Jump to content

Capturing the moment or thinking you are?


Recommended Posts

<p>Phylo: point taken :-)</p>

<p>Julie: I've been thinking about the long exposure, with things "disappearing like smoke". I've a friend who ties pinhole cameras to telegraph poles and lets the exposure form over a year ... even houses and lamp posts can disappear over that time. If we set up a camera which exposed over a century or two, forests could be replaced by metrololises which were then razed by war ... my point being that even permanence is limited and impermanent if you choose the right exposure time, and choosing the frame within which we <em>choose to</em> define photographic permanence is an arbitrary matter?</p>

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 113
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

<p><strong>Marta</strong><br>

My intention when proposing this thread was not to eliminate or diminish our pleasure as photographers, which in my opinion should be kept in its plenitude. So if you prefer not to think about the "magic"in itself, no problem - just keep shooting!</p>

<p><strong>Julie</strong><br>

If an object may vanish from a picture just because it does not stay still during the shutter aperture, it does not mean that a photograph is not <em>a kind of a short</em> movie (please mind the "kind" word in my original post). Even in a traditional movie, if an object just passes in front of the video camera fast enough it will not be capture. It is all a matter of proportions, not concepts.</p>

<p><strong>John</strong><br>

I totally agree that capturing is different from recording and all this debate should be about the capacity of photographs to really capture a single moment and the difficulties we, as human beings limited by our senses, have in understand such peculiarities.</p>

Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>A.N....</p>

<p>No photograph, in any manafestation, records a timeless instant. As photographers, we all know this.</p>

<p> More importantly, no timeless "instant" can exist, even as a concept, since it cannot be recorded, perceived, or even minimally understood without passage of time.</p>

<p>Photographs record phenomena in time, require passage of time. Neural synapses function similarly: electro-chemically in time...therefore concepts function in time in essentially the same way film or a sensor or a synapse does...taking perhaps a billionth of a second, an eternity.</p>

<p>The closest we have come, even alluding to an instant, may be on the Sistine Ceiling:</p>

<p>Yaweh: "Zap, you're it!" </p>

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>"Is a photograph a copy of a real subject or is it a copy of a representation? Let's debate!"</p>

<p>Why bother? It's not important, and it'll end up in the usual worthless waffle... The important thing is to take a few snaps and chuck 'em up on the net for friends to look/laugh at. That's what photography is all about... True story...</p>

Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>A Nunes,</p>

<p>Can you explain or limit what it is that is meant by "event" of which you say a photo is made of "several" and also, what is "a single frame" of which a photo is "never"?</p>

<p>Felix,</p>

<p>I think the film might have gotten a bit mouldy after the first hundred years, but sticking with theoretical film, can you explain "philosophically different from an "instant"" for me? What is this "instant" and/or, what would be philosophically the same as an "instant"?</p>

<p>(I am only half-serious but I would like to know what it is that could/would/should be considered a "single frame" or an "instant". If such a thing is not possible in any format (visual, conceptual, or mechanical) then what are we discussing here?)</p>

Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>Julie, I think the discussion was framed, and then modified, around two notions. The first involved "capture" of something that was casually called a "moment." As in HCB's "decisive moment" perhaps. The second notion was essentially a semantic error, attributing mistaken understanding by others (not by A.N, of course) of the word "instant." </p>

<p>A.N evidently presumed someone here would find one or the other meaningful in relation to photography. But I think he failed to make that case: he assumed that, unlike himself, someone here would believe something that none of us do believe...</p>

<p>I think it's great when we have the guts to risk expression of ideas that may be mistakes.</p>

<p>If our imaginations are so feeble that all we can do is call ideas and discussions "worthless," we're wasting oxygen. </p>

<p>A.N posed some ideas: I don't think they work. Disagreement is often more valuable than agreement.</p>

