Clyde Butcher

[Ken Nadvornick]

What if they output to a 3D printer, are they sculptors?

Depends on if they wrote their own output code...



Ken

 

[blansky]

Slightly tongue-in-cheek: Digital practitioners have an identity crisis. When they output to paper, they wish to be known as photographers. When they only output to computer monitor, they still are photographers. What if they output to a 3D printer, are they sculptors? Why not just be satisfied with being known as artists working in digital media?

Because language doesn't change with the advances in technology really.

A few years ago, you wrote a letter or perhaps you typed a letter. The writing was the physical act of using your hand and a pen and paper of some sort. If you typed it you used a typewriter probably.

But today we still say you wrote an email or a letter and you actually used a computer. We don't say you computed it. Were mentally stuck with the original language because as a group we decided we all know what people meant.

Photography has it obvious origins, and as cameras progressed and/or changed we still say we photographed something, whether it was a Polaroid, or a darkroom process or even now a computer process. We changed tools but we all know what we mean when we say it.

The only people who are having difficulty with the language were probably the same people bitching about typewriters, when they all KNEW that writing in cursive was the ONLY way to write a letter.

Now as for selling to the public, I agree that specifying your tools and your methods are important, so things are not misrepresented.

 

[alexfoto]

And so blansky you mean if you take a picture and use some filter in Photoshop to make a picture look like a painting you are a painter? Art is like typing?..

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

The only people who are having difficulty with the language were probably the same people bitching about typewriters, when they all KNEW that writing in cursive was the ONLY way to write a letter.

But what you sidestep is the reality that changes in tooling brings changes in output, due in no small part to the reduction of built-in negative feedback loops. It's as much about human interface engineering as it is about creating literature. Or images.

Write it cursively, and it will almost certainly be shorter for painfully obvious reasons. In principle, cursive may be better suited to poetry. Write it on a typewriter, and you will get more but the self-editing will be tighter because it's a royal pain-in-the-ass to retype large sections. (Those who went to college before word processing know this all to well.)

Write it on a computer processor, and it will be perfectly spelled with perfect grammar. It will also have perfect fonts and perfect point sizes and perfect line spacing and perfect punctuation. And no white-out blobs. What it may also have is a far more plain vanilla style, unless one takes the time to override the silly dogs and the paperclips with bulging eyes.

rite on sfon and ur not so gr8 #thisstupid...

The user of any of these writing technologies is never a neutral participant in the overall transaction. Same goes for progressively more automated cameras (film or digital).

Ken

 

[blansky]

And so blansky you mean if you take a picture and use some filter in Photoshop to make a picture look like a painting you are a painter? Art is like typing?..

Yes and no.

But that's the difficulty with technology that is so vast.

Look at movies. They can make anything look like it's real.

I have a program called Painter that can make a "painting". It actually can make incredible things from using a photograph to starting from scratch. And it takes a lot of skill to be good at it.

Instead of using paint, you use computer brushes. Computer paint. Computer canvas etc.

This guy started as a painter and then to an illustrator and then a computer "painter"....http://jeremysutton.com/gallery

He teaches Painter. Some of his gallery is to show students from beginner on, what they can achieve. His personal stuff is pretty amazing.

Is he a painter?? A purist will say no. When Michelangelo used assistants to paint "his" Sistine Chapel he also used surrogates to paint his vision.

Now a person can "paint" with surrogate brushes and paint.

BUT it still takes great skill to be GREAT at any of these things. And there is a lot of crap out there.

Computers definitely blurred the lines.

But to me it's all fine, as long as during a sale, nothing is misrepresented.

 

[blansky]

But what you sidestep is the reality that changes in tooling brings changes in output, due in no small part to the reduction of built-in negative feedback loops. It's as much about human interface engineering as it is about creating literature. Or images.

Write it cursively, and it will almost certainly be shorter for painfully obvious reasons. In principle, cursive may be better suited to poetry. Write it on a typewriter, and you will get more but the self-editing will be tighter because it's a royal pain-in-the-ass to retype large sections. (Those who went to college before word processing know this all to well.)

