Image Manipulation.......

[RobC]

 

[blansky]

A character actor perhaps. Not everyone can be the leading lady.

 

[Bill Burk]

I see the line/bar is pretty high: It is not OK to manipulate RAW files to deceive and defraud.

 

[Sirius Glass]

I see the line/bar is pretty high: It is not OK to manipulate RAW files to deceive and defraud.

+1

 

[RobC]

when it comes down to it, it is much much easier to do it in camera than in post. Saves a lot of time. But you need to have the subject worthy of the capture and that is the really hard part just finding and seeing it. If you don't then you may need to paper over the cracks.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

In nineties I was after special effects and image manipulations at my work as system integrator and sales, mostly for video, but a lot of it was done in photoshop as still images sequences.

My life as viewer sucks after it. I can't stand latest Bond movie, for example, where manipulation is obvious and naive. It is done to cut on production cost and nothing else.
Original Star Wars would cost a fortune to do it old fashion way now, it was cheaper to render digital crap instead of working with real light, motion and materials. And result from modern Star Wars is garbage.

Why I writing this here? Because pictures at third link made me laugh. So cheap and dirty they were manipulated.

 

[coigach]

Not sure how anyone can buy the idea of any photograph being "truth".

Everything is chosen and edited, from choice of when to shoot, when not to shoot, how to compose, what to leave in, what to leave out, film to use, how to print. Think digital extends the range of options, but doesn't really alter the basic premise of photographs as artificial and manipulative...

 

[benjiboy]

Photography is illusion

 

[Prof_Pixel]

Photography is illusion

Photography is THE ART OF illusion

 

[cliveh]

The truth is in the eye of the beholder. You can fool some of the people some of the time, but not all of the people, all of the time. Most of us will all gravitate to image integrity within the test of time.

 

[markbarendt]

I see the line/bar is pretty high: It is not OK to manipulate RAW files to deceive and defraud.

That's right, shut done the tabloids, all those magazines at the checkout counter, and all the visual advertising mediums.

On a more technical note: Raw files and negatives are by their very nature only intermediaries; neither becomes "real" (viewable as a positive) without a bunch of choices (manipulations) being made. (Those "manipulations" may be disguised as the "default" settings of the tool we use. The defaults were truly choices, they were just made by somebody else. That doesn't mean they are right.)

Also we shouldn't discount camera work from the manipulation equation of the "Raw" data. Where we point a camera, Under/over exposure, short DOF, colored filters, ... al these manipulations can hide or reveal things in the scene at will.

What really needs to go away IMO is the thought that we should believe in "photo reality".

Too many vested interests for that to happen though.

 

[Prof_Pixel]

What really needs to go away IMO is the thought that we should believe in "photo reality".

Yup, you've got that right!

 

[Sirius Glass]

Photography is illusion

Not all illusions can be photographed.

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

In frustration, when this particular discussion reaches the point, as it always does, that everyone starts patting themselves on the back at the notion that the definitions underpinning physical reality (or in this recurring case, the subset of photographic reality) is somehow subject to the whims of Internet voting where the most matching opinions win, that's where I invariably breach my own personal BS threshold and try to inject a bit of honest rationality.

But this time I'm not going to do it. You guys are free to vigorously hold upright as many thumbs as you like in support of the physical laws of nature being anything you arbitrarily chose to define them to be. You go girl. Knock yourselves out...



Ken

 

[Prof_Pixel]

You guys are free to vigorously hold upright as many thumbs as you like in support of the physical laws of nature being anything you arbitrarily chose to define them to be. You go girl. Knock yourselves out...

The point has been made here several times, that the photographer manipulates the scene capture process by his choice of lens focal length, focus point, shutter speed, camera angle, etc., etc., etc.

The photographer 'bends' the 'physical laws of nature' to produce his version of reality. Another photographer would probably 'bend' them in different ways to produce a different version of 'reality'. There is no absolute in the capture process.

 

[RobC]

While I agree that photojournalism should abstain from manipulated photographs mainly due to the "integrity" of news, whatever that means, I have never really regarded landscape photography to have those constraints. To me that's artistic license and unless you're presenting it as "truth" which I highly doubt any landscape photographer does, it seems sort of strange. As for the link you added, well I get that, he disobeyed the rules, so he was disqualified, but I've never really heard that landscape photography should be sacrosanct as to "reality".

Interesting enough, Clive has also presented that point of view as well on another thread, that photography should be about truth. Except for photojournalism, I have never believed that. And calling asserting artistic license, a lack of integrity, seems ridiculous.

I just don't consider landscape photography as documentary photography.

