View Full Version : CNN Photography article
Interesting article:
http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/10/living/fine-art-photography-manipulation/index.html?hpt=hp_c1
On the "problem" of digitally manipulated images, and artistic trends in photography.
No mention of film or LF!
A short excerpt:
To Liz Darlington, fine art photographer and a professor at Savannah College of Art and Design, several factors have a hand in defining the new world of art photography.
Amidst billions and billions of images, Darlington believes it is how we assess their quality that has changed. Photographers must put concept first, and think of their work as a body of work, rather than one-hit wonders.
"I think that is the biggest change in the art world," Darlington said. "They want to see that photographers have a consistency of vision. That is what's lacking on these Flickr sites: lots of pretty pictures, but nothing that shows the intent of the artist. The intent of someone taking a snapshot with an iPhone and running it through Instagram is very different than someone working on an idea for a long time and shooting with intention."
She teaches her students about the importance of maintaining vision in all things.
"A lot of them think if they can apply all of the right filters, composite and change the lighting and exposure after the fact, that they can be great photographers. Photography has become so easy that a lot of students don't realize how phenomenally difficult it is."1
Brian Ellis
11-Aug-2012, 06:23
"Photography has become so easy that a lot of students don't realize how phenomenally difficult it is."
Photography has always been easy, at least since Eastman Kodak introduced roll film. It's excellent photography that's been - and remains - difficult.
William Whitaker
11-Aug-2012, 06:50
No mention of film or LF!
Well, the descriptive phrase "cheap, low-end film cameras" is used in one caption. That's sure to leave an impression.
And HDR is compared to Ansel's burning and dodging which sounds like a cheap attempt to grab cred.
But the article made me pause and think. Thank you for posting it.
John Flavell
11-Aug-2012, 07:39
I particularly like the two bullet points under the STORY HIGHLIGHTS to the left of the story:
--Photographers are starting to pull back from relying on manipulation as the end-all
--A new trend for "organic" photography is on the rise
Organic Photography? It's new? Does that mean we'll buy film in the organic section of the photography store? Will that be a new category in contest?
I am a free-range photographer so I'll need to know these things.
;)
Well, the descriptive phrase "cheap, low-end film cameras" is used in one caption. That's sure to leave an impression.
And HDR is compared to Ansel's burning and dodging which sounds like a cheap attempt to grab cred.
But the article made me pause and think. Thank you for posting it.
Yes, you're right....
Another Quote:
"I think it is about lamenting the loss of the old processes, which were imperfect," she said. "You only had one chance to get it right. It's about slowing down the process and going back to vision."
And :
"Artists are thinking about the very materials they use in photography," he said. "It's not a nostalgia, but cherishing the craft of photography because of it becoming 0s and 1s digitally."
Which would be good trend news for traditional film and formats I suppose.
Another point made was the idea that digital manipulation AKA "Photohopped" as an artistic tool would go towards expressionism and abstractions. THis makes sense to me, as the digital tools contribute something truly new, something you can't do "in camera"...... rather than hyper realistic depictions.
Meanwhile the header picture of the article sadly features a picture that won an "art" competition - and belongs in the den of a modern day Bonanza ranch - on velvet!! So there is some ways to go....
How about large (gotta sell) b/w "organic" (new art word) silver prints... and they come with a NPSD certificate....fuel that trend off you go.
William Whitaker
11-Aug-2012, 07:55
Meanwhile the header picture of the article sadly features a picture that won an "art" competition - and belongs in the den of a modern day Bonanza ranch - on velvet!!
That was a photograph??
That was a photograph??
Well it must have started with at least three..... Bull & rider, landscape, sky etc...
Anyhow, skilled work I suppose.... I could not do it... But it's not a "photograph" by any sense of common meaning.
goamules
11-Aug-2012, 08:46
...
--A new trend for "organic" photography is on the rise"
Organic Photography? It's new? Does that mean we'll buy film in the organic section of the photography store? Will that be a new category in contest?
