Is a digital print a photograph? I photograph surfers as a hobby using a Nikon D810 camera. Sometimes I print up some of my better shots and hand them out free to the pictured surfer.

griffj98

I photograph surfers as a hobby using a Nikon D810 camera. Sometimes I print up some of my better shots and hand them out free to the pictured surfer. I call them photographs but have had a couple of surfers correct me. They claim digital photography makes prints and not photographs. Is this correct? Is a print a photograph?

Newsbob Loc: SF Bay Area

The photo is what you take with your camera and manipulate afterwards. The print is what's on the paper you hand out. I mean really... talk about nitpicking!

Kuzano

Come to think of it, some of the people who photograph for a living (I hesitate to call them all Professional Photographers), often refer to their enlarged images as "Prints" rather than photographs. However, I side with "nit picking" as well. As long as the check is good, you can call it whatever you want, and so can the buyer.

rwilson1942 Loc: Houston, TX

According to Merriam-Webster: 'a picture or likeness obtained by photography'
So I would say, yes, a print is a photograph. The fact that it was taken with a digital camera is not relevant.
The print was the final rendering of many hundreds of thousands of B&W images back in the film era and I'm pretty sure they were all photographs.

lowkick Loc: Connecticut

Photography is the art of recording light. Both film and digital cameras record light when you take a picture. However, printing from a digital file does not require light whereas printing from a negative does. Technically they are right, a printed image from a digital file is not a photograph. But in reality, the image the digital file came from was a photograph, and they are splitting hairs.

Kuzano

Kuzano wrote:

Come to think of it, some of the people who photograph for a living (I hesitate to call them all Professional Photographers), often refer to their enlarged images as "Prints" rather than photographs. However, I side with "nit picking" as well. As long as the check is good, you can call it whatever you want, and so can the buyer.

Again, I'm not going to nit pick the issue and lose the sale. Acquiesce, make the sale, then argue, in that order.

The misplaced need to be right has a negative impact on one's paycheck, selling product, or working for a boss and collecting a salary.

JohnSwanda Loc: San Francisco

Kuzano wrote:

Come to think of it, some of the people who photograph for a living (I hesitate to call them all Professional Photographers), often refer to their enlarged images as "Prints" rather than photographs. However, I side with "nit picking" as well. As long as the check is good, you can call it whatever you want, and so can the buyer.

Well, they are prints - prints of photographs.

Nikonian72 Loc: Chico CA

I have spent hundreds of hours in several darkrooms enlarging B&W and color negatives onto photographic paper. Once processed through a developing machine, the final product was a photographic print.
The modern procedure of computer editing a digital photograph, then processing electronically through a color printer, still renders a photographic print. Most 'old school' photographer/printers consider the final difference to be slight, but appreciate the ease of digital printing. I wonder if the lack of darkroom experience (perspective) is what we are discussing?

P.S. - I describe my photographic products as Giclée <zhee-KLAY> prints (instant added value). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gicl%C3%A9e

CPR Loc: Nature Coast of Florida

JohnSwanda wrote:

Well, they are prints - prints of photographs.

And if you change your sales pitch to the wording John suggested you should no longer have a problem.

Rongnongno Loc: FL

Basically... What is the schmilblick?

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

griffj98 wrote:

I photograph surfers as a hobby using a Nikon D810 camera. Sometimes I print up some of my better shots and hand them out free to the pictured surfer. I call them photographs but have had a couple of surfers correct me. They claim digital photography makes prints and not photographs. Is this correct? Is a print a photograph?

Years ago when I had my B&W darkroom, I made "prints" from the negatives. Yes, they were called prints.
And an image printed from a digital camera is a print. Only the method of making it has changed.
The result of either method is still a photograph as it was created in a camera.

JohnSwanda Loc: San Francisco

lowkick wrote:

Photography is the art of recording light. Both film and digital cameras record light when you take a picture. However, printing from a digital file does not require light whereas printing from a negative does. Technically they are right, a printed image from a digital file is not a photograph. But in reality, the image the digital file came from was a photograph, and they are splitting hairs.

When photographs are printed in a publication such as a newspaper or magazine, or a book, on a printing press, they are still considered photographs even though no light was required to print them.

JohnSwanda Loc: San Francisco

Nikonian72 wrote:

I describe my photographic products as Giclée <zhee-KLAY> prints (instant added value). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gicl%C3%A9e

Just like darkroom prints are referred to in galleries as "gelatin silver prints".

LFingar Loc: Claverack, NY

You're giving them out free and they are debating what they are?

blackest Loc: Ireland

Not every print is from a printer as such I get prints made on light sensitive photographic paper using a fuji frontier system The paper is exposed using lasers rather than a conventional enlarger sometimes it is from a negative sometimes a jpg file.

is that not a photographic print?