Ken Rockwell and the popularity of film photography

omaha said:

An analog print is a unique thing. Even if one has highly disciplined darkroom technique, no two prints will ever be truly identical. EVERY digital print is metaphysically identical. That's a huge thing.

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It's also not true unless your printer is magic! I'll give you "every copy of a digital file is metaphysically identical", but getting it onto a physical substrate is a physical process with the variability thereunto appertaining.

-NT

Well, I'll grant you that there may be infinitesimal differences from digital print to digital print of the same file, but those differences (absent a mechanical malfunction) are not meaningful in any relevant sense.

The printer (the person, not the machine) does not press "Print" and then say "Ooohhh...I hope this turns out to be a good one!" Instead, he enters the quantity (50, lets say), presses "Print" and expects 50 identical copies.

ntenny said:

It's also not true unless your printer is magic! I'll give you "every copy of a digital file is metaphysically identical", but getting it onto a physical substrate is a physical process with the variability thereunto appertaining.

-NT

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Not done by the nuance of a human however. That's emphatically different.

ntenny said:

..surely everyone realizes (if they think about it) that analog processes are also full of stages in which information is lost or distorted, and that the feeling that a photo is somehow an accurate representation of "what was really there" or "what you would have seen" is an illusion that skips over a whole lot of mental modeling that we do unconsciously.

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I guess I see a photograph as a naturally occurring phenomenon devoid, at the precise moment of rendering, of the Hand of Man.

At its most fundamental level it is a process that, although heavily refined by the chemical engineers to work well on a film substrate, and heavily altered by the optical engineers who designed the lenses to correct the things we don't like about the pinhole images that result from that hole created by the aperture blades, and conveniently encased into a useable form by the mechanical engineers who created the user interface we call a camera, essentially initiates, progresses, and concludes solely according to the laws of physics, chemistry, and thermodynamics.

The human photographer can chose the subject, camera, film, lens, shutter duration, aperture setting (pinhole geometry), along with an almost endless series of other variables. But all of these are chosen pre-rendering of the actual photographic image taking place.

At the moment the photographer releases the shutter, thus allowing light to strike the film medium, his contribution, and the contributions of all those generations of scientists and engineers, ceases to continue. At that moment the Hand of Man stops, and the Hand of Nature takes over.

Nature herself will spontaneously imprint an image onto the medium of whatever image was projected by the aperture pinhole. Nature does not want, and does not need, any input from Man for this process to proceed to completion. Once the shutter closes, the deed is done.

At that point Man steps back into the chain of events. He must tease that preserved image out and make it permanent. And he may later reproduce it many times over, into many different forms. But he cannot non-destructively alter that originally imprinted and preserved image. Nor can he ever identically recreate an exact duplicate, because the arrow of time has moved on. There are implications from the Second Law of Thermodynamics here, but we don't want to cause any more eyes to bleed than have already started to by this point.

The main difference between this process and the other technology is the presence of the Hand of Man at the actual point of rendition. Light still strikes a medium. But that medum no longer preserves the image. Instead, the Hand of Man, in the proxy form of computer software, endeavors to simulate the Hand of Nature by simulating the creation of a real three-dimensional negative.

It does this by reading voltages generated by (but not preserved by) the substitute medium and then logically abstracting them into the form of a zero-dimensional pattern. This pattern, consisting solely of abstract numbers that substitute for real-world negative densities, is itself a pure abstraction and is intended to be a substitute for a real negative.

The crucial difference in all of this is that numbers, being pure abstractions, can be altered non-destructively at any point in (or after) the original simulated rendering of the image. And the practical difference this implies is that at no point in the creation or subsequent viewing of a digital image can the viewer ever be 100% certain that none of the numbers have been altered from their original values.

If you suspect that the photograph in your hands was altered, you can immediately ask to see the original negative. There can be only one. And any after-the-fact alterations will be evident as destructive modifications. This chain of detectable events confers provenance.

