 Alex T. Mizuno |
Fundamental Question One thing (among many other things) I love about BP is the fact that BP accepts all sorts of photographic works. Ever since I joined BP, I've been inspired by variety of works here and that motivated me to learn various photographic skills including Photoshop. Just recently, I started noticing there are people out there who deny processing like HDR or "heavy editing" in Photoshop. Some say, "it's not photography." This touches a fundamental question like "what is photography?" If you consider photography as a form of art, it's a means to express yourself. In this digital age, there are countless ways to express your creativity. But, is there a border line where photography loses its identity? Then, it goes back to the original question, "what is photography?" What is your thoughts on this issue? I appreciate if your let me hear any feedback from you.
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Mark Feldstein |
This question has come up a number of times here in the past. To answer it for yourself, I think you need to both think for yourself in terms of what you're doing versus what the individual processes entail. Since I've been a photographer for a long time, old-school so-to-speak, I believe the process of photography is literally writing with light. I'll stretch that a bit to accomodate recording of light with pixels. I learned to create my images in the camera on film, understand how the film records the light that I see, and how to process those images to take advantage of the recordation process I used in the first instance. When I say "take advantage" I don't mean to rebuild or recreate the entire image by changing the colors, swapping heads of people, refocusing, substituting one item in a photo for another, and essentially creating an entirely different image than the one that you captured in the camera in the first place. That's a process I believe best left to graphic artists and I honestly don't perceive it as photography, either in art or craft. In fact, most of the photographers I've worked with over the years who have been doing this a long time, graphic artists and illustrators, all seem to now believe that photography is one particular art and craft whereas using photoshop, etc., is a technical skill all its own and the resulting modified image isn't really a photograph but writing and coloring pixels. Besides, there are courses at JC and univesity levels that teach photography separately and editing with photoshop separately. I think that's a good idea, especially when they still teach basic photography with cameras that use (omg !!!) FILM ! Now, this is not to say that I can't somewhat modify my own work in the darkroom or at the lab because I understand those processes and how to do them and most importantly, when to do them. But there are limitations due to the creative process on how far one can bend or twist an image on film to create a final image. For example, I know how to push / pull film to increase or decrease contrast and take advantage of films speeds. I also know how to dodge and flash a print under the enlarger to enhance lighter areas or improve a bit of shadow detail. That's still working with light, not pixels per se. Photoshop allows seemingly endless possibilities that I believe requires separate skills produced by the software. That's my spin on your question.
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- Usman M. Bajwa Contact Usman M. Bajwa Usman M. Bajwa's Gallery |
Alex, read the below thread on the same topic at BP and make your own opinion. To me any and all kinds of manipulations done to an image (be these on film or in pixels) are a piece of art! http://www.betterphoto.com/forms/QnAdetail.php?threadID=33527
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John H. Siskin |
I’m not sure how fundamental this question is; defining a thing doesn’t it make it any more or less real. As Mark says there was debate, until recently, about the status of photography as an art. You might want to review the career of Alfred Steiglietz if you want to understand this debate more fully. I would say that I never gave a client a roll of film after I exposed it, I always processed the film first. That processing might include changing the contras, color balance, sharpening (unsharp mask is a film term), cropping, even retouching. I don’t think there is any real need to say that using a particular tool makes something unphotographic. Also there have been a number of photographers who used multiple printing processes to make images. I particularly think of Jerry Uelsmann and Man Ray. I have a friend who makes drawings on a tablet. I don’t know that there is any debate on whether these are real drawings, because they are done on a computer. I would say that there are images, made from photographs that have moved a long way from the light that exposed sensor or film. Perhaps we should acknowledge the skills used to create the image and refer to them as something else, hybrid photography? Finally there is the matter of taste. I have never seen a photograph printed on to canvas that did not disgust me. I did not become a photographer to make things that look like paintings. In fact, if I had wanted to paint, I would have. It is my particular esthetic that a ting made with light lens and the magic of the lab or computer should be presented as what it is, a photograph, rather than manipulated into the fakery of a pretend painting. I am attaching a shot that was made with film. The background was put in, in the camera, not in the lab. What should we call this sort of photography?
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