Tired of the arguments and complaints about manipulation, not to mention the abuse...

[laurie_m]

Vivek, I don't know what "assertion" you're referring to. I don't think there was anything in what I wrote that would suggest I think most Nature photos are manipulated or that I think any rating category should be removed. I don't know how you got that. If that's how my last comment came across I appreciate you pointing it out so I could clarify. My response was to Manel's suggestion that two posts be made to show a RAW or original photo and the "final" image for comparison.

 

I do think there's an expectation, among most, that Nature and documentary photos are more representative vs. interpretive. There are of course shades of gray on that "assertion" as well. I for one, wouldn't want to be the "manipulation police". As stated above, it's an issue I struggle with on a personal level, I have no aspirations of imposing my wishy washy definition on the rest of PN.

 

The only point I've been trying to make all along is that there is a difference of opinion on what constitutes manipulation. Especially when it could be argued that the same adjustments could be made in a darkroom. It's an old but interesting discussion. It's something we should all be considering everytime we open a photo in editing software, not to comply with PN's definition but to remain loyal and honest to our own personal vision.

[root]

I do not agree with your assertion that if it can be done in the darkroom, then it's not manipulated. AA's "Moonrise Hernandez" is manipulated, although it may not be obvious unless you'd seen a straight print. Other examples of traditional darkroom manipulaters are discussed on this site all the time.

 

I doubt that the PN members who are good at composites would agree with you on the degree of difficulty comment either. Read some of Jim McNitt's descriptions about how he's created some of his work.

 

It boils down to the intent of the maker combined with the level of sophistication (or naivite) of the viewer.

[root]

My last comment was addressed to Gustavo.

[vivek iyer]

Laurie, My query was not confrontational (though it was phrased that way). Thanks for your additional comments that appears to clarify your earlier post.

[kathywilson]

I've been following this, because I wonder if I've crossed a line somewhere from time to time. My general stance is that if it could be done in a traditional darkroom, then doing it with software is acceptable. The very Art of photography is already selected reality to begin with. We choose the angle, the light, the time of year, the time of day, what may or may not be happening at any given moment. We have filters, and zoom lenses, lights, tripods, special films, papers, formats, etc etc. And then we take all that and make an image - which we take into the darkroom to dodge and/or burn, alter contrast/brightness etc. The end result is not the reality of standing in that place with a camera. If photography is strictly documentary in nature "It is as it was" then anything is manipulation. If it is Art - an evocation of the spirit of how it was, or an *interpretation* of how it was, then manipulation by darkroom or software is just another tool in the kit. It's no worse than using a filter to improve a sky. It's just a different tool to achieve the same ends. In my case though, that's still to achieve something that looks real, that could have happened, that's close to what actually took place. I've seen other images which perhaps took a photo and then created a different sort of art - This image: http://www.photo.net/photo/2897452

I think that's gorgeous - but I don't call it a photograph. I would place something like that in "Photo-based Computer Art". But his goal was quite different than mine. For his goal, manipulation was required. It's the subjective Art side of photography, and there's simply no real way to untangle that Science vs. Art argument. Perhaps it's best to look to the result and ask if it achieves its goal. Is this image exactly what it ought to be? - regardless of how it got there.

[mg]

1) AT THIS POINT, we do not here care about my or your or his opinion as for what is and what is not a manipulation. For the time being, PNet already has standards ! We use these standards every day. Some of us understand them, some of us are perhaps not too sure about some details. But they exist, and they are well accepted so far - so why try to findnew definitions at this point ?

 

2) Yes, by PNet's standard, Laurie is right: the cows ARE manipulated. They would indeed not be if the background would not be totally black. So, we already have photo.net's answer to questions like that.

 

3) How sure are we, carl, that the cost would be heavy for the separation I was requesting ? I think itmight not be as bad as you think. But let's leave that to the management to evaluate and decide.

 

4) Our task here is not to say we like or dislike PS, or to have yet another chat about PS, nor to throw stones. We should rather see (in this thread and elsewhere) the sign that there's a real problem or conflict here. First main issue: is it or is it not serious enough to change something ?

 

5) Then our job is to see whether separating PS works (i.e. works defined as manipulated by PN's standard) would be a good or a bad thing for the site and for its members. Then the site will decide.

 

Photonetters have the bad habit - generally speaking and of course "imo" - to talk about all sorts of things in no specific order and to be unable to try to find a solution to a given problem.

 

Discipline, at this stage, would help this discussion. Imo.

[mg]

And by the way... saying that there would be mistakes and/or dishonest declarations about manipulated images... is like saying nothing at all... Mistakes already exist, andthey are human, and dishonesty too, and we couldlive, I suppose, with the same 1% error in the system as we already have today. Right ? So, let's move from that point to the next...

[vivek iyer]

" 5) Then our job is to see whether separating PS works (i.e. works defined as manipulated by PN's standard) would be a good or a bad thing for the site and for its members. Then the site will decide."

