The Great Sand Sea - X, Siwa, West Egypt

OK, I am not sure how much it matters except as an illustration of artist's intent but I have mapped the two ripple sections onto each other and posted an image to show it. I think it is indisputably a composite.

 

So Simon's intent was to present a highly controlled graphic interpretation of the scene before him. He did a good job and created an imediately interesting image. Over the long term I think it would retain some beauty but probably has no deeper message for me at least. I feel like the ripples themselves probably could have had the same effect and because they are natural they would have raised questions about natural process, predictability or otherwise of the world and so forth. That is what I get from images like this whether they be animal colouration, leaf design, seed arrangement or what ever.

Put this in black and white, and E. Weston did much the same thing.

 

"Are you seeing aesthetics as separate from emotional response?"

 

There are certainly those who would hold that this is in some sense true. Not so much that aesthetics is separate from emotions, rather the aesthetic emotion is different in kind from other emotions. Enter Formalism. The quintessential aesthetic emotion is an emotion seperate from so-called everyday emotions. You're probably familiar with the term "Significant Form," that combination of lines and colours common to all works of art which stirs such an emotion. No other human activity, the formalist alleges, has the exhibition of form as its special or peculiar provence of value. It is its primary preoccupation with the exploration of form that demarcates art from other human practices. Art may be concerned with religious or political themes, moral education, etc., but so are a lot of other things. What is special about art is that, above all else, it is concerned with discovering formal structures that are designed to encourage our imaginative interplay with them.

 

I'd go on, but at the moment, the world outside is interrupting.

I concede I was wrong about the composite issue. After Richard's mapping, I looked at the large version more carefuly and the smaller ripples section in the shadows was without a doubt cloned to make the larger upper ripples section IMO. That might explain the slight increase in pixelation one sees in that band. It's a bit deceiving to see Simon had to use 'filler' to salvage a mediocre image. What I said earlier still holds and I think the concept is good, but I feel cheated.

I guess my eyes aren't good enough to follow Richard's mapping, but I do think that just

as a visual puzzle one would have to question the authenticity of the top ridge.

Essentially, for this lighting to work, one would have to assume that each ridge is

progressively further back and yet the ripples on the top ridge are significantly larger than

those in the middle. There is no way that this center ridge could be enough lower than the

back ridge to maintain this type of lighting and present smaller ripples. I have seen odd

phenomena with extreme telephotos(baseball analogy--pitcher looks smaller than batter

from center field camera), but this would not be the norm in photography.

 

But I do wonder why we would find an image less because it is manipulated versus

knowing it is real? Is that the aesthetic emotion versus the other emotion?!? It is like an

earlier POW where there was a scene that could have been set up or it could have been

shot as it was and everyone seemed to have a different set of values as to what a good

photograph was based on how it was made. Are we witnessing that here also? Bottom

line, is the photo pleasing or not. Certainly the photographic quality doesn't diminish

because it is natural or isn't, it is the same photograph whether we know this or not. The

only thing that changes is our mind.

First of all I would not relaunch the discussion on "manipulation" of photo that we had above but when Mathieu announce that he feels "cheated" because discovering what he belives is some cloning, we are back to the subject and up to our neck. For me, if Mathieu discovers such manipulation it is probably just badly done !

No, I wanted to contribute to the discussion on "aesthetics", one of these central concepts for our sharing of critics here on photonet. If you go back to the tutorial for critics you will see the following guidelines :

 

"Give a picture a high rating for aesthetics if you like the way it looks, if it attracts and holds your attention, or if it conveys an idea well. A photo does not have to be beautiful to merit a high score for Aesthetics and a high score does not mean necessarily that you would purchase the photo to decorate a wall in your home. It may belong in a museum or in a book or newspaper."

