"Photography" vs "Digital Art?"

There was a thread I was reading before discussing the following image:

 

Http://www.photo.net/photo/16943613

 

There was a comment made by someone that caught my attention because it was something I was thinking about before and was

meaning to ask here. I went on vacation to Death Valley not long ago and i took a great deal of pictures. There was one in particular that

was playing with on Photoshop one day, and I asked myself "how much can I edit this without it turning into a case of 'PS skill' instead of

'photographic skill'?" How much can I edit a picture before it turns into what a man in the thread I read before called "digital art"? Is PS

use like cheating? Am I bringing out the sky in PS in a photo I took because thats just part of the fun, or because my skills are lacking in

that I cant produce something that I'm satisfied with with just my camera?

 

At what point does photography become "digital art?" Am I doing what I refer to as cheating?

<p>There is no 'cheating' unless your goal is to be strictly a documentarian and even at that, acknowledge that the camera does NOT see what you see due to imperfect technology etc etc.</p>

<p>Photography is art no matter how you slice it and it starts in-camera and ends w/ a finished print or image on-screen that reflects what you saw and felt at the moment. </p>

<p>I never understood or gave much credence to the whole purity of image capture concept. If you were a painter, would you refuse to mix some colors to create something you want?</p>

<p>If you make a pencil drawing and then use an eraser to increase highlights in a particular area have you "cheated"? NO! You have simply chosen to use one of the tools available to you when you are working in a particular medium.</p>

<p>If you take a digital photo file and then increase highlights by using Photoshop, you are doing the same thing--using one of several tools available for work in the medium you have chosen.</p>

The extensive reliance on computer hardware and software means that "computer photo illustrator" is a more

discerning/accurate/precise description.

 

It's still photography, but it is unarguably different from traditional film and wet darkroom photography. Not better or worse,

but an undeniably different process.

<p>Here's how I think of it. If you have a poor photograph, there's really not much you can do in photoshop to make it good, unless you plan to make it totally abstract to the point that the original subject matter is unrecognizable. But if you have a good, or decent photograph, you can more easily improve it to where it meets your needs and vision.</p>

<p>Sometimes photographers will use a flash with high speed sync to make daylight look like dusk or even night (via shutter speed), but the flash illuminates the subject sufficiently for it to be properly exposed. This isn't cheating, either...it's using the tools at hand to create the photograph that's desired. Photoshop is just another tool.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>This same argument used to go on about representational versus non-representational painting.<br>

Then it became an issue between those who manipulated their images to a greater or lesser degree in the darkroom and those for whom only the "pure" photo as it came out of the camera would do.</p>

<p>Now it's digital manipulation in post, versus (dare I say it?) digital manipulation in the camera.</p>

<p>Many people really care a lot about this issue, as purists always do. Its cosmic significance, however, is close to zero.</p>

<p>Don't worry about it. Do what you want to do and don't force your views on others doing the same.</p>

It's a good question. In the end it probably doesn't matter. The non-photographer viewing audience probably won't know

the difference. There aren't any "purity tests" in photography other than what we as individuals feel in our hearts. Follow

your vision and don't worry where it takes you. If you hold back out of fear of what others might think, you'll never be

fulfilled.

 

I have been openly critical of highly manipulated photos on occasion, but is that fair? I process my own photos to some

degree, and I'm sure that someone would object to my approach. We should all be free to express our unique vision.

Whether someone else approves is not all that important in the grand scheme.

 

Photography is not reality, and it never has been. The tools have changed, but the license to burn, dodge, crop, select film for color and contrast, select paper for contrast, mask, overlay, distort, etc. has not.

<p>I've begun so see captions in the magazines that say "photo illustration" or the like to describe manipulated images intended to compliment the text of an article. This is in contrast to the photo-journalistic style of, say, National Geographic which does not add or subtract anything from their images. Recall the kerfuffle when they "moved" a pyramid to accommodate their cover format. I think if you're making art, there are no limits (such as in the image you referred to). On the other hand, if you are trying to say that the photograph is true to what you have seen, then some minor burning and dodging is OK, if it enhances the "trueness" of the image. That said, we also know that Matthew Brady apparently moved corpses and posed soldiers to make his images; Edward Curtis' photos of indians weren't entirely natural; and Ansel Adams did extensive manipulation of his images to make his environmental points. Yet all three of these photographers were very influential in changing people's view of war, Native Americans and the landscape in ways that we now find socially relevant. So how about that for a rambling non-answer?</p>

