Digital Manipulation Philosophy

Ok... a few threads down, I was taken with an image of a sunbather,

and suggested, lightly so, that it would be an interesting picture if

the chair were photoshop'd out, and the shadow arranged to suggest the

person was "floating". Now, I wasn't saying, or suggesting that the

image would be better, more valid or whatever, just interesting. Be

it as it may, I have been looking at a lot of Jerry Uelsmann's work

lately. Those not so enlightened ought to see his work, all done in

wet darkrooms. He is the master of manipulation.

 

This led to a brief discussion, some suggesting that:

 

"then it would be a fake. This attitude makes me hate digital..."

(Robin)

 

and

 

"I think it's ok to have digital manipulations but you must state it

CLEARLY when you show the picture in public e.g photonet. "

(Travis)

 

To this I add, why in the world would I want to annouce that I

manipulated an image? Isn't the image good enough, or bad enough to

stand on its own. Why is DIGITAL manipulation worse than wet or

optical manipulation?

 

My case being that the reality is always subject to the presentation

and perception. To what degree do we then allow technical correction,

after which point it becomes artistic manipulation?

 

Is a K2 filter ok, but a 25A manipulation. Is 6 minutes of

development ok, but 7 manipulation? If I darken the sky

digitally, is it verboten, while doing the same via filter, or burning

acceptable? How about the removal of unwanted "distractions" in an

image. Been done in the wet darkroom. Do I need announce it? How

about the inclusion of elements into a picture? I won a photo contest

where I double exposed the moon shot with a 500mm lens onto the sky of

a street scene taken with a 38mm lens (6x6 format folks). Nobody

every questioned it, it was thought good, acceptable and probably to

some a bit artsy. I did that in the camera, but what if I did it

digitally - does that make the result less valid?

 

Sorry to open a potential can of worms here.. but some of those

responses got me seriously thinking.

 

Many thanks!~

i say do what you feel you gotta do, as far as 'art' photography is concerned. that stuff is a huge no-no in the photojournalism world however.....

>>> How the artist presents the view ie technique/media/medium...may be interestign but at best is secondary to the statement the artist is making or sharing with an audience <<<

 

My point exactly Peter. You stated it better than I.

 

A friend told me earlier, to paraphrase WJClinton, and say "Its the IMAGE stupid!". Maybe more people would get it that way.

This question is going to create a mess of a discussion because you avoid DEFINING terms. You are agruing (this is OK, that is manipulation) - against whom? <br>

Basically, you can do whatever you wish and play according to your own rules.<br>

If you accept someone else's rules, those are the boundaries. The discussion is impossible as long as you accept them. Someone will wish to redefind the boundaries next moment, though.<br>

And one more possibility is to take borderline cases and explore limits<p>

That summarizes all possible (and empty) discussion. In practice, invent your own rules and play the game as long as you like it. Then change your rules, and keep yourself amused. When encountering someone else's - follow those (if you wish your images to be accepted to contests, published as news, or advertisements, or sold as wedding photos) - you do not, you get kicked.

As far as my commercial digital work goes, I don't do anything on the computer that I couldn't do in the darkroom.

leave it to the philosopher to make things even more vague

Journalism is journalism. What Uelsmann does isn't foisted off on anyone as reality. It's only HIS vision of a world he creates. Back in the 1960's nobody envisioned Photoshop. What Uelsmann did with his Bronica, followed by 3 enlargers in his darkroom, was new and unique. He mixed this with paper negative techniques for partial negative/positive images. I met him, was in his darkroom, and he expained to me what he was doing and how he accomplished it. He was an artist who chose photographic processes as his medium. The actual techniques he used are rather simple and easy to master. The ability to come up with the right images and combine them the way he does? A whole other ball of wax! Just look at some of the crap that gets ink jetted out of computers these days. 'Nuff said!

