are photographs still photographs...

[Brian Ellis]

Yawn.

[Maris Rusis]

Here is a screed I wrote in another place some time ago. The philosophising is a bit technical but the sentiment may be relevant.

Philosophically speaking I doubt it is possible to manipulate a photograph without destroying its status as a photograph.

"Photograph" is a special name we apply to one particular kind of picture that distinguishes it from all other kinds of picture.
Other kinds of picture have names like "painting" or "drawing" or "ink-jet" and so on. All pictures, photographs, paintings, and the rest, at their most basic level consist of a bunch of marks on a flat surface. The names we give to these various pictures are based on how the marks get onto the surface. It is no surprise, for example, that a painted picture consists of paint. If one were to add details with, say, a pencil would that create a manipulated painting? No. It could rightly be referred to as a mixed medium picture and be viewed on its own merits. But because it no longer consists of paint it is not a painting any more. The same constraint applies to all pictures that are named according to the medium that is used to make them.

Well, what is it about photographs that make them distinguishable from every other kind of picture? I tend to fall back on the original idea of the guy (his idea not mine) who invented the word "photography" and what HE meant by it when he introduced it into the English language. And there is not the slightest ambiguity about it either. Sir John F.W. Herschel said "Photography or the application of the chemical rays of light to the purpose of pictorial representation".

Photographs are pictures made of a bunch of marks occasioned by chemical changes in a sensitive surface when that surface is penetrated by light. Imagine if the photograph is changed by adding marks that get there some other way. It might be a better picture or a worse one but because it is not even a photograph any more it can scarcely be a "manipulated photograph".

None of this is of any account if one is interested in just groovin' on pictures without any considerations about how they come into being. And it helps to ignore any relationship they may have to things in the real world. Under these circumstances manipulation is irrelevant. Its all diverting entertainment for the eye much as chewing gum is entertainment for the teeth.

But if one is serious about contemplating photographs, and only photographs, because of the special relationship they have to the world then "manipulation" breaks that relationship and renders the result not worth looking at.

[D. Bryant]

But if one is serious about contemplating photographs, and only photographs, because of the special relationship they have to the world then "manipulation" breaks that relationship and renders the result not worth looking at.

Yawn.

Don Bryant

[rdenney]

Well, what is it about photographs that make them distinguishable from every other kind of picture?

A digital sensor has as much claim to the chemical connection as does bromides of silver. And the pigments placed on paper to make a print on an inkjet printer are as much chemicals as anything.

It seems to me that what makes a photograph uniquely photographic is that the light itself creates the image, rather than the hand of the artist. There is a lot of handwork required to make the latent image visible, but that handwork may or may not share elements and steps with other forms of art. Yet, those other art forms are not photographs solely because they were not created by the light itself.

For me, as long as that is true, it's a photograph. It could be nothing else, and anything created by the hand of the artist rather than by the light itself can't be a photograph.

Thousands of years ago, primitives wiped animal blood and vegetal dyes on walls, and that became "painting". More recently, another cave dweller splashed house paint on a board from leaky cans dancing on a string, and that is also called painting. What makes a painting uniquely a painting is that paint is applied to make the image. What makes a photograph is that light is applied to make the image.

I go back to my definition that a photograph is a picture made by projecting light onto a sensitized surface. That gives equal billing to digital and wet chemical processes. Just as some painters use oils, some use acrylics, and some use watercolors, and each on any imaginable surface, some photographers will use bromides of silver and others will use dye from an inkjet printer to reveal the latent image. But the latent image is still defined by how it was made.

Each time we draw a box around our definition, we purposely put some people (especially ourselves) inside the box and others outside the box. But when I make a photograph with a digital camera, I don't feel any different than when I'm using film. The artistic decisions that I make, and most of the craft that I apply, are not different. My tools are still composition, exposure, depth of field, focus plane management, and image tonality. My application of those tools is no different when I'm using a 5D or a Sinar. My visualization is just the same whether it's a chemical print or an inkjet print (though with the latter I'm usually closer to my visualization). Saying that photography is only this process or that process excludes a lot of people who are making purely photographic decisions in the creation of art, leaving them nowhere else to be.