I find this a very operational definition that helps communicating if we use it. It is therefore not a question of "feeling" only. However even if we are able to define certain photos (few ! I might personally think to have some 5 ? 6 photos of the sort out of the more than 200 I have put in my portfolio) but the guidelines leaves us without any help us to understanding why certain photos fulfil the criteria. One announces: "to me aesthetic is emotion" and another goes in the exact opposite direction by writing: "I'm wondering if emotions even need to be evoked". We are obviously somewhat lost (at least a great diversity of views) when sharing views on "aesthetics" ? this is why I would find it very positive if we could find the occasion for a separate discussion in view of eventually challenging the use of "aesthetics" and "novelty" (another complex as concepts to define) as then backbone tools of our shared critics. I find it interesting that one of the most interesting art histories published in recent years, the more the 700 pages big ?Art since 1900 ? Modernism, antimodernism, postmodernism? does not use these two concepts in any of its many analyses that also include an extensive analysis of photography (bent towards the American schools of photography).

For me, ?leaving me cold? is an indicator of a mixture of aesthetics and novelty that works for me. If I feel concerned in intellectual, photographical, emotional terms I try to approach the photo with the limited tools I have available in order to understand the big WHY?: composition (including colour and light), reference to recognised photos by people and institutions that I respect (museums, known photographers, art critics etc), photographical quality in more technical terms etc. If on the contrary, I don?t feel concerned I would be tended to skip the photo.

 

Sorry to have been so long.

The image doesn't change, but what it represents does. I think traditionally one of the strengths of photography was that people thought what was shown was firmly rooted in something real. We know that is not, and never was, really true. But I think that belief is deeply embedded in our cultural approach to photographic images unless they are clearly flagged as staged, manipulated, or whatever.

 

Recently a famous image of Rosa Parks sitting on a bus was shown to have been staged - what it represented was real but the event was false. The image became an art work instead of historical record. That isn't something that happened in our minds, otherwise a hollywood movie would be as "true" as documentary footage of a war.

Certainly there is a difference between a historical event caught happening and one that has

been staged, but that isn't what I was referring to here about this image or the one that this

came up on before. I am just saying that if you like this image thinking that it was real, or

rather not knowing it wasn't or..., why does it matter if it was faked? It is a visual and unless

it is stated to be documentary then what does it matter. I think here it was presented as an

aesthetic work and so should we not evaluate it as same?

 

There are certainly other issues regarding manipulation that I have taken a hard stand

against, but that isn't my problem with this image.

"But I do wonder why we would find an image less because it is manipulated versus knowing it is real?"

 

If you are really interested in this question, pick up "Aesthetics and the Natural Environment" by Allen Carlson, pioneer in environmental aesthetics and my former professor ; )

 

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/041530105X/sr=8-1/qid=1146681797/ref=sr_1_1/103-5819267-5783049?%5Fencoding=UTF8

So, it's a composite, after all...? Hmmmm...:-)

 

Now I'd like to see the original, too... Then we could perhaps discuss whether there was an equally good possibility without copying and pasting...

If manipulation doesn't matter, what does the phrase "good eye" mean?

It seems obvious to me that we don't look at images without putting ourselves in the shoes of the artist / photgrapher. A landscape is meant to be appreciated as the photgraphers portrayal of a specific place. If it turns out not to be a specific place, then the purpose and the message are entirely different - more along the lines of "I'm putting together disparate elements in a picture space and hoping you with attribute some purpose or meaning to this composite."

 

At the risk of beating a dead horse, don't try to confuse me by trying to pass off one as the other. If there is a justification for this deception (beyond "whee, isn't this fun") then make your case.

For me, the merit of a photograph vs. digital manipulation is an issue of personal philosophy. In my own photography, I will try my best to depict reality as I see it. When I use strong or altering digital manipulation, in my mind, I pass from the realm of photography to the realm of imaging, which are quite distinct in my mind.

