If it is created with a camera is it "Photography"

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ic-racer

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I was looking at the work of J Beever and was curious how he made the drawings.

Without knowing how he did it, I figured he used a projector at night and drew from that, but he states that he uses a camera on a tripod to mark out these drawings as they are created.
 

dwdmguy

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Go to Michaels Craft store on line and check out the Photo to wall projector and you will then see.
 

Marco B

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Do a google video search for him. Here is one I found.

Great video! Loved to see this.

From the video, it just seems he uses the camera to do quick checks from a fixed point, so as to have the perspective completely right from a single point.

For the rest, I just think he has great skills and experience and a great feeling for perspective. Yes, some people do use projectors to make drawings, but like this guy, there are others who can do without.

In this very short video of the Italian artist Luciano Ventrone, who makes photo realistic oil painting, you can at the end in a very short shot, see him tracing from a projection on his canvas, based on pictures of still lifes he made before. The last sentence he speaks reads: The picture is the starting point, to go elsewhere...

http://www.galleriaforni.it/trailerventrone.htm

This drawing is by myself and I made it just sitting in front of the scene with nothing but a pencil and paper:

haarlem_st_bavo_bartoli.jpg
 

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I actually think that Vermeer's work with a camera obscura is one of the earliest forms of photography. If the scene has been put through a lens, and thus has lensing effects... an apertured perspective, in/out-of-focus elements or overall pinhole diffraction softening etc., then it is a photograph.

So, yes, I do think this is a form of photography. But it's not worth debating, really- I can imagine plenty of valid arguments contrary to mine.
 

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df cardwell

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If it is created with a camera is it "Photography"

If it is created without camera is it a photograph ?

Precedent is on the side of photographic process, not the camera.
So, if it is made with a camera, it is not necessarily a photograph.

Below, a photogenic drawing by William Henry Fox Talbot (British, 1800–1877)
 

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Welcome back, df!
 

2F/2F

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No. If it is created with a pencil or ink, does that make it a drawing? No. Plenty of other things are done with pencil and ink besides drawing. Cameras need not have anything to do with photographs. They existed and were used for various purposes long before photographs could be made with them, and then even longer before fixed photographs could be made with them.

As for the drawings mentioned in the OP, of course they are not photographs. They are drawings. A camera was used as a tool to draw the pictures. That is all.
 

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I answered shortly earlier but will expand:

I answered no and here is why. In the old days I made serigraphs and used a process camera in the process but in the end it was a serigraph not a photograph. Here is something to think about, where I think the hybrid people are confused. If you take your negative and scan it into a computer then print it out on inkjet, it is not a photograph. Just because you use a photographic process does not make the final product a photograph. Now, if you print it on a light jet then it is a photograph. The point being that the final product must be made with light. There is no way to argue this point. By this a d... capture printed on silver halide paper is a photograph. Where a 7x17 neg, carefully composed and developed then scanned in, inkjeted out is not a photograph.
 
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After reading the posts I would say that camera obscura drawings are not photographs. Basically he is doing the camera obscura thing and just drawing on the other side of the lens.

Another point; Due to the ephemeral nature of the drawings (chalk) and the requirement of a specified viewpoint, one could argue he is as much a photographer as John Pfhal (Altered Landscapes, 1974-78). That is, if we interpret his photographs as the final product (though the artist may or may not agree with that).
 
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ic-racer

ic-racer

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And there is of course the famous "The Ambassadors" painting by Hans Holbein the Younger, that includes an anamorphic scull detail:

Nice, Marco, I forgot about that one.
 
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Doesn't really match the original question. If it is made with a camera (recording light) then by definition it is photography. The examples proferred could be considered photography in some circles, denounced in others.
 

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I answered no and here is why. In the old days I made serigraphs and used a process camera in the process but in the end it was a serigraph not a photograph. Here is something to think about, where I think the hybrid people are confused. If you take your negative and scan it into a computer then print it out on inkjet, it is not a photograph. Just because you use a photographic process does not make the final product a photograph. Now, if you print it on a light jet then it is a photograph. The point being that the final product must be made with light. There is no way to argue this point. By this a d... capture printed on silver halide paper is a photograph. Where a 7x17 neg, carefully composed and developed then scanned in, inkjeted out is not a photograph.

I can't fault your answer and I agree that it is a very logical assesment of the situation. FWIW it tends to be used that way in scientific circles, where rarely do I hear people call digital images "photographs", and astonomers tend to refer to "imaging" rather than photography.

