Photograph or Illusion (Page 2): By your statement you have now included Mr. Adams.

billnikon Loc: Pennsylvania/Ohio/Florida/Maui/Oregon/Vermont

Zoo_man wrote:

I believe so-called "photographs" that were created in someone's mind and then brought to life by a digital processing program are not photographs but creative artwork.

"A picture is worth a thousand words" no longer applies. A picture or photograph is now a thousand illusions often created by very gifted magicians.

I praise both artists and photographers, but I personally prefer to keep it in the realm of reality.
Amen

By your statement you have now included Mr. Adams.

Zoo_man Loc: Albuquerque, NM

JohnSwanda wrote:

One doesn't have to have an "excuse" for manipulating photographs. It has been a part of photography since its very beginnings. You don't have to do it, or like it, but don't disparage those who do.

Here is the rest of my original quote: "I praise both artists and photographers, but I personally prefer to keep it in the realm of reality".
Where is the disparaging part?

bcrawf

Zoo_man wrote:

I believe so-called "photographs" that were created in someone's mind and then brought to life by a digital processing program are not photographs but creative artwork.

"A picture is worth a thousand words" no longer applies. A picture or photograph is now a thousand illusions often created by very gifted magicians.

I praise both artists and photographers, but I personally prefer to keep it in the realm of reality.
Amen

You are just having an attack of category-itus. Relax and let your mind have a little more space. There are some exercises you might try, such as answering: "When a cat plays a piano, is it 'really' playing the piano?" Also, doing some reading can be curative.

Uuglypher Loc: South Dakota (East River)

Zoo_man wrote:

I believe so-called "photographs" that were created in someone's mind and then brought to life by a digital processing program are not photographs but creative artwork.

"A picture is worth a thousand words" no longer applies. A picture or photograph is now a thousand illusions often created by very gifted magicians.

I praise both artists and photographers, but I personally prefer to keep it in the realm of reality.
Amen

IMO every photograph, purportedly representing three-dimensions in two, is, by definition, an illusion.

Dave

SharpShooter Loc: NorCal

Zoo_man wrote:

I believe so-called "photographs" that were created in someone's mind and then brought to life by a digital processing program are not photographs but creative artwork.

"A picture is worth a thousand words" no longer applies. A picture or photograph is now a thousand illusions often created by very gifted magicians.

I praise both artists and photographers, but I personally prefer to keep it in the realm of reality.
Amen

Zoo, did you learn that enroute to getting your MFA or did you just suddenly make that up out of the blue?!?!

SS

MW

barkeypf wrote:

I believe people who shun post processing either don't possess the skills to create a better photo or have never tried.

Or grew up on Kodachrome. K-chrome was wonderful in many ways but there was little latitude adjust the results. I never saw a print that was as satisfying as a projection of the original. I think the whole SOOC ethic originated by nessesity from Kodachrome.

JohnSwanda Loc: San Francisco

Zoo_man wrote:

Here is the rest of my original quote: "I praise both artists and photographers, but I personally prefer to keep it in the realm of reality".
Where is the disparaging part?

My reply wasn't to you. Go back and read the post I was responding to.

jcozad Loc: Phoenix, USA, Ecuador

"Reality" in photography is in the eye of the perceiver through the raw tool of the camera. I try to express my sense of reality with every tool available to me through the mechanics of the original shot to the manipulation of the PP programming at my convenience. If beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder, then every photo has the potentiality to become "art" whether manipulated or not.

Edia Loc: Central New Jersey

This is the same argument between reality and impressionism in art. What really matters is the emotional response of the observer. We look in awe at Ansel Adams landscape photos taken with outdated cameras and development techniques. What we are really looking at are prints made from negatives. Those prints have been enlarged and cropped in a darkroom. Even the negatives depended on how the chemicals were used to develop them. Post processing in the digital age is not too dissimilar to darkroom magic in the film age.

Zoo_man Loc: Albuquerque, NM

JohnSwanda wrote:

My reply wasn't to you. Go back and read the post I was responding to.

Oops, sorry JohnSwanda.
I did not want, originally, to give anyone the impression that I do not appreciate the wonderful and creative use of post-processing.

I wrote my post immediately after seeing a so-called photograph on Facebook of an African lion that was all black in color stating that it was a actual living lion with a condition called "melanism" opposite of albinoism. As a zoo man I was disheartened that the person that originally posted the picture was trying to pass it off as a real, breathing black lion. I do appreciate artwork of lions, but this was just plain deception in my opinion. No such animal has ever been found.

Donwitz Loc: Virginia Beach, VA

MW wrote:

Or grew up on Kodachrome. K-chrome was wonderful in many ways but there was little latitude adjust the results. I never saw a print that was as satisfying as a projection of the original. I think the whole SOOC ethic originated by nessesity from Kodachrome.

Speaking of SOOC, have you ever compared a RAW image to a JPEG? They both come straight out of the same digital camera, yet in my experience are different. Is one more valid than the other? Are JPEG shooters cheating themselves? Are RAW shooters getting a more honest image?

I respect Zoo man's original premise, but most people that see a particular photograph have not seen the exact location of the photo under the exact lighting conditions shown in the picture. Just think of all of the settings on a modern digital camera. The time of day, a passing cloud, a bird flying by, the list of variables is infinite! What I am saying here is, if there is no concrete way to verify reality in photograph, why does it matter?

stan0301 Loc: Colorado

Call them what you want, but, Ansel Adams, with whom I studied, said "The image captured by your camera is only the starting point for creating the image that is in your mind"--why an eye and a camera do not see things the same way--if you want your image to look like what you saw you must work on it--for many this post processing is simply letting your camera turn your image into a JPEG (which actually includes a lot of post processing)--you can easily see this by comparing a RAW image to the same shot as a JPEG--
Stan

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

Zoo_man wrote:

I believe so-called "photographs" that were created in someone's mind and then brought to life by a digital processing program are not photographs but creative artwork.

"A picture is worth a thousand words" no longer applies. A picture or photograph is now a thousand illusions often created by very gifted magicians.

I praise both artists and photographers, but I personally prefer to keep it in the realm of reality.
Amen

All photographs are created in someone's mind though the use of lighting, shutter speed, aperture, and most of all composition. Subjects are often posed, and various angles, heights and distances, as well as time of day, are often used to create a specific effect or tell a specific story. It's the rendering of a world of three dimensions over time into a small two dimensional subset at a single point in time. There is very little purity in photos SOOC compared to post processed photos, as some suggest. This is especially true since all modern cameras add post processing in camera. Photography is, and has always been, more about illusion than reality. Most post processing performed generally only enhances the exposure taken and does not necessarily change the content. While what you are suggesting about post processing being used to create art is at times correct, more often than not, it isn't the case.

bbrowner Loc: Chapel Hill, NC

believe that any (mechanical) camera cannot reproduce (any) subject in the same way that the eye sees it. And if that is true... than all photography is a representation and interpretation of what the eye sees. Can we expect more than that?

Than there are the degrees of difference from they eye to the camera's product.

Beethoven's music performed today is always an interpretation. Instruments (for one example) are different now from the ones in Beethoven's time. Even the composer performing his own music will play (somewhat) differently at each performance. Doesn't that also apply to photography? Same scene... different cameras... different result.

Barry

donrosshill Loc: Delaware & Florida

Philosophically speaking, Isn't sight wonderful. The fact that we can all spend so much time discussing it is a reward in it's self. Why not move on to another subject. perhaps we can beat that one to death as well.
Life is Art.