Erik, film, digital and truth in photography

[sojournerphoto]

Erik posted some comments in another low profile🙂 thread about film being better than digital. This led to a statement:

'There is no question about wich system is easier to manupulate or to falsify. Digital!'


Mike Johnson posted a short essay on this here. It's a couple of eyars old, but picks uip the real issue at stake here very well. It is undoubtedly easier to make gross changes to an image in the digital comain than the film domain, but possible in both. What is at stake is whether we consider that 'photorgaphy' is the recording, and ultimately printing that recording (with apologies of 'chromists') , of the image the lens draws.

As Mike points out, this is not really a digital v film debate, but sits at the heart of what we are about as photographers. We all need to decide where we stand and then, in all honesty, should communicate that. Neither is inherently wrong, but one may not be photography as much as painting or 'art creation via this set of tools'- though that's a semantic debate that is often grossly pverlooked at present.

A very good example given my Mike is of a picture created by a computer as a result of scanning ther images on the web. The image is restful and someone may say that that is enough. Certainly that is the philosophy behind much of the 'how to put a new sky in your landscape shot' type of stuff in the amateur phot mags. The issue, to my mind, is that these techniques (originating in advertising, which obviously has a strong relationship with truth - sorry irony alert) are proagated without question as being a part of modern photography. Each image maker needs to wrestle a bit with this and make up their mind what they wish to do.

Finally, Alain Briot is a very succesful 'fine art landscape photographer' who produces beautiful work. He has made and communicates a clear chopice to change the projected image to something he prefers - perhaps a texture isn'thow I feel it should be and so it will be changed to give a better represenaton of how I feel in such places - this is his choice and he communicates it clearly. It is not a digital choice, that is just the tool. We can have a semantic argument over whether Alain's (or others) work is photography or photographically based digital imagie creation, but surely the key point is that poepl understand what they are presented with.

Oh, the responses to Mike's blog post suggest htat most people didn't get that it wasn't a film v digital post. Please read it a couple of times before weighing in and creating yet another fvd thread...

Mike
'

 

[Roger Hicks]

Yes, it's easier.

All this means is that you need less skill to do it. Consider Henry Peach Robinson, for example.

I don't quite see your argument.

Cheers,

R.

 

[pmun]

Erik posted some comments in another low profile🙂 thread about film being better than digital. This led to a statement:
'There is no question about wich system is easier to manupulate or to falsify. Digital!'

If 'falsify' in this statement refers to the accuracy of the relationship between what was in front of the lens and is now recorded by a photographic process, then that relationship is so false already that it is irrelevant which is easier to manipulate or falsify. In other words so much of that has already been done in both mediums - it really makes no difference.

www.urbanpaths.net

 

[sojournerphoto]

If 'falsify' in this statement refers to the accuracy of the relationship between what was in front of the lens and is now recorded by a photographic process, then that relationship is so false already that it is irrelevant which is easier to manipulate or falsify. In other words so much of that has already been done in both mediums - it really makes no difference.

www.urbanpaths.net

Agree - that was Erik's quote🙂 But I certainly wasn't trying to suggest that the recording is an accurate representation of what's in front of the lens. A flat (i.e. 2D) monchrome print from a TriX at EI800 in rodinal neg cannot be described as being at all like the world in front of it...

 

[Roger Hicks]

If 'falsify' in this statement refers to the accuracy of the relationship between what was in front of the lens and is now recorded by a photographic process, then that relationship is so false already that it is irrelevant which is easier to manipulate or falsify. In other words so much of that has already been done in both mediums - it really makes no difference.

www.urbanpaths.net

Very true. The photographer chooses subject; angle of view; viewpoint; and when to press the shutter. All imply a high degree of selection.

As for what was 'really there', well, yes, 'comping' two or more shots together is much easier digitally, but as I said in the earlier post, it's perfectly possible with film, if you're good enough. I watched some of the speps as a skilled transparency retoucher created a picture of Concorde flying under a bridge (Sydney Harbour, I seem to recall, but it was over 30 years ago). The final tranny was very convincing.

