"Photography IS Film"

[michr]

Have you used the "MyDrone" photography app yet? You download the app, and select from a series of locations (where MyDrone is operating) and then choose what time of day you'd like the camera drone to fly for you. You don't operate the drone's flight controls, but from the drone view on your screen you do press the "shutter button" whenever you like during the flight time you bought. Each photo you take is sent back to your computer as a JPG.

Questions:
When someone posts, or prints and displays the image from the drone, do they list themselves as "photographer?"
Is there any photographic meaning to being somewhere, and seeing something with your own eyes, while making a photograph?
Suppose, it eventually leaks out that the drone wasn't flying in real time for YOU, but that a movie, previously shot, was playing and you were essentially just snapping stills from that movie. Is the image still "your photograph?"
Is there any philosophical difference then between selecting a photograph and making a photograph?
Is "snapping a still from a remote webcam" also photography?
How about "ordering" a photograph through descriptors from a service that maintains billions of photographs in a catalog that you can claim as a one off?
What is the essence of photography, that without it, it becomes something else?

Disclaimer: I know of no such "drone service" right now. These ideas are just possible futures that will impact the meaning of photography.

Outside of philosophy, I know legally, at least in the USA, that automated recording, like from a drone in your example, or a CCTV feed, has an owner, but no copyright. It's only the process of human intervention and selection that assigns copyright. I think similar issues were discussed in the monkey selfie copyright case recently.

If you're snapping stills of a movie, then it's either under copyright because it's an actual creative product, or it's just a video feed that's being replayed on a time delay, so again, you might be able to claim copyright on the individual selection of images.

You're getting into a bit of a gray area with regards to copyright and ownership. If you're not already familiar with the work of Richard Prince, you should be. He explores appropriation aggressively. A good example of this phenomenon is Duchamp's "fountain". He famously presented a urinal as a sculpture. He neither fabricated nor commissioned this piece. It was entirely someone else's work. Yet he is celebrated for recognizing it's artistic merit (or for trolling the art world, if you like).

If you were somehow paralyzed, but could direct another person to work a camera, where to aim it and so forth. You would still be the photographer.

I think ultimately, the point where photography happens is where the person uses their mind to select a portion of time from a scene, and that gets reflected into something viewable by others. That's the minimal creative contribution necessary to be the photographer. Everything else has an element of craft.

 

[ReginaldSMith]

You're getting into a bit of a gray area with regards to copyright and ownership.

Oh my, I didn't mean it that way. I meant a SERVICE would compile miles of video for the purpose of selling it frame by frame to those who want to pay for it.
It wasn't at all about copyright issues or IP. It was about the concept of remotely capturing images in the new age of the digital realm.

 

[Berkeley Mike]

It was film, along with a whole raft of alternative processing, which carried photography to this point but was not its end. Now photography includes digital capture.

 

[ReginaldSMith]

Yes, of course "digital capture". But, the question of the meaning of capture is on our doorstep.

At what point is the essence of photography gone?

 

[faberryman]

Yes, of course "digital capture". But, the question of the meaning of capture is on our doorstep. At what point is the essence of photography gone?

It all depends on how you you define the "essence of photography." Some have already excluded digital.

 

[ReginaldSMith]

It all depends on how you you define the "essence of photography." Some have already excluded digital.

That was the question I asked.
Quote: What is the essence of photography, that without it, it becomes something else?

 

[Berkeley Mike]

Yes, of course "digital capture". But, the question of the meaning of capture is on our doorstep.

At what point is the essence of photography gone?

Photography is light mitigated, by a pinhole or exotic glass, to fall on a light-sensitive medium to record an image. Bitumen of Judea on Pewter developed by an Oil of lavender rinse, silver on copper developed in fumes of mercury, silver nitrate and d76, or silicon sensor developed in the computer; it matters not.
It is all photography, except to the devotees of the last transcended technology; these resistant noises have all been made many years and many times before. Some of you are just stuck with only understanding photography through film and its style of results, born of its own peculiar artificial limitations and consequent wonders. It is all understandable and controllable. It is not magic, it is just a consequent "look" we are so accustomed to seeing for the last 190 years that has determined what photography can be. It is hardly an end but a point in the evolution of imaging that served to keep photography alive and lives on.

 

[ReginaldSMith]

Some of you are just stuck with only understanding photography through film

This is a philosophy question, and I am afraid it flew over your head. But thanks anyway for the meaningless allegations, like the above.

 

[ReginaldSMith]

Never thought I'd be doing this, but:

essence

• n.
  The intrinsic or indispensable properties that serve to characterize or identify something.
• n.
  The most important ingredient; the crucial element.
• n.
  The inherent, unchanging nature of a thing or class of things.