 

In this particular case, I gave the benefit of the doubt that it was an interesting play of light, shadows and patterns perhaps skillfuly captured with a telephoto or something like that. In my mind, I was looking at a genuine representation of nature. Now that I am aware of the trickery, I understand Simon's intent to some extent, but I am left with a perversion of nature, because this particular scene never really existed...

 

Like someone said before, it is sort of caught between a natural landscape and an abstract. Increase contrast perhaps and make the leap all the way?

It's possible to mix nature and abstract - nearly all of the slot canyon shots are presented that way. The enjoyment of that approach is in the viewer's ability to go back and forth between a sense of place and the harmony of compositional elements. If you lose that sense of place, then it no longer resonates. It might as well be a chain and a feather next to a dune.

I think Simon has somewhat pushed us all into this discussion on manipulation of photos because he almost puts an address on the title of the scene: The Great Sand Sea - X, Siwa, West Egypt. I admit one can feel deceived if it proves to have been put together by bits and pieces. But after all he did not ask to have this photo selected as POW.

 

As I mentioned earlier, we are up to our neck in our different appreciation of what we are striving at when we take, produces, create photos. Some of us believe we represent reality, others believe that we create reality. In my view, we are in some way all trying to take photos that show to others how we individually see reality.

 

Why do so many of you want to lock us all inside a restricted understanding of what photography is compared to other visual arts. When we see that an original scene has been altered many seem to feel the needed for using words like: perversion of nature; trickery; fake, salvage of a mediocre image; or ﾓso, it's a composite, after all...? Hmmmm...ﾔ.

 

I would agree that one of the strengths of a certain type of photography is that people can trust that what is shown is firmly rooted in something real. Newspapers are filled of such type of photographs and there is a whole profession of photographers out there to deliver such material of highest quality. We are however not all playing that ballgame. Some of us feel totally free to do what ever we find necessary for us to express what we want to express with a certain photo and reality is out there as raw material without limits, for the creative process to start in photoshop or elsewhere, using all the tricks and manipulations that we can master. The final photo is what matters to consider, when you look for aesthetics, the process and the raw materials is not relevant in artistic terms. Just my point of view !

~ the viewer's ability to go back and forth between a sense of place and the harmony of compositional elements ~

 

Exactly. There is a fundamental difference between a photograph that reveals abstract forms in nature -- as uncountably many excellent photographs do -- and a collage or montage that happens to use photographic images of nature as elements. These are different sorts of works, which we judge by different sorts of standards. Obviously, works in either genre may achieve great aesthetic value. But part of the value of a depiction of nature-as-abstract derives from the realistic, representational character of the image, and thus from our ability to go back and forth, seeing its different aspects. If it turns out that this representational base is false or missing, then that part of the work's value diminishes or vanishes. We should then judge it by the standards of a montage or collage. Turning to this week's POW, given that it is not the landscape photograph I thought it was, but a montage, it loses much of its value for me. But not all: It's still graphically striking. It's still an interesting image to look at. But it's not what some of us originally thought it was, and it has less value.

 

Beyond that, I suppose that some viewers will feel tricked by this picture, because it seems to advertise itself as a straight landscape photograph. For some people, this impression of trickery might reduce the value of the work further.

I was shocked to find out that the cover photograph of Bruce Barnbaum's "Art of Photography..." is actually a montage of two photographs from roughly the same area, *in the wet darkroom.* If you've haven't seen it, you should try to look for it, because you will be shocked, too. For me, it loses nothing, in fact, I admire it all the more because it shows a)his absolute mastery of the medium, and b)his commitment to an artistic vision.

There is nothing wrong with creating images based on one's imagination.

But at that point I personally consider them as a mixed medium and not a photograph.

An image that has been produced of pieces of other images or so manipulated which has little to do with reality, could be a great image and yet not a photograph. Of course this is a personal point of view of mine...

 

 

We keep pushing the edges of imagination in entertainment and art to the limit where reality doesn't exist anymore because the reality could be boring to us and for our tastes now. Where even nature doesn't look beautiful enough and we actually have to make it over saturated or recompose it to add a "wow" effect to it.

