Digital Artist vs Photographer

[casil403]

Great discussion going on over at this site here:
Interpretative Nature Photography (http://www.oopoomoo.com/2013/11/50-at-50-interpretative-nature-photography-how-far-is-too-far/)

What do you think?

[Marko]

We've talked about similar themes many times but it's lovely that Darwin provides a real life example.

here's my thoughts on his image (copied)

Fab post with no simple answers that's for sure.


Personally, I like to know how the photograph was made.
I like to know how much post processing was involved and I have to admit that in general I prefer less (dodging, burning, cropping, sharpening, levelling) rather than more processing.This is because I grew up in the film world where we processed less. Yes we still manipulated reality, but way less overall.


Those people that were seriously able to manipulate (from Man ray to Jerry Uelsmann) reality, did so with their own hands - what they produced was more hand crafted than computer crafted. This is a big part of it for me. If the computer does most of the work or a large part of the work, the computer should get some of the credit. For me such a work he is no longer photography in the (more) classic sense of the word. It is digital art. I'd like to see it named as such wherever it appears and sometimes you will see this, as in a gallery setting.


Composite images have a long history in photography and this image is a well done composite. You pre visualized this scene and used the computer as you would a saw. I'd still call this a photo but many people's mileage will likely differ on this call.

[AcadieLibre]

Yes we have had a number of discussions on this topic but it is always good to hear new thoughts on it.

[ericmark]

18554This picture had to be stitched there is no way without a special camera I could have taken this photo of the cafe featured in Last of the Summer Wine without some post exposure work. 18553 the second however was made to satisfy criteria when a picture taken on a camera club walk showing reflections was asked for. The water was some 100 miles or more from the slate quarry and the scene only existed in my mind.

However non of my DSLR photos are direct out of the camera I save in RAW so every image needs some work to convert it to Jpeg. If I took in Jpeg then the camera may have done the same job the camera's built in computer will enhance Jpeg images so all I am doing is manually selecting what I want rather than letting the camera decide.

I have surveyed a scene and realized I can see into the shadows the camera has not captured and to extend the dynamic range to mimic what the eye can see is not cheating but when we extend to above what the eye can see then there is a question. We hear the comment "the camera has not really captured this" and we have to remember our eyes are continually re-focusing and also scanning the scene but the camera is taking a fixed image.

We want to tell a story with out images and to compensate for not being there we need to add something be it some photographic enhancement or a bit of text and that was a major problem I faced when trying to tell a story about a local woodland in pictures. The woodland website is gone but the java script page I developed is still around. The free website I used is slow but This link will show (http://gw7mgw.co.nf/Woodland.html) how I tattled the problem of being able to compare two images and produce a presentation.

Be it a colarge or a presentation we have to select a way to show what we want. As to cheating the artist has as far back as we can go used artistic license to alter his pictures. I remember my mother painting a farm house and omitting the monkey puzzle tree in the front of it as it split the picture in half. The farmer liked the picture so cut down the tree to match the picture.

If one is taking a record shot of a motor accident then clearly the picture should be straight out of the camera but other than that anything we can do to enhance the image is fair game. I have quite a stock of sky pictures to enhance images taken on a gray day and have formed red sun set colour sky when taken midday. OK the shadows may not be spot on but unless pointed out most people will never notice.