Makers or Takers

[Vaughn]

Can you give some examples? Certainly things like adding or removing objects, HDR, "super-resolution", AI night view "enhancement" etc all distort physical reality.

But I'm open to examples you have in mind. Adjustment of colour perhaps?

Me:
But there is always the possibility that an altered image can actually describe reality more fully to the viewer than an unaltered image.

Ansel's use of heavy filters and burning to get black Sierra skies. Yes, they are not 'real' skies, but for those of us who have spent afternoons under those skies with thunder storms rolling in like clockwork, shaking the air around you at 11,000 feet, those photographic black skies and white clouds feel like or represent the reality of being there -- a threatening sky. One is not suppose to be comfortable seeing anything close to a black sky. Lightning is about to dance around you, the wind will blow hard from all directions, and sleet will be coming down upon your head.

Moonrise... is another AA example. Originally printed with a 'real' pre-sunset sky, the image eventually drifted further from 'reality' to a black sky. And like the image or not, it was very successful.

Careful manipulation can help to induce an emotional response from the viewer due to that 'enhanced' reality. Actually, every decision made at the enlarger (or at the computer) is changing the original representation of reality (the negative). Burn the corners in to keep the viewers' eyes within the image and one has altered the reality of the altered reality of the negative. So to speak.

 

[snusmumriken]

Anyway, I still think the whole thing is just silly. The moment you frame a photograph, you deliberately slice a tiny bit of reality (across several dimensions) that then gets encoded in a way that uses physical structures entirely unrelated to the reality that briefly existed in front of the lens. Every photo is 'fake', and 'made'. There's no pure 'taking'; it's all manipulation right from the get-go.

Show a (straight, realistic, detailed) photo of a cat to another cat - it will simply ignore it. Show a cat another actual cat, and you'll have a chaotic furball on your hands. The only difference between a 'taken' and a 'made' photo is the degree to which we allow ourselves to be fooled into believing a symbol.

Exactly. I think @cliveh has adopted for himself a set of HCB’s rules (seize the moment, compose in camera, print the whole negative, don’t monkey unduly with the print) that for HCB delivered artistic integrity in the sphere of photojournalism. I like do the same myself, largely because I’m more of a hunter than a painter. I don’t believe that approach is uniquely valid, nor that it amounts to realism. Of course manipulation/making starts as soon as you decide to take a photo.

 

[ChrisGalway]

Ansel's use of heavy filters and burning to get black Sierra skies. Yes, they are not 'real' skies, but for those of us who have spent afternoons under those skies with thunder storms rolling in like clockwork, shaking the air around you at 11,000 feet, those photographic black skies and white clouds feel like or represent the reality of being there -- a threatening sky. One is not suppose to be comfortable seeing anything close to a black sky.

Careful manipulation can help to induce an emotional response from the viewer due to that 'enhanced' reality. Actually, every decision made at the enlarger is changing the original representation of reality (the negative). Burn the corners in to keep the viewers' eyes within the image and one has altered the reality of the altered reality of the negative. So to speak.

Of course I agree with you and I'm not suggesting for a moment the people should not post-process photos, whether originally analogue or digital ... that's surely part of the creative process, which as you point out, feels like or represents the reality of being there. There's a time and place for everything.

I guess my own (stereo) photos are capturing ordinary street and urban scenes ... complete with litter, rubbish bins, non-posed people etc ... and because the photos are colour transparencies, viewed optically (no digital anything), I see in stereo what was recorded by the camera. No added dramatic sky, or removed/inserted "artistic" object whether animal, vegetable or mineral! That dog peeing against the lamppost is a real dog, that's real pee and a real lamppost!

Of course I accept others prefer the creative "making" process ... add the dog/pee/lamppost if that's what you prefer (it's more hygienic!).

 

[awty]

Careful manipulation can help to induce an emotional response from the viewer due to that 'enhanced' reality. Actually, every decision made at the enlarger (or at the computer) is changing the original representation of reality (the negative). Burn the corners in to keep the viewers' eyes within the image and one has altered the reality of the altered reality of the negative. So to speak.

If you're creative, the more complex the better. You want to tell a story, you need to manipulate. There's many emotions, the more you can work on the better. Make the picture alive, hold the viewers attention, take them to another place.
A picture paints a thousand words.

 

[BrianShaw]

I guess my own (stereo) photos are capturing ordinary street and urban scenes ... complete with litter, rubbish bins, non-posed people etc ... and because the photos are colour transparencies, viewed optically (no digital anything), I see in stereo what was recorded by the camera. No added dramatic sky, or removed/inserted "artistic" object whether animal, vegetable or mineral! That dog peeing against the lamppost is a real dog, that's real pee and a real lamppost!

This is interesting (to me, at least) as it implies a dimension to the question that heretofore does not appear to have been discussed. It seems to me that pictures seem more real to the creator who actually saw (or imagined) the scene than they do to others whop are seeing the resulting photograph, made or taken; 2-D or 3-D.

