Just what is a photograph

Brian wrote:


Pat wrote:

On Nov 25, 2:51 pm, "mianileng" wrote:
"ChrisM" wrote in message

...

In message
,
Pat Proclaimed from the tallest tower:
I wondering what you call a photo that's stright from the camera that
has not been touched up. Maybe there needs to be names for a touched
and a untouched photo.

Look at magazine photos. Are they not photos because they have been
manipulated? All such photos are touched up.


There have been attempts to provide guidelines or self-regulation over
the years, notably one called 'Foundview'. Google it and you'll see
there was a fair amount of interest and discussion about it, but, if
you'll pardon the pun, it seems to have foundered.

Steve wrote:
On Wed, 26 Nov 2008 01:56:34 -0000, "Roy G"
wrote:


"Steve" wrote in message
...

On Tue, 25 Nov 2008 16:52:40 -0000, "ChrisM"
wrote:

In message
,
Pat Proclaimed from the tallest
tower:

Years ago, when working in my darkroom, I had a pretty good idea
what a photograph was. You shone light on a negative, developed
it, put in in an enlarger, shone light on a piece of
light-sensitive paper, and developed that. When you got done
you
had a photograph. You could add elements, dodge, burn, screw
with chemicals or make lithos; but in the end it all came down
to
shining light on a piece of paper and getting a print.

Last week I was working on a silhouette. I took a (digital)
picture of the person, copied it and used two copies of the same
image -- one mirror image of the other -- so they were facing
each other. I printed the faces in "white" and the space
between
them in black. I then used an exacto knife to cut away the
white
areas leaving me with just the black area. The profile of the
faces were preserved in the cut-line.

I tried calling what I had left "a photograph" but I in effect,
it was more of a negative of the original image. The only think
I really had left was a representation of what I had NOT
photographed, not what I had photographed. The other thing that
I pondered was the fact that the image was not represented in
"b&w" or in some tonality but the image was represented
physically as to whether there was paper there or not.

I all made me start thinking "is this a photograph or not".
Just
what is a photograph in the age of digital printing. How is a
digital image any different than a really pretty Excel document.
How much can you manipulate a "photo" before it becomes
something
else -- and when it becomes something else, what does it become?

Have you been smoking something...??

:-)

Seriously though, some interesting points raised!

If you want to go with the definition of a photograph and not try
and really think about what it means when you creatively alter the
image, the better definitions usually have something in them about
capturing a real scene by some means, whether it's chemically
sensitive film or directly converting photons to energy like in a
digital sensor. A photograph is a graph (a visual or symbolic
representation) of the photons (light) that were captured at a
certain place and time.

Once you start creatively altering that graph other than to make
it
more faithfully represent the light that struck the sensor and
"look
like" what you might have seen with your own eyes at that place
and
time, it may be art, it may be a picture, it may be an image but
it's no longer a photograph.

In these days of digital editing, you have to expand that a little
bit. So basically, IMHO, the definition I like to use is that if
your post processing only does things to an original captured
image
that could have been done in the physical world at the time the
photograph was captured (like applying color filters, distortions
that can be created with curved mirrors, fisheye lenses, etc.) and
things like sharpening enough to account for lens/sensor softness,
fixing bad exposure problems, etc., then you are still working
with
a photograph. But once your image starts depicting things that
could either not have existed in the real world or could not have
been photographically captured in the first place, then you are no
longer working with a photograph.

Steve

Which means that applying selective tones to the print via
waterproof masks, or combining images from several negatives, or
removing unwanted parts using cardboard masks, stops it from being
a
photograph.

What about the old timers, circa 1900, when they had to add skies
from bought in plates because their own emulsions were so slow they
could not record cloud detail.

Well, according to what I wrote above, those would be photographs.
Because you'd be using some type of processing to enhance what the
camera captured but because of technilogical limitations could not
present the image near as well as what you'd see if you were looking
at it. Same thing as sharpening or exposure fixing today.

Also, removing unwanted parts using cardboard masks is just like
digitally removing unwanted things from images today, which would
still IMHO be a photograph because you could have always removed
them
in real life before you shot the picture.

