Traditions of Photography - Short essay

[Hikari]

I find the essay very lacking in basic research. Too many false conclusions.

And false premisses.

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

The biggest issue I see here is one of domain.

Some are trying to use a very objective, quantifiable language. Others are comfortable with a more emotive language. And some actively seek the emotive language.

None are wrong, but the domains merely intersect. Neither contains the other fully.

So what domain are we going to choose?

Yep. AM/FM. One person transmits using the former, while another person attempts to receive using the latter. Both parties then end up seriously annoyed that all they are hearing from the other side is unintelligible static.

That's the problem with these damned abstract virtualized conversations. No space and time are being occupied in close proximity by the conversationalists...



Ken

 

[Peter de Groot]

@Ken; I never used usenet so I'm afraid we haven't met online before (wich is according to this discussion not possible anyway ;-) )

I do understand the emotions and feelings that you get when holding a negative. I recently started shooting 8x10 film. Big negative looks totally awesome. However what I do miss in this discussion is the fact that with digital everybody says it is not real because you need stuff to produce an image. However the same is true for analogue photography as well. With stuff you don't get a print or a negative.

Nobody will get a usable archivable negative straight out of the camera. Nobody and never. No matter how much you want it to be true. A latent image is not an image or photo or whatever. You can only let it become an image by putting it in developer and fixer first. In that respect digital is no different then analogue. (only digital uses different techniques)

The comparison with painters and people who draw is not valid either. Those people do not use light in the first place to capture a scene. They use a pen or pencil or paint. Analogue and digital use the same ingredients to form an image: Light, lens (or pinhole) and technique to get that scene onto paper( most of the time).

Side step if used technolgy defines the end result. Is an electric car really a car?

 

[keithwms]

At the level of photons and electrons, the differences on which some D vs. A debaters expend valuable creative time are artistically meaningless.

Anyway, bravo to anyone willing to essay on photographic subjects, and thank you to the O.P. for sharing your thoughts. The essay might be better placed in an blog entry. Posted to the discussion boards, these things tend to work certain people into a lather.

 

[Michel Hardy-Vallée]

Hmmm - "The mind of the poet is the shred of platinum."

Do you think T.S. Eliot would have minded if we substituted "photographer" for "poet"?

Of course, you would have to edit it to "shred of silver" since "sliver of silver" sounds bad...

More seriously, the bits from the essay that matter to me the most are:

" Yet if the only form of tradition, of handing down, consisted in following the ways of the immediate generation before us in a blind or timid adherence to its successes, "tradition" should positively be discouraged. "

"He must be quite aware of the obvious fact that art never improves, but that the material of art is never quite the same."

 

[moose10101]

As well, and perhaps because I have myself spent too many years virtualizing too much reality in the first place, the thought of loading an image abstraction into a computer, then clicking a mouse on some icon and allowing some nameless software engineer's algorithm perform some logical transform on the data bits, printing out the result with another mouse click, then showing the world what *I* just created, simply does not resonate with me.

Well, if you're more comfortable allowing some nameless chemical engineer's emulsion formula to perform some physical transform on the photons that create "your" image, go with that.

 

[holmburgers]

I feel kind of bad hijacking the OP's thread, so I'll be brief.. Also, I think we should applaud him/her for sharing it.

*clap *clap *clap...

I can see the distinction you guys are making between a photograph and a digital image, and I agree that there is a fundamental difference. However, I guess my biggest point of contention is that going around saying "a digital image is not a photograph" paints analog enthusiasts in strange light. I don't think most people will see it as the intellectual argument that it is, and will instead just think you're the ultimate luddite, film-hold-out.

The truth is, I think most people think of a photograph as an image formed by a lens and its recording, period. That's the colloquial understanding.

 

[Aristophanes]

Careful here...

The digital image does not exist in nature. The imaging abstraction has been carried to the point where the very physicality of the medium itself has been removed. The image exists only as an idea. A non-physical logical pattern. A pure abstraction.

Tell that to the photons

 

[Aristophanes]

Most teenagers think they have a large circle of friends. But they are not real world, physical friends. They are virtualized checkmarks next to virtualized boxes highlighted with the virtualized printed word "Friend."

