Manipulation of landscape images

[pico_digoliardi]

Just want you to see an honest, unmanipulated photograph serving its purpose. It also demonstrates what can happen to a strident fanatic who really tries to kick ass. :)<div></div>

[ilkka_nissila]

I also think that someone manipulating a photograph extensively in Photoshop just didn't have the tenacity and vision to find something worthy of a photograph in the real world. So there comes Photoshop to the rescue to the photographer who'd rather fake it in front of a computer than find the real thing.

[dickhilker]

Simplistically, are we taking pictures or making pictures? If we are taking a picture as a record, then we have a moral obligation to "show it like it is." But, if we're making pictures, I believe we start with a blank canvas and fill it as we like, with whatever tools we desire and with no apologies for anything about it. The resultant image should not be held responsible for its accuracy in rendering a landscape any more than any other artist in any other medium is expected to depict things with total accuracy. That's why it's called art, isn't it?

[ilkka_nissila]

Photography can be art or it can be documentary or a bit of both. Choosing the angle of view, point of view, light, moment of exposure, medium, post-processing are all tools. The use of these tools can be consistent with a documentary approach or not. Personally I think if you want to make an image which does not represent what the camera or you saw, why start with a photograph? Do a drawing or painting instead, it will give you with great freedom and it doesn't make the viewer wonder if it is a photograph or not, and if it is, was it manipulated. A drawing is obviously not a direct projection of the real world (it has greater freedom of interpretation). Personally starting with a photograph and using the tools of drawing has the problem that a viewer may mistake the result as a photograph and assume that what is in the picture actually existed.

[dickhilker]

You're suggesting, Ilkka, that when an artist selects photography as the medium, that there's an implied obligation to create an image that introduces no creativity or distortion of what the camera records? Personally, I'd love to be able to draw or paint well, but I simply can't. So, my artform is an inkjet print. Am I thereby precluded from exercising the full scope of my imagination because the use of a camera implies that the image will be a faithful and accurate depiction of the subject?

 

Happily, I don't find that a problem because my own style is very straightforward, using PSE2 primarily to clean up and "tweak" the image which is in itself usually more "postcard" than creative.

 

Full disclosure: I have been known to import a favorite seagull to a compositionally strategic position on a couple of seascapes. Mea culpa!

[ilkka_nissila]

I'm not suggesting that no creativity or distortion should be introduced. I'm only suggesting that the result is no longer a photograph but another art form.

 

My problem is simply because there is a degree of realism which comes from the photograph part (shapes are projected on the light recording device or medium by strict geometrical laws) and a degree of fiction which comes from the manipulation part. I feel uneasy looking at such images.

 

But it's a free world - my unease about combining techniques from photography and drawing is clearly not shared by everyone. I think in the end it's up to the artist, how images are made.

[pico_digoliardi]

Dick said: "Full disclosure: I have been known to import a favorite seagull to a compositionally strategic position on a couple of seascapes."

 

Eureka! Another idea. In the name of Truth in Photography, where there are seagulls, there is seagull poop. But we never see that! I'll do an essay on their poop!

[Spearhead]

<i>I also think that someone manipulating a photograph extensively in Photoshop just didn't have the tenacity and vision to find something worthy of a photograph in the real world.</i><p>

 

Don't forget to point out that the person who had to spend more than five minutes in the darkroom on a print couldn't get things right the first time. That can't be a photographer either, it must be darkroom technician.

[ilkka_nissila]

I have high respect for the art of print-making and spend a lot of time making my own prints too, although I'm far from being very good at making landscape prints myself. That doesn't mean that I need to add a giant salmon jumping over Mount McKinley to get the viewer's interest.

[Spearhead]

Printmaking is a craft, not an art, and some people can do some amazing things with it. There is no place to draw a line, that's the issue. Things are what people say they are, unless they say they aren't.

[pico_digoliardi]

Peek into usenet's photoshop group right now. There's a guy crying "I need a sky". So I imagine someday things like a Pocketfull of Clouds Plugins, or week-long workshops in Nebraska to collect horizon to horizon skyscapes, followed by Rocky Mountain shops for backgrounds.

[root]

I wonder what you all think of the flaming pear fake reflection plugin. Does it concern you that these images are quite popular in the personal favorites pages on this site? Do you assume that a few, some, or most viewers recognize that they are fake?

[sprouty]

I would assume most people on the site wouldn't be able to recognize this type of manipulation if it was done with any semblance of skill.

 

I base my conclusion on the observation that there are many instances of objects simply inserted into an image with completely different light source directions and qualities and yet these same images elicit loads of complimentary comments.

[sprouty]

http://www.photo.net/photo/3010936

 

Here is a quick example.

[dickhilker]

Some of the manipulations, Carl, are so bizarre that they're easily recognized for what they are. Others, done with good taste, subtlety and skill contribute to the effect the artist is trying to achieve. To label such as fakery or lying, particularly if the image isn't intended to provide testimony concerning the subject, is to me as valid as labelling all forms of art as fakes because they aren't 100% replicas of the original. The Mona Lisa is a fake, along with any and all other paintings and sculpture. Even the most carefully documented evidentiary photograph is but a two-dimensional representation of the subject. Does that deserve the label as well?

