JoeV
Thin Air, Bright Sun
This has been an observation of mine for some years now, but I haven't discussed it with other photographers. I was reminded of this again while reading a recent bokeh thread.
I live in New Mexico and on occasion will visit art galleries in the Santa Fe area. With representative art, such as oils and acrylics, I've begun to notice that I can often tell when a painting was made from a photograph, rather than being made in plein air (i.e. painted on location).
One painting in particular struck me. It was of "southwest style" (subject matter being adobe buildings and such) and included a courtyard wall (with the obligatory red chile ristra hanging from a viga), and the wall had an obvious plane of sharpest focus, with its line becoming softer nearer and further from that plane.
Once you see something like that it's hard to unsee it, and from thence forth I've made it a private game, when visiting galleries with representative art, to determine which ones were painted from photos. Some of these attempts at art-making become so obvious that I've amused myself with trying to determine the type of camera lens employed in the original snapshot by the way the bokeh was painted; or at least to figure out the focal length.
I've read a bit of David Hockney and appreciate his views on the differences between the way that camera lenses render scenes and painters render scenes. True painters tend to idealize or represent the essential nature of a setting using an amalgam of various impressions. Cameras don't.
Another way I can tell the difference has less to do with optical effects and more to do with subject matter. I see paintings where human figures are in transition, caught in some temporal pose that becomes obvious it was from a camera snapshot of someone captured mid-movement. You just can't paint such things from memory, or use models in that way.
So how about you? Is it obvious to you when paintings are rendered from photos? And does it even matter?
~Joe
I live in New Mexico and on occasion will visit art galleries in the Santa Fe area. With representative art, such as oils and acrylics, I've begun to notice that I can often tell when a painting was made from a photograph, rather than being made in plein air (i.e. painted on location).
One painting in particular struck me. It was of "southwest style" (subject matter being adobe buildings and such) and included a courtyard wall (with the obligatory red chile ristra hanging from a viga), and the wall had an obvious plane of sharpest focus, with its line becoming softer nearer and further from that plane.
Once you see something like that it's hard to unsee it, and from thence forth I've made it a private game, when visiting galleries with representative art, to determine which ones were painted from photos. Some of these attempts at art-making become so obvious that I've amused myself with trying to determine the type of camera lens employed in the original snapshot by the way the bokeh was painted; or at least to figure out the focal length.
I've read a bit of David Hockney and appreciate his views on the differences between the way that camera lenses render scenes and painters render scenes. True painters tend to idealize or represent the essential nature of a setting using an amalgam of various impressions. Cameras don't.
Another way I can tell the difference has less to do with optical effects and more to do with subject matter. I see paintings where human figures are in transition, caught in some temporal pose that becomes obvious it was from a camera snapshot of someone captured mid-movement. You just can't paint such things from memory, or use models in that way.
So how about you? Is it obvious to you when paintings are rendered from photos? And does it even matter?
~Joe