Link to comment
Share on other sites

<blockquote>

<p>Is a photograph a copy of a real subject or is it a copy of a representation?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I don't think there is any black and white here. I remember being at a workshop once, and an older gentleman heckled the instructor (a professional nature photographer) because in one of the instructor's photos he used a wide angle lens, which changed the way the clouds in the photo looked. The older gentleman acted like it was a crime to have any type of distortion in a photo because "that isn't the way it really looked". The photographer answered (and I'm not going to try and paraphrase here) that it was more important to him to convey a certain emotion/feeling than to document a scene exactly as it was.<br /> <br /> On the other hand, I would hope that photo journalists who are reporting make the best effort they can to create a copy of the real subject. Understanding that it really is impossible to do this because the lens and eye don't see the same, I don't think a standard could be set. I would really hope that a PJ's goal was to document and not to make art.</p>

<p> </p>

<blockquote>

<p>In the end, you look through the viewfinder, adjust your settings, snap an "image", and either sell it or show it to your friends.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Or the other option....delete it because it wasn't any good.</p>

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

<blockquote>

<p>"You can't move through movement. You can't travel through travel..."<br>

How very profound... :) Cheers for giving us a bloody good laugh here... :)</p>

</blockquote>

<p>And funnily enough that was exactly the point ( although not in yours ' everything is a worthless joke ' manner ). To expose the absurd validity of ' moving through time ' or ' the passage of time ' because time=movement / change and not some entity outside of it, something that one can actually travel / move / change through, even though the mind percieves it as such, making it substantially very real. Hence my you can't travel through travel, which makes the absurdity of it pretty much obvious, demonstrated now by your ' bloody good laugh ' at it. Thanks for making my point...: )</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>Julie, I think the discussion was framed, and then modified, around two notions. The first involved "capture" of something that was casually called a "moment." ....</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>John, I believe the OP's main question was :<strong>" Is a photograph a copy of a real subject or is it a copy of a representation? "</strong>. True enough, I was the first to answer and didn't immediately answered that specific one, as I wanted to delve into the abstraction or the ' unreality ' of time, which probably wasn't a good idea as first answer in staying on topic. Later I did provided some obvious photo links dealing with the copy / representation question in photography. Then Fred Goldsmith provided a historical view of photography and it's relationship with realist painting to impressionism. I thought he did provided an interesting quote in context to the question, but you yourself replied rather strangely to it. The OP didn't replied at all. So now we're discussing the form in which the content is being discussed, and not discussing the content. Paul must be having a bloody good laugh about the worthlessness of it all.</p>

<p> </p>

Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>"Is a photograph a copy of a real subject or is it a copy of a representation?"<br>

Unfortunately, photography is a very poor instrument for capturing 'a moment of eternity' compared to our actual experience. When you are experiencing an event, you not only see what is happening visibly, but also hear the sounds, smell the odors, feel the heat/cold/rain/wind/pain, etc., etc. You are aware what happened earlier and what might come next. You are an active participant in a changing 4-dimensional environment, with time as the 4th dimension. Time is not just a perception, it is as real an entity as distance and mass, and it has nothing to do with how it is measured, with clocks or shutter speed. A camera only records an infinitesimal fraction of the immense information on a two diensional film negative or digital sensor. While it is better than nothing as a visual record, it would be a far cry to call it a good representation of the moment, and calling it a copy of reality is absurd.</p>

Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>Paul<br>

If you don't bother about philosophycal issues, I politely ask you: what are you doing in a forum like that? Just stay in the Gallery area of photo.net looking and laughing....</p>

Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>All<br /> To those who are trying to take my proposition and have a high level debate over the questions, I'd like to apologize for my reaction above to Paul's post.<br /> Let's go back to where we should stay and remind the very beginning of our discussion. As Phylo mentioned the main question was if a photograph is a copy of a real subject or if it is a copy of a representation. Implicit in my question is an affirmation that a photograph is a copy, which I think the majority here agree.<br /> Before asking that, I've mentioned time and its relationship with photographs just to make a point whether our senses are capable of capturing the "real" or if, even in our daily activities, all we face and fell are representations of the real objects, as described by several philosophers - and that photographs, with its intrinsic limitations, would only demonstrate that.<br /> I really think we can extract very good insights from several posts above. Let's keep exploring!</p>
Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>"Implicit in my question is an affirmation that a photograph is a copy, which I think the majority here agree."</p>

<p>Alexandre--</p>

<p>That a photograph is a copy is, indeed, implicit in your question, but I'm not sure I agree with your characterization of the majority.</p>

<p>I would say that photos can be copies, but many are not, nor are they trying to be.</p>