Get real, if it was taken by a camera it is a photograph.

Well hell, I absolutely agree with that ... as long as the camera is
at least trying to faithfully capture the scene. That's true even
if
you apply the strictest definition of what a photograph is.

But once you start playing with things taken by a camera, they may
no
longer be photographs. You could have 2 images taken by a camera
and
superimpose them in such a way as to make the result no longer a
photograph because it would be impossible to take such an image with
a
camera. A great example being superimposing a huge moon, several
times it's natural size, on a scene. Both the moon picture and the
scene could be photographs. But the superimposed result is not.
Although it could be a very pleasing image.

So let's see, if I took my old Leica and put the 28mm on it and shoot
the scene with the sky masked and then without advancing the film put
the 135 on and shot the sky with the ground masked, so that the moon
appears huge on the double exposure, that's not a "photograph"?


--
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

Mark Thomas wrote:
Brian wrote:


Pat wrote:

On Nov 25, 2:51 pm, "mianileng" wrote:
"ChrisM" wrote in message

...

In message
,
Pat Proclaimed from the tallest tower:
I wondering what you call a photo that's stright from the camera that
has not been touched up. Maybe there needs to be names for a touched
and a untouched photo.

Look at magazine photos. Are they not photos because they have been
manipulated? All such photos are touched up.


There have been attempts to provide guidelines or self-regulation over
the years, notably one called 'Foundview'. Google it and you'll see
there was a fair amount of interest and discussion about it, but, if
you'll pardon the pun, it seems to have foundered.

INHO a photograph is a finished image, on paper, projected, whatever,
that the author intended the viewer to see - a 'light graph' meant to
convey a message.

All the previous steps involved up to the final image are not
photographs unless they are the final intended image.

Colin D.

On Tue, 25 Nov 2008 22:15:49 -0500, "J. Clarke"
wrote:

Steve wrote:
On Wed, 26 Nov 2008 01:56:34 -0000, "Roy G"
[...]
longer be photographs. You could have 2 images taken by a camera
and
superimpose them in such a way as to make the result no longer a
photograph because it would be impossible to take such an image with
a
camera. A great example being superimposing a huge moon, several
times it's natural size, on a scene. Both the moon picture and the
scene could be photographs. But the superimposed result is not.
Although it could be a very pleasing image.

So let's see, if I took my old Leica and put the 28mm on it and shoot
the scene with the sky masked and then without advancing the film put
the 135 on and shot the sky with the ground masked, so that the moon
appears huge on the double exposure, that's not a "photograph"?

Right. It would be 2 photographs superimposed. It may look great, it
may be art, but it's just as much a "photograph" as if I superimposed
an image of a car onto a camel.

Steve

J. Clarke wrote:
Steve wrote:
On Wed, 26 Nov 2008 01:56:34 -0000, "Roy G"
wrote:

"Steve" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 25 Nov 2008 16:52:40 -0000, "ChrisM"
wrote:

In message
,
Pat Proclaimed from the tallest
tower:

Years ago, when working in my darkroom, I had a pretty good idea
what a photograph was. You shone light on a negative, developed
it, put in in an enlarger, shone light on a piece of
light-sensitive paper, and developed that. When you got done
you
had a photograph. You could add elements, dodge, burn, screw
with chemicals or make lithos; but in the end it all came down
to
shining light on a piece of paper and getting a print.

Last week I was working on a silhouette. I took a (digital)
picture of the person, copied it and used two copies of the same
image -- one mirror image of the other -- so they were facing
each other. I printed the faces in "white" and the space
between
them in black. I then used an exacto knife to cut away the
white
areas leaving me with just the black area. The profile of the
faces were preserved in the cut-line.

I tried calling what I had left "a photograph" but I in effect,
it was more of a negative of the original image. The only think
I really had left was a representation of what I had NOT
photographed, not what I had photographed. The other thing that
I pondered was the fact that the image was not represented in
"b&w" or in some tonality but the image was represented
physically as to whether there was paper there or not.

I all made me start thinking "is this a photograph or not".
Just
what is a photograph in the age of digital printing. How is a
digital image any different than a really pretty Excel document.
How much can you manipulate a "photo" before it becomes
something
else -- and when it becomes something else, what does it become?
Have you been smoking something...??