<p>You havve posed an important question and one that will never really be resolved. When I worked for a major news service in 1970 I took a photo in Central Park in New York City that was well liked. The New York Times used it, for instance. It was a photo of a woman pushing a baby carriage in a broad expanse in the park and there was patches of snow on the ground. The effect was that it looked like she was on a beach or something (B&W photo). I "pulled everything together" using a 300mm lens. The news service said I had to note in the caption that I used a telephoto lens. In older days you could manipulate the devil out of photos and even fake them. This is not a bad trend but the question basically is "how much is too much Photoshopping?" You have to decide for yourself.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>How much can I edit a picture before it turns into what a man in the thread I read before called "digital art"?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Going by your linked image usually the point you can tell it's not a depiction of a real scene is when its tonality draws attention to itself in making the viewer question the direction, character and location of light source as it defies what we consider normal from our memory of that scene. It just looks off.</p>

<p>For instance clouds shouldn't glow with an overly luminescent character to their tonality as if they're backlit when it's clear the sun is at the viewer's back. Buildings, trees and other 3D objects lit from one light source such as the sun or street light have fill light in their shadow areas that bring out detail to a level of clarity that suggest a light the size of a house and bright as the sun is being used which we know from our familiarity and memory of such common scenes is impossible.</p>

<p>Some photographer artists can manipulate the tonality of memory scenes in such a subtle way as to deliver a disturbed and unsettling feel to the viewer on a psychological level because the direction of light is not pronounced and doesn't draw attention in such a way to violate our memory of how such a scene should look but at the same time make the overall scene appear unfamiliar due to subtle tonal manipulation. It's usually referred to as "Surreal" art such as in Salvador Dali's work which your linked image is leaning toward.</p>

<p>The only problem is the subjects in that scene in combination with the "Digital Art/Illustration" look went too far in its rendering it more toward illustration to the point it no longer is representing a photograph of a scene but a composited photo collage/illustration confusing the intent behind what's trying to be communicated considering the subject matter thus making it only look like a copy of a surreal style. It's neither an illustration or representation of an actual scene, thus the confusion. There's a ton of that kind of hyperreal, composited art online.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Its just short of the point where drawing becomes painting; a little beyond where modelling becomes sculpture, and about the same place as where mere "photography" becomes "fine art". In short its wherever you want it to be, and you run into trouble only where</p>

<ul>

<li>you cross your own line</li>

<li>you try and impose your line on other people</li>

<li>You mislead or withhold information from people or bodies that you knpw care about how you've achieved your results. For example organisations that impose criteria on whether you can enter their competitions, show in they galleries and so on.</li>

</ul>

<p>Below is an example of an image I shot of a distant relative suffering from cancer caused liver damage and the yellow jaundice look it gave to his skin.</p>

<p>The before version looked just fine to me at first glance but then I remembered how the sun made his jaundice skin look better and brightened the overall mood which isn't evident in the before image due to the lack of contrast and softness and slight green bias to its tonality.</p>

<p>With some increases to contrast, brightness and clarity and adjusting WB so the t-shirt wasn't so green and hue adjusts to orange and yellow channels toward red in ACR's HSL panel to reduce the look of jaundice I think I made an improvement to the mood of the image. At the point it looked better and still real looking, is when I stopped editing.</p>

<p>It's still my judgement call according to what my goals were in what I wanted to communicate...a very sick man made to look better on a sunny day. 5 months after I took this shot he passed away.</p><div></div>

<p>It just occurred to me on reading this thread that we're probably in an era of neo-pictorialism. Somewhere down the road could we come upon a re-visited "f/64" type of movement (Stieglitz and others) where a renewed pursuit of photo-realism would rise again? As I remember from studying that movement its practitioners strove for the ideal of expressing "equivalents" to the originally perceived scene, through the means of negative exposure, development and printing, sharp focus and great depth of field through small apertures. I might be confused about this however, as I remember Ansel Adams being a part of the movement yet using extreme (red) filtration and bleaching effects to achieve very low sky values to contrast with his higher keyed clouds for a dramatic effect. Anyway, I'm not sure that with the explosion of photo editing technology such a movement could happen again. "Realism" has a way of being slippery. F/64's works were primarily monotone and that in itself is abstraction!</p>

<p>Not sure about any movements along the lines of what you've indicated, Howard, but I know when you want to communicate something in a image it's best to be obvious about it whether it's mysterious worlds made to look real or real world scenes made to look mysterious.</p>

<p>A photographer and painter have quite a few technical options to pull that off, much more with further exploration that go beyond just point, shoot and post process.</p>

<p>If you've developed an image that you saw through your view finder and recorded on your camera's sensor or film, no matter how much "manipulation" you apply, it's a photograph. If you're presenting pictures that are created by combining various images that as a whole make up a scene that no one has ever seen through a view finder, no matter how attractive to an individual they may be, it's "digital art".<br>

I see many highly praised pictures offered for critique here at Photonet that are simply assemblages of pictures and effects that have more to do with clip art than they do with photography.</p>

