The people in this photo gives an awe-inspiring perspective on just how big St. Peter's Cathedral is. This image is from my series on <a href=http://www.danheller.com/rome.html<Rome</a<.

Just look at the picture and see if it strikes you. Every pictures you take is manipulation. Every filter you put on is a manipulator. Ever time you use a zoom lens, you manipulate dof and proportions. I don't see things in black and white in real life, so b/w photos are manipulated? or?

 

By using different films you are already manipulating the scene. Nothing is truer than what your eyes sees in reality. Everything in a photograph is not real.

 

get a grip on yourselves.

I see now the window and light were added in Photoshop as well.

 

This is a nice example of graphic art, but in my opinion there are many better photographs on this site much more deserving of this honor. I think someone is toying with us here.

Ok, I'm not against photoshop. BUT,

for those who keep saying that there is nothing wrong with digital manipulation to any extent: If you're good at illustrator, photoshop or bryce, you can put together a great, amazing, surprising, sharp, perfect "shot" from scratch, without any photo - I don't think that will make you a good photographer if any.

 

Where is the limit? Is it OK to make people smaller therefore enhance the impact of the photo? So then why don't we add a "real" ANGEL and say "I was sooo lucky: right time, right place, the shot of my life" - doesn't work for me, sorry. If I see and ad, I am prepared to be tricked. If I'm looking at the Photograph of the Week on the largest site for photographers, I prefer not to be. To me digital (or any form of) manipulation is ok until it doesn't change the actual CONTENT or the OVERALL (hidden or direct) MESSAGE of the photo.

To change contrast, filter, crop, etc.. you don't even need PS, just some filters and a scissor. Am I too much on the analogue side? Or just haven`t came across a people-miniaturalizing filter yet?

 

M~

Here's a shot from my files for comparison. I like Dan's shot, whether it be manipulated or not. You feel very small when you're standing in St. Peters, and his shot conveys that feeling.

when you shoot people in b/w, you are manipulating and changing the WHOLE SCENE. You change the CONTENT as well because no humans I have seen in real life are in BLACK AND WHITE.

 

That is ok? and this is not?

I think you guys are taking this a little too seriously

Here's another shot I found in my box of rejects. Not a good photo by any stretch, but it's a similar shot.

So, was the window, light, and couple all added in digitaly? If that's the case I'm not interested in this picture at all. That's just too much. IMO. Nice if you like images, though.

Set aside ethnic issue (i.e even if the author tell us the whole truth of how the image was manipulated). If we are asked to judge a photograph (on originality and Aesthetics, particularly for POW), there is got to be a way to draw a difference between the following:- Product made by

 

***A photographer who carry his heavy gear arround early in the moring and late in the evening, waiting for days for the best lights plus all his skill gathered for years and finally obtaining a ¡§decisive moment" kind of shot.

 

***Someone with good PS skill ¡V working on his desktop with an average type of image, remove things he doesn't want appearing, and adding in one of the hundreds sky archives and turning it into a ¡§WOW type of image¡¨

 

I don¡¦t like to refer to a specific member but I am unable to make myself clear without making reference to the famous AP (whom I had a lot of respect in her skill in PS). One of her images appearing ¡§top of photo honour¡¨ for a long time in PN was a small boat floating in a frenzy background sea ¡V excellent mood and lighting but clear manipulation and she admitted but please take a look at the original image which AP kindly submitted amongst the discussion forum. With due respect, it was a ¡§crappy¡¨ image that imo, can be taken any day of the year by someone without any photo skill. Please enlighten me, my respectful colleagues, do we call this photography ? I am sorry to say that, "not my cup of tea" and it is not something i would recommend to a learner in pursuing arts of photography.

 

I agree with "Millennium", there must be a limit otherwise Photo.net would become Painter.net

Here www.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=1899279&size=lg, is an unmanipulated photo of the interior of Saint Peter's. Hmmm...I've been meaning to get around to scanning some of these anyway (ever since December 2000). WARNING: If you whined about Dan's photo needing a PC lens don't even bother looking at mine. I happen to like the super-wide distortion. I think it's a way to manipulate the image to look bigger than life! It's a wider angle but you should be able to draw some conclusions. Here's what I came up with:

The people in Dan's photo are too small to be 'real', 1/3 to 1/2 life size I think.

