Art photos are manipulations

[MattKing]

My wife says that "should" is a cognitive distortion.
I would argue that the photographer would have been better to have revealed the substitution.

 

[markjwyatt]

He shouldn't have photoshopped it if he was going to be embarrassed by the question if he photoshopped it. That's the signal that you went too far. Trust your gut not your head.

I wasn't trying to trap him, just thought the clouds looked odd and asked. If you look at marketing for photo software, they really promote cloud packs, etc.

 

[markjwyatt]

My wife says that "should" is a cognitive distortion.
I would argue that the photographer would have been better to have revealed the substitution.

#[Photrio: Digital, analogous to ordinary darkroom printed, ELEMENTS ADDED: Clouds],

 

[Vaughn]

"Carleton E. Watkins (1829–1916)"

He barely had orthochromatic materials available to him, if even. He had little chance of capturing a sky even if he wanted to. In that case one could argue adding clouds is more realistic than presenting a blank sky. Fair point though.

My favorite quote of his, which I will happily mangle, is from a court case concerning mining rights or something of that nature of a mine he had photographed in the West (I assume for the owners). The judge asked his why he picked that particular place to make the photograph. "It was the best view." he replied. However, my favorite photo quote of that era is by Mr. Peter Britt of Jacksonville, Oregon to a woman with a complaint about her portrait, "Madam, if you wish a picture of a pretty face, you'll have to bring one with you."

PS -- I once used clouds from over the Grand Canyon for a photo overlooking Lower Cathedral Lake (everything snow) in Yosemite National Park, with my friend in the foreground. However, they were printed on different pieces of photopaper and each print (about 3'x10") had its own window cut in the mat board separated by 1/4 of solid rag board. So I think I am safe as long as I do not cross State Lines with it.

 

[faberryman]

It is still not clear to me whether an art photo being a manipulation is good, bad or indifferent. The OP must have been making some judgment when titling the tread.

 

[Vaughn]

Any one of the three depending on well it is done.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Godel's incompleteness theorem applied to art photography. Interesting.

Godel and I are not on speaking terms.

 

[Sirius Glass]

I remember being on a photo forum (not this one) a couple of years ago. Someone displayed a very dramatic scene of a river going through a city with really dramatic clouds. I responded (paraphrased) "did you add the clouds"? Crickets. I followed his Flickr link, and saw many more images with very dramatic skies, some eerily similar to the one in the city, but in different locations. After a few days, I responded to my own response and said (paraphrase), "question answered, I took a look at your Flickr feed. Looks like a lot of your photos have dramatic clouds". A couple days later I got a private message from the poster. He said "I added the clouds".

My main beef about adding skies is they may be skies picked from a library which represent conditions that would NEVER be seen in that locale, or that time of year/day/etc. for instance. Now, if you state these are graphic arts, I guess anything goes (I have done collages for year book pages for my daughters for instance, but it was VERY clear these were a collages). I can also understand a COMMERCIAL photographer, say photographing a house, tastefully adding a few clouds to enhance a scene, or a portrait photographer removing zits on a Senior high school portrait. This is commercial activity, and one needs to please the customer. But in general, I personally prefer to be more conservative about adding/removing elements (and generally do not at all).

We were at some location that had a local photographer who sold expensive color prints to tourists. When we looked at the photographs, we laughed when the same clouds keep showing up in many different photographs. For one or two photographs ok, but seeing things like that and a photographic show at the Getty Museum about the work of some famous late 19th century photographer who prided himself on removing tails from all his photographs of hunting dogs, has really turned me against adding or deleting objects from photographs.

 

[Vaughn]

Of course William Herbert Mortensen excelled at re-touching pubic hair out of a negative. I believe it raised his images above porn...along the lines of have a plinth in the photo.

Or is "removing tails from all his photographs of hunting dogs" an euphemism for doing Mortensen's trick?

 

[Sirius Glass]

Of course William Herbert Mortensen excelled at re-touching pubic hair out of a negative. I believe it raised his images above porn...along the lines of have a plinth in the photo.

Or is "removing tails from all his photographs of hunting dogs" an euphemism for doing Mortensen's trick?

I do not remember whom it was, but it was not Mortensen. I did make a point of forgetting his name in record time.

 

[Sirius Glass]

If a beer bottle is in the scene move, change lenses or change the composition.

 

[markjwyatt]

Godel and I are not on speaking terms.

Apparently you think alike.

 

[markjwyatt]

Of course William Herbert Mortensen excelled at re-touching pubic hair out of a negative. I believe it raised his images above porn...along the lines of have a plinth in the photo.

...

Perhaps a more acceptable method would be to have his models shave?

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

Thank you for your concern about my rocks. My rocks are doing well and appreciate your thought on their well being. To your point I choose the camera, lens, filters, if any, film, composition, focus, exposure and development. Once the film has captured the image from the lens, I may burn in or dodge, bleach, stain, ... but I do not tamper with the captured image, so the image is to altered nor distorted. So yes there is a purity that I maintain. Please feel free to distort your photographs, but I am not required to like the results.

So you burn and dodge, bleach, stain and filter. And somehow this is not manipulation or, to use your word, "distortion" of the image? You're drawing an artificial line in the sand to justify some kind of moral superiority. I'm not saying you have to like digitally composited/edited/manipulated images - you're free to like or dislike whatever you want. But I'm just calling BS on any claim to purity or moral superiority just because you don't remove offending twigs with the clone tool. George Hurrell heavily retouched his negatives with pencils, razor blades and Kodak Crocein Red to give his actresses that porcelain-perfect skin - are you offended by that? Or is that ok, but doing the same thing in Photoshop is not?

