"Photography IS Film"

[markjwyatt]

I'm retired now, but during my career I paid very close attention to the meaning and use of words.
Words used as labels can be very helpful, or incredibly confusing.
I'm not sure that an attempt to essentially stake out a particular defined meaning for the word photography helps protect or enhance those processes that are non-digital.
With all due respect to Maris, of course.
To my mind, this thread is more about word choice than Philosophy or Ethics.

The written and spoken word can be limited. That is why we also need the visual arts, music, etc. to communicate ideas.

 

[ReginaldSMith]

Email (or even text) is a lot more intimate than snail mail. The recipient can read it anywhere, over and over (since virtually everyone has portable email). Then the recipient can respond immediately or later and together the participants can develop ideas over time, depending on how the participants feel and think.

Your proposition is mistaken, and (for what it's worth) most of the world has long known that. That's why most of the world uses email and little of it uses snail mail.

The initial "message" of each becomes inconsequential or consequential, depending on what develops and upon the participants ability to formulate sentences and ideas...which seems to validate human evolution beyond the mere opposable thumb dead end, like that of some teens and famous politicians.

Again, you are focused on outcome and unaware of the dangers in the email process.
Email is gathered, sifted, analysed, and farmed by both government and private owners of that system. This complete automatic lots of privacy is a concern that you ignored. Do I really need to give examples of the dangers of this lots of privacy? Yes, the postal service could open mail in rare circumstances with warrants and probable cause, but it was in no way on the scale of today's "full spectrum" surveillance of mail, phone calls, messaging, social media posts and vacuumed up photographs.

My argument is PROCESS, not outcomes. I post just as many images from Digi cameras as from film, so my point is not outcomes.... All that 'picture is a picture' talk misses the entire point.

 

[jtk]

The "perfect" negative, photograph, or idea is inherently inferior..inherently of a lower conceptual/artistic order...inherently inferior to an ongoing evolutionary process.

No work of art can be of greater consequence than the chatter/dialogue/debate/spin-offs that relate to it.

Densitometry is fun for a linear-thinking few, but it cannot be as consequential as (for example) the ability of Lightroom (or NIK) to explore image possibilities, and that cannot be as consequential as discussion online.

As for the concern about "danger" that you've mentioned twice in one post: danger is on the path to good things.

 

[ReginaldSMith]

I'm retired now, but during my career I paid very close attention to the meaning and use of words.
Words used as labels can be very helpful, or incredibly confusing.
I'm not sure that an attempt to essentially stake out a particular defined meaning for the word photography helps protect or enhance those processes that are non-digital.
With all due respect to Maris, of course.
To my mind, this thread is more about word choice than Philosophy or Ethics.

Word choice is called semantics. The philosophical question here is whether digital image making will create another loss of privacy and further reduce image making to that which is approved by authorities....e.g. un-democracising.

I made these points very explicitly, f so it's hard to comprehend how anyone see this as semantics. Oh well.

 

[faberryman]

No person was excluded from anything. You have just launched a straw man.

The Oxford dictionary defines photograph as "a picture made using a camera, in which an image is focused onto film or other light-sensitive material and then made visible and permanent by chemical treatment, or stored digitally." The words "or stored digitally" were added along the way as a new method for making pictures with a camera was developed. It was an act of inclusion. Advocating deleting the words "or stored digitally" is an act of exclusion, and pointing it out is hardly a straw man.

 

[blockend]

There are false authority figures that will claim they're the expert and will define what something is

YouTube grows them. Almost none of the regulars are good photographers.

 

[jtk]

Paranoia strikes deep, into your life it will creep...

 

[ReginaldSMith]

@jtk It's not paranoia when it is real. Hard to believe that in 2018 there are still people who haven't understood Internet surveillance, but I suppose some level of ignorance offers some level of bliss?