I am a free-range photographer so I'll need to know these things.
Ha! Good one.
Jay DeFehr
11-Aug-2012, 08:51
The linked article documents the current state of near-paranoid, confused, muddled thinking in contemporary fine art photography, in both the images presented and the commentary. The mad scramble to distinguish fine art photography from the photography of the unwashed masses is pathetic. The so-called "experts" are in too big a hurry to make sense of the implications of digital imaging, and their rushed, half-baked notions are embarrassingly naive.
While I wait for my prints to wash at the Photography Center Northwest, in Seattle, I make a round of the current exhibit, and reading the most recent artist's statements and comparing them to the work presented is a cringe-fest, very much in line with the linked article, and I suspect a major factor in this is the total confusion among the middle managers of the art world -- the art school instructors and gallerists who influence students and emerging artists. Look for any clear thinking and vision from outside this system.
Frank Petronio
11-Aug-2012, 08:52
The example photos suck and undermine everything else.
Kirk Gittings
11-Aug-2012, 09:21
Pretty old news IMO. Overall I think, worrying about where you fit into contemporary photographic practice is a stumbling block in and of itself. You become a photographer serving an amorphous fickle and petty client. Just do what you do and let others worry about whether you fit the current trend or not.
Mark Sawyer
11-Aug-2012, 10:13
Meanwhile the header picture of the article sadly features a picture that won an "art" competition - and belongs in the den of a modern day Bonanza ranch - on velvet!!
I suspect there are as many paintings on velvet as there are photographs on gelatin silver paper hanging in the homes of the world, and the respective owners appreciate both...
That was a photograph??
As much as one done on Velvia, with its "world-class levels of image color saturation and vibrancy", (from Fujifilm's ad copy).
It seemed to me the article was caught between condemning digital manipulation as "easy art", then justifying it in the hands of "real artists" defined as "award-winning commercial photographers":
Some photographers have thrown every filter and post-processing technique at a photo and called the result art.
The problem was that the images themselves, the backbone of the art presented, weren't great to begin with, said award-winning commercial photographer David Allan Brandt. Technology was expected to make the mediocre extraordinary.
After that, it wandered through seemingly unrelated photographs with blurb artist statements, with no real point in mind beyond the process is part of photography, somewhat, sometimes, for some people...
...Just do what you do and let others worry about whether you fit the current trend or not.
Right on!
And I am trying hard not to get involved with, or be influenced by, the current trend of negativity on the LFPF. Photography is such a joy!
Vaughn
Jerry Bodine
11-Aug-2012, 10:25
Just do what you do and let others worry about whether you fit the current trend or not.
Kirk, that's pretty clear thinking. I couldn't have summed it up any better.
Vaughn, you responded while I was typing. We are both on the same frequency it seems.
Frank Petronio
11-Aug-2012, 10:35
Great statement Kirk!
Mark Sawyer
11-Aug-2012, 10:46
Pretty old news IMO. Overall I think, worrying about where you fit into contemporary photographic practice is a stumbling block in and of itself. You become a photographer serving an amorphous fickle and petty client. Just do what you do and let others worry about whether you fit the current trend or not.
Agreed, and I'd add that this particular client has a reputation for not paying his bills, and won't respond to emails...
RichardSperry
11-Aug-2012, 13:45
And HDR is compared to Ansel's burning and dodging which sounds like a cheap attempt to grab cred.
Well it's really doing the same thing, isn't it. Putting the dynamic range where you want it, instead of where it is.
You can't tell that Adams' stuff is all completely photoshopped, unless you know that it is. The best HDR work is going to be unnoticeable as well.
Not like the cartoons in the article's sample of images. Bad HDR is readily recognizable, you don't know that the good stuff is.