If you suspect that the print from a digital image in your hands was altered, you cannot ask to see the original RAW file and be 100% certain that the file you are given is an accurate copy of the original values that existed at the original point of rendition. Any after-the-fact alterations cannot be detected because they were non-destructive, and so left no chain of detectable events. Thus, there is no provenance.

Changing a physical thing cannot happen non-destructively. Changing an abstract thing cannot happen destructively.

(Umm... anyone need eye bandages yet?)



Ken

ntenny said:

variability thereunto appertaining.

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Dang.:confused:

Maris said:

And the argument is always wrong.

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If there is one thing I've learned in life it is that absolute assertions are typically wrong. They may appear correct from a specific perspective but when viewed from a different angle they normally look pretty skewed.

Photographs, at best, can only see what was in front of the camera. The laws of physics determine their angle view and the depth of field. Like writers choosing which story to tell, we photographers choose what point our cameras at, what we focus on, and when to snap the shutter.

A beautiful grand baby came into our lives late last year. On our first cross country visit to see her, her mama was struggling with that demanding little lump of work that took 27 hours to bring into the world and all that lump wanted was to suck mama dry, poop, pee, sleep, and cry at all hours.

Like normal, it took a while for baby to become aware enough to actually do anything sentient like look at mama and smile. Being the first child mama was expecting a quicker connection so she was a bit frustrated but there were also beautiful moments where mama was obviously happy with baby.

So, which story do I shoot for; the one that portrays mama's frustrations or mama's dreams? Which perspective is right, which matters, which do I want to remember?

Landscape shooters choices are no different as they wait for the perfect light, perfect clouds, no clouds...

Journalists face the same choices too as they decide which of the stories unfolding in front of them is important. Is it the story of the life of 18 year old conscript who is just trying to live another day in a war he didn't start or of the larger political battle going on around him?

Photos are rarely objective representations of anything.

After reading some of the different opinions it appears pretty obvious that this is emotional topic to a lot of people.

Firstly we have to remember that photography has many avenues of pursuit and whichever avenue we choose we tend to get tunnel vision and think that everyone should agree with our "avenue".

Obviously fine art photographers cherish the hand made aspect and one-off illusion of what they produce. You spend hours making a few prints you could easily get pissed at some guy that shows up and spent 10 minutes making his.

We have portrait types who's job is to take great pictures of people and make lasting prints for their walls. Retouching is extremely important and process is irrelevant to the end buyer.

We have commercial types who often don't even really need to make prints at all but just produce fast great digital files.

We have photojournalist types who need impactful shots and need them now.

We have amateurs who like to dabble and see themselves as fine art or portrait photographers and who parrot whomever they are emulating even though they couldn't sell a print of anything whether it's analog or digital, and nor do they care. It's a fun hobby.

We have traditionalists with and archivists sensibility and only truly find merit in one-off or the perfection of one print per exposed neg/plate.

We have large format types who only make contact prints and who wonder what all the fuss is about.

And we have the crossover of some of the types.

Obviously none of us are going to change anyone's opinion but it is interesting to see them explained and maybe get an understanding what is at stake for each of them.

dslater said:

Indeed - I've been driving stick shift ever since I started making enough money to buy the car I want instead settling for a used one I could afford. Unfortunately, finding new manual transmission cars these days has become very difficult. After the recession when car manufacturers took such a big hit, most of them stopped producing manual transmission cars - they simply didn't sell well enough. Instead they now produce these idiotic "semi-automatic" cars where you shift, but don't have a clutch. What they fail to realize is that having a manual transmission isn't about the shifting, it's about having the clutch and the whole different way you control your car using it.

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Sadly largely true, but fortunately not entirely so. I notice back in my home town area in rural TN they are much more common on dealer lots than here in Atlanta, which is probably largely due to the hideous rush hour traffic we have. I work odd schedules that keep me mostly out of that, usually one day per week, one way only, but this week was driving in it both ways all week (training class, 9-5.) It even has ME muttering about getting a cheap commuter with an auto, and I would if I did that regularly.

