Discussion: Taking vs. making an image

O.K.,guys, I surrender. Go and make your pictures however you wish. Why not quit using your cameras entirely? With the software available today, cameras are not really needed at all. I guess the "natural" image is a dead horse! Best wishes, Bill

They used to joke years ago that some of the printers at the Life Magazine lab were so good that they didn't need a negative. The photographer would describe the scene as the printer would dodge and burn in with the white light from the enlarger, then darken some areas with cotton swabs dipped in heated stock paper developer, followed by lightening other areas with potasium ferracyanide.

 

Just about every magazine and newspaper office had an airbrush artist on staff who could "Photoshop" what the lab guy couldn't accomplish with chemistry, slight of hand, and outright magic.

<i>I guess the "natural" image is a dead horse!</i><P>

The natural image is an imaginary horse. People are comfortable with BS about photography recording reality--they'll conveniently ignore the role of pre-exposure manipulation and how inherently abstract even the most "realistic-looking" photo is. Some lies give comfort; some lies cause distress.

What Jeff Spirer and Bob Todrick have written. If you understand the history of photography, you realize that photographers -- at least the good ones -- have been doing extensive post-processing since the beginning. And the people who eschew post-processing, be it photoshop or careful darkroom practice, are usually the ones who are just too lazy or unskilled to make good prints.

and/or maybe people will simply lose interest in looking at photos. could happen. take/make...won't matter. basically you have to be saying something that connects with the literate part of the brain. otherwise it is just "eye candy." and you need a literate audience, which seems to be dwindling.

If all photos are manipulated, then the word becomes meaningless. Everyone posting here could easily write a very long list of factors that make a photograph different from the subject shot, but to imply that there's no distinction between the lens used and a collage, for example, is just plain silly.

 

. . . as is the assertion that no one cares about the deception due to manipulation except for a few misguided souls on this site. There are too many famous examples, from the pyramids, to OJ, to 'migrations', to the Kent State shot.

 

It's not a question of whether or not we are attracted to a particular pre- or postprocessing technique as photographers or viewers. It's about what purpose the resulting photograph serves. It isn't always about 'art', after all.

<I>"Speaking of Galen Rowell, how many of you know the story about the huge print of the grizzly in his gallery - and why he took it down.</I>

<P>

Come on Carl, you can't leave us hanging.

<i>. . . but to imply that there's no distinction between the lens used and a collage, for example, is just plain silly.</i><P>

I don't think the implication was that there is no distinction between the lens used and a collage--the implication was the decision about what one considers acceptable or valid is usually quite arbitrary.<P>

A notable context in which that decision isn't arbitrary is when photos are used as legal evidence. For evidentiary uses, whether the photo is accepted as a "true" representation depends on supporting testimonials from those who made the image.

<I>"I don't think the implication was that there is no distinction between the lens used and a collage..."</I>

<P>

I'm not sure Mike, it seems to me there are quite a few people here that wouldn't have a too much of a problem calling a collage a photograph, even if it hasn't been explicitly stated in this thread.

<i>If all photos are manipulated, then the word becomes meaningless.</i><p>

 

Carl, this is just plain ridiculous. For example, virtually all books are "edited," and that word still has tremendous value. However, unlike here, nobody argues over it. The words on the page are on the page. If a famous writer has a ruthless editor who pulls words/sentences/paragraphs/chapters out and rewrites etc etc, nobody says the book is "edited." It's just part of the process.

jeff, that reminds me of when we during the last year in high-school got a new English teacher, who actually happened to be a philosopher/philosophy-teacher who also taught English. A week after we handed in papers for some assignment he handed them back to us without having looked at them. He asked us to edit what we have written, we could make any changes we wanted as long as we kept them visable. And after that we would give them to a classmate for input, then that 3rd/4th version was to be handed in and finally graded. Of course there was an uproar, especially from the A grade students that didn't want other people to compete for the higher marks.