I would put a lot of Nat Geo's 'velvia', over saturated, stuff in the HDR group. Completely unnatural, and pretty distracting. But that's what we, as consumers, wanted. I have long not considered NG as journalism as much as it is a pretty picture magazine, with the addendum of self loathing or guilt. Some spokesperson from that organization pretending to be a purest is funny.
Finding anything really incisive about photography trends on the front page of CNN.com is probably a tall order in the first place.
Certainly it is true that any real artist better use their own flashlight to guide them. But it is also true across art history that trends come up and are discernible and artist follow them (more or less), driven by peer influence, technology, world events or "what sells". Hence the moderate interest in this article.....
I don't know, and can't judge if the "trends" delineated in the article are "true" ..... the people quoted probably do believe what they say..
What I came away with was
A. that the enormous strides in digital image manipulation will lead to an abstractive and expressionistic trend in fine art photography and
B. A sort of "pendelum swings back" movement toward appreciation and perhaps use of older techniques and a willful avoidance of digital manipulation and use of "organic" analog photography.
Both make a certain amount of sense to me...... but I could be interpreting the article (and certainly reality) wrong.
Far as how the photography "market" actors handle the profound change in photographic technology the last 10 years, I am sure that is occupying a lot of smart, professional minds, from educators to gallery owners... that fact it has not gelled, or is confusing does not mean they are incompetent. By and large....
Mike Anderson
11-Aug-2012, 18:52
The photo of the lake is also dipped in the lake water.
Too cute.
Brian Ellis
12-Aug-2012, 09:20
Well it must have started with at least three..... Bull & rider, landscape, sky etc...
Anyhow, skilled work I suppose.... I could not do it... But it's not a "photograph" by any sense of common meaning.
Jerry Uelsman has devoted his career to combining multiple photographs in a single image. Uelsman is certainly considered to be a photographer and his images are considered to be photographs. Bruce Barnbaum combined two photographs to create the image that's on the cover of his book "The Art of Photography." I'm pretty sure Bruce would tell you that his image is a photograph. Those are just two examples that quickly come to mind of photographers who combine multiple images to create a single image into something that I think has always been thought to be a photograph.
You may think their work is better than the bull rider. I certainly do. But in terms of what constitutes a photograph in common meaning, I see no difference between the bull rider photograph and the work done by Uelsman, Barnbaum, and many others who for more than a century have been combining multiple photographs into a single image.
Kimberly Anderson
12-Aug-2012, 09:40
We have our differences Vaughn, but that statement is exactly spot on perfection.
Right on!
And I am trying hard not to get involved with, or be influenced by, the current trend of negativity on the LFPF. Photography is such a joy!
Vaughn
Light Guru
12-Aug-2012, 09:44
Well it must have started with at least three..... Bull & rider, landscape, sky etc...
Anyhow, skilled work I suppose.... I could not do it... But it's not a "photograph" by any sense of common meaning.
If you look up the definition of photography in the dictionary the image clearly fits the description of what a photograph is.
Combining images did NOT start with photoshop. It's been done since the early days of photography.
http://www.fourandsix.com/photo-tampering-history/
I remember learning the basics of doing it in the darkroom when in high school.
Kirk Gittings
12-Aug-2012, 09:50
Yes AAMOF, Carlton Watkins commonly replaced the blown out skies of his images.
Jay DeFehr
12-Aug-2012, 10:01
Yes AAMOF, Carlton Watkins commonly replaced the blown out skies of his images.
Is there a difference between combination printing and collage? Or, hand coloring and over-painting? At some point along the image manipulation spectrum, a photograph, or assemblage becomes a mixed media piece. Similarly, I don't think the result of a digital imaging workflow is always a photograph.
Kirk Gittings
12-Aug-2012, 10:05
Well for me personally, there has always been a distinction between photographically based art and a photograph and I have no hierarchical judgements about either. What works works. I personally don't have the imagination to produce interesting photographically based art.