A lot of people in the world can no longer distinguish between these sorts of differences. Sadly, I think, a lot of those wouldn't care even if they could.

And that, in a nutshell, is why my own preference is for the physical reality of Traditional Photography, and not its virtualized cousin.

I can't let these curmudgeonly ramblings go untested

By this logic post office derived pen pals are real and natural because the paper exchanged between them is tangible, but Facebook friends are not real or natural because they exist in an electron cloud and not manifest on a physical medium derived from the periodic table and run through a pulp mill and paper press.

I think people can distinguish and see these sorts of one stop thermodynamic differences as not facts, but opinions. The photographic spectrum now adds Flickr and Facebook photographic exchanges to the self-labelled "traditional" mix.

And if I take a digital photo and EyeFi it to my Mac which then automatically prints a 4x6, how is this any different than a Polaroid?

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

Well, if you're more comfortable allowing some nameless chemical engineer's emulsion formula to perform some physical transform on the photons that create "your" image, go with that.

Dang, moose... Been chasing my tail and going nowhere with the above logic. I do think you've got me with this one. At least until I begin trying my hand at making my own emulsions. (Headed in that direction, just not there yet, maybe come this fall?) Nicely done.

But on the larger point of the differences between real and imaginary in photographic image making, I do still think there are significant differences between the two methods. Whether any of those differences are important is up to you - and everyone else - to decide.

Tell that to the photons

But the photons are not the image. For either film or digital. The photons exist pre-image. Quickly replace the camera with your eye before they arrive and they will still be "captured," and an image will still be "created," but it will be neither a film photograph nor a digital image, existing instead only as a sensation in your mind.

And if I take a digital photo and EyeFi it to my Mac which then automatically prints a 4x6, how is this any different than a Polaroid?

The digital image, regardless of how it was eventually rendered, was not physically present at the moment the image it depicts was realized. The image itself is composed only of an abstract sequence of scalar numbers copied onto an electronic data storage device for later rendering.

The Polaroid photograph was present at the moment of realization. It's a real thing. You can hold it in your hands. You can't "hold" a computer data file in your hands.

This physically traceable connection from the photograph back to the original subject - I have been referring to it here as "provenance" - is what has traditionally made real photographs admissable as evidence in a court of law. And gave newspapers and magazines their deep visual impact. Used to be if you saw a photograph of it, you knew it was so.* And so did the jury.

These days the images you see might be so, or they might not be so. Or more ominously, you no longer realize you should even be concerned... **

Again, whether this - or any of the other - distinctions matter to you, only you can decide for yourself. They do matter to me.

"Curmudgeonly ramblings?" Hardly..

Ken

* Yes, I realize the arguments regarding darkroom manipulations. But I'm not referring here to the Jerry Uelsmanns of the world. I'm referring to everyday, regular film photographs. The rule, not the exceptions to the rule.

** Very interesting to hear the earlier calls for "photos" of the deceased Bin Laden in order to "prove" it was him and he was indeed dead. This curiosity was a vestigial cultural throwback to the days when photographic provenance was real because the photographs were real. I'm not really sure what a digital image of a deceased Bin Laden would have "proved" in these days of PhotoShop. Remember the fake?

 

[Aristophanes]

But on the larger point of the differences between real and imaginary in photographic image making, I do still think there are significant differences between the two methods. Whether any of those differences are important is up to you - and everyone else - to decide.

Digital is not "imaginary". It is scalar, and therefore authoritative.

But the photons are not the image. For either film or digital. The photons exist pre-image. Quickly replace the camera with your eye before they arrive and they will still be "captured," and an image will still be "created," but it will be neither a film photograph nor a digital image, existing instead only as a sensation in your mind.

The photons are from the exact same source regardless. They are simply radiation which we arrange as information. A digital sensor does so electromagnetically and a film plane does so electrochemically. This is all your essay boils down to: a preference for the latter. The "natural" distinction you draw between the two has no basis.

And images in our mind are not "sensations" They have tangible, measurable, physical properties of electrochemistry. Your facts are wrong.

