View Full Version : are photographs still photographs...
...or, more specifically, do today's photographs look like photographs to you? I just got the latest Hasselblad Photographer newsletter in email today. I notice that all the potential "Hasselblad Masters" are represented by images that look... well.... more or less the same stylistically. Upon closer observation, perhaps it is not the style, but the fact that, to my eyes, all that digital medium format stuff looks more like high end illustration than photography. Please believe that I am not, by any means, trying to resurrect that age old debate that will remain nameless here, but it dawned on me that many, perhaps most, of today's high profile photography looks a lot like it was done by a master with an airbrush, rather than a photographer with a camera. This is not a criticism, rather and observation. Whether work can be done with MF digital is not the point here.
I also noticed that the new H3DII-31 is available for about 13k....
We live in interesting times.
Brian Ellis
4-Jun-2009, 07:11
Today's photographs (whatever exactly that means) look like photographs to me.
There are interesting "masters" (whatever that means), and less interesting ones. That's always been like that. Also, most are not interesting - that's also always been like that, it's just that time has thrown away those that don't need to be remembered, and now we get them all… No worries, they'll be forgotten again :)
willwilson
4-Jun-2009, 07:37
I have been thinking the same thing. Photo-Illustration is what I call it. Some of this highly stylized "high-end" pro work has really become 80% photoshop and 20% camera. It's just so easy to push images beyond, not just reality, but what the average person sees as an acceptable photographic version of reality; after you cross that point we are forced to try and find a medium that this new version of super modified photography most closely resembles and that usually ends up being some form of illustration(digital or hand crafted). I see work that is considered photography that could also be easily pasted off as very good digital illustration.
I assume that you would not consider a pencil drawing that started as a simple tracing from a photograph still a photograph. When does a digitally manipulated photograph become digital illustration based on photograph? Is there a line? Is there even a need for a distinction?
I don't even think it really matters, ultimately it is about the art. If you like someones super processed photo-illustration medium format digital work, hire them or hang it in your house or collect it.
Well they don't look like daguerreotypes to me.
But what you are saying (I think) is that current style will be perceived as desirable and will proliferate, by those who define style.
The history of photography is usually seen as a progression, and will always seek new change. Whether the new style will mark a new move forward remains to be seen, but the old style will inevitablely be out dated, no matter how good you or I are at it or how much it suits our perception of photography.
So do they look like yesterday's photograph's? No
Will they look like tomorrow's photograph's? No
Regards
Bill
Some of this highly stylized "high-end" pro work has really become 80% photoshop and 20% camera
How would you set the percentage for the relationship darkroom/camera?
John Kasaian
4-Jun-2009, 07:55
If they weren't still photographs, they'd be movies! :rolleyes:
Donald Miller
4-Jun-2009, 08:00
I think that todays photographs are more artistically creative than the photographs of yesterday. When additional means of expression are found than expression is expanded. That has been historically true...no matter the time. A truly wonderful thing from where I see it.
PViapiano
4-Jun-2009, 08:07
I understand what the OP is saying. In fact, according to a recent New Yorker article*, most photographs in magazines are digitally enhanced, ie, in an issue of Vogue 144 images were digi-retouched, all by Pascal Dangin of Box Studios. Thirty celebrities keep him on retainer to retouch all photos reaching the media. Annie, Patrick and many, many more photographers work only with him.
If you look at a lot of Annie's recent work, there is a "look" to it, especially the story-oriented spreads.I don't think it's unappealing, but it seems to be so prevalent these days and has a sameness, but if there is one main guy everyone is going to that would explain it...
*http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/12/080512fa_fact_collins
willwilson
4-Jun-2009, 08:12
How would you set the percentage for the relationship darkroom/camera?
I often wish I could go further in the darkroom, but this usually relates to damage correction (dust, scratches, the occasional content removal, etc).
In general, it depends on the negative. I would say on average for me personally: 30% Darkroom - 70% Camera. But with the darkroom there is a lower ceiling, with digital the ceiling is almost limitless.
The old-timers said it best: - "Photo Illustration." When they would create heavily contrived or staged scenes followed by airbrushing and other altering techniques, they would proudly call the results, "Photo Illustration." It would be hard to find the definitive point in the continuum from untouched negative to heavily altered digital image, but at some point the result becomes a Photo Illustration, best understood by "feel" than by external metric.
I would say on average for me personally: 30% Darkroom - 70% Camera. But with the darkroom there is a lower ceiling, with digital the ceiling is almost limitless.
I see what you mean - personally, I prefer work done in camera, rather than in darkroom. But truth is that in the darkroom you can go at least as far as Photoshop - and photographers have done so. Photoshop is just the digital version of a darkroom. It's "easier" to use; as in - anybody can click those buttons…
most photographs in magazines are digitally enhanced, ie, in an issue of Vogue 144 images were digi-retouched, all by Pascal Dangin of Box Studios. Thirty celebrities keep him on retainer to retouch all photos reaching the media.
This is nothing new, and retouching was standard practice in portrait photography. Until they invented lenses that made it easier to hide those blemishes on the skin…
Jim Galli
4-Jun-2009, 08:45
I noticed this phenomenon as early as 5 years ago when friends who had sold out to the all digital path were beginning to get to their ultimate distination and were triumphantly showing me photographs that looked more like a Pixar animation than a photograph. Whether apparent at the time I have realized in the mean time that this phenomenon is precisely why I've gone down the 8X10 and larger soft focus path.
Please note that I haven't said any "look" is either good or bad, only that I've chosen a road less traveled. Also noteworthy, theirs sells, mine does not. Not this month any way. Look down the road 25 years. Will we get to a day where someone picks up one of my photographs (I'll be dead of course) and gasps, this is real, look at the dirt in the corners. This was done in a wet darkroom. OK, probably not.
This is nothing new, and retouching was standard practice in portrait photography. Until they invented lenses that made it easier to hide those blemishes on the skin…
Comparing mechanical retouching to the armentarium of digital tools available now is like comparing a pencil to a laser printer. It is no longer a good analogy.
Mark Sawyer
4-Jun-2009, 08:57
My gosh, they're altering photographs? Why can't we just have real, honest photography, like William Mortenson and Jerry Uelsmann used to do... :rolleyes:
This is a current popular style, and it does catch the eye, until we see too much and become jaded, then we move on. I'm just wondering if it's too openly glitzy and commercial to catch on in the fine art galleries...
Jim Galli
4-Jun-2009, 09:05
I'm just wondering if it's too openly glitzy and commercial to catch on in the fine art galleries...
You've made the false assumption that folk with coin who walk into galleries have some amount of taste / class...........
Mark Sawyer
4-Jun-2009, 09:05
Will we get to a day where someone picks up one of my photographs (I'll be dead of course) and gasps, this is real, look at the dirt in the corners. This was done in a wet darkroom. OK, probably not.
More likely, we'll get to the day when there's a pull-down menu on Photoshop CS9 where you can select whether the image from a 20-gig cell-phone cam should look like it was taken with an Artar, a Dagor, a Petzval, a Verito, a Struss, and Imagon, a Pinkham & Smith...
For better or worse, we're getting there...
Comparing mechanical retouching to the armentarium of digital tools available now is like comparing a pencil to a laser printer. It is no longer a good analogy.
Why wouldn't it be? In the end, both produce some signs on some support material - and in this case we are still talking about a photograph in both cases. The digital darkroom offers many things the "real" darkroom couldn't offer - does it make it less of a production space for photographs?
FWIW, I do agree with the stance Jim just expressed so nicely - personally I have chosen the way of film, of large format, of the darkroom, and now am even discovering soft focus. I don't care if this sells or not (at least not now…), I look for something that allows me to express what I have to say. And that something is definetly not where digital photography is.
...or, more specifically, do today's photographs look like photographs to you? I just got the latest Hasselblad Photographer newsletter in email today. I notice that all the potential "Hasselblad Masters" are represented by images that look... well.... more or less the same stylistically. Upon closer observation, perhaps it is not the style, but the fact that, to my eyes, all that digital medium format stuff looks more like high end illustration than photography. Please believe that I am not, by any means, trying to resurrect that age old debate that will remain nameless here, but it dawned on me that many, perhaps most, of today's high profile photography looks a lot like it was done by a master with an airbrush, rather than a photographer with a camera. This is not a criticism, rather and observation. Whether work can be done with MF digital is not the point here.
I also noticed that the new H3DII-31 is available for about 13k....
We live in interesting times.
I think that what you are seeing is more a natural progression than a consequence of digital. After all, Hasselblad's been cultivating a certain "look" and showcasing photographers who get it long before they merged with Imacon and if you look at Hasselblad USA site (http://www.hasselbladusa.com/), you can see for yourself in at least two places:
1. User Showcase (http://www.hasselbladusa.com/user-showcase.aspx)
2. The Masters Archive (http://www.hasselblad.com/masters-2008.aspx)
My favorites are Steve McCurry (User Showcase) and Hans Strand (both links), both have been around long before digital and both are now shooting H3DII-39.
Saying that Photoshop makes "the look" is like saying that pianos make the music. I don't see anything there that old-style photographers wouldn't have done in the darkroom if only they could. In that sense, I see Photoshop and digital processing in general as a liberation, not a diversion.
More likely, we'll get to the day when there's a pull-down menu on Photoshop CS9 where you can select whether the image from a 20-gig cell-phone cam should look like it was taken with an Artar, a Dagor, a Petzval, a Verito, a Struss, and Imagon, a Pinkham & Smith...
For better or worse, we're getting there...
The iPhone, I am told, can already imitate Polaroids, Holgas and Lomos…
Mark Sawyer
4-Jun-2009, 09:10
You've made the false assumption that folk with coin who walk into galleries have some amount of taste / class...........
True. I'm just one of the folks without coin who peeps throgh the gallery's window when nobody's looking...
But I haven't seen the deliberately-obviously-heavily photoshopped photo-illustrations in a fine art gallery yet. I do still see a lot of analog and "straight" digital work there. But then, I'm usually a bit behind the times on such things...
Comparing mechanical retouching to the armentarium of digital tools available now is like comparing a pencil to a laser printer. It is no longer a good analogy.
Or a cave to the modern house... I don't see why not, both still serve the same purpose, only with a different level of advancement and complexity. ;)
After all, photography is the act of capturing light projected through a lens onto a light-sensitive material for a brief moment of time. Everything else is just supporting technology. If anything, I would certainly hope this technology does change with the times!
Or a cave to the modern house... I don't see why not, both still serve the same purpose, only with a different level of advancement and complexity. ;)
After all, photography is the act of capturing light projected through a lens onto a light-sensitive material for a brief moment of time. Everything else is just supporting technology. If anything, I would certainly hope this technology does change with the times!
The original photo retouchers, to create seamless work, endured long apprenticeships and used specialized tools and chemicals. Nevertheless their ability to change images was quite limited, unless it was designed to look intentional (e.g. Uelsmann). In photoshop wholesale alterations can be made in nanoseconds, leaving virtually none of the original structure of the image. Yes, both techniques alter original materials, but the scale and scope and effort involved in making the changes are so vastly disproportionate that the analogy is very weak.
QT Luong
4-Jun-2009, 09:39
1. User Showcase (http://www.hasselbladusa.com/user-showcase.aspx)
Add Meyerowitz and Soth to the list of the converts...
people have been altering photographs since they were able to take them.
masking, double printing, retouching, swapping heads, heavy handed manipulations,
digital technology just allows a different set of tools to do the same thing.
i don't really see much of a difference ...
SamReeves
4-Jun-2009, 09:49
HDR stinks. I see another one made with a $13,000 Hassy or otherwise, I am going to barf on my desk. Shimmering skies and a sparkling ground should be saved for a glittery My Space page, and not photography. :mad: I guess I'm too old school now having learned color photography via RA-4 without the HDR. :o
Some have asked, where is the line? For me, when non-photographic manipulations are made, they are either correcting a flaw in the photographic process, or producing something new to look at. When that something new is the point of the presentation, then it has crossed into photo illustration.
My definition of a photograph is simple: An image produced by projecting light onto a sensitized surface.
Many Photoshop techniques are purely photographic, even though they are executed digitally. Making something lighter or darker, or systematically changing the coloration, various algorithms used to combine photographic data within the image, or even cutting and pasting seem to me photographic. Grabbing the pen tool and drawing, or painting a selection area with a color selected from a palette--those are not photographic because they are not working from data resulting from light projected onto a sensitized surface.
But all that is just a matter of technique. I suspect the real issue is art.
I see a lot of current photographs as being quite faddish, despite the apparent religious worship of innovation rather than, say, beauty. Style is timeless, but fads are ephemeral. Many scoff at the style of Adams, or Strand, or Stieglitz, and in most cases their scoffing seems to stem from their worship of innovation, which consigns the work of past masters to the dustbin of cliche. History has a way of sorting that out in the long run. Many who think that past masters are cliche will be forgotten when those masters are still studied and appreciated. This is true in all art forms. Everyone is always looking for innovation as a means of defining their own voice or vision, and confuse fad with style.
The notion of realism in photography has always been a myth. I made a color photograph of a grave marker on a church on the high road between Santa Fe and Taos (maybe it was Chimayo--but I forget now). Later, I discovered that Adams had photographed the same marker half a century before, and that image was published in Photographs of the Southwest. In my color image, the wrought iron grave marker with wood inserts was dark--in the Zone II to III range. The sky was a brilliant, bright blue. In his image, he's used a red filter and the sky was very dark. The grave marker was bright with Zone IX highlights of the sun reflecting off the surface of the wood and wrought iron. My image, which was more realistic, had the opposite tonal values that his did. Yet both were purely photographic and superficially realistic.
Rick "adding a few random comments" Denney
Chris Strobel
4-Jun-2009, 10:49
Add Meyerowitz and Soth to the list of the converts...
Looking through these various hassy artist work, most of it looks traditional to me, and could have just as easily been captured with a point and shoot at the sizes presented on the computer :D
The original photo retouchers, to create seamless work, endured long apprenticeships and used specialized tools and chemicals. Nevertheless their ability to change images was quite limited, unless it was designed to look intentional (e.g. Uelsmann). In photoshop wholesale alterations can be made in nanoseconds, leaving virtually none of the original structure of the image. Yes, both techniques alter original materials, but the scale and scope and effort involved in making the changes are so vastly disproportionate that the analogy is very weak.
I don't see why is the analogy with the cave/modern house weak?
It is the result that matters, not the level of effort. If anything, reducing the level and complexity of effort needed to accomplish one's goal is what progress is all about.
bvstaples
4-Jun-2009, 11:37
My definition of a photograph is simple: An image produced by projecting light onto a sensitized surface.
In essence I feel this way. To me using a digital devise to record images is imaging; what I do with film and paper is photography. Photography is literally writing with light. I know "photographers" that have never printed a single image, they've all gone on the web. To me that's imaging and they are imagers. They capture, manipulate and display an image on a screen.
Just my dos centavos...
In essence I feel this way. To me using a digital devise to record images is imaging; what I do with film and paper is photography. Photography is literally writing with light. I know "photographers" that have never printed a single image, they've all gone on the web. To me that's imaging and they are imagers. They capture, manipulate and display an image on a screen.
Just my dos centavos...
I basically don't care if the sensitized surface is made from silver or CMOS.
An image made digitally and displayed on the web is still a photograph. What else would it be? A painting? It's a question of how much of the image is drawn versus photographed, and I think that hinges on whether the drawn part becomes the point of the image.
Rick "thinking that 'imaging' is an ambiguous term that could apply to nearly any visual art" Denney
Struan Gray
4-Jun-2009, 12:43
Hasselblad is wooing the advertising and fashion photographers who have a need and a budget for their cameras. Unsurprisingly, a lot of the currently-popular heavily-retouched fashion work makes its way into their glossy materials.
Forget retouching portraits and all that pictorialist fuzzy wuzzy nonsense. If you want to see the real forerunner of today's fashion shoots you need to look at machine tool illustration, particularly from the 30s and 40s. I always get the giggles when I see that perfect plastic skin look on the covers of magazines. Somewhere out there is a lathe fetishist in permanent rapture.
See here for examples of the look that was once standard in literally hundreds of thousands of catalogues, manuals and textbooks:http://www.lathes.co.uk/myford/page12.html
"Imagers" and "Print-makers" are both just subsets of the large set of "Photographers". Another sub-set of photographers would be "Transparency-makers" -- those whose final products are transparencies. But one must be careful about drawing boundaries, as most people are hybrids and such labels can be as mis-leading as they are helpful.
In the sub-set of "Print-makers", there are further subsets of digital printers, wet/darkroom printers (further divided into traditional processes and alternative processes printers), and custom printers (people who have other people printing for them, or print for others).
But, IMO, all are photographers -- all use light to somehow "draw".
Vaughn
"Imagers" and "Print-makers" are both just subsets of the large set of "Photographers". Another sub-set of photographers would be "Transparency-makers" -- those whose final products are transparencies. But one must be careful about drawing boundaries, as most people are hybrids and such labels can be as mis-leading as they are helpful.
In the sub-set of "Print-makers", there are further subsets of digital printers, wet/darkroom printers (further divided into traditional processes and alternative processes printers), and custom printers (people who have other people printing for them, or print for others).
But, IMO, all are photographers -- all use light to somehow "draw".
Vaughn
Very eloquently put.
I draw a distinction with the print itself however. There is to me an intrinsic difference between a wet print that is the actual artifact of chemicals responding to light vs a inkjet print which is a reproduction of a somewhat analogous process happening on chip. One is actual, the other derived from. That makes the print itself qualitatively different.
Very eloquently put.
I draw a distinction with the print itself however. There is to me an intrinsic difference between a wet print that is the actual artifact of chemicals responding to light vs a inkjet print which is a reproduction of a somewhat analogous process happening on chip. One is actual, the other derived from. That makes the print itself qualitatively different.
This is completely arbitrary and makes no sense.
Why is an inkjet print a reproduction of the process that happens on chip and why is wet print not a reproduction on what happens on film?
Why is chemical response to light more important than electrical response to light?
What is an inkjet of a scanned film? And what is a wet print of a digitally captured photograph?
