When is a photograph created?

[RalphLambrecht]

John, from what I understand, and it is backed up in the link you provided, that there is an actual chemical reaction happening between the light and tar (bitumen of Judea). It was used because this property was already observed in the tars use as a resist for engraving.

Vaughn

Vaughn

I don't see it. Can you point us to it, please?

 

[Vaughn]

Vaughn

I don't see it. Can you point us to it, please?

Second paragraph (end).

"He discovered that not only was the bitumen bleached to a light gray color by its exposure to sunlight, but also it had the property of hardening against its support material due to the action of its solvents, oil of lavender and turpentine."

Poorly written, but the is the gist of it. The oil of lavender and turpentine dissolves away the unexposed (thus unhardened) tar.

Vaughn

 

[RalphLambrecht]

Second paragraph (end).

"He discovered that not only was the bitumen bleached to a light gray color by its exposure to sunlight, but also it had the property of hardening against its support material due to the action of its solvents, oil of lavender and turpentine."

Poorly written, but the is the gist of it. The oil of lavender and turpentine dissolves away the unexposed (thus unhardened) tar.

Vaughn

Sorry, but this still reads to me like a simple drying process of the bitumen. The dry and hardened bitumen stays and the wet and still soft bitumen is washed out by the oil. Where is the photochemical reaction?

 

[Q.G.]

I'd suggest that you're not seeing your keyboard, you're seeing the image of it projected on your retina.

Ahhhh, that is something I discovered that changed my photography forever. And that discovery is the simple fact that it is the action of light that allows us to see. We do not see objects -- chairs, keyboards, etc. We see light and light only. We only "see" the keyboard because of the way light reflects off of the keyboard.

Yet, the keyboard is not made by the action of light...

You're both trying to be way too clever.

In this case, I think definitions came up because some people's answers to the original question assumed "the photograph is the negative", some people's answers assumed "the photograph is the print", somebody said "what about slides", at least one person proposed that the photograph exists in some platonic form even before the shutter fires, and it was kind of clear that we weren't all talking about the same thing.

It all doesn't matter.
Trying to find a definition of "a photograph" is leading this off track completely.

"You can't ignore the "why" something (say, a negative) comes to be. This "why" (whatever it is) preceeds the clicking of shutters, the souping of bits of acetate with a sticky residue on it in chemicals, or whatever other step in the process you may want to single out.
Nobody suddenly finds him- or herself holding a camera pointed at something, or with film in a tank that is about to be filled with liquids, or whatever else you may like to consider as the "defining stage of a photograph", without ever having done anything beforehand to wind up in the situation."

Everything you do, everything that results from what whatever you do, begins with you deciding (in whatever form) to do so.
No matter what it is.

 

[Q.G.]

Sorry, but this still reads to me like a simple drying process of the bitumen. The dry and hardened bitumen stays and the wet and still soft bitumen is washed out by the oil. Where is the photochemical reaction?

The hardening is a result of exposure to light. The unexposed bits do dry out too, but are not hardened.
This is not a secret thing that has yet to be discovered.

About when Niepce first made photographs: he did so on photosensitized paper as early as 1816. Not fixed, so we have to trust his word for it.

 

[Vaughn]

Tar does not "dry" -- there is little or no water in it. It changes its chemical properties/make-up when exposed to UV light...that is the definition of hardening in this case. If there were no chemical change in the tar, all of the tar would be dissolved away.

But even if it was a function of removing water from within the tar by the light, that would still a chemical action -- a chemical (water) is removed selectively from a material and then that material reacts to other chemicals based on the presence or non-presence of water.

But it is important to remember that water is a chemical and that "drying", in this case, is the process of changing the physical state of that chemical (from a liquid to a gas) -- a drying towel, dried selectively by exposing it thru a negative for example, could be a photograph if one could make that change permanent.

If one wants to get fussy, light does not cause the full reaction with the silver on film or paper -- it only starts it. It is the developer that takes the slightly changed silver and excellerates the change from one type of silver to another.

Vaughn

PS...what I am saying is that light adding energy to water molecules and causing them to change their state (liquid to gas) is technically a photo-chemical reaction.

