"What Makes A REAL Photograph" (according to ForesthillFilmLab)

I suppose defining what a "real photograph" actually is would help in making the determination in what is or is not real in the many methods of photography. However it's not an issue that is important to me as a photographer.. I tend to think about what is rewarding to me in my quest to obtain nice photos in the world. Currently I enjoy medium format film photography and cell phone photography. Both camera's are just awesome for different reasons.

The guy wants to be Ken Rockwell, but lacks sense of humor.

Irrelevancy is alive and thriving on this thread.

I'm in the "who cares?" camp. If someone wants to claim that "real" photography can only be done with an 11x14 wet plate, fine.

On "The Simpsons" TV show every time a questionable topic comes up a woman runs around saying, "What about the children? How will this affect the children?" If they wanted to change the street parking from diagonal to parallel parking she go around yelling that. But that is off topic. As for the main topic, I don't care. Besides, "photography" is an archaic word. I prefer "picture taking" as in "I done got me my pitchure took."

I would say it is quite a stretch to say that digital photography is not real photography, of course it is.

 

However for people like me who still DO shoot a lot of film, mostly in medium format, I will categorically say that for those of use who started doing photography in the early 70's like I did, when there were no such things as auto ANYTHING (except for auto-diaphragms on lenses) we had to be much better and far more knowledgeable photographers to produce outstanding images. I am floored by how little so many "Generation D" photographers actually know about the technical side of photography. They usually shrug it off and ask "why do I have to know that?". Because, God forbid, you might actually have to focus MANUALLY. To be a truly great photographer you have to be well versed not only on the artistic side of the craft but the technical side as well. Ask a "Generation D" photographer what hyperfocal distance is and how you use it and watch their eyes glaze over and their EEG trace go flat.

The guy wants to be Ken Rockwell, but lacks sense of humor.

I was just about to say that he makes Ken Rockwell look sane and knowledgeable.

 

But on a more serious note, it's one thing to have your own opinions, it's another to aggressively present your opinions and bigotry as facts. Travis is doing nothing to help film photography. In fact, if anything, he's hurting it by making the film community(especially the ones who shoot film exclusively) look like an exclusive clique of badly-dressed millennials. Stuff like that makes me want to swear off film forever...

We should all care, because Mortz's exposition is a good example of non-critical thinking. Today, in the world of politics and commerce, we are exposed to lots of statements that are inherently fallacious, and many people believe them to be true statements because they have not learned about logical fallacies and critical thinking.

 

Mortz's argument is based on at least three fallacies (two of which are closely related).

 

Argument from silence (argumentum ex silentio) – where the conclusion is based on the absence of evidence, rather than the existence of evidence. He justifies his position by limiting his references to material published before digital photography existed or had become widespread.

 

Etymological fallacy – which reasons that the original or historical meaning of a word or phrase is necessarily similar to its actual present-day usage. Mortz ignores the broadening of the meaning of "photography". Words are not now and never have been static in meaning. This is closely related to metonymy:

 

Metonymy – Ignoring the contiguity between concepts. Animal horns were once used to make musical instruments. Now such instruments are often made of brass but are stilled called horns although they do not contain any animal horn. Likewise, photography, which once was based on wet-plates or film now uses light-sensitive sensors. However the concept of capturing images by collecting light on a photosensitive substrate is common to both technologies.

 

What Mortz does is build what appears to be a logical argument on a fallacious foundation that may easily dupe a careless or non-critical person.

 

Obviously, Mortz's misuse of logic is of very little import in the grand scope of things. However, in politics and commerce, the inability to separate statements based on reasoned logic from those based on fallacious logic is very dangerous and can cause us great harm.

 

Ben, Mortz is of no consequence. I could not care less about what he thinks or says. I champion everyone's right to think and speak as they wish. Everyone has the right to be stupid and irrelevant. It is not my job in life to point out how stupid or irrelevant they are. This is one reason so many prefer the companionship of a dog over people.

It is not my job in life to point out how stupid or irrelevant they are.

Agreed.

 

As a matter of fact, Mortz would likely laugh if not snivel at the specter of his arguments actually being dissected. Their significance is not in terms of their validity, but rather in terms of their efficacy at being provocative and self promoting.

 

This is the 21st century where, in so many cases, logic and truth have given way to bombast and bullying.

Well how someone defines "real photograph" makes no difference to me. I just dont care. However he at least came up with his idea and supported it with his old books and such. Outside of unsavory comments about his person knowbody has presented a reasonable rebuttel

Ross, did you read Dr. Ben's post above? What would qualify as a more considered and reasonable rebuttal than that?