OTOH, they are available. I bought a new 2011 Mazda3 in December of 2010. I told the dealer exactly what I wanted, options and transmission and down to acceptable colors from the available choices, and they got me one - from another dealer in Florida. That costs a bit more than finding one that's been sitting on the lot long enough they want to move it, but I'm willing to pay more to get what I want.

Back to the photography topic, I find much of this discussion fascinating, but just too long to read through it all given the other demands on my time. Sigh. But I particularly find the notion that every copy of a digital print is identical save only for minor mechanical imprecision induced by the printer from copy to copy, whereas even the most identical hand made darkroom print varies more, to be something I had not considered before. I read decades ago that one definition of a good printer was someone who could make a bad print then make 10 more copies almost exactly like it. Of course that's not really a "good" printer but consistency is a start, and is not nearly so automatic as clicking number of copies, being sure paper is loaded, clicking print and going to get a beer.

blansky said:

Obviously none of us are going to change anyone's opinion but it is interesting to see them explained and maybe get an understanding what is at stake for each of them.

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As soon as I was done reading everyone else, I was going to write down this exact same observation. You beat me to it.

I find this discussion absolutely fascinating. I don't think anyone here is trying to change anyone's minds. Rather perhaps only offering different definitions and points of view for everyone's consideration. That's how individual perspectives get enlarged and learning happens. Including mine.

Ken

Ken Nadvornick said:

I guess I see a photograph as a naturally occurring phenomenon devoid, at the precise moment of rendering, of the Hand of Man.

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Wow! I will defend to the death your right, and all that, but I find that perspective to be highly alien. Then again, I'm one of those big fans of "character" in lenses and emulsions, and in many ways I see the interesting part of photography as being the attempt to deploy those (very human and inaccurate) tools in a way that respects some sort of "truth" about the subject. I don't have this concept of a pre-existing Platonic photographic image.

(But I wonder if I'm being honest, since in practice I do a lot of stopping in my tracks and saying "Hey, there's a photograph over there!"...)

-NT

ntenny said:

Wow! I will defend to the death your right, and all that, but I find that perspective to be highly alien.

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It's an attempt to define the behaviors of the medium in existential terms. What it truly physically is, and not merely by how it's perceived and/or used.

It seems to me that most of the contributors here want to define it simply by how they use it. That, I think, is why there are so many different definitions, and angst over a sense that no one else understands what it really is except for "me". When one constructs a definition solely around one's own unique interaction with the medium it's not surprising that one ends up with an almost infinite number of interpretations.

Because this is what I do with it, this is what it is. And the corollary, How could it possibly be anything else? Which inevitably leads to, Those guys don't know what they are talking about!

I prefer to drill down to deeper levels in order to define it in its physical foundational terms. How it is used, why it is used, whether or not it can tell the "truth" (whatever that is), how much money we can make with it... those are all questions from far higher up on the food chain. None of them tell me anything about what it really is.

And, of course, if one can (hopefully) better discern what it really is, then it becomes much easier to know what, in the case of that other technology, it really is not.

Ken

Guys, are we not a little off topic here? Back to Ken Rockwell, I agree with most of the last post by Chris Lange, who I also think is a good photographer.

cliveh said:

Guys, are we not a little off topic here? Back to Ken Rockwell, I agree with most of the last post by Chris Lange, who I also think is a good photographer.

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Our threads always go off topic.

Rockwell is a resource.

Some say a good one others a bad one. As are most resources.

Pick your poison.

cliveh said:

Guys, are we not a little off topic here? Back to Ken Rockwell, I agree with most of the last post by Chris Lange, who I also think is a good photographer.

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Topicality is overrated. FWIW, I agreed with most of Chris Lange's post too, except that I do have some appreciation for KR's site---I don't like his photography, but I actually agree with a lot of the ways he thinks *about* photography. I think having someone who's widely read push the idea that it's about eye, light, and composition, not about rarefied gearhead comparisons and pixel counting, is a Good Thing for the photographic world.