 

[minox59]

Help my thread has been hijacked.

 

[RalphLambrecht]

Tar does not "dry" -- there is little or no water in it. It changes its chemical properties/make-up when exposed to UV light...that is the definition of hardening in this case. If there were no chemical change in the tar, all of the tar would be dissolved away.

OK, that makes sense.

But even if it was a function of removing water from within the tar by the light, that would still a chemical action -- a chemical (water) is removed selectively from a material and then that material reacts to other chemicals based on the presence or non-presence of water.

But it is important to remember that water is a chemical and that "drying", in this case, is the process of changing the physical state of that chemical (from a liquid to a gas) -- a drying towel, dried selectively by exposing it thru a negative for example, could be a photograph if one could make that change permanent

That sounds more like physics and less like chemistry.

If one wants to get fussy, light does not cause the full reaction with the silver on film or paper -- it only starts it. It is the developer that takes the slightly changed silver and excellerates the change from one type of silver to another.

True, photochemistry at work!

 

[Vaughn]

It ain't your thread, buddy, it belongs to the forum...

And besides your original question has been already beat to death -- we are looking for more victims (and I think we found one!)

Vaughn

 

[Vaughn]

That sounds more like physics and less like chemistry.

Light is pure physics, my friend. Little packets of energy that can cause chemical reactions, such as change the form of silver in a silver compound and take a chemical from one physical state to another.

Don't let your desire for concrete definitions create boundaries where there are none -- physics and chemistry have no space between them except for the ones we artifacially place there.

Vaughn

 

[removed account4]

Dead Link Removed
there are writings and videos here
that show exactly what he did

even recreations of
the first unfixed salted paper negative
that qg alluded to ...

 

[RalphLambrecht]

My desire? The subject matter of physics includes mechanics, heat, light and other radiation, sound, electricity, magnetism, and the structure of atoms. This is very different from chemistry and biology. This is too basic to be discussed.

It seems to me that this thread values rhetoric over science, while getting absolutely nowhere.

I have to leave you guys to it. This is not for me.

 

[Vaughn]

It is the very structure of atoms that determine their chemical properties. Certainly that is not rhetoric, but whatever! Enjoy!
Vaughn

 

[brofkand]

A photograph is created when a print is produced that agrees with the artist's original conception.

That's my opinion. I don't think a conception that exists purely in the mind, or a negative, are photographs.

 

[Vaughn]

A photograph is created when a print is produced that agrees with the artist's original conception.

That's my opinion. I don't think a conception that exists purely in the mind, or a negative, are photographs.

The limitation of that definition is the concept that a photograph can only be a print. There are also transparencies as final end products, images conceived to be displayed only on computers, and images that are meant to be photomechanically reproduced.. But in essense, I agree -- as I see it as the whole process that ends with the creation of a photographic image in some form.

 

[Q.G.]

I agree (have said it before) that it is a process.
But do not agree that the creation is the end point of the process. What, if not the creation, is all that went on before the end of the process?

"Begin at the beginning, [...] and go on till you come to the end: then stop."

 

[keithwms]

niepce's process is photographic by your definition ...
it was made using a light sensitive material, and washed in oil of
lavender ( a chemical ) is permanent + on display today at the university of texas ... the image i linked to, is the FIRST photograph.

I did a seminar on photography a few years back and for that I thought I should start with a timeline. Constructing the timeline turned out to be more of an undertaking than I had expected!

Many histories of photography do indeed begin with Niépce, but... I think that's very likely quite late in the game. Given the great interest in natural pigments extracted from all kinds of biological sources, an interest which really goes back as far as history itself, I am quite sure that leaf prints were done long before Niépce.

Also, the first pinhole cameras date back thousands of years; I guess the pinhole camera would have been invented just as soon as the first smart person experienced a solar eclipse and noticed the lensing on the ground under a tree- a very striking effect. With naturally light sensitive materials... leaves... everywhere, I speculate that the two were probably united to create the first (quasi) permanent photographs.