These distinctions make even less sense as we go forward.
Steven Barall
4-Jun-2009, 13:22
All photographs are abstractions so all we are really talking about is a matter of degrees and everyone has their own line in the sand that separates "photography" and "illustration". My own tolerance for illustration is pretty low but that's just me. I do believe however that photos are really just tools that can be used for all sort of things.
Toyon, the definition of a photographic "print" becomes a tougher thing to define than "photographer" -- and the definition becomes more of a personal thing. Some might consider a transparency displayed lit from behind, as a print. Some say a print must be "hand-made", etc.
How to define the difference between the inkjet print and the Fuji Crystal Archive print (wet process) that was printed using a digital file? How many angels can dance of the head of a pin? LOL!
Everything else being equal, I prefer the hand-made print -- but that is just my bias, not an artistic standard.
Vaughn
Jim Galli
4-Jun-2009, 14:42
time to unsubscribe??
time to unsubscribe??
What? And lose a marketing tool? ;) Having a rough day down on the ranch, Jim?
Vaughn
Brian Ellis
4-Jun-2009, 15:22
Yawn.
Maris Rusis
4-Jun-2009, 17:33
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
4-Jun-2009, 18:18
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
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
4-Jun-2009, 18:29
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.
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
4-Jun-2009, 20:54
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
4-Jun-2009, 22:12
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.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3386/3596877140_3234aac9b8_o.jpg
Blueberrydesk
4-Jun-2009, 23:54
I've got that same garlic press...
John Kasaian
5-Jun-2009, 00:09
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. :)
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.
My first reaction was "Life Magazine, process color, 1973".
Rick "but still a photograph" Denney
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.
I don't know about your idea of fun, but I've been doing film photography since the early '70, with one long pause, and digital for the last six years or so and I can tell you one thing: not having to maintain a dedicated room with its own ventilation and plumbing, not having to wash a bunch of dishes every time, not having to stumble in the dark and not having to mix and handle toxic, stinky chemicals that leave ugly stains on anything they fall on was a true liberation!
And that's even without going into the specifics of the process itself.
Being able to experiment and see the changes as you make them, in real time, knowing that those changes are non-destructive and being able to go back where you were a minute ago at the click of a button, having the kind of control and adjustment capability you could only dream about in the old days... And having the capability to actually show someone who can be either with you in the room or half the way across the world what are you working on right this moment. Now, that's my idea of fun. :)
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. :)
It's all just about preferences. To me, sourdough tastes exactly as it sounds but it's still bread and some people still like it.... :D
Marko
That is also the most important distinguishing characteristic for me of photography, light creates the image, not the hand of the artist. And that could be via film capture, or digital capture, or other forms of capture.
From the earliest days of its history many people have recognized that the thing that makes photograhy different from every other form of visual art is that the point of departure is an object or objects that first existed in nature and were captured by the effect of light on film. The fact that capture is via another mechanism, CMOS sensor for example, is incidental to the the essential nature of the creation or capture of the image.
Everything that is done to the image after its capture is in the realm of artistic and aesthetic decisions. Many believe that the nature of photography is best conveyed with no manipulation and try to work that way. Others believe otherwise and engage in extensive manipulation. These divergent practices have always existed in photography, albeit with tools much less powerful than we have today. Still, it is all photographic art.
Sandy King
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.
Kirk Gittings
5-Jun-2009, 09:04
Very true Sandy.
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.
Qt (a really great guy by the way) was just at my house comparing my B&W ink prints with my silver prints, some from the same negatives. He may want to chime in here and give his own opinion. But my impression of his impressions was that I had succeeded with ink prints creating a comparable quality (life richness etc.) to my traditional silver. In my opinion, in some cases, I think I have exceeded my silver prints in many ways, because of the amount of micro control I can exercise. My point is (related to the quote above) is it takes a tremendous amount of work to make decent b&w prints digitally. I spend far more time making a decent b&w digital print than I ever did traditionally AND it feels just as personally crafted as my most difficult traditional prints. That much effort could be aimed at creating a very "digitally processed" look in a print or it can be aimed at simply creating a well executed print of traditional print values. You have the freedom to do either, just as AA could do a goofy high contrast blue toned traditional print of Moonrise, but he chose to do a traditional print. Nothing has really changed in the art except the brush. It still takes seeing and craftsmanship.
Chris Strobel
5-Jun-2009, 10:10
Very true Sandy.
Qt (a really great guy by the way) was just at my house comparing my B&W ink prints with my silver prints, some from the same negatives. He may want to chime in here and give his own opinion. But my impression of his impressions was that I had succeeded with ink prints creating a comparable quality (life richness etc.) to my traditional silver. In my opinion, in some cases, I think I have exceeded my silver prints in many ways, because of the amount of micro control I can exercise. My point is (related to the quote above) is it takes a tremendous amount of work to make decent b&w prints digitally. I spend far more time making a decent b&w digital print than I ever did traditionally AND it feels just as personally crafted as my most difficult traditional prints. That much effort could be aimed at creating a very "digitally processed" look in a print or it can be aimed at simply creating a well executed print of traditional print values. You have the freedom to do either, just as AA could do a goofy high contrast blue toned traditional print of Moonrise, but he chose to do a traditional print. Nothing has really changed in the art except the brush. It still takes seeing and craftsmanship.
Kirk, what papers are you using these days for your b&w inkjets?
Thanks!.................Chris
Kirk Gittings
5-Jun-2009, 13:59
Chris, I tend to find something I like and buy large quantities for consistency and use it for awhile. So I am alittle behind on the newest papers. I like Velvet Fine Art and Crane Museo Max and ILFORD GALERIE GOLD FIBRE SILK (very much like traditional silver). Dmax is very important to my aesthetic. I want to start testing some of the new baryta papers.
Chris Strobel
5-Jun-2009, 16:40
Chris, I tend to find something I like and buy large quantities for consistency and use it for awhile. So I am alittle behind on the newest papers. I like Velvet Fine Art and ILFORD GALERIE GOLD FIBRE and ILFORD GALERIE GOLD FIBRE SILK (very much like traditional silver). Dmax is very important to my aesthetic. I want to start testing some of the new baryta papers.
Thanks for the reply Kirk.I've been out of the printing loop for a while.Still have a stash of velvet fine art myself, but need some paper to use up the photo black ink in my 4800.
Chris
Henry Ambrose
5-Jun-2009, 17:00
Once the "myth" of reality or truth that is commonly held about photography is broken, the magic stops.
Its kinda like "the willing suspension of disbelief" in a story. If that's missing then the work becomes merely special effects and craft work or just work. The art is gone. The magic recedes into a place we can't feel anymore.
Maybe its about the myth and maybe the myth is real.
And back to the original post - you do know that Hasselblad is in the business of selling cameras - right? What good would it do to show people that the new Hassy would do the same thing the old Hassys do?
Once the "myth" of reality or truth that is commonly held about photography is broken, the magic stops.
Its kinda like "the willing suspension of disbelief" in a story. If that's missing then the work becomes merely special effects and craft work or just work. The art is gone. The magic recedes into a place we can't feel anymore.
Maybe its about the myth and maybe the myth is real.
And back to the original post - you do know that Hasselblad is in the business of selling cameras - right? What good would it do to show people that the new Hassy would do the same thing the old Hassys do?
thanks henry
it is kind of like the wizard of oz and the red curtain ...
Never mind that elf behind the Bavarian landscape... I am the Wizard of... .... ... ...
Photoshop...?
pablo batt
3-Aug-2009, 14:59
im a bit new at this, i love my printer but im having trouble finding out where the light source is , i think there might be some dust covering the lens as my inkjets are coming out all stripey. i have removed the top cover but all i see is electronics.
is the lens the thing the ink carts sit in, only it looks like a spray head or something, also is it ok to use a red safelight or should i carry on using my inkjet printer in complete darkeness
Donald Miller
3-Aug-2009, 15:43
im a bit new at this, i love my printer but im having trouble finding out where the light source is , i think there might be some dust covering the lens as my inkjets are coming out all stripey. i have removed the top cover but all i see is electronics.
is the lens the thing the ink carts sit in, only it looks like a spray head or something, also is it ok to use a red safelight or should i carry on using my inkjet printer in complete darkeness
The most likely reason that you are having stripey prints is because you need to use a specially filtered safelite. It is available from most digital suppliers and is listed as filter number 010...and maybe while your at it you should get the corresponding filter to that which is filter number 101. These two filters work in conjunction to even out the ink tones.
Hope this helps.
Drew Wiley
3-Aug-2009, 17:23
It's a well-known fact that digital printers are actually possessed zombies who roam
around at night sucking the blood from cute bunny rabbits, helpless little girls, and
cuddly puppies and kittens; they killed Bambi and ate him raw. This is because they
are deprived of worthwhile in-the-dark activities. Real darkroom printers, on the other hand, represent courage, honor, and virtue. The future of humanity is at stake.
I have to agree with Maris and go a little further. Photography is made of two words, photo meaning light, and graphy meaning record. Anything outside of recording light is not, by definition, photography. Camera capturing on film, check, camera capturing with sensor, check, enlarger print, check, inkjet print, no check.
Now as far as defining people outside or inside a box, who really cares? I shoot digital, I shoot film, I have inkjet prints, I have lightjet prints, I have color laser prints, so what?
I would think it would be really simple. If whatever process you use deals with recording light, it is photography. The moment you use something that isn't recording the light, it is no longer a photograph.
Allan
Don Dudenbostel
3-Aug-2009, 18:17
For some time I've felt photographs have become a platform to digitally illustrate over. It seems as though photoshop is as important as the photograph now.
The OP was talking about all the pictures in the Hasselblad magazine looking the same. This is probably a reflection of a stylistic trend that will peak and then ebb ... just like all the other stylistic trends in the commercial photo world.
It just HAPPENS that this particular trend looks heavily manipulated ... like "photo illustration," if you like that phrase. Heavily manipulated photographs, which make it hard to tell if they're predominately photogrphic images or a drawn ones, have gone in and out of fashion at least a few times in the history of the medium. They certainly predate digital photography.
If you look at similar publications from the 80s, the 70s, the 50s, I think you'll see dominant esthetics in each one. In every one of those eras there were probably people who wondered if photography as they knew it had ended. Possibly it had!
http://virtua-gallery.com/wp/wp-content/gallery/cache/1943__480x400_pond-moonlight-steichen-world-most-expensive-photograph.jpg
is this a photograph?
http://newcenturyphotography.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/uelsmann1.jpg
This?
Both predate digital. Both were trendy in their day.
Drew Wiley
3-Aug-2009, 19:17
Paul - you show one of Uelsmann's images, no doubt. These were so seamlessly
printed that they make most of today's Photoshop concoctions look clumsy; and they had a remarkable whimsy to them. The idea wasn't deceit but deliberate open play.
The other image you show is apparently Steichen; but he could do anything, and
earned the right to do something like this (which was admittedly in vogue back then). Today, so many photographs look manipulated because that is the only way
many people know how to present images. They have never exercised enough depth
of perception to do otherwise. They concoct, rather than see! The question of image
reproduction itself is entirely secondary (contradicting my previous wisecrack post
itself!) Uelsmann had a real niche; but ten million Uelsmann wannabees are just
plain monotonous.
For some time I've felt photographs have become a platform to digitally illustrate over. It seems as though photoshop is as important as the photograph now.
No, not as important as the photograph - it has become as important as the darkroom it replaced used to be.
As for illustrating over a photograph, digitally or not, it could be argued if one were so inclined that what goes around comes around (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera_obscura).
:)
Uelsmann had a real niche; but ten million Uelsmann wannabees are just
plain monotonous.
Sure, but I think the same about Weston and his ten million wannabees.
I have to agree with Maris and go a little further. Photography is made of two words, photo meaning light, and graphy meaning record. Anything outside of recording light is not, by definition, photography. Camera capturing on film, check, camera capturing with sensor, check, enlarger print, check, inkjet print, no check.
I have a book of the work of Ansel Adams. As I look through that book, I am looking at pages that were made by coating an offset plate with ink, and then pressing the offset plate up against the paper. The process of making it is no different than an inkjet print.
But if those aren't photographs, I don't know what I would call them.
I also have a book of the work of Georgia O'Keeffe. Guess what? That book shows me a whole pile of paintings.
I think the simplest and most direct definition of photography is:
An image made by projecting light onto a sensitized surface.
Once the image is made, it only really matters how it is printed to those who wish to establish the superiority of the way they do it, it seems to me, and protestations that "I do digital, too" smacks to me similarly to "Some of my best friends are black."
It seems to me that what makes a photograph a photograph is how the image is originally made, not how it is ultimately printed. I show many images on my web page. If they are not photographs, what else could they be? They are as far removed from an enlarger print as any presentation mode I can imagine, but they are still photographs because they were made using a camera.
Rick "some of my best friends use enlargers" Denney
pablo batt
4-Aug-2009, 03:38
serious question?????
is there a way in which a digital image can be guaranteed to have no manipulation and is a honest representation.
say that in 50 years someone comes across a inkjet/file that hasnt faded etc, and they want to know if this is a honest and non manipulated representation ,as they would like to exhibit it as a real scene from the early 21st century for a local museum
how would they do this?
can they do this?
how about digital files is there a way to ensure and guarantee that its not manipulated (dishonest) image?
if i could achieve this with my digital and get some archival print ability then i could be tempted to take the odd full frame honest digi shot, maybe
i have tried to crack this issue but i am too aware of the ease of using computers to fake any situation in imagery and to fake authenticity.
welcome serious solutions and financial backing would be helpful
I think the simplest and most direct definition of photography is:
An image made by projecting light onto a sensitized surface.
Once the image is made, it only really matters how it is printed to those who wish to establish the superiority of the way they do it, it seems to me, and protestations that "I do digital, too" smacks to me similarly to "Some of my best friends are black."
It seems to me that what makes a photograph a photograph is how the image is originally made, not how it is ultimately printed. I show many images on my web page. If they are not photographs, what else could they be? They are as far removed from an enlarger print as any presentation mode I can imagine, but they are still photographs because they were made using a camera.
Rick "some of my best friends use enlargers" Denney
The books you refer to have images, illustrations, or pictures of photographs but are not, by definition, photographs themselves.
My point which you seem to have missed was that there is no superiority either way. Whether or not the final piece of work is a photograph, a painting, a graphic illustration or for that matter, a sculpture, is irrelevant to it being a good piece of art.
As for how the image was originally made, what if I take a picture using a camera, then paint over it? Or just use the photo as a guide to paint free hand? What if I use the digital file from the camera and print to a line printer instead of a inkjet, is the ASCII art then a photograph because it came from the digital photograph?
Once again, photo means light, graphy means recording, anything that is not recording light is not, by definition, a photograph. That does not make either one better or worse than the other, neither one is superior to the other by definition, they are just different.
Allan
John Kasaian
4-Aug-2009, 08:00
I think it is a matter of style more than anything else. While a digitally manipulated image can certainly be copied in a variety of styles, what I'm seeing in advertisements is a fairly definitive style which is apparently quite popular with art directors.
It's not particularly appealing to me, but neither were the styles one sees in advertisements in Life Magazine in the 60's (which were not digital.)
Is what we're seeing to be considered the "classic" digital image archtype? I don't know enough about digital to say---that would be up to the digital photographers to embrace or reject.
The books you refer to have images, illustrations, or pictures of photographs but are not, by definition, photographs themselves.
The question is: whose definition?
I really like the way Sandy articulated it above. I think it deserves repeating:
"Writing with light" is just that - an image of an object (live or inanimate) as it existed in reality for a brief slice of time written into a light-sensitive medium by light and not by the hand of artist.
Everything else is just presentation, an interpretation of that capture by the artist through various methods of processing and manipulation.
It is not hard to foresee the arrival of high-definition, flexible electronic display panels that might be able to roll like a sheet of paper and display images with better veracity and precision than any paper, traditional or inkjet, can do today. We already have flat-panel monitors capable of displaying 16-bit color using Adobe RGB gamut at 120 or so dpi. That's better than half the way toward matching a good inkjet print.
Will an image displayed that way be less of a photograph simply because the presentation medium has evolved? After all, it will still need light for display, just like all current presentation mediums do, including the inkjet print.
Chris Strobel
4-Aug-2009, 09:26
serious question?????
is there a way in which a digital image can be guaranteed to have no manipulation and is a honest representation.
And is there a way an analog image can be guaranteed to have no manipulation and is a honest representation?I saw this image by Ansel Adams at a John Sexton lecture.John was an assistant to Mr.Adams.He showed us this image before and after Mr.Adams had heavily manipulated it.It was hard to believe it was the same image.Every time you dodge or burn under your enlarger, or apply potassium ferrocyanide to a dark room print, etc. you are manipulating it.
http://www.anseladams.com/ProductImages/mps/1501013.jpg
The question is: whose definition?
Well you can start with dictionary.com and go from there.
I really like the way Sandy articulated it above. I think it deserves repeating:
"Writing with light" is just that - an image of an object (live or inanimate) as it existed in reality for a brief slice of time written into a light-sensitive medium by light and not by the hand of artist.
Everything else is just presentation, an interpretation of that capture by the artist through various methods of processing and manipulation.
It is not hard to foresee the arrival of high-definition, flexible electronic display panels that might be able to roll like a sheet of paper and display images with better veracity and precision than any paper, traditional or inkjet, can do today. We already have flat-panel monitors capable of displaying 16-bit color using Adobe RGB gamut at 120 or so dpi. That's better than half the way toward matching a good inkjet print.
Will an image displayed that way be less of a photograph simply because the presentation medium has evolved? After all, it will still need light for display, just like all current presentation mediums do, including the inkjet print.
Yes, the way an image is presented does indeed make it a photograph or not a photograph, in the same way that if you take a picture of an oil painting, print it out the same size as the original, put it in the same frame as the original, that does not make it an oil painting.
Another example. You take a famous oil painter and give them paints that are not petroleum based but have the exact same color, consistency and look as oil paints. Is the painting they create still an OIL painting? No. But once again, it does not detract from the fact that it could be a wonderful piece of art, no matter how precious and priceless, it is still not an OIL painting.
