[Liney]

I read an interesting article in the New York Times on the "Rules and Ethics of digital photojournalism" http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/17/world-press-photo-manipulation-ethics-of-digital-photojournalism/?_r=0
The potential for images to be enhanced to suit a political or other purpose and then used to sell a story in the press is very real, a picture paintds a thousand words and how many people stop to read the words when they can get outraged over the image?

Perhaps the question should be "When is it permisable for an image not to be a true representation of what you saw?

[audiobomber]

Perhaps the question should be "When is it permisable for an image not to be a true representation of what you saw?

This question reminded me of Edward Burtynsky's work:



TAILINGS: "Burtynsky's skill as a photographic colourist is evident in most of his work, but perhaps most strikingly in a group of photographs of nickel tailings near Sudbury, Ontario."
http://www.edwardburtynsky.com/site_contents/Photographs/introPhotographs.html

The artist specializes in landscapes impacted by industry, including a series of images of the nickel tailings in Sudbury, where I've lived most of my life. I've spent countless hours around tailings, and never seen them look as vivid as they are in his photos. Clearly is it art, and as great art often does, it makes one think.

The images are horribly beautiful, but a bit of an insult to Sudbury because of the exaggerated colours. Still, the basic info is true, Sudbury has been polluted on a world class scale. It is significantly cleaner and greener now, but what was done to the landscape for 100+ years, in pursuit of wealth, is a crime. Ed's work makes us think about the effect of industry on the environment, so making it look more visually striking is certainly OK with me.

[normhead]

As long as it's an image created with light it's a photo.

Photography is the science, art and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film.[1]

If it's created with light, it's a photo. What you do after, makes no difference to the definition. I know some love to think they have the power to do something to a photo to make it not a photo, but they don't, you don't nobody does.

I remember talking to a reporter once, I told him this story that involved a shot gun and the police and some shot out windows. He said "that's the perfect example of a story that's not a story. " What he meant wass, it was a "story" in that it happened to me and I told it, but it wasn't a "story" in that is newspaper would have no interest in publishing it.

People can come up with all manner of explanations for why a "photo" isn't a "photo" from their own perspective.. but it's all non-sense, if it's derived from collected light, it's a photo. No other criteria are universally applicable.

[vonBaloney]

As long as it's an image created with light it's a photo.


If it's created with light, it's a photo. What you do after, makes no difference to the definition. I know some love to think they have the power to do something to a photo to make it not a photo, but they don't, you don't nobody does.

I remember talking to a reporter once, I told him this story that involved a shot gun and the police and some shot out windows. He said "that's the perfect example of a story that's not a story. " What he meant wass, it was a "story" in that it happened to me and I told it, but it wasn't a "story" in that is newspaper would have no interest in publishing it.

People can come up with all manner of explanations for why a "photo" isn't a "photo" from their own perspective.. but it's all non-sense, if it's derived from collected light, it's a photo. No other criteria are universally applicable.

Well, it can start out as a photo, I don't think it necessarily remains so. I see art all the time that is a combination of "real" photographic elements and totally fabricated fantasy elements created by hand. I wouldn't call those photos, but they can be achieved by taking a photo and step-by-step-by-step-by-step in PP they turn into something else. Or if I take one of my Topaz filters to turn a photo into a cartoon or [what looks like] a line drawing. That only takes one step, and in my mind it has taken a photo and turned it into something else. And of course I can do all sorts of things that people will never notice -- add and remove or move elements. So I think the question is valid, not nonsense. Like all such questions, it is all about "where is the line?" (And the line moves depending on purpose and context.)

[normhead]

In general I find line drawing very restrictive. It's saying "the world is too big and complicated so I'm going to draw lines around some of it, like just the parts that I can understand.The rest of it, outside the lines, I'm going to pretend like it doesn't exist." Drawing lines is useful, when you're trying to master one aspect of reality. But sooner or later you have to realize they are just intellectual constucts you've created, that they quickly outlive their purpose if you're growing, and the healthier thing is just to try and take it all in, without mental barriers stoping you from seeing what's there.

[mikeSF]

I read an interesting article in the New York Times on the "Rules and Ethics of digital photojournalism" http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/17/world-press-photo-manipulation-ethics-of-digital-photojournalism/?_r=0
The potential for images to be enhanced to suit a political or other purpose and then used to sell a story in the press is very real, a picture paintds a thousand words and how many people stop to read the words when they can get outraged over the image?

Perhaps the question should be "When is it permisable for an image not to be a true representation of what you saw?

oh, the whole time this thread was about shooting for photojournalism? who knew?

To me, photojournalism(reporting the news) is like:



while artistic photography is more like:

[normhead]

True photojournalism has gotten to be an oddity in any case. I know of two people of the 62,000 registered who are real photojournalists, and yet every time this type of discussion on this topic comes up, photojournalism comes up, as some kind of reason as to why photo's shouldn't engage in artistic expression and used to make the argument presented like it should be the defining element of photography in our lives. I would argue, with the advent of video, photojournalism has become almost a thing of the past.

These days ambulance chasers carry video cameras. These days, TV stations want video clips submitted over the internet, pictures, not so much. The whole journalism part of photography started dying in the last century.

Don't let a dying photography niche that was never a big part of photography shape your vision.

---

Last edited by normhead; 07-11-2015 at 09:15 AM.

[luftfluss]

IMO, a photo is no longer a photo when post processing has caused it to look like something not achievable with a film camera.

What makes film the default reality?

[normhead]

What makes film the default reality?

