What is your definition of photography ?

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Vaughn

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It has rain fishes, and sharks are fish. Of course a photoshop image happened...can't exist unless it did. Electrons moving is something 'real' happening...ask any electrician.
 
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the dif

ference between an image on a wet plate or film or sensor, and an "image" made by photoshop is that the photoshoped image NEVER happened.

How many times do you see sharks flying in the sky?
I've seen all sorts of weird stuff.. sharks flying birds swimming toads playing the banjo
ive seen and photographed trees that levitated
gotta let the magic in
 

markjwyatt

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I've seen all sorts of weird stuff.. sharks flying birds swimming toads playing the banjo
...

Birds swimming? Like ducks and swans? Seen it, and photographed it with no special effects necassary. Toads playing banjo? With those little webbed hands, they kind of suck, but they do ok a narrow neck guitar, especially with a slide and a pick.
 

Sirius Glass

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tar-baby.jpg
tarbaby2.jpg
 

wiltw

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The unique character of photography is that manipulation of the scene for making a picture is nil compared to other forms of representation. For example, Goya's etchings on the horors of war were easier to compose, than photos shot by a combat photographer. Canaletto was able to move whole buildings when composing his landscapes.. The reason that I distinguish digital capture is because it is not limited by he constraints of photography as far as manipulating images in picture. This does not mean that DC is better or worse, it's just different..
So when film production has ceased (and all old film stock is consumed) and all there is to record the world seen by our eyes is with a digital sensors, 'photography' will cease to exist in the world, I surmise from reading the above. Then somebody, please shoot me now because I have not been practicing 'photography' in many years, and sharing my 60 years of knowledge with any digital shooters is NOT preserving the practice of 'photography' at all.
 
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wiltw

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the dif

ference between an image on a wet plate or film or sensor, and an "image" made by photoshop is that the photoshoped image NEVER happened.

How many times do you see sharks flying in the sky?

  1. But as a film shooter, I can double expose a frame, and the resulting image is also 'something that never happened', is it not?!
  2. And maybe what I did with Photoshop was merely sharpening the image and altering contrast and shadow detail, presented differently than the sensor recorded it...I could have done the same thing in the darkroom with masks and dodging/burning and use of VC filters.. So utilization of Photoshop was not a tool of faking reality in that usage. It altered reality, but Ansel Adams did that too...is he not a 'Photographer'?!

We get back to the question:
Where in the continuum between Photography and a Graphic Art piece does the crossover occur?!​
 

markjwyatt

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...maybe what I did with Photoshop was merely sharpening the image and altering contrast and shadow detail, presented differently than the sensor recorded it...I could have done the same thing in the darkroom with masks and dodging/burning and use of VC filters...

Maybe. I am always very cautious of digital landscapes, because they always have the most amazing clouds. I always wonder if they are real (for that landscape in that moment, or ever in that particular geographic location). In some cases they are, in others likely not. Does it matter? Yes, it kind of does. And yes, you can do that with film also.
 

eddie

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Maybe. I am always very cautious of digital landscapes, because they always have the most amazing clouds. I always wonder if they are real (for that landscape in that moment, or ever in that particular geographic location). In some cases they are, in others likely not. Does it matter? Yes, it kind of does. And yes, you can do that with film also.
If the photographer thinks the clouds make the scene what it should look like, doesn't that matter? I've burnt in clouds/ used filters to emphasize them. What about portrait photographers who used filters, or retouched, photos of a teen with bad acne? The finished print is what matters, isn't it?
 

markjwyatt

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If the photographer thinks the clouds make the scene what it should look like, doesn't that matter? I've burnt in clouds/ used filters to emphasize them. What about portrait photographers who used filters, or retouched, photos of a teen with bad acne? The finished print is what matters, isn't it?

If the clouds would never be seen in that geography, it is pure fantasy. Fantasy is fine, but just call it that. If a couple of clouds are added by a real estate photographer to enhance a house picture, that may be fine (photographically), and understandable. He needs to get paid, and it may be harmless (legally there may be issues, not sure). I talked about retouching further up. Portrait and commercial photographers operate on a different basis, and it is expected their work could be doctored (and is treated thus).
 
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If the photographer thinks the clouds make the scene what it should look like, doesn't that matter? I've burnt in clouds/ used filters to emphasize them. What about portrait photographers who used filters, or retouched, photos of a teen with bad acne? The finished print is what matters, isn't it?
from what I understood previously
to some, if the person with a camera turns what was infront of the camera into something else ( I guess .. burning, dodging retouching combination printing filters &c ). its not a photograph its graphic arts
I couldn't care less what someone does with their film or files. I think the final product is bigger than the sum of the parts
 

Arthurwg

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Not sure what I was doing today, but I shot 12 pictures using my Hasselblad, 60mm lens and a yellow-green filter. Thought it was photography but it could have been something else.
 

BrianShaw

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Not sure what I was doing today, but I shot 12 pictures using my Hasselblad, 60mm lens and a yellow-green filter. Thought it was photography but it could have been something else.
If you “shot”, who knows what you were doing. Only “capture” or “create” are valid verbs in photography.