Write it on a computer processor, and it will be perfectly spelled with perfect grammar. It will also have perfect fonts and perfect point sizes and perfect line spacing and perfect punctuation. And no white-out blobs. What it may also have is a far more plain vanilla style, unless one takes the time to override the silly dogs and the paperclips with bulging eyes.

rite on sfon and ur not so gr8 #thisstupid...

The user of any of these writing technologies is never a neutral participant in the overall transaction. Same goes for progressively more automated cameras (film or digital).

Ken

OK the user is not a neutral participant in his choices.

Why do you have a problem with that.

Because you believe his tech choices are "unnatural", and you think he's cheating in some way?

 

[alexfoto]

-Well i don't like any of this approach. What is hobby for you then.
-Why you think a hobbyist fisherman pay so much money for staff, lost many hours to wait near the sea, but is so happy when they take only a few small fish, while with few money can have more and easy..
-The core of art and the happiness that give is the way you walk, the travel, not the result. If the road is to easy then the travel lost they're interesting, that's why today photographers take so many pictures but few of them is good.
In my film, i use 120, i now that from 15 exposure the 7-8 is good to enlarge, in digital even if something is boring you try with Photoshop to make interesting and the result if fake most of the time.
I think our society lost all the mining of life, so you are happy if someone make a pill in the end, that if you take it you feel like all go well in your life but in reality you never go out of your house and personal computer?.
I am sorry but i don't like all this, we need to put some limit in convenience.

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

OK the user is not a neutral participant in his choices.

Why do you have a problem with that.

Because you believe his tech choices are "unnatural", and you think he's cheating in some way?

I don't have a problem with other people's choices. Never did.

Rather, my issue is with those who endlessly come on here and proclaim that the two technologies (separated as they are by ~170 years) are actually the exact same thing. And they are used in exactly the same way. And that they both produce exactly the same results. And that the processes and end products are indistinguishable between them.

It staggers the rational mind. I see myself removing a DSLR sensor and dunking it into D-76 (1+1). Not a pretty sight.

You know, Elon Musk made a statement the other day that goes to the heart of the fundamental difference between analog and digital photographic technologies. He said that people need to stop thinking of Teslas as cars and start thinking of them as highly sophisticated computers that have wheels.

There is wisdom in that point of view well beyond just electric automobiles.

Ken

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

I am sorry but i don't like all this, we need to put some limit in convenience.

Which is the functional equivalent of adding additional new negative feedback loops...



Ken

 

[blansky]

-Well i don't like any of this approach. What is hobby for you then.
-Why you think a hobbyist fisherman pay so much money for staff, lost many hours to wait near the sea, but is so happy when they take only a few small fish, while with few money can have more and easy..
-The core of art and the happiness that give is the way you walk, the travel, not the result. If the road is to easy then the travel lost they're interesting, that's why today photographers take so many pictures but few of them is good.
In my film, i use 120, i now that from 15 exposure the 7-8 is good to enlarge, in digital even if something is boring you try with Photoshop to make interesting and the result if fake most of the time.
I think our society lost all the mining of life, so you are happy if someone make a pill in the end, that if you take it you feel like all go well in your life but in reality you never go out of your house and personal computer?.
I am sorry but i don't like all this, we need to put some limit in convenience.

Seriously. Because you prefer something and a way of doing it, then everyone should conform to what you think is right.

Your formula for life and happiness is the only way.

If you prefer a certain method of photography, why would you care what someone else does.

Can you not be happy knowing that other people enjoy what they do and you enjoy what you do?

 

[blansky]

I don't have a problem with other people's choices. Never did.

Rather, my issue is with those who endlessly come on here and proclaim that the two technologies (separated as they are by ~170 years) are actually the exact same thing. And they are used in exactly the same way. And that they both produce exactly the same results. And that the processes and end products are indistinguishable between them.

It staggers the rational mind. I see myself removing a DSLR sensor and dunking it into D-76 (1+1). Not a pretty sight.

