Painting, film photography and digital photography................

Hi all,

 

A long, long time ago, When photography was invented, many claimed

that it would replace painting, it did not !!!

 

Today, with the onslaught of digital photography, many claim film

photography will be obsolette, I can't decide !!! Why, you may ask ?

 

To me, all the above are visual mediums which give one a channel for

artistic expression, to express human emotion...

 

For reportage & journalism, digital has certainly much advantages

over film, as did film over painting.......

 

But for freedom of artistic expression, I would rate painting as the

highest, I can't decide between film photography and digital

photography, hence this thread...

 

i.e Is film give one more freedom over digital with all the available

tool in the trades !? (films + dark room verse sensors + Photoshop)

 

Has film photography has something that will never be replaced by

digital photography no matter how far technology advance !? As did

with painting that was never been replaced by photography.

 

For many years, film photography has not been regarded as "true art"

in many of the art communities, rightly or wrongly !!! But digital

photography may change that !!! So you may count it as a blessing for

those die hard film fan out there.

 

What do you think !?

 

Cheese....Robert.

People who can't draw or paint, they photograph.

 

Guess why I photograph... :(

For freedom of artistic expression, I don't think one can even make such broad strokes as "painting" or "digital photography." Oil paints on canvas are often so different from encaustic paints on wood that they're hardly comparable. How then, are we to compare inkjet prints on paper to digital projections on glass?

 

I don't think it's worth any effort to rank media. Creativity comes out of artists, not out of an artist's medium. Any freedoms granted or restrictions imposed by a medium will be both exploited and ignored by artists.

Artists have always made use of new technology to help them. Rennaisance painters first used a small board with a peephole to help them visualize a scene in 2 dimensions...then the peephole became a pinhole where an image (upside down) could be 'projected' onto a sheet some distance behind the board.

 

This gradually developed into closed boxes with ground glass viewing surfaces with opaque hoods and the pinhole was replaced by a lens to provide a clearer image across the image plane for easy tracing. It was the height of technology back then.

 

I suppose, there were some who said that the early adopters of these technical gadgets were 'cheating' and taking shortcuts rather than developing the skills of earlier artists...maybe they were right but, in any case, people still paint today and the principles of composition remain the same even if the image is captured with a piece of modern technology.

Besides pointing out that these are three seperate mediums that are only related in that

they are visual....my advice is that I think you should get back to doing your homework

and stop worrying about words about words.

Edward,

You are not alone !! I am in the same boat. I love paintings but can't paint for ....Hence taken up photography as a compromise ;(

 

I wonder if Leonado were given some canvas, brushes and a mordern camera, which would he use on Mona Lisa !?

 

:)

<I> wonder if Leonado were given some canvas, brushes and a mordern camera, which

would he use on Mona Lisa !?

 

:)

</I> I keep forgetting this is the "philosophy of Photography" forum -- a nebulous

concept at best.

Believe it or not some painters I know can't take a good

photograph at all. I personally respect a good painter more than

a good photographer but I think the reason being is that I'm

better at shooting than painting/drawing.

 

>>>For many years, film photography has not been regarded as

"true art" in many of the art communities, rightly or wrongly !!! But

digital photography may change that !!! So you may count it as a

blessing for those die hard film fan out there. <<<

 

How is digital going to change photography to "true art"?

Better yet, whose to say what true art is *if* there is such a thing?

A while back, I shot some "installation art pieces" for a friend of a

friend. At the time, I thought they were bad jokes but lately, I

could see how much work/thoughts it goes in designing/building

them and appreciate them abit more.

Painting and photography are a fair bit different. Photography with film and with digital are a lot alike, comparatively. You can even run both down to Walmart to get your prints. You CAN manipulate digital, but don't have to, and you CAN manipulate film to various extents.

 

I think a better comparison between film and digital would be the change from glass plate negatives to film negatives. It may have been a big deal at the time, but now we look back at it and fail to see any great changes in photography, other than convenience, that resulted from it.

