Is straight photography dead?

Pieter12 · Mar 30, 2023

Many galleries and photographic arts centers actively solicit altered images. This may upset photographic purists. One of the reasons for showing altered or hybrid images in my opinion is to take photography and wed it with art by incorporating non-photographic elements, possibly attracting collectors who would not consider photography on its own as something to acquire.

warden · Mar 30, 2023

Pieter12 said:
Don’t leave out that the membership is most likely an automatic renewal on the credit card used, so even if the entrant/member never enters another show, there is still a bit of money continuing to roll in.

It’s definitely an auto renewal in this case. (And a 40% commission on any prints, or boxes, sold)

logan2z · Mar 30, 2023

warden said:
Thanks for that, good insights and unexpectedly funny too. Subscribed!

You're welcome. He's only produced about 15 videos to date but they're all really entertaining.

DREW WILEY · Mar 30, 2023

Matt - If I had the time and budget to do some art tourism, I'd certainly visit certain cities in Canada rather than New York. There seems to be some really interesting things going on, photography and printmaking wise. But I've never been much for urban tourism anywhere, and the wife prefers Hawaiian islands. "West Coast school"? - well, that's pretty much been in my blood all along, although I have my own distinct style too.

But since the West Coast style still garners so much respect in this area, real film per se and classic darkroom skills are still primarily regarded as the real deal, even among digital imaging engineers and pros. I got plenty of compliments just this afternoon toting around a wooden Ries tripod over my should and carrying even a little Fuji 6X9 RF. Respect for classic printmaking is kinda ingrained in this region, in a way the more gimmicky innovations are not. But novelties have always gotten disproportionate representation in galleries and museum venues desperate for attention; it's been hard times for some of them.

Our American Northwest gets less attention than it deserves. A lot of fine work has been done there too.

Craig · Mar 30, 2023

Rather than "straight" a better descriptor might be representative or realistic. A photograph that attempts to capture the world as it is ordinarily viewed by people, within the limitations of the photographic process.

Arthurwg · Mar 30, 2023

Pieter12 said:
It obviously wasn't AI, no could it have been because it was created before the technology. Mr Crewdson has a style and you may not like it, but that is his vision.

I was making an an anaolgy to Crewdson's pictures as fake and empty, which is what I've seen of AI. Perhaps he should leave Yale and move to Hollywood, where much of that output is intentionally fake and empty.

madNbad · Mar 31, 2023

DREW WILEY said:
Our American Northwest gets less attention than it deserves. A lot of fine work has been done there too.

Ray Atkeson: https://www.rayatkeson.com/

awty · Mar 31, 2023

Hassasin · Mar 31, 2023

@madNbad Thanks for the link to Atkeson, ordered Vintage Skiing, looks like high quality nostalgia, classic skiing attire helps all these photos to float above the norm. Can't wait to rewind the clock back to those glorious days.

Hassasin · Mar 31, 2023

logan2z said:
Since Gregory Crewdson's name has come up multiple times in this thread, and a recent post was looking for some levity, I recommend watching this video:

Stephen Leslie's YouTube channel has quickly become one of my favorites. It's very well researched, very funny, and one of the few photography-oriented YouTube channels I've come across that actually talks about photography rather than gear. Worth a look...

Got to say this YT channel is quite a treasure. Might start paying for YT just to subscribe to this. Thanks.

Alan Edward Klein · Mar 31, 2023

YT is free but you can pay a fee to eliminate the ads.

Hassasin · Mar 31, 2023

Alan Edward Klein said:
YT is free but you can pay a fee to eliminate the ads.

Ads are the killer, some channels have them coming in every few minutes. I am looking for reasons to pay up, but still short of enough to do that.

Don_ih · Mar 31, 2023

awty said:
Ic-racer is correct, its ignorance and method of decrementing. Also goes deeper as we want the subject in hard focus (so no shooting in bulb while hand held), you must use the view finder to compose (no shooting from the hip), you must not crop, we want the pictures to look timeless (so no photos of people using phones or contemporary surroundings) etc.

That's correct if you assume "straight" means something that correlates with reality. All I was saying is "straight" is whatever you get by going from camera to print in the most direct, unmanipulated way (cropping is not a manipulation, nor are any of the non-additive operations like dodging and burning and toning). A "straight" photo is not a collage or composite.
"Repesentative" is a good word all on its own for a different idea.

For instance, I don't think I've seen any photos of yours that aren't straight photos. You don't seem to add elements to your photos in the process of going from negative to print.

Alan Edward Klein · Mar 31, 2023

Pay the monthly fee and watch everything to catch up in one month. Then cancel.

Hassasin · Mar 31, 2023

Alan Edward Klein said:
Pay the monthly fee and watch everything to catch up in one month. Then cancel.

I watch a lot of music videos, blues and jazz, and ads drive me nuts. I have a way to get around it, but requires extra steps. Then again I don’t do my own stuff on YT so probably not worth it.

VinceInMT · Mar 31, 2023

Alan Edward Klein said:
"A painting is understood by the viewer to come from the artists mind and brush. So the viewer understands there's an interpretation of reality going on and makes an allowance for that….”

I’m not so sure about that. In the past, painters painted what was in front of them, just like a camera would do in later years. Many used tools like the camera obscura to make sure they got it right. It probably took the impressionists to change the viewers attitude toward that.