Cheers,

R.

 

[remegius]

Every time I come across statements that have to do with "falsify" with respect to photographs I'm reminded of the old story that is supposedly attributed to Picasso. Apparently he was at a cubist exhibition when he overheard a matronly woman remark while gazing at a painting entitled "Fish", "That doesn't look like a fish to me." To which Picasso replied, "It isn't, madam...it's a painting." A photograph is just that, a photograph. It is not reality. How do you falsify that which is not real to begin with?

Cheers...

Rem

 

[bmattock]

Taking the question as given, one must first answer the underlying assumption - is the purpose of photography to faithfully record and then display the original scene the camera was aimed at?

Historically, that was one of the first purposes of the camera, and thus, of photography. From the earliest days, Daguerre's invention was used to take the place of technical drawings of architecture. It was intended to be an accurate representation, not whimsical, not 'artistic' and not an intentional misrepresentation of scenes recorded.

And yet, in very short order, Daguerreotypes and Talbotypes began to seep over into other fields. The fields of silhouette drawing and miniature portrait painting were almost completely devastated and utterly usurped by photography. As this happened, photographers also discovered, as clever portrait-painters had before them, that some patrons preferred a pleasing self-image over an accurate one. This could be achieved, and was, and it seems without a lot of wailing or gnashing of teeth. Photography was a tool, and it would be bent to the ends that seemed most useful, profitable, or expedient at the moment to the photographer.

Thus, the concept of photography as an accurate, true-to-life representation of what was originally seen by human eyes went by the wayside. As photography matured, it was the Pictorialists who wanted to place photography side-by-side with painting as 'Fine Art,' and thus began to intentionally ape some of the methods of Expressionists and other painting schools. Soft lenses, certain development techniques, printing methods, and other tools were employed to hammer the resulting image on the anvil of the photographer and render an image that was intended by the photographer if not by nature.

It was Group f/64 who rejected the Pictorialist's methods and stated that photography should be 'straight', and unmanipulated. Photographs should have massive depth-of-field, lenses should be as sharp as it was possible to make them, and printing should be as accurate to the original tones as was possible to be.

They became a powerful force in photography, and in the early 1920's and 1930's, they nearly wiped the concept of Pictorialism off the map.

The waves thrown up by Group f/64 continue to this day, although very few people are really 'straight' photographers anymore. Even Ansel Adams habitually used a deep red filter on his landscapes - an utter no-no for the 'straight photography' ethos, as it altered the contrast of sky and rock to give the resulting image more emotional power.

As a child of the 1960's, I learned any number of ways to manipulate photographs during processing and printing. From solarization to pushing film for effect, cross-processing, dodging and burning, contrast filters on poly paper, and so on and so forth - even down to creatively squeezing the gel packs of integral Polaroid films to get an interesting effect. Straight photographers we were not.

However, sometime between the early 1980's and the late 1990's, amateur photography suffered a major decline. Point and shoot film photographers were the majority, and one-hour photo shops were how people got their prints and slide made. No creative processing there, just an auto-balanced print of the photo you shot for most of the average happy-snapper photographers (I exclude enthusiasts from this group).

It was into this world that digital photography was born, which brought about a new exploration of manipulation via digital means.

And sadly (for me), it has revived the old argument, once put to rest as insoluble. Should one manipulate or not? Many of today's photographers were digital before they discovered film. Many of them do not know the history of film, or how utterly routine it was to manipulate film images, in the camera with filters (some quite bizarre in nature), in the developing tank, and in the darkroom. We did it all, guys. There is nothing you're doing (or refusing to do) in Photoshop that we did not do with film, by manipulating chemistry or light or both. We didn't much care if it was 'real' photography or not - some people did it, some did not. Some liked it, some didn't. But we didn't engage in religious wars over it. Those wars were over.