Another very plausible origin that I mentioned in my seminar: somebody must have tried extracting the eye lenses from animals. This strikes me as a very natural way for the first optical experimentalists to try to understand how we see. Hey, Galen poked around the liver looking for the soul...! Early students of the eye would have encountered the retina and puzzled over where the image "goes." They probably would noticed the inverted image produced by the lens, and they may have tried to extract the material of the retina...

Another origin is of course Vermeer and his contemporaries. In a camera obscura, they would have traced out faint latent images onto canvas for embellishment with paint.

So... is any of this photography? Well, it's not modern photography, but I think all of it is deeply connected to wanting to record what we see... arguably more connected to that purpose than those first experiments of Carl Scheele ~1760-1780.

 

[Dave Pritchard]

Hey, what if it is a Polaroid? Those things aren't permanent. What about that 60 seconds between shutter release and ripping off the cover sheet? If you mash up the emulsion after getting the image, do you have to add 5 minutes to the date/time for the photograph?

Seriously, you guys ought to get a room. It's obvious that dictionary writers and legal writers don't have a clue that there is a creative process of printing a negative to produce an easily viewable image. They assume that some completely invariant process makes the print soon after shutter release.

 

[MattKing]

I don't think photographs are created. I think they evolve.



Somewhat more seriously, it seems to me that photographs aren't entities that just spring into being (one moment there is nothing, and then the next moment there is a photograph).

Matt

 

[BetterSense]

The subject matter of physics includes mechanics, heat, light and other radiation, sound, electricity, magnetism, and the structure of atoms. This is very different from chemistry and biology. This is too basic to be discussed.

I have two physics degrees, and I think you are wrong. Chemistry is physics the same way that Statics or Newtonian Mechanics or General Relativity or E&M is physics; it is a field of physics. The subject matter of physics is just about anything that can be mathematically approximated. In the words of Ernst Rutherford, "physics is everything. The rest is stamp collecting".

I still think that negatives themselves are photographs, and optical prints are photographs as well, the difference is only the subject. Prints are photographs of negatives. Slides are photographs, daguerrotypes, all optical processes. Inkjet prints are not photographs, digital images on a monitor are not photographs, bits on a memory card are not photographs. A more interesting question is, if lightjets are photographs. I have to admit that I believe they are indeed photographs.

 

[Q.G.]

In the words of Ernst Rutherford, "physics is everything. The rest is stamp collecting".

And just to spite him, they awarded him the Nobel Prize, not in physics, but in chemistry.


It's not true though that anything that can be approximated mathematically is physics.
Everything can be approximated mathematically. (Whether it makes sense is another matter. A question that also can be asked about mathematical physics.)
That's not physics, but a narrow version of rationalism.

 

[keithwms]

I don't think photographs are created. I think they evolve.



Somewhat more seriously, it seems to me that photographs aren't entities that just spring into being (one moment there is nothing, and then the next moment there is a photograph).

Matt

That is what I was getting at in my first response way back on page 1. I have a problem with the whole notion of creatio ex nihilo.

A photographer sees a subject in a multitude of different ways and then imagines a process by which to depict that subject in a chosen way.

So that is the gift of photography, I think: to be able to see the subject... and to see it through right to the print.

 

[Vaughn]

Thanks, BetterSense, I took a quarter of college physics for non-majors, a couple quarters of college chemistry (again for non-majors) and have read The Tao of Physics so I can't say that I am very knowledgable in the fields compared to many...but it is nice to know I am thinking along the proper lines.

But the definition of a photograph is more of a subjective thing rather than a clear cut objective thing. Personally I like to use the terms digital image/digital print and photographic image/print to differentiate between the use of light sensitive image capture/inkjet print processes and light sensitive chemical processes.

But as I said, this is a subjective decision and as long as two people talking know what the other means, it is no big deal if someone wants to call a inkjet print printed from a digital capture a photograph.

 

[Q.G.]

And BetterSense and Keith's answers (again) show that no matter how much room there is to bicker over what a photograph is, the answer to when it is created is simple and easy.

 

[markbarendt]

the difference is only the subject. Prints are photographs of negatives.

Great Thought!