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DPChallenge Forums >> Photography Discussion >> What "Photography" Means to Me (long...)
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 08/23/2007 05:59:47 PM · #1
A fellow Site Council member posed this question to me the other day, and while I was out mowing the yard this afternoon in 90+ degree heat, I gave that question a little more thought.

As a Site Council member, I've always fought to retain "photographic integrity" at DPC; my feeling has always been that DPC is a photography site, rather than leaning toward the digital art realm. But what does that mean exactly?

Well, let me offer some personal background. I've been heavily interested in photography as long as I can remember. My dad was the yearbook adviser for our high school, and we had a darkroom in our house as long as I can remember. In fact, my grandparents had a darkroom, as did my uncle. I actually used to think it was weird to go to a house and learn that people didn't have a darkroom since I was so used to having them around!

So I was developing my own film and prints at a very young age, and later used those abilities at our local newspaper, and a tourist promotion agency during my high school days.

I can still fondly remember taking my first camera (one of those ones with those old flash cubes) to school while I was in the second grade. And I still have those early, yet rather crappy photos of my classmates and the halls of Bell Township Elementary.

When I look at those pictures, I am whisked back to the early 1970s. While looking at those pictures, I can literally smell what the school used to smell like. I can vividly remember the kids I used to hang out with, and the quirks of various classmates and teachers.

The strongest memories I have of any time in my life are thanks to the fact that I was a shutterbug, and that I've kept all of these pictures all these years.

It means a lot to me to look at these pictures and know that the contents of the pictures are precisely what I saw when I snapped the them. There was no Photoshop in those days, so I know that those early pictures of the school really did represent what the school looked like (ditto for photos of family members, and all sorts of other stuff I shot back then).

Some of those shots aren't the most aesthetic things in the world... the school has power lines running in front of it, and areas of the field behind it have unsightly mounds of dirt. If I had Photoshop back in those days, perhaps I would have been tempted to clone out those piles of dirt so the landscape would look better. But now, 30 years later, I wouldn't be able to look at those shots and be reminded of riding my bike over those mounds with my friends.

To me, photography means capturing a slice of time. As soon as I start whacking away at a picture in Photoshop, I'm taking that slice of time and I'm twisting it into an alternate reality, so to speak. Clone a limb here, delete a person there. I can't help but be reminded of "Doc" in the Back to the Future movies, worrying about messing with the time/space continuum. :)

I have tens of thousands of digital shots on my hard drive now, and I think I'll be happy in the future to know that what is in those shots is what I saw at those moments. I wouldn't want to look at those shots years down the road and wonder if I'm looking at an actual reality, or an alternate reality that I felt like inventing.

I've never had trouble with the normal tweaks that are done to shots in photography... like removing sensor dust, or dodging or burning, etc. Those things really help a photo more accurately replicate what the human eye saw at the moment an exposure was taken.

But when we start cloning stuff out, or adding new stuff in, then to me it's like we're "inventing" a scene, rather than photographing one.

Anyway, sorry this is such a long, blithering post, but I thought I'd share these thoughts. These are the reasons I speak up in Site Council in hopes of maintaining my interpretation of "photographic integrity." Other people on SC have differing views, which is very important and is a good thing (if we all had the same opinion, there would be no need for a Site Council!).

At least when someone asks me what I mean when I'm talking about photographic integrity, I can point them to this thread for a little more insight :)
 08/23/2007 06:03:14 PM · #2
Beautifully said. While we all have our reasons for pursuing our photographic journey it is always interesting and intriguing to here others on this subject.

Thanks for sharing.
 08/23/2007 06:04:35 PM · #3
Thank you, Alan! :)
I really love to know where people are coming from, it makes it a lot easier to understand what they're saying, even when I disagree with them.
 08/23/2007 06:09:26 PM · #4
There's always this interesting duality in photography, more so than perhaps in other artistic outlets, between record and equivalence.

Many photographs are just what you describe here, a record of a moment or moments in time. Nothing better or worse than a statement of I was there, I saw this. I came, I saw, I snapped. They might be taken in certain ways for aesthetic reasons, moving a coke can out of the way if you are in to that sort of thing, or just moving your camera forward, so it falls out of the frame. But essentially the photograph is a record of the thing or person in front of the lens.

Then there's the other side of photography, where people take pictures that aren't what the thing in front of the lens is, recording and manipulating what they see, not what the camera sees, using the raw material in front of the camera to express themselves, not what they recorded.

Photoshop then gets thrown in to the mix some time later on, too and that further differentiates this notion of recorded reality vs expressed unreality.

Seems a lot of the big arguments or misunderstandings and misconnections between photographers fall down along these lines, is photography a record or an artistic expression. Some view it at one extreme, others the other, but most of us somewhere along the way between those two ends.
 08/23/2007 06:12:02 PM · #5
Great post. We really need someone with your point of view on the SC.

Err, wait a sec.
 08/23/2007 06:13:50 PM · #6
Alan, Your conservative views on photography are much the same as mine for many of the same reasons. Thank you for putting it into words more eloquently then I ever could...
 08/23/2007 06:17:14 PM · #7
Originally posted by Gordon:
I came, I saw, I snapped.


Veni, vedi, click?
 08/23/2007 06:20:57 PM · #8
Photo manipualtion has been around a lot longer than Photoshop.

Darkroom techniques like sandwiching slides, raising the easel to correct conversion, selctive cropping, even airbrushing flaws ranging form skin blemishes to removing entire people from a scene.