Allan
Allan,
I think, but could be wrong, that traditional oil paints are mixed with linseed oil. Vegetable oil. But we know what you mean.
Well you can start with dictionary.com and go from there.
OK... I looked and it says (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/photograph):
pho⋅to⋅graph [foh-tuh-graf, -grahf]
–noun
1. a picture produced by photography.
So?
Yes, the way an image is presented does indeed make it a photograph or not a photograph, in the same way that if you take a picture of an oil painting, print it out the same size as the original, put it in the same frame as the original, that does not make it an oil painting.
I disagree. The way an image is presented makes it a print or a projection. The way the image was created/recorded is what makes it a photograph or not.
Oil painting is the wrong example for a print - it is the original, an equivalent to negative/slide/raw capture. Using this example, no print would be a photograph.
Another example. You take a famous oil painter and give them paints that are not petroleum based but have the exact same color, consistency and look as oil paints. Is the painting they create still an OIL painting? No. But once again, it does not detract from the fact that it could be a wonderful piece of art, no matter how precious and priceless, it is still not an OIL painting.
Allan
But it is still a painting. Silver bromide, Pt/Pd, VanDyke, Carbon transfer, Gum, Inkjet... they are all various techniques for presenting a photograph.
A picture produced by photography, as your reference states.
Jim collum
4-Aug-2009, 12:44
serious question?????
is there a way in which a digital image can be guaranteed to have no manipulation and is a honest representation.
l
yes... some cameras (at least the pro level ones), can place a digital signature into the image file itself when it is taken. This signature can be used to determine if there has been any alteration.
link to software description (http://www.nikonusa.com/Find-Your-Nikon/Product/Imaging-Software/25738/Image-Authentication-Software.html)
yes... some cameras (at least the pro level ones), can place a digital signature into the image file itself when it is taken. This signature can be used to determine if there has been any alteration.
link to software description (http://www.nikonusa.com/Find-Your-Nikon/Product/Imaging-Software/25738/Image-Authentication-Software.html)
If the purpose of making a photograph is for documentary, journalistic, scientific or other reasons where it is important to know if the representation is true to nature this kind of software can serve a useful purpose.
However, if the purpose of making a photograph is solely artistic, then why should anyone care? From the earliest days of photography people were manipulating the final image by combining negatives. Just look at the work of the Victorian high art photograhers like William Lake Price, or the work of the Swede Oscar Gustve Rejlander, or that of Henry Peach Robinson. It is called artistic license.
Folks who wallow in the myth that manipulation is unique to digital imagery appear to be incredibly ignorant of the history of photography.
Sandy King
Jim collum
4-Aug-2009, 13:31
If the purpose of making a photograph is for documentary, journalistic, scientific or other reasons where it is important to know if the representation is true to nature this kind of software can serve a useful purpose.
However, if the purpose of making a photograph is solely artistic, then why should anyone care? From the earliest days of photography people were manipulating the final image by combining negatives. Just look at the work of the Victorian high art photograhers like William Lake Price, or the work of the Swede Oscar Gustve Rejlander, or that of Henry Peach Robinson. It is called artistic license.
Folks who wallow in the myth that manipulation is unique to digital imagery appear to be incredibly ignorant of the history of photography.
Sandy Kiing
have to agree. In 30 years of photography and printmaking.. I really don't think i've printed a single image that hasn't been manipulated. In fact, the very act of capturing the image onto a film emulsion has manipulated 'reality'. Contrast, color, tonal characteristics have all been manipulated.
OK... I looked and it says (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/photograph):
So?
You should have kept reading, it goes on to state:
n. An image, especially a positive print, recorded by a camera and reproduced on a photosensitive surface.
Note where it states "reproduced on a photosensitive surface." An inkjet is NOT using a photosensitive surface.
I disagree. The way an image is presented makes it a print or a projection. The way the image was created/recorded is what makes it a photograph or not.
No problem, we all have our opinions and you are free to disagree. I personally follow the definition I quoted above so if it is not "reproduced on a photosensitive surface", it is not a photograph. Makes it really easy for me to know what is, and what is not, a photograph.
Oil painting is the wrong example for a print - it is the original, an equivalent to negative/slide/raw capture. Using this example, no print would be a photograph.
An oil painting is only the original if it is not painted from a photograph, illustration, or other art work. Then it becomes the copy or derivative of the original. But I digress. Since the definition I quoted above clearly states that it must be reproduced on a photosensitive surface, I think my point is made.
But it is still a painting. Silver bromide, Pt/Pd, VanDyke, Carbon transfer, Gum, Inkjet... they are all various techniques for presenting a photograph.
A picture produced by photography, as your reference states.
Yes, and if you print a digital image on an inkjet, it would still be graphy (recording), but not photo (light) graphy (recording), just as in my example it would still be a painting, but not an oil painting. Make sense?
Allan
Allan,
I think, but could be wrong, that traditional oil paints are mixed with linseed oil. Vegetable oil. But we know what you mean.
ACK! :eek: Ok, well I was never a painter :rolleyes: I stand corrected.
Allan
I rambled on about the relationship between photography and truth in this (http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showpost.php?p=142524&postcount=1) post ages ago.
The short version is that I believe photography by its nature has a different relationship with objective facts than other media. Some photographers work to preserve this relationship; others work to question or even undermine it. You might see it as differences between a purist approach and a liberal approach to the medium. Or in some cases, an anti-purist approach.
There's room for the whole range of approaches. But not all approaches are appropriate in all situations.
There is an expectation in journalistic photography, for example, that the facts are not altered.
There's a similar expectation (created more by precedent than by ethics) in art photography that's presented as "straight." If someone shows you an image in the style of Weston or Strand, there's a certain expectation that that the rocks and trees were actually there. And that nothing more significant than a dust spot has been painted out. But we know that things like contrast and relative light and dark values may have been altered radically--esthetic changes rather than factual ones.
It's when a photograph violates our expectations of factuality that we feel cheated. When precedent, context, or a particularl set of ethics tells us that we're looking at a factual record, and we then discover that significant facts have been added or removed or changed in important ways, then our trust in the medium has been damaged. The Steichen and the Uelsman image that I posted don't violate any trust; they are presented as hand-altered images.
Whether the medium deserves our trust is a topic for another conversation. I happen to think it would be a shame if we lost it entirely. It's a source of power that's not available in any other medium. We shouldn't be forced to rely on it all the time, but it would be ashame to squander it.
You should have kept reading, it goes on to state:
n. An image, especially a positive print, recorded by a camera and reproduced on a photosensitive surface.
Note where it states "reproduced on a photosensitive surface." An inkjet is NOT using a photosensitive surface.
I don't know if we are looking at the same dictionary.com, but I linked to the definition I quoted from and it said nothing of the sort.
But wherever you found this "definition" it is so incredibly outdated and narrow at the same time that it becomes plain silly. If nothing else, then because it disqualifies even the good old fashioned slides from being photographs. ;)
No problem, we all have our opinions and you are free to disagree. I personally follow the definition I quoted above so if it is not "reproduced on a photosensitive surface", it is not a photograph. Makes it really easy for me to know what is, and what is not, a photograph.
Well, yes, we still disagree. You are free to believe whatever you want, of course. I don't have the slightest problem with that, just like I don't have a problem with people who believe that the Earth is flat too and that it was made in six days a few thousand years ago, or something along those lines. As long as they don't try to force me to accept their beliefs as facts... :D
Yes, and if you print a digital image on an inkjet, it would still be graphy (recording), but not photo (light) graphy (recording), just as in my example it would still be a painting, but not an oil painting. Make sense?
No, but that's fine, it doesn't matter either.
Definitions (especially technical ones) evolve over time. And a definition isn't a product of natural law; it's a convention. People subscribe to conventions to varying degrees; most definitions have both broad and narrow interpretations.
The history of Jazz is an instructive example. if you look at a definition of Jazz written in the 1930s, it will exclude much of the Jazz of the 1940s. A definition from the 1950s will exclude much of the jazz of the 1960s.
And there are still people saying things like "nothing after bebop is jazz," or "fusion isn't jazz." Just as there are plenty of people who think the guys who say this stuff are outdated and out of touch!
There's a lot to be learned from looking at new work. There's precious little to be learned from arguing over categories and definitions. If you can figure out what someone means when they use a word, great. It matters little if you personally use the word to mean something else.
I don't know if we are looking at the same dictionary.com, but I linked to the definition I quoted from and it said nothing of the sort.
http://www.allans-stuff.com/images/photo1.gif
Here is a screen shot from dictionary.com showing the definition for photography.
But wherever you found this "definition" it is so incredibly outdated and narrow at the same time that it becomes plain silly. If nothing else, then because it disqualifies even the good old fashioned slides from being photographs. ;)
No, it does not disqualify slides. The slide is a photosensitive surface that recorded the light. The definition is not outdated either. Just because someone wants something to fit into a definition does not mean the definition is outdated if it does not fit. The term was derived from photo meaning light and graphy meaning recording, those terms have not changed.
Other terms such as jazz as someone else pointed out can be much more fluid since the name is not derived from other words. Photography is much more strict, either the image was produced by the recording of light, or it wasn't. There is no ambiguity there. You could even call it black and white if you pardon the pun.
To me this is no different than calling a laserjet printer an inkjet. They both can produce images on the same paper, in the same resolution, and they both can be color or black and white. In fact, from a few inches away some inkjets can produce text that is indistinguishable from a laser, but that does NOT make the inkjet a laser, they use two different technologies to get the image on the page. Just like photography and graphic arts (what I call an inkjet print), even if the images are indistinguishable in the end, how they got there defines the term you use to say what they are. If it was a photosensitive process, it was photography, if not, then it was not photography, easy!
Take for example the word astrophotography. Astro meaning "pertaining to stars or celestial bodies", and photography. Would it still be astrophotography if I was photographing insects on a tree? No? Why not? Because it is not ASTRO, part of the word. Once you violate the word astro it ceases to be astrophotography. Once you violate the word photo in photography, it is no longer photography.
Well, yes, we still disagree. You are free to believe whatever you want, of course. I don't have the slightest problem with that, just like I don't have a problem with people who believe that the Earth is flat too and that it was made in six days a few thousand years ago, or something along those lines. As long as they don't try to force me to accept their beliefs as facts... :D
I completely agree here. I am just sorry you think the world is flat :D
Allan
Other terms such as jazz as someone else pointed out can be much more fluid since the name is not derived from other words. Photography is much more strict...
Sorry, no. Having identifiable Greek or Latin roots doesn't magically make a definition immutable. Never has, never will ... in English or in any other language.
At any rate, in this particular case, the printing of photographs without light sensitive materials is as old as photography itself. Joseph Nicephore Niepce and William Henry Fox Talbot developed photographic printing processes that used ink on paper; Niepce had a rudimentary method worked out even before the invention of the daguerreotype.
The history of photographic materials unravelled the way it did simply because the daguerreotype and the salted paper print became marketable media before the ink print did (Talbot finally got ink working well enough to get a patent in the 1850s; the current form of photogravure was developed in the 1870s).
No one back then was questioning whether or not these processes were "photography," so the restrictive definition is nothing more than historical revisionism.
Sorry, no. Having identifiable Greek or Latin roots doesn't magically make a definition immutable. Never has, never will ... in English or in any other language.
OK, so I will go have my optometrist check out my ear infection, riding there on my three wheeled bicycle, with the directions I printed off my laserjet using liquid ink squirted on the page, wearing my clear sunglasses and SPF 0 sunblock, on my steel belted tires with no metal in them, carrying my fire extinguisher loaded with gasoline. :eek:
At any rate, in this particular case, the printing of photographs without light sensitive materials is as old as photography itself. Joseph Nicephore Niepce and William Henry Fox Talbot developed photographic printing processes that used ink on paper; Niepce had a rudimentary method worked out even before the invention of the daguerreotype.
You are both correct, and incorrect. True Talbot worked out a method of reproducing pictures by using ink, he took a negative and using UV light and some chemicals created something that could be adhered to a copper plate, then used basically an acid to etch through the material into the copper plate in stages.
The first process he used to create the negative is indeed photography. The second stage to create the etched plate for printing is called photogravure. The last stage is to use the copper plate on a printing press, which is of course called printing.
Allan
...Silver bromide, Pt/Pd, VanDyke, Carbon transfer, Gum, Inkjet... they are all various techniques for presenting a photograph.
A picture produced by photography, as your reference states.
A version of the excellent Collins dictionary intended for children defines a photograph as "a picture made with a camera".
Sometimes, simple is better.
But, of course, a dictionary is descriptive, not prescriptive. So, let's go to what most regular people think is a photograph, not to photographers who have twisted themselves up in the issue. If I show one of my web-displayed pictures to 100 people and ask them to describe it, I suspect a very large percentage of them would say, "That's a photograph." I don't think any of them would say, "That's computer art," even though they are viewing in on a computer monitor. Until you start rearranging details in the image, most people would think it a photograph even if the tones are heavily manipulated.
Rick "who has conducted this experiment to answer this specific question" Denney
So, let's go to what most regular people think is a photograph, not to photographers who have twisted themselves up in the issue. If I show one of my web-displayed pictures to 100 people and ask them to describe it, I suspect a very large percentage of them would say, "That's a photograph."
So following that logic, way back when 99.999% of the people on the planet would have agreed that the world was flat, that was correct? When Dru Blair uses an airbrush to make his photrealistic paintings that really look like a photo, that makes it a photo?
Allan
pablo batt
5-Aug-2009, 05:54
so how does the imprinting on a digital file work as proof of non manipulation, and how do i get it on my camera.
and how would this show up on the print to prove its honesty?
is it recognized as a realistic and definite way of proving its honesty?
also the proof of non manipulation with a photographic image is of course the negative, i personally print once ,full frame ,straight print, and frame the photo with the negative sealed inside of the frame
a total time capsule of the truth, its really hard to manipulate a negative without it being very obvious under a brief inspection
only one photo will ever exist , if the picture gets destroyed then most likely the negative will be also
its honest and i enjoy the image a lot more this way.
i just wish that inkjetters would stop calling there work photography, i myself couldn't look someone straight in the eye if it was me.
plus im a awful liar
OK, so I will go have my optometrist check out my ear infection ...
Language evolves. Which isn't the same as saying language is arbitrary. I have the feeling you're smart enough to understand the distinction; you're just trying to be a wise ass.
The first process he used to create the negative is indeed photography. The second stage to create the etched plate for printing is called photogravure.
And photogravures have, since their inception, been considered photographs. Just like the earlier ink processes by Talbot and Niepce; just like rotogravures; just like collotypes. Since the very first days that museums collected and showed photographs, these prints were curated by the photography departments, not the printmaking departments. Just like with inkjet today.
so how does the imprinting on a digital file work as proof of non manipulation, and how do i get it on my camera.
and how would this show up on the print to prove its honesty?
How would you prove the "honesty" of a silver print?
i just wish that inkjetters would stop calling there work photography, i myself couldn't look someone straight in the eye if it was me.
Personally, i don't care what category anyone puts my work in. The labels are there for convenience. It just happens that the few people interested in my work (whether silver prints or ink) are photography collectors and curators.
Someone recently donated a couple of prints of mine to a museum collection. In the online catalog, they're listed as
Photograph | Gelatin Silver print
and
Photograph | Inkjet?
Showing that
1. they regard both media as photography, and
2. (by the question mark) they're less concerned with the process than with the nature of the image-- someone could have contacted me and asked about the print type, but they didn't bother.
Call me crazy, but I'm more interested in the opinions of museum curators than those of message board loudmouths (like myself)!
pablo batt
5-Aug-2009, 08:31
also the proof of non manipulation with a photographic image is of course the negative, i personally print once ,full frame ,straight print, and frame the photo with the negative sealed inside of the frame
hard to converse when you didnt read my post
A negative isn't proof of non-manipulation. How does someone know the negative isn't altered, generated digitally, or a copy neg made from a retouched negative or print? Even sophisticated forensic examinations can be uncertain when the job is done well.
Of course, it's pure hubris to think anyone's going to care enough to ask, unless the print is being offered as some kind of evidence in court.
pablo batt
5-Aug-2009, 08:53
id love to see a altered neg, im 100% sure i could spot it.
its the best we have for honesty , if its inkjet its no longer photography
Jim collum
5-Aug-2009, 09:16
id love to see a altered neg, im 100% sure i could spot it.
its the best we have for honesty , if its inkjet its no longer photography
I'd bet that given the skill of many of the participants in this forum, there would be someone who could manipulate an image, and then make a copy negative that would require expert forensics to actually determine if i were true or false.
Why someone would want to do that to prove a point to you is another story.
As Paul says... the rest of the world disagrees.. and those important to ones work.. Gallery and Museum curators, buying public, schools, universities, professional journals, friends, family disagree as well. There really isn't a real debate going on about this... just a few people waving their arms wildly in forums that 99.9999% of the world don't know exists...
Jim collum
5-Aug-2009, 09:20
so how does the imprinting on a digital file work as proof of non manipulation, and how do i get it on my camera.
and how would this show up on the print to prove its honesty?
is it recognized as a realistic and definite way of proving its honesty?
Use google (it's a search engine ... http://www.google.com ) and look up "digital signature" .
.. and yes.. it's a way of proving the file is original... much more absolute than a physical negative.
Chris Strobel
5-Aug-2009, 09:55
id love to see a altered neg, im 100% sure i could spot it.
its the best we have for honesty , if its inkjet its no longer photography
Ok this is becoming trollish :mad:
Jim collum
5-Aug-2009, 10:03
.. much more absolute than a physical negative.
... ok.. i guess after thinking about it.. someone could take an image, manipulate it, print it out very large, then under ideal lighting, take a picture of it.
but as previously said.. this really is a non-issue. I really don't think you'll see headlines in any major newspaper any time soon that say "Pablo Batt discovers digital cameras don't take photographs!!!", nor will it be taught along with Pythagoras, Aristotle and Eratosthenes' discoveries.
Pablo, have you walked into an art museum in the Netherlands lately? Maybe you should take up this discussion with the curators there. Or with the local art dealers, or the critics, or the university art historians.