Well for me personally, there has always been a distinction between photographically based art and a photograph and I have no hierarchical judgements about either. What works works. I personally don't have the imagination to produce interesting photographically based art.
Bingo!
RichardSperry
12-Aug-2012, 15:21
I don't think the technology is that far away, for a camera to
capture three or 5 "levels" of exposure from a single shutter actuation.
And I think there is enough inertia for camera developers to at least try to make one. Apple's iPhone HDR is at least close to this already.
When a single exposure high dynamic range image is produced like this, will it be interpreted as "photoshopped"? I wonder.
When I was working with 3D I would usually use a HDRI images as the lighting model(in the mid 2000's). Those images looked like normal scenes(they had to). They had none of the halo'ing or painterly/cartoony effects readily visible on this stuff today. I wonder what went wrong.
I don't think the technology is that far away, for a camera to
capture three or 5 "levels" of exposure from a single shutter actuation.
And I think there is enough inertia for camera developers to at least try to make one. Apple's iPhone HDR is at least close to this already.
When a single exposure high dynamic range image is produced like this, will it be interpreted as "photoshopped"? I wonder.
When I was working with 3D I would usually use a HDRI images as the lighting model(in the mid 2000's). Those images looked like normal scenes(they had to). They had none of the halo'ing or painterly/cartoony effects readily visible on this stuff today. I wonder what went wrong.
In camera HDR is already here, Richard. Nikon and Canon has it on some cameras, iPhone 4s camera has it. I have no clue how well it works.
There is extensive processing in practically all digital cameras, not only on the "assemble the pixels" level but on a content level.
Filters, film emulation, face recognition...... you name it. It's all f'ed up even before you get to say Photoshop.
It is all photographs. Or maybe "digital imaging" is a better description.
I don't think the technology is that far away, for a camera to
capture three or 5 "levels" of exposure from a single shutter actuation.
And I think there is enough inertia for camera developers to at least try to make one. Apple's iPhone HDR is at least close to this already.
When a single exposure high dynamic range image is produced like this, will it be interpreted as "photoshopped"? I wonder.
When I was working with 3D I would usually use a HDRI images as the lighting model(in the mid 2000's). Those images looked like normal scenes(they had to). They had none of the halo'ing or painterly/cartoony effects readily visible on this stuff today. I wonder what went wrong.
My 2 1/2 year old Pentax K-7 does 3 stop in camera HDR (in jpeg only, no RAW).
I personally believe that "artists" who are thinking about what the art world wants are not really artists. A true artist is one who makes their own art whatever the market pressures. But that's just me (luckily I have a hubby who lets me stay home, raise the progeny, and sometimes get to make photos).
RichardSperry
12-Aug-2012, 22:52
I didn't know single shot HDR was available yet.
Good to know.
Doug Howk
13-Aug-2012, 03:36
Occasionally, Art Critics can be incisive. 30 years ago, in "the Shock of the New", Robert Hughes in the closing scene skewered contemporary art. More recently, A.D.Coleman in his blog on "Trope: the well-made photograph" questions the lack of exploration in current photo educational programs. This is corroborated in CNN article by the SCAD instructor's comment about her stressing to students the importance of a consistent vision. The Senior portfolio dominates student activity long before the Senior year. The results are mediocrity with most images manipulated to point of sterile perfection. Unfortunately, the "organic" reaction to this sterile perfection is to play with an imperfect process, eg Polaroids, and call the results fine art. Students and artists are still looking for the great differentiator enabling them to stand out from the iPhone crowd.
Renato Tonelli
13-Aug-2012, 06:14
I cringe whenever someone suggests that an artist 'specialize, concentrate on a theme' or similar suggestions. What of the artist who wants to explore? A photographer may work on a project for years, resulting in hundreds of images of which only a couple may get notice - does it still count?
And just what on earth is "organic photography"?
Academia (I am part of it) can sterilize any creativity in any art form - a good instructor will encourage exploration (I think).