<p>Back to painting for a sec. The Impressionists did not <em>copy</em> nature, they were more concerned withsome of those <em>qualities</em> you spoke of when referring to the apple: color, texture, light, movement. I wouldn't say that Monet didn't paint haystacks. He did. But I don't think he painted copies of haystacks. The Expressionists, rather than bringing out the qualities in things, explored their emotional relationships to them. Through more overt distortions, among other methods, they expressed their <em>experience</em> of things, of reality, if you will.</p>

<p>A photographer can as easily approach his medium impressionistically or expressionistically, surrealistically or even nihilistically. In those cases, I don't think it would be fair to say he or she is making copies.</p>

<p>Here's a recent photo of mine. It was taken with a slow shutter speed and flash while the main subject moved. What's it a copy of? While there are recognizable elements from the scene, had I wanted a copy, I would have set my camera very differently: http://www.photo.net/photo/8717793</p>

<p>Plato thought painting, drawing, sculpture were copies/representations, therefore far-removed from the Forms, Being, that which he thought was Real. But Aristotle recognized the significance of artifice in the ability of humans to express and process their feelings, to show empathy with nature, provide moral insight and learning. Aristotle still fell into the "representative" camp of art, but paved the way toward less strict adherence to imitation and copies and more understanding of the subjective elements at play.</p>

<p>You seem to be suggesting a Platonic view of photography, interesting to consider and reasonable because of the mechanisms and raw materials used. Ultimately, I don't think the unqualified statement that a photograph is a copy (if, by that, you mean to exclude the recognition that many are not) does justice to the full visual and expressive power of photographs.</p>

We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>Phylo, the thread's headline and the bold-faced OT referred to "capture" and "moment," and <em>had nothing to do with "real," "copy," or "representation." The OT asked two questions, one of them direct and coherent and the other less so (perhaps a language issue).</em><br>

<em></em><br>

<strong><em>"</em>Capturing the moment or thinking you are?"</strong><br>

"...<strong> trying to freeze time and capture a moment of eternity"</strong><br>

<strong></strong><br>

I might have mentioned the OT's partial incoherence, but chose to comment only on the emphasized quotations...the subsequent light-typefaced text about "copy" etc didn't relate to the thread's headline or the initial bold-faced quotation, and little or no effort was made to relate it to photography....whereas we all know that "captured moment" is a conventional photographic metaphor. </p>

Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>"time=movement / change"</p>

<p>To me, "time" = state/condition/position. Therefore, change/movement = change of "time".</p>

<p>By my trusty little definition, change/movement requires time, but time doesn't require change/movement (or human perception, of course...). If we think of a strange, hypothetical universe where absolutely nothing whatosever changes or moves, there's still "time"... It just that time never changes there... Time does, however, require something to actually exist, in order for it to possess a state/condition/position at all.</p>

<p>Hope that's enough worthless waffle for the OP... :)</p>

<p><br /></p>

Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>Ah, alas, we humans tend to take ourselves too seriously. Sometimes the art and the enjoyment comes from not knowing and letting it be what it is. I think this sort of conversation is best left to the French, who have the "Je ne sais quoi" needed and quantities of wine able to sufficiently deal with it.</p>

<p>Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.</p>

<p>Mais, je pense, donc je suis stupide!</p>

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>I could not get to your web site to see what you mean Instead it asked me .Did you mean: <a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1C1GGLS_enUS291US303&ei=WQABSoeSFp-0yQWF7LGXCA&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=1&ct=result&cd=1&q=www.annesphotography.com&spell=1">www.<strong><em>annesphotography</em></strong>.com</a> Top 2 results shown' And thats a wedding Photos Shop.<P> To me a photograph is a static image of a subject for that specific moment in time. Faster the shutter smaller the moment in time and records the fraction of expression (movement). In the end you may like / dislike or feel neutral to your effort.</p>
Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>Personally I like "moment in time". Though there may be a trace or more of movement in a 1/125 snap we still experience a frozen captured moment for all intent and purposes when viewing a sharp image. Any deeper thought on the subject hurts my head and doesn't change the content of the photograph one bit.</p>
Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>This is a fascinating subject. In my humble opinion, Photography is about capturing a moment, realizing a vision or expressing yourself. They all have different ways of showing themselves. One mans trash is another mans goldmine. It's still a very subjective field as far as one persons likes or dislikes of another's representation of a vision that the one pushing the button is seeing/feeling. Many are capable of getting the "shot", Most are not able conveying or presenting a picture that speaks for itself. That said, One photo can make a photograher.<br>

