a colored reality are from the get go a rather large step away from reality, a purely aesthetic choice these days since the maturity of color films and paper.

[Wayne Lambert]

Wayne, one point to consider. B&W images of a colored reality are from the get go a rather large step away from reality, a purely aesthetic choice these days since the maturity of color films and paper.

That's true, Kirk. And I probably shouldn't even have brought up that hoary question of What's art? But whatever it is, it has to be defined in much broader terms than Donald's. The black-and-white, but still pretty representational, photograph of Galvan moved me. And for me that's one of the qualities of art; it produces an emotional response. By this criterion, the Strand and Weston examples I mentioned above are, to many viewers, powerful art. And most would agree that they are way down toward the representational end of the representational-nonrepresentational continuum.

[Andrew O'Neill]

So... when you move your camera up a little higher, or over a little to the left in order to exclude that park bench or those nasty telephone wires, aren't you just as guilty of "manipulating the image"?

Isn't this image management, an important part about working out the best composition/perspective? How is this the same as manipulating the image on the computer??

[Paul Kierstead]

This is really quite ludicrous. I can easily visit some horrid polluted industrial place and shoot a pastoral landscape by careful selection of viewpoint. We all know places like this. To say it is ok simply because it is optically "pure" is hogwash. Ethics are about intention, not technique.

A picture is an expression of the photographer. If someone takes it as an accurate representation of reality, that is their mistake (and a very naive one at that), not the photographers unless the photographer has taken pains to say it is reality. Most prints I see don't even list an exact location; you couldn't take them as a representation of reality since you don't even know where they are.

Seriously, who believes photograph-as-truth now-a-days? You'd have to be particularly naive to believe such a thing. Next thing you will tell me is that people think they can consistently get very significantly above prime rates of return over the long run by investing their retirement savings into the stock market.

[Marko]

Isn't this image management, an important part about working out the best composition/perspective? How is this the same as manipulating the image on the computer??

How is it different? Manipulation is manipulation, computer or not.

I think we can safely and rationally agree that not all processing is manipulation.

The sticky part is that the luddites among us won't admit that a fair degree of manipulation can be and indeed is done using traditional methods and that equally fair amount of computer processing does not represent manipulation...

In the grand scheme of things, we are all just collectively wasting our time here because it doesn't really matter - in a few more years, say 10 or so, the question will resolve itself anyway. Organically, so to speak, following the laws of the market. ;)

[Tim Hyde]

One thing seems clear to me: there is a lot of room for disagreement around these artistic questions but it is fatuous and unnecessary to drag "ethics" into the debate. These are aesthetic matters, not moral ones.

[Stephen Willard]

Will "misleading" include oversaturated color?

Kirk, I leave that judgement call to my customers. If they are happy with the inspection, then they will keep the print. If they are not and want a refund then I will give them one as long as the photograph is new like condition. Again, at this point I am considering many different ideas and concepts before I finalizing my website which is why I still consider it a prototype. This is just one of many ideas.

[Stephen Willard]

All of the ideas and considerations mentioned here are excellent and worthy. Personally, I am a fan of many different art forms like Pollock's paintings. I do not know exactly why I like his stuff, but I do. I think many of his works are extremely powerful.

That said, the ethics I have put forth has nothing to do with the art you are practicing in itself, but rather, it lies in how you communicate what you are doing to your customers. I believe it is very important that you do not mislead the patron. That you develop a very clear and forthright artist statement detailing both your craft and artistic process. That is all I am saying, and nothing more.

On the other side of the coin, if you are not forthright with the patron then there will be repercussions in the market place. This is particularly applicable to the modern day photographer who can easily create an image from pieces of many different images. If he tells his patrons what he is doing in his artist statement, and it is consistent with his artistic vision, then there is no harm. I would consider his behavior highly ethical and worthy no matter how manipulated the image is. However, if he tells his customer that his images are real life experiences then that is a lie, and I would say he is unethical. If he says nothing and the image looks like a real life experience as QT has suggested, then in my book, that is a lie also because the patron will assume it is a real life experience based on the history of photography which has traditionally been about realism.

Unfortunately, it is my belief there are many digital photographers who are engaged in the process of piecing together an image and then letting the patron believe it is a real life experience. It is this behavior that deeply concerns me because of the possible negative repercussions in the market place for all of us, including myself.

[jnantz]

stephen,

forgive me for being so confused, but
you are upset because you believe that digital images makers
do not fully disclose how their images of idealized landscapes were made?

it seems that they fully disclosed their methods to you, why don't you believe that
people are "up front" with their methodology for creating photographic images?
did they tell you that they are pulling the wool over their client's eyes?

it seems to me that it is not an easy task to "cobble together" images to create something
new, just as it was not easy 12, 35 or 100 years ago.
as it is not easy to retouch negatives with leads, as people did ( and still do )
it takes time and experience to do a good enough job that a negative can take a
16x20 enlargement without seeing the strokes of a freehand retoucher.

as people have suggested over and over in this thread "altered reality"
and "photographic reality" are pretty much the same thing ... none of it is real ...
no matter what camera placement, filtering, film, developer/s, printing methods, cobbling together,
lenswork, "tricky-stuff" one might (or might not) do.
the people who do these things well, i am sure
are more than happy to discuss with their friends, assocaites, or patrons how they do what they do,
people are usually proud of their accomplishments, and maybe in the end it is why they have patrons to begin with ...

i don't think it is as vast a conspiracy as you suggest.

do you fully disclose every aspect of how you create your images --- film, focusing methods, lenswork,
developers/lab, post processing techniques, printing techniques &C to your patrons?
or do you let them believe it is magic?
a lot of photography IS magical, an image appearing in a tray of fluid
on a blank piece of white paper in a room with a red light, or seamlessly
placing a cheezy rainbow or cloud formation above an abandonned ramshackled
feeding pen in a field of overgrown grass ...

its all the same thing ...

[Paul Kierstead]

If he says nothing and the image looks like a real life experience as QT has suggested, then in my book, that is a lie also because the patron will assume it is a real life experience based on the history of photography which has traditionally been about realism.


Those would have to be particularly dim patrons, assuming the setting is one of a gallery or such. If the context is the front page of the NYT, I see your point, but I think you would be very hard pressed to find someone with the money to invest in prints who doesn't damn well know what digital manipulation is capable of. In fact, I would suspect few would believe a photograph isn't manipulated.