Ross, did you read Dr. Ben's post above? What would qualify as a more considered and reasonable rebuttal than that?

 

 

No I had not read it but I just went back. I would say that he made an attempt at a rebuttel but it was more of a discredit to the kid's point while using language intended to impress rather then to communicate. . Dr. Ben did not provide us with his logical and critical thinking to demonstrate what a "real photograph" actually means or is. .

 

I think the main lesson here to be learned is that the kid has an unpopular opinion among digital photographers and in this thread the members have responded with insults and name calling rather then demonstrating what a "real photograph" actually is and why a digital file is in fact a "real photograph".

 

However I shoot film and digital and they eventually wind up as an inkjet print. Real or Fake I enjoy them. It's just taking pictures is all. I figure family members can check them out for a couple hundred years if they feel like it or they can toss them in the fireplace. My hard drives will quit working or get lost.

Edited April 27, 2017 by rossb

Ross, the point I've been trying to make is that the debate over what is a "real" photograph is a distraction and not important to me, so it would be a little disingenuous of me to make a case for what I believe is a real photograph when what I believe is that the debate itself is the problem and I won't play what I consider to be a fool's game of defining what a "real photograph" is. I'll let others speak for themselves, but I sense from many of the comments that it's not the particular argument that's at issue as much as a general tiring over such ultimately nonsensical and pointlessly divisive debates.

 

My understanding of the word "rebuttal" is that it's a refutation, which is what Ben offered. And he did it with, to me, unquestionable critical advantage. A rebuttal may include, but is not necessarily, the putting forth of a different or personal position on the issue as much as it is a denial of an argument already put forth. A rebuttal is precisely what you say it's not. A rebuttal, in fact, does discredit an opposing point of view without having to put forth an alternative.

Why are we doing this?

 

I do think that is an appropriate question to a discussion that simply repeats essentially similar arguments going back two centuries.

 

So, yes, I do think my invoking of Godwin's Law was timely.

I use and enjoy both equally albeit differently. When using film with the goal of printing in the darkroom, I feel 100% like I am engaging in photography in it's most accurate form. With digital I am producing digital "images" that can give the viewer the same emotional reaction as a darkroom print.

 

Some 10 years ago this kind of argument mattered to me more than it does now. I'm so happy to be earning a living shooting both that I just can't slam either when they play so damn nice together.

Fred when you say stuff I always listen. However the thread is about name calling and insults towards the kid. I do not want to call a fellow photographer insulting names because he has an opinion that differs from mine. Anyway I am not going to post again. Good luck.

Never mind this film/digital debate. I am still trying to figure out which is better - Canon or Nikon.

I am still trying to figure out which is better - Canon or Nikon.

Luckily, it seems everyone else has made up their minds on that issue :rolleyes:

Travis Mortz is perfectly correct. Photography is making pictures out of light-sensitive materials. Other picture-making methods such as painting, drawing, and contemporary digital processes do not make pictures out of light-sensitive materials. Different is not the same.

 

Digital picture-making, insofar as it delivers hardcopy, is technology assisted realist painting or drawing. The parallels between paintings and digi-graphs are remarkable.

 

Both start with an illuminated subject being imaged by a lens onto a megapixel sensor. The sensor can be in the back of a camera or in the back of a human eye. The eye sensor is called a retina and it runs to about 100 megapixels though not all pixels are equal. Some are rods and some are cones.

 

The camera sensor and the retina are both transducers and they transform the real optical image that falls on them into a stream of electrical pulses that is sent up a cable. The camera cable is a wire. The eye cable is the optic nerve.

 

The pattern of pulses is stored in a memory. It could be a computer memory made of doped silicon. Or it could be a biological memory made of neurones, axons, and dendrites.

 

A brain then edits the picture memory. Some things may be deleted, some added, or some rearranged. Several picture memories could be stitched together. Old and new memories could be used in entirely optional ways. The final picture memory formed as a result of processing is only arbitrarily related to the original real optical image that fell on the sensor.

 

Output is via a device that puts visible spots of paint on a substrate. The device could be an ink-jet printer controlled by a "printer driver". Or the device could be a painter's hand with a paint loaded brush in it. The "painter driver" is a set of skills that may take a few years of art-school to acquire.

