Is the real not good enough?

<p>Pierre,</p>

<p>Very true. Its like writing a simple trip report compared to writing a book. When I was a student, I had to print pictures of fellow students during a teachers strike and simply produced straight prints. Like the writing example, you can do darkroom work at any level of interest and creativity. Whatever suits. </p>

<p>It may be true that individuals (including some <em>very</em> famous ones) were and are making straight prints ("You Push the Button, Let Kodak do The Rest"), but manipulation in photographic printing was extensive and common among professionals and amateurs alike back in the 1800's.Things like printing in skies, moving trees, hills, inserting and removing people, head swaps, backgrounds, etc.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Having read all through the thread, one quote stands out:</p>

<blockquote>

<p>I need to defend this idea until I will find a better definition. It's just a philosophical inquire.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Antonio, if you do an inquiry, don't defend your idea. If you want to defend your idea, don't ask others for their opinion. You keep making this thread go in circles this way. It does ask a nice question, but now, it keeps coming back to your view all the time. It's not doing the discussion, the people who share their insights and ideas, and free flow of ideas, any justice. If people disagree with you, it does not mean they did not understand you. It means they disagree.</p>

<p>Like some aired before, the premise is wrong. What is reality, and if it exists, who defines what it is anyway?If you rephrase it to 'the essence of things', nothing changes. Do things have an essence? Are they inmutable entities, or is the eye of the beholder the defining factor?</p>

<p>The extend of manipulation, the ease of doing it, possible ethical debate on alterations, whether it affects the ability to be art of not - it has got nothing to do with reality, essence or capturing something 'as it was'. The original image is not reality, it is an image. Even a clean straight print is not reality - the photographer already morphed it into what he wanted to see while framing the image.<br>

Or a nasty simple example: let a colourblind person take a photo, and no matter what, the result will not be what (s)he saw. You would need to manipulate to make the picture fit their perception of reality again.</p>

<p>What's real anyway? there is not blunt reality in photography, it's all about your prespective; how you choose your angle, your frame and how to approach your subject. Photography is how you manipulate the visual realm surrounding you. I spent a lot of time neglecting digital advancements, and focusing on minimally edited photographs, however you should always present your work in the best possible way even with manipulation, old days photographers, used tricks to edit their work with the available material and film evironment. Now when you display your work on the internet, it shows differently, you customize it to present it the way you think is best.<br>

But for me a heavily edited photograph with beautiful colors that look fake, bland portraits and simply technically correct images is something I can't react to. I accepted long ago that there are types of artists, one has a stronger point than the other, one is a spontaneous photographer with clever right on time shots, one is good with HDR, the other is a still life person, one is more oriented to graphics but what matters is the feel it gives.</p>

<p>It's a bit amusing to me how some of the earlier posts described subsequent modification of a latent image (whether sensor captured or on film) as something simply of technical intent - whether that is related to expanding the dynamic range, changing contrast, improving shadow or highlight detail, correcting colour casts, righting verticals or perspective, sharpening, removing noise or dust spots, or whatever.</p>

<p>Is there no room for a continued modification with an artistic intent? I don't mean by this the adding of clouds where there are none, or the removal of telephone polls or wires, but the modidfication of the image just as a painter might do in evolving his work in progress. Few worry about what brush size or type the painter uses, or the nature of medium or paint overlays, varnish type or methodology of obtaining a specific texture. Why then should we worry, first that a photograph is not seeking to represent reality, or secondly, that he uses the various means at his disposal for evolving the work beyond the initial capture. Its the result that counts, if the intention is art. As has been pointed out, art is not often some gross exaggeration of reality via Photoshop coloration (yes, the two can be the same in some rare cases).</p>

<p>.. if real is the documentary pic you're after, then sure, the pic is ' good enough '.<br>

..a camera is like an instrument (eg. musical) with which you compose, shoot, edit, create, output to your heart's desire.. as there are varied types of music, there are also varied types of photography. from simple color n white balanced realistic documentary pics to fine art aesthetic pleasing decor pics.<br>

..pick your potion,</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Van Gogh was an impressionist, not a realist. He painted in the style that was popular during his short lifetime (although, he was not popular himself).</p>

<p>Your photographs are your own. Do with them as you please. One person might be happy pushing digital editing to its creative limits. Another person might prefer only a dash of optimization. Who cares? We're all free to express our vision as we wish.</p>