You position relies on the patrons being naive and dim. If you give your customers even the smallest benefit of education and knowledge, they aren't going to believe that photographs represent reality. And I don't see what "reality" would be terribly of interest to most of them anyway. We have art to see reality reborn in someone else's vision, and seen it in a different way. If we want literal reality, we can just look around us.

[Marko]

That said, the ethics I have put forth has nothing to do with the art you are practicing in itself, but rather, it lies in how you communicate what you are doing to your customers. I believe it is very important that you do not mislead the patron. That you develop a very clear and forthright artist statement detailing both your craft and artistic process. That is all I am saying, and nothing more.

Artist statements are nothing but a load of marketing fluff with the only and express purpose of helping sell the works. Real art does not need an explanation. Other than a (preferably short) bio, a good artist does not need to explain his vision. All (s)he needs is to show it.

As I said it before, I do like your images, but I have never seen colors like that anywhere in the nature and hence I consider them fake. All your (considerable) efforts to make a distinction between your kind of fakes and digital fakes in this thread remind me of those miracle vacuum commercials with screaming announcers trying to drum all the benefits of owning one for the duration of the commercial break and guaranteeing your happiness or your money back.

The vision should be obvious, if it isn't, it's not really a vision but a construct and no amount of explaining can change the fact.


Unfortunately, it is my belief there are many digital photographers who are engaged in the process of piecing together an image and then letting the patron believe it is a real life experience. It is this behavior that deeply concerns me because of the possible negative repercussions in the market place for all of us, including myself.

Bingo! - Emphasis mine - So this is what it is all about, isn't it? A mud-slinging campaign trying to keep the eyeball count from sliding over to the competition...

Now, that's a real artist's statement! ;)

[Doug Howk]

Paraphrasing a statement by Dan Estabrook, Photography is the only artistic medium in which the outcome is not totally in the creator's mind. Painting, sculpture, etc. may represent reality but it is a reality filtered by an artistic mind. Photography is both a part of reality as well as the artist's image. This is what makes photography so unique. That uniqueness, unfortunately, is being undermined by digital as long as digital practitioners try to be considered a part of photography. Move on!

[Greg Miller]

Paraphrasing a statement by Dan Estabrook, Photography is the only artistic medium in which the outcome is not totally in the creator's mind. Painting, sculpture, etc. may represent reality but it is a reality filtered by an artistic mind. Photography is both a part of reality as well as the artist's image. This is what makes photography so unique. That uniqueness, unfortunately, is being undermined by digital as long as digital practitioners try to be considered a part of photography. Move on!

What is it exactly that you think "digital practitioners" are doing that hasn't been done in photography before? And, whatever that is, why do you not consider that to be part of the "as well as the artist's image" element of the "artistic medium"? The statement that you have quoted includes both reality and creative components - so some creativity is assumed (but not defined).

[Donald Miller]

Donald, your comment raised a question in my mind. Would you, or anyone here, consider Strand's portraits in Tir A'Mhurain art? What about Weston's Manual Hernandez Galvan Shooting? Or I could also use as an example the portrait of Byso on my website's home page (thus my particular interest in this matter). I have always thought of these examples as both representational photography and as art. If I understand you correctly you are saying that if they are representational then they are not creative and, by extension, not art (most of us considering art to be a creative process). I just returned this week from Phoenix where I saw the Weston show which included Galvan Shooting (which by the way was my favorite print in the show). The show was in the Phoenix Museum of Art. How do we reconcile this?


No you do not understand me at all. In the context of this thread I am taking issue with the position that if an image is unmanipulated it makes it more artistic than an image that has been manipulated. I won't go into the thinly veiled contention that digital is more manipulated than film based imagery and thus less ethical by consequence.

So far as the images you mentioned, Galvan Shooting, is an excellent portrait but a strictly representational image to me...it does nothing to or for me...there is no discernible emotional content. Tir A'muhurain is an image that can be classed in both catagories from my perspective...but please understand that art is a highly subjective matter...there is no objective definition that suffices in all instances. Once again, I repeat, that I find it to be an arrogant and pompous position that one takes to classify something as less pure and hence less ethical. As I stated at the outset we would be well served to stop reading our own press.

[Stephen Willard]

stephen,

forgive me for being so confused, but
you are upset because you believe that digital images makers
do not fully disclose how their images of idealized landscapes were made?

it seems that they fully disclosed their methods to you, why don't you believe that
people are "up front" with their methodology for creating photographic images?
did they tell you that they are pulling the wool over their client's eyes?

it seems to me that it is not an easy task to "cobble together" images to create something
new, just as it was not easy 12, 35 or 100 years ago.
as it is not easy to retouch negatives with leads, as people did ( and still do )
it takes time and experience to do a good enough job that a negative can take a
16x20 enlargement without seeing the strokes of a freehand retoucher.

as people have suggested over and over in this thread "altered reality"
and "photographic reality" are pretty much the same thing ... none of it is real ...
no matter what camera placement, filtering, film, developer/s, printing methods, cobbling together,
lenswork, "tricky-stuff" one might (or might not) do.
the people who do these things well, i am sure
are more than happy to discuss with their friends, assocaites, or patrons how they do what they do,
people are usually proud of their accomplishments, and maybe in the end it is why they have patrons to begin with ...

i don't think it is as vast a conspiracy as you suggest.

do you fully disclose every aspect of how you create your images --- film, focusing methods, lenswork,
developers/lab, post processing techniques, printing techniques &C to your patrons?
or do you let them believe it is magic?
a lot of photography IS magical, an image appearing in a tray of fluid
on a blank piece of white paper in a room with a red light, or seamlessly
placing a cheezy rainbow or cloud formation above an abandonned ramshackled
feeding pen in a field of overgrown grass ...

its all the same thing ...

jnanian, your questions are indeed valid, and my conversations were between 20-30 photographers this fall which is clearly not a valid statistical sample. However, I have also been reading lots of photographers artist statements to help me write mine. In all, I have probably read close to 60 different artist statement and only three have talked about their digital solution. 7 of those statements were on websites I got from the business cards of the photographers I talked with this fall and none even mentioned the word digital anywhere on their site. However, 10 of those 60 artist statements did disclose they have a darkroom and use film like your your website for an example. Of those half talked about the types of manipulations they applied to realize there artistic objectives. There was no other group that discussed the type of changes they made to create the print.

Qt's website was one of the few websites that I found that discusses the technical aspects of his digital work flow, but he does not talk about how he uses digital to achieve his artistic vision. Kirk Getting's website does not mention one word that I could find about his digital solution. Keep in mind I am a slow reader, and it is very possible I have overlooked the pages that were dedicated for a digital discussion on his site.