<i>Just look at some of the crap that gets ink jetted out of computers these days.</i><p>

 

No different than the crap you will see if you work in a minilab (I don't but my friends do.) It doesn't matter what the medium is.<p>

FWIW, all my images are creations of my own mind and have nothing to do with reality. This applies to the vast majority that have only been manipulated in the traditional darkroom sense and the work of the last few years that have been manipulated on the computer.

 

There's a big difference between photographs and reality, no matter what way you look at it.

Digital photography just can not have any integrity as a documentary medium as it stands. It has all the integrity of the artist's brush. Its use in photojournalism without the backup of negatives will give the image no more or less integrity than the journalist's words. People are coming to trust printed or published images as much as they trust cartoons, paintings or poetry.

james, u make no sense at all...

Jeff, I'd like to see one of your photographs that was purely a creation of your own mind.

 

?????

<center>

<img src="http://www.spirer.com/images/cooler.jpg"><br>

<i>Girl at the Water Cooler, Copyright 2002 Jeff Spirer</i>

</center>

Heh. Well, I'd still think it had a starting point with real objects. ;)

 

Or did you paint all that stuff? In which case, it's not really a photograph anymore.

I think it depends on what you want with the photograph.

 

Documentary photographers in particular, but all photographers tend think that whatever fashion of photography they do is the only valid one. It would only be fake if you were trying to represent what you saw.

 

And because we have different kinds of photographers here, I most certainly do think it is important to list out what kind of manipulations were done. A documentarian might not appreciate the photograph as much if it is manipulated. This is fine, we're going to appreciate what we are interested in the most.

 

However, if the image never was about discribing what was in the scene, then their is absolutely no reason tht it would be fake... it was never meant to be real to start with.

 

In one extreme is advertising. I work for an ad agency as a photographer and graphic artist. We take objects from one frame, place them in another, take objects from product promotion materials, stock photography, and the whole thing is fabricated to look absolutely perfect to sell the product. That is our intent, and I am not going to apologize for it being fake so long as it isn't severely falsely projecting the product to be something it is not. White lies though are certainly acceptable... and if you don't like that, complain to whoever is in charge of capitalism.

 

Ahhhh... that word "Intent". Reminds me of college, and the intense fear of being asked "what's your intent anyway? i find this image entirely pointless. it's too muddled. you need to be clearer" eeeeep!

 

Anyway, oh yes, intent. Every photographer needs one, it sets values and limitations on your work so that it isn't just all helter skelter. You don't need a super-rigid one, but whatever you do, don't deny others work just because it doesn't fit your own.

 

To the person who complained about digital imaging quality- I am at the point now where in most cases, given good material you cannot tell what I have done. Recently I have removed straws from drinks and put them elsewhere, added shadows and glare and my co-workers who are most certainly trained eyes could not see what I had done when I asked if the general area looked funny. Just like anything, you have to be good at it. We printed it out on a fujitrans, I promiss you that you couldn't tell the difference, under a loupe, it has the same non-uniform grain as any other optical print.

 

Also- just so you all know... in the "industry" you try to edit as little as possible. It is much cheaper, easier and more reliable to set up a few props properly than add/remove them in Photoshop. For my personal work, I prefer not to get into thinking "oh, I can photoshop it out" and I rarely even consider finished images that I couldn't print in the darkroom. I think there is something to photographing life as it is atleast in form, but still, I do "assist" the composition through selective color adjustments, but that's nothing new and I don't consider changing an orange wall to a slightly more yellow orange wall a manipulation but rather a correction.

You can do whatever you want to your image and display it in public. But when viewers question you if PS was used if they detected gross manipulation, you jolly well own up if you did so and if your intention was not to lie/manipulate the audience. This way, you play within the rules . That's what I was saying in that previous thread and Charle's above quote of mine. I don't mean you need to state it CLEARLY the image was manipulated at first (i.e if noone ask).

 

In the "cloned clouds doomed thread", those clowns did not own up even when questioned and evidence shown to them. That, is lying and is not acceptable in a public forum, IMO of course.