The digital image, regardless of how it was eventually rendered, was not physically present at the moment the image it depicts was realized. The image itself is composed only of an abstract sequence of scalar numbers copied onto an electronic data storage device for later rendering.

Yes, they are physical in that there is matter involved. You are buying into the non-existent virtualization hype.

A sensor and its data is not abstract at all. Where are you getting your information? Hubble uses sensors.

If anything, a digital sensor is the opposite of abstract. Film is afar more abstract in that it relies utterly on some chemist getting the mix right for your batch of emulsion. Lots of randomness potential there. Digital sensors are ruthlessly clinical in their ability to arrange photon radiation into precise image captures. That's a reason why there is a growing nostalgia for film and its variability, idiosyncrasies, imprecision, discipline, and interpretations.

The Polaroid photograph was present at the moment of realization. It's a real thing. You can hold it in your hands. You can't "hold" a computer data file in your hands.

Semantics over the arrangement of molecules.

I can take a photo on my DSLR and have it printed faster than an instant from my Fuji Instax will self-develop a shot.

There is no loss of fidelity nor scalar authority along the way for either. Both result in a print which is the best way to transimt that information to me eye in a tangible form. Photons hit an electron and are interpreted and arranged by chemistry or pixel bins and off we go.

And let's not forget all the additional photonic and chemical steps a negative has to go through to get to a print. The LCD screen on my digital cameras is far more "present at the moment of realization" than any negative.

This physically traceable connection from the photograph back to the original subject - I have been referring to it here as "provenance" - is what has traditionally made real photographs admissable as evidence in a court of law. And gave newspapers and magazines their deep visual impact. Used to be if you saw a photograph of it, you knew it was so.* And so did the jury.

Provenance still exists in digital photographs. Do your legal research before assuming generalizations about jurisprudence and chains of evidence.

Again, whether this - or any of the other - distinctions matter to you, only you can decide for yourself. They do matter to me.

Then the OP is not an essay, but a personal commentary. So be it.

"Curmudgeonly ramblings?" Hardly..

They are curmudgeonly when you use the analogy that Facebook friends are less than real friends. You are judging other people's relationships based on your personal experience of friendship. There is a tone in your essay that the old ways are better and more natural and real.

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

Photons hit an electron and are interpreted and arranged...

I can see the time has come (passed?) for us to simply agree to disagree. There is a tendency around here to continue deconstructing objects until eventually some level of presumed equivilency is reached, then claim it as such.

Sure, I suppose that at some subatomic level of resolution all real things begin to look the same. But at the scale we humans exist and practice film photography or digital imaging, reducing it all to the level of a Higgs boson doesn't really provide much of a useful framework within which to draw meaningful conclusions. Or even meaningful opinions.

I mean, if the essence of every object is defined solely by the Standard Model particles it contains, then boys and girls and cows and mousetraps are all the same. Of course, at our human level of scale and experience we know that not to be the case. Certainly for the boys and girls...

So I'll leave you with the following illustration,

I'm sitting out on my backyard deck one afternoon when the US Government calls. They want to test an atomic bomb. For reasons never fully understood, they have decided my backyard is the best place to perform this test.

However, before they come over they give me a choice. They can achieve the exact same test results by either setting up a supercomputer in my garage and running a software-based virtual explosion, or they can build a shot tower and hoist up and detonate a real plutonium bomb core.

Since I will be allowed to watch the test from my deck, they ask me what is my preference?​

All protestations to the contrary, there is a difference between virtual descriptions of real things, and the real things themselves. The description is an abstraction of the real thing. The real thing is... well, The Real Thing.

Further, I believe this very distinction is fundamental to the difference between a digital image (a virtual data file) and an analog photograph (a physical negative). As always, YMMV.

Thanks for the excellent discussion, sir. Very enjoyable. I will continue to respect your differing point of view on this topic. Should you feel it necessary, the floor and the last word are yours...



Ken

 

[Monito]

All protestations to the contrary, there is a difference between virtual descriptions of real things, and the real things themselves. The description is an abstraction of the real thing. The real thing is... well, The Real Thing.