The light/window/etc are (probably) real as can be.

My photo was taken on a very busy day in Saint Peter's , so it IS possible to get a photo with minimal people in a shot especially when you take into account long exposure times.

I don't know what his intent was though. It's possible that Mr. Heller is intentionally trying to 'dupe' everyone, (and his caption didn't help here), but it's also possible that he's just someone who's caught up in the photography vs graphic arts vs images debate...and doesn't care. I guess from the quote about the Lightning above that he's interested in making striking images and not as interested in reality. If so, it's just unfortunate that he captioned his photo the way he did. I would have preferred he'd said nothing, or better yet mentioned something like 'extensive manipulation' myself.

Still, it's a good capture, and handy photoshopping...Happy shooting-creating all!

Looked faked. Now I know it's faked. .

Ok, on to the ratings. How can one comment on this? Originality? Sure, I'll give it a 3. I don't find it very original to place tiny people into a picture to make it "awe inspiring". I do it sometimes to my friends to make them really really tiny in pictures. "I'm crushing your head, I'm crushing your head...". And how many times have we seen light streaming in from a window? I'll give it a few points though b/c he may be trying to send a deeper message (see below).

Aesthetics? I'll have to give it a 2. I find the image boring, contrived and not well-composed. The cathedral (representing God, the Church, etc.) isn't the source of the light or even interacting with the light. The light comes from outside the cathedral and leads towards the (altogether too tiny) people, but misses them. I would prefer tying together the light somehow with the church (perhaps coming through a stained/semi-stained glass window and directly landing on the face of the people. That would hold more meaning for me. As it stands, the components of the picture are fragmented and incongruous.

I could say some witty comments about how digital manipulation being used to create the mood has parallels in religion, but I'll refrain from starting more fires... ;)

All in all, I see this as an almost successful attempt in digital manipulation to turn a boring shot of an oft photographed location into something meaningful. Good photoshopping? Almost. Good photography? No.

Dan, I like and admire your photos in your portfolio. I don't admire the photoshopped pieces, although I can enjoy their aesthetic qualities. If I were rating your digital art as digital art, I'd probably still think you could improve on this picture. As it is, I'm rating it as a photo and the base, underlying photo is not particularly amazing (which is probably why you did the photoshopping).

Photography is an art, manipulating photos is another kind of art. The effect looks impressive, but it's not real, is artificial.

St. Peter is big, really big and really beautiful, it doesn't need manipulation to seem more big and more beautiful.

As one who gushed over Dan's picture early on (and even upped my score after visiting this place), I feel I must add to this discussion.

 

Firstly, to those who think the sun-rays aren't real, the attachment to this post should dispose of those arguments (attached: one of several available with Google Image search, search on "St Peters Basilica Interior"). They DO exist and CAN be photographed. Remember: everyone smokes in Italy.

 

The sizes of the human forms are more problematic. I really wanted to dispatch these over the fence for a home run (or a "six" if you play cricket) with a killer Google image, but couldn't find one with sufficient unambiguity.

 

The average person is about a foot taller than the base of the columns shown (cf. the abovementioned Google Image Search). As this couple is closer to the camera than the columns, you'd expect them to be quite large compared to the column bases... sadly (and I really mean that), they're not.

 

Suffice it to say that unless Dan stumbled upon a (rare) visit from a busload of Idaho Pygmy Catholics to the Great Basilica (aka "St. Peter's"), it doesn't look good for the "lucky shot" brigade (of which I was one).

 

Having sifted through many, MANY pictures of the interior of St. Peter's. I've come to the conclusion that this is a pic of one of the side chapels (I tried to match the inscriptions, but couldn't find a Google pic that had the same words).

 

No wonder I couldn't (as noted in one of the early posts to this pic) find an equivalent situation inside the Great Dome. I'm starting to suspect that it didn't - couldn't - exist.

 

Score "1" on the sun-rays, (so far) "0" on the size of the diminuitive pilgrims.

 

As Dan hasn't posted anything new (photos or comments) to Photo.Net in two years now, I suspect that he's (a) not reading this and (b) couldn't care less what we think about his picture.

 

DO look at his website. It's an exercise in envy. He may (or may not) have faked this shot, but I wish I was in his shoes right... about... now.

