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Thread: are photographs still photographs...

  1. #21
    Claudio Santambrogio
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    Re: are photographs still photographs...

    Quote Originally Posted by Mark Sawyer View Post
    More likely, we'll get to the day when there's a pull-down menu on Photoshop CS9 where you can select whether the image from a 20-gig cell-phone cam should look like it was taken with an Artar, a Dagor, a Petzval, a Verito, a Struss, and Imagon, a Pinkham & Smith...

    For better or worse, we're getting there...
    The iPhone, I am told, can already imitate Polaroids, Holgas and Lomos…

  2. #22
    Mark Sawyer's Avatar
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    Re: are photographs still photographs...

    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Galli View Post
    You've made the false assumption that folk with coin who walk into galleries have some amount of taste / class...........
    True. I'm just one of the folks without coin who peeps throgh the gallery's window when nobody's looking...

    But I haven't seen the deliberately-obviously-heavily photoshopped photo-illustrations in a fine art gallery yet. I do still see a lot of analog and "straight" digital work there. But then, I'm usually a bit behind the times on such things...
    "I love my Verito lens, but I always have to sharpen everything in Photoshop..."

  3. #23

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    Re: are photographs still photographs...

    Quote Originally Posted by Toyon View Post
    Comparing mechanical retouching to the armentarium of digital tools available now is like comparing a pencil to a laser printer. It is no longer a good analogy.
    Or a cave to the modern house... I don't see why not, both still serve the same purpose, only with a different level of advancement and complexity.

    After all, photography is the act of capturing light projected through a lens onto a light-sensitive material for a brief moment of time. Everything else is just supporting technology. If anything, I would certainly hope this technology does change with the times!

  4. #24

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    Re: are photographs still photographs...

    Quote Originally Posted by Marko View Post
    Or a cave to the modern house... I don't see why not, both still serve the same purpose, only with a different level of advancement and complexity.

    After all, photography is the act of capturing light projected through a lens onto a light-sensitive material for a brief moment of time. Everything else is just supporting technology. If anything, I would certainly hope this technology does change with the times!
    The original photo retouchers, to create seamless work, endured long apprenticeships and used specialized tools and chemicals. Nevertheless their ability to change images was quite limited, unless it was designed to look intentional (e.g. Uelsmann). In photoshop wholesale alterations can be made in nanoseconds, leaving virtually none of the original structure of the image. Yes, both techniques alter original materials, but the scale and scope and effort involved in making the changes are so vastly disproportionate that the analogy is very weak.

  5. #25
    Founder QT Luong's Avatar
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    Re: are photographs still photographs...

    Quote Originally Posted by Marko View Post
    Add Meyerowitz and Soth to the list of the converts...

  6. #26
    multiplex
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    Re: are photographs still photographs...

    people have been altering photographs since they were able to take them.
    masking, double printing, retouching, swapping heads, heavy handed manipulations,
    digital technology just allows a different set of tools to do the same thing.
    i don't really see much of a difference ...

  7. #27
    Large format foamer! SamReeves's Avatar
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    Re: are photographs still photographs...

    HDR stinks. I see another one made with a $13,000 Hassy or otherwise, I am going to barf on my desk. Shimmering skies and a sparkling ground should be saved for a glittery My Space page, and not photography. I guess I'm too old school now having learned color photography via RA-4 without the HDR.

  8. #28
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    Re: are photographs still photographs...

    Some have asked, where is the line? For me, when non-photographic manipulations are made, they are either correcting a flaw in the photographic process, or producing something new to look at. When that something new is the point of the presentation, then it has crossed into photo illustration.

    My definition of a photograph is simple: An image produced by projecting light onto a sensitized surface.

    Many Photoshop techniques are purely photographic, even though they are executed digitally. Making something lighter or darker, or systematically changing the coloration, various algorithms used to combine photographic data within the image, or even cutting and pasting seem to me photographic. Grabbing the pen tool and drawing, or painting a selection area with a color selected from a palette--those are not photographic because they are not working from data resulting from light projected onto a sensitized surface.

    But all that is just a matter of technique. I suspect the real issue is art.

    I see a lot of current photographs as being quite faddish, despite the apparent religious worship of innovation rather than, say, beauty. Style is timeless, but fads are ephemeral. Many scoff at the style of Adams, or Strand, or Stieglitz, and in most cases their scoffing seems to stem from their worship of innovation, which consigns the work of past masters to the dustbin of cliche. History has a way of sorting that out in the long run. Many who think that past masters are cliche will be forgotten when those masters are still studied and appreciated. This is true in all art forms. Everyone is always looking for innovation as a means of defining their own voice or vision, and confuse fad with style.

    The notion of realism in photography has always been a myth. I made a color photograph of a grave marker on a church on the high road between Santa Fe and Taos (maybe it was Chimayo--but I forget now). Later, I discovered that Adams had photographed the same marker half a century before, and that image was published in Photographs of the Southwest. In my color image, the wrought iron grave marker with wood inserts was dark--in the Zone II to III range. The sky was a brilliant, bright blue. In his image, he's used a red filter and the sky was very dark. The grave marker was bright with Zone IX highlights of the sun reflecting off the surface of the wood and wrought iron. My image, which was more realistic, had the opposite tonal values that his did. Yet both were purely photographic and superficially realistic.

    Rick "adding a few random comments" Denney

  9. #29

    Re: are photographs still photographs...

    Quote Originally Posted by QT Luong View Post
    Add Meyerowitz and Soth to the list of the converts...
    Looking through these various hassy artist work, most of it looks traditional to me, and could have just as easily been captured with a point and shoot at the sizes presented on the computer

  10. #30

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    Re: are photographs still photographs...

    Quote Originally Posted by Toyon View Post
    The original photo retouchers, to create seamless work, endured long apprenticeships and used specialized tools and chemicals. Nevertheless their ability to change images was quite limited, unless it was designed to look intentional (e.g. Uelsmann). In photoshop wholesale alterations can be made in nanoseconds, leaving virtually none of the original structure of the image. Yes, both techniques alter original materials, but the scale and scope and effort involved in making the changes are so vastly disproportionate that the analogy is very weak.
    I don't see why is the analogy with the cave/modern house weak?

    It is the result that matters, not the level of effort. If anything, reducing the level and complexity of effort needed to accomplish one's goal is what progress is all about.

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