Is 60 artist statements a viable population to draw any conclusions? Absolutely not, but it makes me very suspicious that people are making extensive changes and letting the patron assume because it looks like a real photograph then it must be truly a real life experience when in fact it is not.

I suspect that after I post this response there will be many members who will find an artist statement or a website that discuss their digital solution, but I believe they will not be able to find anyone that talks about the types of digital manipulations they employ to realize their artistic views that goes beyond the optical reality of the original scene. Yet, every single person I talked with this fall was boasting about doing just that except for one.

[Donald Miller]

John, In trying to gain some information about Stephen, I found this on Photonet.
It supposedly was posted on Jan 29, 2008 at 3:09 a.m.

Quote:
"I shoot color landscapes using large format cameras. I process all of my own film and prints in my color darkroom. To mimic the quality I achieve in my darkroom I have had to do a high-end drum scan and have high-end lightjet print made. In my darkroom I can make a 16x20 for around $1.30 including chemicals printed on Fuji Crystal Archive paper. This is the same paper most high-end lightjet images are printed on. When I make a 16x20 print I usually print three at a time using 2-3 8x10 test prints to get the correct colorhead settings on my 8x10 enlarger. So the actual cost per print is around $1.60 for each 16x20. To do a digital image of comparable quality ranges from $30.00 to $90.00. If I make 20 prints or more of the same print the price is around $30.00 per print with a total cash outlay of $600. This does not include the price for a high-end scan which is around $150 for each 5x7 or 4x10. Just to drum scan all of my film, I estimated it would cost me around $30,000."

I believe the price of small digital prints of medium quality is somewhat competitive with traditional prints. I have come to the conclusion to do big high quality digital prints is prohibitively expensive. The bigger the print the more cost prohibitive it becomes. I do up to 30x40 and 20x50 panoramic prints in my darkroom. 16x40 and 20x50 prints are my biggest sellers for me because they fit perfectly over the couch. If my memory is correct, I believe to have one 20x50 lightjet print made was around $400 to $500. To make big prints in my darkroom, I buy my paper in rolls (40"x100') to save money and can make a 20x50 for around $10.00 which is a lot less than $400 to $500."


Now, as I read what he has said on Photonet I am unsure what it is that he does in making his prints. On the one hand he speaks of having drum scans made and then having light jet prints made. On the other hand he speaks of making large prints in his darkroom. Maybe he does both. However I did note that if this is the case he fails to openly disclose which process applies to which images on his website.

Like you I have not found an artists statement on his website. He does have a short article addressing image permanence as relates to print production and presentation at the following site

http://www.stephenwillard.com/documents/permanenceInfo.php?%20%20%20retailid=SAW

Even though Stephen does advocate following accepted criteria for maximum permanence, I noted he seems to not follow it as relates to mounting the print. (I believe that were he to check further he would find that most noted authorities do not advocate dry mounting prints even though a fairly large number continue to do so.)

I sense through what Stephen has said at the outset and throughout this thread that he started that he has a real bone of contention with those who use digital as their means of photography. This stance appears to be nothing more than the continuation of digital bashing, albeit under the thinly veiled guise of ethical considerations.

All in all, it might prove more advantageous for Stephen to examine the real problem that exists because his problem, it appears to me, is more within his view of things than it is with ethical considerations...considering that by virtue of the images he presents on his website he does materially alter the reality of the world around him.

Finally one does not elevate themself by attempting to diminish others but rather by concentration upon producing work of apparent uniqueness and true creative expression.

[jnantz]

thanks donald ..
i guess i deleted my post as you were writing yours.

you seem to have a double standard stephen ..
you seem to be quite upset that digital image makers
do not fully disclose their techniques,
yet at the same time, you visually enhance your images ..
rather than adding or removing distracting objects, you
visually enhance in other ways, and at the same time
disclose no information about your techniques on your website.

why is this OK for you, but not for others?

[D. Bryant]

[QUOTE]I haven't seen colors like that in the landscape since the 60s.

Brother, I've been there! :)

Don Bryant

[Stephen Willard]

Just for the record my website is not done yet and will not be completed until this spring as I have already stated in this thread several times. It is the reason I do not include my website at the end of my postings yet. However, if you look halfway down the gallery page you will see a declaration that I use traditional darkroom methods, and it states the type of changes I do not make. It reads as follows:

The integrity of my images is restricted to the optical reality of what lies before my lens, and my artistic vision. I cannot add, subtract, or alter because I use only film cameras and traditional darkroom techniques for the production of each photograph...

Clearly, it needs to bee updated to talk about what changes I do make in my printing process which is why I started this thread. This discussion is being used by me to help gain clarity into the ethics of modern day photography and the statement above along with everything else on my website. I can assure you there will be drastic changes. At this point I am still trying to figure out what all this means. Maybe I will conclude that no one cares so I may just drop any discussion about ethics. This thread is just one data point. Clearly, it is primarily from a digital photographers point of view. I have been talking with photographers in the field; I have been talking with my customers; I have been talking with gallery people; and I have been looking at other websites to see what other people are doing with photography and other artistic disciplines as well. Perhaps I can borrow ideas from them to.

As a rule, I never formulate practices or decisions in a vacuum. I am the type of person that has to engage in a dialog with as people as possible. Some of the questions I have raised here are not easy ones to answer, and if I have offended anyone I would like to offer my deepest and most sincere apologies. The feed back and ideas put forth in this thread have been amazing and have not fallen on deaf ears. Even though I may have made strong rebuttals, it does not necessarily mean I am in favor of my own rebuttal. I have the deepest respect for all members on this sight.

Again, thanks for all of your comments and thoughts.

[Tim Hyde]

Stephen- I don't think people object to the lack of technical information on your website, any more than they object to the somewhat unrealistic colors in your images. They are reacting to your occasional tendency to get on the high horse and make pronouncements about such things as "ethics" and "conceptual [sic] art." It is one thing to disagree, but another to use charged and dismissive words to describe people who disagree with your philosophy.

[Gordon Moat]

Paraphrasing a statement by Dan Estabrook, Photography is the only artistic medium in which the outcome is not totally in the creator's mind. Painting, sculpture, etc. may represent reality but it is a reality filtered by an artistic mind. Photography is both a part of reality as well as the artist's image. This is what makes photography so unique. That uniqueness, unfortunately, is being undermined by digital as long as digital practitioners try to be considered a part of photography. Move on!

