Is it possible to create art with digital?

jsrockit said:
But it's generally a technical concern. Good art is more in the concept.

So, what this really comes down to is grain right? Lack of grain turns many off. However, grain isn't everything and generally speaking grain does not make a bad photo great.
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It's mainly about the way it handles tonality, especially digital BW(I have silver EFX pro and I feel it doesn't do that fantastic of a job - better than nothing though. the film emulation plugins don't work too well)
 
regularchickens said:
It's about the content, not the medium.
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MarkoKovacevic said:
The medium has a distinct effect on the final content though.
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I thought the question was about the possibility of making art, not about the effect being "distinctly" different with Digital.


It's like asking if it's possible to write poetry with a laptop, or if it's possible to perceive reality when using contact lenses, or if it's possible to make a hamburger with ground turkey, and turning around saying "no, because the medium has a distinct effect on the final content".

Ken Rockwell would most likely say that it's impossible to write meaningful poetry with a laptop, that reality is hopelessly corrupted by contact lenses, and that the only real hamburgers are made with cows he's raised and fed and butchered and grilled with mesquite he chopped himself with an axe forged using shards of Narsil.

I personally think that the only real hamburgers are the ones you can actually eat. The ones that don't make you sick are recommended. And of those that taste great are the best. Just please don't add any Swiss cheese.
 
kxl said:
All other considerations aside, isn't this statement more of an indictment of your skills with digital medium?
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Yes, quite possibly. Though I'd think it would be similar. Same lenses+I'm shooting in raw and working on each photo individually, maybe it's just the feeling..
 
MarkoKovacevic said:
Not bashing digital(I use it myself) but I find it difficult to use in an artistic fashion, especially for BW. It feels too clean, too restrictive, too unorganic versus traditional. What's your take?
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It depends... If "artistic" is rather to mean aesthetically pleasing then it is up to the photographer's taste and understanding. For example a certain Sebastiao Salgado after having to switch to DSLR -because of the issues lived thru airport x-ray checks- started having his digital frames "converted" to 4x5 film first and then printing them. This might be the way to opt for Salgado as for him fidelity to what the lens sees could be a prime virtue. However for photographers who value manipulative means highly like Andy Goldsworthy for example, I wonder if they would be shooting solely film if digital was available say twenty years ago.

Art is a very flexible concept to define and confine within boundaries; and the end result sometimes speaks more than the means employed to accomplish it. BTW, I see more and more photographers switching to digital; naturally in the coming years we would be seeing more pictures to be called by the majority as being art and the minority as being not..
 
One of the joys of digital is its clarity. Maybe try and work with it and not against it? Or use film.
 
... although; in a radio interview David Bailey did say that the "Art was in the errors" and that he found it easier to make the errors while using film ... it could well be film's inferiority that proves to be it's greatest strength
 
Digital or film? Who can really know for sure:

perfect-ten-pandas.jpg
 
MarkoKovacevic said:
It's mainly about the way it handles tonality, especially digital BW(I have silver EFX pro and I feel it doesn't do that fantastic of a job - better than nothing though. the film emulation plugins don't work too well)
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I can see that. Digital's dynamic range isnt there always. I don;t use film emulation plugins... I just let digital be digital. I prefer digital's aesthetic these days. I used film for a long time. I'd still use it today if I had access to a color darkroom.
 
I shoot both film and digital and no one can tell the difference. No one who buys my work cares either. People who constantly bash one or the other, while proclaiming their work to be better or more artistic or authentic than someone else's because of the medium used are using choice of medium as a crutch because they don't have the ability to produce work that stands on its own as an image. I've seen this many, many times all over the country in places I've lived and visited. The artists whose work is worth looking at use what they want. Maybe film, maybe digital, often both. They do it and they don't go about trumpeting about how their work deserves recognition because of the medium. They don't HAVE to. The work stands on its own.
 
Chriscrawfordphoto said:
I shoot both film and digital and no one can tell the difference. No one who buys my work cares either. People who constantly bash one or the other, while proclaiming their work to be better or more artistic or authentic than someone else's because of the medium used are using choice of medium as a crutch because they don't have the ability to produce work that stands on its own as an image. I've seen this many, many times all over the country in places I've lived and visited. The artists whose work is worth looking at use what they want. Maybe film, maybe digital, often both. They do it and they don't go about trumpeting about how their work deserves recognition because of the medium. They don't HAVE to. The work stands on its own.
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The work stands on its own.

that pretty much sums it up folks...
 
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