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Thread: Film and “footprints”

  1. #31

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    Re: Film and “footprints”

    We are defined as people by our reality. For some people reality is objective, they accept their surroundings at face value, and for some reality is subjective, for them objective reality is filtered through the value system. People are extraverted or introverted, not in the sense of liking or disliking people, but depending on how they relate to external stimulus.

    So if you want to argue about reality, perhaps you should be talking about objective reality and subjective reality. I supose the pure sciences are objective and the social sciences, such as history and dare I mention it, art, are subjective. I maintain that photography is inherently subjective. It is interpretive. The operators of the instrument are not capable of producing objectivly repeatable results (the whole point of it is to not produce objectivly repeatable photographs). Photography is not the same as doing a titration in a lab. Photography is not sensiometry. Sensiometry is objective, photography is not. Even forensic photography is interpretive. Picking up a camera is not the same as operating a MRI machine.

    Just for interest, are the photographs made by Hubble subjective or objective? I would expect the humans on Earth are pointing the cameras and processing the image data into something viewable.

  2. #32

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    Re: Film and “footprints”

    "Women are the only reality"

    There you have the truth in 5 words.

    Note that this is a quote.

  3. #33
    Format Omnivore Brian C. Miller's Avatar
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    Re: Film and “footprints”

    Quote Originally Posted by BetterSense View Post
    I like pretty pictures.
    You'll just have to do with the ugly long-exposure test I just did!

    No, I did not have a wooden ball on hand, just a lemon that had dried into a dessicated state while sitting in my fridge's butter tray. But since this is in the "Image Sharing & Discussion" forum, we are now on topic with one image!! Yeeee haaaaw!

    Now, in this image I claim that it is a dessicated lemon, and not fresh. Can someone tell if I am lying or telling the truth? I claim that the lens was left open for between 1-1/2 to 2 hours. Can that be refuted? I claim that I used Plus-X Pan expired in September 1985 (OK, so I thought it was a bit older in the other post) and exposed using my Graflex Super Graphic with the bellows at maximum extension at f32. I could have used a digital camera! How can any statement be asserted as true or false based on a cruddy .jpg?

    What is the spirit of the photograph? Is the lemon truly alone? Does it represent something else other than a lemon? Does it represent the lack of a wooden ball, which in turn represents the lack of something else, like yet more unfathomed BS?

    Does the lemon represent me, or do I represent the lemon? I think neither. The lemon exists on its own apart from me. Under the right conditions, this mummified fruit will outlast me, possibly by orders of magnitude. I can interact with it, but our existences are seperate.

    Does the image represent me? No. If the photograph were one of Cindy Sherman's productions, then yes, I would definitely agree that the image represents the photographer.

    Literally, we think that we see the image of a lemon in the corner of a cardboard box. We think that this image has not been deliberately modified. Some people may think that this is a significant photograph, especially if it is printed and stuck in a frame on a wall. And if this image was found on a glass plate among glass plates of Yosemite, it might be hailed as being made by a famous photographer and offered up for the sum of many thousands of dollars.

    But my reality is that I wanted to post something to this thread to keep it on the forum topic.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vaughn View Post
    Nothing we experience is "reality". All our senses feed our brains which creates its own version, its copy, of reality. As the Hindus and Buddhists would say (and perhaps the Christian mystics), it is all Maya, all illusion.
    Christianity has some pretty explicit exhortations about detachment and release, but the main books don't mention the word illusion. There is probably something in the scads and scads of commentary down through the last couple of millenium, though.

    And how does that tie in with photography? The shutter release, of course! We release the shutter, to create a chemical change on some gunk inside of a box. Then, depending on the camera in question (digital or chemical) we do things which eventually results in a photograph. If the image is good then we retain it, and if it is bad, we release it, and do the process again. What is the point to this paragraph? We are constantly releasing. We don't know beforehand if we will be satisfied with what we have created. And even after we have created the "final" print, we don't really know its value until others interact with it, until the image creates thoughts within their minds. And if the print becomes damaged in the future or we figure a better interpretation of the original image, we must release it yet again, and create it anew.

    Photography is full of illusions. How many manipulated images are there? Untold millions? And I'm refering to chemical-based photography. Just because there is a print, that doesn't mean that there was a corresponding scene. Most of us play "spot the pixel" game, or look at some old photo and comment how a ghost in the picture isn't real. So is there always an indexical relationship between the final print and anything else? No, just ask Jerry Uelsmann, who is in Florida, and has one camera and six enlargers.

    Now I'm going to wander off to bed, having finally kept the discussion on track within the forum topic.