<p>So we call sandwich negative prints "digital art"? Doesn't make much sense to me. But then I'm not into insulting other people's work with remarks about "clip art."</p>

<p>I hear where you are coming from...it is a point well considered and one which, IMHO, defies just where the line of demarcation is. I remember several years ago I was out west visiting the studio of a well known landscape photographer. He had the most luscious photograph of a play of light and dark, curves and straight lines, and shades of color in a canyon I've ever seen. His wife told me the one and only print was for sale for $4000 (framed). I was flabbergasted..but if I had had the money, I would have parted with it. She told me it had taken over a week in the darkroom to produce it (film, not digital, but as you know manipulation existed long before digital). Three days later his studio burned to the ground...including this print, and its negative. I don't know where one says...too much manipulation...I guess it varies by person.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>"It just occurred to me on reading this thread that we're probably in an era of neo-pictorialism."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I'd say there is no dominant movement or genre. The creative anarchy of the web effectively prevents such domination. If a particular style seems dominant on some sites it's mostly an illusion created by the consensus of a relative handful of the most persistent participants and their mates. But those klatsch cliques seldom translate their influence to dominate other sites where more autonomy is allowed or encouraged.</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>"Somewhere down the road could we come upon a re-visited "f/64" type of movement (Stieglitz and others) where a renewed pursuit of photo-realism would rise again?"</p>

</blockquote>

<p>God forbid. Adams abused his influence to demonize William Mortensen, literally characterizing Mortensen as a devil.</p>

<p>Today, Adams' heavy handed politicizing of his favored style over another would be dismissed as the ravings of a butthurt crank. He'd lord it over a legion of HDR realists while pictorialsts and visual fabulists and fantasists would do their thing with little or no regard to the efforts of a cranky old man to suppress their style.</p>

<p>Unless you're a photojournalist or doing documentary photography and bound by certain ethical guidelines, the field is wide open. Do whatever you like. Don't let others steal your bliss.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Adams abused his influence to demonize William Mortensen, literally characterizing Mortensen as a devil.</p>

</blockquote>

<p> <br>

I haven't thought about that in years, but Adams really forced him out of the photography world strictly for his own purposes. Really nasty. But you're right, would be difficult to do that today.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>...pictorialsts and visual fabulists and fantasists...</p>

</blockquote>

<p>When is that movement going to happen? It's got a nice ring to it for sure.</p>

<p>"Fabulists"!...You taught me a new cool word, Lex. Thanks!</p>

<p>Not warming up to butthurt, though.</p>

Are you using Medium X to create something to look at, or because you like using Medium X? If the first, why would you care about what you would need to use to create that something to look at? If the latter, please do shun away from anything that isn´t Medium X.

<p>Everyone draws their own line. I seriously doubt anyone would have a problem converting from RAW and in the process adding exp. comp, NR, picture control etc. but for me personally the line is at the point where it doesn't look real, or it looks hyper-real or whatever. I have no problem with established photographic techniques- if you can manipulate the capture of an image by DoF, Tv or whatever, that's standard practice. Changing colour balance for effect or from compassionate grounds is perfectly laudable in a private context- if you were photographing a political leader whose health/capacity to do his job was in doubt that would be a different story. But what I can't understand is what the ubermanipulators feel they are adding to a photograph which so obviously looks fake? The magic of photography for me is that it is a window into a particular point in space-time- a slither of reality. Making it obviously fake is totally missing the point!</p>

If you are asking the question then you probably know the answer...

 

Photography: first utterance.

Sir John Herschel, 14 March 1839 at the Royal Society, "Photography or the application of the Chemical rays of light to

the purpose of pictorial representation".

 

Photography was the first medium that made the promise (or implication) of veracity, or at least of a physical tie to the

factual world. This has been an important source of its power, and of its unique place alongside the plastic arts. As

photography changes—partly by perception, partly by technology—into just another kind of drawing, these changes are

going to have profound effects on the ways we value photographs. Changes of values tend to be better news for some

people than for others.

 

Boundless use of Photoshop or in other words, computer illustration involves fabricated resemblance not physical

causality like a photograph. A photograph comes about when something that was physically part of the subject matter

flies across space, gets organised into an image by a lens, and physically penetrates a sensitive surface and causes

changes in that surface. Those changes in that surface enable in a pattern of in situ picture forming marks called a

photograph. A photograph has an indexical relationship to its subject matter just as certainly as a footprint in a beach has

an indexical relationship to the foot that made it.

 

Nearly all images we see in the world are fabricated by some sort of mark-making engine operating according to a set of

coded instructions. Information is turned into pictures. There are a few image making processes that aren't based on

coded instructions or information. These processes use physical causality and include life casts, death masks, brass

rubbings, coal peels, wax impressions, hand stencils, fingerprints and...

 

......Photography.

Dupe post, please delete...

Dupe post, please delete.