Brian Ellis
13-Aug-2012, 06:29
I didn't know single shot HDR was available yet.
Good to know.
The ability to push the shutter button once and make anywhere from 3 to 7, maybe more, different exposures has been around for a long time. The main difference between that and the "in-camera HDR" that some of the camera manufacturers are promoting is that with traditional multiple exposures the exposures had to be blended later with an editing program or by hand. With "in-camera HDR" the blending is done in the camera. Also at the moment the only "in-camera HDR" I know about (Nikon's) produces only two images, one overexposed, one underexposed, so it's more limited than traditional multiple exposures. I'm sure that will eventually change if it hasn't already so that more than two exposures can be made and blended. Personally I wouldn't want the camera to do the blending for me, I'd much rather do it myself.
I didn't know single shot HDR was available yet.
Good to know.
http://www.pixiq.com/article/single-shot-hdr
http://www.flickr.com/groups/raw2hdr/
You learn something new every day.
Kirk Gittings
13-Aug-2012, 07:28
Occasionally, Art Critics can be incisive. 30 years ago, in "the Shock of the New", Robert Hughes in the closing scene skewered contemporary art. More recently, A.D.Coleman in his blog on "Trope: the well-made photograph" questions the lack of exploration in current photo educational programs. This is corroborated in CNN article by the SCAD instructor's comment about her stressing to students the importance of a consistent vision. The Senior portfolio dominates student activity long before the Senior year. The results are mediocrity with most images manipulated to point of sterile perfection. Unfortunately, the "organic" reaction to this sterile perfection is to play with an imperfect process, eg Polaroids, and call the results fine art. Students and artists are still looking for the great differentiator enabling them to stand out from the iPhone crowd.
Is that from personal observation? Not me. What I have seen, being loosely connected to two of the top art photo programs in the country (University of New Mexico and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago), is that the Alex Soth kind of quirky color documentary work aesthetic overwhelmingly dominates student work-not PS manipulated work.
I didn't know single shot HDR was available yet.
Good to know.
Yeh, it's called Tmax400.
Is that from personal observation? Not me. What I have seen, being loosely connected to two of the top art photo programs in the country (University of New Mexico and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago), is that the Alex Soth kind of quirky dolor documentary work aesthetic overwhelmingly dominates student work-not PS manipulated work.
I don't get excited about Alec Soth, but I can see how the combination of apparent honesty and simplicity is attractive. It seems a blending of documentary and fine art as well, for people who aren't ready to settle on one genre.
I consider myself technology agnostic, but I understand and participate in the reaction to the sterility of digital perfection. However, the "organic" process doesn't have to be notably imperfect either. The automotive obsession is faced with a similar creative differentiation; the white gloved handled no-expense spared clean-room show car versus the "barn find" and the rat-rod.
E. von Hoegh
13-Aug-2012, 09:06
Yeh, it's called Tmax400.
*snickers* And I was using it back in the 80s........
Yes AAMOF, Carlton Watkins commonly replaced the blown out skies of his images.
As a matter of fact, I have seen images of some of his prints with the same clouds! Way fun!
RichardSperry
13-Aug-2012, 10:10
http://www.pixiq.com/article/single-shot-hdr
http://www.flickr.com/groups/raw2hdr/
You learn something new every day.
Yes. I am aware that single photos can be "made" HDR during post. That is not, nor photos like the examples, really what I had in mind. It does confirm my thought that IT is close, and will be soon.
It may require a larger color space too. There are only 256 shades of black for example, that may not be enough. One of which is pure white and one pure black(leaving 254 greys).
RichardSperry
13-Aug-2012, 10:19
Yeh, it's called Tmax400.
When digital can compress 15-20 zones into 1024 or 4096 shades of grey(or more), that may be different.
Until then you are probably correct.
Powered by vBulletin® Version 4.2.5 Copyright © 2024 vBulletin Solutions Inc. All rights reserved.