Silver based photography now an alternative process?

[Deleted member 20172]

Perhaps it will be nice to label the pictures like the audio CDs:

The audio CDs are labeled DDD, ADD, or AAD (D for digital, A for analog) for each of the recorder used.

We can label pictures as AAA, DDD, ADA, ADD, the first letter for the camera type, the second letter for the enlarger type (or scanner), the third letter for the print. So a print labeled ADA would mean that the picture was taken with a film camera, that the film was scanned (digital enlarger) and the picture is printed on photographic paper.

 

[bcostin]

I like that idea

So a print labeled ADA would mean that the picture was taken with a film camera, that the film was scanned (digital enlarger) and the picture is printed on photographic paper.

That's a pretty good suggestion. I have no religious beliefs about the relative superiority of analog or digital photography, but I often would like to know what processes and equipment were used to create a certain image.

 

[Maris]

The means by which photographs are made lies central to the identity of photography itself.

The term "photography" is not a reference to a given picture or a picture making impulse. It is the invented name for a particular process. Sir John Herschel gave the world "Photography" out of thin air in front of the Royal Society at Somerset House, London, on the 14th of March, 1839. The key phrase is recorded in the minutes and it goes "Photography or the application of the chemical rays of light to the purpose of pictorial representation...".

That is where the matter lay for the next 160 or so years. All the works of Talbot, Weston, Adams, Cartier-Bresson, and millions of other sat neatly, certainly, and unambiguously within that definition.

Now, of course, highly detailed pictures can be generated by painting machines (inkjet), or laser writers (Lambda) controlled by electronic files which may be, in whole or in part, derived from the digitisation of a lens image. Vulgar usage appends the term "photography " to this work even though it is a very different thing, technically and philosophically, from original photography.

When we say "photography", and we're talking precisely, we need to specify the technical process otherwise it is not certain what sort of picture we are talking about.

In ordinary speech folks use the word "photography" to mean what it means now, not 1839, and therein lies the problem. We had a word which uniquely referred to billions of pictures accumulated over the last 170 years that definitively separated them from all other pictures. The pictures were the ones made via "the chemical rays of light" and the word was "photography".

Now when I want to refer to pictures made solely by "the chemical rays of light" (for aesthetic or historical discourse, say) I can no longer use "photography" because that word now includes electro-mechanically generated pictures. In effect I've lost a useful word and don't have a effective substitute. It is tedious to have to specify the means every time; "chemical rays of light for the purpose of pictorial representation".

In language usage always wins over definition but occasionally the users themselves lose when they are unable to say clearly what they could say before.

 

[Daniel_OB]

Maris
In language usage always wins over definition but occasionally the users themselves lose when they are unable to say clearly what they could say before.

Photography is invented at the time when people started to seek truth. If it is invented in time of Rococo it will never see light of the day. As it was “easy” to produce an image, and cost went down, it got wider and wider. Just in recent time photography is mass media, millions carry “camera”. Mass of people just started to think that just anything shown on paper that they can recognize is a photograph no matter how it is made, which fact is used to make a profit: schools just want as more as possible students and for them just anything on a paper is a photograph if it attracts more students, equipment manufacturers use the same trickery to sell their machines, and fashionable mass just accept it.
Actually, what is photography is a large secret to so many camera workers and buyers. Can it damage photography? NO. As former curator in a large museum I know very well the game: a computer image is a work of art as long as it can be sold as it, and after the session curator say inside him fu_k off and you and your sh__t.

www.Leica-R.com

 

[Daniel_OB]

MaHo
I think you are the one with some problems too. Photography and digital image are so far not the only means to produce an image. Somehow other means requires AND talent so are left unknown.

To Arno
Do you know what is fundamental difference between photography and painting in aesthetic sense (that is, what is it that each comunicate). NO (assumption base on what you write). Are able to step in Academy with you "opinion"? NO. So you just bla bla bla what you think out of personal grandpa's phylosophy, and camera ownership "gives" you right to it. Try to figure out answer on my first question and you will see how much your thinking will change from that very simple staff.


Artur Zeidler
"The problem with your argument is that it isn't just the "unqualified" Fred Blogs public who think this. Many many more fully qualified people also take this approach and understand "digital photography" (and ink prints) to indeed be photography - professional photographers, photographic artists, photographic educators, museum curators and collectors, professional writers on photography and more. All people who have a solid grounding in photography, its processes and history. (Indeed, many curators and institutions do indeed classify Bromoil and even Photogravure and photograms as photographic processes)."

Where this hells came from... Are you OK? Oh man you right, I think you are from Museo del Prado.

www.Leica-R.com

 

[arno]

Daniel_OB :

Sorry, I'm still trying to extract anything worth being answered from your hysterical post, but did not manage so far.

What i would really like to figure out actually is why your obvious self-conviction of being intellectually superior leaves you so agressive.

Oh, and please........leave grandpa alone.

 

[Katharine Thayer]

Never mind all the persiflage about whether digital is photography or not; I'm still stuck on the assertion that cyanotype and platinum prints aren't photographs, because the word "photograph" refers only to works involving silver salts. Who decided that, and when? I wasn't there at the time, but I would be willing to bet that the people printing photographic negatives on platinum or cyanotype or a dozen other light-sensitive materials 100 years ago thought they were making photographs.

 

[arno]

Katharine Thayer :
I do agree

Maris :
You made a very interesting point.

But by nature any technology evolves and constantly absorbs new processes, materials and tools.