 

[ReginaldSMith]

The Oxford dictionary defines photograph as "a picture made using a camera, in which an image is focused onto film or other light-sensitive material and then made visible and permanent by chemical treatment, or stored digitally." The words "or stored digitally" were added along the way as a new method for making pictures with a camera was developed. It was an act of inclusion. Advocating deleting the words "or stored digitally" is an act of exclusion, so it is hardly a straw man.

Your original claim offered the connotation that I was "excluding people" from something with my argument. That's black print rubbish and all you have to do is read my posts to understand that. .There was no attempt at reducing peoples to some lesser status. Everything has been about preserving the differentiation between processes for all the reasons I have spelled out at least twice. You're usually better than this sort of cheap sniping.

 

[ReginaldSMith]

Ok, I can see that "Ethics and Philosophy" as a forum heading was way too high minded.

 

[markjwyatt]

@jtk It's not paranoia when it is real. Hard to believe that in 2018 there are still people who haven't understood Internet surveillance, but I suppose some level of ignorance offers some level of bliss?

Ok. So your point is not whether digital is "real photography" or not, but rather that you want to preserve photo-sensitive methods and materials so the government or some evil agency cannot control image making? If that is the case I am not sure why it matters what you call each medium. This is a totally different issue from which medium is the "real thing".

It is too late to rescue the masses on this, In their minds photography largely is digital image making. I know there are plenty out there that remember film, but for the most part it is accepted (wrongly or rightly) that it has been replaced technologically. There are still practitioners of alternate and older photographic methods. Their motivations may be different than yours, but they are trying to keep some method alive. All photography has surpassed painting technologically (at least in terms of ease of image creation, not necessarily artistic value), but people still paint. I hope film (to generalize) survives, as I still like shooting film sometimes. But the most important thing to me is to create images I like.

Interestingly it appears that any easy or practical photo-sensitive methods depend largely on large corporations and/or governments (see the Film Ferrania thread) to survive!

 

[Dan Pavel]

The meaning of a word is not always given by its semantics logic.Think "software", for example.
Words are socio-cultural conventions and the final meaning of a word is given by the socio-cultural consensus.
Therefore "Photography" means what the majority of people thinks it does and its meaning covers digital photography, as well.
"Photography IS film" is nothing else than an wishful affirmation.

 

[jtk]

Paranoia is a pathology, not a philosophic toy. The OT's game is intended to inspire division and fear.

 

[faberryman]

Your original claim offered the connotation that I was "excluding people" from something with my argument. That's black print rubbish and all you have to do is read my posts to understand that. .There was no attempt at reducing peoples to some lesser status. Everything has been about preserving the differentiation between processes for all the reasons I have spelled out at least twice. You're usually better than this sort of cheap sniping.

You are clearly excluding individuals who make images using digital cameras from the definition of photographer by limiting the definition of photography to making images by film and chemical means. Exclusion does not imply a lesser status. That is your spin. You can preserve differentiation among processes by means other than redefining general terms. Distinguishing between film photographers and digital photographers seems a rational demarcation.

 

[MattKing]

The philosophical question here is whether digital image making will create another loss of privacy and further reduce image making to that which is approved by authorities....e.g. un-democracising.

FWIW, my post about semantics (I prefer "word choice") was in response to the question you initiated this thread with, not the subsequent discussions which appear to have wandered into more Orwellian themes. It seems to me that the latter are worth a thread of their own.
During the many years I have participated on this site there have been innumerable attempts to define photography by attaching and specifying labels. It seemed to me that this thread was another one.

 

[jtk]

@jtk It's not paranoia when it is real. Hard to believe that in 2018 there are still people who haven't understood Internet surveillance, but I suppose some level of ignorance offers some level of bliss?

Reginald, your images in Media and your various posts (other than this one) consistently suggest that you are personally "democratic" and well-intentioned.

"Philosopy" and "Ethics" are conceptually stuck with divisions between people.