 

Wherever you are, Dan.

this is an good work, contrast and lightning a great. the person too.

 

i like it.

 

roman

I don't know why you're wishing stuff like that Tony. I wish I was in Sidney right now (springtime yeah?) taking Cartier-Bresson "imitations" as good as yours. Cheers.

Roland Barthes argued that photograph is iconic by nature, reality is mapped to photograph via certain set of rules determined mostly by optics and chemistry. Photograph is representing its object (reality) by similarity. So the only symbolic meaning, photograph can contain in itself, is similarity to referent reality. Other meanings are communicated by different channels, completely outside of photograph.

 

There are others (Philippe Dubois f.e.), who see the photograph as a trace left behind by the referent itself, so being directly connected to referent reality, or indexical by nature. (At the time of exposure, photograph is connected to referent reality by light rays.) Indexical nature communicates truth. By recognizing indexiality, we accept photograph as a message from reality. Removing a pimple from portrait doesn't affect iconicity, but it alters the indexiality of the photograph. Indexiality is what separates photograph from drawing.

 

René Lindekens showed that there can be some code incorporated in photograph itself. By choosing the exposure, contrast or similar characterictics, we choose between rules of maping the reality to photograph and thus we also choose the message we want to communicate. We can vary the proportions of foreground and background by choosing the focal length, thus choosing a point we want to make. So photograph is also symbolical, containing a coded message.

 

Photograph manipulated in a way like current POW, is not a photograph from indexical point of view and it seems like it hurts many feelings by lying about reality. It carries two contradictory indexical relations and, as a whole, cannot be taken as truth. By altering the direct connection between reality and photograph, the symbolic message is boosted and made more clear. Exactly in the same way as a portrait with pimple removed is not true referent for the face with pimple. But we usually do not have any hard feelings about this kind of minor lies. So it is probably a question about degree of alterations.

 

I was fortunate enuogh to read through some comments before rating the POW, so I do not feel insulted by this outrageous lie and was able to give 7/7 with peace in my heart. If you recognize the alterations, you can still value the overall composition and message the photograph conveys. Good work.

The issue here is disclosure. He's got great pictures here and on his site, and most seem genuine enough.

 

I think most people would react exactly like us when they find out about the shrunken people. They feel duped, and now view the rest of your pictures with suspicion. Worse, they now stop trusting mine also, especially after they find out I use photoshop!

 

There's nothing against editing (manipulating?) pictures. The question is not to edit or not to edit, but (to quote Dan) at what exact point along that spectrum of distortion lies the division between an "acceptable representation of reality" and an "unacceptable distortion of truth?".

 

To me, a line is crossed when disclosing the edits made to a picture really change it's perception. That's where I lose interest.

 

Now Dan may say: yes I shrunk those peole, and I'd do it again, dammit. And that's fine. He's free to do what he wants! But as his audience I would prefer disclosure.

Just to add some "environmental" information: it isn't precisely true that "everybody smokes in Italy", even if in Italy people smokes, on the average, more than in the USA or UK. But, most of all, nobody is allowed to smoke in a church, museum or similar place. You will be immediately thrown out if you try :-).

Nevertheless that "beam light" phenomenon is quite common in churches because of incense (spelling?) and, most of all I believe, haze. I never tried to get it into a photography, but I don't see any reason that would prevent it from being registered in the photo.

If Mr. Heller shrunk those people by any means other than Photoshop, I'll remember to steer clear of him!

 

Regardless of the ethics and techniques of the creation of this photograph, my immediate reaction was that I had seen this kind of image before. My knowledge of art history is paltry, but many a science fiction book cover shows precisely this kind of scene. Small explorers dwarfed by outsized buildings or ruins in an alien landscape.

 

And then I realized; I have a couple of prints of the ruins of the Middle-East by David Roberts, an English artist who travelled those parts in the 1830s and published prints for an Early-Victorian public hungry for visual images of places they had only heard about.

 

The same monumental scale composition, of small people in front of large old architecture, inspiring vicarious awe in the viewer, prevail.

 

So it's got to be a well establish artistic trick, around for a long time.

 

Those knowledgeable about Art History may care further explain...

