Photography or manipulation?

[kent_tolley2]

Heh Eugene. Some people say the same thing about PHOTOGRAPHERS. :-)

[ned1]

I the TRP can be said to be "now" if "now" means digital imitations of 50's motel-room decorations. There's nothing inherently "good" or "bad" about manipulation, but the novelty and ease of it seems to be blinding a lot of people to the basics of good and bad art (and yes, I'll be a heretic and say that there is such a thing as bad art).

 

But what the heck, there were even a few motel-room painters in the 50's who are developing a posthumous reputation today.

 

And here's a suggestion for the TRP: require at least one 4/4 or higher from a "rate recent" to be eligable. You'd be amazed how many mediocre pictures that would screen out.

[michael_spencer3]

Took me a minute to figure out what TRP stood for. Shows how much I visit that page.

 

After taking a quick glance I have to wonder what this thread has been all about. I see birds that look like birds, a church that looks like a church, landscapes that look like landscapes, some kind of stage that looks like lit-up stage. The only image that looks other than what I would expect from a photo is the one with a crystal ball in it. Ha! I said to myself. I wonder how she did that? Well, that one doesn't look any more manipulated to me than some of the double/treble/quadruple exposure, zoom while exposing, etc., stuff folks in my photo club seem to like.

 

Does this mean the end of photography as we know it? Probably not, change is going to happen. The photographers of the next generation are not going to be steeped in Stieglitz and Adams -- they won't even know who those people are. As I type this, there is a public service advertisement behind me on the radio that asks teenagers some questions like "Have you ever heard of Man Ray? Who is Martha Graham" The kids make up funny answers like "Man Ray is a killer fish that lives in the Gulf of California", "Marth Graham invented the Graham cracker". The ad is supposed to make me feel guilty about the lack of fine arts study in high schools, I guess. However, for those of you mooning about photo manipulation you really need to relax a little. Take a look at Man Ray's photography (e.g. Violon d'Ingres, 1924). Some of it is "straight" some not so "straight", but all of it is delightful.

 

check out www.manray-photo.com

 

Mike S

[ned1]

A lot of those "birds that look like birds" have been cut and pasted onto backgrounds that have nothing to do with the original photo.

[michael_spencer3]

Edward Horn wrote: "... A lot of those "birds that look like birds" have been cut and pasted onto backgrounds that have nothing to do with the original photo".

 

Well, two were black, one was white (maybe snow) and three were natural foliage. Slip on over to the Lighting forum to learn how many stops light differential it takes to cause your background to go all black or all white.

 

Does it make any difference to me whether they darkened the background in PS? No, not at all. I don't jump up and down when looking at an Audubon Print whose background is all green or ecru, either. So, it may be "manipulation", but it is not anything that isn't done everyday in the photo studio.

 

By the by, in Sunday's Washington Post there is an interesting article about the "eagle lady" of Homer, AK. Apparantly she lives down by the water there in an old trailer. During the winter she feeds several thousands of pounds of fish to the eagles who come from miles around to eat there. Making the citizens of Homer go crazy 'cause the eagles' poop is so stinky. Anyway, according to the post "If you have seen stunning close-up photographs of bald eagles with fish in their beaks in glossy magazines in the United States, Europe or Asia, chances are good that they were shot outside [her] trailer". Now there is some "manipulation" that is worth getting upset about. This is not doing the eagles anygood.

 

Mike S ;-)

[ned1]

Well, for example, if you look at the TRP at this moment, you'll see a picture of a hummingbird with an insect in its beak (no names here, so you'll have to hunt for it. It's on the first page.) Look closely and you'll see that the insect has simply been pasted over the beak. There's another picture of what appears to be a bird in flight but if you enlarge it a bit you'll see that the wings have been motion-blurred (sloppily) and the bird's eye is reflecting back a camera (can you say "stuffed?") and so on and so on.

[aphanius]

Edward, are you sure that hummingbirds eat insects? Furthermore, I can't find any hummingbird in today's TRP first pages. So, where are you pointing to about nature photography manipulations? I'm used to shoot insects, and I understand basic skills needed in macro technique. As it has been commented in <a href=http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00BhAH>another thread</a> this week, macro technique isn't widely spreaded among photographer's community. Even less spreaded are macro shooting around 1:1 ratio. So, I don't expect that 95% of all my viewers could distinguish between a manipulated shot and an original one (unless manipulation was stated or was too much evident).

<br><br>

The same applies to bird photography techniques (not the same stuff, as tele-lenses are more spreaded than 65mm macro or reversed lenses). What about digiscopping technique in bird shooting?. What about infrarred barriers with automatic flash displays? What about shooting from a hide? Several bird technique skills and techniques. That's the real point to comment on, aside from manipulations (if any).

<br><br>

Technique aside, nature photography requieres knowledge skills about species behaviour, species distribution and environmental situations. Of course, we aren't comparing free or controlled animals, as this would be a different issue and would generate more controversial arguing than manipulated vs original. I guess we should focus more on creative skills in manipulated shots rather than in inspecting "tricky composites".