Right. However your analogy is a big fail because it is not analogous. It would be analogous to a film/digital recording of Nelson Mandela giving a speech compared to a Computer Graphic simulation of such a speech. Nice straw man you demolished.

Both film and digital photography are real things. Both record real images. The real images are the latent images created by the photon on the sensor/film as they knock out electrons. In both cases, the real image must be transformed into a visible image by conversion. In one case the conversion is chemical. In the other case the conversion is electro-mechanical.

 

[Aristophanes]

My last word is to say that I got back into film because I dug up my old Minolta when moving and out of curiosity bought some film and snapped a few rolls off. My 5 year old son could not conceive that a sheet of plastic could hold an image, and furthermore than one would have to wait to see it by sending it off to a lab for processing, waiting a week or two for return. When the prints came back he went nuts arranging them and sorting them, hanging them on the wall. It was great fun and real relief not to have to sit in front of the Mac to enjoy photos. He totally got a kick out of the surprise aspect, but he also noticed some shots turned out very poorly and worried we'd have to pay for them still. Now he wants more of the "old fashioned photos". But he still also likes the digital camera for instant gratification (and practise; digital is a Godsend for practise). He likes the instant Fujis as well, but he has noticed the better quality from the SLR and Mamiya. I could have just printed more digital photos, but what my son grasps is that there are different means to an end.

I was never arguing that film photography is not tangible. I was arguing that both film and digital are real, viable, and informative regardless, and it is a futile exercise to thump the book down on one side of the table and argue that one is "real" and the other "imaginary". Both are representations. Enjoy them. My 5 year-old got that intuitively.

 

[Peter de Groot]

As I said before I am missing the acknowledgement that a negative has already been processed. Digital photography doesn't produce a negative. The positive print can be made directly using a computer and printer. A negative is not the purpose of photography it is a means to get a positive image. THAT is the end result. I can print a digital image on photographic paper and develop it in chemicals to get an image. Is that a real photo then? If not why not?
I don't think the used technology defines what "real"photography is. I mean that in the same way that a train run by electricity is still a train. Just like a locomotive is. Or a mag lev train is. The last one doesn't have an engine on board that is located in the track.
The fact that you call it digital is just to distinguish between the two different techniques used to get to the some end result. A photograph.

The analogy with the atom bomb is not correct. If I see an image on the computer screen that would be the same is your virtual explosion. If I print that same image that would be like the real explosion.

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

As I said before...

PM sent.

Ken

 

[realart21]

Nice thread. It describes the deep depth of traditions photography.

 

[David Carlson]

Your essay is very informative and useful. It was very interesting to read! Thanks.

 

[Berkeley Mike]

Photography is about capturing light and light reflected off of surfaces. Anything after that is technique, after that, style.

 

[Vaughn]

Photography is about capturing light and light reflected off of surfaces. Anything after that is technique, after that, style.

That pretty much wraps it up nicely.

 

[Maris]

Photography is about capturing light and light reflected off of surfaces. Anything after that is technique, after that, style.

Given that, what does a picture have to do in order NOT to be photograph? Remember, even Leonardo's Mona Lisa started off in the artist's eye as light captured in the form a lens image focussed on a megapixel sensor, the retina.

 

[Máx Arnold]

This essay is interesting. Not to say that photography doesn't always tell a story but an emotion, and the mind of the viewer makes up the story from the emotion. At least, that's what I think. If anything photography tells two things, then, a story and a feeling. Photojournalism is a great example for when we talk about telling stories.

In years to come we will see 35mm film be completely eradicated and the new digital world take over and form it’s own traditions.

I dare say my wish is for this not to happen. It'd be terrible. I do photography because I love how it was. This kinds of communities like APUG and photrio make me feel not alone. Each and every time I can I try to revive forgotten processes, techniques and traditions.

Do you think T.S. Eliot would have minded if we substituted "photographer" for "poet"?

No way! What about Platinum-Palladium! It's way better then!
(Maybe he'd had minded, but we don't)
"The mind of the photographer is the shred of platinum."
As is the mind of the poet,
As the photographer is a poet,
As the poet photographs art in written form.
(I dare add)