 

I was so impressed by this approach as a young man when i realized that it was about improving the final product, not how good the first iteration/draft was. That philosopher/teacher made an impression on me.

Mike: "I don't think the implication was that there is no distinction between the lens used and a collage--the implication was the decision about what one considers acceptable or valid is usually quite arbitrary."

 

I maintain that every effort is being made to lump them all together and then assert that manipulation is 'unavoidable', as Jeff has just done. While I agree that shooters of similar subjects may not agree on what is or is not suitable, most would fall into a range that would not necessarily be the same for another style. The absence of clear lines of demarcation does not lead inevitably to "everything is manipulated - end of story."

 

Very little of this discussion attempts to address Patrick's question. I read that he's embraced a style of photography that employs minimal manipulation . . . . . . and then he gets besieged with all these posts suggesting that what he's doing is inferior . . . . . . and maybe impossible.

Dear Jeff,

 

I really don't think that a competent writer could become famous if they were subjected to a ruthless editor. You're buying the writer's talent, not the editor's. If anyone's writing is improved AT ALL by ruthless editing, then they weren't even competent to begin with. They certainly weren't good.

 

Possibly a great editor can make a mediocre writer famous, but it's worth remembering that writers take top billing, while editors are rarely remembered. Admittedly there's a cultural divide here -- Americans seem much more willing to accept editing than people who have English as their native language -- but I know from extensive experience that the majority of competent published writers are even more touchy about their creations than the majority of competent published photographers.

 

Cheers,

 

Roger

Roger, it's not about making a mediocre piece of work better. However, just like many photographers, writers are sometimes their own worst editors. Many have a friend or family member help before they send it out, which is similar to an editor.

 

By the way, my mother was a book editor. I've seen the process close up.

My wife is an editor.

 

Consistent with my argument, there are different approaches to editing depending on the content and publication.

Dear Jeff,

 

A good editor is a blessing -- but certainly not to the extent of ruthlessness. An editor's job is to spot inconsistencies and SUGGEST possible rewrites, not to carve up well-considered work or rewrite (without permission) as if they were the writer.

 

I fully take your point about reading the work over to someone else: my wife and I almost always do that. After that, if it needs heavy editing, it's incompetent.

 

Cheers,

 

Roger

Dear Carl,

 

I fully take your point about the different degrees of editing that are required for different subjects and publications, but as someone who has been paid for both fiction and non-fiction, I cling to the view that the writer's intention and style must be paramount.

 

I have dealt with scores of editors since my first paid piece appeared (in Penthouse International, of all things) some 32 years ago. I don't know how many million words I've had published: certainly, not as many as your wife has edited. But always, there has been a line across which I will not go: I have refused permission to publish (which much surprised the publisher) and cancelled the contract unless they were willing to publish something closer to what I had written.

 

As I said in an earlier post, American writers on all subjects appear to be willing to accept much heavier editing than those writing in English. Both my wife and I attribute this to the American educational system, which is vastly more inclined to impose uniformity than the English, using heavy-handed and incompetent authoritarianism if necessary.

 

She went to school in New York State and to university at the University of Southern California, and as she says, "I knew how to read and write when I left high school in NY state, but by the time I left USC my confidence had been destroyed. Since then I have has many hundreds of thousands of words published -- and I am absolutely sure that the teacher who 'taught' me has never been paid good money by an editor for publishing anything."

 

Cheers,

 

Roger

My wife is mostly involved with government work from people who have the position and the information, but not necessarily the writing skills. Many of them seem not to care much for sentence structure, knowing it will get fixed later.

 

I used to play music professionally. Most piano technicians - my current profession - used to play professionally as well, but often in very different circuits. An approach that flies in one place falls flat elsewhere.

 

Same with pictures.

There's nothing wrong with getting it right the first time- there's nothing wrong with working on it to get further either---instead of sharing and teaching others your techniques in Patrick's other nw thread about processing so that all can benefit we chose to type pages and pages here instead talking to the sky

Sometimes the truth hurts, RJ. :-)