Age of digital photo art.

The only thing that is an impediment to me learning how to improve in the context of the great digital debate, is when post processing produces an image hardly obtainable through a baseline of camera use. It is simply a matter of being able to assess limits of various formats. Extensive manipulation beyond the camera makes that nearly impossible these days in cases where it is skillfully done. Chasing digital with film or trying to get from a digital camera what is produced with a computer program can be frustrating if you can’t establish a baseline for comparison.

“Photo doping” if you will.

 

Add to all of that, competing ego and sensitivity of all varying degree among folks who like “imaging”, and the debate is eternal.

The same software (PS) that was originally created to replace the darkroom and as one of the steps of sharing of photographer's work, became the force that is pushing photographer to the pool of "paint artists" (which is, probably, unconscious feeling of every photographer.) The digital pic is becoming just a blueprint for the photoshop product.

 

What you describe is referred to in the advertising art business as a "Photo Illustration" category. It was going gangbusters back in the film days in the '70's & '80's when I was a graphic artist thumbing through the list of art categories of paid entries that landed a spot in Communication Art magazine.

 

Instead of airbrushing, masking and darkroom tricks it's now done with 1's & 0's.

I think why digital is being perceived as it is in topics such as this is that the technology has made it easier for many to make images that are not formulated from within an art aesthetic viewpoint such as those with art training or a natural sensitivity to it.

 

The really dynamic looking images that seem to be massed produced by the same photographer seen online are being made or influenced by technologists who seek to make the technology only duplicate what they see or what they've been exposed to from pop culture, movies and graphic novels. It has changed the source of the motivation to create an image. Making images using digital technology is more of a novelty for the masses.

 

I found one of these technologists (mainly with a perspective sourced from the gaming and CGI community) from a link provided on another photography site.

 

Filmic Tonemapping Operators

 

Read the rest of those blogs which may teach some things on why we like film over digital and why it seems a lot of photos look the same.

marksmith said:

For a huge number of people like myself, we had some film, a camera, and books that taught us about filters, extended exposure, panning and such, but after we dropped the film off at the drug store or sent it in a mailer, the process was out of our hands. A simple matter of frame of reference. Simplicity has its appeal.

For me, in 1968 when I got into a a darkroom for the first time at age 18, I happily discovered a new world: I discovered I could used different contrast papers, control the exposure of the print, dodge and burn, crop, etc. I eagerly devoured Ansel Adam's The Print and The Negative. So for me and others like me, digital is simply an extension of what we were doing 50 years ago.

The only thing that is an impediment to me learning how to improve in the context of the great digital debate, is when post processing produces an image hardly obtainable through a baseline of camera use. ... Chasing digital with film or trying to get from a digital camera what is produced with a computer program can be frustrating if you can’t establish a baseline for comparison.

“Photo doping” if you will.

 

Add to all of that, competing ego and sensitivity of all varying degree among folks who like “imaging”, and the debate is eternal.

 

This shouldn't be an impediment to your progress. Once you know a heavily manipulated image or composite image, you decide which framework is best for you to work within. If you want to do what's commonly called "straight photography" you're not going to produce images of things that don't exist. And if you go with "illustration-enhanced photo design" you'll never get the immediacy of fast street photography.

 

There are different kinds of image making and they are not necessarily competing on the same playing fields.

Yes but the problem comes in when the “photo” looks too good to be real but might have been produced with no post production manipulation. Just how good is the best in any given format has grown ever more difficult to pin down when looking at what is out there.....

How important is "how good is this" in those terms?

 

Like I said above, I get curious, too, to know how something was produced.

 

But maybe it's not such a terrible thing that we can no longer qualify this sort of "goodness" and can just look at the photos and feel or learn or be shown something.

 

I'm of two minds on this. I think knowing the possibilities and results of a given format can be important to craft and even to response. At the same time, those sorts of things can often be distractions to actually just relating to the imagery itself.

 

Life's a bunch of trade-offs.

marksmith said:

Yes but the problem comes in when the “photo” looks too good to be real but might have been produced with no post production manipulation.

But, all photos are "manipulations" of reality. It doesn't matter if it is slide film, black and white film, digital, whatever. Each medium constrains the image to its own limitations. Black and white is not "real" for instance, but we certainly accept it as a valid art form. Slide film tends to be contrasty and lack shadow detail, compared to prints made with negatives, but lots of people love the look of slide film. The idea of "post production" has been discussed here at length so I won't open that can of worms again!

I simply like to know what I am looking at, beyond what I see.

A lot of this is about context. When I see the pyramids at Giza on the cover of National Geographic I expect to see them as they appear (I know, appearances change). I don't want some photoshopper to have moved the pyramids closer together to make them both fit on a vertical cover. That's journalism. I would never manipulate the "facts" of an image taken for a newspaper. In my own work, which I show in galleries, etc., I'm not beyond cloning out that critical, stupid, distraction I didn't spot but I tread lightly there, too. If I'm looking at a CD cover for a band I don't particularly care if they convert a photograph to all red tones or whatever. I come to that image with the idea that it's a CD cover, not journalism.

Kenneth, what is the frequency?