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Just what is a photograph



 
 
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  #1  
Old November 25th 08, 05:52 PM posted to rec.photo.digital,alt.photography
ChrisM
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 116
Default Just what is a photograph

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!


--
Regards,
Chris.
(Remove Elvis's shoes to email me)


  #2  
Old November 25th 08, 08:51 PM posted to rec.photo.digital,alt.photography
mianileng
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 151
Default Just what is a photograph


"ChrisM" wrote in message
...
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!


Those points and the issue suggested by the subject line have been raised
more than once and sometimes led to heated debate.

To me and to some others, a photograph is a picture taken with a camera,
reproducing the appearance of the subject as faithfully as possible within
reasonable limits. This does not preclude the use of *some* amount of
processing to make the picture appealing and to enhance technical accuracy,
compensating for shortcomings in the camera and exposure errors. But it does
exclude a picture that has been excessively manipulated and altered, such as
by adding something that was not in the original scene or by gross
deliberate distortion of shapes, content, color and light.

This is where opinions differ. Some people argue that a picture always
undergoes some processing and alteration in the camera and in the darkroom
(in film photography), that everyone sees a scene differently and therefore
there's no such thing as an accurate photo, and so on. This camp believes
that a photo is a photo no matter how much of the manipulations described
above has been applied.

I don't think anyone will object to someone creating an artistic picture by
applying any amount of alteration. It's just that some of us think that it
is no longer a photograph.


  #3  
Old November 25th 08, 09:50 PM posted to rec.photo.digital,alt.photography
Steve[_12_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 440
Default Just what is a photograph


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
  #4  
Old November 25th 08, 09:59 PM posted to rec.photo.digital,alt.photography
Ofnuts
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 644
Default Just what is a photograph

mianileng wrote:

To me and to some others, a photograph is a picture taken with a camera,
reproducing the appearance of the subject as faithfully as possible within
reasonable limits. This does not preclude the use of *some* amount of
processing to make the picture appealing and to enhance technical accuracy,
compensating for shortcomings in the camera and exposure errors. But it does
exclude a picture that has been excessively manipulated and altered, such as
by adding something that was not in the original scene or by gross
deliberate distortion of shapes, content, color and light.


My personal criterion would be along the lines that it's a photograph if
it could always have been better with a better camera/body/lens(*).
Otherwise it's just a pretty/interesting picture incidentally made out
of a photograph.

(*) for some virtual value of better, I am not that addicted to
expensive gear, and anyway the relation between picture quality and
camera cost is far from linear.

--
Bertrand
  #5  
Old November 26th 08, 12:48 AM posted to rec.photo.digital,alt.photography
Mark Thomas
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 835
Default Just what is a photograph

Pat wrote:
On Nov 25, 3:50 pm, 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.


I think that is pretty much spot on.


But "back in the day", no one though that airbrushing a photo made it
less of a photo. If you remove a pimple or "unblink" an eye (and no
one can tell the difference), then is it a photo? To some extend,
touch ups might make some photos look MORE realistic.


Yes, but that falls into the category "look(ing) like what you might
have seen with your own eyes". Although I would change that to "looking
like what you perceived", given how much brainwork there is involved in
what we 'see'. I have sometimes retouched portraits where the person
was unlucky enough to have a pimple or other temporary condition at the
moment of the portrait. To me that definitely still stands as 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


Again, I pretty much agree. I don't think that the definition is very
important except in one way - when there is *purposeful* deceit. In
competitions, or when describing an image, the *process* is (or may be)
important, so if, eg you pasted a silhouetted bird into a sunset rather
than waiting for a real one.. you need to declare that. Same with
replaced skies, etc.

But, then, what if you just digitally removed a piece of rubbish from a
scene (it might have been behind a fence and inaccessible..). Do you
need to declare *that*, and under what circumstances?

It's all very tricky.

As an aside, I must confess I get some enjoyment out of busting
pretenders - there have a been a few notable examples on sites like
Photosig where a 'photographer' falsely described the 'reality' of an
image and then got busted.. (Eg a 'Joshua Tree' that miraculously
appeared in two different locations.. (O
  #6  
Old November 26th 08, 02:09 AM posted to rec.photo.digital,alt.photography
Steve[_12_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 440
Default Just what is a photograph


On Wed, 26 Nov 2008 09:48:30 +1000, Mark Thomas
wrote:

Again, I pretty much agree. I don't think that the definition is very
important except in one way - when there is *purposeful* deceit. In
competitions, or when describing an image, the *process* is (or may be)
important, so if, eg you pasted a silhouetted bird into a sunset rather
than waiting for a real one.. you need to declare that. Same with
replaced skies, etc.

But, then, what if you just digitally removed a piece of rubbish from a
scene (it might have been behind a fence and inaccessible..). Do you
need to declare *that*, and under what circumstances?

It's all very tricky.


For the purposes of competition, things should be declared that might
not necessarily matter when discussing whether something is a
photograph not. For instance, if you digitally removed something that
you could have removed in the real world, but didn't because it's
behind a fence and is inaccessible and did it in such a way that it
looks like it was never there in the first place I'd still consider
that a photograph. But it should be declared for a competition.

I have a wonderful picture of an old steam engine pulling away from a
station but there are overhead wires that detract from the image. I
could have cut them down but that would land me in some trouble. So I
removed them digitally and I still consider it a photograph, probably
because the alterations were so minor.

But on the other hand, when you do something like superimpose a full
moon on a scene where the moon is obviously several times larger than
it would have been if it were captured as it would appear in real
life, then that's no longer a photograph.

Superimposing a bird on a sunset is definitely a gray area though. I
would more than likely consider that not to be a photograph because,
instead of working with what you captured, you're adding something
that wasn't there. But as with anything that's in a gray area, I
could be convinced otherwise.

As an aside, I must confess I get some enjoyment out of busting
pretenders - there have a been a few notable examples on sites like
Photosig where a 'photographer' falsely described the 'reality' of an
image and then got busted.. (Eg a 'Joshua Tree' that miraculously
appeared in two different locations.. (O


Or recently and famously, the pictures of the Iranian missile test
that were altered by copying and pasting missiles that worked and
sections of their smoke trails over the duds.

Steve
  #7  
Old November 26th 08, 02:48 AM posted to rec.photo.digital,alt.photography
Roy G[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 208
Default Just what is a photograph


"mianileng" wrote in message
...

"ChrisM" wrote in message


Snipped


To me and to some others, a photograph is a picture taken with a camera,


Edited Out


The above is a fair definition.

Everything that was done in the original post could just as easily have been
done in a darkroom.

Don't forget that using semi transparent negatives never were the only way
of making prints.

Roy G


  #8  
Old November 26th 08, 02:56 AM posted to rec.photo.digital,alt.photography
Roy G[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 208
Default Just what is a photograph


"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.

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

Roy G


  #9  
Old November 26th 08, 03:17 AM posted to rec.photo.digital,alt.photography
Steve[_12_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 440
Default Just what is a photograph


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.

Steve
  #10  
Old November 26th 08, 03:22 AM posted to rec.photo.digital,alt.photography
Brian[_9_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 24
Default Just what is a photograph




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.

 




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