Your disagreement is with them, not us. No one actually cares what we think about the subject. I'm not even sure how much i care ... I just do my work with the best tools I can get my hands on.
If someone in the printmaking department at MoMA called and said they wanted to show my work, I'd be ecstatic.
pablo batt
5-Aug-2009, 10:47
are photographs still photographs...
this is the topic, i thought the idea was to discuss on a forum
my opinion is that digital recorders have very little to do with photography, and that any digital steps in the production of photography makes your efforts null and void.
all i want is for digital people to call there product a inkjet imaging as this is what it is and to not use the word photography , because it is not.
digital capture has nothing to do with photography in which case such discussion has no place in a large format photography forum
Chris Strobel
5-Aug-2009, 10:52
are photographs still photographs...
this is the topic, i thought the idea was to discuss on a forum
my opinion is that digital recorders have very little to do with photography, and that any digital steps in the production of photography makes your efforts null and void.
all i want is for digital people to call there product a inkjet imaging as this is what it is and to not use the word photography , because it is not.
digital capture has nothing to do with photography in which case such discussion has no place in a large format photography forum
I think I found you a new home :D
http://www.apug.org/forums/home.php
pablo batt
5-Aug-2009, 11:04
im guessing that a lot of people here use a film camera and then scan and make inkjets, thats fine and im sure some gallery's think thats fine too
and if the price reflects the media used then thats ok too
but when inkjets are connected to photography in some way, then this is fraud as no inkjet has any photograph techniques involved in there production
i myself understand this, but theres also a lot of people who dont know and may buy a inkjet and not understand this point i am making
photography is photography
inkjets are inkjets
please dont use words that obscure these facts and pass off inkjets as some kind of alt photography process
inkjets have no connection to any photographic process
the end
please dont use words that obscure these facts and pass off inkjets as some kind of alt photography process
Or else...?
;)
pablo batt
5-Aug-2009, 11:19
in my part of the world there is a law called ...
the sales of goods act
any misrepresentation of a product for sale would then be taken to a court for a decision
its called law and most of us follow it
and some dont and reap the penalty, i know i would report it.
Jim collum
5-Aug-2009, 11:20
im guessing that a lot of people here use a film camera and then scan and make inkjets, thats fine and im sure some gallery's think thats fine too
and if the price reflects the media used then thats ok too
but when inkjets are connected to photography in some way, then this is fraud as no inkjet has any photograph techniques involved in there production
i myself understand this, but theres also a lot of people who dont know and may buy a inkjet and not understand this point i am making
photography is photography
inkjets are inkjets
please dont use words that obscure these facts and pass off inkjets as some kind of alt photography process
inkjets have no connection to any photographic process
the end
But you're not really convincing anyone who buys these prints. you need to be stopping people as they enter the museums and galleries and explaining it to them.
photography is photography
i capture images using a digital camera. i then take that photograph, and make a negative from it. I then coat a sheet of paper with platinum and palladium and contact print that negative. The result is a platinum print, and is displayed and sold as a photograph. Frankly, i'd say there's a lot more time and craft that goes into this photograph, than one of your prints... but it's not the time and effort that is being bought by a customer. An inkjet print by Julie Blackmon or Hiroshi Watanabe would sell for a lot more than a platinum print by me.
Pablo, you seem to think that stating your opinion over and over again will somehow make it true. And you state your opinion as "fact," when in fact authorities from every end of the spectrum disagree with you.
I'm always up for a lively debate. But this isn't one. You're just repeating your conclusion, without any supporting evidence or reasoning ... not counting your original and very weak semantic argument.
Give us a reason to listen to you, and not, say, the curator of photography at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the editors at Aperture, or the art historians at Yale.
pablo batt
5-Aug-2009, 11:26
using a digital process in the production of a photograph does not make the end result a photo.
as no light was used to make your copy of the neg using a inkjet
if you want a photo as the end result then use light as the tool during the complete process, any digital step will not render a photo
this is the concept of photography and it keeps it honest
Jim collum
5-Aug-2009, 11:27
in my part of the world there is a law called ...
the sales of goods act
any misrepresentation of a product for sale would then be taken to a court for a decision
its called law and most of us follow it
and some dont and reap the penalty, i know i would report it.
see if there are any photographs from Mark Klett, Michael Levin, Hiroshi Watanabe, Julie Blackmon, David Burdeny, Thinh Le, John Chervinsky, Charles Cramer being sold in your part of the world.. you might want to start by reporting them
pablo batt
5-Aug-2009, 11:30
i have no idea who these people are but im sure they use digital as a part of there inkjet process
as long as they dont misrepresent in the sale of there inkjets
Jim collum
5-Aug-2009, 11:36
using a digital process in the production of a photograph does not make the end result a photo.
as no light was used to make your copy of the neg using a inkjet
if you want a photo as the end result then use light as the tool during the complete process, any digital step will not render a photo
this is the concept of photography and it keeps it honest
...What Paul says.
and frankly, I'd say that your example of a straight, uncropped, unmanipulated (i take it you're using an emulsion that has a linear characteristic curve, and that when you developed it, there was no modification of that curve by the chemistry), color (haven't seen much b/w in the real world), no UV filter in front of the lens, is not only an extreme minority.. but i'd suspect a rather uninteresting one (except perhaps for journalistic work). I'd bet there isn't a single photographic image of any significance that has not been manipulated.
in my part of the world there is a law called ...
the sales of goods act
In your part of the world is there there any actual law or case history excluding ink prints from photography?
If so, it's your duty as a citizen to report the H+F Collection at the Huis Marseille Foundation for photography (http://www.huismarseille.nl/) in Amsterdam, and the Nederlands Fotomuseum (http://www.nederlandsfotomuseum.nl) in Rotterdam.
They're lying to everyone!
Jim collum
5-Aug-2009, 11:52
i have no idea who these people are but im sure they use digital as a part of there inkjet process
as long as they dont misrepresent in the sale of there inkjets
they're being sold, collected, hung in museums as photographic art. They are defrauding the buying public and art community, and for a lot more money than most on this forum bring in. I'd say it's a good start for you to report
pablo batt
5-Aug-2009, 11:58
are they being sold as inkjets or photos?
if they are breaking the sale of goods act they could well be open to prosecution
Chris Strobel
5-Aug-2009, 12:01
photography is photography
inkjets are inkjets
please dont use words that obscure these facts and pass off inkjets as some kind of alt photography process
inkjets have no connection to any photographic process
the end
From the Miriam Webster Dictionary:
Main Entry:
pho·tog·ra·phy
Pronunciation:
\fə-ˈtä-grə-fē\
Function:
noun
Date:
1839
: the art or process of producing images by the action of radiant energy and especially light on a sensitive surface (as film or a CCD chip)
Main Entry:
1pho·to·graph
Pronunciation:
\ˈfō-tə-ˌgraf\
Function:
noun
Date:
1839
: a picture or likeness obtained by photography
Pablo, you are arguing in whats called circular reasoning in logic.Go take a basic logic course at your local community college, and then come back to argue :D
pablo batt
5-Aug-2009, 12:05
i think its called blinded by technology
happy inkjetting
Thanks!
Happy bullshitting!
Jim collum
5-Aug-2009, 12:10
are they being sold as inkjets or photos?
if they are breaking the sale of goods act they could well be open to prosecution
In those cases, photographs (even though some are captured digitally), under a variety of names.. archival pigment print seems to be the most common.
But why not start with me... since I start with a digital photograph, print a negative with an inkjet printer, and contact that onto Platinum... That has to be the most dishonest of all from your perspective. I sell platinum prints of photographs (there... i've even admitted it on a public forum.. you can use that as evidence of my wrong-doing). I sell (and have sold) 11x14 prints for $550 US, and a number of 16x20 prints at $700 US. I've even sold some in Europe
pablo batt
5-Aug-2009, 12:16
congrats for all the sales
although i would say that inkjet prints is a term that more would recognize
archival pigment print...sounds like another sale of goods act moment to me
why not us the term inkjet? (after all thats whats written on the box the archival pigment printer came in when purchased
Jim collum
5-Aug-2009, 12:19
congrats for all the sales
although i would say that inkjet prints is a term that more would recognize
archival pigment print...sounds like another sale of goods act moment to me
why not us the term inkjet? (after all thats whats written on the box the archival pigment printer came in when purchased
because i don't sell inkjets. I sell platinum prints. but i sell platinum prints of photographs i have taken with digital cameras
pablo batt
5-Aug-2009, 12:22
jim this comment was not really aimed solely at you, you do understand this?.
it was aimed at the general inkjetter artists, be loud and proud and call them inkjet prints, and then there would be no heated discussion about it
Troll Alert! Troll Alert! Troll Alert! Troll Alert! Troll Alert! :D
I've been following this with half an eye peeled to the email notifications.
I have seen the word inkjet mentioned profusely. The word Giclée has not been mentioned. Or did I miss it?
Giclée (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gicl%C3%A9e)
pablo batt
5-Aug-2009, 12:27
haha giclee
yes thats a bueaty, how misleading, someone should make a law to stop it happening
oops i forgot there allready is one
"Photograph" is rarely used as the medium. Just as museums and galleries rarely list a work as a "painting" ... they'll say "oil on canvas," or "fresco," or "acrylic on aluminum."
They typically use the name of the print process ... "gelatin silver print" or "platinum print" or "type c print" or "cibachrome print" or "photogravure" or "ferrotype" or "inkjet print" or "callotype" or "duratrans."
Sometimes you'll see a construction like "Photograph | Rotogravure" or "Photograph | silver gelatin print"
... someone should make a law to stop it happening
oops i forgot there allready is one
Cite a specific law or stop wasting everyone's time with your b.s..
pablo batt
5-Aug-2009, 12:31
well yes that goes without saying,museums are on a much tighter leash than a gallery.
sales are generated mostly on the door
pablo batt
5-Aug-2009, 12:31
Cite a specific law or stop wasting everyone's time with your b.s..
sales of goods act
Yeah, you mentioned that vague law. You have not cited any clause of that law or any case history that supports your argument.
In contrast, I have found, with less than five minutes work, two major collections in the Netherlands that call inkjet prints photographs.
Please learn to construct an argument. It's not the same thing as making noise and bugging people.
pablo batt
5-Aug-2009, 12:40
that is the act that covers goods being sold, there is no other act, it covers the whole of the European union with no exception.
if compensated i will investigate the actual points that the act covers on this issue for you, but im not a charity my friend.
but i am perfectly aware that gallery's misrepresent there products and potentially upset there customers
I will bet anything that this is what you'll find: no gallery is guilty of deception, because acording to current standard usage, inkjet prints of photographically derived images are (surprise!) photographs. The burden of proof is on you to show otherwise; you're the one making the claim that laws are being broken.
No one's going to compensate you to investigate this. The significant fact is that you HAVEN'T investigated it. You're just making another assumption. Which means you have no grounds for your argument. Still.
Bring some evidence and reasoning to the table or stop making noise.
I'm not responding to any more nonsensical logical fallacy.
pablo batt
5-Aug-2009, 12:58
im neither sitting at a table or feeling the need to offer up proof, im not on trial here.
this is the way it is
if your selling a car and its really a bike, wheels alone are not enough to make them salable under the same title
that would be against the sale of goods act
just as a photograph can not be sold as a inkjet, the image alone is not enough to make them salable under the same title
Jim collum
5-Aug-2009, 13:08
im neither sitting at a table or feeling the need to offer up proof, im not on trial here.
this is the way it is
if your selling a car and its really a bike, wheels alone are not enough to make them salable under the same title
that would be against the sale of goods act
just as a photograph can not be sold as a inkjet, the image alone is not enough to make them salable under the same title
well... you've threatened to take some of these people to court.. report them or whatever... so i've admitted what i'm selling in a prior post, and how i'm selling it. It's my opinion that i'm acting in good faith to my customers and they are getting exactly what they're paying for (method of capture: photograph, medium: platinum print). In your opinion, i'm breaking the law.... so i'm an easy one for you to report to the courts. If you're so certain that you're right.. you should, in all fairness to the people you think i'm defrauding, bring me up under charges.
otherwise.. i'm done as well, and will happily continue to call what i do as photography.
Jeremy Moore
5-Aug-2009, 13:10
sales of goods act
Can you provide a link to the specific text of this act? Is the Sale of Goods Act in the Netherlands different from the UK act of 1979?
Under the UK act the only way I could see "inkjet not as a photograph" would be dealing with the implied under description. Your argument would be you bought a photograph and you were sold an inkjet print which you do not consider to be photography.
With the UK act an inkjet would be considered a photograph if a consensus of experts considered it to be so, which, as everyone else in this thread has contested, they do.
So you would lose. Additionallly, the Sale of Goods Act does not cover a buyer who is more expert than the seller (Harlingdon & Leinster Enterprises Ltd. v Christopher Hull Fine Art Ltd. [1990] 1 All ER 737) and as you obviously consider yourself the gatekeeper of what is or isn't photographic you would have no recourse to the Sale of Goods Act.
Finally, there is no way to "report" someone under the Sale of Goods Act because it only applies where there is an actual sale of goods (there is no "conspiracy for the sale of goods act").
Of course, this is only the UK's Sale of Goods Act, but I believe this is the act the EU uses.
pablo batt
5-Aug-2009, 13:20
you assume that i consider you are in some way breaking the law, i have never made this supposition and have no knowledge of your personal sales technique , i really have no reason to query your methods or of any other image makers.
im basically stating that misrepresentation of a product falls under most countrys basic sale of goods structure.
it would be a terrible world if we purchased a chicken only to find it was actually a rabbit in disguise, lol
i have no problem with inkjetters as long as that is what they are
as much as i dont want to buy a photograph only to realize its a inkjet, i also wouldn't sell a photograph as a inkjet print
its just easier (honest) that way, we all then know where we stand
Jim collum
5-Aug-2009, 13:27
off the topic, i was curious what unmanipulated looked like, but couldn't find anything online attributed to pablo batt. You have a gallery or scans anywhere online? I'm always interested in seeing new work
jim
pablo batt
5-Aug-2009, 13:31
no i dont do online only flesh and bones for me, your most welcome to come and press my flesh and i would even invite you into my darkroom for a good smoke and a smell of my fixer
Kerik Kouklis
5-Aug-2009, 13:37
Is there a law against beating a dead horse in the Netherlands? If so, you'll be doing some hard time, Pablo...
pablo batt
5-Aug-2009, 13:40
hello kerik, is there any need for me to ask if there is a archival pigment printer churning out giclee sitting where your enarger used to live
no malice intended
Kirk Gittings
5-Aug-2009, 14:12
no i dont do online only flesh and bones for me, your most welcome to come and press my flesh and i would even invite you into my darkroom for a good smoke and a smell of my fixer
I thought he had posted a link awhile back to some of his images. It is in this thread:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30665456@N06/
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/30665456@N06/)
i photographed some of my working prints for you guys to pick apart and hate. i must warn you i didn't take the plastic sleeves of some of the shots so the quality is a little crappy. most are 645 and 35mm.Pablo Batt
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30665456@N06/
Chris Strobel
5-Aug-2009, 14:15
http://lh5.ggpht.com/carlos57775/SCobc6EL_hI/AAAAAAAABys/RG0y66Z3ZDY/s288/Don%27t%20feed%20the%20troll.jpg
pablo batt
5-Aug-2009, 14:15
well i forgot about those, i did only photograph them for you
be warned they arent scanner quality and a few are fibres dring on a mirror
But... I see no prints there! On my monitor, they all look like electronic images!
:D
pablo batt
5-Aug-2009, 14:25
thats why i dont like online gallerys, i dont have anymore than my wifes digi point and shoot and my light box to copy negs, and my flatbed is too small for the prints.
ps im not a photographer i own my own camera sales business and i service shutters clean lenses fix the unexpected. side effect being that i go retro and use them all on a regular basis.
anyways now you all have had a good laugh at my online images
the point still remains once digitally modified as all digi files on the net have been, they are now no longer photographs
and that fact cannot be over looked
Jim collum
5-Aug-2009, 14:25
well i forgot about those, i did only photograph them for you
be warned they arent scanner quality and a few are fibres dring on a mirror
ok.. i just wanted to check. i suspect that if you're selling most of these, then you're also guilty of selling manipulations. i see b/w work, shots taken thru filters, as well as shot on velvia (if there's *anything* further from 'real' .. it's velvia :D )
Maybe we can share a lawyer when we're brought up on fraud ...
no i dont do online only flesh and bones for me, your most welcome to come and press my flesh and i would even invite you into my darkroom for a good smoke and a smell of my fixer
What would be the smoke, Pablo? I have the impression that you may have access to something there in the Netherlands that we can not buy here in the US at the local pharmacy!!
You are certainly entitled to your opinion as to what is and what is not photography. I have seen the same attitude expressed here, and on APUG, by a number of other people. However, in the long run it is the greater photography community, which includes both amateur and professional users, museum curators, photo-historians, etc. who will decide this issue, and from my perspective your view is out of touch with that community.
But what else can we say? There are people who still believe that the earth is flat, that the US faked the 1969 trip to the moon, and that Obama is not a citizen of the US.
Sandy King
ps im not a photographer i own my own camera sales business and i service shutters clean lenses fix the unexpected. side effect being that i go retro and use them all on a regular basis.
So, it IS some sort of vested interest behind all the huff and puff, eh Pablo?
The guilty may fear, but no vengeance he aims
At honest man's life or Estate
His wrath is entirely confined to wide frames
And to those that old prices abate
;)
pablo batt
5-Aug-2009, 14:42
i use a durst 138s condenser , so a need to pull a stop and yellow filter is just to tame the incredible ease for the blacks to run away from me,due to the callier effect i believe
my prints arent for sale, at no price, but if i like you i would just give them too you. for me there is no reason to make money from my prints + i have a short attention span and get bored of prints very quickly
today i set up my calumet mono rail to do this shot again
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30665456@N06/3789336819/
its a view out of my window right next to my tv and couch, so set up the focus and composition tripod etc and used a digi point and shoot as a look out (webcam style) once i had a suitable human target, i used a shutter release extension, all this whilst i had my feet up in front of the tv . lol
im just so lazy i was going to use a mirror so i could just have a smoke etc instead of just standing there waiting fo people to cross my frame, couldnt find one though,at last a use for digital in my photography
i hope this doesnt mean i am now a inkjetter
wheres the bleach, time for a drink
Jim collum
5-Aug-2009, 14:46
i use a durst 138s condenser , so a need to pull a stop and yellow filter is just to tame the incredible ease for the blacks to run away from me,due to the callier effect i believe
actually, i was referring to your use of filters when you take b/w images (from the description on flickr).