Thats not quite what I mean. For example is it valid to horizontally flip a landscape photograph because it looks better to you and then present it as a known place?

for example is this valid or lacking in integrity if I present it as Lindisfarne Castle having flipped it? (see disqualified image at http://www.digitalcameraworld.com/2...grapher-of-the-year-2012-winner-disqualified/ )

to me this is a "fundamental" alteration which is not valid when given a place name. However if you don't present it as a known place and maybe title it as "brewing storm over castle" then maybe its acceptable, except in this particular case the place is such an iconic and well known location that someone will recognise it and slate you for flipping it. And that puts your photographic integrity into question.

 

[blansky]

Thats not quite what I mean. For example is it valid to horizontally flip a landscape photograph because it looks better to you and then present it as a known place?

for example is this valid or lacking in integrity if I present it as Lindisfarne Castle having flipped it? (see disqualified image at http://www.digitalcameraworld.com/2...grapher-of-the-year-2012-winner-disqualified/ )

That's a tough one. There's one in the gallery right now. I guess you can do what you want really, but most people who've ever been there will tend to "discount" it as a mistake or WTF.

I think it sort of loses credibility but it's an interesting conundrum because in this case it could be more pleasing to someone, because of our natural practice of reading left to right in the west. I've seen advertisement photos flopped to stay away from the subject facing the center fold and instead facing out.

 

[Maris]

One of the basic necessities of any philosophical discussion is "define your terms". So far in this thread I see the term "manipulation" being employed so broadly that it could mean any action that changes an outcome. But such a broad usage tends to empty "manipulation" of useful meaning and it fails as a guide to understanding. Here, I hope, is a more tightly argued case:

Pictures are just arrangements of marks on a surface that people interpret as a representation of something. And there are many many ways of marks becoming arranged and forming pictures.

Pictures made purely out of light sensitive substances have the property that their constituent marks have a physical connection to the subject matter they represent...TRUE.
Every mark in such a picture has an obligatory one to one correspondence with a specific place in the subject matter...TRUE.
There are no marks in a photograph (technical flaws aside) that don't represent a piece of subject matter...TRUE.
Anything in the subject matter that a photographic system can see will be recorded...TRUE.
The order of marks in a photograph, which mark is next to which, bears a fixed relationship to the order of visible points in subject matter...TRUE.
These are remarkable and impressive characteristics of photography as it was invented and named back in the 1830s...TRUE.
If one allows that the matrix of marks that constitute a photograph forms in the absence of a rearranging hand one can truthfully say a photograph is un-manipulated.

Fabricating pictures in digital environment, Photoshop for example, enables picture-forming marks to be taken away, added, re-arranged, or freely modified however the Photoshop worker desires. The marks in a digital picture no longer have any particular obligatory correspondence with places in original subject matter. But this facility to organise marks matches exactly what people have been doing for thousands of years when they produce paintings and drawings: the marks go where the picture-maker wants, not where the subject matter says.

I look at photographs as a thing apart from all other picture-making methods. That's why I dedicate myself to making pictures out of light-sensitive materials using purely physical processes; nothing virtual.
I look at digital pictures in a different way. I see them as paintings and drawings just done with different tools. And there's nothing wrong with paintings and drawings. Remember, virtually all of the famous treasures of Western Art are paintings and drawings of one kind or another.

 

[blansky]

One of the basic necessities of any philosophical discussion is "define your terms". So far in this thread I see the term "manipulation" being employed so broadly that it could mean any action that changes an outcome. But such a broad usage tends to empty "manipulation" of useful meaning and it fails as a guide to understanding. Here, I hope, is a more tightly argued case:

Pictures are just arrangements of marks on a surface that people interpret as a representation of something. And there are many many ways of marks becoming arranged and forming pictures.

Pictures made purely out of light sensitive substances have the property that their constituent marks have a physical connection to the subject matter they represent...TRUE.
Every mark in such a picture has an obligatory one to one correspondence with a specific place in the subject matter...TRUE.
There are no marks in a photograph (technical flaws aside) that don't represent a piece of subject matter...TRUE.
Anything in the subject matter that a photographic system can see will be recorded...TRUE.
The order of marks in a photograph, which mark is next to which, bears a fixed relationship to the order of visible points in subject matter...TRUE.
These are remarkable and impressive characteristics of photography as it was invented and named back in the 1830s...TRUE.
If one allows that the matrix of marks that constitute a photograph forms in the absence of a rearranging hand one can truthfully say a photograph is un-manipulated.

Fabricating pictures in digital environment, Photoshop for example, enables picture-forming marks to be taken away, added, re-arranged, or freely modified however the Photoshop worker desires. The marks in a digital picture no longer have any particular obligatory correspondence with places in original subject matter. But this facility to organise marks matches exactly what people have been doing for thousands of years when they produce paintings and drawings: the marks go where the picture-maker wants, not where the subject matter says.