<br><br>

Just a thought ;)

[johnb]

John your not the only one who notices this :+(

<br><br>

Iv'e been on the <A href="http://www.photo.net/bboard/forum?rating_type=photocritique&topic_id=1481&category=Pets" title="Click to Open Pet Photo Critique page" target="_blank">Photo Critique Pets forum</a> and <b>every</b> picture of a pet was manipulated, sad :+).

<br>

I then went to the Macro Critique section and all shots were manipulated except 1, this is very sad :+(.

<br>

How can any photographer help another if the one that wants help or review, manipulates his photos?

<br>

We should have a Forum called Manipulations, then they can upload there manipulations and have other manipulators rate it on manipulation.

<br>

Then do not allow manipulated photos for review or critique in the remaining forums.

<br>

By doing this maybe would could keep photographers that know how to use a camera to bring what they see or want to the film (sensor) at Photo.net site <br><br>

Unfortunatly the site isn't supporting photographers, its supporting graphics by allowing manipulated images into all the forums. This doesn't set a good example for the new photographer, seeing mostly/only manipulated pictures. <br><br>

When I first saw this site in the 90's, I was amazed on how people would put down the people doing manipulations to there slides.

<br>Now look at it. :+( <br>

Now we have the Manipulation site. <br>

Please any photographer looking for a lens, cannot honestly judge the lens by a manipulated photo. <br><br>

So why do we let it be for judging Aesthetics and Originality?

[michael_dimarzio]

John Bauer writes "Unfortunatly the site isn't supporting photographers, its supporting graphics by allowing manipulated images into all the forums. This doesn't set a good example for the new photographer, seeing mostly/only manipulated pictures."

 

I agree 100%. How many of the great photographers of the past discarded photos that would have been made great with PS? Ok, I tend to be a "old fashioned" or maybe a purist when it comes to photography (not technology though, I integrate wireless CDMA data networks), but when I see the originanl crap photo, then how everyone raves over a decolorized posterized version, I can only think that sorry pal, you have no talent as a photographer, but you are ok with PS.

 

I am struggling with should I save a potentialy great travel photo that has a magenta sky courtesy of Velvia RVP, or should I accept that fact I should have used E100GX?

 

There is one photographer here in particular, that takes ok images, then destoys them with PS. Maybe it is my, and your responsibility to tell her that her finished product is really ugly, the equivalent of a pink flamingo in a Miami trailer park painted florescent orange.

 

In closing, I rate myself in the bottom 20% talent wise of the photograpgers here, but you'll never see an florescent orange pink flamingo rated 7/7 in my crappy pics portfolio.

[ned1]

Interestingly enough, the hummingbird pic seems to have been removed during the night (can we say "oops, you caught me!")

[ivan_dzo]

I share people's concern with the bad taste of many of the manipulations that regularly fill out and top the TRP. The proposal to ban all manipulations however, is not tenable. PS darkroom type work like levels, curves, cropping, sharpening and colour adjusting are considered ok, yet it is impossible to define where standard "darkroom" type manipulation ends and "unacceptable" manipulation begins. In reality the problem isn't as bad as made out by the TRP. The plague of mate rating now going on in the TRP is such that it is totally debased and tells us little about people's photographic taste. I too am saddened when I see excellent photographers recycle all their photo's with todays new dramatic sky and they shoot to the top of the TRP. It all boils down to taste, which is little more than my opinion vs yours. At least solving the mate rating issue would let us see what people's taste really is!

[jeremy freeland]

The fact that these sometimes clumsily manipulated images feature highly in the TRP is a just a reflection of what much of the rating viewers want. There's no changing that without changing the TRP viewing community.

 

Most of those high rated manipulated images are pretty sentimental, i.e., per the dictionary definition, "marked or governed by feeling, sensibility, or emotional idealism; resulting from feeling rather than reason or thought." Many of the highly rated non-manipulated images reflect similar subject matter, but are a little less sentimentally intense because they don't combine elements from different images.

 

Personally I find many of these images a little too saccharine, but don't have a problem with other people liking them. But what does concern me is when the preference for the sentimental outweighs the necessity of confronting the real. I think this reflects a more generic problem of too easy willingness to to succumb to edited reality. This is why propaganda is successful - not just because people turn off their skepticism, but also because they prefer story to reality.

 

Photography has a great history of confronting people with reality, e..g., napalmed children in Vietnam, or famine victims in Ethiopia. Artificicially created sentiment, if it becomes the norm, or if it is not critically evaluated, risks undermining the credibility of other much more important images.

[dave_nitsche]

Michael, "Does it make any difference to me whether they darkened the background in PS? No, not at all."

 

Talk to the pro birder who spends hours waiting for the correct moment and lighting to shoot about that statement. Darkening and PSing nature images like that goes against the very grain of the art IMO. I know a guy who goes out of his way to get nature shots that actually represent nature. The PS'ed images a plenty here lately are nothing more than caricatures of nature. They are moments that didn't exist.