I’m glad you didn’t “take”any pictures... that sounds like theft.
 

Arthurwg

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If you “shot”, who knows what you were doing. Only “capture” or “create” are valid verbs in photography.

I’m glad you didn’t “take”any pictures... that sounds like theft.


Gosh thanks, I didn't know that.
 
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"Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photography
 
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Not sure what I was doing today, but I shot 12 pictures using my Hasselblad, 60mm lens and a yellow-green filter. Thought it was photography but it could have been something else.
You used a filter ? That’s graphic arts. Oops
 

Sirius Glass

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If you “shot”, who knows what you were doing. Only “capture” or “create” are valid verbs in photography.

I’m glad you didn’t “take”any pictures... that sounds like theft.

I return them back to the wild after I take them. No photographs were injured nor killed in the process.
 

markjwyatt

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You used a filter ? That’s graphic arts. Oops

I would say it is addressing a known limitation/characteristic of the medium (in this case [likely] panchromatic B&W film)- creating a tonal response closer to the standard (human vision). All artistic mediums have some limitations relative to the standard.
 
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I would say it is addressing a known limitation/characteristic of the medium (in this case [likely] panchromatic B&W film)- creating a tonal response closer to the standard (human vision). All artistic mediums have some limitations relative to the standard.
perhaps yes. ... it might be addressing known issues but it is turning one thing into another as far as some folks seem to be concerned.
nothing is permitted on the camera but the lens .. no filters no nothing and when it is printed. no funny business like that burning and dodging and flirtation stuff
but then again, if it had a lens filter on to begin with none of it matters being a graphic arts enterprise as it may be.
onward and upward or whatever it is they say
and im really not sure why any of it matters since reality is not real and photographs just express untruths
 

markjwyatt

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perhaps yes. ... it might be addressing known issues but it is turning one thing into another as far as some folks seem to be concerned.
nothing is permitted on the camera but the lens .. no filters no nothing and when it is printed. no funny business like that burning and dodging and flirtation stuff
but then again, if it had a lens filter on to begin with none of it matters being a graphic arts enterprise as it may be.
onward and upward or whatever it is they say
and im really not sure why any of it matters since reality is not real and photographs just express untruths

I guess everything is rhetorical at this point, but I'm not sure I have heard anyone saying that...
 
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I guess everything is rhetorical at this point, but I'm not sure I have heard anyone saying that...
not sure about rhetorical but from what I can tell
this is an illusion ..
not sure about you but
I've been submerged in a giant tank
and handcuffed in steamer trunk for 78 years
its rather amusing the nonsensical people and points of view
one imagines when they ae deprived of oxygen.
I never thought about any of these things when I was dangling
upside down on a cable in a straight jacket
 

Sirius Glass

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not sure about rhetorical but from what I can tell
this is an illusion ..
not sure about you but
I've been submerged in a giant tank
and handcuffed in steamer trunk for 78 years
its rather amusing the nonsensical people and points of view
one imagines when they ae deprived of oxygen.
I never thought about any of these things when I was dangling
upside down on a cable in a straight jacket

Translation: One can have any opinion of this subject as long as it agrees with the OP. Ok I got it now. :blink:
 
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Translation: One can have any opinion of this subject as long as it agrees with the OP. Ok I got it now. :blink:
I think you have it the other way around, its not that I disagree with your opinion or definition ... I'd like to, but it makes absolutely no sense because of what a camera and photographic print from a negative projected down on or contact printed on a sheet of light sensitive paper does. your definition refuses to allow photography to be photography. my ghost publisher suggests it will be fine if you tweaked your definition a little so it make sense.
 
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wiltw

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not sure about rhetorical but from what I can tell
this is an illusion ..
not sure about you but
I've been submerged in a giant tank
and handcuffed in steamer trunk for 78 years
its rather amusing the nonsensical people and points of view
one imagines when they ae deprived of oxygen.
I never thought about any of these things when I was dangling
upside down on a cable in a straight jacket

For most of those 76 years in a trunk in a tank, all there was was a single genre of 'photography', film. About 40 years ago, the blasphemy of Photoshop, a graphic arts production package for years before it could handle photographic images, appeared on the scene to confuse things, because it could easily do what took lots of knowledge and effort to do the same thing in the darkroom. Then, in the past 25 years, this beast called a 'digital camera' emerged, further confusing those who lived with 'only film' as the medium of capture. And we find ourselves here, in philosophical questions and in little agreement. Welcome back to the modern world, after your Rumplestiltskin sleep. After your atoms are scattered and you are reconstructed inside Mt. Everest, you will be even more bewildered...it that considered 'travel'?!
 

Brendan Quirk

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not sure about rhetorical but from what I can tell
this is an illusion ..
not sure about you but
I've been submerged in a giant tank
and handcuffed in steamer trunk for 78 years
its rather amusing the nonsensical people and points of view
one imagines when they ae deprived of oxygen.
I never thought about any of these things when I was dangling
upside down on a cable in a straight jacket
OK, Houdini!
 
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