 

[Vaughn]

I question the logic behind calling something more real than something else. Something is real or it is not..there is no scale of realness. One is pregnant or not. Alive or dead, real or not real.

The photographer just has the memory connection between the image and its taking,,,and that can drive the making.

I print full frame with no dodging or burning, but not to keep it 'real', but to make the hunt for light enjoyable and meaningful to me...using the light to paint an image onto the film about how the light defines a place.

Photography does not and has never captured reality. Photoshopping a unicorn into an image is just as 'real' as photographing a horse. IMO. The only thing that counts is that whatever one does to one's image it should push its story forward.

 

[BrianShaw]

I agree, Vaughn. But there are some folks who have declared in their "critique"/comment that some photos do not represent reality, or the film that the photo was taken with isn't being "correctly" represented in their "real attributes". Whether it's a personal philosophy on "reality" or their perception of "reality", declaring a photo to be real of not is the problem in discussions like this.

More folks should live and let live... or, perhaps, just remain silent. Not everything desires or requires a response. Sometimes just looking is sufficient.

 

[ChrisGalway]

This is interesting (to me, at least) as it implies a dimension to the question that heretofore does not appear to have been discussed. It seems to me that pictures seem more real to the creator who actually saw (or imagined) the scene than they do to others whop are seeing the resulting photograph, made or taken; 2-D or 3-D.

You are spot on for stereo! The whole idea (at least for me) is not to take a photo with a "dramatic" 3D effect, but rather to take a photo that recreates the scene in a realistic fashion. When you view a stereo pair in a good immersive optical viewer, it's as though you are standing there, exactly where you took the photo, and you can look around the scene; usually, on looking at the reconstructed science I see all kinds of detail that I missed when taking the photo!

For me, the "making" is in the taking ... if that makes sense. Once you have the colour transparencies, the only options to "alter" the 3D effect are (i) cropping and (ii) adjusting the viewing window, both in the mounting process. (In fact I always use 50x50mm window mounts, so there's not much cropping flexibility for the approx 56x56mm images.)

 

[BrianShaw]

For me, the "making" is in the taking ... if that makes sense.

That makes complete sense; there is little to no difference! Now 'faking'...

 

[cliveh]

If you're creative, the more complex the better. You want to tell a story, you need to manipulate. There's many emotions, the more you can work on the better. Make the picture alive, hold the viewers attention, take them to another place.
A picture paints a thousand words.

I would say the less complex the better, but perhaps I'm not creative?

 

[MattKing]

Anyone who has ever seen a really good play in the theatre or a really good theatrical movie on a screen can appreciate what is meant by "But there is always the possibility that an altered image can actually describe reality more fully to the viewer than an unaltered image."
It is the Art within the artifice that determines the success.
And the alterations in the image can be anything from extremely literal to the extremely symbolic - otherwise surrealists like Man Ray or theatre of the absurd would not have the power and effectiveness that they do.
A relatively personal thought question for @cliveh and other devotees of the HCB approach - do you read and enjoy and get moved by by novels and other works of fiction? What about poetry, or lyrics that are poetic?
Or are you more likely to gravitate to non-fiction, or music relying less on the lyrics?

 

[cliveh]

Anyone who has ever seen a really good play in the theatre or a really good theatrical movie on a screen can appreciate what is meant by "But there is always the possibility that an altered image can actually describe reality more fully to the viewer than an unaltered image."
It is the Art within the artifice that determines the success.
And the alterations in the image can be anything from extremely literal to the extremely symbolic - otherwise surrealists like Man Ray or theatre of the absurd would not have the power and effectiveness that they do.
A relatively personal thought question for @cliveh and other devotees of the HCB approach - do you read and enjoy and get moved by by novels and other works of fiction? What about poetry, or lyrics that are poetic?
Or are you more likely to gravitate to non-fiction, or music relying less on the lyrics?

I appreciate fiction novels, films, plays, music with and without lyrics, poetry and most creative media. All of these can be done over the course of time, but in my photography I want to capture a moment. Even a scene with no movement may have a moment of personal vision within the frame from a given viewpont and perspective. Zen is found right here, right now, by letting go of special goals and embracing the present moment with non-dualistic awareness. It is a state of calm attentiveness, living in reality rather than chasing an ideal, often requiring the cessation of excessive effort to simply experience the present.

 

[BrianShaw]

HCB and AA (and probably many other photographers) share one tying in common: they can spin a good story and attract followers. Very inspirational and influential. Yet I often wonder how much is marketing versus philosophy versus Truth.

 

[Vaughn]

In AA’s case, one needs to layer in the educational aspect of AA’s photographic career. One needs something to talk about in front of a group of people and stories grow. That is their nature.

 

[Don_ih]

a moment of personal vision within the frame from a given viewpont and perspective

and that is a stance adopted by you, a result of choices you make, it's your idea of what the scene before you should become in a photo. That's how you "make" your photo.

 

[BobUK]

You don't, buzz off.

