The ethics of modern day photography

[W K Longcor]

OK time to throw one more fly in the ointment. A few decades back, noted (and very controversial) photographer, Robin Perry stirred things up while judging at a national exhibit of professional photographers. The 16X20 color photo in question was a beautiful view of the Grand Canyon. Mr. Perry's comment -- 10 points to GOD for the great subject -- 8 points to Kodak for the great film -- 8 points to the lab for good processing and printing -- but the photographer ----2 points at best. The photographer didn't manipulate or add anything other than to have stood where many had stood before him and made an proper exposure ( as would be the least expected of a professional). It made quite a stink at the time -- all the other judges were upset.

I guess it comes down to -- if it is for art -- anything goes. If it is for an ad for the "vacation spot" -- it darn well better look just like it is.

[Nathan Potter]

Amen, Mr. Longcor. Well said. But that dosen't mean I don't enjoy looking at a superbly rendered straight landscape.

Nate Potter, Austin TX.

[Marko]

As practice by Adams, that truth lies in preserving the optical reality of the original scene. When a photographer crosses that then line things are different.

Adams practiced nothing of the sort. B&W does not and never did represent "the optical reality of the original scene". The reality of the world around us is color.

And by "color" I do not mean super-saturated world as seen by Velvia through Singh-Ray gold-and-blue warming polarizer either.

Photography is all about subtracting things that are present in the scene through framing, focusing and exposure - and processing! - as opposed to painting and other visual arts which are all about adding things to a blank frame. A photographer, any photographer inevitably crosses the line you set by the very nature of his/her endeavor because it results in representation of photographer's vision of reality, not of reality itself.

I do believe it is okay to practice the standards employed by Adams of minipulating the gray scale (and color scale) to alter the mood of the composition to express the artist's emotional state of mind when he created the photograph. My images are in many cases expressive in nature, and thus, are a construction of what I saw and FELT. In fact I borrow from fiction, using a story thematic approach to creating an expressive image. My narratives on my website are the story and the theme lies in the symbols I give to the elements and colors in the composition. I do to color photography what Adams did to b&w photography and perhaps more in methods only. I only wish I was as good as he was in his art.

So, your images are "expressive in nature" and "are a construction" of what you "saw and felt". To accomplish that, you "borrow from fiction".

Which is all fine, but how exactly is that any better or more accurate representation of reality than someone else's, who chooses to use Photoshop instead of chemistry?

If what we are doing is "expressing the artist's emotional state of mind in when he created the photogrpah" does reality matter at all? And if so, whose reality should that be? Adams'? Yours? Mine? As this thread shows, our individual realities can differ rather significantly.

Crossing the line and altering the optical reality of the imaging with photoshop and then hanging it in public as a real live image, I beleve will backfire on you guys. At that point the photograph becomes nothing more than a cheap fake.

Once you cross over the line, or should I rather say over the top, how you got there is irrelevant. It's been less than 10 years since the first commercial DSLR hit the market and look how far it already got. Give it another 10 years at this clip and discussions like this will become even more irrelevant, at least as far as technology is concerned. Kitch is another matter altogether, just like it always was.

[lecarp]

If it is for an ad for the "vacation spot" -- it darn well better look just like it is.

Not so, I live in an area that is nothing more than a beach front vacation and shopping area. Artificial towns on various themes ( we call the residential theme parks ). The digital photography being done to promote the area in magazines etc. is so heavily manipulated It is often hard to recognize places I pass every day. For example inserting huge unspoiled views of the beach between condos that are really only a few feet apart.

[Brian Ellis]

Again it is not what I think, but rather how the buying patron will react should they perceive digital landscape photography as highly manipulated fakes. Of course, this may never happen, but there is a very real possibility that it could. I just believe that digital landscape photographers are treading on thin ice.

This may be kind of like mortgage loans and credit card practices the banking industry has engaged in for the past eight years. What goes around can catch up with you guys and completely undermine your discipline. I am not saying it will, but there is a real possibility that it could. Personally, I hope it does not because if that happens, then it would have a negative effect on all photographic landscape art which includes me.

Digital photographs have been selling and selling well for quite a few years now and not because buyers have been tricked into thinking they're getting the "real thing" and not a "fake." People buy photographs for a lot of reasons but often just because they like them, not because they think they're getting some sort of purist duplication of the scene exactly as it existed when the photograph was made. If that was the case why would people have bought and continue to buy black and white photographs, which obviously are as far removed from "reality" as one can get? Or getting closer to home, why would anyone buy your photographs? The ones I see on your web site don't even vaguely resemble anything I've ever seen in nature, they're super-saturated and every bit as manipulated as the photographer who uses Photoshop to move a bench out of the print.

[Maris Rusis]

If I'm looking at a surface that was penetrated by light that initiated chemical changes that caused marks that form a picture I'm happy. This is a photograph. And modern day photography, olden day photography, and future photography are the same thing.

Out of a myriad of processes that are capable of making realistic looking pictures of the external world photography is the only one that uses light, photos, to make marks, graphos, where it hits. Everything else, painting, drawing, and digital, uses a multi-element sensor (eyeball, CMOS chip, whatever) to collect information about a lens image. This information, raw, modified, or fabricated is then used to control a mark making device (artists hand/brush, ink-jet printer, whatever) to place marks that form a picture.

Because the two worlds, "photography" and "everything else", are so different they offer a different relationship to subject matter and a different relationship to the discerning viewer. One system is not inherently superior to the other.

If Gene Smith had fabricated his Minimata pictures from a mental or electronic image file their impact and credibility would be diminished. After all, anything imaginable or file-able can be pictured. The Chisso Chemical Company might have got away with the mercury pollution.

On the other hand if we only had photography, and painting, drawing, and digital were never invented, them we would miss the glories of the Sistine Chapel ceiling and the startling special effects of Star Wars.

It is the continuing bane of "modern day photography" that it forgets the treasure embodied in its fundamental and irrevocable identity with the photographic process itself.

[Frank Petronio]

You mean those ferro-cyanide-ographs that Gene Smith made from his silver prints using bleach on Q-tips? ;-)

Oh dear, then all those earnest Magnum-type photo-journalists using digital cameras in war zones and ghettos are just wasting their time?

Seems to me that people manipulated "truthful optical photography" quite successfully since the get-go -- Potemkin village and the like... Heck even Robert Capa's falling Spanish soldier is suspect -- and nobody needed to resort to any darkroom tricks to pull that off.

Thanks for the entertaining thread. It's almost as funny as the old lounge!

[Alan Curtis]

Do not dodge or burn...not real. Very few LW users are photojounalists, it's hard to get the bank robbers to wait while we make camera adjustments. We all are trying to capture the emotion we feel in some subject and if we over expose or over develop to get there, that is our method. Hopefully, it is art that someone likes.

[Rick Moore]

As I recall, Gene Smith was a master print manipulator in the dark room, using reducers, intensifiers, bleaches, redevelopers, etc., applied directly to small areas of the print with small brushes to achieve the exact result he wanted.

Digital cameras use photons to excite electrons in the sensor to record images. Analogue cameras use photons to excite electrons in the silver halide molecules in the film to record images. In the end, it's photons being reflected or absorbed by the print (either analogue or digital) exciting electrons in the retinas of our eyes that generate the actual images in our brains.

It seems to me there is a lot of holier-than-thou hair-splitting going on here.


P.S. Frank, if I could type faster I would have seen that you said pretty much the same thing.

[domenico Foschi]

Did someone mention the old Lounge?
Where is it?