But there's no doubt that the term "photography" itself has been co-opted by the masses and now colloquially refers to both chemical processes and digital processes. Exactly what "photography" means now is pointless to debate I think; the term is approaching meaninglessness. That's why we need to embrace more specific words to describe our processes; "digital photography" and "analog photography" work for me, or "digital art" and "traditional photography" or anything else. These terms will settle out eventually. In the meantime, it's entirely unproductive to insist that the word "photography" means what it did 20 years ago. "Photography" departments are just as likely to teach digital, and "photographers" are just as or even more likely to be digital artists than "old-photography" ones. You can blame it on kodak and the other big companies for selling digital as "photography" from the very beginning.
 

df cardwell

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Exactly what "photography" means now is pointless to debate I think; the term is approaching meaninglessness

How can you be more specific than "photography" ? Meaningless ?

PBrooks gave a pretty concise description of photography,
which would be good for any time over the past 160 years,
and as long as we can image with light, anytime into the future.

"Analogue Photography", however, is a term which is not much more than a cry for help,
and not descriptive of anything. It does not inform, yet PBrooks' description does.

The terms settled out a long time ago, and have nothing to do with computers, film, CCD sensors or, God Save Us, art schools.

We photographers shaped our craft, and our art, and despite the efforts of marketing firms and MFA programs administered by painters, an image made by light is still a photograph. Made by pencil, a drawing; and by a burrito, a BFA project that has run out of time.

.
 
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BetterSense

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Depends how you look at it. I was pointing out the impossibility of using the following definition and then claiming that it can be used as a precise definition of what constitutes a photograph as opposed to some other object or medium.

and [sic] image made by light is still a photograph. Made by pencil, a drawing; and by a burrito, a BFA project that has run out of time.

The poster of that opinion claims it's a precise definition, when in reality it couldn't be much less precise; it's not even quite sensical. What is meant by "an image made by light"? We need light to see any image. Does it make any sense to speak of images that occur in the absence of light?

In a sense all images are "made by light". If any image made by light is a photograph, then is my reflection in a mirror a photograph then? When I look into the eyepiece of a telescope, am I looking at a photograph?

If I trace a camera obscura's image onto the wall with crayon, have I created a photograph? If I place a matrix of sensors on the wall and record their readings in a notebook or computer memory, have I created a photograph? If I trace an image in my head onto the wall, have I created a photograph? What if I look at an object in the real world and trace that on the wall without an camera obscura, is that a photograph? I take pictures of microscopic things every day with an electron microscope. Are those photographs, considering they were made by reading electrons impinging on an electronic detector?

Saying that anything "made by light" is a photograph is meaningless unless you clarify what it means to say that an image is "made by light". Far from solving the problem of defining what media should be called photographs, it's simply a restatement of the problem itself.

Personally, I feel "an image made with a camera" is a better definition of "photograph" "an image made by light". "An image made with a camera" is a photograph and this follows in the same sense that "an image made with a pencil" is called a drawing. It also reflects how the term is popularly used.
 
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df cardwell

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Well, I'll probably regret this, but I'll drag the poor horse into the middle of the room where we can see it better before I start to hit it.

We (elderly, addled, and incontinent old photographers) are used to viewing the artifact presented,
and trying to describe THAT. So, if you were displaying some vintage Kodak Electron Plates, all backlit and pretty,
I'd call them photographs (or electronphotomicrographs). If you were showing a nice 16x20 print made on photosensitive paper, I'd call that a photograph. If you displayed an image scanned from the plate, and printed via inkjet, I'd happily call that a digital image. For me, it is the artifact that is being named, regardless how it got there. So, Henry Talbot's beautiful 'photogenic drawings' have been photographs since the 1830s.

There is something in a name that is useful to the understanding of the craft, or the process of craftsmanship. The process of becoming a good photographer (or carpenter, or photomicroscopist) demands the transformation of the craftsman rather than the transformation of the materials.

Well, that's about it. Have mercy on the horse, it isn't looking very good.
 

Q.G.

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Depends how you look at it.

Of course.
But best not confuse the way we look at it with what we are looking at.
Then you will not have to struggle with meaning, or sense, the way you are.
:wink:

A photo is an image, and it's made by light.
A rock is not. It's not even an image.
Nor is a pen drawing. It is an image. But not made by light.
We can look at all three.
 
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