<p><a href="../photodb/user?user_id=934135">P</a><a href="../photodb/user?user_id=934135">Phylo Dayrin</a><br>

"If the real <em>is </em>indeed good enough, than why take pictures at all, as photography is both an addition to and subtraction from the *real*. The real just isn't, it never was."</p>

<p>exactly. </p>

<p>Also, through its very definition, the term 'photography' has a broad spectrum of interpretation and allows for many genres, including 'visual arts' in the form of photo manipulation amongst others. A photograph can be about something else other than the reality of what it depicts. Photography in the form or reality and unrealistic interpretations of that reality can co-exist within the same definition</p>

<p>Dan, if nobody "cares" why shoot photos at all and especially why share them. Close down places like Photonet and leave "reality" to itself then - whatever that means. </p>

<p>I suggest that the OP read Art X's comment, as it expresses in an unconstrained and undeterministic manner what photography is, and should be, about. </p>

<p>Antonio,<br>

I can't count the number of times that I have been in an amazing location, feeling the wind on my skin, and watching dust motes float like fairies through columns of sunlight that filter through a living green canopy. I feel overwhelmed with the beauty of the scene and I think to myself how I would love to share that moment with someone. I pull out my camera and take a few shots. I get home and have a look at them and the disappointment hits. What I captured was nothing like what I saw at the time. It seems smaller and flat and less alive. When I close my eyes and remember the scene chances are that even my memories are colored by my emotional attatchement to the place or time or situation. There are editing techniques and software that allow me to manipulate a photograph so that the end result more closely matches what I saw in my minds eye and allow me to convey more of what I felt or saw or experienced at the time.<br>

Maybe when I look at a rusted out old truck I see a kind of beauty in it. When you look at one you might see just a used peice of metal. Perhaps by the time I am done editing and saturating and manipulating the photograph I took of the old truck I may be able to convey to you what it is that I see when I look at it. Everybody sees and experiences what is real and their vision of it is colored or clouded or whatever by who they are and how they feel and what they've experienced. What photography does is help give us more control over how we wish to convey an image. You may wish to show a thing in as natural a state as possible, under the best conditions you can, and hope that people see the beauty in it. Someone may want to show the stark simplicity of a buildings lines without the buildings or people around it competeing for the viewers attention, or boost all the colors of a carnival shot so the viewer sees a dream like scene that was closer to what the photographer expericened while he/she was there. Is one method more right or valuable than another. I don't think so. The more diversity we have in photography the more eyes we have to see the world through.</p>

<p>Just a note <em>re</em> Cartier-Bresson. His printer complained constantly that the negatives were terrible, and that it took hours to get a decent image out of them. I suspect that most of the people praising the 'purity' of film photography have never been in a darkroom (same for the 'SOOC' school of digital photographers). Steve McCurry is often invoked as the paragon of the purist technique. He shot Kodachrome, and just printed it straight. What does 'printed it straight' mean? It means that <em>National Geographic's</em> master prepress technicians knew exactly how to get the <em>Geographic</em> style of vivid color out of that particular film. McCurry also carefully chose whether or not to blur his backgrounds. When you look at someone a few feet in front of a wall, does the wall dissolve into a blur of color?</p>

<p><strong>Les</strong><br>

Bresson's negatives were not all bad. Some of them were not perfectly exposed because often he had to shoot fast without thinking in order to get the moment he was always searching for. <a href="http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2010/08/voja-mitrovic-part-ii.html">LINK</a><br>

<strong>Nicole</strong><br>

I like your words (and your portfolio as well)</p>

 

<p>Sorry for weighing in so late and for not having the time to read the previous posts.</p>

<p>Indexicality: The following definition of "indexical" comes from <a href="http://www.philosophypages.com/dy/">http://www.philosophypages.com/dy/</a></p>

<p>"An expression whose <a href="http://www.philosophypages.com/dy/m5.htm#meaning">meaning</a> depends upon the context in which it is employed. Thus, for example, in the sentence, "<em>I came back from there an hour ago</em>," the words "<em>I</em>" and "<em>there</em>," along with the phrase "<em>an hour ago</em>," are all indexicals—the person, place, and time to which they refer is different on each occasion of their use."</p>