The old Soviet Union would literally "cut and paste" people in and out of historical photographs.

And these same conversations about photograhic integrity were happening then, too.

You can still have your original images, nothing says you have to delete them once an edit is made.

DPC has 4 rule sets to cover all sensitivities in this area.

Minimal - sounds like what the OP is looking for.
Basic - also on sound ground from a purist perspective
Advanced - for those how wish to improve upon the original capture (sometimes at their own peril)
Expert - Pretty much "anything goes" as long as there is a photographic basis for the image.

Sounds like something for everyone to me.

But if you think this debate is new, you're about 100 years too late. ;-)

All of this, of course, is IMHO.

Message edited by author 2007-08-23 18:21:35.
 08/23/2007 06:26:01 PM · #9
Originally posted by scarbrd:
But if you think this debate is new, you're about 100 years too late. ;-


I don't recall claiming it was a new argument... I'm putting it in the context of my involvement with DPC :)

Originally posted by scarbrd:
Minimal - sounds like what the OP is looking for.


Actually, I hate the Minimal ruleset, and I'm not sure I've even participated in one. I'm pretty content with what's available in the Advanced ruleset, actually, although I'd say that the majority of my submissions in any challenge would be legal in Basic.
 08/23/2007 07:11:43 PM · #10
To me, photography falls into 2 catagories. Taking photos and making photos.

I take photos all the time of my kids and family. I do minimal editing (except to nip and tuck my wife). BTW, don't ever tell your wife what editing you did to make her look good. These pictures, I put online or print out for our family photo album.

I make photos usually for DPC or stock. This usually involves some setup and planning. Usually the post processing involves more work and tweaking. I've never actually printed these pictures out. There's no reason since they don't hold any special memories.

Of course, this might change with my free study entry. I'm digging it. I might actually make a big print (16x??).
 08/23/2007 07:14:04 PM · #11
Originally posted by kirbic:
Originally posted by Gordon:
I came, I saw, I snapped.


Veni, vedi, click?


It's better than

Veni, vedi, photoshopi ?
 08/23/2007 07:17:26 PM · #12
FWIW, I think these two somewhat succinctly capture what I'm trying to say.

Neither of them are particularly photoshopped, both represent what I caught with my camera. They were both taken at roughly the same place, at roughly the same time.

One records where I was, the other records where my head was at. One is a record, the other a response. Both entirely valid within the minimal ( I guess, aside from the crop - a bizzare ruleset really) or basic rule-sets, yet coming from very different directions, about what photography is or isn't, to me.




Message edited by author 2007-08-23 19:19:19.
 08/23/2007 07:46:12 PM · #13
Originally posted by alanfreed:
Originally posted by scarbrd:
But if you think this debate is new, you're about 100 years too late. ;-


I don't recall claiming it was a new argument... I'm putting it in the context of my involvement with DPC :)


I didn't mean to put words in your mouth, and certainly meant no offense.

Originally posted by alanfreed:
Originally posted by scarbrd:
Minimal - sounds like what the OP is looking for.


Actually, I hate the Minimal ruleset, and I'm not sure I've even participated in one. I'm pretty content with what's available in the Advanced ruleset, actually, although I'd say that the majority of my submissions in any challenge would be legal in Basic.


I'm not crazy about the Minimal or Expert rules sets myself. But they do present a challenge for me. And for that reason I try my best to participate. Minimal, while too minimal IMO, challenges me to compose in camera. I can't rely on cropping to enhance the composition as I have done ever since I got into photography. As for Expert, I learned my Photoshop chops as a photojournalist, not as a digital artist. Expert gives me an opportunity to develop my digital skills. I don't think I will ever approach what Elsapo pulled off for for the last Expert challenge, but I would like to get better at it. That is the challenge for me. I like getting high scores as much as the next person, and the competive spirit in me loves it when I get the occasional ribbon. But what keeps me here is the 'challenge' part of DPChallenge. I've learned a lot and have a lot yet to learn.

I guess my point is, no one is compelled to enter every challenge. If a particular rule set doesn't appeal to you, don't enter. There are plenty of opportunities to enter challenges at DPC that fit with anyone's notion of what photography means to them. But I don't believe DPC has lost any photographic integrity because there are rule sets that don't appeal to a certain mindset. As long as Basic and Advanced are still around and the most used rules sets, I think the occasional diversion into the fringe area is more than acceptable.
 08/23/2007 08:00:59 PM · #14
Originally posted by scarbrd:
I didn't mean to put words in your mouth, and certainly meant no offense.


None taken! :)

Originally posted by scarbrd:
But I don't believe DPC has lost any photographic integrity because there are rule sets that don't appeal to a certain mindset. As long as Basic and Advanced are still around and the most used rules sets, I think the occasional diversion into the fringe area is more than acceptable.


I think we're on the same page here. For me, "Minimal" is more restrictive than I'd ever want to be. I kinda like the concept, as it REALLY makes you think about how you're doing things behind the camera. But for me, it's probably not something I'll attempt too often.

Expert is off the deep end for me, but I am glad it's one of the rule sets. I like the fact that it gives people some real artistic freedom, and it gives people a chance to express themselves that way here. I would be very much against seeing it as a "normal" feature here, though. I like it as an occasional, fun thing to toss into the mix... but I don't feel that it's the spirit of what DPC is all about.
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