I thought one of the function of art was to lie & distort, to make the viewer see what the

artist wanted you to see. What does "truth" have to do with art?

Given a modern 35mm camer Da Vinci would probably never take pictures with it, but likely draw hundreds of technical sketches of it showing various ways to improve the design and hold it - and he'd be right.

 

When photography first emerged it was not applied as the purist art form that painting was at the time. It was originally conceived as a utilitarian means of producing records in the form of realistic images. I'm guessing if the long dead photographers from the late 1800's were brought back from the dead and saw the way their work was now treated as fine art by the B/W cult they'd likely shake their heads and ask for a 1Ds.

 

When you paint, you an see what you are doing and are accomplishing right there. If painitng were like conventional color film photography, you'd pretend to paint on a canvas that didn't show anything, then have to take it down the street and wait a week to be 'developed' into an image that may/may not look a thing like you wanted it in the first place.

This is off topic but I watched Tim Burton's 'Ed Wood' last night -- it's in B&W and looked fantastic. It was probably shot with film but it could have been shot with digicams -- who cares as long as the look is right.

 

Digital and film photograpy are both recognisably photography rather than painting or some such. They have 95% the same genes.

Guys,

 

I know painting & photography are different gene, and the difference between film & digital is minimal with today's technology.

 

But there is one common thing amongst them when a artist using any of these tools, it is the subjcet, the subject which is to be used to express one' emotion, feeling. e.g A nude, a lanscape scence, a person.... What I alluring to was, given the same subject for artistic expression, what is the difference, advantage, disadvantages in the medias !? If there is no difference, then one can replace the other over time, obviously there is much difference between painting & photography ,that's one of the reason why painting still exist. If film has no unique properties , significant difference from digital on a artistic expression point of view, then the value of its existence will diminish overtime........

 

Robert.

Not sure if this is apocryphal, but I've read that when Picasso was a young man and still painting representational stuff, he discovered the camera and declared there was nothing else for him to paint and that he might as well kill himself (or something to that effect).

 

Of course, he went on to produce some quite bizarre portraits that seem far more imaginative than any current computer generated, science fiction life form. Picasso obviously had no intention of competing with the camera.

 

It seems to me the essential difference between the painter and the photographer, is that the former starts with a blank canvas and adds to it, whereas the latter starts with a completed canvas (the scene, subject and background etc.) and subtracts from it. With the help of Photoshop, the process of subtracting from the original completed scene (and amending it) can be just as elaborate, time consuming and skilled (but in a different way) as the process of adding paint to a canvas. And of course, even though one might print straight from the camera without any Photoshop modification, the process of subtraction has been unavoidable, resulting from choice of lens, format, aperture or simply pointing the camera in a particular direction to exclude something that marrs the composition.

AFAIK, Picasso was an excellent draftsman and produced "realistic" paintings in addition to many others. Quote is on home page of Photo.net.

 

I have to agree pretty much with the homework comment; it doesn't matter whether it is art to you if it is art to me. Go in peace.

Shoot Medium Format film, scan it.

 

"Enhance" the file in PS.

 

Print on canvas.

 

Paint in some more details and highlights (try oils & acrillic).

 

Frame.

 

Voila!

 

 

ART.

 

Just do it!

I find it interesting that you chose painting as the example to compare to photography. Why not etchings or lithographs?

 

Why would you rate painting as the highest form for freedom of visual expression? Perhaps you equate photography with one exposure = one image method of working. You should become familiar with some of the Dada expirements in photography, Henry Peach Robinson, Jerry Uelsmann, John Paul Caponigro, Joel Witkin, John Pfahl, Andy Goldsworthy, and a host of others - and then get back to us on that freedom of expression thing.

 

Photography can be whatever you want it to be. You are only self limited by your imagination. I suggest not dwelling on digital versus film, but on what you want to express - and the mode of creating it will become self evident.