For what concerns people size, they are undoubtely too small, so they are a fake. I'm not against photo manipulations per se, and I understand that where to place the limit is a matter of taste (so any discussion about this topic is useless). We could instead discuss if this kind of photo manipulation is ok in this photo. To me it looks like this wasn't the right place for this kind of manipulation: the St. Paul Cathedral is really huge and there should be no need to reduce people to deliver this feeling...

This photo IMO has been shot at a very interesting angle. i would guess it is from an elevated position. if you look at the perspective on the arch and the projected light at the bottom, your eyes are drawn to the window and then towards the people. There is a striking similarity of composition by caravaggio or raphael(i cant remember) it is a one point perspective though with the lines converging to the viewpoint of the person in the picture. I would doubt that this picture is manipulated. could be due to the wide angle shot to capture the whole arch which dwarfed the humans as they are far away from the camera. great shot.

Interesting observation Mani. True, not only in art history but also in more scientifiec fields, such as archaeology, exaggeration in sizes of monuments is evident in a great many of early century sketches made by excavators. Early century issues of scientific journals like National Geographic contain quite a few drawings of Egyptian or Inca statues and buildings with tiny people next to them, purposedly exaggerated to convey the feeling of enormity.

Of course the issue with regard to photography is different, because with sketches and paintings you expect that you see an artificial, free-representation, view of the actual reality. Whereas when faced with a photograph, and unless otherwise proclaimed, most people kind of expect that what they see is a monosemantic depiction of reality, only affected by optical effects of lenses and films. I suppose that with the abundance and ease of use of manipulation devices, this expectation will start to wane. Already courts do not accept photographic evidence without first analyzing and verifying their authenticity and absence of manipulation.

Regarding the particular photo, I think this whole issue has popped up because the photographer's captioning of the image reinforced and played on the expectation that the scales and proportions of the image are key to appreciating reality. Technically, if he has changed the proportions he has exaggerated reality, which naturally makes the viewer feel duped on hingsight.

But skipping the acknowledgement part, the truth is that this exaggeration succeeds in conveying the intended emotional state. People who have been there say that inside this temple they feel small. A conventional shot, with the optical and perspective qualities that a lens alone can provide might not be able to portray this emotion, not as intense as it is in reality. Think about big things, and how photographs rarely manage to emanate the emotion you have when you really face them. Enormous mountain landscapes, endless cloud-littered skies fading into the horizon, the Pyramids, name yours. A purist photo may contain the scales of reality, but may be far off the emotional intensity of it. On the other hand, a photo (or painting) with untrue scales, may be pragmatically away from reality, but emotionally much closer to it.

The photographer, by the use of this manipulation, may have altered the proportions of reality, striding away from it in the technical sense, but in doing so he has compensated the loss of emotional impact that occurs between reality and photographic representation. He has made it more real in a sense, by intensifying the key emotions pertaining to the place.

So, if all photos are only representations of reality (which they are, manipulated or not) which one is more real? One in which the scales and measurements of perspectives are correct, or one which delivers a similar emotional impact as the actual real-life scene?

We often make comments about how the closing up on a foreground subject with a wide-angle lens accentuates a detail, an emotion, or a message that actually constitutes the meaning of the photograph. Nobody cares that reality in measurement terms has been distorted. The whole point of photography is to portray a vision of our world that is different to the experience delivered by our eyes, but more similar to the perceptive experience that results when biological vision gets mixed with emotions and thought-processes. I think that this photo succeeds in doing just that. And that is why it stands out.

After all our perception of the world is nothing like the light recording of a 50mm lens. It is mixed with mental understanding of space, object and their semantics. The scenes we experience visually are mixed with accepntuations, points of interest, understanding, feeling, semantics, etc, the moment we perceive them. So even technically, there is no photographic reality.

Whether or not the tools, the methods and the presentation of the result are ethical is a totally different discussion. Whether or not this is an entirely original idea or beaten to death is also a different discussion. I choose not to delve in these at the moment. I have already taken up too much of the forum's air time today.

Howzis?

 

This way we can better evaluate the theme of "playing with light" rather than "playing with Photoshop."

Sorry for the oversized image.

Zippy took a little time away from her friends to say, "I abhor the digitally manipulated photo. It should frankly be banned from Photo.net. The is sacreligious, and we should find the photographer, and I will lead a torchlight brigade to his domicile. I hope he has cat treats when we arrive."