You know, Elon Musk made a statement the other day that goes to the heart of the fundamental difference between analog and digital photographic technologies. He said that people need to stop thinking of Teslas as cars and start thinking of them as highly sophisticated computers that have wheels.

There is wisdom in that point of view well beyond just electric automobiles.

Ken

But this is just your usual groundhog day rant. Same rant different day.

The thread is about an incredible photographer who has move some of his process to digital.

Why would you care?

 

[doughowk]

Several years ago Clyde Butcher was marketing his carbon pigment inkjet prints as carbon prints. He apparently was reminded by some carbon printers that such term usage was at best misleading. Alot of digital media marketing tries to appropriate terms that still have some panache associated with them - archival prints for example. Or emulate an established process such as using Corel Painter to output a Monet-style print on canvas.
If I called myself a digital media artist for using on/off light control switches in my darkroom, some might question my sanity as well as the misrepresentation of my artwork. But I don't because there is no panache in calling something a digital inkjet print or a giclee. So the marketers concoct terms such as ultrachrome to befuddle the buying public.

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

But this is just your usual groundhog day rant. Same rant different day.

The thread is about an incredible photographer who has move some of his process to digital.

Why would you care?

I don't. As I stated much earlier, I think Mr. Butcher is more than qualified to select whatever tools he likes. My apologies, however, as my subsequent sequence of replies were originally in response to post #55, with additional detours afterward. Post #58 was an attempt to open a sub-discussion, but it went ignored. I wasn't surprised.

[Edit: Oh, and it's not a rant. It's reality. Some things are open to opinion and can thus have more than one valid point of view. The laws of nature are not included in that subset. Not even for artists.]

Ken

 

[blansky]

I don't. As I stated much earlier, I think Mr. Butcher is more than qualified to select whatever tools he likes. My apologies, however, as my subsequent sequence of replies were originally in response to post #55, with additional detours afterward. Post #58 was an attempt to open a sub-discussion, but it went ignored. I wasn't surprised.

Ken

Carry on then..... smoke 'em if you got 'em.


By the way what do you make of your signature line?

 

[DREW WILEY]

Thank you for pointing out that Tesla thing, Ken - a computer on wheels. One more reason not to buy it. Someone can hack in, and nobody
will be able to fix anything unless they're in the official gravy train. One of those "if you can afford to buy it in the first place, you can afford a thousand bucks every six months to keep it serviced". There's enough of that already. Headaches happen in the darkroom too; but at least the equipment can be kept going by anyone with basic shop skills for decades to come. But I, for one, really don't give a damn about what this or that person has chosen in terms of practical equipment at a certain point in their life. I choose what is right for me.

 

[blansky]

Thank you for pointing out that Tesla thing, Ken - a computer on wheels. One more reason not to buy it. Someone can hack in, and nobody
will be able to fix anything unless they're in the official gravy train. One of those "if you can afford to buy it in the first place, you can afford a thousand bucks every six months to keep it serviced". There's enough of that already. Headaches happen in the darkroom too; but at least the equipment can be kept going by anyone with basic shop skills for decades to come. But I, for one, really don't give a damn about what this or that person has chosen in terms of practical equipment at a certain point in their life. I choose what is right for me.

That's why we have to get old and die off.

Can you imagine the bitching if we lived for 200 years and everyone over 60 was continually complaining about how things were better way back in 2025.

There are generations now and coming that have never worked on a car, a house, a motor or anything. The concept of self repairs is/will be completely foreign.

Until the apocalypse .....then the old timers would be handy to have around to fix stuff.

 

[Roger Cole]

Slightly tongue-in-cheek: Digital practitioners have an identity crisis. When they output to paper, they wish to be known as photographers. When they only output to computer monitor, they still are photographers? What if they output to a 3D printer, are they sculptors? Why not just be satisfied with being known as artists working in digital media?