 

[eddie]

What is the motivation and goal of those who persist in excluding those who make images by digital rather than chemical means from the definition of photographer, and the images themselves from the definition of photographs? Is it something more than mere semantics? When these arguments are advanced, I always ask the question: "And?"

I still think those who wish to narrowly define photography, on both sides, do so to justify their personal choice and (perhaps) insecurities with that decision. The same goes with which method is "superior".
The desire to place creative endeavors into an us vs. them choice is a useless exercise. Art should be a pursuit void of tribalism. Perhaps, though, it is natural, as tribalism has infected almost every other area of our existence, from politics to culture.

 

[ReginaldSMith]

I'll try to get this back on track.

QUOTE
An image may be worth 1000 words, but image metadata may spill far more information than that, especially when applied to a Google service. According to this year's Google I/O keynote, the Photos service will offer a search function that can find people, places, and objects — all without any active tagging on the end user's part.

It does this in part by scanning your image's metadata: the location and other information your camera builds into the underlying code of your digital image. For the rest, I suspect Google is inventing its own supplemental metadata, using rapid image scans and automatic face detection as part of the company's continuous "machine learning" system. It may not be perfect at the start, but as Google gets more and more photographs to scan, it could become the most accurate auto-tagging service on the Internet.
End Quote = source:https://www.imore.com/google-photos-may-be-free-what-personal-cost

Google photos is the tip of the iceberg. Google is the world's leading AI developer and has been in a permanent partnership with the NSA since they launched. Of course many people think "google" is a search engine, so it might be hard to make this point strong enough.

 

[markjwyatt]

I still think those who wish to narrowly define photography, on both sides, do so to justify their personal choice and (perhaps) insecurities with that decision. The same goes with which method is "superior".
The desire to place creative endeavors into an us vs. them choice is a useless exercise. Art should be a pursuit void of tribalism. Perhaps, though, it is natural, as tribalism has infected almost every other area of our existence, from politics to culture.

Well, if you use matte paper, or enlargers, or enjoy bokeh, I guess you may not fit the definition of "real photography",

http://photographyhistory.blogspot.com/2012/04/group-f64-manifesto-1932.html

""The camera should be used for a recording of life, for rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself, whether it be polished steel or palpitating flesh." A corollary of this idea was that the camera was able to see the world more clearly than the human eye, because it didn't project personal prejudices onto the subject. The group's effort to present the camera's "vision" as clearly as possible included advocating the use of aperture f/64 in order to provide the greatest depth of field, thus allowing for the largest percentage of the picture to be in sharp focus; contact printing, a method of making prints by placing photographic paper directly in contact with the negative, instead of using an enlarger to project the negative image onto paper; and glossy papers instead of matte or artist papers, the surfaces of which tended to disperse the contours of objects.

 

[markjwyatt]

I'll try to get this back on track.

QUOTE
An image may be worth 1000 words, but image metadata may spill far more information than that, especially when applied to a Google service. According to this year's Google I/O keynote, the Photos service will offer a search function that can find people, places, and objects — all without any active tagging on the end user's part.

It does this in part by scanning your image's metadata: the location and other information your camera builds into the underlying code of your digital image. For the rest, I suspect Google is inventing its own supplemental metadata, using rapid image scans and automatic face detection as part of the company's continuous "machine learning" system. It may not be perfect at the start, but as Google gets more and more photographs to scan, it could become the most accurate auto-tagging service on the Internet.
End Quote = source:https://www.imore.com/google-photos-may-be-free-what-personal-cost

Google photos is the tip of the iceberg. Google is the world's leading AI developer and has been in a permanent partnership with the NSA since they launched. Of course many people think "google" is a search engine, so it might be hard to make this point strong enough.

I agree on this point. But that to some degree, but that is an entirely different topic.

 

[faberryman]

I'll try to get this back on track.

QUOTE
An image may be worth 1000 words, but image metadata may spill far more information than that, especially when applied to a Google service. According to this year's Google I/O keynote, the Photos service will offer a search function that can find people, places, and objects — all without any active tagging on the end user's part.