 

[ReginaldSMith]

I'll attempt an analogy here:
Big Game Hunting.

For the well-healed, a big game hunt means flying to a site with all the comforts of home, and hiring a band of laborers to act as pack mules, and guides to hustle you and your entourage onto some game area. They carry all your weapons and comfort burdens and make a deluxe camp each night with gourmet meals from the camp chef. The guides lead you finally to a spot where the animal is, they load your gun, hand it to you, wherein you shoot the animal, romp over to it, hold it's head up while the camp photog takes your picture before the camp skinner beheads the animal, packs it in a crate and rushes it to your taxidermist.

Is the essence of hunting still present for the patron?

 

[MattKing]

The inherent, unchanging nature of a thing or class of things.

Which is why photography, which is and has always been forever changing, can never be restricted to "just" film.

 

[Berkeley Mike]

This is a philosophy question, and I am afraid it flew over your head. But thanks anyway for the meaningless allegations, like the above.

Always mindful that philosophy is disposition after cognition, it is the disposition that I see.

 

[jtk]

That was the question I asked.
Quote: What is the essence of photography, that without it, it becomes something else?

Nothing has an "essence" that can be expressed in words.

 

[faberryman]

Nothing has an "essence" that can be expressed in words.

And yet we try so as to be able to communication between one another. And generally do a pretty good job.

 

[ReginaldSMith]

The "film & sensor" rut is awfully deep, isn't it?

There's no more essence to photography than the medium? No seeing need be involved

Nothing has an "essence" that can be expressed in words.

Oh, please!

 

[jtk]

I'll attempt an analogy here:
Big Game Hunting.

For the well-healed, a big game hunt means flying to a site with all the comforts of home, and hiring a band of laborers to act as pack mules, and guides to hustle you and your entourage onto some game area. They carry all your weapons and comfort burdens and make a deluxe camp each night with gourmet meals from the camp chef. The guides lead you finally to a spot where the animal is, they load your gun, hand it to you, wherein you shoot the animal, romp over to it, hold it's head up while the camp photog takes your picture before the camp skinner beheads the animal, packs it in a crate and rushes it to your taxidermist.

Is the essence of hunting still present for the patron?

You've asked a question and you refer to "the essence." What is it?

 

[ReginaldSMith]

There is one thing the photograph must contain, the humanity of the moment.”
— Robert Frank

He is speaking of the essence, to give an example.

 

[faberryman]

There is one thing the photograph must contain, the humanity of the moment.”
— Robert Frank

He is speaking of the essence, to give an example.

The rabbit hole only gets deeper.

 

[michr]

Oh my, I didn't mean it that way. I meant a SERVICE would compile miles of video for the purpose of selling it frame by frame to those who want to pay for it.
It wasn't at all about copyright issues or IP. It was about the concept of remotely capturing images in the new age of the digital realm.

Such a service already exists for satellite photography, so I imagine it could use that existing service as a template. I don't see why you couldn't buy views from a drone platform and stick your name on them. Now if the drone was hovering in front of half dome, for example, and you bought today's footage at 12:30:00.00 local time and the person after you bought the next frame. Those two images are going to look near identical. That gets into a much stickier copyright situation.

 

[ReginaldSMith]

You've asked a question and you refer to "the essence." What is it?

I'm asking all the experienced photogs what THEY THINK THE ESSENCE IS.

 

[MattKing]

Essence: Writing with light.
It is process independent.

 

[ReginaldSMith]

Essence: Writing with light.
It is process independent.

Now, we're cooking. Thanks, Matt.

"Writing with light." So, let's play with my Black Box**. I say to it, "Hey, give me a cheerful picture today!" And, it spews out a marvelous cheerful image on paper.
Is this kind of process still photography?

**Black Box is is term for an unknown process which has knowable inputs and outputs, but not a known process of transforming the one into the other.

 

[MattKing]

No.
You didn't write with light.
You wrote with words and black box algorithms.
The black box may have done "photography", but you didn't.

 

[ReginaldSMith]

Here's a Robert Frank quote that for me gets to the heart of it.
“When people look at my pictures I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a line of a poem twice.”
― Robert Frank
He is suggesting that the picture contains human emotion, like the poet infuses into his language.
Can that happen when you are not present (in the same light) as the subject?

 

[ReginaldSMith]

No.
You didn't write with light.
You wrote with words and black box algorithms.
The black box may have done "photography", but you didn't.

Ok, so we're getting pretty close to defining the human role in photography, right? It sounds like you have drawn a line in the sand, such that images produced by AI are not photography even if the input is a list of desires from the human. That's a big step.