Slightly OFF Topic..when does it stop becoming photography and become post processed 'art'?

Pete D wrote:
"frederick" wrote in message
news:1184911959.220270@ftpsrv1...
Andy wrote:
snip
Note: In traditional photography, the well-focused optical
image is thrown
Sheesh - use of even some Canon L glass on new $4500 cameras excludes the
resultant image from being called a traditional photograph!

We were thanking that Canons will not be allowed at all!! ;-)


It's just so sad that now you can say such things about Canon with full
confidence that the once great company is now in terminal decline, even
the most devoted fan-boys are so shell-shocked, they've lost all will to
respond.

"frederick" wrote in message ...
Pete D wrote:
"frederick" wrote in message
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Pete D wrote:
"frederick" wrote in message
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Pete D wrote:
"frederick" wrote in message
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the_niner_nation wrote:
"frederick" wrote in message
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Pete D wrote:
This is easy.

A photograph is what you take with any camera and then do a
direct print, this is a photograph.

Anything else is simply not a photography, it will be a digitally
altered image.
Agree 100%.

BTW, what sharpening, white balance, and saturation settings
should I apply to best achieve this?

Would it be cheating to set the exposure time to freeze or allow
motion blur to be used as a feature, or use the aperture settings
to control DOF?

Would shooting in monochrome be cheating?

Would correcting distortion be cheating? What about perspective -
can I use a PC lens? Should I use rectilinear corrected lenses or
fish-eyes? Can I even use different focal lengths?

I think that the only way to avoid cheating with a dslr is to fit
it with a standard prime lens, then glue your camera mode dial to
"P", smash the pop-up flash off if it has one, and thenceforth
only ever use the shutter button.
the changes you are referring to dont actually distract from the
'ethicical' spirit of your photograph..it's not like you are
pinching the sky from an arizona desert landscape to make up for
blown highlights you got from a waterfall in the lake district ..
So is it ethical to use a large aperture to obscure/blur out
something in the background - something really was there, but not
ethical to do the same using pp techniques?

IMO the "ethical spirit" is mainly crud. The "legal spirit" matters
if you're taking forensic photos and can apply to photos used as
records, journalism etc, but I can also think of perfectly
legitimate uses of digital pp for those - that are also entirely
ethical.

As for photography as an art, then IMO any criticism of pp is
precious crock, probably purveyed mainly by luddites and other
fixer-sniffers who don't know how to use a computer.
I think you have missed the point here, pretty much every image we as
photographers print up these days are digital images, not
photographs. Never did I say anything about ethics etc, I simply said
basicly print from the camera and that is a photograph, do more than
that and it is a digital image, whatever you want to do is fine by
me, you have to look at it.
Rubbish.
Even while I type this, I'm looking at a photo of my Great Grandmother
and Grandmother taken in about 1895, and probably more heavily altered
than many people typically do with digital, but I doubt that anyone
over the past 112 years has ever even questioned the purity of that
image as a "photograph".
Whatever, thats your opinion and you are allowed to have one.
What is that supposed to mean?
Because you now see that your view was crazy, you excuse yourself by
commenting that an opposing view was "allowed"?
Sheesh.

What gives, am I not allowed an opinion, last time I looked that was ok,
not allowing it now in your group? So sorry but I cannot agree but am
more than happy for you to think differently!

Cheers.

The Crazy Man!!



No - and I don't mean to **** you (or anybody else) off.
But, the restriction that you believe should be in place for what you
think should be called a "photograph" must be defined by some arbitrary
decision where biased personal opinion is used to determine what "degree
of manipulation" etc should be allowable.
There's nothing unusual about that from people, who from my experience
seem to have a desire to control others in a manner which I would describe
as "authoritarian", despite the absurd reality that to do so requires
extended definition to the point at which it all becomes absurd and
futile.

No, you have an opinion and I have one, they are different, all is well. In
this case they are both valid opinions, simply put, you have yours and I
have mine.

Cheers.

Pete

"frederick" wrote in message
news:1184918250.443117@ftpsrv1...
Pete D wrote:
"frederick" wrote in message
news:1184911959.220270@ftpsrv1...
Andy wrote:
snip
Note: In traditional photography, the well-focused optical
image is thrown
Sheesh - use of even some Canon L glass on new $4500 cameras excludes
the resultant image from being called a traditional photograph!

We were thanking that Canons will not be allowed at all!! ;-)
It's just so sad that now you can say such things about Canon with full
confidence that the once great company is now in terminal decline, even
the most devoted fan-boys are so shell-shocked, they've lost all will to
respond.

Come on, I am sure you can(on) still use them as doorstops. ;-)

"the_niner_nation" wrote in message
.. .

"frederick" wrote in message
news:1184893495.832792@ftpsrv1...
Pete D wrote:
This is easy.

A photograph is what you take with any camera and then do a direct
print, this is a photograph.

Anything else is simply not a photography, it will be a digitally
altered image.
Agree 100%.

