Does “Photographic Realism” really exist?

[Drew Wiley]

There are good illusionists and poor illusionists. That's all.

[Leigh]

Am I being too mischievous if I ask: at which “moment”?

Well, since you asked...

For any given imaging medium (I'll use digital for convenience of discourse, but the math is identical for film):

The value of each individual pixel equals the integral over the period Topen to Tclose of the intensity of the cone of light focused on that pixel. The difference in time from Topen to Tclose is the shutter speed.

Next question?

- Leigh

[Jay DeFehr]

To my admittedly simple mind, "photo realism" means that the photographer used all of his or her skills and abilities to make a photograph of a scene that resembles the scene as accurately as possible within the limitations of using a two dimensional process to represent a three dimensional scene.

So, my simple definition excludes black and white photography, photoshop or Velvia-enhanced colors, shallow depth of field, and probably a number of other tools that photographers use to alter the "reality" of a scene.

Dan,

There is a problem with your definition. Quotation marks, or not, your definition depends on an objective, measurable reality, against which to compare a photo. This is perhaps most simply illustrated by your limitations on spectral representation. The tonal values of a B&W image result from values in the scene, though they don't represent the full electromagnetic spectrum. Same goes for the Velvia. Your definition contradicts itself because it pretends an objective reality, but imposes a subjective, human visual perception system as arbiter of that reality. The same human visual perception system that sees sharply, and in color, in only a small, central part of the field of vision, with an extremely shallow depth of field, and relies on cognition to interpret rapidly scanned, visual input as meaningful imagery. For example, which photo is more "realistic", one of a waterfall made with a very short exposure, detailing every drop of spray distinctly, and clearly, or one made with a longer exposure, obscuring the details, but rendering the impression of movement?

[Leonard Evens]

"Photorealism" as a movement in photography certainly exists.

But what it might mean otherwise is problematic. The difficulty is that what we "see' with our eyes is something that is constructed within our brains. Our vision system is very different from how a camera works. It is true that the cornea and lens together act similar to a photographic lens in that they produce an image on the retina. But that is not what you see. Only the small section called the fovea accurately records the image, so you have to scan the scene to build up a complete image. Most of what we think of as vision takes place in the brain. And the process is complex. So photography never captures a scene as we see it, but it can produce a photographic image, which when viewed properly, approximates what we "see'. Indeed. most people when looking at a picture, even an ordinary snapshot, will recognize what they see. Again, this is explained by what happens in the brain, not by what is actually on the photograph.

[Heroique]

The difficulty is that what we “see” with our eyes is something that is constructed within our brains. Our vision system is very different from how a camera works.

To add punch to Leonard’s point, the two interesting views below from a related thread may contradict each other here & there, but they both suggest that “photographic realism” is, at best, an extremely problematic term:

The camera, AA says in The Camera, is “analogous” but not “identical” to the eye:

The camera, for example, does not concentrate on the center of its field of view as the eye does, but sees everything within its field with about equal clarity. The eye scans the subject to take it all in, while the camera (usually) records it whole and fixed. Then there is the film, which has a range of sensitivity that is only a fraction of the eye’s. Later steps, development, printing, etc., contribute their own specific characteristics to the final photographic image.

Art critic Robert Hughes (in The Shock of the New) has his own ideas about the eye:

Look at an object: your eye is never still. It flickers, involuntarily restless, from side to side. Nor is your head still in relation to the object; every movement brings a fractional shift in its position, which results in a miniscule difference of aspect. The more you move, the bigger the shifts and differences become. If asked to, the brain can isolate a given view, frozen in time; but its experience of the world outside the eye is more like a mosaic than a perspective set-up, a mosaic of multiple relationships, none of them (as far as vision is concerned) wholly fixed. Any sight is a sum of glimpses.

[jb7]

Whenever I see the term, I assume I'm looking at something artificial...

Artifice really exists. Nothing else is real.

Maybe I'm dealing with a different question.

[MDR]

Nope all photography is unrealistic.

Dominik

[Leonard Evens]

Let me give one further example of the surprising ability of the eye-brain combination to recognize what it is in a picture as a "realistic" view of the scene. In principle, there is exactly one position of your eye for which, when viewing a picture, the perspective is correct. Your eye should have the same relation to the picture that the lens did to the scene for vanishing points to be placed properly. This is true not only for photographs but for artists' renditions on canvas. But the typical viewer has no difficulty working out the three dimensional aspects of the scene from any point of view. Indeed, artists often depart significantly from pure perspective rules in order to make their pictures look more "realistic".

It may be an accident of evolution that we can recognize scenes from pictures of them, but without it, all two dimensional art, including photography, would be impossible.

[Jay DeFehr]

Let me give one further example of the surprising ability of the eye-brain combination to recognize what it is in a picture as a "realistic" view of the scene. In principle, there is exactly one position of your eye for which, when viewing a picture, the perspective is correct. Your eye should have the same relation to the picture that the lens did to the scene for vanishing points to be placed properly. This is true not only for photographs but for artists' renditions on canvas. But the typical viewer has no difficulty working out the three dimensional aspects of the scene from any point of view. Indeed, artists often depart significantly from pure perspective rules in order to make their pictures look more "realistic".

It may be an accident of evolution that we can recognize scenes from pictures of them, but without it, all two dimensional art, including photography, would be impossible.

leonard, If you haven't read The Age of Insight, I think you might enjoy it.

[Heroique]

In principle, there is exactly one position of your eye for which, when viewing a picture, the perspective is correct. Your eye should have the same relation to the picture that the lens did to the scene for vanishing points to be placed properly.

Doesn’t the absence of parallax in the print freeze or preserve the “correct” viewing position, no matter where the viewer is in relation to the print? So it’s correct everywhere.

I think Balzac wrote a short story about a painter who miraculously discovered how to preserve a three-dimensional scene’s parallax on his two-dimensional canvass!

That would be stunning realism indeed, being able to step to one side & see behind the subject.