Now that we have a whole new group of photography enthusiasts who cut their teeth on digital and have since discovered film, they have dredged this old war back up again. It would not have come up if the new breed of photographers who cut their teeth on digital were not so woefully (and intentionally) ignorant of the history of photography. Well, they're woefully ignorant about pretty much everything, but that's just my opinion there.

Is the purpose of photography to faithfully record and then display the original scene the camera was aimed at?


I say that photography has no inherent purpose. It is whatever we make of it. We humans invented photography, and it's proper purpose is whatever we wish it to be. A screwdriver may make a poor hammer, but if it's my screwdriver, I'll use it as a hammer if I bloody well want to, and anyone who tells me I oughtn't be allowed to do so it going to get it rapped sharply across their knuckles.

Photography is what it is. Manipulated, straight, whatever. I will say that if it purports to be an accurate representation of a scene, then it ought to be that - such as in news reporting. In the context of artistic expression (I'm intentionally not using the term 'art'), all's fair as far as I'm concerned.

Regarding which is easier to manipulate - digital or film - I would say it doesn't matter a whit. I suppose digital would be easier, but one can also scan film and then manipulate it digitally, which is what I do myself.

As the OP said, it's not a film versus digital thing, though. It's an artistic expression versus just technical drawing please thing.

 

[remegius]

Bill...

Well thought out, and well stated.

Cheers...

Rem

 

[Mcary]

Sorry but the idea that photography is some pure and honest form of communication is pure BS. Simple things like one's choice of lens, where one points their camera and the most basic the choice of pressing or not pressing the shutter all contribute to manipulating a photograph to convey a certain message or idea.

 

[bmattock]

Sorry but the idea that photography is some pure and honest form of communication is pure BS. Simple things like one's choice of lens, where one points their camera and the most basic the choice of pressing or not pressing the shutter all contribute to manipulating a photograph to convey a certain message or idea.

Indeed. It often seems as though some people accept what THEY choose to do as 'authentic' and accurate, but not one whit further will they tolerate. Yes, they'll dodge and burn a print in a darkroom, but allow its digital equivalent? NEVER!!! Why?

Well, uh, it's WRONG, that's why! Unholy! Unclean! Promotes tooth decay!

It goes both ways, though, I'm not just picking on the film guys here. Some people see what THEY do as the only correct way to do things, and lash out against everything else.

 

[Carlsen Highway]

And yet interestingly enough for the overwhelmingly largest group of users of photography, the believe that ithe image is real and faithful recording is the most important thing about it. Babies on the lawn. Family gatherings. photo's of loved ones.
Photography will always be grounded in its reliance on reality. It is photographys greatest strength and also its weakness.

Even the "changes" that we talk about here, are presented and understood by viewers as being "real" - otherwise why make them?

When people look at a figurative painting they know its not 'real' in other words they know it was frabriacted paint and canvas. They accept it for what it is. With photogrpahy they know it was made with actual light reflected off the real world. hence the betrayal when they find out that they are manipulated or changed. Then, mostly - they are dismissed as being of lessor value.
Unless you have a totally other worldy image (fantasy/add work) but even that only works because it was made with "real" parts.

Personally for me, I am not a "creator' of images, I want photography to be a recording of what I find in the world - compromised necessarily by my own choices and the limits of the medium. And if there is some fantasy or magic, and otherwordlyness to the image it will be found in the gap between photographer and viewer, made with naturally recorded light and the art in directing the viewer. I guess I am a surrealist after all. Without reality you cant have psuedo reality. There is enough manipulation with vviewpoint, framing and timing to achieve what I want - if I am lucky, and and resolved in the search.

If I want to create an image I will go back to oil painting. If its not "real" then I am not going to pretend that it is - a great figarative painting may be good becasue we know its not "real"; its a form of magic.

If your going to show me a beautiful landscape photograph with an improved sky - and I find out - I will be disppointed. I will suggest you are working in the wrong medium. These are my own feelings on the matter.