BTW, what sharpening, white balance, and saturation settings should I
apply to best achieve this?

Would it be cheating to set the exposure time to freeze or allow motion
blur to be used as a feature, or use the aperture settings to control
DOF?

Would shooting in monochrome be cheating?

Would correcting distortion be cheating? What about perspective - can I
use a PC lens? Should I use rectilinear corrected lenses or fish-eyes?
Can I even use different focal lengths?

I think that the only way to avoid cheating with a dslr is to fit it with
a standard prime lens, then glue your camera mode dial to "P", smash the
pop-up flash off if it has one, and thenceforth only ever use the shutter
button.

the changes you are referring to dont actually distract from the
'ethicical' spirit of your photograph..it's not like you are pinching the
sky from an arizona desert landscape to make up for blown highlights you
got from a waterfall in the lake district ..

It's interesting you should say so, because that's exactly what they had to
do in the early days of photography. Film was too sensitive to blue light,
so skies would burn out, and if you wanted a sky in your landscape, you had
to add it in the darkroom.

--
www.mattclara.com

"Roger N. Clark (change username to rnclark)" wrote in
message ...
Pete D wrote:

"N" wrote in message
...

"Pete D" wrote in message
...

This is easy.

A photograph is what you take with any camera and then do a direct
print, this is a photograph.

Anything else is simply not a photography, it will be a digitally
altered image.


From a raw image?
In camera JPG have some processing done before being saved.


Yes from jpeg. I guess that from RAW would qualify if all you did was use
defaults and maybe a bit of exposure adjustment then print it.
So by people's definition of "photograph" in this
thread, are slides from Fuji Velvia photographs?

What if you use a polarizer?

What grade paper MUST you use in the darkroom?

People seem to reject a lot of conditions/processing because
it ;s "digital." yet more extremes were and are done with traditional
film and darkroom work.

Roger

A digital image is binary data until it is printed. Only then does it
becomes a photograph. Detail may be added or removed from binary files and
no one can claim more or less detail in the photograph printed from the
altered file.

A traditional negative or positive film, could genuinely be described as a
photograph from the time it is developed. Digital cameras do not take
"Photographs", they record binary data which may or may not end up a
photograph. The images you see on your monitor may have started life as
photographs (as in scanning film) but when you view them on a computer
screen, they are not photographs but binary data.

Given that what I said above is correct, it matters little how much post
processing goes into a data file before it is printed. What is clear, is
that once a data file (binary image file) is printed, it becomes a
photograph by description.

Arguments about how much Photoshop work went into producing alterations to
the file before it became a photograph have little impact when one considers
how much work went into producing a Cibachrome print from a high contrast
transparency when contrast masks (sometimes several) may have been made in
order to achieve a "beautiful" photograph.



--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

Julian. wrote:
A traditional negative or positive film, could genuinely be described as a
photograph from the time it is developed. Digital cameras do not take
"Photographs", they record binary data which may or may not end up a
photograph. The images you see on your monitor may have started life as
photographs (as in scanning film) but when you view them on a computer
screen, they are not photographs but binary data.

Given that what I said above is correct, snip

Stop there please.
That's pretentious crap, analogous to saying that "television" isn't
"television" if it's displayed on an LCD screen.

"Julian." wrote in message
.. .

A digital image is binary data until it is printed. Only then does it
becomes a photograph. Detail may be added or removed from binary files and
no one can claim more or less detail in the photograph printed from the
altered file.



But when you print a binary file, it's just paper with ink on it.

In article ,
the_niner_nation wrote:
Having bypassed film all together and entered the world of SLR into the very
contemporary 'digital' age, I have been looking at lots of people's work
posted on line, spectacular photos and amazing visuals.

I oftentimes wonder just how much post processing ( photoshop, etc, et al)
are responsible for making a good photograph into a jaw dropping work of
art? I reckon probably more often than not...

What are the attitudes of tradional 'film' photogaphers towards photos that
have been digitally enhanced and manipulated to the stage that the end photo
is a million miles away from the original photograph?

In my opinion, art is about what the artist is trying to say. Of course
artist can try to stay within certain limits as an artistic tool, but in
general I expect an artist to pick the best tool to express himself.

So, I think that just the resulting image should be judged. If one
photographer wants to go out and search for the perfect shot and another
collects just digital material for editing in photoshop then for me both
trying to do the same thing: creating an image that matches what they
have in mind.

Of course, heavy editing may reduce the value of an image for documentary
purposes, or it may have serious social implications (young girls essentially
getting themselves mutilated to look like the manipulated images they see).
But this has nothing to do with art.

Of course non-artists want to label and classify things. But the value of
a work of art should not depend on its label.


--
That was it. Done. The faulty Monk was turned out into the desert where it
could believe what it liked, including the idea that it had been hard done
by. It was allowed to keep its horse, since horses were so cheap to make.
-- Douglas Adams in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency