Hidden Gem.....Seriously? - DPChallenge Forums

Nikon MF Zoom-Nikkor 35-105mm f/3.5-4.5 AIS

03/18/2009 10:10:48 PM · #151

I will most definitely be looking forward to seeing another one then...

I missed my opportunity to dig into the archives. Thanks!

rob_smith

Nikon D300

Nikon AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR II

03/18/2009 10:53:05 PM · #152

I'd love to have a go at a minimal editing challenge! More please!

03/18/2009 11:27:45 PM · #153

Originally posted by Spazmo99:

Originally posted by Prash:
What I am saying is this: the image has already been captured a moment from when the shutter is released: be it in a photo-checmically reactive medium, or in a memory chip off a sensor. Everything else is just a means of presenting it in human readable form. And I call that processing.

And when you say photography continues long after shutter is released to 'alter' the original negative or binary code, all that is 'processing'. You are only enhancing/touching up on the original content.. you are not adding anything that wasnt in the scene (generally). The original scene is already preserved by then in the 'original' negative or the 'original' raw binary data as you say. And to me, photography ends where that 'original' data is generated.

Again, you dont have to agree with this.

Originally posted by PGerst:
Just out of curiosity...

Before digital cameras, did you sit around a table showing your negatives or prints? To equate this to the digital world, do you share a bunch of ones and zeros or do you share something more?

In both cases, photography continues long after the shutter is released. You merely alter the form of the original negative or binary code to something that is understood by the brain.

Alterations of the emulsion or bit data are part of the art form. The image isn't made until the emulsion or bit data are processed.

Originally posted by Prash:
To me, 'photo''graphy' ends when the shutter is released. The image is already made by that time. Sure we can argue to the end of this world that RAW processing is also photography, but I would call that 'processing' (WB/exposure adjustment/brightness/contrast/crop/hue/saturation).

Deny 150+ years of photo history if you want.

Things, places, and people change. That is why it is called history. What's today will be history tomorrow. You have a right to believe in what you want, and I do too. Lets leave it at that. I am not bound to believe in what is engraved.

Sony FE 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 G OSS

03/18/2009 11:28:36 PM · #154

Originally posted by rob_smith:

I'd love to have a go at a minimal editing challenge! More please!

Yes. More. More. More. More of true photography and less of made-up layered up art:-)

vawendy

Sony Alpha 1

03/18/2009 11:29:23 PM · #155

For that matter, I always thought set shots weren't true photography. Photography was capturing something the way it is. And if you're manipulating the lights, the poses, the background... what's the difference between manipulating them before or after the shot? You're messing with reality either way. So setting up shots is completely new to me.

03/18/2009 11:35:20 PM · #156

Originally posted by vawendy:

There are those that like a face as it is... in all its rawness.. with pores and dark circles. Then there are those that like it perfected with a make-up. Both are right in their own ways. I just happen to like the rawness... both before/after a picture is clicked. But made-up pictures (sets/lights/heavy post processing) dont bother me. I can live with them being around me. I just dont like them.:-)

Sorry for a bad analogy re: the make-up.

chromeydome

03/18/2009 11:47:17 PM · #157

Originally posted by Prash:

Originally posted by rob_smith:
I'd love to have a go at a minimal editing challenge! More please!

Yes. More. More. More. More of true photography and less of made-up layered up art:-)

Seems at odds with your own challenge entries, half of which explicitly note layers as part of your processing--merging three images, etc. I guess we just agree to disagree, and we will both get along fine without comprehending each others' posts. :-)

citymars

03/19/2009 12:10:36 AM · #158

Originally posted by VictoriaSecretGarden:

When I first joined, I used to enjoy receiving my DPC updates and new challenges because I felt that I could relate to them. In the many years since then, I have probably spent thousands of hours on Photoshop, learning and tweaking and enhancing my little heart out. .... etc. etc.

It surprised me to realize you participate solely as a voter. Nothing wrong with that, but I was hoping to see some of your "tweaking" skills!

03/19/2009 01:01:46 AM · #159

Originally posted by chromeydome:

Originally posted by Prash:

Originally posted by rob_smith:
I'd love to have a go at a minimal editing challenge! More please!

Yes. More. More. More. More of true photography and less of made-up layered up art:-)

Seems at odds with your own challenge entries, half of which explicitly note layers as part of your processing--merging three images, etc. I guess we just agree to disagree, and we will both get along fine without comprehending each others' posts. :-)

I have tried that, I wouldnt lie. But I have now stopped participating in challenges that push me to do more and more post processing just to be competitive. I realized that I didnt like that at all.. for the same reason that I feel it takes one away from spending time and energy in getting a good shot in the first place, and now only enjoy side challenges and discussions. I have always been against heavy post-processing, if you cared to search for my earlier posts/threads.

On a side noe, I find it sad that you went as far as looking for my old challenge entries to make a point. Too bad our discussions here werent enough for that:-) Not too dignified for someone to set an example IMO.

Message edited by author 2009-03-19 01:04:03.

chromeydome

03/19/2009 01:15:31 AM · #160

Originally posted by Prash:

Originally posted by chromeydome:

Originally posted by Prash:

Originally posted by rob_smith:
I'd love to have a go at a minimal editing challenge! More please!

Yes. More. More. More. More of true photography and less of made-up layered up art:-)

Seems at odds with your own challenge entries, half of which explicitly note layers as part of your processing--merging three images, etc. I guess we just agree to disagree, and we will both get along fine without comprehending each others' posts. :-)

I have tried that, I wouldnt lie. But I have now stopped participating in challenges that push me to do more and more post processing just to be competitive. I realized that I didnt like that at all.. for the same reason that I feel it takes one away from spending time and energy in getting a good shot in the first place, and now only enjoy side challenges and discussions. I have always been against heavy post-processing, if you cared to search for my earlier posts/threads.

On a side noe, I find it sad that you went as far as looking for my old challenge entries to make a point. Too bad our discussions here werent enough for that:-) Not too dignified for someone to set an example IMO.

No trying to make a point--was interested to see some minimal editing was all, and was surprised... You should enter challenges with the types of images and PP you prefer, sir. That, to me, is the value of this site.

03/19/2009 01:34:27 AM · #161

Well I appreciate all the advice. But how did we get from having different opinions to you suggesting what kind of challenges I should participate in?

I am ok with you having a different understanding of the process of photography and post processing. Not sure if you are ok with me having a different one.

I would just leave it at that: two persons having different opinions about a topic.. and not try to go into details and previous entries to make any other point just because we think differently. At least I do not intend to/am trying to do that.

So lets not get personal here, there is a thin line between a dignified conversation and one that invites attacks.

To each their own definition...

Happy photography!

Originally posted by chromeydome:

Originally posted by Prash:

Originally posted by chromeydome:

Originally posted by Prash:

Originally posted by rob_smith:
I'd love to have a go at a minimal editing challenge! More please!

Yes. More. More. More. More of true photography and less of made-up layered up art:-)

Seems at odds with your own challenge entries, half of which explicitly note layers as part of your processing--merging three images, etc. I guess we just agree to disagree, and we will both get along fine without comprehending each others' posts. :-)

I have tried that, I wouldnt lie. But I have now stopped participating in challenges that push me to do more and more post processing just to be competitive. I realized that I didnt like that at all.. for the same reason that I feel it takes one away from spending time and energy in getting a good shot in the first place, and now only enjoy side challenges and discussions. I have always been against heavy post-processing, if you cared to search for my earlier posts/threads.

On a side noe, I find it sad that you went as far as looking for my old challenge entries to make a point. Too bad our discussions here werent enough for that:-) Not too dignified for someone to set an example IMO.

No trying to make a point--was interested to see some minimal editing was all, and was surprised... You should enter challenges with the types of images and PP you prefer, sir. That, to me, is the value of this site.

Message edited by author 2009-03-19 01:37:35.

pixelpig

Sony Alpha a55

Sony DT 1.8/50mm SAM

03/19/2009 01:55:44 AM · #162

I am amused to death by this discussion & all the others like it I have read. Nothing will be resolved but it's worth it to work out where you stand.

From where I stand, it seems that for the purists photography is all about the camera. For the other side it's all about the human ego behind the camera.

From where I stand, there is nothing sacred about the original capture because I'm interested in the process, not the product. The process of getting the original capture is as interesting as the process of what I do with it. For me, reality is subjective, having no existence outside my perception of it. My perception of reality is selective, shaped by my life's experiences. The camera can only record an instant reflected light. It's an inadequate, imperfect tool and I only use because it has two unique attributes--speed & selection. A sunset is a continuum of changing light. A photograph of a sunset is an instant snatched from that continuum & forever separated from it, to do with what I choose. Doing someothing with it is what I live for.

None of this is intended as an attack or a rebuttal. It's an expression of where I stand on the subject of photography. That having been said, I wonder: If Leonardo da Vinci were alive today, would he be a purist photographer? I watched a Natioinal Geographic program on TV that speculated the Shroud of Turin was created by Leonardo da Vinci using a camera obscura. That is an intersting thought.

Message edited by author 2009-03-19 02:00:26.

trnqlty

Nikon AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8

03/19/2009 02:45:57 AM · #163

I can honestly say that I have never cared less about how my picture

did in a challenge. I love it. I've recently started purposely pushing my editing over the top. Its a wonderfully satisfying creative process from the get go. Photography is simply an art, photojournalism, albeit can be art, is really documentary. When I look at a scene, I'm shooting in preperation for the edit. I still always make sure that lighting, composition, exposure is all on point but I'm also thinking about the texture in a scene, what color it is, what I can change it to, how I could manipulate it. It certainly is getting close to painting in a sense but who cares. Its still art, its still cool. Just make stuff that is bad a**, whatever that may be to you.

That's all why I don't care how it scores b/c I know that cool landscapes here do better...ALWAYS. I would love to have seen more great portraits, its all I shoot anymore, I respect landscapes but for me they've just got boring. I just read it from someone in this thread, roughly "its about giving people the least to not like" and its hard to dislike a beautiful landscape.

At the recent Professional Photographer's of NC state convention, i watched the entire print competition judging (panel of six long established judges). Every single photo is HEAVILY processed, not a one that would pass in basic I bet. There I had three shots ribbon, all of which on here would prolly barely break 6.

These threads do make me chuckle, suppose b/c Im about the exact opposite of a purist and couldn't be happier about it. Especially if I actually want to make a living doing this. Essentially all professional photography is advanced editing.

ThingFish

Olympus OM-D E-M1

Olympus 12-50mm MZuiko Digital ED F:3.5-6.3 EZ

03/19/2009 04:12:31 AM · #164

Photography�Not Pictorial
"Art is an interpreter of the inexpressible, and therefore it seems a folly to try to convey its meaning afresh by means of words." This thought from Goethe is so true to me, that I hesitate before adding more words to the volumes both written and spoken by eager partisans�or politicians. I have always held that there is too much talk about art�not enough work. The worker will not have time to talk, to theorize�he will learn by doing.

But I have started with art as subject matter, though I have been asked to write my viewpoint on "Pictorial Photography." Are they, or can they be analogous? I would say, "Let the pedants decide that!" And yet�that word "Pictorial" irritates me: as I understand the making of pictures. Have we not had enough picture making�more or less refined "Calendar Art" by hundreds of thousands of painters and etchers? Photography following this line can only be a poor imitation of already bad art. Great painters�and I have had fortunate contacts with several of the greatest in this country, or in the world�are keenly interested in, and have deep respect for photography when it is photography both in technique and viewpoint, when it does something they cannot do; they only have contempt, and rightly so, when it is an imitation painting. And that is the trouble with most photography�just witness ninety per cent of the prints in innumerable salons�work done by those who if they had no camera would be third rate, or worse, painters. No photographer can equal emotionally nor aesthetically the work of a fine painter, both having the same end in view�that is, the painter's viewpoint. Nor can the painter begin to equal the photographer in his particular field.

The camera then, used as a means of expression, must have inherent qualities either different or greater than those of any other medium, otherwise, it has no value at all, except for commerce, science, or as a weekend hobby for weary businessmen�which would be fine if they did not expose their results to the public as art!

William Blake wrote: "Man is led to believe a lie, when he sees with, not through the eye." And the camera�the lens�can do that very thing�enable one to see through the eye, augmenting the eye, seeing more than the eye sees, exaggerating details, recording surfaces, textures that the human hand could not render with the most skill and labor. Indeed what painter would want to�his work would become niggling, petty, tight! But in a photograph this way of seeing is legitimate, logical.

So the camera for me is best in close up, taking advantage of this lens power: recording with its one searching eye the very quintessence of the thing itself rather than a mood of that thing�for instance, the object transformed for the moment by charming, unusual, even theatrical, but always transitory light effects. Instead, the physical quality of things can be rendered with utmost exactness: stone is hard, bark is rough, flesh is alive, or they can be made harder, rougher, or more alive if desired. In a word, let us have photographic beauty!

Is it art�can it be? Who knows or cares! It is a vital new way of seeing, it belongs to our day and age, its possibilities have only been touched upon. So why bother about art�a word so abused it is almost obsolete. But for the sake of discussion, the difference between good and bad art lies in the minds that created, rather than in skill of hands: a fine technician may be a very bad artist, but a fine artist usually makes himself a fine technician to better express his thought. And the camera not only sees differently with each worker using it, but sees differently than the eyes see: it must, with its single eye of varying focal lengths.

I cannot help feeling�and others have too�that certain great painters of the past actually had photographic eyes�born in this age they might well have used the camera. For instance, Velazquez. Diego Rivera wrote of him: "The talent of Velazquez manifesting itself in coincidence with the image of the physical world, his genius would have led him to select the technique most adequate for the purpose: that is to say, photography."

And there is Vincent Van Gogh who wrote "A feeling for things in themselves is much more important than a sense of the pictorial." Living today he might not use a camera, but he surely would be interested in some present day photographs.

Photography has or will eventually, negate much painting�for which the painter should be deeply grateful; relieving him, as it were, from certain public demands: representation, objective seeing. Rivera, I overheard in a heated discussion one day at an exhibit of photographs in Mexico: "I would rather have one of these photographs than any realistic painting: such work makes realistic painting superfluous."

For those who have been interested enough to follow me so far I will explain my way of working. With over twenty years of experience, I never try to plan in advance. Though I may from experience know about what I can do with a certain subject, my own eyes are no more than scouts on a preliminary search, for the camera's eye may entirely change my original idea, even switch me to different subject matter. So I start out with my mind as free from an image as the silver film on which I am to record, and I hope as sensitive. Then indeed putting one's head under the focusing cloth is a thrill, just as exciting to me today as it was when I started as a boy. To pivot the camera slowly around watching the image change on the ground glass is a revelation, one becomes a discoverer, seeing a new world through the lens. And finally the complete idea is there, and completely revealed. One must feel definitely, fully, before the exposure. My finished print is there on the ground glass, with all its values, in exact proportions. The final result in my work is fixed forever with the shutter's release. Finishing, developing, and printing is no more than a careful carrying on of the image seen on the ground glass. No after consideration such as enlarging portions, nor changing values�and of course no retouching�can make up for a negative exposed without a complete realization at the time of the exposure.

Photography is too honest a medium, direct and uncompromising, to allow of subterfuge. One notes in a flash a posed gesture or assumed expression in portraiture�or in landscape, a clear day made into a foggy one by use of a diffused lens, or an underexposed sunset labeled "Moonlight"!

The direct approach to photography is the difficult one, because one must be a technical master as well as master of one's mind. Clear thinking and quick decisions are necessary: technique must be a part of one, as automatic as breathing, and such technique is difficult. I can, and have taught a child of seven to expose, develop, and print creditably in a few weeks, thanks to the great manufacturers who have so simplified and made fool-proof the various steps in picture making: which accounts for the flood of bad photography by those who think it an easy way to "express" themselves. But it is not easy! �not easy to see on the ground glass the finished print, to mentally carry that image on through the various processes of finishing to a final result, and with reasonable surety that the result will be exactly what one originally saw and felt. I say mentally carry the image to stress the point that no manual interference is allowed, nor desired in my way of working. Photography so considered becomes a medium requiring the greatest accuracy, and surest judgment. The painter can, if he wishes, change his original conception as he works, at least every detail is not conceived beforehand, but the photographer must see the veriest detail which can never be changed. Often a moment or a second or the fraction of a second of time must be captured without hesitancy. What a fine training in seeing, in accuracy, for anyone�for a child especially. I have started two of my own boys in photography and expect to with the other two: not wanting nor even hoping that they will become photographers, but to give them a valuable aid in whatever line of work they may choose to follow.

I may be writing for a very few persons, maybe only one, no more is to be expected. To the few, or the one, I would finally say, learn to think photographically and not in terms of other media, then you will have something to say which has not been already said. Realize the limitations as well as possibilities of photography. The artist unrestrained by a form, within which he must confine his original emotion, could not create. The photographer must work out his problem, restricted by the size of his camera, the focal length of his lens, the certain grade of dry plate or film, and the printing process he is using: within these limitations enough can be said, more than has been so far�for photography is young.

Actually I am not arguing for my way. An argument indicates a set frame of mind by those who participate, and to remain fluid, ready to change, indeed eager to, is the only way to grow. Personal growth is all that counts. Not, am I greater than another, but am I greater than I was last year or yesterday. Each of us is in a certain stage of development and it would be a drab world if we all thought alike.

Some there are who will remember my work of fifteen years ago, or less, and some will like my past better than my present. To the latter I have not much to say; they are still in a world where lovely poetic impressions are more important than the aesthetic beauty of the thing itself.

Seeing Photographically
Edward Weston, The Complete Photographer, Vol. 9, No. 49, pp. 3200-3206, 1943

Each medium of expression imposes its own limitations on the artist �limitations inherent in the tools, materials, or processes he employs. In the older art forms these natural confines are so well established they are taken for granted. We select music or dancing, sculpture or writing because we feel that within the frame of that particular medium we can best express whatever it is we have to say.

The Photo-Painting Standard

Photography, although it has passed its hundredth birthday, has yet to attain such familiarization. In order to understand why this is so, we must examine briefly the historical background of this youngest of the graphic arts. Because the early photographers who sought to produce creative work had no tradition to guide them, they soon began to borrow a ready-made one from the painters. The conviction grew that photography was just a new kind of painting, and its exponents attempted by every means possible to make the camera produce painter-like results. This misconception was responsible for a great many horrors perpetrated in the name of art, from allegorical costume pieces to dizzying out of focus blurs.

But these alone would not have sufficed to set back the photographic clock. The real harm lay in the fact that the false standard became firmly established, so that the goal of artistic endeavor became photo-painting rather than photography. The approach adopted was so at variance with the real nature of the medium employed that each basic improvement in the process became just one more obstacle for the photo-painters to overcome. Thus the influence of the painters' tradition delayed recognition of the real creative field photography had provided. Those who should have been most concerned with discovering and exploiting the new pictorial resources were ignoring them entirely, and in their preoccupation with producing pseudo-paintings, departing more and more radically from all photographic values.

As a consequence, when we attempt to assemble the best work of the past, we most often choose examples from the work of those who were not primarily concerned with aesthetics. It is in commercial portraits from the daguerreotype era, records of the Civil War, documents of the American frontier, the work of amateurs and professionals who practiced photography for its own sake without troubling over whether or not it was art, that we find photographs that will still stand with the best of contemporary work.

But in spite of such evidence that can now be appraised with a calm, historical eye, the approach to creative work in photography today is frequently just as muddled as it was eighty years ago, and the painters' tradition still persists, as witness the use of texture screens, handwork on negatives, and ready-made rules of composition. People who wouldn't think of taking a sieve to the well to draw water fail to see the folly in taking a camera to make a painting.

Behind the photo-painter's approach lay the fixed idea that a straight photograph was purely the product of a machine and therefore not art. He developed special techniques to combat the mechanical nature of his process. In his system the negative was taken as a point of departure�a first rough impression to be "improved" by hand until the last traces of its unartistic origin had disappeared.

Perhaps if singers banded together in sufficient numbers, they could convince musicians that the sounds they produced through their machines could not be art because of the essentially mechanical nature of their instruments. Then the musician, profiting by the example of the photo-painter, would have his playing recorded on special discs so that he could unscramble and rescramble the sounds until he had transformed the product of a good musical instrument into a poor imitation of the human voice!

To understand why such an approach is incompatible with the logic of the medium, we must recognize the two basic factors in the photographic process that set it apart from the other graphic arts: the nature of the recording process and the nature of the image.

Nature of the Recording Process

Among all the arts photography is unique by reason of its instantaneous recording process. The sculptor, the architect, the composer all have the possibility of making changes in, or additions to, their original plans while their work is in the process of execution. A composer may build up a symphony over a long period of time; a painter may spend a lifetime working on one picture and still not consider it finished. But the photographer's recording process cannot be drawn out. Within its brief duration, no stopping or changing or reconsidering is possible. When he uncovers his lens every detail within its field of vision is registered in far less time than it takes for his own eyes to transmit a similar copy of the scene to his brain.

Nature of the Image

The image that is thus swiftly recorded possesses certain qualities that at once distinguish it as photographic. First there is the amazing precision of definition, especially in the recording of fine detail; and second, there is the unbroken sequence of infinitely subtle gradations from black to white. These two characteristics constitute the trademark of the photograph; they pertain to the mechanics of the process and cannot be duplicated by any work of the human hand.

The photographic image partakes more of the nature of a mosaic than of a drawing or painting. It contains no lines in the painter's sense, but is entirely made up of tiny particles. The extreme fineness of these particles gives a special tension to the image, and when that tension is destroyed�by the intrusion of handwork, by too great enlargement, by printing on a rough surface, etc.�the integrity of the photograph is destroyed.

Finally, the image is characterized by lucidity and brilliance of tone, qualities which cannot be retained if prints are made on dull-surface papers. Only a smooth, light-giving surface can reproduce satisfactorily the brilliant clarity of the photographic image.

Recording the Image

It is these two properties that determine the basic procedure in the photographer's approach. Since the recording process is instantaneous, and the nature of the image such that it cannot survive corrective handwork, it is obvious that the finished print must be created in full before the film is exposed. Until the photographer has learned to visualize his final result in advance, and to predetermine the procedures necessary to carry out that visualization, his finished work (if it be photography at all) will represent a series of lucky�or unlucky�mechanical accidents.

Hence the photographer's most important and likewise most difficult task is not learning to manage his camera, or to develop, or to print. It is learning to see photographically�that is, learning to see his subject matter in terms of the capacities of his tools and processes, so that he can instantaneously translate the elements and values in a scene before him into the photograph he wants to make. The photopainters used to contend that photography could never be an art because there was in the process no means for controlling the result. Actually, the problem of learning to see photographically would be simplified if there were fewer means of control than there are.

By varying the position of his camera, his camera angle, or the focal length of his lens, the photographer can achieve an infinite number of varied compositions with a single, stationary subject. By changing the light on the subject, or by using a color filter, any or all of the values in the subject can be altered. By varying the length of exposure, the kind of emulsion, the method of developing, the photographer can vary the registering of relative values in the negative. And the relative values as registered in the negative can be further modified by allowing more or less light to affect certain parts of the image in printing. Thus, within the limits of his medium, without resorting to any method of control that is not photographic (i.e., of an optical or chemical nature), the photographer can depart from literal recording to whatever extent he chooses.

This very richness of control facilities often acts as a barrier to creative work. The fact is that relatively few photographers ever master their medium. Instead they allow the medium to master them and go on an endless squirrel cage chase from new lens to new paper to new developer to new gadget, never staying with one piece of equipment long enough to learn its full capacities, becoming lost in a maze of technical information that is of little or no use since they don't know what to do with it.

Only long experience will enable the photographer to subordinate technical considerations to pictorial aims, but the task can be made immeasurably easier by selecting the simplest possible equipment and procedures and staying with them. Learning to see in terms of the field of one lens, the scale of one film and one paper, will accomplish a good deal more than gathering a smattering of knowledge about several different sets of tools.

The photographer must learn from the outset to regard his process as a whole. He should not be concerned with the "right exposure," the "perfect negative," etc. Such notions are mere products of advertising mythology. Rather he must learn the kind of negative necessary to produce a given kind of print, and then the kind of exposure and development necessary to produce that negative. When he knows how these needs are fulfilled for one kind of print, he must learn how to vary the process to produce other kinds of prints. Further he must learn to translate colors into their monochrome values, and learn to judge the strength and quality of light. With practice this kind of knowledge becomes intuitive; the photographer learns to see a scene or object in terms of his finished print without having to give conscious thought to the steps that will be necessary to carry it out.

Subject Matter and Composition

So far we have been considering the mechanics of photographic seeing. Now let us see how this camera-vision applies to the fields of subject matter and composition. No sharp line can be drawn between the subject matter appropriate to photography and that more suitable to the other graphic arts. However, it is possible, on the basis of an examination of past work and our knowledge of the special properties of the medium, to suggest certain fields of endeavor that will most reward the photographer, and to indicate others that he will do well to avoid.

Even if produced with the finest photographic technique, the work of the photo-painters referred to could not have been successful. Photography is basically too honest a medium for recording superficial aspects of a subject. It searches out the actor behind the make-up and exposes the contrived, the trivial, the artificial, for what they really are. But the camera's innate honesty can hardly be considered a limitation of the medium, since it bars only that kind of subject matter that properly belongs to the painter. On the other hand it provides the photographer with a means of looking deeply into the nature of

things, and presenting his subjects in terms of their basic reality. It enables him to reveal the essence of what lies before his lens with such clear insight that the beholder may find the recreated image more real and comprehensible than the actual object.

It is unfortunate, to say the least, that the tremendous capacity photography has for revealing new things in new ways should be overlooked or ignored by the majority of its exponents�but such is the case. Today the waning influence of the painter's tradition, has been replaced by what we may call Salon Psychology, a force that is exercising the same restraint over photographic progress by establishing false standards and discouraging any symptoms of original creative vision.

Today's photographer need not necessarily make his picture resemble a wash drawing in order to have it admitted as art, but he must abide by "the rules of composition." That is the contemporary nostrum. Now to consult rules of composition before making a picture is a little like consulting the law of gravitation before going for a walk. Such rules and laws are deduced from the accomplished fact; they are the products of reflection and after-examination, and are in no way a part of the creative impetus. When subject matter is forced to fit into preconceived patterns, there can be no freshness of vision. Following rules of composition can only lead to a tedious repetition of pictorial cliches.

Good composition is only the strongest way of seeing the subject. It cannot be taught because, like all creative effort, it is a matter of personal growth. In common with other artists the photographer wants his finished print to convey to others his own response to his subject. In the fulfillment of this aim, his greatest asset is the directness of the process he employs. But this advantage can only be retained if he simplifies his equipment and technique to the minimum necessary, and keeps his approach free from all formula, art-dogma, rules, and taboos. Only then can he be free to put his photographic sight to use in discovering and revealing the nature of the world he lives in.
//www.jnevins.com/readings.htm

Message edited by author 2009-03-19 04:16:16.

ThingFish

Olympus OM-D E-M1

Olympus 12-50mm MZuiko Digital ED F:3.5-6.3 EZ

03/19/2009 04:14:52 AM · #165

The Art Motive in Photography
A discussion of all the ramifications of photographic methods in modern life would require more time and special knowledge than I have at my disposal. It would include all the diverse uses to which photography is being put in an essentially industrial and scientific civilization. Some of these applications of the machine, the camera, and the materials which go with it, are very wonderful. I need only mention as a few examples the X-ray, micro-photography, photography in astronomy as well as the various photo-mechanical processes which have so amazingly given the world access to pictorial communication in much the same revolutionary way that the invention of the printing press made extensive verbal communication possible and easy.

Of much less past importance than these in its relationship to life, because much less clearly understood, is that other phase of photography which I have particularly studied and worked with, and to which I will confine myself. I refer to the use of the photographic means as a medium of expression in the sense that paint, stone, words, and sound are used for such purpose. In short, as another set of materials which, in the hands of a few individuals and when under the control of the most intense inner necessity combined with knowledge, may become an organism with a life of its own, as a tree or a mountain has a life of its own. I say a few individuals because they, the true artists, are almost as rare a phenomenon among painters, sculptors, composers as among photographers.