-NT

blansky said:

Our threads always go off topic.

Rockwell is a resource.

Some say a good one others a bad one. As are most resources.

Pick your poison.

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Oh stop making sense.

"People crave something real, a physical object that is unique and that you can hold in your hand," said Masato Yamamoto, general manager of Fujifilm’s photo imaging products division, on the sidelines of the [new Instax Mini-90 Neo Classic] camera launch.

"Film yields an authenticity that is often missing in a digital world."

Fortunately, there are some people who really do get it...

Ken

Ken Nadvornick said:

"People crave something real, a physical object that is unique and that you can hold in your hand," said Masato Yamamoto, general manager of Fujifilm’s photo imaging products division, on the sidelines of the [new Instax Mini-90 Neo Classic] camera launch.

"Film yields an authenticity that is often missing in a digital world."

Fortunately, there are some people who really do get it...

Ken

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But sadly, more that don't.

It's not that prints from digital files aren't authentic, it's just that the majority of people have the same mentality that we often ballyhoo on here of "I can press print and get 50 copies!".

A) Anyone that editions their work at 50 is a dumbass.

B) printing with inkjet is as difficult as printing in the darkroom...color inconsistencies, profiling, batch to batch paper variation that is generally more pronounced than we experience in the darkroom world...the only thing is that since more people have inkjet printers than darkrooms, we see (drastically) more people who don't really care about the true quality of the finished product. Don't you think we are a little biased here? We have all chosen to be members of what is billed as an "exclusively analog" photographic community of printers and photographers, for better or worse. By that very fact alone, we all care 100% more about our finished product than 98% of the photographic community. My father exclusively prints via inkjet now...but to make a single print that he is willing to put his signature on is an hours long ordeal, requiring extensive collaboration with his printer (whom, I might add, is descended from a 3 generations long family of printers, both lithography and silver based). He will make a visit to her lab all day and come home with two or three prints...no different than any discerning professional darkroom worker.

C) I'm really sick of people disrespecting digital photography as a medium because of its intrinsic lack of a concrete original between shutter-press and print (Polaroid, eat your heart out). Digital cameras didn't hurt standards of quality in photography, and there aren't any more bad photographers than there were in the past, it's just that the needle is no longer hidden in a haystack, it's submerged in a pool of shit the size of the Pacific Ocean. Archival pigment prints have projected lives beyond that of both Ciba and RA-4 (even CA-II). Also...we can whine but when was the last time you were able to get a color print done on 310gsm fiber-based paper without using color-carbro-Ilfo-BBQ-EDTA-Fresson-Transfer-Chromeoil?

D) I don't know about y'all but I hate touching my negatives...

E) I think people would use film more if they saw more work that they enjoyed which was made on film. Some annoying rich guy yelling about nonsense isn't going to have much actual effect on anything.

Ken Nadvornick said:

"Film yields an authenticity that is often missing in a digital world."

Fortunately, there are some people who really do get it...

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Let's be fair: Some of us "get" it, but disagree. I like film, obviously, and in many ways the process leaves me as a creator feeling in closer contact with the work than digital does, but I don't find this "film-only authenticity" to be a real phenomenon. I understand that you do, and this is one of those subjective things where reasonable people can differ.

I actually find instant film to be a lot like digital, in that the process is sort of a magical black box, and I think it's cool in its own way but doesn't have much in common with darkroom work. I'd actually say in some ways it's more "detached" or "alienated" from the photographer than digital, precisely because it *is* so much of a black box---apart from Polaroid backs on system or LF cameras, the actual controls applicable to the process are almost always very limited, and the controls you can apply after exposure are basically nil.

To me, that stuff only gets really interesting when you start to look at things like emulsion transfers and experimenting with the "goop" side of peel-aparts. Your mileage may, obviously, vary.