I look at photographs as a thing apart from all other picture-making methods. That's why I dedicate myself to making pictures out of light-sensitive materials using purely physical processes; nothing virtual.
I look at digital pictures in a different way. I see them as paintings and drawings just done with different tools. And there's nothing wrong with paintings and drawings. Remember, virtually all of the famous treasures of Western Art are paintings and drawings of one kind or another.

That's all well and good but the thread is more about the use of "manipulation" being described in the original post, namely in news industry. And that happened in both digital and analog. Ease of doing it really isn't the issue, or if digital sucks or not.

 

[Prof_Pixel]

Fabricating pictures in digital environment, Photoshop for example, enables picture-forming marks to be taken away, added, re-arranged, or freely modified however the Photoshop worker desires. The marks in a digital picture no longer have any particular obligatory correspondence with places in original subject matter. But this facility to organise marks matches exactly what people have been doing for thousands of years when they produce paintings and drawings: the marks go where the picture-maker wants, not where the subject matter says.

Image manipulation predates Photoshop and goes back to the earliest days of photography! Images have been modified since the very beginning of the photographic art. Just go to Dead Link Removed for examples.

 

[removed account4]

hi maris

i understand exactly what you have said
but if i photograph a scene with a car driving by
at 1/500 or 1/30th of a second there will be a car on
the negative, if i stop way-down and leave the shutter open for
5 or 10 seconds ( sorry i don't know the threshold where it begins )
the car that drove by will not exist.

has the ( recording of the ) scene been manipulated ?

a few years ago i had a series of images in the apug-gallery and in the comments i had a conversation with
a well known ( internationally known ) landscape photographer and he claimed that shutter speed choice
has nothing to do with image manipulation. he had a photograph in
the gallery as well that he refered to, where stars swirled around the polaris, villages/settlements glowed, maybe there was a dotted path of a plane &c and
he claimed that his job as a photographer was to record what he saw. it is very much like this discussion we are having in this thread
while i do not argue that the stars never moved, that the settlement glowed or that it is not a an unmanipulated image ( some like him may say it is unmanipulated ) ...
sure it shows the unmanipulated effect of the fluidity of time, but it is not how one sees reality ( without being on sensory enhancing drugs i would imagine ) ...
moving pictures with a shutter speed of if i remember correctly 24 frames per second is teh fluidity of reality, not a slice of 1/125th of a second or a 5, 10second or 2 hour long exposure.

thanks for your post, i always enjoy reading what you write.
john

 

[markbarendt]

Ken,

It's not a debate about the reality of the rules of nature, it's about our use of those rules, the discussion is about human social fuzzy wuzzies, not physics.

Changing the camera's focus for a given shot is a choice, it's a manipulation; it doesn't break the rules of nature. Short DOF follows optical formulas exactly. Burning and dodging break no physical laws. Adjusting camera exposure doesn't break the real world's rules. All these things manipulate what the final photo looks like, who we protect, who we incriminate, what story we tell.

Jerry Uelsmann is a good example of my thought, he just makes a few more choices than I normally do. The images he uses to make his prints are taken of real scenes in the real world and he doesn't break any of mother nature's rules to make his prints. http://www.uelsmann.net

Like Ulesmann I make choices, my photos never show an unbiased reality; they show what I want to show, a snippet out of context, an inside joke that my buddies will get. I don't think that it is even possible for anyone to take a photo without some bias. That's ok by me, I don't believe in photo reality.

I believe that the "rightness" of most things social are defined by the perspective of the winner, not reality. We should all understand that.

To demonstrate this thought/conundrum in a patriotic theme I'll ask; if the Boston Tea Party was held today in Boston harbor as a protest on a real merchant ship from China, would it be considered a terrorist act?

 

[Sirius Glass]

Image manipulation predates Photoshop and goes back to the earliest days of photography! Images have been modified since the very beginning of the photographic art. Just go to Dead Link Removed for examples.

Yes, but whether film or digital, that is what I do not approve it use instead of reality. It is a tool for fraud and propaganda, therefore should not be part of photography rather fauxography.

 

[markbarendt]

One of the basic necessities of any philosophical discussion is "define your terms".

Let me add one word to that definition "One of the basic necessities of WINNING any philosophical discussion is "define your terms"."

 

[blansky]

Let me add one word to that definition "One of the basic necessities of WINNING any philosophical discussion is "define your terms"."

I think the point of philosophical discussions is to hear and debate other people's points of view. The only way there are winners is if we learn something we previously didn't know or think of.

A consensus is not winning.

Like I've said before, you rarely learn anything from people you agree with.