Getting "reality" with film. It ain't happening.

[Steve M Hostetter]

One other thing you might ask yourself is, do my prints look the same as the tranny on the lightbox.?

[Steven Barall]

Ceci n'est pas une pipe.

Reality has nothing to do with it. If you think you are recreating nature then where is the creativity? If you can't be creative why do it in the first place?

In semiotics school they taught that a foot print in the sand is the index of the foot, it's a direct relationship, one makes the other. Is photography like that? Does the mountain and the cloud and the moon have that same relationship to the photo as the foot has to the sand?

I give photography more credit than to say that is merely replicating nature and photographers more credit than to call them camera operators.

Cheers and have a great weekend everyone.

[ROL]

This is why I prefer black and white. Photography is an abstraction from what we see in the external world, and since most of us see in color, I find that black and white is more honest about being an abstraction.

Plus, it looks awfully darn cool.

Bruce

Well said.

my blog

[cyrus]

Reality is overrated.

[rdenney]

...is more honest about being an abstraction.

How can an abstraction be honest? It seems to me that an abstraction is, by definition, dishonest.

Adams said that color can't be manipulated as much without beginning to look "obviously unreal." He implied that black and white can be heavily manipulated, to the point of clear unreality, and still look realistic. I would think that looking realistic when not being realistic is fundamentally less honest than not looking realistic.

But I don't think it's a moral issue, as implied by the use of the word "honest". I think it's an issue of artistic intent. Making it a moral issue will surely bring us to the same head that the impressionists faced with the realists or (worse) the romantics.

So, I would say that black and white, by being abstract by its nature, allows further abstraction without that abstraction becoming the subject in its own right. I think that's what you said, but without the moral connotation.

Rick "many of whose color images have been so heavily manipulated as to challenge Adams's assertion" Denney

[Steve Gledhill]

One of my eyes sees color totally differently than the other eye. I've spent a lot of time analyzing this once I noticed it last year. Essentially, one eye has a warmer white balance and more vivid color and the other has a cooler white balance, less vivid color and less sensitivity to specular highlights. I am not imagining this, and I actually find it really valuable when taking color photos.

So, which eye is "reality"?

...

You're not alone. For me the difference shows up in greens - but it is only a slight tonal difference. So, your reality question is real and meaningful. I prefer my left reality but my right's ok too.

It does surprise me as I would have expected my brain to have calibrated each eye so that I perceive the same colour identically. But what do I know?

[Heroique]

...I would think that looking realistic when not being realistic is fundamentally less honest than not looking realistic...

Personally, I think being honest when not looking realistic is fundamentally less realistic than looking honest.

(A minority opinion, I realize. )

But seriously, I’ve always thought the neglected term “naturalistic” would help clarify discussions like this about what “realistic” means in photography.

[bgh]

But I don't think it's a moral issue, as implied by the use of the word "honest". I think it's an issue of artistic intent. Making it a moral issue will surely bring us to the same head that the impressionists faced with the realists or (worse) the romantics.

So, I would say that black and white, by being abstract by its nature, allows further abstraction without that abstraction becoming the subject in its own right. I think that's what you said, but without the moral connotation.

Rick--

You're quite right, a good catch; photographs are not moral agents, and can be neither honest nor dishonest. Perhaps better word than "honest" for what I meant would be "forthright" or "unambiguous."

However, I stand by my assessment that they look pretty darn cool!

Bruce

[BetterSense]

Photography is an illusion. It's amazing that people consider a photographs to be representations of reality.

[Robert Hughes]

I would think that looking realistic when not being realistic is fundamentally less honest than not looking realistic.

You wouldn't get along very well in Congress, I can see that ...