 

[markjwyatt]

If a beer bottle is in the scene move, change lenses or change the composition.

Or, move the beer bottle. Better yet if it is full (and a good beer)- drink it.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

Or, move the beer bottle. Better yet if it is full (and a good beer)- drink it.

We should all strive to be good environmental stewards and leave the places we visit cleaner than when we came. Unfortunately, sometimes the beer bottle is beyond safe reach.

I do get Sirius' point about manipulation, really... I'm not a fan of T-Rex, a flying shark and a man meet at a waterfall kind of photos. But if we're talking about ART photos - that is, photographs made with intent to convey an idea or emotion, rather than present factual information, then I see no need to stand on some absurd purity standard. I've already offered up numerous examples of people who are somewhere between famous and canonical who have manipulated photographs either mechanically, chemically, or digitally. From my perspective, George Hurrell, Jerry Uelsmann, Maggie Taylor and Henry Peach Robinson all qualify as Photographers (with a capital P), yet they manipulate or even construct images that would not exist without that manipulation.

 

[Vaughn]

Perhaps a more acceptable method would be to have his models shave?

I do not particularly like that option...it is way too creepy for me -- it is like pretending the girls are underage, it is really weird.

 

[Sirius Glass]

We should all strive to be good environmental stewards and leave the places we visit cleaner than when we came. Unfortunately, sometimes the beer bottle is beyond safe reach.

I do get Sirius' point about manipulation, really... I'm not a fan of T-Rex, a flying shark and a man meet at a waterfall kind of photos.

You have your standards and I have mine. Mine are just superior. << wink, wink >>

 

[Pieter12]

I do not particularly like that option...it is way too creepy for me -- it is like pretending the girls are underage, it is really weird.

Weston often was concerned if pubic hair would show in some of his nudes, because he could get in trouble for distributing pornography and the USPS might destroy them if he tried to mail them. Such were the standards of the day. Lucien Clergue would often not include the model's face in a photo if pubic hair was showing, the French authorities at the time considered it pornography.

 

[markjwyatt]

I do not particularly like that option...it is way too creepy for me -- it is like pretending the girls are underage, it is really weird.

My reply was somewhat sarcastic to offer an alternate solution to committing the sin of manipulating an image. I agree it exposes a whole other set of issues, but I was not intending to derail the thread.

 

[radiant]

"Manipulation" is skill itself. It is called skill of photography

I mean isn't the goal to tell story, awake feelings, make people want the photo on their wall? Is there are reward how "pure" the photo is? And how is the "pureness" measured?

Just tell me how I can manipulate my film prints to achieve the previous and I will take it to the max - no questions.

 

[markjwyatt]

We should all strive to be good environmental stewards and leave the places we visit cleaner than when we came. Unfortunately, sometimes the beer bottle is beyond safe reach.

I do get Sirius' point about manipulation, really...

Let's say we did move the beer bottle. We as the photographer are no longer a neutral observer of the scene (and never really are, especially if people are in it). We have modified the scene. It is a fair question as to whether physically moving the beer bottle before the shot is less of an infraction (or even an infraction) than removing it digitally or in the darkroom. There is a cultural expectation that a photograph represents the moment in time as the photographer recorded it, and thus as it was when he came. I suspect the answer comes in terms of the magnitude of the modification. For instance, physically removing a beer bottle or a piece of dog poop form the scene to be photographed is physically very feasible, and unlikely to create an image which could not have occurred. Removing it digitally later would be an admission that you were not paying attention when you took the shot (or that things happened too fast, or you could not access the beer bottle). But it is modifying the recorded scene. I suspect this is less of an issue than adding a set of clouds that would never be seen in the locale whether ever or that time of year, or that time of day, etc. An even worse situation would be a set of clouds wholly inconsistent with the lighting on the ground. On the other hand such a move (inconsistent clouds) COULD be used for artistic purposes (to create a sense of mystery or unease). The question is, would it be better at that point to call it something other than photography? Maybe Graphic Arts? I don't know, and it is not going to matter much because people are going to manipulate images proportionally to the magnitude of the effect and the technological ease of doing so.

 

[markjwyatt]

"Manipulation" is skill itself. It is called skill of photography

I mean isn't the goal to tell story, awake feelings, make people want the photo on their wall? Is there are reward how "pure" the photo is? And how is the "pureness" measured?

Just tell me how I can manipulate my film prints to achieve the previous and I will take it to the max - no questions.

How about if I take a photograph, print it on canvas, then sign my name on it in paint, and maybe even add a few brush strokes. Can I sell that as a painting?

 

[radiant]

How about if I take a photograph, print it on canvas, then sign my name on it in paint, and maybe even add a few brush strokes. Can I sell that as a painting?

Does it matter how it is done? But I think you cannot sell it as traditional painting. It is something else. If it looks good and it sells, just do it.

 

[MattKing]

How about if I take a photograph, print it on canvas, then sign my name on it in paint, and maybe even add a few brush strokes. Can I sell that as a painting?

Yes, if it is of Elvis!
All of these related versions of the question turn on how we represent the result.
If we are using the photograph to support testimony in a court of law, we are representing the photograph differently than if we are Peter Lik and trying to sell something to be hung above a customer's couch. The two different uses come with different expectations, so they come with different representations.