I don't know. it's slippery slope.. today it's yellow/green filters, pushing film, dodging & burning.. next thing you know, you'll be removing "Lone Pine" from the hillside.
pablo batt
5-Aug-2009, 14:52
oh chill out jim, its no big thing
in a way my flickr proves my point, once digitized even a digi image of a fb print drying on glass is no longer a photo
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30665456@N06/3790124000/
Language evolves. Which isn't the same as saying language is arbitrary. I have the feeling you're smart enough to understand the distinction; you're just trying to be a wise ass.
Actually I completely agree. But no matter how much evolution, a BIcycle will always have two wheels, and a PHOTOgraph will always be capturing light. Words which do not have such absolute origins can evolve, others are replaced. I have the feeling you are smart enough to understand what I am saying but are just being argumentative, but that is just speculation on my part.
And photogravures have, since their inception, been considered photographs. Just like the earlier ink processes by Talbot and Niepce; just like rotogravures; just like collotypes. Since the very first days that museums collected and showed photographs, these prints were curated by the photography departments, not the printmaking departments. Just like with inkjet today.
I would agree that photogravures would be considered in the same genre as photography, after all, it requires photography to complete. But saying something is in the same genre or that one requires the other does not make it the same thing.
Allan
I will bet anything that this is what you'll find: no gallery is guilty of deception, because acording to current standard usage, inkjet prints of photographically derived images are (surprise!) photographs.
By you, maybe, by many of us it seems, they are not. Once again I would like to say that there is absolutely nothing wrong with inkjet prints, and no method of creating a print is factually superior to another. However that does not mean that one method IS another method.
Allan
With the UK act an inkjet would be considered a photograph if a consensus of experts considered it to be so, which, as everyone else in this thread has contested, they do.
Everyone? Nope, sorry.
Allan
pablo batt
5-Aug-2009, 15:02
i think that europe is a very different place to live than the u.s.
no malice intended
the old ways are still cherished here by many, in the states progress allmost overwrites what went before,
i guess that the difference is due to a few thousand years of occupation over a few hundred in the states
time rushes by ,things change but only if you allow them too
Jeremy Moore
5-Aug-2009, 15:11
Everyone? Nope, sorry.
Allan
Sorry, I should have said the majority.
i think that europe is a very different place to live than the u.s.
no malice intended
the old ways are still cherished here by many, in the states progress allmost overwrites what went before,
i guess that the difference is due to a few thousand years of occupation over a few hundred in the states
time rushes by ,things change but only if you allow them too
Spoken by someone who lives in a country where horny pricks walk by and pick their whores out of phone booths.
Sandy King
pablo batt
5-Aug-2009, 15:39
hahaha
drunks live in the phone booths, pro s work in the back street establishments,but at least its a clean controlled industry unlike the backward ways of doing these things in the states.
hahaha
drunks live in the phone booths, pro s work in the back street establishments,but at least its a clean controlled industry unlike the backward ways of doing these things in the states.
But in the US, outside of Vegas and Reno, we still adhere to the old traditional ways. A puto/a is always a whore, by whatever name you may want to call him/her.
Or in poetry, a rose is always a rose, by whatever name it is called. And a photograph is always a photograph, whatever name you use.
Sandy King
pablo batt
5-Aug-2009, 16:10
puto/a what is this?
puto/a what is this?
It's Spanish for male/female Hoer. Either as a profession or a character trait. ;)
When Dru Blair uses an airbrush to make his photrealistic paintings that really look like a photo, that makes it a photo?
No. It's not an image made with a camera. The use of the device that projects the light is the defining element, and it applies to how the image was captured in the first place.
If that person on the street that said, "that's a photo" later found out that it was an airbrush painting, they would say, "wow! fooled me." But if I told them I made the image with a camera and then printed it on my inkjet printer, they would still think it was a photo. If I told them I took pieces of a dozen photographs and blended them together into one image, they would say it was a montage of photos. If I told them I hand-colored it (as was done a century ago), they would call it a hand-colored photo. But it would not lose its status as a photograph just because of subsequent manipulation.
And, by the way, we were talking about the definition of words, not objective physical realities. The flatness or roundness of the planet is a physical reality that can be resolved objectively, and those who disagree with an objective physical reality are simply wrong. The definition of round or flat requires that everyone using those words agrees as to their meaning, and that meaning can migrate over time based on how most people use the word.
Rick "understanding that a small enough piece of the planet's surface simulates flatness adequately for medieval farmers who, for example, flood their fields for irrigation, but if they lived now they would know that a photograph is a picture made with a camera" Denney
No. It's not an image made with a camera. The use of the device that projects the light is the defining element, and it applies to how the image was captured in the first place.
That's the crux of the issue right there. Getting caught up in how a print is made is really a technical distraction. All the curators and historians whose work I've read, and the photographers whose views I respect, think of a photograph in terms of the optical method of capturing the original image.
Gravure, collotype, bromoil, carbon, are all examples of photographic prints where the final image is made of pigments on a non light-sensitive medium. In fact, the very first photographic process of all, invented by Niepce, was a form of photo intaglio: an ink printing process. It dates to the 1920s. It never became commercially viable only because it was too slow.
Significantly, historians as early as Beaumon Newhall, and photographers as early as Walker Evans, believed that ink was the most significant and logical photographic medium. Specifically, they were talking about books, made either by rotogravure or offset printing. Their feeling was that one of photography's most important qualities was its infinite, mechanical reproduceability. It's inherently the most democratic medium. And a photography book gets the image (in a form that's perfect in many ways) in front of as many people as possible. For them, photography demolished the distinction between "original" and "reproduction."
I was personally sold on ink the first time I saw the Paul Strand book printed by Steinhauer press, with separations made by Richard Benson. The book sent me into the fetal position for days: I had thought my silver prints were second to none. But the plates in the Strand book went way beyond anything I knew how to produce in the darkroom or by any other means.
Chris Strobel
5-Aug-2009, 23:37
So I have a handful of books, John Sexton, Edward Weston, Brett Weston, Ansel Adams, Henry Gilpin, Howard Bond, Ray McSaveny, Jack Dykinga, and Christopher Burkett.So when I'm flipping through these I'm not looking at photographs according to Pablo Batt?
pablo batt
6-Aug-2009, 03:39
they are printed ,probably in offset method
a photograph it aint lol
if they were all photographs then you would likely be a rich man, hence the difference between a photograph and a cheaply printed book
i personally dont like the style/quality of photography by any of the above named photographers, and in my eyes they are all sell outs.
i dont trust people who sell out for the almighty dollar and then consider themselves as SERIOUS artists.
photographs are created by light this includes the print, if you dont get this then you are in denial of the facts
and this is your problem ,not mine, when the dollar means more to a artist than the work its self then you stop being a artist
No. It's not an image made with a camera. The use of the device that projects the light is the defining element, and it applies to how the image was captured in the first place.
Then once again, if I capture an image using a digital camera, then print it to a inkjet you say that is a photograph because of how it was captured. So if I unplug the cable from the inkjet and plug it into a line printer and then send the same digital file to it, the ASCII art that results is by your definition a photograph. Interesting.
If that person on the street that said, "that's a photo" later found out that it was an airbrush painting, they would say, "wow! fooled me." But if I told them I made the image with a camera and then printed it on my inkjet printer, they would still think it was a photo.
Here you make the assumption that the person on the street does not adhere to the definition of photography as I do. Bold assumption.
And, by the way, we were talking about the definition of words, not objective physical realities. The flatness or roundness of the planet is a physical reality that can be resolved objectively, and those who disagree with an objective physical reality are simply wrong. The definition of round or flat requires that everyone using those words agrees as to their meaning, and that meaning can migrate over time based on how most people use the word.
Rick "understanding that a small enough piece of the planet's surface simulates flatness adequately for medieval farmers who, for example, flood their fields for irrigation, but if they lived now they would know that a photograph is a picture made with a camera" Denney
No, I was talking about the definition of words, Photo (light) graphy (recording), and the physical realities of that definition (is it produced by light sensitive materials or not). You are talking about objective ideas which seem to ebb and flow with whatever you want.
Allan
Jim collum
6-Aug-2009, 07:03
they are printed ,probably in offset method
a photograph it aint lol
if they were all photographs then you would likely be a rich man, hence the difference between a photograph and a cheaply printed book
i personally dont like the style/quality of photography by any of the above named photographers, and in my eyes they are all sell outs.
i dont trust people who sell out for the almighty dollar and then consider themselves as SERIOUS artists.
photographs are created by light this includes the print, if you dont get this then you are in denial of the facts
and this is your problem ,not mine, when the dollar means more to a artist than the work its self then you stop being a artist
wow.. the requirements to be a photographic artist are pretty steep. Full frame/no crop... no manipulation (dodging, burning, contrast/color control,) negative attached to the image (which means only 1 print per image), and then that single image not sold, but hanging.. where? in his own home so only he/she, friends and family can see it?
goamules
6-Aug-2009, 07:20
Is a blue sky blue?
No, I was talking about the definition of words, Photo (light) graphy (recording), and the physical realities of that definition (is it produced by light sensitive materials or not). You are talking about objective ideas which seem to ebb and flow with whatever you want.
Word defintions are not absolute. You've already been challenged, and I think persuasively, on the notion that a word does not mean what its Latin roots suggest it might mean. I think that's especially true for modern words concocted from Latin roots, such as "photograph".
You cannot print a bit-map graphic file to an ASCII printer without processing it to produce ASCII art. That processing fundamentally alters the look of the image to make something new. In that case, it's a "photograph that has been altered to produce ASCII art." How is that any different from "hand-colored photograph" which is a term we've been happily using for a century or more? An inkjet print has its own look, but that look is not fundamentally less like the image projected by the camera lens than any other print medium.
The reason I keep going to the man on the street regarding definitions is because that's how definitions are determined. Those brainiacs on the expert panels who make decisions about what goes into dictionaries don't follow the process you are following. They don't say, "This word should mean x because 1.) that's what I want it to mean for technical reasons and 2.) that's what I think the Latin roots suggest". They say, "What do people think this word means?" That's why dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive. Having them helps people understand each other, because it provides a common frame of reference as long as both people use it. But there is a reason why the definitions of words are so different from one dictionary to the next, and a reason why language nuts argue about which dictionary is "better". This is not objective fact, and your saying so doesn't make it so.
The way in which a print is made has different value to different people. Some might prefer a gelatin silver print because of how it looks, others might prefer it because it pleases them to know that the photographer smelled like fixer for three days after making it. Some might not care as long as they like the result. Some may actually prefer the pigment inkjet print as being more archival than other color processes. None of these issues change the fact that the image is still a photograph.
But then there's another practical question. What else would it be? If I scan a negative and print it on an Epson, what would I call it other than a "photograph printed on an Epson?" It's not a painting. It's not an illustration. It's not a drawing. It's not a potato block print. It's not a sculpture. It's a photograph, because I made the picture with a camera. Does that strike at some religious belief that makes it impossible to accept the simplicity of it?
Rick "wondering if we'll still have photographs when optical enlargers are no more" Denney
The word "photograph" was chosen by committee, in 1839. It was not handed down from Zeus. It was not found in a Dead Sea scroll by Moses. It wasn't a prophecy given to us to fulfill.
It was descriptive. A new process had been invented (or discovered, depending on your point of view). People needed to call it something. A name was chosen. Other options on the table were Heliography and Photogenic Drawing. A name like this has as much authority over destiny as a name like Bob or Sue given to a kid.
At any rate, not that it mattered, we can trust that the definition was NEVER meant to restrict photography to one type of printing process or another. Daguerre himself, who had worked on printing in ink before perfecting the daguerrotype, and who was later a key player in photogravure, was among the people who coined the word.
Guys. If you are arguing what's essentially a philosophical idea based on a dictionary definition, you are indulging an impoverished intellect and wasting everyone's time. You would be laughed out of any art history or philosophy class I've been in for pursuing such a retarded line of reasoning.
This reminds me of a hilarious (but somewhat less stupid) discussion a few years ago. Someone was lambasting an ink company for offering inkjet inks in "sepia" color.
"That's not sepia!" the argument went. "Sepia is a sulfur toning process for a silver print, PERIOD! That marketing is DECEPTIVE!"
Being bored, and on my employer's dime, I looked up the history of the word sepia. Interestingly, it predates photography. It's a dye extacted from the cuttlefish, which was used, ironically, for coloring PRINTING INK.
I could have turned around and berated the silver printers for misusing the term. "That's not sepia you're using! You're LYING!" But it was better just to laugh. Usage evolves. Sepia went from being a specific dye to being a description of a color in printmaking. It was then only natural to attribute it to a sulfer toning process in silver photography. Just as it's only natural to attribute it to the same color in newer forms of ink printing.
I'm not trying to advocate a free for all. For example, the monochrome inks I use are made from carbon pigments. I'm careful with words so that they won't be confused with carbon prints. Because in current usage, "carbon print" describes a very specific process. It is not a description of a look, nor is it just a description of the pigment used.
Kerik Kouklis
6-Aug-2009, 09:25
Is a blue sky blue?
No, it's white. EVERYONE knows that. When photography went panchromatic, it was no longer REAL photography. :p
Chris Strobel
6-Aug-2009, 09:38
i personally dont like the style/quality of photography by any of the above named photographers, and in my eyes they are all sell outs.
i dont trust people who sell out for the almighty dollar and then consider themselves as SERIOUS artists.
photographs are created by light this includes the print, if you dont get this then you are in denial of the facts
and this is your problem ,not mine, when the dollar means more to a artist than the work its self then you stop being a artist
Oh yeah, Edward Weston a sell out, right up there with Vincent Van Gough :eek:
What utter bullshit.I can't believe I'm still feeding this troll :(
Is a blue sky blue?
No, it's white. EVERYONE knows that. When photography went panchromatic, it was no longer REAL photography. :p
And when the sky turns grey, is it still sky or is it already falling? :D
Word defintions are not absolute. You've already been challenged, and I think persuasively, on the notion that a word does not mean what its Latin roots suggest it might mean. I think that's especially true for modern words concocted from Latin roots, such as "photograph".
Certain words I agree are not absolute. But the word photography is not an interpretive word, it is a literal conjunction of two words with explicit meanings, whether you like them or not. They are not 'suggestions', they are literal words. Just like a bicycle must have only two wheels, a unicycle one, a tricycle three, and an optometrist must be a doctor who deal with eyes. What would you call a optometrist who went in to a hospital to perform heart surgery? Insane is the word that comes to my mind. What would you call someone who refers to an inkjet print as a photograph.....
You cannot print a bit-map graphic file to an ASCII printer without processing it to produce ASCII art. That processing fundamentally alters the look of the image to make something new. In that case, it's a "photograph that has been altered to produce ASCII art." How is that any different from "hand-colored photograph" which is a term we've been happily using for a century or more? An inkjet print has its own look, but that look is not fundamentally less like the image projected by the camera lens than any other print medium.
So again, we are back to the 'look' of the print. If look is the primary concern then any painting, drawing, or printing that 'looks' like a photograph fits? And just for the record, you do not send a bitmap image directly to an inkjet either, would you use PCL or PS to send the file?
The reason I keep going to the man on the street regarding definitions is because that's how definitions are determined. Those brainiacs on the expert panels who make decisions about what goes into dictionaries don't follow the process you are following. They don't say, "This word should mean x because 1.) that's what I want it to mean for technical reasons and 2.) that's what I think the Latin roots suggest". They say, "What do people think this word means?" That's why dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive. Having them helps people understand each other, because it provides a common frame of reference as long as both people use it. But there is a reason why the definitions of words are so different from one dictionary to the next, and a reason why language nuts argue about which dictionary is "better". This is not objective fact, and your saying so doesn't make it so.
And I keep going back to 'what the majority of people believe' does not make it right. The dictionary I use is for reference, it is blatantly obvious what the word photograph means even without reference material, at least to me. Once again, do we really need to look up the term bicycle to know it has two wheels?
The way in which a print is made has different value to different people. Some might prefer a gelatin silver print because of how it looks, others might prefer it because it pleases them to know that the photographer smelled like fixer for three days after making it. Some might not care as long as they like the result. Some may actually prefer the pigment inkjet print as being more archival than other color processes. None of these issues change the fact that the image is still a photograph.
To you, that may be true. To me, if it is not a capture of light, it is not a photograph, very simple. An inkjet connected to a computer is no different to me than an artist using an airbrush. The airbrush has much more in common with an inkjet than an inkjet has with an enlarger (or lightjet). The computer is the brain of the artist. Regardless of what the output looks like, it either is a recording of light, or it is not, and I personally can not find the light in most inkjets :-)
But then there's another practical question. What else would it be? If I scan a negative and print it on an Epson, what would I call it other than a "photograph printed on an Epson?" It's not a painting. It's not an illustration. It's not a drawing. It's not a potato block print. It's not a sculpture. It's a photograph, because I made the picture with a camera. Does that strike at some religious belief that makes it impossible to accept the simplicity of it?
Rick "wondering if we'll still have photographs when optical enlargers are no more" Denney
That is simple! It is a PRINT. What does a 'printer' do? It PRINTS. It does not photograph, or expose. It prints. That is the simplicity of it.
Allan
Guys. If you are arguing what's essentially a philosophical idea based on a dictionary definition, you are indulging an impoverished intellect and wasting everyone's time. You would be laughed out of any art history or philosophy class I've been in for pursuing such a retarded line of reasoning.