I immediately thought of Jeff Wall (http://moma.org/exhibitions/2007/jeffwall/) when I read this. In advertising based photography, like I do for my profession, the scene and all aspects of the image are usually controlled. The result is a production look to many images, which is actually quite common in commercial imaging. The approach I take is often very much the same steps I would use to create one of my oil paintings.

I respectfully don't agree with your take on the use of digital backs and digital cameras (nor scanners), despite that I am largely a film based shooter. Mob rule cannot hope to define nor exclude aspects of imaging due to biases, one way or the other. The tools of imaging do not define imaging, only the end results.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat Photography (http://www.gordonmoat.com)

[Doug Howk]

Gordon, Conceptual photography such as Wall's, Sherman, etc. is really a throwback to the Hollywood still. William Mortensen may have scraped, scarred, etc. at his negatives & prints, and today those so inclined can do the same digitally. Or, as with Wall, they can stage an uber-reality. But, as with Hollywood, there is only an illusion. No pretense is made as to being real.

What Stephen is asking are those who market their landscape images as being a photographer's view of reality being dishonest when they don't acknowledge that their composite images never existed as a single view of that reality. It really is another uber-reality, as with Hollywood. It may be beautiful & artful or kitsch, but it exists only in the computer. Maybe today the Matrix satisfies most, but there are still those who would like to believe that the moment in time captured on a neg/print did exist as evidenced by the photographer.

[Marko]

What Stephen is asking are those who market their landscape images as being a photographer's view of reality being dishonest when they don't acknowledge that their composite images never existed as a single view of that reality. It really is another uber-reality, as with Hollywood. It may be beautiful & artful or kitsch, but it exists only in the computer. Maybe today the Matrix satisfies most, but there are still those who would like to believe that the moment in time captured on a neg/print did exist as evidenced by the photographer.

Neither do b&w or all those super-saturated landscapes exist in nature nor they ever did. They can exist only on a piece of Velvia copied to a piece of paper and then subjected to aggressive treatment with extremely corrosive chemicals.

This entire trashing of digital workflow is either a product of utter unfamiliarity with and fear of the new technology or simply transparent marketing fluff.

As for capturing a moment in time that did exist as evidenced by the photographer - my digital Canon can capture the same moment in time using the very same lens as can my film Canon. That's the cheapest Canon DSLR and what used to be the most expensive "machine-gun" film SLR. Under certain circumstances, that same cheap DSLR can capture much shorter time fragment of the same scene than can the top of the line film SLR.

And what if I scan in the film capture? It was "real enough" for your own criteria when captured and developed. So, once scanned, does it remain real or does it suddenly become fake? Why?

[Kirk Gittings]

Kirk Getting's website does not mention one word that I could find about his digital solution.

Unlike you Stephen I find this to be a virtual non-issue to me personally or to the people who collect my b&w images or hire me to photograph architecture. This has not changed since I started shooting digital commercially two years ago or printing digitally (I also still print traditionally). IME it very rarely comes up in any context except amongst photographers and I see no reason to clutter up my site with defensive diatribes on issues irrelevant to my clientel. I like to think that my work stands for itself and I think my track record suggests it does.

[domenico Foschi]

Stephen, without trying to sound unkind, if what another group of photographers is doing is bothering you so much is nobody else's problem but yours.

What does it matter what everybody else does?

I for one don't think that your criticism comes out of passion for the medium as much from a need to control.
I was against digital, I still don't like it much but I have come to the conclusion that if I was feeling threatened by it than that wasn't the right position from which to form a judgement.
I also realized that part of my resistance to the medium was the insewcurity I felt in my own work.
I couldn't see a defined path for my work, then I understood that nobody can see that path and gave up in trying to foresee the future and I resolved to keep working and focused only in my path and in the now.

[alec4444]

In all honesty I read the first 8 pages before posting this. Don't have all night.

To the OP's point, I shared an equal amount of frustration with the digital world....beginning with "spray & pray". Take enough photos of anything and there's bound to be something interesting in there. How is that fair? With a 12-something megapixel camera, Joe Schmo is going to capture some fantastic image with < 1 sec of thought put into it. He'll blow it up to 16x20 and people will oooh and ahhh and tell him what a great photographer he is. And here I am, the dumb schmuck, taking five plus minutes to setup my camera, another few to focus and play with movements. And then, a stupid mistake in the 20-step process leaves me with a $4.50 ruined negative and nothing to show. Yup, I was with you Stephen.

Then some time passed.

Now, my opinion has changed quite a bit. I discovered that what I like about film photography is the process. I also discovered that I like alt. processes, which often have flaws and "blurps" that make me happy rather than cringe. In the uber-megapixel world, you just won't see that - everything is made "pixel perfect". So my work finally is starting to stand out from the mainstream. People who are sick of perfect everything like it better. My images will probably last longer. My images are "handcrafted" and one-of-a-kind. I move at my pace, and in doing so, I see things that the hyperactive, onto-the-next-shot digital people miss. Did you see those wet-plate collodion shots Eddie took? See if a digital shooter can replicate that. Or the carbon prints on that Alt Process thread. I get to spend more time outside, and less time in the glow of the computer.

...And with all that and more having been digested, I'm able to smile at the digi-people and know that their work can never be compared side-by-side with what I do; it's just not the same type of photography. And thus, I'm at peace with all of this.

Cheers!
--A

[Stephen Willard]

Stephen, without trying to sound unkind, if what another group of photographers is doing is bothering you so much is nobody else's problem but yours.

What does it matter what everybody else does?

I for one don't think that your criticism comes out of passion for the medium as much from a need to control.
I was against digital, I still don't like it much but I have come to the conclusion that if I was feeling threatened by it than that wasn't the right position from which to form a judgement.
I also realized that part of my resistance to the medium was the insewcurity I felt in my own work.
I couldn't see a defined path for my work, then I understood that nobody can see that path and gave up in trying to foresee the future and I resolved to keep working and focused only in my path and in the now.

Domenico, I have found none of the comments on this thread rude or unkind, but rather just passionate.

You are right, I do feel threatened from the digital photographers, but not for the reasons you may think. My sales have far exceeded my expectations this year despite the economy. So the threat does not lie in the fact that a digital photographers can make a more sellable image than myself with their manipulations.

It is rooted in what many of my customers have to say about digital photography and the impact of those perceptions on the photographic market for landscape photography in my region. It is very hard to sell photography as an art where I live, and my real competition is not the digital photographer as you may think, but rather landscape painters. This is what my primitive market research keeps coming up with.