Now the production of such living organisms in terms of any material is the result of the meeting of two things in the worker. It involves, first and foremost, a thorough respect and understanding for the particular materials with which he or she is impelled to work, and a degree of mastery over them, which is craftsmanship. And secondly, that indefinable something, the living element which fuses with craftsmanship, the element which relates the product to life and must therefore be the result of a profound feeling and experience of life. Craftsmanship is the fundamental basis which you can learn and develop provided. you start with absolute respect for your materials, which, as students of photography, are a machine called camera and the chemistry of light and other agents upon metals. The living element, the plus, you can also develop if it is potentially there. It cannot be taught or given you. Its development is conditioned by your own feeling which must be a free way of living. By a free way of living I mean the difficult process of finding out what your own feeling about the world is, disentangling it from other people's feelings and ideas. In other words, this wanting to be what may truthfully be called an artist is the last thing in the world to worry about. You either are that thing or you are not.

Now the general notion of artist is quite a different matter. This notion uses the word to describe anyone who has a little talent and ability, particularly in the use of paint, and confuses this talent, the commonest thing in the world, with the exceedingly rare ability to use it creatively. Thus everybody who slings a little paint is an artist, and the word, like many other words which have been used uncritically, ceases to have any meaning as a symbol of communication.

However, when you look back over the development of photography, when you look at what is being done today still in the name of photography in Photograms of the Year in the year book of the pictorial photographers, it is apparent that this generally erroneous notion of artist has been and is the chief worry of photographers and their undoing. They, too, would like to be accepted in polite society as artists, as anyone who paints is accepted, and so they try to turn photography into something which it is not; they introduce a paint feeling. In fact, I know of very few photographers whose work is not evidence that at bottom they would prefer to paint if they knew how. Often, perhaps, they are not conscious of their subjugation to the idea of painting, of the absence of all respect and understanding of their own medium which this implies and which sterilizes their work. But, nevertheless, either in their point of view toward the things they photograph, or more often in the handling of certain unphotographic materials, they betray their indebtedness to painting, usually second-rate painting. For the pathetic part is that the idea which photographers have had of painting is just as uncritical and rudimentary as this popular notion of the artist. There is every evidence in their work that they have not followed the whole development of painting as they have not perceived the development of their own medium.

You need not take my word for this. The record is there. You can see for yourself the whole photographic past, its tradition, in that extraordinary publication, Camera Work. For photography has a tradition, although most of those who are photographing today seem to be unaware of the fact. That is at least one of the reasons why they are prey to the weaknesses and misconceptions of that tradition and are unable to clarify or to add one iota to its development. So if you want to photograph, and if you are not living on a desert island, look at this tradition critically, find out what photography has meant to other people, wherein their work succeeds or fails to satisfy, whether you think you could hang it on the same wall with a Durer woodcut, a painting by Rubens or even Corot, without the photograph falling to pieces. For this is, after all, the test, not of Art, but of livingness.

In my own examination of the photographic tradition I have found out for myself, and I think it can be demonstrated, that there are very few photographs which will meet this test. And they will not because, although much of the work is the result of a sensitive feeling for life, it is based, nevertheless, on that fundamental misconception that the photographic means is a short cut to painting. But from the point of view of genuine and enthusiastic experimentation, however it may have been on the wrong track, this work will always have great historical importance, will be invaluable to the student. The gum prints of the Germans, Henneberg, Watzek, the Hofmeisters and Kuhn, those of Steichen, will never happen again. Nobody will be willing to spend the time and energy or have the conviction necessary to the production of these things. And it is when one finds, as one does today, photographers all over the world, in England, Belgium, Germany, in this country, going right ahead as though nothing had ever happened, using this and other manipulative processes without one one-thousandth of the intensity or ability with which their predecessors worked, that such work ceases to have any meaning and becomes merely absurd.

Let us stop for a moment before discussing further the photographic past and present, to determine what the materials of photography really are; what, when they are not perverted, they can do. We have a camera, a machine which has been put into our hands by science. With its so-called dead eye, the representation of objects may be recorded upon a sensitive emulsion. From this negative a positive print can be made which without any extrinsic manual interference will register a scale of tonal values in black and white far beyond the power of the human hand or eye. It can also record the differentiation of the textures of objects as the human hand cannot. Moreover, a lens optically corrected can draw a line which, although different from the line drawn by hand, let us say the line of Ingres, for example, may nevertheless be equally subtle and compelling. These, the forms of objects, their relative color values, textures, and line, are the instruments, strictly photographic, of your orchestra. These the photographer must learn to understand and control, harmonize. But the camera machine cannot evade the objects which are in front of it. No more can the photographer. He can choose these objects, arrange, and exclude, before exposure, but not afterwards. That is his problem, these the expressive instruments with which he can solve it. But when he does select the moment, the light, the objects, he must be true to them. If he includes in his space a strip of grass, it must be felt as the living differentiated thing it is, and so recorded. It must take its proper but no less important place as a shape and a texture, in relationship to the mountain, tree, or whatnot, which are included. You must use and control objectivity through photography because you cannot evade or gloss over by the use of unphotographic methods.

Photography so understood and conceived is just beginning to emerge, to be used consciously as a medium of expression. In those other phases of photographic method which I mentioned, that is, in scientific and other record making, there has been at least, perhaps of necessity, a modicum of that understanding and control of purely photographic qualities. That is why I said these other phases were nearer to a truth than all the so-called pictorialism, especially the unoriginal, unexperimental pictorialism which today fills salons and year-books. Compared with this so-called pictorial photography, which is nothing but an evasion of everything truly photographic, all done in the name of art and God knows what, a simple record in the National Geographic Magazine, a Druet reproduction of a painting or an aerial photographic record is an unmixed relief. They are honest, direct, and sometimes informed with beauty, however unintentional. I said a simple record. Well, they are not so simple to make, as most of the pictorial photographers would find out if they threw away their oil pigments and their soft-focus lenses, both of which cover a multitude of sins, much absence of knowledge, much sloppy workmanship. In reality they do not cover them for anyone who sees.

Gums, oils, soft-focus lenses, these are the worst enemies, not of photography, which can vindicate itself easily and naturally, but of photographers. The whole photographic past and present, with few exceptions, has been weakened and sterilized by the use of these things. Between the past and the present, however, remember that there is this distinction�that in the past these extrinsic methods were perhaps necessary as a part of photographic experimentation and clarification. But there is no such excuse for their continued use today. Men like Kuhn and Steichen, who were masters of manipulation and diffusion, have themselves abandoned this interference because they found the result was a meaningless mixture, not painting, and certainly not photography. And yet photographers go right on today gumming and oiling and soft-focusing without a trace of that skill and conviction which these two men possessed, who have abandoned it. Of course, there is nothing immoral in it. And there is no reason why they should not amuse themselves. It merely has nothing to do with photography, nothing to do with painting, and is a product of a misconception of both. For this is what these processes and materials do�your oil and your gum introduce a paint feeling, a thing even more alien to photography than color is in an etching, and Lord knows a colored etching is enough of an abomination. By introducing pigment texture you kill the extraordinary differentiation of textures possible only to photography. And you destroy the subtlety of tonalities. With your soft-focus lens you destroy the solidity of your forms, likewise all differentiation of textures, and the line diffused is no longer a line, for a significant line, that is, one that really has a rhythmic emotional intensity does not vibrate laterally but back, in a third dimension. You see, it is not a question of pure or straight photography from a moral point of view. It is simply that the physical, demonstrable results from the use of unphotographic methods, do not satisfy, do not live, for the reasons I have mentioned. The formless halated quality of light which you get at such cost with a soft-focus lens will not satisfy. The simplification so easily achieved with it, and with these manipulative processes will not satisfy. It is all much too easy, as I know, because I have been through the mill myself. I have made gum prints, five printings, and I have Whistlered with a soft-focus lens. It is nothing to be ashamed of. I had to go through this experience for myself at a time when the true meaning of photography had not crystallized, was not so sharply defined as it is today, a crystallization, by the way, which is the result not of talk and theorizing, but of work actually done. Photography, its philosophy, so to speak, is just beginning to emerge through the work of one man, Alfred Stieglitz, of which I will speak later.