:-)

Seriously though, some interesting points raised!
If you want to go with the definition of a photograph and not try
and really think about what it means when you creatively alter the
image, the better definitions usually have something in them about
capturing a real scene by some means, whether it's chemically
sensitive film or directly converting photons to energy like in a
digital sensor. A photograph is a graph (a visual or symbolic
representation) of the photons (light) that were captured at a
certain place and time.

Once you start creatively altering that graph other than to make
it
more faithfully represent the light that struck the sensor and
"look
like" what you might have seen with your own eyes at that place
and
time, it may be art, it may be a picture, it may be an image but
it's no longer a photograph.

In these days of digital editing, you have to expand that a little
bit. So basically, IMHO, the definition I like to use is that if
your post processing only does things to an original captured
image
that could have been done in the physical world at the time the
photograph was captured (like applying color filters, distortions
that can be created with curved mirrors, fisheye lenses, etc.) and
things like sharpening enough to account for lens/sensor softness,
fixing bad exposure problems, etc., then you are still working
with
a photograph. But once your image starts depicting things that
could either not have existed in the real world or could not have
been photographically captured in the first place, then you are no
longer working with a photograph.

Steve
Which means that applying selective tones to the print via
waterproof masks, or combining images from several negatives, or
removing unwanted parts using cardboard masks, stops it from being
a
photograph.

What about the old timers, circa 1900, when they had to add skies
from bought in plates because their own emulsions were so slow they
could not record cloud detail.
Well, according to what I wrote above, those would be photographs.
Because you'd be using some type of processing to enhance what the
camera captured but because of technilogical limitations could not
present the image near as well as what you'd see if you were looking
at it. Same thing as sharpening or exposure fixing today.

Also, removing unwanted parts using cardboard masks is just like
digitally removing unwanted things from images today, which would
still IMHO be a photograph because you could have always removed
them
in real life before you shot the picture.

Get real, if it was taken by a camera it is a photograph.
Well hell, I absolutely agree with that ... as long as the camera is
at least trying to faithfully capture the scene. That's true even
if
you apply the strictest definition of what a photograph is.

But once you start playing with things taken by a camera, they may
no
longer be photographs. You could have 2 images taken by a camera
and
superimpose them in such a way as to make the result no longer a
photograph because it would be impossible to take such an image with
a
camera. A great example being superimposing a huge moon, several
times it's natural size, on a scene. Both the moon picture and the
scene could be photographs. But the superimposed result is not.
Although it could be a very pleasing image.

So let's see, if I took my old Leica and put the 28mm on it and shoot
the scene with the sky masked and then without advancing the film put
the 135 on and shot the sky with the ground masked, so that the moon
appears huge on the double exposure, that's not a "photograph"?

Depends on the context.

Having taught photography to beginners, maybe my attitude is skewed a
little, but here's the rub for me.. If I plonked that 'photo' down in
front of a rank beginner and without any further information said "go
out and take one just like it", I would be doing them a disservice.
Although it might be a good learning experience for them!

In the same way, I have a camera magazine that displays an image that is
very clearly a double exposure of exactly that kind, in an article about
night time exposures for beginners. But the image is not described in a
caption, nor was that technique explained in the article! It was
probably just an editorial omission, but in doing that they may have
misled their readers and potentially caused frustration as the naive
photog keeps wondering why *his* moon looks smaller, and is totally
washed out when he does long exposures...

So yes, it's still a photograph, but should be described as a double
exposure if presented in a learning or competitive environment.

If you're selling it as art, do what you like!

Brian wrote:


Pat wrote:

On Nov 25, 2:51 pm, "mianileng" wrote:
"ChrisM" wrote in message

...

In message
,
Pat Proclaimed from the tallest tower:

I wondering what you call a photo that's stright from the camera that
has not been touched up. Maybe there needs to be names for a touched
and a untouched photo.

There's 2 kinds of post-processing:

1) brightness & contrast
This is global stuff like chosing the film, paper or raw conversion
sliders. Everyone does this.

