Has Digital Changed Darkroom Printing?

[Drew Wiley]

My "targets" have certainly not changed in the least. Much of that digital foolishness is more like an annoying mosquito. Just walk away from it or swat it. I prefer to ignore it. Photography is about discovery, then translating that into print fashion which somehow acutely expresses your visual experience in a way others can share. In many cases digital tools might factor into that process if judiciously employed, although I work strictly darkroom style. But in terms of all the loosey-goosey hog wild options out there, particularly on the consumer electronics side, and now AI, people are starting to accept Soylent Green as normal food, and are beginning to forget what the real deal tastes like. Their loss, not mine.

[Vaughn]

OK, I have a challenge for all of you following this thread. Answer the following question with just a yes or a no: "So I wonder whether your "targets" for your prints have changed due to your exposure to the huge number of Photoshopped images." ...

Yes. But then everything does.

[xkaes]

Apparently some people -- not me -- consider your "real deal" prints as much a fake as any AI image. Just sayin'

On a lighter note, I just discovered several hundred sheets of Kodak 4x5" Royal-X Pan (ASA 1250) in one of my freezers. They were in a lead-lined bag, so easy to overlook. It's Christmas in February -- OK, it's a FAKE Christmas, but it feels like the "real deal".

[MartyNL]

On a lighter note, I just discovered several hundred sheets of Kodak 4x5" Royal-X pan in one of my freezers. They were in a lead-lined bag, so easy to overlook. It's Christmas in February -- OK, it's a FAKE Christmas, but it feels real.

Those lead-lined bags really mess with my x-ray vision, too!

[jnantz]

Apparently some people -- not me -- consider your "real deal" prints as much a fake as any AI image. Just sayin'

On a lighter note, I just discovered several hundred sheets of Kodak 4x5" Royal-X Pan (ASA 1250) in one of my freezers. They were in a lead-lined bag, so easy to overlook. It's Christmas in February -- OK, it's a FAKE Christmas, but it feels like the "real deal".

LOL
AI images aren't photographs not sure how they can be NOT considered fakes because they were not something considered "real" anyways.
if you can show me a photograph that hasn't been affected somehow through chemistry or printing then that might not be fake, but it's manipulated,
and if something manipulated, converted to b/w or vivid colors, muted colors, filtration for dramatic skies, blurry water or whatever be not fake im not sure what is ..
not sure it matters, they're photographs and that's what photographs are .. contrived / manipulated images of what might have been there. doesn't matter to me,
it's fun making something out of nothing..

have fun with the royal pan, I loved using a box of that I found, exposed everything at ISO 100 and made them bulletproof so I could 15second on RC paper with a 300W bulb.

[Drew Wiley]

Manifestoes. I have an old Encyclopedia Brittanica volume where Edward Weston entered his hardshell doctrine of photography, ala his f/64 phase. It was a blistering manifesto sending everyone else to a pit lower in hell than anything Dante contrived. But if you look at the full body of EW's own work, especially the earlier half, which included much of the best, by the same rules, he was himself a damned Pictorialist. But either way, he got there due to a deep appreciation for that light his eyes actually saw. The rest was interpretation.

And indeed, every great photographer is to a certain extent a competent illusionist as well, transforming the visible onto an abstracted two dimensional surface bounded by a rectangle. Nonetheless, it is still an interpretation of something actually seen and experienced via ones own emotions and technical ability, and hardly deserves to be called "fake" in that manner so much contemporary PS alteration and now Ai is patently, blatantly fake, and has more in common with Hollywood teenage blockbuster flicks than anything discernible in the real world. I'd rather be out in the elements seeing things with my own eyes than sitting in a loud germ-filled theatre anyway. (Cold storm here today; I was out yesterday afternoon).

[Ulophot]

In a word, no.

[xkaes]

That's four words, but who's counting?

[h2oman]

Me, of course! Mr. black and white, yes or no.

[jnantz]

transforming the visible onto an abstracted two dimensional surface bounded by a rectangle. Nonetheless, it is still an interpretation of something actually seen and experienced

I never said it wasn't an interpretation and an emotional experience to make an emotive image, I just said it was fake, and interpretation of something, it's been altered -- not fake in this situation means non altered not the real thing. that's what photographs do .. photographs aren't unaltered. it's a reality you ( the photographer) construct.