A precursor of things to come?

[Donald Miller]

Some of the comments on the recent threads got me to thinking. I think that while some may not openly embrace digital capture there is a greater acceptance, on the whole, than there has been at any time since it's inception.

I would like to open this discussion of advances in photography a bit further if I may. Taking things a little farther, I think that we as still photographers take a very limited view of photography from our own little corner of the world. The reason that I say this is that with todays technology we can take things far beyond where they are now.

I personally believe that movies (film based) and video (digital) are both photographic processes and that in some ways they relegate still photography to a very limited place. The reason that I say this is, borrowing from a straight photographers litany, that straight photography is more realistic than any other type of photography, when one examines the "realistic premise" on face value it is not really as realistic as is it would appear.

Let's compare what is and what could be...

Still photography whether it is film or digital captures one slice of time/space and nothing more. All of the expertise in the taking or printing of a still image is never going to do more than capture a single portion of time/space as it relates to the object/subject being photographed. It can never become more than that and the same conditions at the time of exposure as it relates to that time/space may never reoccur again. Furthermore, all that is capable of being portrayed in a still photographic image are the visual aspects of form...nothing more. If we were to take a photograph of a tree, a stream, a waterfall, or some architectural aspect it will be able to contain only the visual aspects of form as it relates to that subject/object.

Now with todays technology one could alternately capture an entire day of time/space on film or video. Let me assume that this would be daylight portrayal since the limitations of available light applies to both "still" and "unstill" photography. We could with todays technology place digital picture frames throughout a display space in lieu of framed still photographic prints. Now with this approach with computer control we could depict a more life like and hence more realistic aspect of the object/subject that we are photographing because we have the ability to depict virtually unlimited multiples of single portions of time/space.

Instead of a silent unmoving still image, we would be able to observe movement, sound, and changing light conditions as well. Instead of an unchanging image we would present a continuously changing image. Additionally, since we would be viewing this by transmitted light in lieu of reflected light I would hazard that most viewers would choose this over a photographic print. One could, with available technology, alternate these ongoing images from place to place within the inhabited space and even change them from time to time if desired.

Expensive? to that I would ask what is expensive when you consider the prices that some prints command today?

In this scenario rather than buying still photographs one would buy or rent discs to depict the photographic scenes they wanted in their inhabited spaces. Obviously this will not initially appeal to some...certainly, one would expect existing still photographers to be highly resistant. Too strange?, perhaps?...I would like to hear your thoughts on this.

[Annie M.]

'Still photography whether it is film or digital captures one slice of time/space and nothing more'... untrue... there are many photographers who's work is just the opposite... mine included

'Furthermore, all that is capable of being portrayed in a still photographic image are the visual aspects of form...nothing more' untrue... the visual aspects of time and light are also portrayed...

Also... artists have been doing Tempographs for many years...

Cheers, Annie

ps... film (movies) .... just a glorified flipbook.... the limitations you see in still photography are in your limited paradigm not intrinsic to the medium...

[John Voss]

One role of the artist is to find the moment in the ongoing continuum that bears lingering over (as distinguished from being necessarily 'decisive'.) For those unaccustomed to taking the time to 'look', or knowing how to look, this is the service rendered by the artist. Because technology allows what you are describing, Donald, I'm sure it will be exploited both commercially, and artistically, but not to the exclusion of the artist's choice of how, where and when to confine the temporal to the concrete.

[Donald Miller]

'Still photography whether it is film or digital captures one slice of time/space and nothing more'... untrue... there are many photographers who's work is just the opposite... mine included

'Furthermore, all that is capable of being portrayed in a still photographic image are the visual aspects of form...nothing more' untrue... the visual aspects of time and light are also portrayed...

Also... artists have been doing Tempographs for many years...

Cheers, Annie

ps... film (movies) .... just a glorified flipbook.... the limitations you see in still photography are in your limited paradigm not intrinsic to the medium...

Hi Annie,

Hope that this finds you well. I am not following you on a couple of things that you said. I hope that you will amplify on them for me so that I can understand what you mean.

The first is that you seem to be saying, as I read you, that you have the ability with a still image to factually depict more than what existed before the camera lens during the time that the shutter was open. If this is true, are you representing that this is possible or merely an abstraction?

The second is that it appears that you and I don't speak the same language when I address the visual aspects of form. Certainly, as I understand it light/shadow (tone, hue, and saturation) are among the other aspects of form. I think that obviously these, in fact all photography, requires the existence of light...so it goes without saying that the existence of light would be involved. So light existence is necessary for the observance and capture of the visual aspects of form. However, I will go on to say, we only see the aspects of form in a photographic image...light is not present within the image since one can not factually measure light as emanating from within the image. Any light is simply the reflection from an outside source falling upon the photographic image. That is what I meant when I wrote what I wrote. That brings me back to your second mention of the portrayal of time. How do you factually represent a greater measure of time (beyond the time the film is exposed) unless it is a pure abstraction?