I get feedback from surveys and my surveys mention nothing about digital photography other then allowing a space at the bottom of the form to make additional comments. I get feedback from phone calls I get before my customers make a purchases online. I get feedback from customers who come to my studio to pick up their orders or to look at prints before they buy. From the responses I get from my customers, there are concerns about digital landscape photography not being real photography and they do not want to pay for a computer jock, but rather a gifted photographer. Almost all the phone calls I get ask the question is my work digital.

If you go to a gallery that is exhibiting photography and is printed using traditional means, then the sales people will quickly volunteer and exploit that information. If the work is digital, then there is silence. If you ask the question is it digital, then they will quickly note the artist goes to great lengths not to deviate from the original scene (which I no longer believe). If you look at most digital photographers websites, many do not mention digital at all. All of Mangelson newest work is done optically, and I suspect his customers are saying the same thing my customers are saying.

So my real concern lies in that digital landscape photography is creating a perception that modern day landscape photography is no longer real photography, and the patron will conclude she (90&#37; of my customers are women) is better off buy landscape paintings. And that is how I feel threatened by digital photography.

How do hope to counter this. Well I intend to make a big deal about my ethics and very clearly define my printing process (and yes I will talk about colors) and where I draw the line in the sand on my website. I intend to put as much distance as I can between my methods and digital photography as possible and have explicit pages dedicated to this discussions. Am I happy about doing such things? Nope!

It is my belief that digital photographers could be on the verge of pioneering a new form of photography, but it can only happen if they are more informative and forthright about what they are doing so as to educate the patron rather then mislead the patron. If they fail to be more informative then I think the patron will come to view digital landscapes photography as fakes of a real life experiences.

[kev curry]

Stephen,

So your real concern lies with how you think digital photography is changing peoples perceptions of the medium of photography generally, and as a consequence there relationship to it, resulting from the growing awareness in the opportunities and 'ease' with which digital files can be changed and manipulated beyond whats was present at the time of capture.

So before digital technology arrived, what I'm getting, is that photography could more quietly and comfortably rely on the misconceptions prevalent in the public mind that the photograph carried some inherent integrity and was representative of reality with the ''camera never lies'' idea. We all understand that that has never necessarily been true to begin with.

Maybe as a consequence its that that's rightly being challenged?

Looking at it this way I can only see good coming of it. Maybe the worst that can happen is a more evolved and discerning public mind towards photographic Art .

As for the manipulation of photographs, I think that all is fair in love and Art as long as the Artist honors personal integrity in the same way that it applies in all areas of life!

We should always defend the freedom of thought and never allow ourselves to be creatively constrained whether philosophically or technologically.

As for photoshop my 8+ year old PC couldn't even run it and I wouldn't know where to begin anyway. I love the darkroom, infact I've just placed an order with Lynn Radeka for one of his Pin Registration Carrier System and Masking Kits to hopefully satisfy my creative addictions for print making!

Let Art Rip!

kev

[Patrik Roseen]

In all honesty I read the first 8 pages before posting this. Don't have all night.

To the OP's point, I shared an equal amount of frustration with the digital world....beginning with "spray & pray". Take enough photos of anything and there's bound to be something interesting in there. How is that fair? With a 12-something megapixel camera, Joe Schmo is going to capture some fantastic image with < 1 sec of thought put into it. He'll blow it up to 16x20 and people will oooh and ahhh and tell him what a great photographer he is. And here I am, the dumb schmuck, taking five plus minutes to setup my camera, another few to focus and play with movements. And then, a stupid mistake in the 20-step process leaves me with a $4.50 ruined negative and nothing to show. Yup, I was with you Stephen.

Then some time passed.

Now, my opinion has changed quite a bit. I discovered that what I like about film photography is the process. I also discovered that I like alt. processes, which often have flaws and "blurps" that make me happy rather than cringe. In the uber-megapixel world, you just won't see that - everything is made "pixel perfect". So my work finally is starting to stand out from the mainstream. People who are sick of perfect everything like it better. My images will probably last longer. My images are "handcrafted" and one-of-a-kind. I move at my pace, and in doing so, I see things that the hyperactive, onto-the-next-shot digital people miss. Did you see those wet-plate collodion shots Eddie took? See if a digital shooter can replicate that. Or the carbon prints on that Alt Process thread. I get to spend more time outside, and less time in the glow of the computer.

...And with all that and more having been digested, I'm able to smile at the digi-people and know that their work can never be compared side-by-side with what I do; it's just not the same type of photography. And thus, I'm at peace with all of this.

Cheers!
--A

I totally agree with this post! I have the same experience as alec...
Another thought about ethics and manipulation.
I remember when 'playback' was introduced on stage, and the reaction when people realized the singing was not real. Then singback was introduced, leading to a bunch of teenagers entering the stage on the merits of their good looks and ability to dance.
At the same time music was suddenly created by putting together lots of retakes, cutting out mistakes, adding synthetic sounds and doing all sorts of alterations. The thing of the matter was that the possibilities of manipulations lead to music not possible to recreate consistently on stage. Play back/singback solved this and there was no stop to it.

Now is this bad? Do we not like the music produced?
Well, I still admire those who can produce the music in one take or live on stage ...but the world has changed with the times. A reaction was the 'unplugged' concerts, where 'older' musicians/artisits showed what they could do without all electronics and alterations.

Models in magazines are retouched in every way we can imagine.Young girls will starve themselves or undergo surgery to get the same look of their 'star'. Boys will take steroids in an attempt to get the same pumped up muscles as the model in the magazine. Is manipulation unethical...well it does not end with the image it starts there.

Manipulation and retouching etc was there already in the analog era. Digital has brought out so much more powerful tools to perform it even better.
Will we add to this by using the same manipulations in our workflow? I guess this is the same question magazine editors and musicians have asked themselves for decades now. For commercial reasons many have decided to go the same way.

As stated, I am with Alec, If I wanted to do this I would buy a digital system, the latest PS version etc and get to it. I have decided not to go there since I do not see the thrill in building images this way.
Instead, I am going back/staying with the 'unplugged' method and trying to develop my own style.

[domenico Foschi]

Why don't people, when they have the urge to be critical toward digital or analog or whatever instead of being negative, do an act of love and confirm their position by going to shoot or getting in the darkroom, or even CLEAN the darkroom, or maybe do some PS tricks and so on.

YEs we all know that darkroom work is a craft and blah blah blah stop talking about it and do some work.

There is nothing better than seeing one of your own prints and being moved by it, right?
Does anything else matter?
Even the fact that damned Obama will get president pales when I am in the "Zone".
I was one of those persons who critiqued digital and I can't believe how stiff and boring I sounded.