 

The salmon leaping over Mt Mc Kinley's obviously a fanciful use of digital manipulation, but if it somehow conveys the artist's message, then I feel it has validity and value as an artistic expression, however absurd it may appear to most of us. When some fleabag motel is made to look like the Taj Mahal for a brochure, that's not only fakery, but intentional deceit as well. Quite different, I feel, than the use of software to make a purely artistic statement.

[root]

All the flaming pear reflections look the same to me, so I'm not convinced that there's much skill involved unless someone can show me a comparison that suggests otherwise. I can't imagine it being used in any context other than to create something that looks real to the undiscerning eye. It's Elvis-on-velvet taken to the next level. If it is true that most people who consider themselves to be photographers are fooled by this, then is it no wonder that photographers who enjoy photographing well crafted reflections have reason to be concerned.

[Spearhead]

<i>then is it no wonder that photographers who enjoy photographing well crafted reflections have reason to be concerned.</i><p>

 

Why? Why does this change anyone's enjoyment in what they do? Do they have to have their process affirmed by other people? Why are they so insecure?

[pico_digoliardi]

Somehow the tail of this thread reminds me of a Henny Youngman joke. (Henny Youngman was an old-time, stand-up comedian who just about defined the one-liner.)

 

"I worked fifty years to be here. It's hard work. Then along comes this kid and in a year he's a big hit! Talent - it's just a cheap trick!"

[root]

Take my photograph . . please!

 

(Hmmmm, Henny Youngman can be appreciated on so many different levels.)

 

Jeff, it's not about insecurity. You sell your work, but maybe not the kind of stuff that's threatened by a fake reflection. Maybe flaming pear shots don't sell and it's just here that they are so much admired.

 

The bigger question is whether or not these ersatz techniques will become so widespread that the concept of a photographic eye will cease to have any meaning or value . . . to anyone. Maybe you think there is no such thing. I don't know.

[peter_nelson1]

<I>I also think that someone manipulating a photograph extensively in Photoshop just didn't have the tenacity and vision to find something worthy of a photograph in the real world.</I><P>

This is nonsense. It's like saying that '<B>painters</B> don't have the tenacity and vision to find something worthy to photograph'. Pixels are media. Trees, mountains, figures, buildings, etc, are just design elements. All of them can be arranged or used in any way the artist sees fit. The artist has a certain vision of what he wants to say or do. Is he supposed to drive around for months until he finds the exact meadow with the exact trees and brook, and undraped model sitting at the edge of the water, at precisely the right time of day to cast shadows just so?<P>

 

One could just as easily say that photograhers who insist on only recording scenes handed to them by circumstance or nature lack imagination or creativity.

[peter_nelson1]

<I>Personally I think if you want to make an image which does not represent what the camera or you saw, why start with a photograph?</I><P>

 

Why do movies use live actors or on-location settings instead of cartoon characters or obvious studio backdrops? Because you can make a stronger statement that way.<P>

 

<I>Do a drawing or painting instead, it will give you with great freedom and it doesn't make the viewer wonder</I><P>

Making the viewer wonder is a <B>raison d'etre</B> of art!

[root]

"Is he supposed to drive around for months until he finds the exact meadow with the exact trees and brook, and undraped model sitting at the edge of the water, at precisely the right time of day to cast shadows just so?"

 

Spoken like a studio photographer. The answer to your question, removing the obvious exaggerations, is "YES".

 

Check out my last three uploads and trust me when I tell you that the best part of being a photographer for me is finding this stuff and presenting it to viewers in a context where they know they are looking at what was captured, not created. I can't always control that condition. . . . but often enough. I spent virtually all my time at the opening reception to my exhibit last month answering questions about how these kinds of images are seen.

 

People do care.

[ilkka_nissila]

<i>Is he supposed to drive around for months until he finds the exact meadow with the exact trees and brook, and undraped model sitting at the edge of the water, at precisely the right time of day to cast shadows just so?</i>

<p>

Yes, precisely.

<p>

<i>One could just as easily say that photograhers who insist on only recording scenes handed to them by circumstance or nature lack imagination or creativity.</i>

<p>

Nope. There is creativity involved in the search and the selection, the use of light and whatever nature provides. It is not a question of something being handed to us - we have to know where to look, and when to look, as well as how to convey what we see well in the photograph. If you don't have this skill or interest in the outdoors then perhaps you don't understand it. I don't understand why someone would want to modify a nature image to make it less documentary. To me it suggests that that person doesn't have respect for nature as it is.

[Spearhead]

<i>I don't understand why someone would want to modify a nature image to make it less documentary.</i><p>

 

Because it represents a <i>feeling</i> or an <i>emotion</i> that these scenes brought out in them. Maybe <i>you</i> don't get that, but it's really what <i>art</i> is about. And some of us are very interested in <i>art</i> and not simple recording. If recording were all there were too it, a surveillance camera or a camera sitting somewhere with an interval timer for a few days would suffice. But some of us are interested in what goes way beyond that simple recording action.

[peter_nelson1]

<I>I don't understand why someone would want to modify a nature image to make it less documentary.</I><P>

Because they think it looks better that way. What part of that don't you understand?<P>

 

<I>To me it suggests that that person doesn't have respect for nature as it is.</I><P>

 

But that's what painters do. Pixels are are just another medium, like paint on a canvas. One doesn't suggest that painters disrespect nature. So why does it matter if their medium is digital?