<p>The indexicality of a photograph simply amounts to the photograph's pointing to something other than itself. This does not, by any means, establish the reality of the subject. Moreover, this entire thread begs a huge question - - the nature of reality. </p>

<p> </p>

<p><em>"The art in photography does not lay in the technical and visual aspect, but in the mental and emotional process the photographer does when he visualizes and takes a shot. That's why it is not "visual" art, because it is "emotional" and "mental" art of the photographer itself capturing a real scene that should be the same for everybody but it is not."</em><br>

Visualising and taking a shot can indeed embody emotional and mental, but what the above argument very conveniently ignores is the visual (and technical) aspect that comes later when the person then transforms that captured image into something more, which is what is possible in the black and white darkroom (possible also with colour, of course) and what costiturtes the making of visual art in some cases. As said above, "many of the "best" images ever made were made with manual film cameras and a huge amount of manipulation in printing."<br>

It is also possible in the lightroom, although the transformation does not necessarily lead to visual art.</p>

<p>Antonio, I think that the bulk of "unreal" images being made today are the result of the quest for instant impact at the expense of subtlety, artistic longevity, or qualities inspiring thoughtfulness, reflection, new ideas, etc. Images with the combination of highly saturated color, simple but strong graphics, controlled shadows and highlights, and a tonal baseline of a rich black have a major "wow" factor, can be powerfully attention-grabbing and often "attractive" to many people. If they are taken too far, however, they really become cartoonish caricatures of the scene or subject, and if one were to hang such a print on the living room wall, one might well find that the image overstays its welcome rather quickly. This approach to image making still requires decent seeing and visualization, as well as knowledge of certain formulaic techniques, but it seems to me that it often lacks meaning and conceptual depth.</p>

<p>To me, the photographs that have true merit are those that, whether visually impactful or subtle and quiet, also encourage reflection and thoughtfulness, promote new ideas, reveal certain truths or interesting conceptual perspectives, etc. In other words, without being trite or cliché they prioritize the philosophical, while being, to varying degrees, conventionally attractive or repulsive, real or unreal, and descriptive or abstract.</p>

 

<p>Sorry, I did not read a good part of the discussion but I am going to state my opinion about the question.<br /> As Ansel Adams says, photography, in its first step is making something other than reality. Because we are at least mapping a 3 dimensional work to a 2 dimensional piece of paper which is a changed reality and not the same as the original at all.<br /> Secondly, I cannot understand the difference between a camera and photoshop ! aren't both tools made by human being to produce art ? I believe each person <strong>who has been trained about the fundamentals of art </strong>should not feel any limitation of using those tools in order to create a piece of art. your limit is your imagination. Why can should I rely on camera and not on photoshop ?! why not reverse !?<br /> Cheers,</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Dan, if nobody "cares"</p>

</blockquote>

<p>That's not what I said, is it? I didn't make a blanket statement that no one cares about photography, only that it doesn't matter where one's work falls on the realism continuum (ultra-realistic to hyper-impressionistic).</p>

<p>A few days ago, Mr. Bassi wrote,"That's why editing is superficial, IMO. The artistic process happens BEFORE the shutter is released, not after."</p>

<p> In my opinion, the artistic process happens between the ears and can occur at any time. For that matter, art also happens between the ears and can occur at any time. Notice that I have differentiated the two. they are not one and the same in my opinion. One is what the artist does alone, the other is what the art consumer and the artist do together.</p>

<p> I have produced very edit sparse images and heavily edited images. Both according to what I was feeling at the time of creation. I don't believe one was created as a result of the 'artistic process', and one was not. Sometimes, what I was feeling at time of image capture is not what I was feeling at the time of presentation. And sometimes what I was feeling at the time of artistic consumption is different from both. ALL of that is part of the artistic process, and ALL of that changes the minute you throw the art consumer into the equaiton.</p>

<p>In some ways, this is a futile argument, but it is an interesting argument nonetheless; and one, I suspect, will go on forever. For me though, art is a form of communication and like all communications, it is a two way street, what the sender means, what the reciever percieves and sends back to the original sender, and what HE or SHE percieves. In a sense, art and communictions is an endless feedback loop and all of the loop affects later iterations of that loop. <br /><br />Maybe this forum thread is a type of art!</p>