Keep shooting</p>

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>Julie H:<br>

...can you explain "philosophically different from an "instant"" for me? What is this "instant" and/or, what would be philosophically the same as an "instant"?<br>

Nothing would be philosophically the same as an "instant" in this sense – which is sort of the point.<br>

You say you're "only half serious", and I <em>know</em> you're very aware that philosophy and physics both posit "ideal" entitities which are dimensionless. Classical physics is based on the dimensionless particle; classical and analytic geometry are based on the dimensionless point, the perfectly one dimensional line, the perfectly two dimensional plane. Nobody expects to actually met any of those things, but they are nevertheless fundamental to definition of theoretical frameworks. The "instant" is the temporal equivalent: a theoretical dimensionless moment of zero duration. (A Nunes was being poetic rather than literal when he said "not even mathematics can explain".)<br>

An analogy is absolute zero temperature... a theoretical state which we only approach ever more closely.<br>

John rightly talked of normal usage; and behind that normal usage lies the suconscious assumption that most photographs are taken in a duration of time so short as to differ in no signficant way from a dimensionless instant. In most cases, subjectively, for any shorp photograph, that assumption works – but is not, if we're being precise, true. Philosophically, as I know you are well aware, there is a big difference between a dimensionless entity and an extremely small one; practically, there may well not be.</p>

Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>

<p > </p>

<p > </p>

<p ><strong>This</strong> <strong>has</strong> <strong>been</strong> <strong>dealt</strong> <strong>with</strong> <strong>almost</strong> <strong>a</strong> <strong>century</strong> <strong>ago,</strong> <strong>go</strong> <strong>and</strong> <strong>read</strong> <strong>Henri Bergson</strong> <strong>on cine</strong>-<strong>time</strong> (<strong>he</strong> <strong>deals</strong> <strong>with</strong> <strong>shutters</strong> <strong>and</strong> <strong>successive</strong> <strong>moments</strong>) <strong>in <i>Creative</i></strong><i> </i><strong><i>Evolution and Matter</i></strong><i> </i><strong><i>and</i></strong><i> </i><strong><i>Memory</i></strong>. <strong>Walter</strong> <strong>Benjamin</strong> <strong>then</strong> <strong>critiques</strong> <strong>Bergson</strong> <strong>in</strong> <strong>his</strong> <strong>own</strong> <strong>essay <i>On</i></strong><i> </i><strong><i>Some</i></strong><i> </i><strong><i>Motifs</i></strong><i> </i><strong><i>in</i></strong><i> </i><strong><i>Baudelaire </i>which is also worth a read. </strong></p>

</p>

Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>Getting back to one of the original questions regarding making an image of a real thing or its representation. Isn't this the very thing astronomers deal with in every photograph they make? Light travels so far to get to their cameras that they take for granted that they are seeing the Universe as it was many light years ago. Yet they persist in believing that the images they get are trustworthy representations of real things. If a person could actually go to the source to see the celestial objects for himself at the right time they think he would find that the photograph is a dependable tool. Why shouldn't the same thing apply when the time light takes to go from subject to camera is so short it might as well be instant?</p>

<p>If you believe that the subject of the photograph is actually an illusion, sometimes a very convincing one, why would anyone take it more seriously than a light amusement? As if to say, "The view I have of the world around me is undependable. The things I think I see are never there, and I'm always tripping over the unseen things that get in my way!" In many ways this depiction is true enough of one's interior mental construction of things, but the world external to us that our bodies live in seems to be made of more solid stuff. It persists and has an existance of its own. I do not believe that I will ever in my life find a Great Lake where Mt. Rushmore ought to be.</p>