VinceInMT · Mar 31, 2023

Pieter12 said:
Many galleries and photographic arts centers actively solicit altered images. This may upset photographic purists. One of the reasons for showing altered or hybrid images in my opinion is to take photography and wed it with art by incorporating non-photographic elements, possibly attracting collectors who would not consider photography on its own as something to acquire.

Of that type of process, I am guilty. Last year I did a series where I first made a cyanotype on a large sheet of drawing paper and then completed the image using graphite, charcoal, and pastels. And in that series, the photographic element represented non-reality and the drawing portion, which I do sort of hyper-realistically, represent reality.

I continue to examine ways to combine my interests in both photography and drawing.

Alan Edward Klein · Mar 31, 2023

VinceInMT said:
I’m not so sure about that. In the past, painters painted what was in front of them, just like a camera would do in later years. Many used tools like the camera obscura to make sure they got it right. It probably took the impressionists to change the viewers attitude toward that.

I still think people trust photos more than paintings for accuracy of the scene. Here's a picture I shot in Monument Valley. Notice the distance between the monuments in the background and on the painting. Also the skies. Which do you trust to more accurately reflect the actual view? My photo or his painting? By the way, the artist liked my digital capture so much, he asked for it so he could use on his business cards.

VinceInMT · Mar 31, 2023

Alan Edward Klein said:
I still think people trust photos more than paintings for accuracy of the scene. Here's a picture I shot in Monument Valley. Notice the distance between the monuments in the background and on the painting. Also the skies. Which do you trust to more accurately reflect the actual view? My photo or his painting? By the way, the artist liked my digital capture so much, he asked for it so he could use on his business cards.

I was referring to your previous statement from a historical perspective. Prior to photography, paintings or drawings were what represented reality for the viewer. Once photography came along, it ushered in a change in the art world where artists had competition for realism and moved into other realms such as impressionism, surrealism, etc.

Craig · Mar 31, 2023

Hassasin said:
Ads are the killer, some channels have them coming in every few minutes. I am looking for reasons to pay up, but still short of enough to do that.

Adblock plus as an addon to your Firefox browser is what you need.

Hassasin · Mar 31, 2023

Craig said:
Adblock plus as an addon to your Firefox browser is what you need.

That knocks out YT ad interruptions?

Rolleiflexible · Mar 31, 2023

VinceInMT said:
I’m not so sure about that. In the past, painters painted what was in front of them, just like a camera would do in later years. Many used tools like the camera obscura to make sure they got it right. It probably took the impressionists to change the viewers attitude toward that.

I've stayed out of this discussion, because it is a subject that is so central to my preoccupations that I don't want to lose myself in longwinded dialogues here. But two observations:

1. I find it interesting that before the Great Yellow Father put cameras in every household, drawing was considered a basic skill, not an art refined by a relative few. Everybody drew. It was the only way to record images. Computers and smartphones have marginalized handwriting in the same ways that cameras marginalized drawing.

2. That said, painters often took license with "what was in front of them" for many centuries before the Impressionists arrived. I don't think Hieronymus Bosch visited the musician's hell before painting The Garden of Earthly Delights. More prosaically, portraitists routinely flattered their sitters over the centuries. Or, in the case of our man Sargent, passed off his male infatuation, Albert de Belleroche, as his famous Madame X in a prototrans moment in art history.

redbandit · Mar 31, 2023

Don Heisz said:
That's correct if you assume "straight" means something that correlates with reality. All I was saying is "straight" is whatever you get by going from camera to print in the most direct, unmanipulated way (cropping is not a manipulation, nor are any of the non-additive operations like dodging and burning and toning). A "straight" photo is not a collage or composite.
"Repesentative" is a good word all on its own for a different idea.

For instance, I don't think I've seen any photos of yours that aren't straight photos. You don't seem to add elements to your photos in the process of going from negative to print.

Photography seems dead...

YOu can go online and see so many videos on how to do things with photoshop or light room..

Like say how to take a photo of a person in swim trunks, a photo of a suite, and turn into into a photo of a person in swim trunks wearing a suite jacket..

Its one of those things that raises issues when that "professional photographers of america" education package and certification test is nothing but light set ups and digital editing

Pieter12 · Mar 31, 2023

VinceInMT said:
I was referring to your previous statement from a historical perspective. Prior to photography, paintings or drawings were what represented reality for the viewer. Once photography came along, it ushered in a change in the art world where artists had competition for realism and moved into other realms such as impressionism, surrealism, etc.

Every seen a Hieronomus Bosch painting?

DREW WILEY · Mar 31, 2023

madNbad - Atkenson was first in the genre of big coffee table books, slightly ahead of even the Muench clan. More the scenic or postcardy genre, and basically all classic ole Ektachrome 64 4X5 work. My older brother sometimes traveled with Emil Muench to locations; but neither he nor I was ever influenced by that genre, and both of us gravitated more toward Eliot Porter as a role model instead.

Both my parents were from pioneering Oregon families. My great grandmother was the first woman to climb Mt Hood, and my great grandfather pioneered the side of Tillamook Bay soon after the Civil War where the cheese factory is. I owned the oldest cemetery in Oregon for awhile, until I deeded it over to a nephew; the State maintains it as a historical site. And the State historical printing press and society is housed in my Grandfather's and Great Grandfather's grist mill, where my mother grew up.

Is straight photography dead?

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