It does this in part by scanning your image's metadata: the location and other information your camera builds into the underlying code of your digital image. For the rest, I suspect Google is inventing its own supplemental metadata, using rapid image scans and automatic face detection as part of the company's continuous "machine learning" system. It may not be perfect at the start, but as Google gets more and more photographs to scan, it could become the most accurate auto-tagging service on the Internet.
End Quote = source:https://www.imore.com/google-photos-may-be-free-what-personal-cost

Google photos is the tip of the iceberg. Google is the world's leading AI developer and has been in a permanent partnership with the NSA since they launched. Of course many people think "google" is a search engine, so it might be hard to make this point strong enough.

How does any of that get us back on track with respect to the thread topic and original post? It seems to just take us farther afield.

 

[FujiLove]

Someone hires a portrait painter to create a painting of their daughter. They hire them because their CV says they are a classically trained painter and their portfolio features some excellent portraits that appear to have been created using oil, which the client loves.

They arrive on the first day with a laptop, Wacom tablet and a copy of Painter (https://www.painterartist.com/en/product/painter/)

They explain that it’s still oil painting, even though it’s all pixels, and the inkjet print they will deliver is indistinguishable from oil on canvas. They tell the client that nothing matters but the final image.

If you were the paying client, would you be okay with that?

 

[faberryman]

Someone hires a portrait painter to create a painting of their daughter. They hire them because their CV says they are a classically trained painter and their portfolio features some excellent portraits that appear to have been created using oil, which the client loves.

They arrive on the first day with a laptop, Wacom tablet and a copy of Painter (https://www.painterartist.com/en/product/painter/)

They explain that it’s still oil painting, even though it’s all pixels, and the inkjet print they will deliver is indistinguishable from oil on canvas. They tell the client that nothing matters but the final image.

If you were the paying client, would you be okay with that?

No. What is your point? That when people hire a photographer they are expecting a film photographer and are outraged when he shows up with a digital camera? No one but a film photographer with an agenda thinks that the term photographer means only film photographer.

 

[markjwyatt]

Someone hires a portrait painter to create a painting of their daughter. They hire them because their CV says they are a classically trained painter and their portfolio features some excellent portraits that appear to have been created using oil, which the client loves.

They arrive on the first day with a laptop, Wacom tablet and a copy of Painter (https://www.painterartist.com/en/product/painter/)

They explain that it’s still oil painting, even though it’s all pixels, and the inkjet print they will deliver is indistinguishable from oil on canvas. They tell the client that nothing matters but the final image.

If you were the paying client, would you be okay with that?

I would definitely have to think about it. If I had gotten a price, I may consider renegotiating at that point if I were convinced to go forward.

I think yours is a more extreme example than digital vs. photo-sensitive, but i guess it is fair. No photograph is created by manually putting down every pixel/point/grain by hand, and photo-sensitive as well as digital (and hybrid) processes both allow for modifications (computer process, retouching, dodging/burning, etc.).

 

[FujiLove]

Email (or even text) is a lot more intimate than snail mail. The recipient can read it anywhere, over and over (since virtually everyone has portable email). Then the recipient can respond immediately or later and together the participants can develop ideas over time, depending on how the participants feel and think.

Your proposition is mistaken, and (for what it's worth) most of the world has long known that. That's why most of the world uses email and little of it uses snail mail.

The initial "message" of each becomes inconsequential or consequential, depending on what develops and upon the participants ability to formulate sentences and ideas...which seems to validate human evolution beyond the mere opposable thumb dead end, like that of some teens and famous politicians.

Hand written letters have value, and can sometimes last through the centuries. They are poured over, caressed, smelt, touched, kept in boxes under the bed, to be taken out and re-read in quiet moments. They age gracefully, are imperfect, full of character and tea stains.

Email is throw-away and skimmed. Like the overwealming majority of digital images in 2018.