Would you process a photograph to this degree?

[Tim_Lookingbill]

<p>John, that posted 1932 photograph is apples to oranges by comparison to the OP's linked tutorial.</p>

<p>That posted image above makes it obvious that it is a manipulated photo. The viewer is in on the experience of what the artist wanted to say.</p>

<p>The image of the doctored castle landscape isn't a landscape at all but a composite and a mediocre one at best of something that doesn't exist, but it's not made obvious to the viewer as Guy pointed out.</p>

<p>It's a lie and bad one at that. The effort put into making it the way it looks says more about the lack of vision from the artist-no strike that-SCREAMS bad judgement and vision on the part of the artist. It's just a bad example for showing why someone would NEED to manipulate a photo like that. There's no aesthetics value or payoff for all the work put into it.</p>

<p>As I said before I'ld be more interested in <strong>why</strong> Eastway edited and even shot the image of the castle, <strong>not how. </strong><br /> It leads me to question the creative impetuous behind the rest of the his work that isn't that bad but does look manipulated/stylized.</p>

[johne37179]

<p>My point is "who cares?" There is no standard that says: This is a photograph and this is a digital image, or whatever. The camera and the rest of the system, be it a chemical darkroom or a digital CPU are all creative tools. A photographer can be a creative artist. It is purely an artificial construct to draw some sort of imaginary and totally subjective line that defines "photography". The artist/photographer did what he did because he liked it or wanted to experiment with it. You can choose to like it or not, but your view does not matter a wit as to the legitimacy of what was done.</p>

[Spearhead]

<blockquote>

<p>It's a lie</p>

</blockquote>

<p><br />It's not a lie. It's a photograph. Photographs are two-dimensional objects that don't have the ability to tell the truth or lie.</p>

[johne37179]

<p>Great point Jeff. In the sense that no photograph can reproduce its 4 dimensional subject, all are lies. I guess some might lie better than others. Not to mention photographers and fishermen as accomplished liars.</p>

[unangelino]

<p>From the article about Peter Eastway:</p>

<p><em>Australian Landscape Photographer of the Year three times.</em></p>

<p>Is it really a landscape if the resulting landscape image wasn't wholly based on an actual one?</p>

<p>Just wondering.</p>

[johne37179]

<p>Of course it was based on the actual one. If you were standing any where near where the shot was taken from would you have any doubt about it being the right location?</p>

[unangelino]

<p>I was thinking of the trees as integral to that specific landscape.</p>

<p> </p>

[johne37179]

<p>When did "wholly" become "holy"?</p>

[ilkka_nissila]

<p><em>In the sense that no photograph can reproduce its 4 dimensional subject, all are lies.</em></p>

<p>This is such nonsense. Equally, I could say that "since no sentence can tell the whole truth about all things in the world, all sentences are lies."</p>

<p>A photograph is a two-dimensional projection created by light hitting a photosensitive surface and forming an image. The characteristics of the projection are determined mostly by the optical system in use. The relationship between photograph and reality is generally known and understood by even lay people (even if non-mathematically). It is strange to suggest that there is no relationship. </p>

<p>A digital image which is altered like the image referenced in the original post is something else entirely. It's a merger between photography and drawing, in a way. Not straight drawing or painting or photography, but a mixture.</p>

[johne37179]

The optics are just the first step in a 1000 step journey. I didn't know that chemical and digital processes were outside the

laws of physics! All photographs are mixtures of multiple components.

[dan_south]

I like JDM's merger of techniques/technologies description. That describes the Eastway image accurately.

[Tim_Lookingbill]

<p>It's a lie from a perspective on what the artist is trying to communicate to the viewer. What's a photograph? It's just a word.</p>

<p>What's an idea? An emotion? It's what makes a person. We're not cyborgs. We don't view images/photographs/paintings/sketches (pick a medium) just so we can view them. We view them to gain further understanding of what is being said by the artist.</p>

<p>The least we can gain from the artist/photographer as a communicator is they show us their sensitivity to know when to trip the shutter at the right time. With the Eastway example he didn't even do that or else he wouldn't needed to manipulate it to the levels lined out in the tutorial.</p>

<p>Or maybe this is really just all about "garbage in, garbage out" and we can agree to that.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<blockquote>

<p>The least we can gain from the artist/photographer as a communicator is they show us their sensitivity to know when to trip the shutter at the right time.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>That's just your own imposed and arbitrary rule. Man Ray didn't do. Why should Eastman? What Man Ray had that Eastman didn't was NOT that he gave me the sense that he needed to trip the shutter when he did. He often didn't even trip a shutter. What Man Ray had was an aesthetic sensibility, a vision I cared about, a vision that was intertwined with his process. Eastman, as far as I'm concerned, is just snapping a shutter and then pushing buttons and creating something I don't care about. I don't care about WHAT I SEE when I look at his work. It's not how he does it that bothers me.</p>

[johne37179]