No kidding, I used to polarize images, re-expose them after a minute developing and create all kinds of odd effects with film cameras. I've done things to film that are much less subtle than anything I've done in photoshop. One of these days, I'll dig through my old film portfolios and post a few images. A lot of the film techniques were un-intentional, you just pulled your underexposed image that was supposed to develop for a minute, after 15 seconds, so the image developed where the developer had splashed on it, then immersed it after re-expsoing it to light. The results could be bizarre, and often you had no idea when you started, what the print would look like when you were finished. Then you had to copy the print, make a negative so you could reproduce it if you liked it. There was no way you could reproduce the image. They were one offs. And that was part of photography because photography is "writing or drawing with light", and that included manipulations done in the dark room, after the original image was capture, adding light, subtracting light, or chemical and filter additions to the processing. If it involved the manipulation of light, or it's effect on the film, it was legit.

Not to mention that I have to this day a folder of filters, that I could put in the filter drawer of my enlarger to add all sorts of effects. All the original photoshop filters, were based on filters you could buy over the counter at most photo stores, for use in your enlarger. They weren't a new concept. They allowed many of us to do in photoshop what we used to be able to do with film. Film image manipulation came first, photoshop had to give us the tools to do what we always did, or we wouldn't have used it. But for some techniques, like the one described above, there is just nothing in Photoshop that creates anything like it. Photoshop can't do everything film could do, at least not yet.

I swear to god, half these people crying for "anything you can't do on film", have no idea what you could do on film. And that's the problem with this kind of revisionist history. Because they don't know what we used to do, then, they take exception to what we do now. Before, good photographers did it. Now everyone can do it. Just some of everyone would rather they could knock everyone else down to their neolithic glass plate and contact print, level of post processing so their picture might look good by comparison. That went out in the early 1900-s dudes. As soon as there were enlargers, there were people manipulating images. And there have been enlargers for a very long time.

I guess the real argument here is "photography is what people who used to just take their film to the drug store to be processed used to end up with." It's practically enough to make you barf.

People think the darnedest things....

If you can't compete on a level playing field, tilt the playing field so people with more talent than you have their work excluded. Is that what this is about?

Before Photoshop: How photographers have been manipulating images for more than 150 years

This place continuously makes me feel like a grumpy old man, born in the first half of the last century, which is pretty much what I am, but, living in my own mind, I'm not that. It's tough coming out here.

[Liney]

MikeSF

I added the link to that article as an aspect of what I thought the thread was about. From what I've read this discussion is around the manipulation of a photograph to obtain a final image, and how far you can push that manipulation. The article in question relates to specific cases where the image was manipulated for very specific purpose, i.e. to illustrate a story and probably to illicit a specific reaction.

If you can get the same sort of reaction from your images (whatever they may be) then good for you, but my post was intended to illustrate how in some cases extreme post processing takes an image and mages a lie.

Sorry to have bothered you

[mikeSF]

MikeSF

I added the link to that article as an aspect of what I thought the thread was about. From what I've read this discussion is around the manipulation of a photograph to obtain a final image, and how far you can push that manipulation. The article in question relates to specific cases where the image was manipulated for very specific purpose, i.e. to illustrate a story and probably to illicit a specific reaction.

If you can get the same sort of reaction from your images (whatever they may be) then good for you, but my post was intended to illustrate how in some cases extreme post processing takes an image and mages a lie.

Sorry to have bothered you

i did not click on your link after seeing the title. Photo journalistic rules have no interest to me nor my subject matter, nor. I suspect, to a very large segment of photography as a whole.

[Liney]

Fair cop, I must have missed your list of "no interest" items. Please provide a link so I know what to avoid in the future.....

[mikeSF]

Fair cop, I must have missed your list of "no interest" items. Please provide a link so I know what to avoid in the future.....

I have no interest in providing this list.

[Rondec]

As long as it's an image created with light it's a photo.


If it's created with light, it's a photo. What you do after, makes no difference to the definition. I know some love to think they have the power to do something to a photo to make it not a photo, but they don't, you don't nobody does.

I remember talking to a reporter once, I told him this story that involved a shot gun and the police and some shot out windows. He said "that's the perfect example of a story that's not a story. " What he meant wass, it was a "story" in that it happened to me and I told it, but it wasn't a "story" in that is newspaper would have no interest in publishing it.

People can come up with all manner of explanations for why a "photo" isn't a "photo" from their own perspective.. but it's all non-sense, if it's derived from collected light, it's a photo. No other criteria are universally applicable.

To me, there is a difference between a photo and graphic art. Often graphic art begins with a photo, but the end result may be exceedingly different from the initial scene. It may be a collage of several scenes or have weird color filters dropped on it.

I'm not against digital art -- some of it is done well and is quite beautiful -- I just don't look at it and think that it is a photograph.

[normhead]

Usually the line between photography is not really unclear. Graphic art is like a cereal box cover, and photoshop's initial success was because it was so good at graphic arts. . The first guy I saw using photoshop was a graphic artist doing cereal box covers. There may be a few photographers wandering into graphic art, but, I don't know any who actually call themselves photographers. Most people seem to have the distinction down pretty good. Especially the artists themselves. Drawing on the past, I was married to a graphic artist before the industry tanked thanks to computers. They used to put together image and text in collages for GM print commercials, then photograph them and send them off to magazines. Hence the whole "cut and paste" thing. They really were cutting with scissors and paste with glue like materials. But because photoshop had it's roots in being a great graphic arts program as well as being very useful to photographers, I guess that sort of blurred the line for some people. You can spend a lot of time trying to define the blurry border between graphic art and photography, but it won't do anything to improve your photography, it'll just be another block to your creativity.

SO there's a difference between photography and graphic art.

There's a difference between photography and painting.

THere's a difference between photography and bicycle riding, although sometimes you can do both at the same time.

SO I'm glad you look at graphic art and don't think it's photography... ... That would be weird....