In short, photographers have destroyed by the use of these extrinsic methods and materials, the expressiveness of those instruments of form, texture and line possible and inherent in strictly photographic processes. And these instruments, although they are different in the source and manner of production, therefore different in the character of their expressiveness, from those of any other plastic method, are nevertheless related to the instrumentation of the veritable painter and etcher.

For if photographers had really looked at painting, that is, all painting, critically as a development, if they had not been content to stop with the superficial aspects of Whistler, Japanese prints, the inferior work of German and English landscape painters, Corot, etc., they might have discovered this�that the solidity of forms, the differentiation of textures, line, and color are used as significant instruments in all the supreme achievements of painting. None of the painting just referred to comes in that category. Photographers, as I have said before, have been influenced by and have sought to imitate either consciously or not consciously the work of inferior painters. The work of Rubens, Michelangelo, El Greco, Cezanne, Renoir, Marin, Picasso, or Matisse cannot be so easily translated into photography, for the simple reason that they have used their medium so purely, have built so much on its inherent qualities that encroachment is well-nigh impossible. And it is being demonstrated today that a photograph likewise built upon the basic qualities of photography cannot be imitated or encroached upon in any way by painter or etcher. It is as much a thing with its own unalienable character, with its own special quality of expressiveness, as any fully realized product of other media.

The unintelligence of present-day photographers, that is of so called pictorial photographers, lies in the fact that they have not discovered the basic qualities of their medium, either through the misconceptions of the past or through working. They do not see the thing which is happening, or which has happened, because they do not know their own tradition. This is proven by their continued puerile use of the unphotographic methods just dealt with, evidence that they are still dominated by a rudimentary, uncritical conception of painting, that they see in a half-baked, semi-photographic product, a short cut to what they conceive painting to be, and to the recognition of themselves as artists. But, above all, the lack of knowledge of their own tradition is proved by the fact that thousands of numbers of Camera Work lie idle today in storage vaults, in cellars, clutter up shelves. These marvelous books which have no counterpart or equal, which contain the only complete record of the development of photography and its relationship to other phases of life, to the publication of which Stieglitz devoted years of love and enthusiasm and hard work, photographers have left to rot on his hands, a constant weight upon him, physical and financial. That he has not destroyed every copy is a miracle. But he continues to preserve them as well as the collection of photographs representing this past development of photography, the only collection of its kind in existence, and most of which he purchased�all this he preserves perhaps, because he has faith in photography, in the work he has done, and in the young generations of students, who, he hopes, will seek them out and use them; that is, use all this past experiment, not to imitate, but as a means of clarifying their own work, of growing, as the painter who is also an artist can use his tradition. Photographers have no other access to their tradition, to the experimental work of the past. For whereas the painter may acquaint himself with the development and past achievements of his medium, such is not the case for the student worker in photography. There is no place where you can see the work of Hill, White, Kasebier, Eugene, Stieglitz as well as the work of Europe, on permanent exhibition. Yet the photographers do not seem to be interested. They have done nothing to help preserve or use these things. This is in itself a criticism of their intensity, and it shows in the quality of their work. All the way through there is this absence of faith in the dignity and worth of their own medium however used or misused, and, at the same time, the absurd attempt to prove to the world that they, too, are artists. The two things do not jibe. So I say to you again, the record is there, accessible to anyone sufficiently interested. If when you have studied it, you still have to gum, oil, or soft-focus, that is all right, that is your experience to go through with. The human animal seems unable for some reason or other to learn much from either the blunders, or the wisdom of the past. Hence the war. But there are, nevertheless, laws to which he must ultimately conform or be destroyed. Photography, being one manifestation of life, is also subject to such laws. I mean by laws those forces which control the qualities of things, which make it impossible for an oak tree to bring forth chestnuts. Well, that is what photographers have been trying to make photography do�make chestnuts, and usually old chestnuts, grow on an oak tree. I won't say it can't be done, but it certainly has not been done. I don't care how you photograph�use the kitchen mop if you must; but if the product is not true to the laws of photography, that is, if it is not based on the inherent qualities I have mentioned, as it will not, you have produced something which is neither an acorn or a chestnut, something which is dead. Of course, it does not follow that if you do make what has been called a good straight photograph, you will thereby automatically create a living organism, but, at least, you will have done an honest piece of work, something which may give the pleasure of craftsmanship.

And if you can find out something about the laws of your own growth and vision as well as those of photography you may be able to relate the two, create an object which has a life of its own, which transcends craftsmanship. That is a long road, and because it must be your own road nobody can teach it to you or find it for you. There are no short cuts, no rules.

Perhaps you will say: But wait, how about design and composition, or, in painter's lingo, organization and significant form? My answer is that these are words which, when they become formulated, signify, as a rule, perfectly dead things. That is to say when a veritable creator comes along, he finds the only form in which he clothes his feelings and ideas. If he works in a graphic medium he must find a way to simplify the expression and eliminate everything that is irrelevant to it. Every part of his picture, whether a painting, etching, or a photograph, must be meaningful, related to every other part. This he does naturally and inevitably by utilizing the true qualities of his medium in its relation to his experience of life. Now when he has done this transcendent thing, after much hard work, experiment, and many failures, the critic and the professors, etc., appear on the scene, usually fifteen or twenty years after the man has died, and they deduce from his work rules of composition and design. Then the school grows and academic imitation, until finally another man comes along, and, also naturally and inevitably, breaks all the rules which the critics and the professors have neatly tied up with blue ribbons. And so it goes. In other words, composition, design, etc., cannot be fixed by rules, they are not in themselves a static prescription by which you can make a photograph or anything that has meaning. They signify merely the way of synthesis and simplification which creative individuals have found for themselves. If you have something to say about life, you must also find a way of saying it clearly. And if you achieve that clarity of both perception and the ability to record it, you will have created your own composition, your own kind of design, personal to you, related to other people's, yet your own. The point I want to make is that there is no such thing as THE way; there is only for each individual, his or her way, which in the last analysis, each one must find for himself in photography and in living. As a matter of fact, your photography is a record of your living, for anyone who really sees. You may see and be affected by other people's ways, you may even use them to find your own, but you will have eventually to free yourself of them. That is what Nietsche meant when he said, "I have just read Schopenhauer, now I have to get rid of him." He knew how insidious other people's ways could be, particularly those which have the forcefulness of profound experience, if you let them get between you and your own vision. So I say to you that composition and design mean nothing unless they are the molds you yourselves have made, into which to pour your own content, and unless you can make the could, which you cannot if you do not respect your materials and have some mastery over them, you have no chance to release that content. In other words, learn to photograph first, learn your craft, and in the doing of that you will find a way, if you have anything to say, of saying it. The old masters were craftsmen first, some of them artists, afterwards. Now this analysis of photography and photographers is not a theory, but derived from my own experience as a worker, and more than that even, is based on the concrete achievements of D. O. Hill, who photographed in 1843, and of Alfred Stieglitz, whose work today is the result of thirty-five years of experimentation. The work of these two men: Hill, the one photographic primitive, Stieglitz, who has been the leader in the fight to establish photography, not photographers, stands out sharply from that of all other photographers. It embodies, in my opinion, the only two fully realized truly photographic expressions, so far, and is a critical comment upon the misconceptions of the intermediary past and the sterility of the present. The work of both disclaims any attempt to paint, either in feeling or in handling.