 

Photography belongs to an entirely different class of picture making and is not a version of painting, drawing, or digi-graphy. The restricted class of methods that includes photography is based on direct physical interaction between subject and picture. Some other members of this class are death masks, life casts, brass rubbings, wax impressions, coal peels, and foot prints.

 

Painting, drawing, and digital methods are very versatile and can make pictures that look like anything. Sometimes they are used to make pictures that look like photographs.

I am sorry, I can't watch his moving talking digital picture file because it is not record on motion picture film with a player piano going in the room.

 

I can play the moving pictures purist card too. lol.

 

Now I will go back to my hobby of digitalimagegraphy using my strange image capture data converter box thingy. Do you think Canon, Sony, Nikon, Leica, Hassleblad... realize they no longer make photography cameras. lol.

 

Glad the nice young man schooled us all from a book written in 1923. It is on the internet, it must be true.

 

I wonder if he realizes by his logic that when he scans his photo to share over the internet, it is no longer a photo, it is only 1's and 0's in computer files. He should no longer call it a photo.

 

Opinions are like backsides, everyone has one. He is not hurting anyone.

Edited April 27, 2017 by Mark Keefer

Mark . . . LOL!

 

This now insipid debate is missing one important ingredient. Before defining what a "real photograph" is, I think it's incumbent upon us to define what "real" is. For, after all, how can we know what a real photo is before we know what is real?

 

Therefore, or as some of us prefer to say, ergo, in order to further participate in the discussion, each future contributor to the thread must submit a paper (typed and double-spaced, minimal use of white-out permitted, but none of this typing on a keyboard nonsense) of no less than 10 pages fully defining reality. I'll be submitting a freshman Philosophy paper I wrote under the influence of a preferred substance of that era about 46 years ago when I can dig it out from decades' worth of mighty fine dust.

 

Oh, and Maris, yours has to be written in Elizabethan English, preferred meter to be iambic pentameter.

The restricted class of methods that includes photography is based on direct physical interaction between subject and picture.

Say what? A direct physical interaction of the subject with the picture? That's what photography does/is? Can you expand on that a little please, as I am lost? All of a sudden the "photo-sensitive material" is replaced by a "direct physical interaction between the subject and the picture"? How is that interaction accomplished, I wonder?

 

"Digital photography" results from light impinging on a sensor creating an electrical signal that is processed to yield and image. "Real photography" uses light impinging on film to create a latent image by interacting with silver halide crytals (initiating a chemical reaction involving electron transfer); that latent image then needs to be developed in another chemical process to create the final image. Aside from the details in the two processes, I don't see a major difference here; the fundamental image creating step consists of light interaction with something that is photosensitive (in both cases, a camera is involved). The details how the image is then "fixed" to be presented are just that, details. No fundamental diffference means the entire discussion on digital vs real is pointless. If anything, then the digital process is more direct, avoiding the cumbersome chemical processes involved in film developing. I think the closer one examines the differences, the more similar the two become. One could even argue that digital also creates a "latent" image (the direct sensor output) that then needs to be "developed" to be visible to the human eye.

Edited April 28, 2017 by Dieter Schaefer

Darn 15 minute editing limit!

 

One argument one could make is that the digital sensor is reusable whereas the film sensor is not; IMHO that counts just as an disadvantage of film but not as a fundamental difference between the two (just demonstrating that film photography is the less direct way to a final image).

Darn 15 minute editing limit!

 

One argument one could make is that the digital sensor is reusable whereas the film sensor is not; IMHO that counts just as an disadvantage of film but not as a fundamental difference between the two (just demonstrating that film photography is the less direct way to a final image).

This isn't the first time Maris waxed poetically about how there's no such thing as digital photography. In a 2013 interview with The Large Format Blog in Australia:

 

"There is no such thing as digital photography. It's digital picture-making. Photography is the production of pictures out of light sensitive substances. Digital picture-making consumes no light sensitive substances; therefore not photography. And the thoughtless chorus of millions of digital picture-makers doesn't legitimise the "digital" equals "photography" fallacy. Aristotle listed this kind of fallacy in his perceptive analysis of informal fallacies. In philosophy it’s usually referred to as the argumentum ad populum fallacy."

Maris, you are hilarious!!

 

"eye cable" ... OMG!

 

Let me tell you a story. A few days back, I took a couple of pictures and left them in the camera without transferring to the computer. Now when I view them, the camera has edited my pictures and changed them completely. Modern digital cameras, go figure! Never would have happened with the good old film ones.

Edited April 28, 2017 by Supriyo