 

Good thing, *IMO*, Marc. I will vote for that! Thanks for the clarity!

 

Vivek.

[minicucci]

I just reread PN's advisory on what makes a manipulated versus unmanipulated photo. Mark,

you are right, it really is pretty good. I'd read it when I joined but not since.

 

Since all uploads have the opportunity to check the "unmanipulated" box, is there any

possibility of having a review sort done based on how one checked the box? More simply, can

Pnet just use what is already in place to perform the sort?

[ilkka_nissila]

Yes, they could but photo.net calculates the TRP searches in the background and stores them in a database. This means that the database would take more space and the calculation of the queries would take more time because of the additional criteria. But I really think Brian could implement it in a matter of a couple of days, depending on how the system is currently implemented.

 

I think it is indeed sad that I know that there are tremendous volumes of high quality photographs out there in the database, but which are difficult to find.

 

As to capturing a fish jumping out of the water in real life, well, how do you define photographic skill? Finding a place and natural conditions where there are loads of insects on the water. I think this is entirely feasible, and this knowledge of nature is definitely in the skill requirements of a wildlife photographer. The actual timing of the exposure would have to be implemented with some kind of triggering system. The photographer could either wait underwater and trigger the shutter with a remote release when they see a fish reaching out of the water. Or an IR triggering system might be implemented. These certainly are photographic skills as much as anything else. And these sort of things are routinely used by high end wildlife photographers and often something equivalent is needed to document special situations in nature. Adding a fish in photoshop is a cheap trick in comparison, and it would be an outrage if published in a nature magazine.

[ilkka_nissila]

Obviously in the current situation, a real shot of a fish jumping out of the water would not make TRP because it wouldn't look "original" enough to the raters. Only when something is fake (unphysical looking spills of water), do the ratings seem to go to 7. Wild colours are another possibility. Is that what originality in photography is about?

 

How would the vote be carried out? Sending E-mail? Clicking on a vote page? I think it would be good if an e-mail were sent to subscribers and we could then respond with a Y/N answer. Quite a few e-mails? This would perhaps motivate some anti-PS people to subscribe and this would help pay for the change :-)

[aphanius]

Ilkka, to shoot a jumping fish you must go to a lake, river or sea, and this definitely doesn't require any skill - maybe a driving license - (regarding with opportunity or serendipity referred by Carl).

<br><br>

A wildlife photographer definition isn't a universal standard, but please consider the one who add to some of your honest proposals (wait underwater, IR triggering) more advantatges. For instance: <br>- feeding the place with fish food in order to attract more fishes, <br>- forcing fishes to jump in the right place with a dry fly fisihing expert, <br>- setting shutter repeater to catch the optimal position in the air for each set of shots, <br>- waiting inside a mimetic hide in silence, <br>- so on..... <br><br>

<b>BUT</b> some wildlife photographers are people with no time to spend (money money) and need more EFFICIENCY, so they try cheap tricks:

<br>A) hang a fish from a tree by means of a thin nylon wire, creating the sensation that the fish is jumping

<br>B) throwing dead fishes to the lake with the help of one or more collaborators, creating again the "jumping effect"

<br>C) coying and pasting a jumping fish into a landscape layer

<br><br>

So, A) and B) are photographic manipulations and C) is a digital manipulation... Could you distinguish among A), B) and C)? Sure not... END of arguing about digital manipulation in nature photography... P.S.: Some tricks are routinely used by "PEOPLE" in general, so maybe should focus on author's honesty and not in manipulated vs non manipulated controversy. Serendipity is a nice term, but a 7/7 photographer cannot rely on it more than one or twice a year... (outside Photonet, I mean) ;)

[rj]

Each photographer must decide to follow whatever set of ethics they create for themselves. Joan shows above many instances that I would deem unethical in nature photography and as such I would not do them. It would just be so easy if the artists (photographers, designers, uploaders) would just caption if their image is unmanipulated or not.

[ilkka_nissila]

If you stage a shot by hanging the fish from a wire, it's not much better than inserting the fish digitally to the picture, except that the latter is much easier to do (to the quality point required for web viewing) and thus more common. Also, the photoshop manipulations are generally not done well enough that it looks "right". It helps a lot in finding honest photography if these are weeded out. It doesn't matter if some funny setups are left because these are so rare and it's up to the photographer then to comment on how the shot was accomplished.

[stevemarcus]

Can't disagree with any of your excellent points. -SM

[root]

No Joan, the fact that some photographers use tricks to lure their prey (and many are illegal) does NOT put an end to the issue of digital manipulation. They are both deceptive and are frowned on by most of the nature photographers I admire. You aren't implying that one or the other is required to get good shots, are you?

 

I rely on serendipity most of the time I go out on a shoot. I don't know precisely what I will find and invariably come back with something I didn't anticipate.

