is photography supposed to be reality ?

[MattKing]

I think we should put this subject on hold and start talking about reality in the context of Special and General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Here's the test. If someone looks you in the eye and asks if you photoshopped it, and you don;t hesitate before answering or feel a twinge in your stomach, then the photo is real.

 

[Dali]

I think you've lived in Washington DC too long where no one there knows the truth.

The discussion is worthless as long as you are mixing ontology (reality) and logic (truth).

 

[removed account4]

Here's the test. If someone looks you in the eye and asks if you photoshopped it, and you don;t hesitate before answering or feel a twinge in your stomach, then the photo is real.

but to get it here its digital

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

I think you've lived in Washington DC too long where no one there knows the truth.

No. I just went to a good university where I learned to ask questions of things instead of taking them for granted. You probably think that language is precise and accurate, don't you?

 

[removed account4]

i guess the title says it all
is a photograph or photography ( generally speaking i don't care of the format, or language ( digital or analog )
supposed to be reality ?

personally i don't think it is, even though its said to be a "mirror" more like a mirror that whoever being the camera
controls the warp...

sorry fellas
it has nothing to do with guns and mustaches or the semantics of language
as i asked in the opening post ... is a photograph or photography supposed to be reality ?

as i said, i don't think so ..

doesn't matter what university you went to..

 

[Dali]

Of course it has to do with semantics as your question is vague enough to be interpreted in various ways.

 

[removed account4]

yeah well maybe ... but it has nothing to do with mustaches
and more to do with when a camera makes a photograph of
things that don't exist and if THAT is reality

 

[Vaughn]

yeah well maybe ... but it has nothing to do with mustaches
and more to do with when a camera makes a photograph of
things that don't exist and if THAT is reality

Light exists (I think), so by definition a photograph has to be of something that exists (the exception, if not more, would be chem-photographs -- images created by putting chemicals on photopaper/film...though light might influence those, also). We almost never photograph objects -- just the light reflecting off of them.Recent science news has the first photograph of light as a wave and as particles in the same image.

 

[Berkeley Mike]

We almost never photograph objects -- just the light reflecting off of them.Recent science news has the first photograph of light as a wave and as particles in the same image.

Vaughn, would you please expand on this?

 

[jtk]

Here's the test. If someone looks you in the eye and asks if you photoshopped it, and you don;t hesitate before answering or feel a twinge in your stomach, then the photo is real.

So...if your photo was printed by a lab, their results define "real" ? What if you have prints of that image/frame/file made by multiple labs? If your prints are small, does that mean your reality is smaller than that of someone who prints larger? If Velvia does the fake character of that film define reality?

 

[Vaughn]

Vaughn, would you please expand on this?

Hopefully, not the second part -- I am not a physicist!

Simply, when we 'see' a chair, we are not experiencing the chair directly. Our sight-sense does not come in direct contact with the object. We experience (and photograph) the chair through the workings of light, which has no other connection to the chair other than being reflected off of it in various amounts. Our brains recognizes the pattern of light that we call a chair.

Touch and smell are direct senses (my term). When we smell the new varnish of the chair, actual pieces of the chair enter our nose. Taste is a similar sense. Touch of course is direct contact with the chair. When I sit on the chair and it complains loudly about the 260 pounds sitting on it, this would be, IMO, an indirect sense. The chairs parts rubbed together creating sound waves, and it is the sound waves we hear, not the chair itself. I would be hearing sound waves resulting from the interaction between two objects, me and the chair, aided by gravity. The kicker here would be if one considers sound waves as being part of the object(s) generating the waves, or as a separate phenomenon. The same would have to be considered about light emitting objects.

Is this significant to our daily lives? Probably not. But it informs my photography and affects how I approach it.

 

[cowanw]

Strong feelings here from the not reality position with the implication that others have clearly stated that photographs are reality.
Just to make the point that nobody has yet posted, without some modification or equivocation, that a photograph is reality. Either the interpretation that the photograph itself is physically real or that it represents reality. John has clarified that the question is not one of the photograph as a real artifact
These three quotes are the closest.
AI Print
When I was a kid I also thought photography was reality. I still do and do my best to uphold that ethic in my work to this day.
Vaugan
I vote for reality squared. A photograph is a real thing representing a real thing.
miha
Is photography supposed to be reality? But of course. It's just that there are different realities.
I think it is possible to imagine that a photograph is interpretive of reality while recognizing it really is not the barn.

