From " Outside" magazine: editorial against photo manipulation

[Gary Sandhu]

Nice read and strong opinions.
http://outside.away.com/outside/culture/200909/digital-photography-1.html

 

[BearCatCow]

Nice read and strong opinions.
http://outside.away.com/outside/culture/200909/digital-photography-1.html

Good read! I can see the reasons for both sides. It's true though that the camera always lie. And many photographers impose their vision on their photographs so it's really not a very pure right/wrong pure/adulterated issue.

Maybe photoshopping and not-photoshopping will gradually diverge into two separate visual arts. What do you think?

 

[Ken Shipman]

Interesting. It's an old argument that precedes Photoshop. I remember in the early 80's Galen Rowell often bickered with critics who claimed his high-altitude alpinglow shots must have been created with filtering, and Galen would howl in indignation. Before his death he warned of the coming problem with digital manipulation, inspired by the Art Wolfe incident. In a way I'm glad he doesn't have to witness this eventuality. He's probably spinning in his grave.

 

[Tuolumne]

It is an entirely different thing to create an image out of whole cloth, where the image bears little or no resemblance to reality, and quite another to remove distracting pictorial elements. From an editorial view one may want to ban both, just to draw a bight line between manipulated and unmanipulated photos, but the two cases are worlds apart. I have no problem with either, as long as both are identified for what they are.

/T

 

[DGA]

When does a manipulated image become non-informative?

While looking at photography as an art form, I think the sky is the limit in PS manipulation.
I have no trouble with that also.
Still, photography, on the other way, has the means of conveying information to the public.
That is the documentary photography's purpose. Isn't it?
Nowadays, the thin line between documentary and art photography is fading rapidly, so no wonder new "forms of art" are finding their way to informative work.
As results, we, the readers/viewers, sometimes feel frustrated trying to figure out if the photograph presented to us is an art or not 🙁

 

[Tuolumne]

I think the case is similar to using words. You can use words to make up a story, a novel, etc. This bears no relation to events that happened, but may be "truer" than a recounting of events. You can use words to report events that happened ("news"). This had better bear as close a resemblance to what happened as is humanly possible. So with photos, in a magazine like "Outside", they clearly want their photos to be News - that's the way it was. The surfing photographer made up a story with his images which, like a novel, may be truer to the idea of surfing, but never happened. Just because tou can use words to tell what happened doesn't mean you can't also use them to make up a story. It's just harder to tell with photos.

/T

 

[pmun]

It's true though that the camera always lie.

I don't think the camera lies - it's a case of people confusing what was photographed with the actual photograph - they of course are very different.

www.urbanpaths.net

 

[James R]

Photojournalism and street photography require an honest frame. Everything else is fair game. Those frames represent the photographer's vision, be they over-saturated, desaturated, HDR, etc. The observer or client decide the success of that vision. IMO, it's rather pompous to demean those who don't share one's photographic opinion.

I'm tiring of HDR and other over worked photos; but, that is just one man's opinion. Remember when every wedding album had that one b&w photo with the bouquet in color? How long before that got old, yet, every bride wanted one. That doesn't make the bride wrong.

Aside from photojournalism an street photography, any manipulation is OK if done well.

 

[JoeV]

Skepticism does have an upside. One of the more positive trends taking hold is the policing of photos. Earlier this year, judges in the Picture of the Year contest in Denmark created a stir when they disqualified Klavs Bo Christensen for excessive Photoshopping in his series of photos of Haitian slums. In July, The New York Times Magazine ran a portfolio of abandoned construction projects across the U.S. taken by Portuguese photographer Edgar Martins. When the Times posted them online, commenters on the community weblog MetaFilter jumped on apparent cloning and mirroring techniques, causing Times editors to quickly pull the images.
What I think is happening—what I hope is happening—is that we're finally fed up with all the tampering. Too many published photographs are unhinged from reality, morphed by a few mouse clicks into slick advertisements for perfect moments in time. Our relationship to photography is clearly changing, as Farid notes, but so is our taste: There's a growing hunger for truth. We'll never get all the way there—no camera will ever see as honestly as our eyes—but the idea that photographers set out to pursue truth is about to have its moment. And it's about time.

That's the closing two paragraphs of the article. I like the writer's ideas, especially regarding the notion of the two general directions of photography discussed, documentary journalism and art, it's pretty clear that as art, photography can just about do anything, as there are very few permissive boundaries; whereas with photojournalism (whether one is a paid, credentialed PJ or not) there are standards that must be maintained.

I have no personal beef against either type of photography; except that in the cases discussed in the article the essential conflict seems to be that the casual viewer cannot discern the difference between the two types, as they appear superficially identical. And that is, I believe, the fundamental issue with the veracity of photography: these are two entirely distinct genres of graphic arts at their core, yet they superficially appear to be the same thing, hence the intrinsic power to manipulate and misrepresent.

I also understand very well the inherent abstraction of photography, that all images lie to a certain extent, that all images are constructs; I've been a student of this subject, and have written about it numerous times in my blog. But this is a straw man argument, used by the digiratti to justify unlimited image manipulation, and ignores the fact that photographs have not only been used to lie, manipulate and propagandize, but also that there's a history of photojournalism where the essential bare facts of an historic event have been preserved on film, by the photographer's careful application of the techniques of the craft to ensure faithful adherence to the facts of the situation. Like the example given in the article about National Geographic's rigid standards, for instance. The people who say that "all photographs lie", implying that you can never trust one single photographic image to represent anything veracic, ignore, and do disservice to, the legacy of photojournalism.

Journalism and art are two entirely distinct genres, but in photography both appear to superficially be the same thing. That's the essential conflict, unless one digs for a deeper understanding.

~Joe

 

[Juan Valdenebro]

Cameras don't lie. Any particular angle and instant were true...

As years go by, I hate more and more image manipulation. I even hate it when a good image in black and white reveals dodging and burning of sky and clouds in order to produce more impact... An evocative image is in no need like that... At all!

For me it's philosophically impossible to feel part of a group of people pretending that as times change, any technology can be used any way, and that the only important thing is the final output... No! Photography will remain some way (maybe a reduced or exclusive one) as the art of placing a vision in an original silver light sensitive film. That's the beauty of the game for me: it ends when you click!

All my best wishes to those around here playing this game!

Cheers,

Juan