[Marko]

Why don't people, when they have the urge to be critical toward digital or analog or whatever instead of being negative, do an act of love and confirm their position by going to shoot or getting in the darkroom, or even CLEAN the darkroom, or maybe do some PS tricks and so on.

YEs we all know that darkroom work is a craft and blah blah blah stop talking about it and do some work.

There is nothing better than seeing one of your own prints and being moved by it, right?
Does anything else matter?
Even the fact that damned Obama will get president pales when I am in the "Zone".
I was one of those persons who critiqued digital and I can't believe how stiff and boring I sounded.

Hey Domenico,

Cheers to all of that! As a matter of fact, I spent the previous weekend with a long time friend in another friend's top-of-the-line custom darkroom over in Santa Barbara. It was the first time in over 20 years that I did that! It was a blast from the past in the real sense of the word and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Until this point, the traditional darkroom work - other than developing film - was a nostalgic thing from my youth that I always wanted to restart but either did not have the time, the resources or the space. This made me realize why exactly I prefer digital workflow, at least when it comes to print-processing phase. It allows so much more precision and efficiency that it is like comparing a horse buggy with a car for commuting.

Except that I don't do photography for commuting, so to speak, :) so I will keep going back, hopefully at least once a month, but I will keep Photoshop as my primary darkroom method, since I tend to shoot both film and digital and spend half of my work time in Photoshop anyway. I may even cobble together a primitive makeshift mini-darkroom of my own some day, although I am really reluctant to waste expensive LA space for that, at least at my skill level.

And I will keep being exasperated by the dinosaurs and their whining and ridiculous claims about digital. After this session, I will also keep smiling/laughing at them for all the control and potential they are missing out of sheer close-mindedness and fear of trying something new.

Cheers,

Marko

[Patrik Roseen]

Hey Dominico,
why so gloomy all of a sudden. Now it's other peoples turn to sound stiff and boring.;)

Anyway, I am lugging my 4x5 Technika around as often as I can and regularly go into my bathroom darkroom when time allows. And I love every minute of it, working out my own style.


There is a brilliant swedish photography book called Centennium, which describes the photographic history in Sweden from year 1900 to today. It includes the exact statements made at the time. The commercial photographers were the ones who really made fools of themselves by trying to stop competition from newcomers with more modern tools. One example was the introduction of multiple portrait photos on the same glassplate. They claimed people would start to accept lower quality, they tried to influence legislation to stop 'non-traditional photographers' from entering the trade, they agreed not to rehire any assistant who 'went over to the other side' etc.
What they did not realize was that the use of small portraits started to be used as business cards or something one exchanged with ones friends and peers (take a look in any old photoalbum and you will see all these small photos of your ancestors' friends.)

[Marko]

To the OP's point, I shared an equal amount of frustration with the digital world....beginning with "spray & pray". Take enough photos of anything and there's bound to be something interesting in there. How is that fair? With a 12-something megapixel camera, Joe Schmo is going to capture some fantastic image with < 1 sec of thought put into it. He'll blow it up to 16x20 and people will oooh and ahhh and tell him what a great photographer he is. And here I am, the dumb schmuck, taking five plus minutes to setup my camera, another few to focus and play with movements. And then, a stupid mistake in the 20-step process leaves me with a $4.50 ruined negative and nothing to show.

Hi Alec,

As I write this, I am looking at my 8 MP Canon Digital Rebel sitting next to my film Canon 1N RS and wonder how would you apply your "spray & pray" theory to them? The first gets mere 2-3 fps and the latter is faster than any DSLR ever made (or at least equal to one I know of) at 10 fps.

Which one is your Joe Schmoe going to use for his fantastic blowouts?

As for the dumb schmuck, it takes only a little-heavier-than usual finger, a digit if you will :D, to burn $4.50 worth of film on that RS too. The upside is that it takes only 2.5 to 3.5 sec to do it, depending on what you loaded.

So, in the end, I can't but wonder what makes a bigger schmuck - blowing $4.50 of film in 15 minutes or in 3.5 sec? And how high is either of those two schmucks going to blow those negatives up?

P.S.

Back to my two Canons, since they use the exact same lenses and are operated by the same schmuck, which one, IYHO is going to yield more fantastic 16x20 blowouts?

Normally, I would tend to think they would both be the same, but since you guys seem to be insisting that it is indeed the camera that makes good or bad pictures, no matter how good or bad the photographer, I thought I should ask the expert... ;)

[Scott Davis]

Hi Alec,

As I write this, I am looking at my 8 MP Canon Digital Rebel sitting next to my film Canon 1N RS and wonder how would you apply your "spray & pray" theory to them? The first gets mere 2-3 fps and the latter is faster than any DSLR ever made (or at least equal to one I know of) at 10 fps.

Which one is your Joe Schmoe going to use for his fantastic blowouts?

As for the dumb schmuck, it takes only a little-heavier-than usual finger, a digit if you will :D, to burn $4.50 worth of film on that RS too. The upside is that it takes only 2.5 to 3.5 sec to do it, depending on what you loaded.

So, in the end, I can't but wonder what makes a bigger schmuck - blowing $4.50 of film in 15 minutes or in 3.5 sec? And how high is either of those two schmucks going to blow those negatives up?

P.S.

Back to my two Canons, since they use the exact same lenses and are operated by the same schmuck, which one, IYHO is going to yield more fantastic 16x20 blowouts?

Normally, I would tend to think they would both be the same, but since you guys seem to be insisting that it is indeed the camera that makes good or bad pictures, no matter how good or bad the photographer, I thought I should ask the expert... ;)

Marko-

The point about "spray-n-pray" with digital has more to do with memory card capacity than it does with motor drive speed. I often hear digital shooters talking about the literally hundreds or even thousands of images they shot in a single outing on a single day. I've had digital shooters come up to me while shooting my 8x10 and brag, "but I can shoot 600 images without having to reload!". I don't know that being able to shoot three, four, five or more hundred images is something to be proud of, especially when claiming that kind of volume for a type of photography that lends itself to slow contemplation.

When shooting sports or some other kind of action, the 3,5, or 10 FPS motor drive is obviously a requirement, regardless of film or digital. You set the camera, aim, and shoot instinctively, because you know somewhere in there is going to be the winning shot, and trying to time it on your own will more often than not result in missing the shot. Taking this approach to landscape, or architecture, or travel documentary is what people are objecting to. If it takes you a hundred shots of the fruit on display at a vendor's stall in the wet market in Bangkok to get one keeper, then you're not a photographer, you're a spray-n-pray-er, regardless of the medium.