 

[Arklatexian]

I think we should put this subject on hold and start talking about reality in the context of Special and General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.

Are we required to get that far afield. There is another question that, I think, should be answered first and I am sure it has been asked here before. I love good B&W. I shoot B&W, sometimes good, many times not. Is a B&W subject in a photograph, realism? There is no color there. (I know: all colors and no colors) For years I have been told that B&W is "in reality" an abstract. Is it? Also, we should answer to ourselves the question: "does it matter"?..............Regards!

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

The following is the NY Times submission requirements for a photo essay they want to publish.

"7. Photographs can be made on any kind of camera, although if you are using a cellphone camera please do not use filter effects. Please keep digital manipulation and postprocessing to a minimum in general. (That is, you may use editing software for minor corrections such as one might make in a darkroom — cropping, adjusting brightness, balancing colors, etc. — but please do not alter the reality of the photo in any way.)

They used the word reality. I wonder what they meant by it.

Here's the link. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/...generation-a-photo-contest-for-teenagers.html

 

[FujiLove]

I think we should put this subject on hold and start talking about reality in the context of Special and General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.

FujiLove: "Ouch! Matt, stop throwing those particles at me!"

MattKing: "I didn't throw anything! I just waved at you."

True story.

 

[Dali]

The following is the NY Times submission requirements for a photo essay they want to publish.

"7. Photographs can be made on any kind of camera, although if you are using a cellphone camera please do not use filter effects. Please keep digital manipulation and postprocessing to a minimum in general. (That is, you may use editing software for minor corrections such as one might make in a darkroom — cropping, adjusting brightness, balancing colors, etc. — but please do not alter the reality of the photo in any way.)

They used the word reality. I wonder what they meant by it.

Here's the link. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/...generation-a-photo-contest-for-teenagers.html

Ask them and let us know.

 

[markjwyatt]

No. I just went to a good university where I learned to ask questions of things instead of taking them for granted. You probably think that language is precise and accurate, don't you?

Well clearly you did not go to a university recently.

 

[markjwyatt]

The following is the NY Times submission requirements for a photo essay they want to publish.

"7. Photographs can be made on any kind of camera, although if you are using a cellphone camera please do not use filter effects. Please keep digital manipulation and postprocessing to a minimum in general. (That is, you may use editing software for minor corrections such as one might make in a darkroom — cropping, adjusting brightness, balancing colors, etc. — but please do not alter the reality of the photo in any way.)

They used the word reality. I wonder what they meant by it.

Here's the link. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/...generation-a-photo-contest-for-teenagers.html

It is bad enough to imply a court of law defines reality, but The NY Times? If so we are really in trouble!

 

[faberryman]

No. I just went to a good university where I learned to ask questions of things instead of taking them for granted. You probably think that language is precise and accurate, don't you?

Does this mean we get to discuss Wittgenstein?

 

[markjwyatt]

Our two eyes (and the distance between) them is we can observe the three dimensionality of that which you are observing. If you close one eye you cannot Observe the three dimensionality Thus a camera with a single lens cannot provide three dimensionality

Ken

Thee can be clues to 3 dimensionally in photographs ( shadows, perspective, etc.), but agreed a photograph is a 2D representation of a scene in reality. Here is what I mean by Flatlanders:

https://books.google.com/books/abou...-YC&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button

 

[removed account4]

Simply, when we 'see' a chair, we are not experiencing the chair directly. Our sight-sense does not come in direct contact with the object. We experience (and photograph) the chair through the workings of light, which has no other connection to the chair other than being reflected off of it in various amounts. Our brains recognizes the pattern of light that we call a chair.

a physiology / anatomy professor told me something similar / the same thing a few months ago ..
its not really there its just the light that makes it there ...
its almost as if what we see is actually all like kirilian photography and our brains give it dimension and recognition.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

Well clearly you did not go to a university recently.

Yes. I graduated in 1993.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

Does this mean we get to discuss Wiggenstein?

More Derrida, Lacan, and Foucault than Witgenstein.

 

[faberryman]

More Derrida, Lacan, and Foucault than Witgenstein.

Anyone other than the French!