I look forward to hearing from you. I imagine that I will learn something here.

Good luck and good light,
Donald Miller

[Donald Miller]

One role of the artist is to find the moment in the ongoing continuum that bears lingering over (as distinguished from being necessarily 'decisive'.) For those unaccustomed to taking the time to 'look', or knowing how to look, this is the service rendered by the artist. Because technology allows what you are describing, Donald, I'm sure it will be exploited both commercially, and artistically, but not to the exclusion of the artist's choice of how, where and when to confine the temporal to the concrete.

John, I fully agree with what you have said. I hope that I didn't lead you to believe that I meant that still photography would be supplanted. That certainly is not what I intended.

[Annie M.]

Hey Donald... my cameras and I have drifted far since that winter day in the coffee shop when I showed you my timid little photographs...

'you have the ability with a still image to factually depict more than what existed before the camera lens during the time that the shutter was open' ...yes ...

It is on the 'factual' that you are tripping up... of course I am teathered to a visual reality because I am using a machine ... but I really stretch the obvious aspects of visual reality and to me it is a different aspect of a true visual/time/light reality not the traditional aspect of abstract form...

simple analogy... in early filmmaking... the camera was still and everything was played out in front of it... it was a hangover from the theater paradigm... then someone picked the camera up and started moving it through the scene...voila...revolution... new paradigm.

I have my own little umwelt going on and I do not use cameras in the traditional way.

'greater aspect of time unless it is a pure abstraction'... not a greater aspect of time... a different rendering of time on the negative... it is not any more an abstraction that 1/125sec... which is in fact an arbitrary unit of time that is indeed an abstraction as well... but through lens culture we have become trained to see it as non-abstract.

soooooo... probably I am just messing with the semantics of images and how they relate to our notions of reality and experience of place.

Cheers and thanks again for the coffee!

[billschwab]

Donald,

I guess I don't see where any of what you have proposed is new. We've had webcams depicting people's lives’, trips, fish tanks, pets, volcanoes, cities ... you name it. 24/7. Complete with sight and sound. Hasn't Bill Gates some sort of artwork panels that randomly display images to enhance the room's environment? What is it you propose that is any different and what does it have to do with "straight photographers" and their chosen form of expression?

Some of the comments on the recent threads got me to thinking. I think that while some may not openly embrace digital capture...

... borrowing from a straight photographers litany, that straight photography is more realistic than any other type of photography...

Obviously this will not initially appeal to some...certainly, one would expect existing still photographers to be highly resistant.

I don't really see where these comments have anything to do with what you are discussing? I'm left feeling from this and other posts that you have made that you have some underlying problem with straight, tradiional or film photographers. What's up?

Bill

[Turner Reich]

So you got a new digital camera and every thing looks digital to you, that has changed for you but not necessarily for others.

[David_Senesac]

Odd you are not mentioning this holiday season's new image sensation the LCD digital picture frame that has taken a few years to rise to the public's awareness. A product that will undoubtedly sell well with holiday shoppers though one in which I have not yet been personally impressed with. Marketing for digital picture frames has consistently targeted the low end consumer with puny pixel sizes at VGA (640x480) or less. Any larger displays cost more than one will pay for similiar pixel size computer monitors that have way more functionality when connected to a computer. Some of these same products have been stupidly marketed at serious D-SLR photographers in the field who have not surprisingly tended to ignore them for the greater functionality of last year's functionally dated laptops with vastly more functionality at hardly more cost.

The same issue of small pixel dimension is likely to plague what I would coin digital video frames that you mention. The idea is not new at all because people have been looking at these things for years in our consumer electronic store television isles. All the HiDef big screen TVs in wide format going through sequences of canned scenic pics off some DVD with the sound often muted. Some DVD devices can be put in auto repeating sequence so one only requires media. I'd speculate to the consumer, such an idea will more often than not rise no further than the memory of watching some nature DVD on their TV. The newer HiDef experience at 1080 pixel size is a huge improvement over NTSC and still novel enough that digital video frame products has some credibility. However the significant cost of the current displays mean that such functions could not be supported alone, so any such feature is likely to be incorporated within a pricy HiDef televsion set.

What does tend to impress people is when they see a cutting edge IMAX 70mm film image on a big theater screen. Now that is impressive and different enough from TV to be novel. Due to obvious lack of memory and display limitations we won't be seeing any such products to display huge images any time in the next decade or two. However there will be a time in the not too distant future when one will be able to combine LCD panels in a modular fashion to free us from size contraints at typical living room distances and eventually memory issues will allow gigabytes of stored transfer to allow such. Thus in the future one might have several feet of display against a wall that will allow a more lifelike experience. In the mean time people will have to be content standing next to our static large format 35 inch plus sized fine art prints to experience a sense of being in a picture.

...David

[Struan Gray]

www.theircircularlife.it