I have said something like this for a long time, that both digital and "analog" (what a weird term if you think about it) would have benefitted from having distinct terminology. I wanted film to keep "photography" and digital to be "digital imaging" but that produced such heated responses one guy on LFPF might have punched me if he'd been here in person, ranting about how I should find (some famous recent war time photojournalist shooting digital) and tell him he wasn't a photographer. He (the ranter, not the war shooter) clearly didn't grasp my point that, in my view, he'd be something else but equally valuable. I didn't mean that either would be considered superior and, in fact, in the case of photo-journalists ("imaging journalists" perhaps?) in a war zone digital clearly has very substantial, perhaps overwhelming, advantages.

But it didn't go that way and much argument and noise that could have been avoided was not avoided.

 

[Roger Cole]

Because language doesn't change with the advances in technology really.

A few years ago, you wrote a letter or perhaps you typed a letter. The writing was the physical act of using your hand and a pen and paper of some sort. If you typed it you used a typewriter probably.

But today we still say you wrote an email or a letter and you actually used a computer. We don't say you computed it. Were mentally stuck with the original language because as a group we decided we all know what people meant.

Photography has it obvious origins, and as cameras progressed and/or changed we still say we photographed something, whether it was a Polaroid, or a darkroom process or even now a computer process. We changed tools but we all know what we mean when we say it.

The only people who are having difficulty with the language were probably the same people bitching about typewriters, when they all KNEW that writing in cursive was the ONLY way to write a letter.

Now as for selling to the public, I agree that specifying your tools and your methods are important, so things are not misrepresented.

Well no, I don't think those people "all KNEW that writing in cursive was the ONLY way to write a letter" at all. But I do know, for example, people who do and appreciate calligraphy. Is it the same art if it's some fancy font they can just type and output? No, it isn't, and it clearly matters to them.

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

I have said something like this for a long time, that both digital and "analog" (what a weird term if you think about it) would have benefitted from having distinct terminology.

Roger that's a very good idea.

As you know it's done all of the time in tech. A function, a subroutine, a method, a procedure? How many different ways can the same basic thing be renamed?

But each naming iteration serves the purpose of identifying its namesake as being part of a much larger class of technology. Use any single one of those terms in conversation (with those skilled in the art, whatever art that may be) and everyone listening knows instantly what bigger picture is being discussed. The context is included in the name.

Then over time newer iterations are allowed to grow and develop each in their own natural directions, unencumbered by the baggage of their ancestors. Digital imaging would not need to constantly compare itself favorably with any earlier version. It could blossom all on its own, and if worthy, surpass its predecessors without constantly beating them up.

I'd be OK wit dat. I mean, don't all parents want to see their kids do better than they did??



Ken

 

[removed account4]

I don't have a problem with other people's choices. Never did.

Rather, my issue is with those who endlessly come on here and proclaim that the two technologies (separated as they are by ~170 years) are actually the exact same thing. And they are used in exactly the same way. And that they both produce exactly the same results. And that the processes and end products are indistinguishable between them.

i have been here since 2003 and have never read anyone suggesting
they were the exact same thing. similar, maybe ( light sensitive, and light jet prints /optical prints done well might be hard
to tell apart even by so called luddite analog experts )

maybe i have missed it, can you please post these "endless proclaimations"?

 

[Roger Cole]

i have been here since 2003 and have never read anyone suggesting
they were the exact same thing. similar, maybe ( light sensitive, and light jet prints /optical prints done well might be hard
to tell apart even by so called luddite analog experts )

maybe i have missed it, can you please post these "endless proclaimations"?

Exactly same process no, but how many times have we read that the method is unimportant and only the results count?

That's just not a position I will ever agree with. The method IS important. For many of us, the process IS the art. That doesn't criticize either, it just acknowledges that they are different things.