 

[FrankS]

The greatest control that both digital and traditional (let's call it that for the sake of the argument) photographers have is selective framing and timing, but both have that ability equally.

I think that gross manipulation/alteration (let's stay away from the word "falsification" because it may carry a negative connotation) of the image is easier in the digital realm, so I am agreeing with Erik's statement.

 

[bmattock]

If I want to create an image I will go back to oil painting. If its not "real" then I am not going to pretend that it is - a great figarative painting may be good becasue we know its not "real"; its a form of magic.

If your going to show me a beautiful landscape photograph with an improved sky - and I find out - I will be disppointed. I will suggest you are working in the wrong medium. These are my own feelings on the matter.

How do you feel about women wearing make-up, or men having their hair transplanted to cover a balding spot or wearing a toupee? Not really what they look like, certainly. Shall we all be made to appear 'as we are' or risk your disappointment?

Your point about 'knowing' that a painting is not 'real' and expecting that a photograph is accurate is well-taken. But I reply that the world itself is not what it appears, nor does it want to be, nor do we wish to see it that way.

We paint our houses and cars fanciful colors - I can't imagine why, gray would do as well. We perform strenuous exercise and have plastic surgery done to look our best (not I, but many do). We fight the marks of age, we color our gray hair and have the teeth whitened.

None of the photos of models on magazine covers even look remotely like them, as has been seen before on RFF (I won't quote the link, it's ghastly). Not only is the photography 'done', but we, the viewing public, demand it be done. One can clamor for honesty as a virtue in photography - but you'd be the only person buying those magazines on the newstands, and they'd go broke.

Everything we buy, everything we have marketed to us, it's all modified from its true appearance to make it more attractive to us - even down to the boxes the crap we buy comes in.

A photograph is no more an accurate representation of the world than a painting or a velvet Elvis wall hanging. To expect that it should be? Wishful thinking, I suspect. And I further suspect that if you actually got your wish, you'd change your mind pretty quickly.

 

[FrankS]

How do you feel about women wearing make-up, or men having their hair transplanted to cover a balding spot or wearing a toupee? Not really what they look like, certainly. Shall we all be made to appear 'as we are' or risk your disappointment?
.

A beautiful woman augmented by plastic surgery is more disappointing than a natural beauty, IMO.

 

[bmattock]

A beautiful woman augmented by plastic surgery is more disappointing than a natural beauty, IMO.

And if you have no idea what she looked like BEFORE the surgery? If she was not indeed a 'natural beauty', should she be required to forgo impressing your senses?

This may seem off-topic, but it really does speak directly to the concept that a photograph must meet some standard of purity to be considered acceptable.

I have seen it on RFF (and other forums) many times. The upturned nose, the sniff of derision, the firm statement that a giclee print (for example) is unacceptable, one must perforce prefer the wet print. And if it one is brought to the point of acknowledging that they cannot tell the difference between the two, then of course it matters because 'they know' that one is 'real' and the other not.

As I said - one prefers one's cherished illusions to the illusions of others. But illusions they all are.

 

[FrankS]

Bill, you may think it "wrong", but given 2 images which both rate 10/10 on my subjective scale, I am more impressed by an image that was obtained by "traditional" methods and a photographer's patience, skill, and luck, than by another image that was composited in photoshop. Sorry, but that's how I feel. But I do not expect others to agree with me. Everyone has a right to their own subjective opinions. As long as they don't try to tell me what is absolutely right or wrong, and how I should feel.

 

[Nikon Bob]

The only relationship to reality that any image has is that it hopefully represents the subject matter the way the photographer saw it at the moment of taking. Two people viewing the same subject matter at the same time from the same position will have two different ideas as to what they saw and how to interpret it. It may not be a vast difference but it will be different. You are not falsifying anything in getting an image to represent what you thought you saw at the moment of taking. You are well on the road to creating a false image even before you take the image because your take on it is not going to be my take on it. In the end, for me at least, none of that matters when viewing the final result and I will like it or not. There, not a word about film vs digital, both are inherently false or true from the get go as no two people see the same way.

