is photography supposed to be reality ?

Berkeley Mike · Oct 4, 2018

From Vaughn's citation:
"mathematics are and can only be a tool to explore reality. In this exploration, mathematics do not constitute an end in itself, they are and can only be a means.

Maurice Allais, La formation scientifique, Une communication du Prix Nobel d’économie, Maurice Allais, address to the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques (1997)."

If we replace the term mathematics with photography:

Photography is and can only be a tool to explore reality. In this exploration, photography does not constitute an end in itself, it is and can only be a means.

Markjwyatt suggests:

"Bishop Berkeley,Leibniz, and later relativists would say there are multiple views or interpretations of reality, all referenced back to the viewer of reality."

By this position, photography, by proxy as a tool, is a viewer of reality.

removed account4 · Oct 4, 2018

markjwyatt said:
Bishop Berkeley,Leibniz, and later relativists would say there are multiple views or interpretations of reality, all referenced back to the viewer of reality.

Berkeley Mike said:
By this position, photography is a viewer, by proxy, of reality.

not sure if i would agree that this photograph
https://www.photrio.com/forum/media/fence.58475/
is a multiple view referencing back to my own reality.
i wasn't on hallucinogens or dreaming or half asleep
and i think i understand the reality i live in to know that
i was there i saw a fence and building and a tree.
i mean i could invent a reality, a fiction revolving around that tree mising its trunk
as if i didn't remember it was there, or the light was funny or there was a glitch when
i made the photograph or that its a really weird part of town i photographed ..
but that's not really the case ..

miha · Oct 4, 2018

John, you see a fence and building and a tree. I see a storm.

Berkeley Mike · Oct 4, 2018

One wonders how one embraces the perception you describe. Our predisposition, based upon our hardwiring and learning, to see things with our own personal bias may make our experience different for each of us.

markjwyatt · Oct 4, 2018

jnanian said:
not sure if i would agree that this photograph
https://www.photrio.com/forum/media/fence.58475/
is a multiple view referencing back to my own reality.
i wasn't on hallucinogens or dreaming or half asleep
and i think i understand the reality i live in to know that
i was there i saw a fence and building and a tree.
i mean i could invent a reality, a fiction revolving around that tree mising its trunk
as if i didn't remember it was there, or the light was funny or there was a glitch when
i made the photograph or that its a really weird part of town i photographed ..
but that's not really the case ..

I think that would fit under my quoted "interpretations of reality". The abstraction is an interpretation. There was some reality or realities in the source of the image. Any artistic manipulation you did is part of your interpretation.

markjwyatt · Oct 4, 2018

miha said:
John, you see a fence and building and a tree. I see a storm.

Berkeley Mike · Oct 4, 2018

miha said:
John, you see a fence and building and a tree. I see a storm.

Wonderful.

removed account4 · Oct 4, 2018

markjwyatt said:
I think that would fit under my quoted "interpretations of reality". The abstraction is an interpretation. There was some reality or realities in the source of the image. Any artistic manipulation you did is part of your interpretation.

i did no artistic manipulation
that print is a straight print, no manipulation when i took it, when i processed the paper nor when i scanned it
it is a direct exposure > print

that was the whole point of the thread ..
the camera captures the light reflected off of the subject
onto the paper, the chemical rays interact with the paper
then the developer develops it. it is supposed to reflect reality not some abstraction
or hallucination. if i had retouched the tree trunk out of the image either with spottone fluids or lead
or using the bandaid/rubber stamp in photoshop i wouldn't have uploaded the image as part of
this thread because it wasn't "reality" .. but a manipulated reality ...

i always thought it was the operator of the camera, and maker of the prints who decided
what to include and not include in an exposure, editing and composition is not the job of the camera
it is not supposed to have any way to think on its own ... maybe i know why the person who sold it to me
sold it to me? because the camera had a mind of its own and depicted whatever reality it wanted///
( like an episode of the twilight zone )

blockend · Oct 4, 2018

jnanian said:
it is supposed to reflect reality not some abstraction

It failed if that's the case. Nothing moves, it remains resolutely 2-dimensional, frequently lacks any colour, is distorted by the choice of lens...

Since the late c19th photography has mostly been about splitting time into fractions of a second, which is a completely artificial way of looking at the world. People forever frozen mid-step. Familiarity has acclimatised us to that convention, but it's still unnatural to present reality as the blink of an eye.

TheFlyingCamera · Oct 4, 2018

Photography has a propensity toward realistic depiction. But by virtue of it being a two-dimensional, achronal (outside of time) representation of things that happened to be in front of the camera at the moment the shutter was actuated, it is not and cannot be "reality". And by virtue of the ways in which photographs are made, they can be strikingly unrealistic as well.

cowanw · Oct 4, 2018

On the other hand the future cannot be a part of reality, and neither can the past, as it no longer exists. As soon as you experience a moment of reality it is in the past and no longer a moment of reality. Maybe the photograph, insofar as it captures reality as best it can and keeps it for perusal, may be the most accurate way of looking at reality.

faberryman · Oct 4, 2018

cowanw said:
On the other hand the future cannot be a part of reality, and neither can the past, as it no longer exists. As soon as you experience a moment of reality it is in the past and no longer a moment of reality. Maybe the photograph, insofar as it captures reality as best it can and keeps it for perusal, may be the most accurate way of looking at reality.