<p>Fred, I think you are absolutely right. Even the very traditional photographers, like Ansel Adams, had a vision they sought to execute -- both with the camera and in the darkroom. I have no doubt that if Ansel were shooting today he would be pushing the limits of Photoshop. He certainly pushed the limits of the traditional darkroom. He designed his own enlarger, he played with the chemistry and he meticulously recorded the results to be able to reproduce them. Ansel would at times spend months or even years waiting for the right circumstances to come together so that he could execute his vision. Those who have read his books will be familiar with his "previualization" terms. I remember going with him to a site in Yosemite that he had probably visited over a hundred times. We spent most of a day there and he never felt the light was right and we left with out him tripping the shutter. I, on the other hand took dozens of pictures. My vision clearly was not his. I don't think any here would call Ansel's photographs "lies", but they may be as far from the scene in front of the camera given the tools available to Ansel, as some of the heavily Photoshopped images today. Ansel wasn't trying to capture nature in the raw. He tried and frequently succeeded in capturing his personal and preconceived vision of nature.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>I might call Adams's photos lies just as I might call any photo a lie. But I'd use it as a term of endearment, not one of derision. "Art" and "artificial" have the same root. There is a sense in which all art is a lie, ironically usually a lie that tells an important truth. A kind of magic. Go figure.</p>

[AJHingel]

<blockquote>

<p>There is a sense in which all art is a lie, ironically usually a lie that tells an important truth.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Bravo Fred, this long exchange has at least advance the many previous discussions on "lies and photography". The Casual photo forum is here more fertile than the Philosophy forum has been.</p>

[Tim_Lookingbill]

<p>No body reads what I write. They interpret. I give up.</p>

[johne37179]

<p>Tim, I always thought that art was a search for the truth -- not lie. ...all those years I've wasted.</p>

[dan_south]

What I've learned here is that photographers are all a bunch of liars. ;-)

[richardsperry]

"Ansel would at times spend months or even years waiting for the right circumstances to come together so that he could

execute his vision"

 

Or just hurriedly stop and jump out of his truck. Take the single shot then photoshop it dramatically back in the darkroom.

 

He was very reluctant to print a straight print of Moonrise Hernandez, I believe only one print was shown. And it is a pretty

mundane snapshot photo in comparison.

 

http://www.leeduguid.com.au/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Ansel-Adams-with-straight-and-fine-print-of-Moonrise.jpg

 

 

In an interview Adams(on youtube somewhere) said that it is his most popular print, the photoshopped one I mean.

 

 

"Those who have read his books will be familiar with his "previualization" terms"

 

He was previsualizing how he was going to photoshop the negative. He saw in his mind how he was going to edit it to make the image he wanted to make. Sounds exactly what Eastway did.

[jgalyon]

I'd never seen both versions side- by- side. Thanks, Richard!

[richard_john_edwards]

The side by side versions are exactly what I would expect. A negative with all the information, and a print conveying a

vision, this really is no different than most accomplished photographers, it's the vision that people have issue with..

[Tim_Lookingbill]

<p>So Ansel took several photos of different locations and pieced them together as a composite to fit his vision he had in his head? If so, then Ansel was using reality as just a blueprint/framework to create a picture of a scene that doesn't exist except in his head?</p>

<p>I didn't know this could be done in the darkroom, but then the only darkroom I've ever worked in was for shooting and enlarging with a graphics camera logos off business cards to appear in newspaper ads and t-shirts. I couldn't perform composites in there to save my life. I had to resort to piecing layouts and graphic elements on a light table and reshoot with the graphics camera as one single composite image.</p>

[ilkka_nissila]

<p><em>The optics are just the first step in a 1000 step journey. I didn't know that chemical and digital processes were outside the laws of physics! All photographs are mixtures of multiple components.</em></p>

<p>So where do you draw the line of what you still call a photograph? Record an image with a camera, then draw a cartoon on top of it and leave one pixel of the original photograph intact. Is it still a photograph when you have one pixel left that was recorded by a camera and the rest you drew by mouse? What about when you print the "photo", and finally 50 years after that the paper is recycled and made into some raw material that could be used to make paper again. Is the physical ink pigment that held that one pixel still enough for you to maintain that that lump of pulp is a photograph? It's all governed by physical processes after all.</p>

<p>No. A digitally edited image that originated from a photographic image recorded by a camera is something else. It could be a reproduction of a photograph if faithful to the original image, or it could be a piece of digital art. But the photograph is the image which was captured by the camera.</p>

<p>By the way I sincerely doubt that you do 1000 editing operations on a typical file you capture with a camera.</p>

[richardsperry]

Tim,

 

I am sure you are familiar with Jerry Uelsman. He uses several negatives with six enlargers to produce his

photographs.

 

http://www.uelsmann.net/data/pages/061208082602_1Home01.jpg

 

http://www.uelsmann.net/home-p_1.html

 

"I didn't know this could be done in the darkroom," Of course it can.

 

 

 

"If so, then Ansel was using reality as just a blueprint/framework to create a picture of a scene that doesn't exist except in his head?"

 

If you watch his interviews or read the introductions of his many books, he says this exactly. Usually using a different analogy(music), but yes this is true.