Bob

 

[JoeV]

Certainly photography is an abstraction, always has been, always will be; Barthes and Sontag have both taught us that. I don't think this is at the heart of the question, however. Rather, the question pertains to whether the photographic image is either photography or, alternatively, graphic arts.

In my simplistic way of thinking (and I realize this personal working model may not work well for others,) the key attribute that determines the photographic image to be principally photography is that its abstraction can be mapped in general correspondence to a physical reality at the moment the image was recorded.

Conversely, the key attribute that determines a photographic image to be principally graphic arts is that its abstraction does not map well in good correspondence to the physical reality at the time the photographic image was recorded.

That being stated, it becomes immediately obvious that there remains a tremendous gray area in my personal working definition, such that the ultimate decision becomes one of personal aesthetic taste alone. This is the crucial reason why such discussions will never be resolved to satisfaction, for we are really discussing, in proxy, matters of individual personal aesthetics.

~Joe

 

[Carlsen Highway]

How do you feel about women wearing make-up, or men having their hair transplanted to cover a balding spot or wearing a toupee? Not really what they look like, certainly. Shall we all be made to appear 'as we are' or risk your disappointment?

Your point about 'knowing' that a painting is not 'real' and expecting that a photograph is accurate is well-taken. But I reply that the world itself is not what it appears, nor does it want to be, nor do we wish to see it that way.

We paint our houses and cars fanciful colors - I can't imagine why, gray would do as well. We perform strenuous exercise and have plastic surgery done to look our best (not I, but many do). We fight the marks of age, we color our gray hair and have the teeth whitened.

None of the photos of models on magazine covers even look remotely like them, as has been seen before on RFF (I won't quote the link, it's ghastly). Not only is the photography 'done', but we, the viewing public, demand it be done. One can clamor for honesty as a virtue in photography - but you'd be the only person buying those magazines on the newstands, and they'd go broke.

Everything we buy, everything we have marketed to us, it's all modified from its true appearance to make it more attractive to us - even down to the boxes the crap we buy comes in.

A photograph is no more an accurate representation of the world than a painting or a velvet Elvis wall hanging. To expect that it should be? Wishful thinking, I suspect. And I further suspect that if you actually got your wish, you'd change your mind pretty quickly.

BMattock,
I understand what your saying and believe you are correct, but when you quote the glamour mags, you illustrate my very point entirely. This is adevertising using "photographic reality" as a tool.

Photography trades on reality. Without it, it looses its meaning, its polint, if you will.
Now, I know all that you said is true, and what I mean is that photography is as close as I can get - and still leave an edge for a personal interpretation of a subject and have it be convinving becasue of photographies basci foundation on the 'real world'.

And as far as record keeping and reportage go, where ideally the intention is to nail down reality as best we can within the mediums limitations - its better than quick sketches, am I right?

 

[250swb]

Coincidentally in another currrent thread in RFF (I won't say where as it turned into an argument) we had a chat about the ability of high ISO (and DR), and how (I contended) in future as the ability of the digital camera increases so proportionally the amount of truth to the subject will decrease if all people do is leave the camera on its optimal settings (the high majority of cameras are left like this). Interiors will be falsified to look like well lit exteriors, shadow areas will have even more detail than the eye perceives in scanning a scene, and all due to advances in high ISO ability, DR, and such things. The camera will out resolve the eye in many photographic situations. And in many ways does already with software add-ons and HDR manipulations.

So I'd say film does limit you more towards the truth, although digital now and in the future will have the ability to be used in a truthful way. The problem for digital though is that nobody will believe you with the same acceptance that is apparent with film. I make no apology for re-quoting Henry Wessel Jr. to highlight the type of photographic power that we stand to lose if all scenes become accessible, manipulated, and regularized by the digital camera,

"Chances are, if you believe the light, you are going to believe that the things photographed physically existed in the world. It's this belief that gives the still photograph its power." - Henry Wessel Jr.


Steve