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Thread: A Photographer or a Graphic Artist?

  1. #1
    Kirk Gittings's Avatar
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    A Photographer or a Graphic Artist?

    "Photoshop it in, just like everybody else." refering to the desire for deep blue skies from the SHOOTING ARCHITECTURE QUESTION thread.

    I truely believe that it is always better to solve a visual problem in the field if it can be solved rather than in Photoshop. The results have the sense of authority of something that happened in the real world rather than the virtual world. That sense of authorty is true even when we artificially light a subject, use filters or highly manipulate the tones of a print. It is that authority that gives photography a unique place in the visual arts and separates a photographer from a graphic artist. An illusion? Maybe. But it is an illusion I choose to hold on to.
    Thanks,
    Kirk

    at age 73:
    "The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
    But I have promises to keep,
    And miles to go before I sleep,
    And miles to go before I sleep"

  2. #2

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    A Photographer or a Graphic Artist?

    Then how am I supposed to get Scarlet Johannson naked and into my pictures.

    Actually I stick to what is in the transparency. I might need to massage a little shadow detail out but that is about it.

  3. #3

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    A Photographer or a Graphic Artist?

    Amen brother Gittings! Too much is being solved in photoshop and making for some sloppy photography, in my mind at least.

  4. #4

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    A Photographer or a Graphic Artist?

    I guess we won't need the camera at all if Photoshop have their way.
    As for thinking about lighting, composition, location, yada yada yada, that all seems like very much hard work.
    I know I am bordering on the digital vs film debate but, IMHO, "it just don't feel creative".

  5. #5

    A Photographer or a Graphic Artist?

    In any art form, I believe it is essential (i.e. the truest universal statement actually results from) to move from the specific to the general or universal. This is the traditional link or path to TRUTH in art that Photoshop filters, stock photography, clip art, etc. are destroying. Sadly, in such an imperfect (i.e. REAL) world, there is a tremendous psychological compunction for perfection-a cloud can't be out of place, no one hair can be uncombed, every sunset must be perfect, we can't tolerate a telephone pole or parked car in the wrong place. And, yes, I know that the greatest painters worked to an ideal or patron presciption but they started with real people, real models, real drapery, whatever and that is why in the work of someone like Titian (just to pick one of a thousand or so examples) even the theme or commissioned art work transcends the BIG PICTURE MESSAGE and becomes a document of human character, human fears, human aspirations, the human soul. That's my story. THANKS KIRK.

  6. #6

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    A Photographer or a Graphic Artist?

    Bullshit. It really doesn't matter whether it's digital or traditional, as photographers have manipulated "truth" since the get go in 1839.

    FWIW, the best Photoshop artists almost always have to be good photographers too, in order to do convincing work.

  7. #7
    Kirk Gittings's Avatar
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    A Photographer or a Graphic Artist?

    Frank,

    I have a few images that have a very surreal aspect to them. Viewers often ask if I found it that way or did I put it together in Photoshop. Now, the tones of the image may be highly manipulated for dramatic effect or the juxtapositioning may be exagerated by lens distortion etc., but the key elements of the image where there in place in the real world. That is what the viewers are asking about, and when the answer is no "I put them together in Photoshop" there is a sense of dismay, because there is that sense that a photograph should come from some actual physical event in the real world. That is the strength of photography as a medium that separates it from all others. I'm not saying it is a better medium than painting or anything like that. It's all art. But to me its that unique aspect of photography that drives me.
    Thanks,
    Kirk

    at age 73:
    "The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
    But I have promises to keep,
    And miles to go before I sleep,
    And miles to go before I sleep"

  8. #8

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    A Photographer or a Graphic Artist?

    I agree with Kirk 100%. The photograph stands apart in the world of visual communication. The photographic process captures visual information in a more unbiased fashion than any other medium. And as Kirk says, that is the power of photography. When Adlai Stevenson went to the U.N. with evidence of missiles in Cuba, he didn’t bring paintings, he brought photographs. Susan Sontag put in well in saying that although many artist renderings of William Shakespeare exist, a single photograph of him would be priceless.

    On one end of the spectrum you have the photograph and on the other….I don’t know, maybe Surrealism. And the challenge is to determine where, in the gray area in between, photography leaves off and rendering begins…IMHO.

  9. #9

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    A Photographer or a Graphic Artist?

    But when Michael Terchekov (an 80's photo-celeb - groan) put a mouse in foreground, and a globe in the background, of a 12 mm Nikkor, and made the mouse look like he was about to devour the world, he is doing the same thing with traditional tools.

    I'd dare say the problem is with the cheezy Photoshop work and dumb concepts. I don't like digital artist/photographer/guru John Paul Capanigro's work either, but you can't tell me that it doesn't have realistic photo elements that gives it that sense of "reality" that you so much desire.

    People have been making this same argument with each new generation of technology.

  10. #10

    A Photographer or a Graphic Artist?

    "...but the key elements of the image where there in place in the real world. That is what the viewers are asking about, and when the answer is no "I put them together in Photoshop" there is a sense of dismay, because there is that sense that a photograph should come from some actual physical event in the real world."

    (sssh! don't tell Jerry Uelsmann.)

    Maybe, for the photographs you make. On the other hand, I 've seen some pretty nice pinhole false color IR landscape work, and some weird but artistically exciting street photography done on cross-processed color fim. It didn't have a whole heck of a lot of that 'this corresponds to some actual physical event in the real world' look, but I would be hard pressed to say that it wasn't well done art.

    If you want to argue about whether it's photography or not, I'd say that we've strayed well into the 'how many angels fit on the head of a pin" territory.

    By and large, the artists I admire seem to go ahead and make the art they want/need/feel compelled to make, and they leave it to others to sort out how those benign parasites of the art world we call art critics will categorize it.

    In the end, it's just not a very important question.

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