[FHPhotographer]

I'm not trying to stir up controversy -- heaven knows I've managed to annoy enough people already with other issues -- but I'm curious how people feel about the esthetics of data-based images vs. printed images.

My feeling has been that as powerful as digital imaging can be in the right medium, an image didn't reach its potential until printed. Up until then, it was only data. But I might have been so far out of the loop that I didn't even feel the photographic sea change going on under my feet.

Now data-only images are the norm as people take/manipulate/share images with a wide variety of devices. The images are transient. Once viewed, they are either deleted or moved along and forgotten. That process creates its own reality, with its own standards of quality and esthetics. Hard copy prints, of either routine or high-level quality, may be irrelevant to the shared/ "internetted " /cloud connected world.

So the question is... has the emerging digital-only photography created a new esthetic criteria, and if so, has it made the traditional esthetic standards (composition, lighting, content, point of view, etc) irrelevant?

Brian

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Last edited by FHPhotographer; 01-01-2010 at 12:51 PM.

[Frank Fletcher]

Super hard to make this decision. I would have said, "Apples and Oranges..." but a comparison is inevitable.

Surely, the printed image will always have a place in my heart ... however, it is very very difficult to get the printed image to luminesce like one on the screen. Lots and lots of light have to be centered on a printed image before it comes close to what is available on a good full-frame screen. After all, prints are light subtractive and monitors are light additive. Of course, I say that because I sit in front of a nice modern, 26" high gamut monitor.

That being said, "data-only" is a very slippery term. Most of us only visualize photographic data on a screen, or a print (or maybe some other strange esoteric medium). The data itself is not a medium. In fact, there is almost as much data in the print as there is on the screen.

[Kaimarx]

"So the question is... has the emerging digital-only photography created a new esthetic criteria,..."

Yes. Pixel peeping.


"has it made the traditional esthetic standards (composition, lighting, content, point of view, etc) irrelevant?"


No. IMO Photography is still an art medium and as such requires those very skillsets, moreso now then ever before, to stand out among the "crowd".

[Frank Fletcher]

has it made the traditional esthetic standards (composition, lighting, content, point of view, etc) irrelevant?

I only just got this part of your post now. You seem to be asking two questions. I only answered my opinion on the substrate medium.

I find the term "aesthetic standards" to be really strange. "Aesthetics" are, by definition, subjective while "standards" are by definition objective. It's hard to reconcile the two, even though I do take your meaning.

That being said, I do not think that my sense of aesthetics that is tied to the substrate medium has significantly altered my sense of aesthetics surrounding the image content itself.

There, second question answered.

[Kaimarx]

"Is there an esthetic difference for data-only vs. printed images?"

What Frank said about the screen displaying light (millions of colours) vs the limitations of pigments and dyes.


Difference in sentimentality in favour of a physical peice, but aesthetically i have to say screen display looks better (like looking at slides through a loupe on a light table).

[mysticcowboy]

As someone who made a living for 12 years as a web designer I have to admit to an electronic bias. So take this for what it's worth.

Right now a printed photo looks better than a digital display. Mostly it's a matter of resolution. Most monitors have little better than 100 PPI. With the rapidly advancing quality of flat displays, that's changing. 10 years ago when most monitors were CRTs, photos looked awful on computers. Right now a 20 inch a high definition TV monitor has enough resolution to display photos pretty well. Who knows what another 10 years will bring? The gamut of displays is certainly greater than paper.

Then there's the question of reflective vs. back lit viewing. That certainly makes images look different. Which is better? That's mostly a matter of personal preference. However, we're near having e-paper that will offer reflective display. With high enough resolution and good color control, I can imagine having e-paper photo frames, at a reasonable price that look great.

michael mckee
My Port Townsend – A City in Photographs – 365

[Rupert]

I assume you are just referring to viewing purposes? Otherwise prints win by a mile...or better. Sending someone a link to a web photo has little value in a world where there are literally billions of such photos. Putting a nicely done print in their hand....well, that is priceless.
Regards!

[pontusadefjord]

I haven't printed many images since I started getting serious about photography (when I bought my K200D in april 2009) - but when I've done I've always got a feeling as if the picture was finally finished. I like having the pictures in my computer but when I get a print in my hand I feel that I remember what photography is supposed to be about. I really don't like those digital frames - nowhere near the real thing.

And yes - I am thinking about getting started with film...

[janosh]

Prints don't necessarily work better than monitor images, but photographers who print their own (or manage their own technicians or use top tier labs) seem consistently to be far more demanding of their work than photographers who do not.

[raz-0]

Prints don't necessarily work better than monitor images, but photographers who print their own (or manage their own technicians or use top tier labs) seem consistently to be far more demanding of their work than photographers who do not.

I think that is mostly because you are cramming in one more EXTREMELY picky medium in terms of color into the work flow. You have to be that picky to get something exactly right in print. Heck the PITA nature of print is why pantone exists.

I do think print vs. monitor requires different mind sets to get optimal results. I think print requires more work to get optimal results. I think a stunning image in either medium is still a stunning image.

[WMBP]

I'm stunned that the correct answer - that the esthetics of images on screen are inferior to well-printed images - is currently coming in THIRD out of four options. Stunned.

I don't print nearly as many photos as I would like to, but it's because I'm lazy and poor, not because I have talked myself into thinking that online viewing of images provides as rich an esthetic experience as viewing a print. I don't go to galleries and museums as often as I would like to or ought to, but I haven't yet deluded myself into thinking that an 800x600 online copy of a Delacroix is better than viewing the original hanging in the Louvre.

And I don't quite agree with mysticcowboy that it's just a matter of time before digital display technology catches up with and then overtakes print technology. It's perhaps just a matter of time before it becomes a question of comparing really good apples to really good oranges. In the meantime, we're comparing really good apples to mediocre oranges.

Will

[jamonation]

Vinyl sounds better than CDs right?

Un-possible question to answer.