[Stephen Willard]

Just for the record I am no longer responding to any questions directed to me or about this subject. It is not because your questions or ideas lack merit or worthiness, but rather, I am just worn out.

Again thanks for all your comments, ideas, and considerations. It is clear to me that this haunt harbors rugged individuals who bare far more intelligence and are far more gifted in their discipline than I will ever posse.

I do hope that the moderators will continue to let me drop in from time to time to tape into all of your amazing experiences and wisdom. However, I suspect that I am been moved to their must watch carefully list, and my time may be limited.

Thanks again...

[Tim Hyde]

Thanks for initiating this discussion, Stephen, and taking so much time to participate. The discussion was not only thoughtful, but both spirited and civil. It helped me sort some things out, certainly.

[Paul Kierstead]

If it takes you a hundred shots of the fruit on display at a vendor's stall in the wet market in Bangkok to get one keeper, then you're not a photographer, you're a spray-n-pray-er, regardless of the medium.

One of the curios things I have found is that I generally have more 4x5 keepers for a given expedition then I do from digital. Clearly this is not for sports shooting (which I don't do) or low-ambient existing light shooting (which I haven't tried in 4x5, but still tend to prefer some grainy B&W 35mm film for). Because of the cost and effort, I take more care with 4x5 and end up better off. Clearly, this is a personal thing and not related to the technology directly (and is also influenced by my personal fondness for slightly more sterile, formal pictures), but I think more then a few other people suffer similarly, they just don't know it.

Oh, and Stephen; seriously, you will have to work a *lot* harder then that I expect to even get close to a monitor list. Wayyyy way harder. You got nothing on most of the lot in here....

[Greg Miller]

To the OP's point, I shared an equal amount of frustration with the digital world....beginning with "spray & pray". Take enough photos of anything and there's bound to be something interesting in there. How is that fair? --A

And then there are some LFers who think that just because they captured on a large piece of film, spent 20 minutes deliberating over the composition, 5 minutes setting up, and 2 days in the dark room, that their images are good.

In the end it comes down to artistic vision and execution (regardless of media or technology), resulting in an image that causes an emotional reaction in the viewer (or perhaps just the creator). The image either speaks to people or it doesn't. Everything else is secondary in importance.

[Marko]

Marko-

The point about "spray-n-pray" with digital has more to do with memory card capacity than it does with motor drive speed. I often hear digital shooters talking about the literally hundreds or even thousands of images they shot in a single outing on a single day. I've had digital shooters come up to me while shooting my 8x10 and brag, "but I can shoot 600 images without having to reload!". I don't know that being able to shoot three, four, five or more hundred images is something to be proud of, especially when claiming that kind of volume for a type of photography that lends itself to slow contemplation.

When shooting sports or some other kind of action, the 3,5, or 10 FPS motor drive is obviously a requirement, regardless of film or digital. You set the camera, aim, and shoot instinctively, because you know somewhere in there is going to be the winning shot, and trying to time it on your own will more often than not result in missing the shot. Taking this approach to landscape, or architecture, or travel documentary is what people are objecting to. If it takes you a hundred shots of the fruit on display at a vendor's stall in the wet market in Bangkok to get one keeper, then you're not a photographer, you're a spray-n-pray-er, regardless of the medium.

Hey Scott,

My point was that a schmuck is a schmuck, regardless of equipment. All these sneers about digital and computers that the luddites are throwing around only reinforce the notion of equipment being more important than the photographer. Which is exactly what makes those schmucks the schmucks they are, regardless of equipment they use. It is also what makes those sneers so ridiculous. And BTW, I've seen a lot of such schmucks back in the days long before digital existed.

Think of it this way - three hundred sixty frames is ten rolls of 35mm film. I've seen professional shooters burn through several times that covering a single event. A couple of rolls or so a day on a week-long trip is not unreasonable by any measure and that's several hundred shots right there. The fact that you hear digital shooters talk about it today only means that digital has replaced film and became mainstream in 35mm.

As for shooting lots of frames with digital... Why not? Once you buy the camera, all the shots are virtually free. In fact, the more you shoot, the less you pay per shot, so why discard the benefit?


Marko

[D. Bryant]

If it takes you a hundred shots of the fruit on display at a vendor's stall in the wet market in Bangkok to get one keeper, then you're not a photographer, you're a spray-n-pray-er, regardless of the medium.

Sorry Scott I just disagree with that assumption. Shooting with a digital camera can provide a completely different approach to photography, allowing me to make a lot of different compositions quickly if I want to.

Photographing in this manner doesn't mean that the approach is mindless. And I have to wonder why you think it isn't a valid approach. It isn't a "throw enough mud on the wall and something sticks approach", rather a rather liberated loose intuitive approach to image making.

Yeah at the end of day most of the images won't make a final cut, but who cares. The processes of shooting this way is really just a different way of thinking or not thinking deliberately, some what stream of consciousness.

Don Bryant

[Kirk Gittings]

It seems that anti digital people make false assumptions based on how amatuers use their cameras. In my case (and other professionals I know) when shooting architecture with a digital camera, we do far more images in a day (largely because we do not have to light spaces so much) but the ratio of keepers is nearly the same as it was with film. Why? I use a DSLR always on a tripod with shift lenses and cable relaease etc. not much different than how I use a VC. The process is still deliberate and contemplative. The shot editing still goes on largely before I set the camera up.

[Gordon Moat]

. . . . . .

What Stephen is asking are those who market their landscape images as being a photographer's view of reality being dishonest when they don't acknowledge that their composite images never existed as a single view of that reality. . . . . . . .


I suppose the proper Title for this thread should have been The Ethics of Modern Day Landscape Photography. If anything, the more modern usage of colour film is a better reality than the past usage of B/W film, because few real landscapes are actually grey when viewed in person.

Moving a mountain, removing a tree, adding a tree, eliminating people from a scene . . . would someone who saw photos of the wilderness be upset that when they went there they found souvenir shops, parking lots, and way too many people? I give modern people a bit more credit to think that many places they go will have other people there. We are at a point in time when their are few truly empty places, other than perhaps the desert in the middle of summer (and even then it seems someone is always there).

In my opinion, landscape photography can be escapism. It can appeal highly to the urban dweller who simply want to get away from it all. If that is the intention, then it could be extended that the photographer has a duty to their viewers of presenting an idealized landscape. After all, landscape photographers are not photojournalists.