The psychology of Hill is interesting. He himself was a painter, a member of the Royal Scotch Academy, and one of his commissions was to paint a picture in which were to appear recognizable portraits of some one hundred or more notable people of the time. He had heard of the lately invented process of photography, and it occurred to him that it might be of considerable assistance in the painting of his picture. He began to experiment with a crude camera and lens, with paper negatives, exposures in the sun five or six minutes, and he became so fascinated by these things that he neglected his painting. He worked for three years with photography and then finally, when his wife and friends got at him and told him he was an artist wasting his time, in other words, gave him a bad conscience, he gave it up and, as far as we know, never photographed again. In other words, when Hill photographed he was not thinking of painting. He was not trying to turn photography into paint or even to make it do an equivalent. Starting with the idea of using photography as a means, it so fascinated him that it soon became an end in itself. The results of his experimentation reveal, therefore, a certain directness, a quality of perception which, with Hill's extraordinary feeling for the people whom he photographed, has made his work stand unsurpassed until today. And this, mind you, despite the crudity of the materials with which he had to work, the long exposures, etc., and in spite of the fact that George Eastman was not there to tell Hill that all he (Hill) had to do was to press the button and he (Eastman) would do the rest. He was not trying to paint with photography. Moreover, it is interesting to note that his painting, in which he was constrained by the academic standards of the time, has passed into obscurity. His photography, in which he was really free, lives.

The work of Stieglitz, from the earliest examples done thirty-five years ago, to the amazing things he is doing today, exhibits to even a more marked degree this remarkable absence of all interference with the authentic qualities of photography. There is not the slightest trace of paint feeling or evidence of a desire to paint. Years ago, when he was a student in Germany painters who saw his photographs often said, "Of course, this is not Art, but we would like to paint the way you photograph." His reply was, "I don't know anything about Art, but for some reason or other I have never wanted to photograph the way you paint." There you have a complete statement of the difference between the attitude of Stieglitz towards photography, and practically every other photographer. And it is there in his work, from the earliest to the latest. From the beginning Stieglitz has accepted the camera machine, instinctively found in it something which was part of himself, and loved it. And that is prerequisite to any living photographic expression for anyone.

I do not want to discuss in detail this work of Stieglitz, as another exhibition of his most recent photographs opens April I at the Anderson Galleries. Go and see these things yourselves. If possible, look at the earlier photographs in Camera Work, so that you can follow the development of his knowledge and of his perceptions. Stieglitz has gone much further than Hill. His work is much wider in scope, more conscious, the result of many more years of intensive experiment. Every instrument, form, texture, line, and even print color are brought into play, subjugated through the machine to the single purpose of expression. Notice how every object, every blade of grass, is felt and accounted for, the full acceptance and use of the thing in front of it. Note, too, that the size and shape of his mounts become part of the expression. He spends months sometimes just trying to mount a photograph, so sensitive is the presentation. Observe also how he has used solarization, really a defect, how he has used it as a virtue consciously, made the negative with that in mind. That is truly creative use of material, perfectly legitimate, perfectly photographic.

In other words, go and see what photography really is, what it can record in the hands of one who has worked with intense respect and intelligence, who has lived equally intensely, without theories. Stieglitz fought for years to give other people a chance to work and to develop, and he is still fighting. The photographers failed. They did not develop, did not grow. Stieglitz has done for photography what they have not been able to do. He has taken it out of the realm of misconception and a promise, and made it a fulfillment.

In his exhibition two years ago he set aside the question of whether photography is or is not art as of no importance to him, just as he did thirty-five years ago. Exactly, because nobody knows what art is, or God or all the other abstractions, particularly those who make claims to such knowledge. There are a few, however, who do know what photography is and what painting is. They know that there is as much painting which is bad photography as most photography is bad painting. In short, they have some idea whether a thing is genuine and alive or false and dead.

In closing, I will say this to you as students of photography. Don't think when I say students that I am trying to talk down. We are all students, including Stieglitz. Some a little longer at it than the others, a little more experienced. When you cease to be a student you might as well be dead as far as the significance of your work is concerned. So I am simply talking to you as one student to others, out of my own experience. And I say to you, before you give your time, and you will have to give much, to photography, find out in yourselves how much it means to you. If you really want to paint, then do not photograph except as you may want to amuse yourselves along with the rest of Mr. Eastman's customers. Photography is not a short cut to painting, being an artist, or anything else. On the other hand, if this camera machine with its materials fascinates you, compels your energy and respect, learn to photograph. Find out first what this machine and these materials can do without any interference except your own vision. Photograph a tree, a machine, a table, any old thing; do it over and over again under different conditions of light. See what your negative will record. Find out what your papers, chloride, bromide, palladium, the different grades of these, will register. What differences in color you can get with different developers, and how these differences affect the expression of your prints. Experiment with mounts to see what shape and size do to your photograph. The field is limitless, inexhaustible, without once stepping outside the natural boundaries of the medium. In short, work, experiment and forget about art, pictorialism, and other unimportant more or less meaningless phrases. Look at Camera Work. Look at it critically, know at least what photographers have done. Look also just as critically at what is being done and what you are doing. Look at painting if you will, but the whole development; don't stop with Whistler and Japanese prints. Some have said that Stieglitz' portraits were so remarkable because he hypnotized people. Go and see what he has done with clouds; find out whether his hypnotic power extends to the elements.

Look at all these things. Get at their meaning to you; assimilate what you can, and get rid of the rest. Above all, look at the things around you, the immediate world around you. If you are alive, it will mean something to you, and if you care enough about photography, and if you know how to use it, you will want to photograph that meaning. If you let other people's vision get between the world and your own, you will achieve that extremely common and worthless thing, a pictorial photograph. But if you keep this vision clear you may make something which is at least a photograph, which has a life of its own, as a tree or a matchbox, if you see it, has a life of its own. An organism which refuses to let you think about art, pictorialism, or even photography, it simply is. For the achievement of this there are no short cuts, no formulae, no rules except those of your own living. There is necessary, however, the sharpest kind of self-criticism, courage, and hard work. But first learn to photograph. That alone I find for myself is a problem without end.
//www.jnevins.com/readings.htm

Message edited by author 2009-03-19 04:15:45.

lyn100

Nikon AF-S Zoom-Nikkor 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G IF-ED VR

03/19/2009 05:14:37 AM · #166

I have never posted to a thread before but this time I feel I must, I have entered a few challenges not with particularly brilliant pictures, but they are not too far removed from how they were taken, generally my processing is levels, hue/sat cloning where necessary, and usm. My husband says I could do so much more with the pictures, but my reply is 'that is not the picture I took!' For me that is what it is about, not how good I am in Photoshop.