<p>Perhaps the question ought to be phrased, "How can the light reaching my camera be any more or less real than my subject itself?" Does light do a good job of transferring the appearance of something to me? Does the photographic process of image-making do a good job of replicating the subject? Can I trust the result? Doesn't this suggest that all photos have this risk of capture uncertainty built into them? If they're all the same then should I even be concerned about it? (How would I even know enough to suspect that a convincing photo isn't real? - BTW Isn't creating the illusion of reality out of nothing making Hollywood a lot of money in many movies?)</p>

<blockquote>

<p><strong>"To reach the limit that not even mathematics can explain and trying to freeze time and capture a moment of eternity - that's what photography means to me and this is the reason I'm always trying to see things as unstable as they are."</strong></p>

</blockquote>

<p>Mathematics explains many things in a systematic way, but you don't have to look very far to find ordinary things it can't touch. For example, why does my wife get so upset when I forget her birthday? Futhermore mathematics needs structure. "2 + something gives you a result" is not a proposition that can be solved without first reconstructing the expression into something that can be manipulated using the tools and principles mathematicians employ. In short, the limits of mathematics are everywhere around us every day in our ordinary lives.</p>

<p><strong>Chaos is presence without explanation</strong></p>

<p>Perhaps another word for instability is chaos. The OP goes on a bit about reality and such, but he doesn't tell us what his own quote really says. I have noticed in my daily life that most of the things I find and see around me are simply there. They all have stories to tell, of course, about what they are made of and how they got there, but these stories are almost never evident. Ordinary utilitarian objects occupy so much of the world around me that I tend not to notice them, but they are everywhere just the same. Suppose for a minute that I stop to ask simple questions such as what do they do and where did they come from? Who thought of doing things with an object like this anyway? What knucklehead put it in my way? You can see that simply by paying attention to ordinary things you can have and appreciate the experience of chaos around you. This can be quite profound because it will knock your illusions of controlling things in your life right out of you. Clearly there has always been and continues to be a lot going on the world without my knowledge and consent.</p>

<p>As for seeing things as being "as unstable as they are," how could you not? No matter how hard you search, where would you find something <em>stable</em>, ie. something that doesn't come from chaos? What's so remarkable about something so ordinary? Ordinary as dirt - and even that's not stable in any way I can truly depend on. Aren't you being a little pretentious about this? I suppose the fact is that, whether you like it or not, things are what they are - at least as far as your camera is concerned.</p>

Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>Felix,</p>

<p>If we go to "normal usage", then I think that most photography and most art is <em>considered to be</em> a copy of a real subject. That's using homo sapiens consensus attitude as our yardstick. Both "time" and "real" are idealized abstracts for purposes of this discussion. We are settling for "normal usage," not something more rigourous such as this description by <a href="http://www.edge.org/q2008/q08_4.html#tegmark ">Max Tegmark</a>:</p>

<p> </p>

<blockquote>

<p>The ultimate triumph of physics would be to start with a mathematical description of the world from the "bird’s eye view" of a mathematician studying the equations (which are ideally simple enough to fit on her T-shirt) and to derive from them the "frog’s eye view" of the world, the way her mind subjectively perceives it. However, there is also a third and intermediate "consensus view" of the world. From your subjectively perceived frog perspective, the world turns upside down when you stand on your head and disappears when you close your eyes, yet you subconsciously interpret your sensory inputs as though there is an external reality that is independent of your orientation, your location and your state of mind. It is striking that although this third view involves both censorship (like rejecting dreams), interpolation (as between eye-blinks) and extrapolation (like attributing existence to unseen cities) of your frog’s eye view, independent observers nonetheless appear to share this consensus view. Although the frog’s eye view looks black-and-white to a cat, iridescent to a bird seeing four primary colors, and still more different to a bee seeing polarized light, a bat using sonar, a blind person with keener touch and hearing, or the latest robotic vacuum cleaner, all agree on whether the door is open.</p>

<p>This reconstructed consensus view of the world that humans, cats, aliens and future robots would all agree on is not free from some of the above-mentioned shared illusions. However, it is by definition free from illusions that are unique to biological minds, and therefore decouples from the issue of how our human consciousness works.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>We are specifically <em>not</em> interested in the "decoupled" view in this thread? Right?</p>

<p>That makes things much simpler. As I said above, <em>if </em>that's how it's framed, I think much of art is a copy of the real (loosely defined).</p>

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now



×
×
  • Create New...