Nice one Clive

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

It's important to recognize different photos serve different ends. A photo that is to stand as evidence of something needs to be as authoritatively authentically representative as possible. So don't add or remove bits from it - leave it as-is to be interpreted and assessed as-is for its evidentiary value.

Art photos - adding and removing doesn't make them fake. It makes them what they are. They are photos that are ends in themselves.

Family snapshots? Once again, do what you want. A personal photographic record is usually very selective and overly glossy, anyway.

Except for a few darkroom magicians, photography has generally been understood as capturing a moment in time in the real world. Interpretations were left to paintings. It shoots down the whole concept if someone asks you, "Did you Photoshop it?" Or worse, "Did you create it in your computer with AI?" Being unimpressed, the public will just shrug their shoulders and move on to something more authentic. No one is going to care about photography. We're shooting ourselves in the foot. On the other hand, it should make film photography more popular and desirable, and more authentic. So maybe we here are on the right track.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Anyway, I still think the whole thing is just silly. The moment you frame a photograph, you deliberately slice a tiny bit of reality (across several dimensions) that then gets encoded in a way that uses physical structures entirely unrelated to the reality that briefly existed in front of the lens. Every photo is 'fake', and 'made'. There's no pure 'taking'; it's all manipulation right from the get-go.

Show a (straight, realistic, detailed) photo of a cat to another cat - it will simply ignore it. Show a cat another actual cat, and you'll have a chaotic furball on your hands. The only difference between a 'taken' and a 'made' photo is the degree to which we allow ourselves to be fooled into believing a symbol.

We're not cats.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Exactly. I think @cliveh has adopted for himself a set of HCB’s rules (seize the moment, compose in camera, print the whole negative, don’t monkey unduly with the print) that for HCB delivered artistic integrity in the sphere of photojournalism. I like do the same myself, largely because I’m more of a hunter than a painter. I don’t believe that approach is uniquely valid, nor that it amounts to realism. Of course manipulation/making starts as soon as you decide to take a photo.

A camera can never capture all of reality, only the part that it sees in the viewfinder. So sure, that is selected by the photographer. But the part it does capture is real and it happened at the time the camera shutter was snapped. Most people understand that. They;ve shot pictures themselves. But there's a big difference when the captured image is so changed, it no longer matches what the original scene was. People understand that too.

 

[Don_ih]

@Alan Edward Klein -- people, for the most part, don't seem to care about authenticity as long as it looks the way they want it to. There is currently a prominent trend for people to run their old worn photos through AI and get "improved" versions of them. The people in the new photos, on close scrutiny, almost never look like the people in the old photos. But people just don't care. The apps to restore photos (and turn dead people into creepy, waving automatons) are very popular.

 

[Don_ih]

A camera can never capture all of reality

A camera can't "capture" reality at all. It produces an image. The movement from whatever is out there in the real world to what ends up as the viewable image is heavily mediated and influenced by numerous factor - not the least of which is whatever the photographer decided to do. In other words, a photo is more the result of a decision than of a reality.

And, yes, the normal understanding is that the photo looks like the scene (or object, person) it recorded. But that is based on a lot of assumptions.

What's happening in this photo?

(Robert Capa)

Go read about it here and here

 

[ChrisGalway]

Except for a few darkroom magicians, photography has generally been understood as capturing a moment in time in the real world. Interpretations were left to paintings. It shoots down the whole concept if someone asks you, "Did you Photoshop it?" Or worse, "Did you create it in your computer with AI?" Being unimpressed, the public will just shrug their shoulders and move on to something more authentic. No one is going to care about photography. We're shooting ourselves in the foot. On the other hand, it should make film photography more popular and desirable, and more authentic. So maybe we here are on the right track.

Yep, Photoshop can be a serious disease! Fortunately the price of the monthly subscription makes it quite easy for anyone to cure themselves.

 

[Vaughn]

...

View attachment 421591

(Robert Capa)

...

Dang, you mean I mimiced a fake image?! Does that make my image fake?

Burnt Tree, Rock, Yosemite Valley, 2025

5x7 Platinum/palladium print from camera negative. My titles are usually simple, but after matting this, I decided an alternate name could be, "Dead Ent: Battle of Isengard...with apologies to Robert Capa"

www.photrio.com

 

[Don_ih]

I mimiced a fake image?

That's a great photo, Vaughn.

Well, I don't know if Capa's shot was staged or otherwise. But the photo needs someone to say what's happening for the viewer to interpret it one way or the other. Is the caption "Moment Soldier gets hit by enemy fire" or is it "Moment Soldier slipped on the wet grass"? When the photo was first published, if it had that second caption, it never would've been regarded as a great war photo. The story that accompanied the original caption (Loyalist Militiaman at the Moment of Death) certainly determined how the original audience understood the photo.

It's noteworthy that the photo became famous without Capa's input. He'd sent back the undeveloped film and the photo was published in his absence. He was not consulted and did not originally title the photo.

 

[cliveh]

But photographs that are not staged or seriously manipulated (as in photoshop) are nearer to reality: -