Okay, so I also think of Edward Burtynsky in this. He photographs harsh realities, yet the compositions are almost a surreal beauty, until you realize what is in that scene. Rather than suggest that these places need to be cleaned up and disappear, he simply presents them for the viewers without comment beyond the what and where of each scene.

I still don't think technology has any implications in ethics. We are largely not using lenses that match human vision, we choose where to place the camera, and what instant of time to capture a scene. If there were a greater reality, then we would simply snap away and each capture would be reality . . . boring . . . and who wants that. Indicating tools and techniques, for art photographers, is purely marketing. In a way it is funny that those using more modern tools and techniques are sometimes criticized by those using older techniques, as if the effort involved somehow validated the image. Take away the explanation of how an image was created, and many photographers are on an even level, with nothing but the image to carry their voice.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat Photography (http://www.gordonmoat.com)

[alec4444]

Hi Alec,

As I write this, I am looking at my 8 MP Canon Digital Rebel sitting next to my film Canon 1N RS and wonder how would you apply your "spray & pray" theory to them? The first gets mere 2-3 fps and the latter is faster than any DSLR ever made (or at least equal to one I know of) at 10 fps.

Which one is your Joe Schmoe going to use for his fantastic blowouts?

As for the dumb schmuck, it takes only a little-heavier-than usual finger, a digit if you will :D, to burn $4.50 worth of film on that RS too. The upside is that it takes only 2.5 to 3.5 sec to do it, depending on what you loaded.

So, in the end, I can't but wonder what makes a bigger schmuck - blowing $4.50 of film in 15 minutes or in 3.5 sec? And how high is either of those two schmucks going to blow those negatives up?


Hey Marko,

In my example I was comparing Joe Schmoe (the digital photographer) to the dumb schmuck (aka ME) who photographs with 11x14. Both are generalities. Sure there's digital photogs who take time in composing and capturing images. There's also ULF guys that don't make the types of mistakes I'm still making. This was my perceived reality and hence my (initial) subsequent misgivings.....which, as I posted, later gave way to my indifference about digital photography.

In the end, as you put it, I may just be the bigger schmuck. But I've come to terms with the fact that I like what I do, I like where I'm headed, and the types of things I'm doing can't be compared to digital, and thus any misgivings I had about digital photography have vanished. That may not have been the outcome if I were going for the tack-sharp pics of Ansel Adams. Dunno.

BTW, the archetype of "Joe Schmoe" with his "spray-and-pray composition" comes from general observations made in NYC whilst shooting my camera. A lot of people barely stop walking while snapping off pics. Most of them probably don't even consider themselves photographers.

--A

[Merg Ross]

It seems that anti digital people make false assumptions based on how amatuers use their cameras. In my case (and other professionals I know) when shooting architecture with a digital camera, we do far more images in a day (largely because we do not have to light spaces so much) but the ratio of keepers is nearly the same as it was with film. Why? I use a DSLR always on a tripod with shift lenses and cable relaease etc. not much different than how I use a VC. The process is still deliberate and contemplative. The shot editing still goes on largely before I set the camera up.

Kirk, spot on. I know everyone is probably tired of me talking about the Weston's, but to your point. I was in the field with Brett, after he had used the 8x10 as his camera of choice for over forty years, and started using the Rollei 66 system (120 film). He used a tripod, mirror lock-up, cable release and made tight compositions with the appropriate lens. If he saw it square, he printed it square. The one thing he told me was that the Rollei simply made some shots possible that he could never have done with the 8x10. He loved the ability to shoot straight up or straight down. Anyone who has tried that with a view camera can appreciate his love of the Rollei. But you are absolutely correct, the process was still deliberate and contemplative.

[Marko]

I suppose the proper Title for this thread should have been The Ethics of Modern Day Landscape Photography.

And I think this thread belongs to The Lounge so it can be safely ignored.

Or better yet, it should be banned because religious arguments are verboten throughout the site as of lately. ;)

[Jim Becia]

[QUOTE=Stephen Willard;404561]I have returned from my fall photographic trip, and I had the privilege of meeting many photographers over the 4 weeks I was away.



The one large format photographer I met who scanned his film did not admit to fabricating images. However, I did observe him shooting under a blank gray sky the day before I met him and was suspicious. After he had composed his photograph while I was watching the next day, I asked him if I could look at the 4x10 image on his ground glass. I was not surprised to find a giant blank gray sky occupying at least half the image. Either he was a bad photographer or he was going to paint in a different sky once the film was scanned. I concluded that because he was an experienced LF 4x10 guy, then the latter was most likely true.

Am I the only one that finds this behavior unethical or is that just the way it is? Maybe I am just out of touch with mainstream ethics because I am the only photographer that was using traditional methods. The modern day photographer posts his images to world declaring greatness when in reality he is sitting at his computer fabricating images with Photoshop and other AI software.


QUOTE]

Stephen,

Hi, I am the guy you met that was shooting 4X10 up on Kebler Pass. I just got back from my trip this morning and saw this thread. Don't mean to call you on the carpet here, but you have made some bad assumptions about some things here. While you looked at my ground glass, you obviously didn't see what I or the film saw. The sky is neither blank nor gray. I realize from our conversations that you like bold contrastiy skies, but my image came out with a nice moody sky with white and blue patches coming through. Your assupmtions are wrong on several fronts. If I print the image (and yes, it would have to be scanned) I will darken the sky slightly and it will be just fine. I will not have to "paint" the sky in by any stretch of the imagination. I guess you've painted a scenario here where you are either saying I'm a bad photographer or I am going to paint in a new sky. Well, I don't think either asumption is true. And the day before when you observed me shooting, again, my skies are wonderful. I'm not sure your vision and my vision and my film's "vision" of the same scene are on the same page. But clearly you see things differently than how my film or I see the image. I've been shooting large format slide film for going on ten years now and know the limitations of the film. And while my slide film won't give me the 10 to 14 stops you state that your negative film will give you, I'm very happy with the type of images that I tend to shoot on slide film. When I get them scanned, I'll be happy to show them to you. But please don't make statements that are not true. Jim Becia

[Michael Alpert]

. . . clearly you see things differently than how my film or I see the image. I've been shooting large format slide film for going on ten years now and know the limitations of the film. . . . Jim Becia

Jim,

Thank you for coming forward. This thread, from the beginning, has needed correction. Photography is both a means of documentation and a vehicle for aesthetic judgement. To have a singular artistic stance is at the heart of the effort. (Stephen's concerns are a secondary issue. The ethics involved in marketing prints is not unique to photography and, frankly, is not complex.) In your very moderate statement, you have spoken well. Thanks again.