UrfaK

Canon EOS-650/T4i Rebel

Canon EF-S 15-85mm IS USM

03/19/2009 05:22:47 AM · #167

For me editing has always meant bringing my image closer to what I envisioned or what I was seeing with my eyes. I play around with only 4 MP so I edit to restore my images to a certain standard rather than make them super pretty.

mikeee

Canon EOS-550D Rebel T2i

Canon EF 24-105mm f/4.0L IS

03/19/2009 05:52:05 AM · #168

When I did a lot of B/W film processing and printing, I limited myself to contrast, brightness, dodge, burn and crop because that was all that was easily available.

In digital I've added USM, sharpen, levels and hue (for non-challenge photos I may clone out objects I don't like). I don't have an aversion to the use of Photoshop etc and I think that the results of good photoshopping are awesome and can transform average images into works of art. Digital photography is a combination of camera work and post-processing in the same way that film was a combination of camera work and hours in the darkroom with unpleasant chemicals. A lot of classic film shots look good because they were correctly processed and printed and I'm sure there are a lot of wasted shots which weren't developed properly or were not given the right amount of attention in the darkroom to get the best out of them.

MistyMucky

Nikon AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4D

03/19/2009 06:02:57 AM · #169

Originally posted by UrfaTheGreat:

For me editing has always meant bringing my image closer to what I envisioned or what I was seeing with my eyes.

You got it! But it's not only the eyes, it's also the mind which is very subjective. If somebody is in a romantic mood, he will probably see a scene with more saturated colours than in a depressed state or whatever. This justifies different ways of processing: it allows to bring in feelings.

On the other hand, it's completely meaningless to justify oversaturated colours with the work of Ansel Adams...

I think the question in the OP is interesting and unanswered. What have we become? Nobody can deny there has been an evolution on DPC. For good or bad, I will leave open. But I am astonished that this dicussion is always resolutely avoided.

david1707

Tamron AF 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 XR Di II for Nikon

03/19/2009 06:10:54 AM · #170

The camera is mearly another tool of the artist. As long as you are happy with your finished product why should you care how you got to it. Photography is art and thus subject to the artists interpritation of the finished product. Some images I process heavily and others are practically out of the camera. I don't participate in many challenges here because I take photos for my pleasure. If I have one that fits the challenge I'll submit a photo. (I'm not a paid member as I already pay on a couple other sites so I am usually limited to basic editting.)

Because photography is art, it is also subject to the viewers opinion, which, as we all know, can be very different. My wife and I always have different opinions on my processing. She'll like it one way and think the way I like it isn't as good. Bottom line, it's my vision of how the finished product should be and no one elses. If you don't like it, oh well, you don't have to.

I am an artist who's canvas begins with a photo.

Spork99

Canon EOS M6 Mk II

Canon EF-M 22mm STM Lens

03/19/2009 09:11:09 AM · #171

Originally posted by Prash:

Originally posted by Spazmo99:

Originally posted by Prash:
What I am saying is this: the image has already been captured a moment from when the shutter is released: be it in a photo-checmically reactive medium, or in a memory chip off a sensor. Everything else is just a means of presenting it in human readable form. And I call that processing.

And when you say photography continues long after shutter is released to 'alter' the original negative or binary code, all that is 'processing'. You are only enhancing/touching up on the original content.. you are not adding anything that wasnt in the scene (generally). The original scene is already preserved by then in the 'original' negative or the 'original' raw binary data as you say. And to me, photography ends where that 'original' data is generated.

Again, you dont have to agree with this.

Originally posted by PGerst:
Just out of curiosity...

Before digital cameras, did you sit around a table showing your negatives or prints? To equate this to the digital world, do you share a bunch of ones and zeros or do you share something more?

In both cases, photography continues long after the shutter is released. You merely alter the form of the original negative or binary code to something that is understood by the brain.

Alterations of the emulsion or bit data are part of the art form. The image isn't made until the emulsion or bit data are processed.

Originally posted by Prash:
To me, 'photo''graphy' ends when the shutter is released. The image is already made by that time. Sure we can argue to the end of this world that RAW processing is also photography, but I would call that 'processing' (WB/exposure adjustment/brightness/contrast/crop/hue/saturation).

Deny 150+ years of photo history if you want.

Things, places, and people change. That is why it is called history. What's today will be history tomorrow. You have a right to believe in what you want, and I do too. Lets leave it at that. I am not bound to believe in what is engraved.

If "Ignorance is bliss" works for you, so be it.

pawdrix

Nikon AF Nikkor 85mm f/1.4D IF

03/19/2009 09:47:58 AM · #172

Originally posted by yanko:

Originally posted by pawdrix:

Ahhh...very cool. So, we have pre-production, production and post-production. Primarily but not in a hardcore way I consider Photography the "production" phase. All the elements combined make an image, of course but when I talk about photography, starting with the light (set-up or natural) that taking of the image and some minor pp, that's generally where I'm focused.

Interesting. I tend to look at all three of those stages as one. I don't compartmentalize. Well I guess I do but they are different. There's what happens in the mind (ex. studying the subject, previsualization, brainstorming, etc) and the choices that are born from it (i.e. lighting, composition, processing, etc). I don't place more value on choices made before, during or after the click of the shutter. The only thing that is important to me is whether or not the choice was a good one or not, and the results that stem from it. I like this way of looking at it because it isn't technology dependent nor should it be because technology isn't what is giving birth to the work, IMO.

First, I look at an image and simply see if it moves or communicates something to me. So in that sense I don't compartmentalize unless I'm looking at the image to see what they did to achieve it.

Then if I'm judging an image on it's photographic merits, as a student, I suppose a new set of criteria comes into play. There, as I stated, I begin in the center with the camera choices, subject, light, crop then I extend outward to pre-production and post production. They all come into play but a great photograph begins with those initial things.

Some images are ALL about the camera as a tool and don't rely much on pre or post production although they must come into play to some extent however minor. Some images are very basic photographically speaking but amazing in terms or pre production and while I could praise the photographer and photograph I would still view it's wonder in terms of pre-production.

BTW, commercial photography can be art but that might be stretching the word "art" very thin. Avedon's probably a good example of a great commercial artists but there aren't too many like him.

Message edited by author 2009-03-19 09:48:31.

Bear_Music

Samsung Galaxy S21, S21+, S21 Ultra

Sony 24-70mm F4 Vario-Tessar T* FE OSS

03/19/2009 10:45:46 AM · #173

Originally posted by pawdrix:

BTW, commercial photography can be art but that might be stretching the word "art" very thin. Avedon's probably a good example of a great commercial artists but there aren't too many like him.

You can add Helmut Newton to that short list :-)

R.

Message edited by author 2009-03-19 10:45:56.

pawdrix

Nikon AF Nikkor 85mm f/1.4D IF

03/19/2009 11:05:13 AM · #174

Originally posted by Bear_Music:

Originally posted by pawdrix:

BTW, commercial photography can be art but that might be stretching the word "art" very thin. Avedon's probably a good example of a great commercial artists but there aren't too many like him.

You can add Helmut Newton to that short list :-)

R.

Luuuuurve Helmut Newton. Herb Ritts should also be on the list.

I cooked for HN a few times, privately and at some events.

chromeydome