Where we fail to see the reality of beauty (with its imperfections) in everyday life and have to recreate it the way we want and want to see it.

Again that is part of artistry of course...that's what every artist supposed to do, express her/his feelings/imaginations of a concept in his/her medium of choice but...if you create a personal limit for your work then you have a chance to purify your personal style...! It's only one way of seeing and appreciating the surroundings and ideas. Now I can push the concepts, aesthetics and ideas within these self select boundaries and "try" to get the most out it.

 

 

Cheers

 

 

M.H.

I have thorougly enjoyed the discussion here about manipulation. There are a lot of good

points being made, but I am somewhat getting the impression that there are two camps,

the purists and the progressives, no judgement being made in the categories. I find

myself in both camps over different issues.

 

When I first saw this photo, I had no sense, as I said at the beginning, of the sense of

natural wonder or place or anything of that ilk. I saw this as a graphic. I really didn't get

interested enough in it to determine whether it was a composite or not, the fact that there

was manipulation of tones was pretty obvious. So I was not really anchored in reality and

so didn't have any sense of being deceived or caring in this case.

 

For me, Carl's reference to having a good eye has multi-levels. There is the good eye to

see something immediate, as a Cartier Bresson, there is also the good eye that sees

something in nature as the raw material for a great photo--alla Ansel Adams and his

incredibly manipulated prints and then there is having a good eye to see a composition.

This latter "eye" is something we use when we shoot, crop and, should we wish to

composite, employ in creating a final image that works to promote our vision. All of these

"good eyes" may work together in one image or maybe they are used in various

combinations to complete an image that reflects who we are.

 

I certainly look at photos differently as to genre, subject and such, but what is important

to me in the final analysis is whether the photo moves me in some way. Does it affect me

and give me something new to think about or does it make me feel good or bad or does it

make me go off to another place-physical or mental. So, on that level, I don't care if an

image is manipulated.

 

As to the totally pure, I wonder if we can really say that our film portrays life as it is. For

instance, there are colors that film does not see. There are colors film sees but our eyes

do not and the film manufacturers give us different contrast, saturation and such to meet

our needs, or maybe theirs. So why shouldn't we feel free to push contrast, saturation,

color in a way that

expresses our impression of what is in nature and what we want the image to convey. We

never question this when we are in the

darkroom printing black and white--dodging, burning, bleaching toning etc, and how far

from reality is that!

Funny how the photograph looks exactly the same after it's thought to be manipulated as it did before.

 

"If manipulation doesn't matter, what does the phrase "good eye" mean??

 

"good eye" refers to anything and everything, to do effective manipulation you must have a good eye.

 

 

"As a fellow photographer, don't you want to know what he saw??

 

no, if I did, I would just go there and see it for myself. a literal interpretation is nothing compared to the real thing. I do however want to see his ARTISTIC interpretation of the subject matter.

 

"A landscape is meant to be appreciated as the photographers portrayal of a specific place"

 

who says? I've never done a landscape for this purpose. I see something that moves me to photograph and I interpret it as I see fit. It's my art and I'll cry if I want to.

 

I don't understand this obsession with the idea that photographs are to represent only what the physical eye sees and not the mind's eye. Leave that to photojournalism and documentary work.

"Ansel Adams and his incredibly manipulated prints"

 

don't forget his incredibly manipulated negatives.....

This image is proof that depth is not required to inspire depth from the viewer. The

discussion is somewhat interesting because of the works faults mainly. When it comes to creativity ,all is a manipulation by an inspiration upon

us and by us on whatever inspires us, if you get my meaning. In the end what ever

references an Artists uses should desolve into the work so that the birth of an original idea

can take place. There is no such thing as a set reality which we can all agree on. Ten

different Artists could go to the desert, absorb the same view and come back with ten

different interpretations. Simon expressed his point of view. The only fraud in the art of

creation , to me , is insincerity. Whatever we do should come from a place of belief and

commitment. As long as this work found its source in Simons true nature and has the

intent of his convictions, it is a viable artistic contender. If on the other hand, deceit. or

personal dishonesty toward the subject provoked the end result, well then it becomes grist

for the trash can. In the end it is what it is. My dislike for this image has nothing to do

with how it was made or why it was made. On both fronts the work fails to make me care.