You are confusing reality with the present. The reality is that you woke up this morning and posted on Photrio.

blockend · Oct 4, 2018

cowanw said:
On the other hand the future cannot be a part of reality, and neither can the past, as it no longer exists. As soon as you experience a moment of reality it is in the past and no longer a moment of reality. Maybe the photograph, insofar as it captures reality as best it can and keeps it for perusal, may be the most accurate way of looking at reality.

What about film and video? Few viewers can stand a locked off live view shot for very long, or surveillance camera movies would have a big audience. Maybe a frozen moment is the only way we can take reality without a cut in the action?

removed account4 · Oct 4, 2018

cowanw said:
On the other hand the future cannot be a part of reality, and neither can the past, as it no longer exists.

hi bill
i've had experiences in i guess what might be called my life? reality?
where i knew what was going to happen in the future before it happened...
i don't mean i knew what to expect because cause 1 >> makes > effect 2 or i did something previously and new
the outcome ( like drop a pie on the floor and it goes splat ) but deja vu or some other
unexplained phenomena ...

faberryman said:
You are confusing reality with the present. The reality is that you woke up this morning and posted on Photrio.

maybe
or this could all be a dream and i just dont' realize it ...
i do have trouble reading fine print and the light switches don't seem to work
and ive seen a heck of a lot of weird stuff lately ...

cowanw · Oct 4, 2018

faberryman said:
You are confusing reality with the present. The reality is that you woke up this morning and posted on Photrio.

You are speculating I went to bed.

Alan Edward Klein · Oct 4, 2018

At my photo club, we were reviewing member's photos taken at an antique automobile show. Many were photoshopped with backgrounds replaced with skies, other things deleted or cloned, etc. I was afraid to express my opinion that I didn't think it was photography so accustomed have we become to photoshopping. I didn't want to start a fight; these are friends. Now, you have to realize I'm not some old guy with youngsters. All the people in the photo club are seniors who had grown up with film cameras. Yet, with the advent of digital and computers, so many have adjusted to see a photograph as anything you do to it to improve how it looks without regard to the reality or truth of what was photographed. It's become the new normal and I hate it. Yet, I was right up there telling others how they could improve their shots by cloning and digital manipulation as well as the next guy. Maybe we're all senile.

blockend · Oct 5, 2018

Alan Edward Klein said:
Yet, with the advent of digital and computers, so many have adjusted to see a photograph as anything you do to it to improve how it looks without regard to the reality or truth of what was photographed. It's become the new normal and I hate it. Yet, I was right up there telling others how they could improve their shots by cloning and digital manipulation as well as the next guy. Maybe we're all senile.

The idea pre-dates digital photography. Magazines were full of "tips" on the use of graduated filters to add a rosy or stormy tint to an otherwise blank and cloudless sky. Mattes and bi-focal filters to make a tree appear to emerge from a woman's hand.

Some photographers are frustrated artists, and a camera is the nearest they get to wielding a paintbrush. Cloning in a sky or Photoshopping an oak tree is the natural next step

removed account4 · Oct 5, 2018

Alan Edward Klein said:
At my photo club, we were reviewing member's photos taken at an antique automobile show. Many were photoshopped with backgrounds replaced with skies, other things deleted or cloned, etc. I was afraid to express my opinion that I didn't think it was photography so accustomed have we become to photoshopping. I didn't want to start a fight; these are friends. Now, you have to realize I'm not some old guy with youngsters. All the people in the photo club are seniors who had grown up with film cameras. Yet, with the advent of digital and computers, so many have adjusted to see a photograph as anything you do to it to improve how it looks without regard to the reality or truth of what was photographed. It's become the new normal and I hate it. Yet, I was right up there telling others how they could improve their shots by cloning and digital manipulation as well as the next guy. Maybe we're all senile.

hi alan
if you ever get a chance watch a movie called "photographing fairies" its about an obsessed photographer from the edwardian period
whose day job is to swap heads in photographs.
i haven't seen it in a long time but it really showed how the things we think of as so modern and evil ( the use of photoshop ) have been around for a long long time
not to mention the "fake id" trade LOL. i from the teen movies like "fast times" .., there were 4 types of ID's
1, a sibling's grabbed and used; 2. one of some old geezer or someone completely different from the person holding it
and you hoped the guy selling you the hooch just looked at the birthdate and didn't notice some 14 year old white kid kid's id said he an african american and like 30 or 90; 3 one
made by constructing a giant larger than life replica of an ID someone stands a stool to be photographed \
( you know like at the carnival were you stuck your head in midas or zeus's head and made believe you were zeus or midas); or 4 an idea of someone else
where the person removed the lamination and swapped heads with the someone completely different or old geezer ... and then the kid just
says he is benjamin buttons or something..
ive heard stories from liquor store clerks and they are usually kind of funny....
thankfully no one makes one using a camera like mine nothing worse than a fake ID of a kid where half his head is missing ...
i gues they can always be in a suit and a hat and suggest the person who made it was paying homage to rene magritte.