You know, my father (rest in piece) and my debate professor disagreed on pretty much everything. One thing they did agree upon though, which I always believed, and you just helped them both prove, is that once your opponent in a debate stops debating the facts and starts with the insults, you have won, move on.
I salute them.
Allan
Word defintions are not absolute. You've already been challenged, and I think persuasively, on the notion that a word does not mean what its Latin roots suggest it might mean. I think that's especially true for modern words concocted from Latin roots, such as "photograph".
...
Denney
Except that the word "photograph" is "concocted" from 2 Greek words...;)
pablo batt
6-Aug-2009, 12:16
i think we all now really know what a photograph is,and isnt
what concerns me the most is.. who are the main culprits of the inkjet is a photograph fraud ,and is this ignorance or denial
inkjet is money, profit margins, devious sales pitches, overpriced A4 paper ,ink that costs more than gold, shoddy workman ship, and blatant capitalism
photography is love
CatSplat
6-Aug-2009, 12:22
overpriced A4 paper
Geez, and I thought my Ilford paper was more expensive than inkjet paper. :rolleyes:
Yonce your opponent in a debate stops debating the facts and starts with the insults, you have won, move on.
I haven't insulted you, I'm expressing exasperation with the endlessly repeated logical fallacies that you're passing off as an argument. And with your refusal to address the many well supported arguments that have been presented to you.
what concerns me the most is.. who are the main culprits of the inkjet is a photograph fraud ,and is this ignorance or denial
Do you really think that all the museum curators have been bamboozled? If you're so concerned, why don't you talk to one? Or a photo historian at a university? Or how about someone who collects both kinds of prints in question?
One thing I'm pretty sure you'll find is that these people aren't stupid. And that if profit were really their motive, they'd be doing something else entirely.
Jim collum
6-Aug-2009, 12:47
Do you really think that all the museum curators have been bamboozled? If you're so concerned, why don't you talk to one? Or a photo historian at a university? Or how about someone who collects both kinds of prints in question?
One thing I'm pretty sure you'll find is that these people aren't stupid. And that if profit were really their motive, they'd be doing something else entirely.
They have to be stupid.. i mean.. look at some of those they consider as great photograhers
John Sexton, Edward Weston, Brett Weston, Ansel Adams, Henry Gilpin, Howard Bond, Ray McSaveny, Jack Dykinga, and Christopher Burkett
I mean... if they are stupid enough to believe that their work is good, then convincing them to accept products of The Great Inkjet Paper Conspiracy is a piece of cake.
:eek:
They have to be stupid..
Good point!
Let's not forget the great impressionism hoax, the "straight photography" conspiracy, and the cubism imbroglio.
Personally, I think it was all set up to hide the fact that Matthew Brady assasinated Lincoln.
pablo batt
6-Aug-2009, 13:15
ilford is so last century, its harman now old boy.
my paper is half the price of epson lustre, and that stuff reminds me of aeroplane plastic paneling found in the bathrooms
Chris Strobel
6-Aug-2009, 13:31
ilford is so last century, its harman now old boy.
my paper is half the price of epson lustre, and that stuff reminds me of aeroplane plastic paneling found in the bathrooms
I guess your not a big fan of Ilfo/Cibachrome either?
Jim collum
6-Aug-2009, 13:38
I guess your not a big fan of Ilfo/Cibachrome either?
Harman Baryta FB gloss should be just fine though
pablo batt
6-Aug-2009, 13:40
mr strobel , pls can you outline your findings on my like or potential dislike of the now harmon paper you outlined in the previous post
i do not recollect my declaration of such a travesty of time itself
why sir if i were wearing gloves i may have removed them and thrown them down in front of you and demanded a test of you metal
sir i implore you
Colin Graham
6-Aug-2009, 13:46
Pablo, get some sleep buddy.
Chris Strobel
6-Aug-2009, 13:55
mr strobel , pls can you outline your findings on my like or potential dislike of the now harmon paper you outlined in the previous post
i do not recollect my declaration of such a travesty of time itself
why sir if i were wearing gloves i may have removed them and threw them down in front of you and demanded a test of you metal
sir i implore you
Mr.Batt, please could you speak englsh, I have no idea what you just said :confused:
pablo batt
6-Aug-2009, 13:58
why colin is this a offer or just perhaps a suggestion?? if so i will quickly pick up my gloves and make like a whippet up those apple and pears where i will lay my coal coated torso in preparation for the journey to the tomorrow world
bdkphoto
6-Aug-2009, 14:00
You know, my father (rest in piece) and my debate professor disagreed on pretty much everything. One thing they did agree upon though, which I always believed, and you just helped them both prove, is that once your opponent in a debate stops debating the facts and starts with the insults, you have won, move on.
I salute them.
Allan
You might want to do a quick edit, some of your many detractors might ask about your fathers untimely dismemberment.
Miriam Webster's eleventh edition (which is the publishing industry standard):
Main Entry: 1pho·to·graph
Pronunciation: \ˈfō-tə-ˌgraf\
Function: noun
Date: 1839
: a picture or likeness obtained by photography
Main Entry: pho·tog·ra·phy
Pronunciation: \fə-ˈtä-grə-fē\
Function: noun
Date: 1839
: the art or process of producing images by the action of radiant energy and especially light on a sensitive surface (as film or a CCD chip)
Nothing about the photograph needing light sensitive materials, just the capture. Notice they include digital.
Miriam Webster's eleventh edition (which is the publishing industry standard):
Main Entry: 1pho·to·graph
Pronunciation: \ˈfō-tə-ˌgraf\
Function: noun
Date: 1839
: a picture or likeness obtained by photography
Main Entry: pho·tog·ra·phy
Pronunciation: \fə-ˈtä-grə-fē\
Function: noun
Date: 1839
: the art or process of producing images by the action of radiant energy and especially light on a sensitive surface (as film or a CCD chip)
Nothing about the photograph needing light sensitive materials, just the capture. Notice they include digital.
I agree with that definition. An inkjet does not produce images by the action of ratiant energy on a (light)sensitive surface so that fits right in.
Allan
bdkphoto
6-Aug-2009, 14:35
I agree with that definition. An inkjet does not produce images by the action of ratiant energy on a (light)sensitive surface so that fits right in.
Allan
You've misread the definition.
You've misread the definition.
He hasn't misread it. He is misinterpreting it, however.
A very clever troll bait which seems to be working just fine... ;)
Except that the word "photograph" is "concocted" from 2 Greek words...;)
Yes, I deserve to writhe in pain. A word with Latin roots could hardly have been handed down by Zeus.
Rick "but it was concocted" Denney
We haven't yet talked about the development that I find most interesting ... at least along the lines of "are photographs still photographs?"
Through most of photography's history it was a printmaking medium. There were a number of superficial exceptions to this: daguerrotype, carte de visite (basically monoprints); E6 and Kodachrome (transparencies, also one-of-a-kind). But they were still visual objects, much like prints. And everything else from the salted paper print to the offset lithography of bookmaking was a kind of printmaking.
In this context, there's nothing fundamentally interesting about inkjet printing. It's just a new printmaking technology, interesting in ways that, in a broader historical context, amount to details.
What's actually revolutionary is the on-screen image. Like it or not, this is the new face of photography. This is how most phographs are probably viewed now, and certainly how most will be viewed in a short time. The rise of video art and video installation in the art world, and merging of photo and video as academic subjects, all point to this becoming a dominant way of looking.
The on-screen image completes the recasting of photograph from object to pure image. A single photograph can be viewed at any number of sizes, on any number of devices, can be transmitted nearly instantly around the world, can be printed (or not) in any number of ways, can be stored, can be duplicated infinitely without any alteration.
The "photograph" itself becomes invisible data, much like the latent image on film. The final viewing form becomes subordinate ... it's simply one of many possible ways to realize the image.
Inkjet prints are old-school compared with the increasingly disembodied, virtual world of photography.
I haven't insulted you, I'm expressing exasperation with the endlessly repeated logical fallacies that you're passing off as an argument. And with your refusal to address the many well supported arguments that have been presented to you.
I'm sorry but 'impoverished intellect' and 'retarded line of reasoning' is quite insulting. I have also addressed every point I have seen. I do feel however that you have refused to acknowledge several points made to you, such as words like bicycle and optometrist which have a literal meaning, just like photography.
Allan
You've misread the definition.
OK, lets try this again then....
: the art or process of producing images
OK, an art or process producing images, got it. That could cover any form including paint, ink, charcoal, dye sub, etc. It also does not state any type of image, so a stick figure is an image, ASCII codes are images, etc. Got it.
by the action of radiant energy
OK, by the action of, that means that the resulting image as mentioned above is a direct consequence of..... 'radiant energy'. OK, so what is radiant energy? According to dictionary.com it is 'energy transmitted in wave motion'. So now we know that the image must result directly from energy that travels in a wave motion. This would include electromagnetic, light, and sound among others.
and especially light on a sensitive surface (as film or a CCD chip)
Here it says that the definition especially applies to light, on a sensitive surface and goes on to specify film and a CCD. Since film and CCDs are not sensitive to sound or radio waves, it is safe to conclude the sensitive surface they are referring to in this example is light sensitive.
Now, since a recording of sound is called sonography (sono for sound, graphy for record), and recording of radio waves is radiography (radio for radio waves, graphy for record), then it stands to reason that photography (photo for light, graphy for record) refers primarily to light recordings.
So, even if we exclude the 'and especially' part of the equation we have a definition that specifies that the RESULT (final print), must be a DIRECT CONSEQUENCE of energy traveling in a wave. Would you please explain to me how ink spraying from a jet on a printer is considered radiant energy?
A lightjet printer on the other hand uses light sensitive paper which the definition mentions, and exposes it using a laser which is comprised of light, one of the forms of radiant energy the definition specifically mentions.
What did I miss?
Allan
Inkjet prints are old-school compared with the increasingly disembodied, virtual world of photography.
I am quite sure you knew this would raise red flags with me, so I will happily step up to the plate!
The first problem, which you identified yourself, is that it is an image on the screen, not a photograph. Please see my other posts for more on that. :rolleyes:
Second, an argument could be made that it is actually video, since the screen refreshes at least 56 times a second (unless it is interlaced, in which case it would be 56 half screen refreshes per second).
Ignoring all of that, if we talk purely about the effects of images now being displayed in electronic form as opposed to being printed either as a print, or a photograph, I think it will eventually get to the point where captured images will be displayed on the walls on integrated displays which are put on much like wallpaper. This will allow many more images to be displayed in the same amount of space, more shows of different work on the same gallery wall, and eventually the decline of these images as serious art.
Why? Because they will be easier to make, easier to display, easier to manipulate, easier to copy, and ubiquitous. To many (at least many I know), art must be somewhat limited to really be appreciated. That doesn't mean only one copy like an oil painting, but when you see the same image thirty times a day every day, it ceases to be as meaningful.
At least that is my take on it.
Allan
OK, by the action of, that means that the resulting image as mentioned above is a direct consequence of..... 'radiant energy'. OK, so what is radiant energy? According to dictionary.com it is 'energy transmitted in wave motion'. So now we know that the image must result directly from energy that travels in a wave motion. This would include electromagnetic, light, and sound among others.
[...]
Here it says that the definition especially applies to light, on a sensitive surface and goes on to specify film and a CCD. Since film and CCDs are not sensitive to sound or radio waves, it is safe to conclude the sensitive surface they are referring to in this example is light sensitive.
You definitely need to get your definitions (and sources) in a row...
1.
a) Visible light IS a part of the electromagnetic spectrum
b) So are radio "waves" - energy, really
c) Sound is NOT.
2. Electromagnetic radiation (including light in general and visible light in particular) has dual nature - wave or particle. Therefore, "wave motion":
a) IS NOT a condition for "writing with light".
b) IS a condition for transferring sound
3. It is NOT safe to conclude that "Sensitive surfaces" you mention are sensitive to light only. The are sensitive to electromagnetic radiation (or a segment thereof), not necessarily just visible light.
Now, since a recording of sound is called sonography (sono for sound, graphy for record), and recording of radio waves is radiography (radio for radio waves, graphy for record), then it stands to reason that photography (photo for light, graphy for record) refers primarily to light recordings.
Finally, this is pure nonsense - radiography is using what used to be known as "radio-active energy", or high energy portion of the electromagnetic spectrum - X-Rays, gamma-rays and such - for creating images.
So much for reason... ;)
So, even if we exclude the 'and especially' part of the equation we have a definition that specifies that the RESULT (final print), must be a DIRECT CONSEQUENCE of energy traveling in a wave. Would you please explain to me how ink spraying from a jet on a printer is considered radiant energy?
A lightjet printer on the other hand uses light sensitive paper which the definition mentions, and exposes it using a laser which is comprised of light, one of the forms of radiant energy the definition specifically mentions.
What did I miss?
Allan
You missed the dual nature part of light. The fact that light can be both a wave AND a particle.
Ink is also comprised of particles...
:D
The first problem, which you identified yourself, is that it is an image on the screen, not a photograph. Please see my other posts for more on that. :rolleyes:
Your other posts all insist on the exclusivity of using light to create an image.
Now, what is, in your opinion and according to your sources ;) the source of an image on the screen?
goamules
6-Aug-2009, 18:43
A rose by any other name...
You definitely need to get your definitions (and sources) in a row...
1.
a) Visible light IS a part of the electromagnetic spectrum
b) So are radio "waves" - energy, really
c) Sound is NOT.
Never said sound was part of the electromagnetic spectrum, I did say it travels in waves. If you read carefully I stated that radiant energy was energy that travels in waves (as per the definition) and that energy that travels in waves includes electromagnetic, light, and sound among others. Are you saying that sound is not energy that travels in waves? If that is true, I apologize, for I thought it was.
2. Electromagnetic radiation (including light in general and visible light in particular) has dual nature - wave or particle. Therefore, "wave motion":
a) IS NOT a condition for "writing with light".
b) IS a condition for transferring sound
You mean that light has a particle too? What is it called? It would not be PHOTOn would it? I mean if it was, that might have something to do with PHOTOgraphy, would you not think?
3. It is NOT safe to conclude that "Sensitive surfaces" you mention are sensitive to light only. The are sensitive to electromagnetic radiation (or a segment thereof), not necessarily just visible light.
Hold on there, where did I specify VISIBLE light? Even invisible (to the human eye) light has PHOTOns right? So any surface sensitive to PHOTOns would be light sensitive. Since the name is PHOTOgraphy, and they specifically mention film and CCDs as examples to being sensitive, what exactly would it be sensitive to other than PHOTOns?
Finally, this is pure nonsense - radiography is using what used to be known as "radio-active energy", or high energy portion of the electromagnetic spectrum - X-Rays, gamma-rays and such - for creating images.
Actually, 'Radiographers now often do fluoroscopy, computed tomography, mammography, ultrasound, nuclear medicine and magnetic resonance imaging as well' and an MRI, among other tests as I am sure you know, use RF fields to align the magnetization to make the scanner work. Although I will admit I threw that bone in there to see what you would pick out :D I have to admit I am surprised how easy that was.
So much for reason... ;)
Indeed.
You missed the dual nature part of light. The fact that light can be both a wave AND a particle.
Ink is also comprised of particles...
:D
Actually I did not miss it. You did. PHOTOns? PHOTOgraphy? All this time I have been pointing at the word and saying it meant light, and just now you think of the particles?
Ink is indeed comprised of particles. I agree. Although you still have not answered my question of how you think the ink being sprayed on the page is radiant energy, because if it is not, then the definition you quoted just proved my point. I thank you for that!
Allan
Your other posts all insist on the exclusivity of using light to create an image.
Now, what is, in your opinion and according to your sources ;) the source of an image on the screen?
If you read the definitions, and of course my posts, you would note that they/I state that a photograph is created when you use a light sensitive surface to record light. A monitor is not light sensitive, and it is not recording anything. Therefor the monitor is no more a photograph than a light bulb is.
You are obviously an intelligent person. I find it incredibly difficult to believe that even if you vehemently disagree with my position, that you do not understand exactly what I am saying.
Allan
Rather than bat this around fifty more times I will make a clear statement here.
My personal opinion is based on what I was taught many years ago, which also happens to be almost exactly the dictionary definition of the word photograph....
If you use a light sensitive surface (film, CCD, CMOS, photosensitive paper) then the image you produce is a photo (meaning light, from the particle of light called a photon) graph (recording).
If you do not use a light sensitive surface to capture light (for example, but not limited to, inkjet printer, dot matrix printer, paint, charcoal, clay, etc) it is not a photo (meaning light, from the particle of light called a photon) graph (recording).
That is it, there is no ambiguity. It does not matter if the end result looks real or fake, it does not matter who did what to whom when or where. It does not matter how it started or how it ended. It either is, or is not.
Lastly, being a photograph or not a photograph does not make either one superior to the other. Both can be awe inspiring, or repulsive, both can take extreme talent to create, or be jammed together by a five year old. It is merely a descriptive term and nothing else.
Allan
That is it, there is no ambiguity. It does not matter if the end result looks real or fake, it does not matter who did what to whom when or where. It does not matter how it started or how it ended. It either is, or is not.
So, what do YOU call YOUR inkjet prints?
Rick "just curious" Denney
If you read the definitions, and of course my posts, you would note that they/I state that a photograph is created when you use a light sensitive surface to record light. A monitor is not light sensitive, and it is not recording anything. Therefor the monitor is no more a photograph than a light bulb is.
Yes, a photograph is indeed created when a light sensitive surface is used TO RECORD/CAPTURE LIGHT.
PRESENTATION of that photograph is another matter altogether. A distinction you seem unable (I doubt, you seem intelligent enough) or unwilling to recognize for whatever reason. Which is fine with me, you should be free to have whatever opinion you want. Everybody has one, after all...
In the end, you are right - it does not matter at all. That's it from me, I've fed the trolls enough in this thread to last me a long time.
I like to take photographs. All my photos are my favorite.
_______________________
http://www.arcurs.com/microstock photography
pablo batt
7-Aug-2009, 03:06
so i think we can all agree that inkjets are not photographs buy definition and quality.
although a digital file displayed on a monitor/screen is a photo lol
not sure how you would fit a monitor and a small power station into your wallet
what a backwards step digital is ,it has no special abilities and is never going to create a genuine photo
So, what do YOU call YOUR inkjet prints?