2) burning & dodging
This is manipulation of specific areas. Of course there's gray areas
like a graduated neutral density filter/gradient adjustment and a little
local contrast adjustment isn't as bad as cloning in new info or
air-brushing a negative. Then again, what's the harm in cloning out a
little piece of trash in the corner?


Look at magazine photos. Are they not photos because they have been
manipulated? All such photos are touched up.



--
Paul Furman
www.edgehill.net
www.baynatives.com

all google groups messages filtered due to spam

Steve wrote:
On Wed, 26 Nov 2008 01:56:34 -0000, "Roy G"
wrote:

"Steve" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 25 Nov 2008 16:52:40 -0000, "ChrisM"
wrote:

In message
,
Pat Proclaimed from the tallest tower:

Years ago, when working in my darkroom, I had a pretty good idea what
a photograph was. You shone light on a negative, developed it, put in
in an enlarger, shone light on a piece of light-sensitive paper, and
developed that. When you got done you had a photograph. You could
add elements, dodge, burn, screw with chemicals or make lithos; but in
the end it all came down to shining light on a piece of paper and
getting a print.

Last week I was working on a silhouette. I took a (digital) picture
of the person, copied it and used two copies of the same image -- one
mirror image of the other -- so they were facing each other. I
printed the faces in "white" and the space between them in black. I
then used an exacto knife to cut away the white areas leaving me with
just the black area. The profile of the faces were preserved in the
cut-line.

I tried calling what I had left "a photograph" but I in effect, it was
more of a negative of the original image. The only think I really had
left was a representation of what I had NOT photographed, not what I
had photographed. The other thing that I pondered was the fact that
the image was not represented in "b&w" or in some tonality but the
image was represented physically as to whether there was paper there
or not.

I all made me start thinking "is this a photograph or not". Just what
is a photograph in the age of digital printing. How is a digital
image any different than a really pretty Excel document. How much can
you manipulate a "photo" before it becomes something else -- and when
it becomes something else, what does it become?
Have you been smoking something...??

:-)

Seriously though, some interesting points raised!
If you want to go with the definition of a photograph and not try and
really think about what it means when you creatively alter the image,
the better definitions usually have something in them about capturing
a real scene by some means, whether it's chemically sensitive film or
directly converting photons to energy like in a digital sensor. A
photograph is a graph (a visual or symbolic representation) of the
photons (light) that were captured at a certain place and time.

Once you start creatively altering that graph other than to make it
more faithfully represent the light that struck the sensor and "look
like" what you might have seen with your own eyes at that place and
time, it may be art, it may be a picture, it may be an image but it's
no longer a photograph.

In these days of digital editing, you have to expand that a little
bit. So basically, IMHO, the definition I like to use is that if your
post processing only does things to an original captured image that
could have been done in the physical world at the time the photograph
was captured (like applying color filters, distortions that can be
created with curved mirrors, fisheye lenses, etc.) and things like
sharpening enough to account for lens/sensor softness, fixing bad
exposure problems, etc., then you are still working with a photograph.
But once your image starts depicting things that could either not have
existed in the real world or could not have been photographically
captured in the first place, then you are no longer working with a
photograph.

Steve
Which means that applying selective tones to the print via waterproof masks,
or combining images from several negatives, or removing unwanted parts using
cardboard masks, stops it from being a photograph.

What about the old timers, circa 1900, when they had to add skies from
bought in plates because their own emulsions were so slow they could not
record cloud detail.

Well, according to what I wrote above, those would be photographs.
Because you'd be using some type of processing to enhance what the
camera captured but because of technilogical limitations could not
present the image near as well as what you'd see if you were looking
at it. Same thing as sharpening or exposure fixing today.


Sounds like HDR which meets my criteria of global processing unless it
was some other sky then it's a photo composite, or maybe it is anyways
for a strict definition.


Also, removing unwanted parts using cardboard masks is just like
digitally removing unwanted things from images today, which would
still IMHO be a photograph because you could have always removed them
in real life before you shot the picture.

Get real, if it was taken by a camera it is a photograph.

Well hell, I absolutely agree with that ... as long as the camera is
at least trying to faithfully capture the scene. That's true even if
you apply the strictest definition of what a photograph is.