 

[removed account4]

yes, i have read that they are similar processes and if someone wants to believe that, that is fine.
they are similar enough that it doesn't make a difference, and the end results ( in print ) are sometimes indistinguishable. yes i have read ( and experienced )
computer generated negatives for alternative processes that are better than film negatives, and yes i have shown ink, light jet and hand printed portraits
to a self proclaimed- film-snob - and he couldn't tell the difference between the 3 or pick out which one was made with photo paper in the dark.
but that isn't what ken referred to. he said something completely different --

my issue is with those who endlessly come on here and proclaim that the two technologies (separated as they are by ~170 years) are actually the exact same thing. And they are used in exactly the same way. And that they both produce exactly the same results. And that the processes and end products are indistinguishable between them.

in almost 12 years i have never read they are the exact same process, not even once, and i know ken tries his best to only state facts ...
i would imagine if it was really said by people who endlessly arrive in threads and say this stuff in the last 12 years worth of BS DvA threads i would have remembered it.
since my memory seems to be shot, and seeing these trolls endlessly come into threads like this, and proclaim

"the two technologies (separated as they are by ~170 years) are actually the exact same thing"

i am guessing these posts will be easy to dig up, i would like to read a few of these posts ..

the only thing i ever hear endlessly in these BS DvA threads is how different the two end results are, how people who practice the more modern technology
are sell outs or hacks or have no idea what they are doing, are crooks / swindlers who mislable what they do on purpose
and that electronic photographyis the spawn of satan,
and, it is the equivalent of chain of custody that matters... film negatives are pure and only show the truth,
and that chemical prints can not be manipulated like digital prints ... and then they cut on people who don't their own lab-work "they aren't real photograpers" either ...
it is all true, and none of it is true.
the lion's share of people making digital photographs couldn't care less about how their print was made
just like 30 year older cousins who made snapshots with their brownie or instamatic couldn't have cared less too

if it makes a difference to you ... great.

photography isn't a religion and it isn't a matter of life and death. its too bad people think it is..

 

[removed account4]

I can't recall Ken saying anything about digital photography being worse, just that it is different on a fundamental level.

However I still think he's missing out on a lot of excellent movies.

i never said ken said these things ... (others have, even in this thread, and the link/comments &c in the OP )
but over the years there have been countless dva threads
where someone said all those things. ken has just said that many people have claimed the 2 different processes
are exactly the same. ... i have never read that.

 

[blansky]

I have said something like this for a long time, that both digital and "analog" (what a weird term if you think about it) would have benefitted from having distinct terminology. I wanted film to keep "photography" and digital to be "digital imaging" but that produced such heated responses one guy on LFPF might have punched me if he'd been here in person, ranting about how I should find (some famous recent war time photojournalist shooting digital) and tell him he wasn't a photographer. He (the ranter, not the war shooter) clearly didn't grasp my point that, in my view, he'd be something else but equally valuable. I didn't mean that either would be considered superior and, in fact, in the case of photo-journalists ("imaging journalists" perhaps?) in a war zone digital clearly has very substantial, perhaps overwhelming, advantages.

But it didn't go that way and much argument and noise that could have been avoided was not avoided.

I agree that new terminology would have been beneficial, BUT for most of us digital was not really a revolution but merely an evolution. We slowly moved from analog to digital, first with Photoshop and scanning negs, then later to digital cameras. (others evolved differently).

I'm one of those that incorrectly have stated in the past, that process was not really a concern but the final result was all I cared about. For ME that's true, but as has been pointed out here, I was wrong. AND I am wrong. For some people the process is everything. OR at least a great deal of it.

For me and probably most pro photographers who evolved to digital imaging we are all about the final print on the wall. And digital was a godsend, due to convenience, retouching abilities, and less costs for film and developing. I know you can add the cost of upgrades and computers, but when shooting hundreds of rolls a week, digital is cheaper.

But sometimes what happens in life is we only see our own group/tribe and forget that there are other groups who love/prefer different processes and want that kept separate and sacrosanct because of the massive influx of the new group.

I guess part of the problem is that the act of capturing/taking pictures/images is such a diverse group and that so many of the actions crossover each other that somehow, it just never happened.

But I agree, it's too bad that separate terminology was not used for the new processes.

 

[jovo]

If the final image were all that mattered, no one would care whether a painting of the same subject by the same artist was done in oil, acrylic, pastel, or water color. But, many people do care. I'm one of them.