When is a photo not a photo - discuss!

I'm not having a go at anyone who over enhances, strange as it may seem.
Those are easy to see, and at first sight you know just exactly what you are seeing, my beef is with those clever people who take pictures of eg. sunsets then over do the colouration, or trees with very green leaves, the list is endless.

As for doing the enhancement while taking the picture, filters etc. or during the developing stage, in the old methods, I would assume that would take far more skill and knowledge than just playing around with Photo Shop, on a wet Monday afternoon.

 

So you think it's O.k doing the same effects as long as it's with old style cameras and filters, because you think it's more difficult that way?
I would have thought both methods could produce good and bad results depending on the ability of the individual surely.

To do digital PP badly is very easy, to do it well takes more skill. To do it and have it not be recognisd as such, is much more difficult.
Over saturating colours is a style some people like. I don't like it myself. Also, that can be done using a filter on a film camera too. It ends up looking the same.
Having done enhancement while taking a photo on a film camera and after using PP with a digital. I would say they're on a par. It's almost like filters and film is more craft and digital and PP is more art.

The term "just playing around with Photo Shop, on a wet Monday afternoon" is quite derogatory and implies no skill is needed. The same knowledge is used in PP programs as with old film techniques. After all it originated from there. That is why the same terms are used.
Also, lets not forget some people do it for a living.

Can I ask if you have experience in either method of enhancing photos, or is it just an impression that you have.

 

No, I'm afraid I have no real experience of digitally altering photos, other than a bit of tweaking if I want to improve a picture I'm not likely to ever get again, and I messed up during the shooting.


I just look at a photo and know if I like it or not.

If its been modified, mostly I dont.
If its been modified in such a way as to deceive the viewer, but no statement is made to that effect, I think it is wrong.
And the world is full of such images.

 

There are some cases where I'd agree it can be damaging, estate and travel agents removing the likes of pylons from photos, models figures altered and skin smoothed way beyond the normal, giving unrealistic expectations to consumers and giving young girls poor body image. Oh , and anything done to photo journalist's work. Other than that, I don't see why there is a need to make that statement. Most photos are for appreciating in the same way as a painting.
It's the view the photographer wants to present to you.

 

Mrs W shares your opinion regarding the second photo Sheal, but she's quite significantly visually impaired and seldom sees subtle differences. In fact I know that if I ask her 'what do you think of that?' I'll usually be disappointed with the reply!
Regarding 'painting' photography is painting, but painting (or more accurately writing) done by light. Painting in the generally accepted sense involves applying a solid medium in a contolled manner to a canvas/paper/board etc. Photography involves applying light in a controlled manner to either a chemically treated film and/or paper. The digital varient is just the same but gives the photographer/artist potentially considerably greater control over the palette at his or her disposal.

I'm glad I started this thread - it's generated the discussion I hoped it would.

 

OK, I guess not being particularly "artistic" I dont understand.

But when I see a painting which has taken hours to paint and is exactly that, the artists impression of what they see, as the scene is very likely to have changed between starting the painting, and finishing it.

To me a photo is, to use another derogatory term, a "snapshot" a split second in time, captured by the camera, very easily done, on most occasions.
To then go away and alter the image and make it appear different from what it originally was, but at the same time hope to deceive the viewer will never be right to me.
I struggle to see it as "Art".

 

Why? "Painting" digitally is just another art form. I use a graphics tablet. It works just like a brush if that's what is wanted. I used to sketch with charcoal. I can do that too, without the mess I used to get on my hand!

I think there is a difference between a "snap" that someone takes to quickly record something and a photograph where some artistic thought is used to compose the end result.

You're saying you appreciate the painting because it took hours to paint, and ends up being the artist's impression. Then are deriding the digital version when the person has taken time ( sometimes equally as long as the painting) to create their impression of what they see. To me this doesn't make sense. They are the same.

I think you have a romantic idea of an artist sitting in a field with their brushes and canvas. Where as it's common practice to take a photo and then go back to your studio to paint.

 

A camera is a tool for recording an image. It's nowhere near as clever as the human eye and has only one formula to capture an image. Shutter speed=Aperture.
Apply that formula to say Landscape photography and it can't come anywhere near what the eye can see. Rubbish in fact. Correcting this via image software can help you enormously. That was what Photoshop was designed for.
Of course as NA say's there's a fine line between photography and digital art.
But whatever you may think just about every image you will see in a glossy magazine will have been digitally corrected.
I personally try to re-create an image that I have seen with my eyes by using techniques I have learnt over many years. Your photography and pictures will improve drastically if you can master a few simple tools in PS.

 

I'd just like to say that I love the second picture above....well done .........closer to art that the original photo for me as it is so obvious that its been "tweaked" but it looks good in its own right .

I do agree on the whole that personally I usually leave my photos alone, BUT I can see that when someone takes a photo of say a favourite flower and once its on the pc screen the colour isn't quite as vivid as you saw with your human eye that a little enhancing to bring it back to the colour it should be would be beneficial. That wouldn't produce a 'fake' or obviously enhanced picture but a truer representation of what you originally saw with your own eyes

 

Photography: Greek "drawing with light" from photos = light, and graphis = stylus, paintbrush or graphê = representation by means of lines, drawing. So...."Drawing with light"

ALL digital photographs are edited, bar none. Whether that is done in camera automatically by the hardware or after the photo is downloaded to a device such as a PC is irrelevant.