It is every bit as snooty to do so as it was for painters to bitterly contest the creation of the photography department at MoMA, with the conviction that photography was not art.

Now, that ought to get me yelled at.

Rick "who makes photographs" Denney

[VictoriaPerelet]

Sloppy huge format pic out of Deardorff is as sloppy as bad 39Mpix pic from CF-39MS back mounted to Hassy H3DII-31 and as sloppy as bad cell phone pic.

Good pic - same. It does not matter.

Adams who never printed straight neg without manipulations dreamed about digital imaging.

Now whole bunch of internet "purists" hate digital by typing on computer keyboard watching LCD screens - funny ... go to desert, take rock and scrape on the wall - no refresh button there.

[Chris C]

Oil painting is just as much painting as water colour.

Different mediums have different final products. I just wish we as photographers could accept this and drop the whole debate and spend more time taking photos and not worry or feel like we have to justify ourselves and our means of capturing our vision.

[Daniel_Buck]

What gives those digital photos that "illustration" look, is the particular digital processing of the photos (and probably to a degree in some of them, the lighting). You can do alot of things with digital processing, most of which is very easy to go overboard, and alot of people seem to like the 'overboard processing', but it's not for everyone. I think alot of folks like that style *because* it's different.

You could easily get the same/similar results the same by scanning in an 8x10 sheet and "processing" it digitally with the same techniques. It's not the digital capture that gives them the different look, it's how they treat those captures.

[Chris Strobel]

What gives those digital photos that "illustration" look, is the particular digital processing of the photos (and probably to a degree in some of them, the lighting). You can do alot of things with digital processing, most of which is very easy to go overboard, and alot of people seem to like the 'overboard processing', but it's not for everyone. I think alot of folks like that style *because* it's different.

You could easily get the same/similar results the same by scanning in an 8x10 sheet and "processing" it digitally with the same techniques. It's not the digital capture that gives them the different look, it's how they treat those captures.

So true.Lucis and Topaz come to mind.Both of them have presets that pump up the local contrast and saturation to varying degrees.Just go to Flickr groups and type in HDR and you will come up with thousands of images using these softwares, most way over done.Once in a while an image will catch your eye, but I come from the f/64 west coast straight photography school myself, and those are the types of images I enjoy most.However just for fun and illustrative purpose (pun intended , this is my wifes kitchen tool drawer with one of the Topaz presets applied as an example.There is no HDR software employed in the image at all, just the Topaz CS3 plugin.It is a stitched panorama of six images with a Canon G10 yielding a 19"x20" print at 360 DPI.

[Blueberrydesk]

I've got that same garlic press...

[John Kasaian]

I'm trying so hard not to get involved, but here's my thoughts---

There are three significant elements seperating photographs done in the dark room and those illustrations printed with digis:
1) Progress. In terms of capabilities and end use, digital appears to be the cat's pajamas. Cool. There is a market for this stuff. It is a creative outlet for those who enjoy computers. Cool!

2) Fun. In terms of sheer enjoyment, photographing with film in bellows cameras and printing in a darkroom beats electrical gizmos and sitting at a computer and having a machine spurt out inkjets.

3) Energy. A conventional print made by a real human and born under an oc safelight while floating in a tray is a visual and tactile delight as it is nurtured through the stop, fix, second fix, wash, toner, and drying steps. Done by hand the photographer makes a physical object, much like a painting or sculpture. Electrons sent from a desk top to a uber printer is a completely different thing---physical contact between the "maker" and the print is just not in the equation.

Now does one picture have a different "look" than the other? Unless it was made that way on purpose, otherwise I think it would take a fairly sophisticated eye to discern any difference.

But there is a difference! Like "artisanal" bread that comes out of a factory bakery where extraordinary control is achieved through technology assuring the highest quality end product will yield some very tasty pan rustique is different from a loaf of sourdough kneaded with your own hands and baked in your own kitchen that comes out a wee bit black on the bottom.

Which would you prefer?

I'll take the home made bread every time, but if you prefer the high tech loaf, thats your choice. Either way the sandwich will still be a sandwich.