But once you start playing with things taken by a camera, they may no
longer be photographs. You could have 2 images taken by a camera and
superimpose them in such a way as to make the result no longer a
photograph because it would be impossible to take such an image with a
camera. A great example being superimposing a huge moon, several
times it's natural size, on a scene. Both the moon picture and the
scene could be photographs. But the superimposed result is not.
Although it could be a very pleasing image.

Steve


--
Paul Furman
www.edgehill.net
www.baynatives.com

all google groups messages filtered due to spam

J. Clarke wrote:

So let's see, if I took my old Leica and put the 28mm on it and shoot
the scene with the sky masked and then without advancing the film put
the 135 on and shot the sky with the ground masked, so that the moon
appears huge on the double exposure, that's not a "photograph"?

'photo-composite'

--
Paul Furman
www.edgehill.net
www.baynatives.com

all google groups messages filtered due to spam

In message , Brian
writes



Pat wrote:

On Nov 25, 2:51*pm, "mianileng" wrote:
"ChrisM" wrote in message

...

In message
,
Pat Proclaimed from the tallest tower:

I wondering what you call a photo that's stright from the camera that
has not been touched up. Maybe there needs to be names for a touched
and a untouched photo.

But your camera touches the photo unless you are shooting RAW. At the
very least it does colour balance and sharpening, and usually noise
reduction and I'm sure there are other things it does.

--
Surfer!
Email to: ramwater at uk2 dot net

Steve wrote:
On Tue, 25 Nov 2008 16:52:40 -0000, "ChrisM"
wrote:

In message
,
Pat Proclaimed from the tallest tower:

Years ago, when working in my darkroom, I had a pretty good idea what
a photograph was. You shone light on a negative, developed it, put in
in an enlarger, shone light on a piece of light-sensitive paper, and
developed that. When you got done you had a photograph. You could
add elements, dodge, burn, screw with chemicals or make lithos; but in
the end it all came down to shining light on a piece of paper and
getting a print.

Last week I was working on a silhouette. I took a (digital) picture
of the person, copied it and used two copies of the same image -- one
mirror image of the other -- so they were facing each other. I
printed the faces in "white" and the space between them in black. I
then used an exacto knife to cut away the white areas leaving me with
just the black area. The profile of the faces were preserved in the
cut-line.

I tried calling what I had left "a photograph" but I in effect, it was
more of a negative of the original image. The only think I really had
left was a representation of what I had NOT photographed, not what I
had photographed. The other thing that I pondered was the fact that
the image was not represented in "b&w" or in some tonality but the
image was represented physically as to whether there was paper there
or not.

I all made me start thinking "is this a photograph or not". Just what
is a photograph in the age of digital printing. How is a digital
image any different than a really pretty Excel document. How much can
you manipulate a "photo" before it becomes something else -- and when
it becomes something else, what does it become?
Have you been smoking something...??

:-)

Seriously though, some interesting points raised!

If you want to go with the definition of a photograph and not try and
really think about what it means when you creatively alter the image,
the better definitions usually have something in them about capturing
a real scene by some means, whether it's chemically sensitive film or
directly converting photons to energy like in a digital sensor. A
photograph is a graph (a visual or symbolic representation) of the
photons (light) that were captured at a certain place and time.

Once you start creatively altering that graph other than to make it
more faithfully represent the light that struck the sensor and "look
like" what you might have seen with your own eyes at that place and
time, it may be art, it may be a picture, it may be an image but it's
no longer a photograph.

In these days of digital editing, you have to expand that a little
bit. So basically, IMHO, the definition I like to use is that if your
post processing only does things to an original captured image that
could have been done in the physical world at the time the photograph
was captured (like applying color filters, distortions that can be
created with curved mirrors, fisheye lenses, etc.) and things like
sharpening enough to account for lens/sensor softness, fixing bad
exposure problems, etc., then you are still working with a photograph.
But once your image starts depicting things that could either not have
existed in the real world or could not have been photographically
captured in the first place, then you are no longer working with a
photograph.

Steve
What the OP has is a 'derivative art piece'.