  4. #34
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    Re: Film and “footprints”

    Quote Originally Posted by Heroique View Post
    Ah, analysis – that’s the Western bias, I think, that Vaughn resists. If I read Brian Miller’s earlier thoughts correctly, so does he.
    We are born with both halves of a brain--one half that feels and the other half that thinks. We can't divorce the two halves without imposing other problems, but one side can be allowed to dominate the other. I live my life in an analytical world, but then I'm an engineer and that's what I'm paid to do. When I make photographs or music, both halves are engaged. If I play a note out of tune or with inappropriate articulation, that all-too-common fact is something I note analytically, in a process running parallel to but otherwise independent of my focus on the emotion of the musical line. The goal for musicians is to gain such technical mastery that the analysis becomes sub-conscious, allowing full mental headroom for simply feeling and expression the emotion. Note that without the technical mastery, that expression is hindered and perhaps even blocked altogether. It is not blocked because of analysis, but rather because of the lack of analysis done in preparation for the expression. Da Vinci, as an artist, performed deep analysis of his subjects, and when the analysis was complete, he made art that we still admire many centuries later.

    If that approach is uniquely Western (I don't think it is), then so be it. I'm a Western man, being true to my own cultural heritage.

    Now, I may have a little more sympathy w/ analysis than others (and I suspect Maris does too), but I do have to ask: What makes an instrument of analysis (e.g., your “XRF machine,” etc.) – no matter how many of these instruments we use on a subject, no matter how sophisticated they are – a more reliable interpreter of “what something is” than by our looking at it and seeing the light rays bounce off?
    It is not more reliable. It is more precise. But an XRF machine is really just a different way of seeing. It beams X-rays at a subject until it fluoresces, and a spectral analysis of the fluorescence reveals the component elements. So, we analyze, say, a piece of polished brass, partly by its color. If it is reddish, it has more copper. If it is yellowish, it has less. We are analyzing the brass, mostly sub-consciously and probably entirely empirically, by evaluating the spectrum of visible light bouncing off of it. We make photographs using infrared film to expose a different aspect of a subject. I have seen photographs made using ultraviolet light that involves considerable visible fluorescence. The XRF machine, and other machines like it, are doing the same thing, but they are looking at the object in different "light".

    Thus, we are actually seeing a narrow band of the energy reflected from objects, and other aspects of their nature are revealed by exposing them to different frequencies of energy.

    Those methods, formal or not, reveal aspects of a subject's physical nature. I don't mind using the word reality in place of physical nature, but I also don't mind if others prefer not to make that equation. The reason I don't mind is that it doesn't affect what I perceive. And it is orthogonal to what I feel about a subject--that part runs on a parallel and independent process, just as with music. That aspect is what I am always trying to improve. It is not analysis that holds me back, but the importance analysis has in my way of thinking. Again, so be it.

    So, in the end, whether something is real or not beyond its physical nature is a matter of spiritual faith, and that is not the topic at hand. A news photographer is not charged with photographing what cannot be perceived--that is the realm of art. A news photographer is charged with photographing what can be explicitly perceived, and in a way that is consistent with standards of perception. I think news photographs should stick with clearly illustrating something's physical nature, as visible in plain light.

    I’d like to hear more about this “authority” we trust whose representation of a photo as “factual” is the only way to generate our belief that it is. (And I’d like to meet him.) Let’s say it’s someone who has no intention to “violate” our trust – one whose credentials enjoy an iron-clad reputation for trustworthiness. Still, can this ideal authority ever enjoy such perfect knowledge about the facts of a photo to warrant the only way we can believe in those facts? If they can, is it because they have access to an even higher “Authority” – note the capital “A” – to whom we have none? Or maybe this authoritative photographer used special instruments of analysis? Makes me think one should be more than “rightly skeptical” about this person.
    An authority is one whose assertions are trusted by those charged with evaluating those assertions. No more; no less. Authorities are wrong all the time, as are their evaluators. That is why all such authoritative assertions are subject to further analysis and confirmation. A photograph illustrating a news story comes with an implicit assurance of authority, though that is one that I find untrustworthy often enough to cast the whole idea of implicit photographic authority into question. When a reporter asserts, in words, the events illustrated by a photograph, then I trust it more, simply because words are easier to evaluate. There is no absolute authority in this physical world. I do believe in absolute authority, but again that delves into spiritual topics not the subject of this thread.

    Perhaps this is my most pressing question of all: Once one “predicts” all the ways light can behave, and considers all the multiple viewpoints that are possible, which one (or how many) of these behaviors and viewpoints does one select, or emphasize, to make a point about reality? Do instruments of analysis have anything to do with the choice?
    We employ instruments of analytical precision to answer questions about their physical nature that are relevant to what we are trying to achieve. We develop such machines because we have learned, through analysis and experimentation, that our eyes and fingers are not sufficiently precise to answer those questions. Or, that our prior multiple views and observational modes give conflicting evidence of that physical nature. Again, I'm happy with the equation of physical nature with reality, in the context of this discussion.

    We may learn something about physical reality that changes our spiritual world view, but more often, we interpret physical reality in the context of that world view. Even if that world view is specifically void, as it is with some belief systems, that is still a filter through which we evaluate physical nature. But that crosses the line into navel-gazing, it seems to me. Introspection is what we do to consider how we are reacting to the physical nature of the subject before us, and that leads to an emotional feeling that we may try to express artistically. That introspection is not evaluating the nature of the subject, but rather our emotional response to it. I try not to confuse the two.

    Rick "noting that words are more precise than pictures, but it takes a thousand of them" Denney

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