[guyscrivner]

When I read a good story by an author like Steven King, John Mitchner, etc. I never really stop and think whether he wrote it by hand, used a typewriter or a word processor. I just know if I like it or not.<p>

Photography, should be just as transparent as to the hardware used. No one has to tell me if it is a photograph or graphic art either. I can make that distinction. As to whether or not a fish was added to the image, why does anybody care. Are we so analytical that we compare one photographer's method to that of another? I don't think so. <p>

The root meaning of photography is painting with light. As long as that is done then it is a photograph. The tools include cameras, lenses, different film types, filters, flash, darkroom techniques, photoshop methods, and the list goes on. To me it is just that simple.

[rj]

Don't you want to know if you are reading fiction or non-fiction?

[jhenry]

RJ, yes precisely! but what you refer to is <b>style</b> (surrealism, ...) not <b> mean </b>(manipulation of contrast, manipulation of color,...).

[ilkka_nissila]

Contrast and color manipulation is not what this thread is about (that's considered acceptable unless done to extremes). But when you add a fish to a place where there was no fish, then it becomes fiction. The means the picture itself is made is not so interesting, but how it relates to the physical world that existed when the photo was taken, is of interest.

[jhenry]

<i>Contrast and color manipulation is not what this thread is about (that's considered acceptable unless done to extremes)</i> Ilkka your assertion pointed out the very problem of what is considered as manipulation or not. <p>Some may agree with PNet definition (if so there is a box for that! and then it would be easy for admin to split the TRP according to checking/not this box), some may agree with your definition, but many more may have other and valid point of views as you can see if you read this thread ... and if you re-read the original post of this discussion, you will find that it is just plain in the subject!

[ilkka_nissila]

So people want to think that adding a fish is no different from adjusting colors a bit. I can't really agree with that nor do I see any sense in claiming that there is no difference. In a photograph, the lines and shapes that it contains are a projection of a real scene in the physical world. If you add shapes to it, it is not a photograph (drawn by light) but a mousograph or a drawing or digital art or whatever you like to call it. I think we can safely stick to dictionary definitions of existing words, including photography. If you want to make a new word for a new art form, you're free to do that and maybe it will be popular, but it's not photography, by the very definition of the word.

 

As to why contrast or color adjustments in Photoshop might be considered acceptable, IMHO Photoshop is a tool for making digital reproductions of photographs. You can do other things with it such as digital illustrations or whatever, but these are neither photographs nor reproductions of photographs.

 

When discussing the manipulation of images on photo.net, I think the current photo.net definition of manipulation is perfectly reasonable and acceptable. You can agree or disagree with it, I don't really care. We can change it if there is a reasonable consensus about what the new definition should be. However, there are vast numbers of clearly unmanipulated photographs (which look very closely like the original scene or the slide on a light table) and then there are things which are more drawings than photographs but which gather attention in the layman because they look weird. There is no question that manipulated digital art is here to stay, but whether unmanipulated works should be allowed visibility as they are still representations of photographs, while the other ones are not.

 

Academic discussions about what exactly is manipulation is pretty silly IMHO. The current photo.net criteria are not too different from Foundview criteria and they're well thought out, I have no objection to them and if someone wants to change them, let it be a separate fight.

[mike dixon]

<i>Don't you want to know if you are reading fiction or non-fiction?</i><P>

You don't need Photoshop or any other kind of post-exposure manipulation to tell huge lies with a camera.

[ilkka_nissila]

Sure you can lie by making people assume a scene was not staged while it may have been. However, a photograph does not really lie about what the forms and shapes were in the physical world, at the moment the picture was taken. That part is what makes it a photograph, drawn by light. If you want to draw by mouse, that's a separate thing entirely.

 

A photograph, if it is really a photograph only tells the viewer that shapes like that were in front of the camera at some point of time, represented by a 2D-projection through an optical lens on a photosensitive surface or sensor. That part is always true of a photograph. If you make assumptions about what those forms were doing in the scene, then it's just the viewer's interpretation and a photograph in itself doesn't claim anything about what the people in the scene (if there were people) were doing or what is the meaning of it all. It's just a projection of the physical world according to certain laws of optics and chemistry (or physics) on a piece of paper. If it is not an optical projection of the physical world, then it's not a photograph. Really simple.

[jhenry]

Ilkka, I am afraid you and few others here and in the other thread are labouring the obvious. <br>Reading you, I don't see any problem at all, if you are member of Pnet and you admit PNet rule about the definition of what is considered here as manipulated or not, then check the correponding box or don't. The split in TRP, if important, could then be done by admin according to that criteria (supposed that everybody caring about checking correctly the box). Therefore, I don't see the need of long repetition of same whinings (THAT's what this thread was about) and that's what I called it vain and somehow egocentric...<br> the Admin are not deaf and they changed quite a few things we asked them to change when and if they estimate it necessary. <p>And so far, IMO, this site is quite above many others in quality despite some posters claim regularly (by the way I still don't understand why they keep posting here!?). <br>The quality of the site is not only a question of rule but also depend on the quality and more the discipline of its participants.