 

SO, go on and make the chair disappear in A.K's picture if you need to express it that way, but be prepared to take the flak when the traditionalist comes your way.

 

 

Damn, I think I have to agree with Bender on this one though..;)

What if I show a "straight" photo that completely misrepresents the "truth" of a situation?

 

The idea that manipulation is only a product of the computer or the darkroom is horribly naive.

Mike, you mean like a certain crop or a certain composition? But really, what is the truth? Who defines where the truth lies.

 

The photographer defines the truth?

 

Perhaps we need a larger viewfinder then...

Composition, perspective, subject, plane and depth of focus, timing, . . . there are dozens of ways for a skilled photographer to alter the message of the photo without doing any kind of post-exposure manipulation.

The magic of photography, the REAL THRILL of it, is that it all happens in a fraction of a second in that litlle box. A negative that needs extra attention in the dark room is, to me, slightly less than one that is just perfect straight away. Painting, leaving stuff out, adding stuff with double exposures, PS; all very nice and convenient but a different thing altogether. Just a necessity if i have to deliver results, but not something i'm particularly proud of.

Mike, I think what Travis is referring to is a case where the photographers specifically claimed they had "found" a certain arrangement of objects and their photograph was a faithful depiction of that arrangement in a single exposure, when in fact it was a photo made from multiple images.

I am a commercial advertising photographer always requested to produce images

with high impact. Art directors don't care of the approach and we take in post-

production and we simply do whatever it takes to make the client pay big bucks for

our productions. To have great images that really stand out, more than often, we

"radically enhance" our images in Photoshop. And I mean "radically"! Still, our images

still look like photograph and are considered as such.

I am a commercial advertising photographer always requested to produce images

with high impact. Art directors don't care of the approach and we take in post-

production and we simply do whatever it takes to make the client pay big bucks for

our productions. To have great images that really stand out, more than often, we

"radically enhance" our images in Photoshop. And I mean "radically"! Still, our images

still look like photograph and are considered as such...

The real philosopher here is Grant. He said it all in one

sentence.

 

IMO, all photography begins with manipulation, even

photojournalism. If we select B&W film and a 28mm lens we are

minipulating because the eye doesn't see that way. Often we

select such a lens to emphasize one thing and de-emphasize

another. In short, we can manipulate an emotional reaction

through the choices we make. The photographer decides. That

is acceptable as being real rather than fantasy because the

photographer didn't alter reality, just placed emphasis on an

element for communicating a point of view or projecting an

emotional insight.

 

Commercial photography really falls into two catagories. Pure

fantasy is accepted (legally) because it falls into the realm of

commonly recognized hyperbole. Impact or communication of an

abstract concept is the objective, not a strict representaion of

truth. Despite what may believed, product representation is

heavily scrutinized for legality. Every major ad or TV commercial

is submitted to legal review by the client's legal council and also

has to pass through Network legal Beagles. Long gone are the

days of putting fillers in soup bowls to make it look as if there

were more noodles than there really are. Some years ago the

people shooting a Volvo commercial reinforced the roof on the

sly, they were found out and Volvo paid a heavy price in terms of

their reputation as a safe car. Heads rolled on that one.

 

Art photography is what you want it to be. Grant nailed it.

 

For the record, I've never cared for Jerry Uelsmann's work.

Painters have done the same thing so much better. The fact that

he does it all in the darkroom is meaningless to me.

Mike Dixon it right, of course. And it all (again) is image image image image. It matters not a hill of beans how you got there. The image either works, or it does not.

 

Travis... I really dont see why someone needs to fess up if asked. Again, its like asking "did you use a Leica?" or "was that shot on Tri-X?", or (for the painter) "Did you use a Grumbacher #7 Special for the clouds?". If the photographer (or paint on canvas artist) is a poor artisan, than it will show, if not, it won't, but either way its about the image.

 

More input... this from another friend - "You're not a REAL photographer if you use photoshop". To that I respond, I guess all the wet plate / contact printing guys and gals are saying the same thing to those of us using "film".