In camera, photos are edited to compress and save space before saving using settings that are generally "factory set", some can be changed by the user, most cannot. This results in a "jpeg(jpg)" saved to a memory card or internal storage device on the camera ready for download to a device and use by the camera operator/user. A LOT of information is lost in this process and if you consider that a forum posted photograph can be around 100-200kb in size and that a 10megapixel camera can "throw away" around 5-6mb of information...thats an incredible 25-30 times the size of the forum posted photo size...that is just discarded by the camera, before the user has had a chance to even see it.

So RAW photography was born to counteract this compression and loss (in camera) of photo information, and to give the photographer a chance to choose what information is used and what is discarded before he/she saves it to a jpeg for viewing or use on computer screens (The photographer must edit at this point!).

Many 'togs where rightfully upset at not being able to use the photograph they had seen and recorded through the viewfinder when they where left with a substandard jpeg. Colour shifts and pixelisation where quite common in the early days of digital. Indeed, even now digital photography is still in it's infancy, jpeg's came first, then RAW....there will in the next few years be another format..I'm certain of that and I'll try to explain why.

The following diagram exposes (pun most definately intended...you may titter for a moment!) the shortfall of digital cameras, remember it's still in it's infancy! The grayscale image below represents the dark and light available in a given scene, seen through the viewfinder of a camera, ie its what the human eye can see.



The yellow box shows what the human eye can see, we see it all. The red box shows what a digital cameras sensor can see and record. Because the human eye can see all, it's called a "Dynamic Range"

Now consider the following diagram, this shows how a photographer can take photographs



In all instances a loss of photo information occurs due to the limitations of what the camera can actually see, record and save. Again I say that Digital Photography is still in its infancy, there is more to come yet.

Going back to the first diagram, we know what the camera can see and that it is much less that what the human eye can see or expects to see and this is why editing takes place, to try and bridge that gap between the two as at the end of the day a human eye will once again view the photograph using its inherent "Dynamic Range" to assess what it sees...it will very quickly see, what it does not and notice that the photo is not quite right, editing goes some way to trick the eye to see what should be there, but is not.

This is nothing new in Photography, in film days "Velvia" was a method to enhance colours and give vibrance to a final photo, making them pleasing to view. Jiggery pokery was used in the darkroom with pieces of glass etc to help make a photo appear sharper or different skies where spliced in etc etc...this is but the tip of the iceberg. But nothing new!

The problem is, and always has been..."Dynamic Range"...what we can see and what we can record. I mentioned above we had jpeg then RAW and that a new format would surely come along soon. Well it has or at least first steps have started with new "Dynamic Range" cameras http://www.andor.com/scientific-cam...s/ikon-l-936?gclid=CNvnjer_yLICFY5TfAodYC0AFA

It will be a good while before it's in general use, no doubt due to cost, the link above looks ominous as the phrase "Request a quote" appears on the page

The above just explains a little bit about digital photography and it's history in relation to film photography, from my point of view and the shortfalls in both mediums or more importantly in this topic why editing is necessary in digital photography.

Moving on a little to art, Photography is an art form of that there is no doubt. We know all art is subjective and one person will see one thing in an artwork whilst the next person sees another. We have all looked up at the sky and clouds and said, that one looks like a Dog, the next person might say...I think it's a Fox. Slightly different but its that persons perception.

The very same thing applies to digital editing of photographs and its why some 'togs edit strongly, some lightly and some not at all...its the perception of the individual.

For me, digital editing has to be real. My final edited photograph MUST be what I saw through the viewfinder when I took the shot, my photographic archive reflects this, they are my memories of that day in time...they are what I saw at that moment and when I look back at them they jog my memory and duplicate what is stored there. This means that to achieve that (knowing the shortfall between digital cameras and human eyesight) I MUST edit, but I do this sparingly and as light as possible, I consider every edit very carefully and will not edit to simply make it look better.

For example I would not remove telephone lines from a photograph or pieces of litter, I would do that when taking the Photo itself, I'll use my legs and move to a new position so the telephone lines are not in the shot or pick up the litter before pressing the button on my camera, if that is not possible then I take the shot anyway as its what I saw through the vviewfinder...so they stay in the photograph!

I have in the past been called a purist for these thoughts, but I just consider myself a Photographer who wants to record what he sees, nothing more.

When is a photo not a photo?

Simply put, a photo is not a photo when it moves away from what the photographer saw through the viewfinder, in my book/opinion...thats end of dicussion.

How far should a photo be edited is a whole new discussion and one only the user can decide remebering that Photography is an art and that in itself is subjective and must take into account the users perception of such.

And how we achive both photo and artwork must take into account both the dynamic range that the eye can see and the shortfalls in what a digital can view, record and save.

In other words, until we have cameras where the inner workings match exactly what the human eye can see and can accurately and completely record that, then editing will be necessary, and it must be assumed that every single digital photograph has in some way shape or form...been edited.

Steve...

 

My head hurts....