Rick "just curious" Denney
Ummmm, prints?
Allan
Yes, a photograph is indeed created when a light sensitive surface is used TO RECORD/CAPTURE LIGHT.
So we agree here, good!
PRESENTATION of that photograph is another matter altogether. A distinction you seem unable (I doubt, you seem intelligent enough) or unwilling to recognize for whatever reason. Which is fine with me, you should be free to have whatever opinion you want. Everybody has one, after all...
I think here is the rub. Your definition of a photo (and please correct me if I am wrong) stops after the capture, while mine does not. My definition requires that the end result, not just the original capture, be a direct result of the capture of light. This is why I argued about a line printer and ASCII art. In my definition, the ASCII art is automatically disqualified because it does not use light and a light sensitive surface (the same goes for an inkjet). In your definition it is disqualified because it does not look like a photo (unlike an inkjet).
Now suppose I take a black and white photo of a bunch of ASCII text. Now the ASCII art looks exactly like the photo, does that ASCII art qualify as a photograph even though it is printed using only letters and numbers like from a typewriter and is printed using an ink ribbon on tractor feed paper?
In the end, you are right - it does not matter at all. That's it from me, I've fed the trolls enough in this thread to last me a long time.
Once again though, referring to me as a troll is rather insulting. The wiki defines trolls as :
"In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room or blog, with the primary intent of provoking other users into an emotional or disciplinary response[1] or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion."
I would say that discussing ones opinion of what exactly a photograph is, on a photography forum, in a thread entitled "are photographs still photographs.." is precisely on topic. So unless I am misreading this definition too, I could not possibly be a troll. Thank you.
Allan
Allan,
You seem to be arguing for arguing's sake, and in doing so you keep committing a veritable list of logical fallacies as well as taking and twisting definitions to the absurd and/or using irrelevant examples (optometrist, ASCII printer, etc.). You did provoke at least one user into an emotional response and you did derail and disrupt this discussion. You also seem to be a fairly intelligent and coherent person, so you are obviously doing it intentionally.
Ergo, IMO&E, you are a troll.
No need to feel upset about it though. It's just my opinion - you have your opinion and I have mine. And besides, what's another definition we disagree about after so many? ;)
pablo batt
7-Aug-2009, 06:46
mark you are a troll of the biggest order, and you are also in denial of the facts
Henry Suryo
7-Aug-2009, 07:48
So I was asked to visualize a kitchen scene, with specific furniture and appliances in mind, as well as how it would look with the soft morning light coming in from the terrace. Nothing was there at the time. So I modeled and simulated the scene as accurately as possible and set my virtual 6x12 camera with approximately a 65mm lens and employed a bit of front rise and rear swing. Then calculated the sun angle based on the orientation of the house, latitude and longitude for a specific time of day and year (a misty autumn morning in Amsterdam) and particle-traced the photons bouncing around inside, taking account how certain materials in the scene will reflect and/or absorb the rays. I had a final print size and look in mind so I "recorded" it with adequate pixels per inch for a "grainless" image and a bokeh like a sharp/soft anastigmat like the Cooke or Graf Variable.
Nothing like the joy of traditional photography and printmaking, but there's nothing wrong also with virtual visualization in my book. In the end it's the final product that matters. This may not be a photograph in the strictest sense but it takes as much judgment to make it a successful image, and perhaps more fun because you can have control on the variables that you normally can't, like controlling the sun. Make it a great day, OK? :)
CatSplat
7-Aug-2009, 08:08
mark you are a troll of the biggest order, and you are also in denial of the facts
http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a318/CatSplat/successful_troll.jpg
Brian Ellis
7-Aug-2009, 10:44
so how does the imprinting on a digital file work as proof of non manipulation, and how do i get it on my camera.
and how would this show up on the print to prove its honesty?
is it recognized as a realistic and definite way of proving its honesty?
also the proof of non manipulation with a photographic image is of course the negative, i personally print once ,full frame ,straight print, and frame the photo with the negative sealed inside of the frame
a total time capsule of the truth, its really hard to manipulate a negative without it being very obvious under a brief inspection
only one photo will ever exist , if the picture gets destroyed then most likely the negative will be also
its honest and i enjoy the image a lot more this way.
i just wish that inkjetters would stop calling there work photography, i myself couldn't look someone straight in the eye if it was me.
plus im a awful liar
Couldn't someone buy your framed print, tear out the backing, break the glass, and destroy the frame to get at your negative? And couldn't they take your negative to a lab that has a film recorder and duplicate it? Then they could defile it by scanning it and changing it around in Photoshop so that it no longer represented the one and only honest truth. And - are you sitting down? you should be when you read what's coming next - they could make an INK JET PRINT from your duped and revised negative. And they wouldn't stop with just one. No, they'd make hundreds, thousands, they'd flood the world with INK JET PRINTS from what began as your negative. You'd start having nightmares about your negative, you wouldn't be able to eat or sleep, eventually it would lead to insanity and finally to suicide. Such is the power of Photoshop and ink jet printing.
Chris Strobel
7-Aug-2009, 10:58
so i think we can all agree that inkjets are not photographs buy definition and quality.
Pablo what is your EXACT definition of a photograph, and who do you consider to be some of the great photographers from the past?
I'm sorry but 'impoverished intellect' and 'retarded line of reasoning' is quite insulting. I have also addressed every point I have seen. I do feel however that you have refused to acknowledge several points made to you, such as words like bicycle and optometrist which have a literal meaning, just like photography.
Allan
It's your choice whether or not to feel insulted. My remarks, however, were addressed to your arguments, not to you. I don't know you; as far as I know your arguments are deliberately specious, and you're just having fun spewing them and watching the rest of us waste our time with them. As is suggested by all the troll cartoons.
I've already wasted a fair amount of time, and done so pretty thoroughly, I think. Your bicycle and optometrist examples are simply examples of definitions that haven't changed much. They don't do what you're trying to do, which is to enforce a prescriptive model of linguistics.
The dictionary (English or Greek) doesn't hold any authority over the evolution of language, or the evolution of cultural boundaries.
People have indeed had battles over usage, historically. But if you want to have one, I suggest you aim it at the groups of people who are in a position of influence: curators, art historians, etc...
My guess is that they'll find your opinion as unintersting as I do. But I can't speak for them. I only know how they've voted on this topic in the past.
People have indeed had battles over usage, historically. But if you want to have one, I suggest you aim it at the groups of people who are in a position of influence: curators, art historians, etc...
My guess is that they'll find your opinion as unintersting as I do. But I can't speak for them. I only know how they've voted on this topic in the past.
Having published several books on the history of pictorial photography in Spain I believe I have the right to count myself among the " photo art historians." I also make what most people consider to be real photographs, teach workshops on carbon transfer printing, and my work has been featured in several photography magazines over the past 5-10 years. Yet, by the definition of Flea and Batt my work would not be photography? These are strange times -- the Rapture must be near.
I applaud folks like Paul and Marko who have drawn the discussion out because it allows reasonable people to judge for themselves the lack of logic in the ideas of Flea and Batt. Let us concede that Flea and Batt have the right to whatever definition they want to use of photograph, but frankly their definition is out of the mainstream and about as interesting to me as the hair on a rat's ass.
Sandy King
The first problem, which you identified yourself, is that it is an image on the screen, not a photograph. Please see my other posts for more on that
Yes, I fully understand that an on-screen image doesn't fit YOUR definition of photography.
I wanted to convey that in many areas of the photography world (art, journalistic, vernacular), the working definition has been rapidly shifting. Not only has it been moving farther away from your definition, but it's been moving farther from the definitions that people held even ten years ago.
Second, an argument could be made that it is actually video...
Yes, it could. And the counter argument is that the distinction is becoming less and less relevent. This isn't my argument ... it's one that artists, dealers, and curators alike seem to be implying. Because the trend in photography has been away from traditional printmaking media, and towads video. As I'd mentioned, in both universities and museums, photography and video departments have been merging.
I'm not saying this as a cheerleader. Personally, most of the video art I've seen has left me cold. And my roots in photography have more in common with traditional photo / printmaking than with video art. But I'm seeing a trend ... one that's been building momentum for years ... and it's hard to pretend it isn't happening.
Ignoring all of that, if we talk purely about the effects of images now being displayed in electronic form as opposed to being printed either as a print, or a photograph, I think it will eventually get to the point where captured images will be displayed on the walls on integrated displays which are put on much like wallpaper.
Yes, this has already been done quite a bit.
This will allow many more images to be displayed in the same amount of space, more shows of different work on the same gallery wall, and eventually the decline of these images as serious art.
Well, this isn't the nature of what I've seen. If a gallery has filled a wall with images, it's generally because that was the vision of the artist to do so. It would be a particular type of photo or video installation. The impact, the sensory overload, etc., would be intentional ... an intrinsic part of the piece.
Why? Because they will be easier to make, easier to display, easier to manipulate, easier to copy, and ubiquitous.
That's certainly a possibility. But I haven't seen things going quite in that direction. What I've seen is video monitors that belong to the artist, along with all the attendant computer hardware and software and programming to make this kind of installation work (expensive; a pain in the ass to set up).
At its best, the work I've seen has taken advantage of the unique impact of this medium and this type of presentation. At its worst, it's been about novelty.
pablo batt
7-Aug-2009, 12:12
so if what you say about prints not needing to be named using the printing process used, a photograph should actually be called a negative print or a jpeg/digi file print
as the print stage has no bearing on the name of finished print
a negative printed using light is now a negative print
a jpeg/digi file printed using ink is a jpeg/digi file print
???
im ok with that, jpeg/digi file print sounds most satisfactory
negative print sounds a little negative :o(
It's your choice whether or not to feel insulted. My remarks, however, were addressed to your arguments, not to you. I don't know you; as far as I know your arguments are deliberately specious, and you're just having fun spewing them and watching the rest of us waste our time with them. As is suggested by all the troll cartoons.
OK, then lets do this. I agree to completely drop the thread. In return I get to ask you one question which I honestly want an answer to.
You have read my definition of photography, and how I can clearly see how a lightjet print is a photograph, and a inkjet is not.
What I would like to see is YOUR definition of photography. Now anyone reading your definition must be able to easily apply it to any given circumstance (for example, in my definition, anything that is not created using light on a light sensitive surface is not a photograph). So your definition must allow inkjet prints, while not allowing ASCII prints (regardless of if they are exact representations of the original capture or not), also must not allow photorealistic paintings etc.
You say my arguments are deliberately specious although I have repeatedly said the exact same thing, adhearing to the exact same definition, which happens to be the definition on dictionary.com. On the other hand, I have seen you pose no definition, only shoot mine down. So for a change, I want to see the exact guidelines you use to determine if something is a photograph or not, a set of rule I can apply to anything and get an answer.
Allan
id love to see a altered neg, im 100% sure i could spot it.
its the best we have for honesty , if its inkjet its no longer photography
Having spent many hours doing 35mm masking and duplication in a darkroom I'm quite sure you would have no idea. I used to print Cibachrome and to do a nice job anything other than low contrast woods stuff would have to be masked. The product of that would only be obvious if you read that it was on duplicating film.
I'm a total hybrid whore now. 4x5 to scan to Eppy 3800.
Love it ... ain't never going back.
What I would like to see is YOUR definition of photography. Now anyone reading your definition must be able to easily apply it to any given circumstance (for example, in my definition, anything that is not created using light on a light sensitive surface is not a photograph). So your definition must allow inkjet prints, while not allowing ASCII prints (regardless of if they are exact representations of the original capture or not), also must not allow photorealistic paintings etc.
Paul already gave you his definition in this very thread:
http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showpost.php?p=494240&postcount=163
And so did a few others, me included.
An optical method of capturing the original image on a light sensitive surface.
Sandy's articulation refines it further:
An image created by light and not by the hand of artist.
These two sentences perfectly encapsulate all current and possible future methods of presentation which do not require artificial addition or subtraction of objects in the original scene or their alteration.
That is the simplest and most succinct way to explain it, you cannot possibly not understand it and still be able to coherently converse using a computer.
That you choose to ignore or reject it is a whole different matter.
Allan, I'm happy to answer.
First I want to make clear that the arguments I've called specious are the ones that insist definition A is correct and that definitions X, Y, and Z are false, in absolute terms. This whole discussion is by nature a semantic one ... or more broadly, one about conventions in art criticism. Which means the defininition is going to come from current usage, not from natural law or from usage that's decades or centuries in the past.
My working definition is deliberately broad. I don't think artists and critics have done any favors when they've used restrictive definitions to dismiss new developments. History is littered with the bones of critics who pronounced that impressionism is a joke, modernism is garbage, straight photography has no artistic merit, modern music is noise, bebop isn't jazz, cubism is an outrage, postmodernism is a hoax (I might have been guilty of this one back when I was in school ...), color photography can't be art, etc. etc....
So my definition--based in part on what makes sense to me, and in part on what seems to be the convention in most major institutions--is this: Photography is broad term for processes that capture a projected image from the physical world.
What makes it photography how the image is captured, not how it's presented afterwards. It's the nature of photography that there may or may not be any meaningful distinction between an original image and a reproduction. Many end products of photography are multiples by nature, generated either by hand or mechanical means. Others (like E6 or Daguerrotype) are by their nature one-off processes with a clear original. And others (like digitally captured images) have no innate physical form and may either be printed by various means or left as disembodied images.
I used the word "projected" primarily to exclude photograms, which I think are very close relatives of photographs, but not quite the same thing. I didn't use the word "focussed," because photographs don't have to be. And pinhole photographs technically cannot be.
One thing that drives some people nuts is that xerox copies, by this and many other definitions, are photographs.
This thread questions when a photograph stops being a photograph, due to hand work or other manipulation. I think this is a very difficult question, and one that will never be resolved to everyone's satisfaction. Throughout the history of the medium, people have manipulated photographs in substantive or superficial ways, by hand coloring, airbrushing, compositing, masking, etc. etc... These images have always been collected as photographs. It gets murkier when significant portions of the image are painted in. At what point does it become a painting, or some kind of hybrid? I don't know.
A more specific question is when does a straight photograph stop being straight? Photographic materials by their nature influence tonal scales and color palettes. Photographers choose papers and chemistry to manipulate these qualities as well. Few photographers or critics have ever considered burning and dodging to be deceitful.
My answer to this gets into semiotics. Of the many kinds of sign/signifier relationships, photographs are unusual in that they're indexical. This means that the image was made in a direct way by the thing depicted ... much like a fingerprint or the mark of a wave in the sand. The indexical nature of the image isn't changed by a local contrast adjustment. But it's fundamentally changed by compositing or airbrushing. If you add an object, move one, or remove one, you have violated that indexical relationship, and at that point the photograph must be seen as manipulated.
Ok, I apologize for rambling so much. Disclaimer: I do not present these opinions as facts or as universal. I do think that they are at least a rough summary of the working definitions you'll see in contemporary museums and critical dialog.
Which is to say, they will probably change, and do so in ways that I'll never be able to predict.
Paul already gave you his definition in this very thread:
http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showpost.php?p=494240&postcount=163
And so did a few others, me included.
An optical method of capturing the original image on a light sensitive surface.
Sandy's articulation refines it further:
An image created by light and not by the hand of artist.
These two sentences perfectly encapsulate all current and possible future methods of presentation which do not require artificial addition or subtraction of objects in the original scene or their alteration.
That is the simplest and most succinct way to explain it, you cannot possibly not understand it and still be able to coherently converse using a computer.
That you choose to ignore or reject it is a whole different matter.
I do understand it. What I have issue with is that the first definition ONLY defines the capture method, which leaves printing the image out on an ASCII printer in the equation. To me, and maybe not you, the capture and presentation BOTH have to adhere to the definition.
I am not ignoring it at all, I am simply trying to understand how a definition can only relate to the capture method yet exclude certain methods of presentation and not others. Maybe if we refined the presentation part of those definitions I would at least understand the whole picture (no pun intended).
I am curious about one thing though. Are you ignoring the fact that all my posts have dealt with both the original capture and the presentation?
Allan
Allan, I'm happy to answer.
First I want to make clear that the arguments I've called specious are the ones that insist definition A is correct and that definitions X, Y, and Z are false, in absolute terms. This whole discussion is by nature a semantic one ... or more broadly, one about conventions in art criticism. Which means the defininition is going to come from current usage, not from natural law or from usage that's decades or centuries in the past.
First, I would very much like to point out that I do not mean to say my definition is right and yours is wrong. Mine is my opinion, and I believe it is correct. More than anything I am trying to understand your point of view.
My working definition is deliberately broad. I don't think artists and critics have done any favors when they've used restrictive definitions to dismiss new developments. History is littered with the bones of critics who pronounced that impressionism is a joke, modernism is garbage, straight photography has no artistic merit, modern music is noise, bebop isn't jazz, cubism is an outrage, postmodernism is a hoax (I might have been guilty of this one back when I was in school ...), color photography can't be art, etc. etc....
One thing you have hit upon here is that all the instances you mention seem to say that if something is not x, it is bad. I have repeatedly stated that just because something is not a photograph, does not make it any less of a valuable art. I am using the idea that something is or is not a photograph as a descriptive term, just like if I said something is printed at 8x10 instead of 8.5x11. Neither is better than the other, they are just different things. An 8x10 is not, and will never be an 8.5x11.
So my definition--based in part on what makes sense to me, and in part on what seems to be the convention in most major institutions--is this: Photography is broad term for processes that capture a projected image from the physical world.
What makes it photography how the image is captured, not how it's presented afterwards.
Here I think is where we disagree because I completely agree up until you said 'not how it's presented afterwords'. I see an inkjet print as just that, a print. To me, the definition of photography does not magically stop at any certain point, it has to be on both ends.
I have said this before but I will use it here as well. To me, there is no difference between an inkjet print and the artist who can do photorealistic airbrushing. Both can start with a camera taking a picture of a person, both travel into a computer (PC on one, brain on the other), both spray ink on a surface to create the image.