 

As for putting a sky in behind a bird, well, I have a 14 year old cousin who could do that in photoshop. Photography IMO is more than the finished image. It is about the efforts made in capturing it. Take a picture of a sky one day, a bird at a zoo another and add 20 minutes in photoshop. Anyone can do it.

 

I love digital art. I think it is a brilliant art form. Matt Vardy posted a great image last week. Until I read his statements I didn't know it was digitaly done. He was upfront with it. I think his image presented a thought in his mind. It was 1 step short of surreal for me and a great piece of art. The difference between it and slapping a sky behind a flamingo is that he wasn't trying to pass it off as nature. He was showing us his thoughts. Big difference in my book.

 

I agree with Kent. This should be in the Philosophy of Photography section.

[Spearhead]

I'd delete in the Philosophy forum. It's clear in the "About" section that the Philosophy Forum is not for discussion of ratings, TRP, etc. That's an internal issue, hence its presence here in Site Feedback.

 

Also, this issue has been beat to death. Outside of photo.net, there isn't much controversy about this, it's accepted. Here, people think the amount of effort to produce a photograph creates its value, but most people just like to look at a photograph, not read an essay about its creation.

[jeremy freeland]

... except, of course, Jeff, those PN subscribers who are contributing to and reading this discussion.

[dave_nitsche]

Agreed Jeff, but this is a photography site meant to help people learn and improve their photography not just an art site. The intension is different I think. This is still a huge topic in the photographic community if not the general public.

 

See your point about the philosophy section also...

[Spearhead]

<i> This is still a huge topic in the photographic community</i><p>

 

I don't see it much outside of here, excluding discussions around photojournalism. I've been to three receptions for photography shows in the last month (one was mine) and been to a large photogaphy exhibit (that included traditional and manipulated work) and not heard a single word about it. People in the photographic community are much more interested in discussing things like projects, ideas, shows, locations, other photographers more than technical issues. It's just accepted everywhere I've been lately.

[root]

The difference is that this is supposed to be a teaching environment, as Dave mentions (although agree with your point that degree of difficulty in and of itself does not or should not score photographic points.) There is also the kitsch factor - I suspect that none of the venues you refer to have the equivalent of flamingo-on-velvet on display.

 

If someone were to write a through balanced article on the subject, would there be a place to publish it on this site for ready reference? Sure would save a lot of posts trying to inform the few people who find these threads for the first time.

[Spearhead]

Carl, I did acknowledge the "kitsch" thing above, but, as I pointed out, I don't think this has anything to do with manipulation. How many "kitten in a cup" notecards were produced in the past, well before manipulation? At least now, if I were really good with PS, I could show a pit bull about to chomp on the cup.

[root]

The two are certainly not inextricably linked, but I think this wouldn't be as much of an issue if the purpose or results we're so often kitschy or dishonest, trying to pass off these concoctions as the real thing. Birders have a right to be ticked off, as do so many other bona fide shooters on this site because there are too many naive viewers who are being influenced in the direction of 'fabricate it', rather than 'capture it'. Not that the former is necessarily bad, but on a learning site, capture should get at least equal billing.

[eugene_scherba]

This whole thing is total nonsense. If you want to create "rules" for yourself, that is to show only "unmanipulated" images whatever that means (personally I think that nothing unmanipulated exists out there as far as photography goes), then go for it and don't "manipulate" your stuff. Show how great your are at "straight photography" (what a sexist term!) and shut up. And don't try to enforce those rules on the whole site or on its participants.

[william_todd_faulk]

Eugene, your rather eloquent command of the English language is most impressive. If I close my eyes, I am almost able to savour the flavour of the Slim Jim's and bask in the bouquet of stale beer as we rest our hard hats on the bar after a long day of driving spikes.

 

Nevertheless, you are to the point and correct.

[bobatkins]

Photo.net isn't a site for photography purists. I'm sure such sites exist. APUG.org is devoted to only classical analog photography for example. I'm not sure if there's a similar site which includes digital. However, if there is, it's not photo.net.

 

Personally I dislike digitally composed graphics art images being passed off as phoptography, but that's just my bias. It's apparantly not one shared by the "person in the street". I shoot digital, I manipulate digital, but I don't make graphics composites. To me that's outside the realm of photography and outside the realm of things I'm intersted in. My own site has no discussion of graphics art and my Gallery has no examples of graphics art. Photo.net has to cater to a much wider audience than just me though.

 

For me, enabling the capability of doing an image sort containing only those images the photographer has designated as "unmanipulated" would be a positive move, and would somewhat serve those "luddites" among us who really don't care to see eagles flying over breaching whales silhouetted against a colorful sunset while the full moon shines overhead.

[kent_tolley2]

I'm with Bob and would love a sort of the gallery that selected unmanipulated photos. And for those which are manipulated I would probably comment if they got the phase of the moon wrong in their composite.

[bobatkins]

The only problem with an "unmanipulated" selection capability would be the endless arguments about what constitutes "unmanipulated".

 

Since the tag is presently unused for anything and ignored by most users, people don't feel the need to argue about it. That could easily change if it became significant in some way, like being a criterion for image selection.