The difference between painting and photography is that if your original painting doesn't please you, you can always paint over it. Rembrandt built up to his finished works in this way.

I spent $150 for a graphic artist's paper representation of ancient petroglyphs that I have photographed in Nevada's Valley of Fire. This representation was a better interpretation of the millenias-old original art, than were my sharp and contrasty Nikon photos.

 

Fortunately, the original artists have been dead for more than 70 years, which legally allows others to copy their carvings in a way that expands art.

 

This month's National Geographic has an article illustrated with tintypes. One photo shows the photographer in action, presumably so we wouldn't think the effect was created in Photoshop!

 

Rocks, cameras, paper, canvas, tin, paint, film, zeroes and ones -- and anything else at hand -- are just the means to an end.

 

"Brandon's Dad"

"If film has no unique properties , significant difference from digital on a artistic expression point of view, then the value of its existence will diminish overtime."

 

Yes, you're right about that. And to some extent, artistic film usage has diminished in the past few years, largely due to its similarity to digital photography. There are some minor technical differences, but for the most part, what can be done on film can be done digitally, and vice versa.

 

But the unique property that digital will never match is film's history. After, what, 160 years of doing something one way, there will long be people who enjoy the romance of film, the scents of the chemistry, the touch of emulsion.

 

In this month's Esquire (which proclaims itself "The Photo Issue") there is a self portrait by Chuck Close in which he used the daguerrotype method. Sure, he could have used a more modern method with similar results, (which he did on the next page) but for the artist, it holds unique properties that possibly no one else can see.

Brian,

Exactly, you are the one who seem to understand what I tried to drive at... Most reponses are taken a defensive stand on photography.

 

With today's digital technology, films still can be used to express certain visual elements which can yet be replicate by digital, with the advance of technology, it may or may be not be able to. I don't know....That's why I ask the question.

 

Brian, and for those who think they have done their "homework", apart from the historical significance as pointed out by Brian, is there any thing else that is so unique in film that can never be replaced by digital, as painting has not been replaced by photography !?

 

-Robert

Unique element in film + difficulty in using them effective + historical significant = "Perceived art".

 

Can you now see the parallel between painting/photography, film phtography/digital photography and Art !?

Painting is not photography or the other way around. Neither one needs to be representational, but photography at least conventionally needs something to photograph in the external world. Painting is free of that requirement. Either one has a lot to do with process, particularly in terms of contemporary ideas of art, modern or post-modern (whatever, I don't want to start in on the post modern business). The processes are obviously different. In terms of simply creating images I think the digital vs film debate is dead (at least if talking comparable appropriate print sizes) it terms of 35mm at any rate. But again the processes differ. Film imposes an approach that requires previsualization and pre composition while because of its interactive nature, digital allows more of an improvisational way of working. Digital workflow is simpler and more elegant from capture to output. Basically its camera->computer->print or monitor. Film is camera->film processing->negative->scanning or optical enlargement->print(and all the chemical processes this entails - that I know little about). Unless one does camera->process->slide and leaves it there. There are more variables with film shooting that are out of the direct control of the photographer. The film workflow and way of working can be simulated with digital but not the other way around. This is not to say one is better than the other in an aesthetic sense, just different processes. Also the (mechanical manual)cameras available for film have arguably better user characteristics, or at least suggest a somewhat different attitude. I think different processes can lead to different conceptions of what the photographer is doing, so in that regard film is not likely to be obsolete artistically any more than painting. They're just different mediums. Ultimately you have to take what you've got available and work within it's limitations and potentials.

I don't know whether it's unique, but I hate the idea of sitting at the computer to make a photograph. There's too much computer elsewhere in my (our?) lives, and the "wet" process gives me the feel that I am doing something different from a job in the office:).. It's sort of ridiculous to me that looking at a person and not seeing the screen one has no way of knowing whether they are calculating a payroll, writing an e-mail or doing "art". It's depressing..