-NT

(The Platonic original of a photograph)

Ken Nadvornick said:

It's an attempt to define the behaviors of the medium in existential terms. What it truly physically is, and not merely by how it's perceived and/or used.

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I've been thinking about this post and why I find the perspective it addresses to be so strange at a gut level, and after a couple of days of pondering, I think it's because of the deployment of absolute phrases like "[w]hat it truly physically is" in a setting where I'm pretty sure they don't mean anything objective.

That is, you're talking about the "truth" of photography in terms of a kind of optical magic, in which the information in a bunch of loose photons is captured wholesale as a physical, concrete image. We all know that doesn't happen---the photo loses polarization, timing information, and the wave properties of light, for a start, and that's without considering optical imperfections of the lens or spectral and sensitivity limitations of the capture medium---but you write as if it's very viscerally clear to you that *those* departures from perfect accuracy are not important, while *other* departures are enormously important.

Which, y'know, take your gut feeling and run with it! I'm not going to argue that you shouldn't have that attitude to the medium. But I don't see that it has any special claim to being The Way Photography Really Is, or that any particular choice of the cutoff point between "not important" and "enormously important" is intrinsically more right than any other.

It seems to me that most of the contributors here want to define it simply by how they use it. That, I think, is why there are so many different definitions, and angst over a sense that no one else understands what it really is except for "me". When one constructs a definition solely around one's own unique interaction with the medium it's not surprising that one ends up with an almost infinite number of interpretations.

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Agreed, absolutely. I kind of think that these different interpretations are all we've got, though, unless you abstract your concept of "the medium" away from photography and into general visual art.[1] While we can try to understand one another's interpretations and get out of our own confined assumptions, I think the idea of a transcendent Grand Unified Theory of Photography is a fiction, and epistemological arguments about it are founded on sand.

-NT

[1] What distinguishes photography from painting, I submit, is *solely* the process; it's possible for a technically skilled painter to make a viewer say "wait, is that a photo?", or an inventive photo printer to make a viewer say "wait, is that a painting?", which by itself almost proves that you can't really distinguish the two media purely on viewable characteristics of the image. The two certainly speak the same language between the creator and the viewer, and what can be said about one in terms of image and communication can be equally said about the other. Discuss?

Chris Lange said:

C) I'm really sick of people disrespecting digital photography as a medium because of its intrinsic lack of a concrete original between shutter-press and print...

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It's not disrespect, Chris. It's simply clarifying the differences between the two processes for those who insist on burying their heads in the sand and denying that there are any differences at all. There are differences. Obvious, demonstrable differences. Whether those differences matter to you... is up to you. For some, perhaps even most these days, they don't matter. But for others, they do.

Ken

When digital photography appeared I had no problem with it and found it a great addition to analogue to further the boundaries of what could be achieved. The problem I had was when it was hijacked by marketing men to make money and put digital as a technological replacement over film.

cliveh said:

The problem I had was when it was hijacked by marketing men to make money and put digital as a technological replacement over film.

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Why should that bother you?

Dinesh said:

Why should that bother you?

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Because I don't feel it is an ethical development of photographic technology. A personal view of course.

ntenny said:

(The Platonic original of a photograph)

[1] What distinguishes photography from painting, I submit, is *solely* the process; it's possible for a technically skilled painter to make a viewer say "wait, is that a photo?", or an inventive photo printer to make a viewer say "wait, is that a painting?", which by itself almost proves that you can't really distinguish the two media purely on viewable characteristics of the image.The two certainly speak the same language between the creator and the viewer, and what can be said about one in terms of image and communication can be equally said about the other. Discuss?

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Yes, at the naive level of "looks like means same as" paintings and photographs can be contrived to resemble each other. But mere resemblance is the shallowest and most superficial way of looking at pictures and I reckon all images that don't evaporate somewhere between the eye and the memory carry richer connotations. And these connotations delight and reward the viewer who takes the trouble (or has the brains) to understand the creative, technical, and aesthetic strategies of the picture maker.