~andi · Oct 5, 2018

Don't know about "supposed to be". Supposed to be by whom? To what purpose?

I think every photograph is real. Even the digital ones (not in the material sense though) are real. How can they not be real? Its there. Of course if real for you is defined as "material" it may not be. But that's a very naive interpretation. The moment it can be thought, it's real. Its manifested as connections in at least one brain. Very real.

To the school of thought that photographs depict reality: so what's a photograph of a photograph then? Also what about photographs of a neuron which has been injected with fluorescent virus. Its not depicting "reality" at all. That logic breaks down there. No, no, there can only be one answer: every photograph is unreal or real. I vote for real

Sirius Glass · Oct 5, 2018

Alan Edward Klein said:
At my photo club, we were reviewing member's photos taken at an antique automobile show. Many were photoshopped with backgrounds replaced with skies, other things deleted or cloned, etc. I was afraid to express my opinion that I didn't think it was photography so accustomed have we become to photoshopping. I didn't want to start a fight; these are friends. Now, you have to realize I'm not some old guy with youngsters. All the people in the photo club are seniors who had grown up with film cameras. Yet, with the advent of digital and computers, so many have adjusted to see a photograph as anything you do to it to improve how it looks without regard to the reality or truth of what was photographed. It's become the new normal and I hate it. Yet, I was right up there telling others how they could improve their shots by cloning and digital manipulation as well as the next guy. Maybe we're all senile.

Let me guess, they use the same clouds for every photograph.

Mainecoonmaniac · Oct 5, 2018

Some think Instagram stars are real.
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-...media-spam-followers-influencer-a7751696.html

You can also pay $15K/mo to live like one.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/30/...on=click&module=Editors Picks&pgtype=Homepage

Ah.. that perfect life.

Alan Edward Klein · Oct 5, 2018

Using a graduated neutral density filter to darken the sky is not the same as cloning in a sky when there were trees actually there originally in the scene and photo. The filter makes up for the camera's deficiency of capturing the dynamic range of light in one exposure. The filter makes the photo result more real, accurate and truthful.

Regarding cloning and changes photographers use to do with film, that's mostly a canard. I shot slides for decades and never change one shot. Most contemporaries of mine acted the same way, back then. Of course, they have changed with Photoshop. Their theory now is just shoot and we'll fix it in Photoshop. Of course, most edits are usually noticeable. Also, their lack of trying to do it in the camera just leaves photos that are not angled right. Nothing Photoshop can do will help. You can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear.

Frankly, my whole argument against cloning is personal preference. I realize that. It's a losing position at my photo club. People there older than me would call me old fashioned. However, I still feel that we should try to replicate what we see. We're capturing a slice of God's time. If pressed I could argue the other side as well. But it would be helpful if we acknowledge it to be let's say computer art rather than a photograph, just to admit the difference in the results.

faberryman · Oct 5, 2018

Sorry to hear that you camera club is so fractious you don't feel you can have an honest discussion. I wouldn't waste my time on it.

Alan Edward Klein · Oct 5, 2018

faberryman said:
Sorry to hear that you camera club is so fractious you don't feel you can have an honest discussion. I wouldn't waste my time on it.

Maybe I'm making it more "fractious" than it is just to make a point. Once I make the point though, then what? They have a right to do what they want. I continue to limit my photoshopping and we all get along. In any case they are in shock when I mention I shoot film as well as digital. But that's another story.

Sirius Glass · Oct 5, 2018

Alan Edward Klein said:
Using a graduated neutral density filter to darken the sky is not the same as cloning in a sky when there were trees actually there originally in the scene and photo. The filter makes up for the camera's deficiency of capturing the dynamic range of light in one exposure. The filter makes the photo result more real, accurate and truthful.

Regarding cloning and changes photographers use to do with film, that's mostly a canard. I shot slides for decades and never change one shot. Most contemporaries of mine acted the same way, back then. Of course, they have changed with Photoshop. Their theory now is just shoot and we'll fix it in Photoshop. Of course, most edits are usually noticeable. Also, their lack of trying to do it in the camera just leaves photos that are not angled right. Nothing Photoshop can do will help. You can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear.

Frankly, my whole argument against cloning is personal preference. I realize that. It's a losing position at my photo club. People there older than me would call me old fashioned. However, I still feel that we should try to replicate what we see. We're capturing a slice of God's time. If pressed I could argue the other side as well. But it would be helpful if we acknowledge it to be let's say computer art rather than a photograph, just to admit the difference in the results.

+1

is photography supposed to be reality ?

is a photograph supposed to be reality ?

yes

no

Berkeley Mike

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miha

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Berkeley Mike

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TheFlyingCamera

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~andi

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is photography supposed to be reality ?

is a photograph supposed to be reality ?

yes

no

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