Herschel has defined photography as "an application of chemical rays of light". Certainly, yes. But what chemicals did he refer to?

This definition wasn't that precise indeed, it let the door opened for the bunch of very diverse processes that later have made the history of photography and I believe it was on purpose : Herschel, as a man of one of the most productive centuries in term of human knowledge, certainly knew that this newborn technology would quickly take many forms. And it did. So when you use the word photography, understood as "an application of chemical rays of light", what are you talking about : web plate collodion or silver print enlarged from a negative? Of course, both are opto-chemical processes, but that's really the only thing they have in common. In fact there's a gap in-between. When Eastman introduced the first consumer camera in 1888 and then invented the film on a transparent base in 1889, he didn't just proposed another process, he changed the face of photography. Portability and reproductibility were raised to an unknown level. His slogan was "You press the button, we do the rest", photography entered in a new era and became a mass media.
So, as soon as the end of the XIXth century the word photography had lost a lot of its specificity, referring to different practices, each one involving completely different usage and technical means. When Brassaï used the word photography in the 30's, it referred to a media that only had a few in common with what Nadar meant when he used the same word 70 years before. Nevertheless, you consider legitimitly that they all sit within Herschel's definition. So why digital photography couldn't be a member of the family? Only because in 1839 Herschel didn't mention the electro-mechanical process as an option? Well, considering that the first viable light bulb was invented only 40 yrs later, how could he?
According to the Oxford English Dictionnary, the first use of the word "computer" refered to a mechanical calculating device. Considering that my PC is from a very different nature, should I find another way to name it?

 

[Vaughn]

Arno...

I believe "chemical rays of light" refers to the action light itself...not to any photographic chemicals or process. Or perhaps better...the light's ability to cause chemical reactions. Largely the blue and UV part of the light spectrum. "Chemical Light" was seen as something different from, or at least a different component of, light (colors). I believe that they felt that light must have a chemical component in order to be involved in chemical reactions...instead of what we know now (that the high energy of UV light breaks chemical bonds, causing chemical reactions, or longer parts of the spectrum for more sensitive processes such as silver gelatin printing)

For example: from Rev. W. Farren White's Ants and Their Ways printed in the Nature issue of 26 July 1883

"The elaborate experiments of Sir John Lubbock, showing that ants preferred the red end of the spectrum and avoided the violet end, are all explained by their preference for the greater warmth accompanying the red rays, though he also thinks they dislike the effect of the chemical rays. His general conclusion is, that there is no evidence that they distinguish colour or prefer one colour to another, but that they always prefer warmth, and dislike the action of the chemical rays of light, while to light itself they have no objection whatever."

So I think you are right, Arno...when Herschel has defined photography as "an application of chemical rays of light" he was not referring to any particular photographic process.

Vaughn

 

[Daniel_OB]

Arno
I will not wonder if I go to engineering forum and find you argue with engineers why FEA fails, just because you know how to change oil in your car yourself.
I will not wonder if I go to Physic of solid state forum and find you argue with Physicist what is impact time when electron hit electron, just because you both a microscope.
It is not to wonder if you go to boundary layer forum to argue about turbulent flow with thermal gradient
………
So I do not wonder why you are here to argue too. It is just something universal.

Your posts are just representative post what and how people do and think about photography without any real qualifications about it. And it is very true regardless of your investment into photo-equipment. It is nothing wrong to use this (specific) forum for killing time purpose. It is nothing wrong to bla bla around and to “express yourself with words”. But what make me nervous and angry is not what you think about “chemical rays of light” for you certainly will not be able to do anything about the matter, but that photography is about to change its name, and has to. What digital imaging did to photography is only good. But people like you made it impossible for photography to survive with its historical name, just because a programmer never think -how it will looks like if a photographer argue with me about programming-, and no way to change this behavior on internet.
And what is wrong with it? … Will not work.

 

[smieglitz]

From Goethe's Farbenlehre (Theory of Colors):

"Ritter discovered in 1801 that beyond the extreme violet of the spectrum there is a vast efflux of rays which are totally useless as regards our present powers of vision. These ultra-violet waves, however, though incompetent to awaken the optic nerve, can shake asunder the molecules of certain compound substances on which they impinge, thus producing chemical decomposition. But though the blue, violet, and ultra-violet rays can act thus upon certain substances, the fact is hardly sufficient to entitle them to the name of chemical rays, usually applied to distinguish them from the other constituents of the spectrum. As regards their action upon the salts of silver, and many other substances they may perhaps merit this title; but in the case of the grandest example of the chemical action of light- the decomposition of carbonic acid in the leaves of plants, with which my eminent friend Dr. Draper has so indissolubly associated his name-the yellow rays are found to be most active."

So "chemical rays" are UV.

And if Photography was restricted to only those images formed by the action of UV, the billions of images taken on ortho and panchromatic materials wouldn't qualify.

In an age of Lambda printers and platinum prints generated using inkjet negatives as light attenuators, does it really make much sense to argue over the meaning of the word Photography? I think the energy is better spent actually ensuring that an inkjet print is identified as such and not as a carbon or platinum print.

Joe

 

[Photo Engineer]

The basic sensitivity of silver halide is in the UV portion of the spectrum. Adding iodide increases sensitivity to visible light (blue region). Through the action of bromide, iodide, sulfur and gold, the inherent sensitivity to blue light is vastly increased, and the addition of sensitzing dyes extend sensitivity to green, red and infra red light.

PE

 

[AgX]

Farbenlehre...

"The rays are not coloured", W.D. WRIGHT