Now I do NOT give you this example to say you are wrong and I am right, I do this so you can see how I see the situation, right or wrong. Even if you disagree I hope you understand how I see it.
It's the nature of photography that there may or may not be any meaningful distinction between an original image and a reproduction. Many end products of photography are multiples by nature, generated either by hand or mechanical means. Others (like E6 or Daguerrotype) are by their nature one-off processes with a clear original. And others (like digitally captured images) have no innate physical form and may either be printed by various means or left as disembodied images.
I used the word "projected" primarily to exclude photograms, which I think are very close relatives of photographs, but not quite the same thing. I didn't use the word "focussed," because photographs don't have to be. And pinhole photographs technically cannot be.
One thing that drives some people nuts is that xerox copies, by this and many other definitions, are photographs.
This thread questions when a photograph stops being a photograph, due to hand work or other manipulation. I think this is a very difficult question, and one that will never be resolved to everyone's satisfaction. Throughout the history of the medium, people have manipulated photographs in substantive or superficial ways, by hand coloring, airbrushing, compositing, masking, etc. etc... These images have always been collected as photographs. It gets murkier when significant portions of the image are painted in. At what point does it become a painting, or some kind of hybrid? I don't know.
A more specific question is when does a straight photograph stop being straight? Photographic materials by their nature influence tonal scales and color palettes. Photographers choose papers and chemistry to manipulate these qualities as well. Few photographers or critics have ever considered burning and dodging to be deceitful.
My answer to this gets into semiotics. Of the many kinds of sign/signifier relationships, photographs are unusual in that they're indexical. This means that the image was made in a direct way by the thing depicted ... much like a fingerprint or the mark of a wave in the sand. The indexical nature of the image isn't changed by a local contrast adjustment. But it's fundamentally changed by compositing or airbrushing. If you add an object, move one, or remove one, you have violated that indexical relationship, and at that point the photograph must be seen as manipulated.
Ok, I apologize for rambling so much. Disclaimer: I do not present these opinions as facts or as universal. I do think that they are at least a rough summary of the working definitions you'll see in contemporary museums and critical dialog.
Which is to say, they will probably change, and do so in ways that I'll never be able to predict.
I completely agree with all of this except that I believe that a Xerox of a photograph is not a photograph, which I sincerely hope you understand why at this point (although probably not agree with, but that is OK!)
Allan
If a xerox is a photograph, then I think a xerox of anything is a photograph. Xerox a photograph and you have a crappy looking reproduction, but I don't see how it's not a photo. It's just the 5-cent version or what Sherry Levine was doing throughout the '80s ... taking pictures of photographic masterpieces and hanging them on gallery walls, to be provocative.
And yeah, I understand that we diverge on the significance of the final form/presentation of the image.
I wonder if you could come up with a definition of photography that included a strict definition of the output medium, and which could still include the bulk of contemporary work that's in the major collections today.
Just thought of this ... there's some really interesting stuff that I don't consider to be photography, but which uses traditional photographic materials.
One of my friend Anne McDonald's installations (http://anneardenmcdonald.com/noflash/installations/body_trans/2.html).
The pieces are a combination of photogram, printing-out experiment, and chemistry experiment. She contact prints her body and other objects on gelatin silver mural paper, in full sun, and then develops and bleaches and paints with various potions that react in strange ways with the silver salts.
What I find so intriguing about the technique is that this work can ONLY be done with traditional photographic materials. It requires the kind of unpredictablity and happenstance that only comes when light meets silver meets strange chemistry meets time. In contrast, straight photography like what I do can be accomplished just fine with either digital media or with analog.
I wonder if you could come up with a definition of photography that included a strict definition of the output medium, and which could still include the bulk of contemporary work that's in the major collections today.
I might could but that isn't the point. The point was I was expressing my opinion, nothing more.
Unfortunately my personal definition of what photography is, or is not, does not rely on how many people have what in their collections. It revolves around my literal translation of the meaning of the words. Of course I think you knew that.
I do not really think that the term 'photography' has any real bearing on what people collect, if they like it, they collect it. I think people would buy a given image whether you called it a photograph, or print, or just an image. Which was part of what I was saying..... The descriptive terminology should not matter to the viewer.
Think of it this way. If I walk into Wal-Mart and see a price on a can of Acme cleaner, the price could be printed on the label, or on a sticker stuck to the label. Now it doesn't matter one iota which, I really don't care, but just because it doesn't matter does not make a sticker the same as printed on the label. Make sense?
Anyway, I think we have beaten this into the ground. I also think we pretty clearly understand each others point of view. No amount of banter will change either one of our opinions, and that is fine. Even though I do not agree with you, I respect your opinion as yours.
Allan
I do understand it. What I have issue with is that the first definition ONLY defines the capture method, which leaves printing the image out on an ASCII printer in the equation. To me, and maybe not you, the capture and presentation BOTH have to adhere to the definition.
Well, no, it seems that you do not quite understand what I am saying. If you did, you wouldn't keep insisting on the ASCII printer, which I think is a rather silly argument since it is a device made with a single purpose of stamping predefined shapes - letters - out on paper and as such incapable of producing bit-map output.
I am not ignoring it at all, I am simply trying to understand how a definition can only relate to the capture method yet exclude certain methods of presentation and not others. Maybe if we refined the presentation part of those definitions I would at least understand the whole picture (no pun intended).
A definition relates to capture only simply because that is the decisive moment when an image of reality is, well, captured on light sensitive medium through optical means. We can also say recorded instead of captured if that makes any difference to you.
At that point, a photograph already exists and it is only a matter of presenting it to the viewer in a manner that the artist deems as most closely approximating his/her vision. To do so, the presentation medium should not alter the image in a way that would alter the physical existence of objects as they existed at the time of capture. The hand of the artist should in other words be limited to processing but not rearranging the image and the same goes for presentation method.
I am not sure I can express this precisely enough, but since the capture relies on finite particles of matter, no matter how small, the presentation medium should also replicate the image in the same manner. In other words, any method that forms an image by arranging small clumps of matter, be it ink, toner, silver, platinum/paladium, carbon, etc. in a pattern is fine. A method that redraws the image or recreates it through any kind of approximation is not. This is where my inkjet and your ASCII printer fundamentally differ. A bitmap vs. vector, if that helps make more sense.
I am curious about one thing though. Are you ignoring the fact that all my posts have dealt with both the original capture and the presentation?
Allan
I have stated very clearly at the very beginning of our discourse that I disagree with your view regarding presentation and why. We can discuss which methods are suitable for presenting an already existing photograph, but I don't think presentation should be included in the definition of a photograph.
You kept ignoring that position and kept insisting on having it your way. Why do you sound surprised to realize that I may simply be reciprocating?
Donald Miller
7-Aug-2009, 21:32
***
pablo batt
8-Aug-2009, 04:48
no photographer is great, i personally do not have any idols, as i believe photography is a simple linear event.
i attach no monetary value to my pictures , i would prefer to give as a gift.
the more a photographer thinks there great the less interested i am in viewing his or hers egos
if a photograph isnt humble in its creation and honest, i am really not interested
photography is easy and every photograph is limited in viewing appeal
mostly my pics get taped to a wall and in my eye have little or no value,the only part i played was to go for a walk with a camera
photography is like taking a journey, and you have very little control over that
Well, no, it seems that you do not quite understand what I am saying. If you did, you wouldn't keep insisting on the ASCII printer, which I think is a rather silly argument since it is a device made with a single purpose of stamping predefined shapes - letters - out on paper and as such incapable of producing bit-map output.
You do realize of course that a bit mapped image is one where an image is built from many small items(bits) to create one large item, correct? For example, one could use lines of photons (TV screen), square dots (LCD screen), small shavings (laser printer), dots of ink (inkjet) or other forms to create the image. The bitmap format only states that here is a item, and this is it's color, next item goes here, and here is it's color.
Nowhere in the bitmap file does it specify the size (different printers and monitors have different dot pitches which are different dot sizes) or shape (inkjets use a jet to send an almost perfectly round dot of ink, bubblejets use the explosion of ink from surface tension so the dot is not as round, laserjets use slivers of ink which are more oblong before being melted, etc) of the items that make up the image. Therefor, one could make a bitmap image from coloring the end of matchsticks and grouping them together (each stick would be an item, or pixel if you prefer) or for that matter, one could use the letter A to represent a pixel, hence a line printer.
A beautiful example would be a friend of mine used to live in a 'beer house'. One wall had a wonderful depiction of a budweiser girl, made entirely from bottlecaps. Technically the entire wall was a bitmap of different colored bottlecaps, from a distance making a image.
A definition relates to capture only simply because that is the decisive moment when an image of reality is, well, captured on light sensitive medium through optical means. We can also say recorded instead of captured if that makes any difference to you.
My opinion is that this is just the first stage, the equivalent of making a negative to use in creating the photograph. To use something other people keep harping on here, public opinion, no one I know would call a negative a photograph, it is not finished. It is only finished and a 'photograph' when printed. Although I disagree in principle, it does show you what I mean when I say my definition must include the finished product.
At that point, a photograph already exists and it is only a matter of presenting it to the viewer in a manner that the artist deems as most closely approximating his/her vision. To do so, the presentation medium should not alter the image in a way that would alter the physical existence of objects as they existed at the time of capture. The hand of the artist should in other words be limited to processing but not rearranging the image and the same goes for presentation method.
I agree. Although the degree of acceptable processing will likely spur another heated thread. :D
I am not sure I can express this precisely enough, but since the capture relies on finite particles of matter, no matter how small, the presentation medium should also replicate the image in the same manner. In other words, any method that forms an image by arranging small clumps of matter, be it ink, toner, silver, platinum/paladium, carbon, etc. in a pattern is fine. A method that redraws the image or recreates it through any kind of approximation is not. This is where my inkjet and your ASCII printer fundamentally differ. A bitmap vs. vector, if that helps make more sense.
It does make sense. You could eliminate the line printer from the definition right here if you specified the size and/or shape of the particles used to create the image. Unfortunately you said finite particles (which the dots on a dot matrix printer, and for that matter, the letters on a line printer qualify for) no matter how small (which to me implies also 'no matter how large or what shape').
I have stated very clearly at the very beginning of our discourse that I disagree with your view regarding presentation and why. We can discuss which methods are suitable for presenting an already existing photograph, but I don't think presentation should be included in the definition of a photograph.
There in lies the rub. To me, a photograph is the finished product. If you read much by Ansel Adams (and for that matter, Minor White) the image in the camera was referred to as a latent image. Next came the negative, then finally, the print. The entire process was called photography. This, to me, states that from pressing the shutter to processing the print is photo(light) graphy(recording) and therefor must include light and a light sensitive surface.
Now don't get me wrong, I understand we diverge here. I just see that photography was always about making something people can see, a slice of time. No one can see it unless it is displayed, therefor photography starts at capture and ends at presentation, and by definition must include light and light sensitive surfaces. You disagree, that is fine.
You kept ignoring that position and kept insisting on having it your way. Why do you sound surprised to realize that I may simply be reciprocating?
I think you missed the most important thing of all. At no point have I specified anyone was right or wrong, I have only defended my opinions, attempted to explain them, and attempt to understand yours. If standing by my opinion of the definition of photography is 'having it your way' then yes, that is what I have been doing.
I think the reason there is so much friction is that I am having a hard time finding a black and white (pardon the pun) definition for what you refer to as photography. For me, there is one simple test and it either passes or fails. As far as I can tell, your definition is black and white to start, then turns more shades of gray than the zone system! :eek:
Me:
1: Does the capture revolve around light striking a light sensitive surface? If so, go to step 2 otherwise it is not a photograph.
2: Does the final display method revolve around light striking a light sensitive surface? If yes, it is a photograph. If no, it is not a photograph.
-END-
You:
1: Does the capture revolve around light striking a light sensitive surface? If so, go to step 2 otherwise it is not a photograph.
2: Does the final display method look like a photograph? If yes, proceed to step 3. If no, it is not a photograph.
3: Was the final display method made by hand? If yes, it is not a photograph. If no, proceed to step 4.
4: Is the final display method a bit mapped image? If yes, proceed to step 5. If no, it is not a photograph.
5: Is the final display method made from small semi-round multicolored dots? If yes, proceed to step 6. If no, it is not a photograph.
6: Is the final display method made on a material traditionally associated with photography? If yes, proceed to step 7. If no, it is not a photograph.
7: Is the final display method something the majority of people consider a photograph? If yes, it is a photograph. If no, it is not a photograph.
-END?????
Allan
You said you would drop the thread in exchange of clear explanation of our view.
You have been provided with not one but two.
Well?
pablo batt
8-Aug-2009, 09:03
marko being a troll again, shame on you
mandoman7
8-Aug-2009, 09:11
Where are the photos? Do you guys have any images that you've taken recently?
marko being a troll again, shame on you
Show us what ya got pookie. You are just a self absorbed poodle as far as I can tell.
pablo batt
8-Aug-2009, 10:18
pookie , ?
im more like a pigeon, city dweller
Jim collum
8-Aug-2009, 10:52
you do understand that this indicates that your ego is as involved in your photographs as much as those who's work you disdain. (probably more, since the other 'great' ones are probably a bit more open in their acceptance of other people's work)
i'm not saying this as a bad thing... i believe the ego is involved in any photograph taken.. it's a personal perspective (ok.. maybe not with that new 'automatic party camera')
no photographer is great, i personally do not have any idols, as i believe photography is a simple linear event.
i attach no monetary value to my pictures , i would prefer to give as a gift.
the more a photographer thinks there great the less interested i am in viewing his or hers egos
if a photograph isnt humble in its creation and honest, i am really not interested
photography is easy and every photograph is limited in viewing appeal
mostly my pics get taped to a wall and in my eye have little or no value,the only part i played was to go for a walk with a camera
photography is like taking a journey, and you have very little control over that
pookie , ?
im more like a pigeon, city dweller
Indeed! Very apt self-description. ;)
Where are the photos? Do you guys have any images that you've taken recently?
Took a bunch of small format ones recently, posted a couple over in The Lounge a few days ago.
Chris Strobel
8-Aug-2009, 11:08
no photographer is great, i personally do not have any idols, as i believe photography is a simple linear event.
i attach no monetary value to my pictures , i would prefer to give as a gift.
the more a photographer thinks there great the less interested i am in viewing his or hers egos
if a photograph isnt humble in its creation and honest, i am really not interested
photography is easy and every photograph is limited in viewing appeal
mostly my pics get taped to a wall and in my eye have little or no value,the only part i played was to go for a walk with a camera
photography is like taking a journey, and you have very little control over that
How sad.If you ever do decide to go digital I think I found the perfect camera for you ;) http://www.dpreview.com/news/0908/09080600sonypartyshot.asp
Jim collum
8-Aug-2009, 11:14
Where are the photos? Do you guys have any images that you've taken recently?
i've posted a number in this thread
http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?t=51078&page=25
Indeed! Very apt self-description. ;)
LOL ... lookout below.
pablo batt
8-Aug-2009, 12:48
i have two pigeons that know me well , they walk into my apartment for a feed and sometime help with some developing, well they watch
You said you would drop the thread in exchange of clear explanation of our view.
You have been provided with not one but two.
Well?
Actually I was a bit more specific than that. What I said was:
Now anyone reading your definition must be able to easily apply it to any given circumstance (for example, in my definition, anything that is not created using light on a light sensitive surface is not a photograph). So your definition must allow inkjet prints, while not allowing ASCII prints (regardless of if they are exact representations of the original capture or not), also must not allow photorealistic paintings etc.
Then Paulr and I had a quite civilized conversation which I capped with:
Anyway, I think we have beaten this into the ground. I also think we pretty clearly understand each others point of view. No amount of banter will change either one of our opinions, and that is fine. Even though I do not agree with you, I respect your opinion as yours.
That effectively ended my participation until you replied with:
Well, no, it seems that you do not quite understand what I am saying.
If you look at what I said it required that anyone (me included) should be able to apply your definition. If as you stated, I do not understand what you are saying, then I can not very well apply your definition now can I? As a matter of fact I specifically stated in my last post that I was 'having a hard time finding a black and white (pardon the pun) definition for what you refer to as photography'.
So either my last post was correct in the steps you use to define a photograph, in which case I am indeed done, or it was incorrect and we need to discuss this further so that I completely understand your opinions. Which is it?
Allan
(ducking the crossfire ...)
I don't see why an ascii print, if it's of a photographic image, is fundamentally different from a halftone print in a newspaper. It's a really odd (and interesting) example, but there's no reason in my mind why an ascii print can't be a photograph if a photogravure can be.
Silk screen is just a printing process. You could certainly print a photograph with silk screen, but it's not generally used for this. It just happens to be one of many printing processes that uses photosensitivity in one of its steps. Like traditional offset printing.
So either my last post was correct in the steps you use to define a photograph, in which case I am indeed done, or it was incorrect and we need to discuss this further so that I completely understand your opinions. Which is it?
Allan
Neither. I think your last post was incorrect and I think that we do not need to discuss it any further. At least I don't need to, so I'll bow out at this point. If you feel like continuing, you are of course free to keep it up.
(ducking the crossfire ...)
I don't see why an ascii print, if it's of a photographic image, is fundamentally different from a halftone print in a newspaper. It's a really odd (and interesting) example, but there's no reason in my mind why an ascii print can't be a photograph if a photogravure can be.
Well my ideas have been called odd, interesting, and much worse so no worries! I would tend to agree. Think about it, pictures are made up of tiny dots, crystals, whatever anyway. Who is to say (I haven't looked under a microscope, have you?) exactly what shape they are in. Back off enough, PRESTO! There is a image! Just like those big billboards/signs that used to/still do use light bulbs or LEDs, they sure are not round 'dots' up close, but they still make nice images at a distance!
So I would say that if you lump photogravure in with photographs, that would open the door for any printing method that made a image that vaguely resembled a photograph to actually BE a photograph. If you have seen my local paper, you would understand the 'vaguely resemble' remark. :D
Allan
PS. OK, now I am agreeing with you, I feel so dirty :eek:
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