The more I look at this work , the more it feels like interior design. I mean, it we were

looking down at the top of a glass and stone coffee table, we would all, I'm sure ,be taken

by the coolness and artistic solution to the problem ( of the top of a coffee table). That

standard is coming from a different place than whatever personal standard we might apply

to someone making serious works about life, the world and ourselves. To think Simon

went into the desert and came back with so little enlightenment to share with us is,well,

sad. What makes us all different, as Artists, is how we process internally the external

inspiration. It is true that Simon is better than this photo presents him, But it is good that

he is trying new things , whether they succeed or fail. Perhaps he learned something from

this picture that will be expressed more successfully later. Abstraction of nature (or

anything else) is best expressed when essence is the goal through elimination of all that is

disquising the subject of what it really is. I don't go deeper into the subject by way of this

abstraction. It keeps me further from understanding, and so for me , it fails its purpose.

before we use words like tricked, misled, reduced in value, and failed. I think the image never purported to be anything but itself - our expectations for it were brought by our individual selves. Seeing it now with new eyes I find it has an interesting rhythm - near-far-near. We see the far ripples as we might have had we moved down the foreground dune a little. Perhaps the structure was designed to express this motion through the landscape. What we lose in abstraction of a real scene we gain by realising we are seeing the same thing again but from another stance. It may or may not work but in some ways I think that is up to us as viewers.

Interesting discussion. For me the last result is what counts. As many of us see photography as a medium to creat our vission, or our way to reflect reality, manipulation is a legitimate way.What for me makes it or not is as was said here before, if it evocs my feeling or connection to the presented image.If the ellements in composition are well working together, to create a significance, harmony or what ever that will keep me want to look closer into it.

 

I can see it is an interpretation of a desert ellements, but the two parts somhow leave me unconnected to the whole, even the upper form has a nice flowing lines.

"For me, it loses nothing, in fact, I admire it all the more because it shows a)his absolute mastery of the medium, and b)his commitment to an artistic vision." - Aaron Falkenberg

 

Although I agree with the b) part to some extend, I think, there's something wrong with the "a)" statement, here, Aaron...

 

I wouldn't talk about an "absolute mastery of the medium" when Richard Watts - and presumably others - was able to identify the trick. Unless of course showing the trick is considered part of the magician's art - but for me it isn't, in this case.

 

Do I feel fooled ? Well, yes. But I'm rather ashamed of myself for not noticing the trick, rather than ashamed of the photographer for using this trick.

 

More importantly, I'm with M.H. here, not all the way, but I am with him when he commented about this modern tendency to see reality as not being good enough, or not being worth our interest. I agree that the danger here is to just MISS the true magic there is in reality sometimes. To me, there's nothing wrong with a photo-montage - I often do my own - BUT... I am now fairly convinced that

 

There was a great picture there that day, which didn't require this manipulation - and the photographer may have failed to see it.

 

At least, I think he saw something beautiful and, with his vision in mind, he created what I'd call beauty. Or rather: RE-CREATED beauty.

 

I think this discussion will now either turn in circles, or could become truly interesting IF THE PHOTOGRAPHER COULD SHOW US THE ORIGINAL. The point being: I'd like to see a crop or such of the original, which I suspect would be a great (non-manipulated) picture. I think it's important to see if we could find some beauty without manipulation, in this case - be it just to let appear again the simple and original beauty that must have existed there that day.

The original

Moderator note: The original is posted below as an image you can see within the forum instead of a link