"Photography does not exist anymore!" New manifesto!

patrickhh said:
I am sure that there will always be film material in production, simply because there will always be a market for it. Even if all photographers decided to shoot digital only, there would still be a market. Keep in mind that B/W film is also getting used in areas outside "fine art photography", such as traffic control. Many manufacturers already make most of their money in these specialized areas.
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As far as I know, most motion pictures are still done on 35mm film. That too will no doubt change, but more slowly. It may mean we will be forced to use a film we don't like too much, but surely that will provide a film for a long time, to say nothing of people like most of us in these forums who will keep up a demand for film.

Someone mentioned Lucas. I thought even his digital stuff was mostly copied onto motion picture film for distribution. Is that wrong? I don't really know.
 
By "in a film like way" i was rather inelegantly meaning, just taking a picture and doing the minimum of fiddling with it afterwards. A film like workflow?

Finder - images were not as manipulated in the film era (pre scanning, photoshop etc I mean). They just were not. It just was not possible to do anything like what one can do today. The technology did not exist to enable it to be done. If they could have, they would have. Of course images have always been fiddled with to an extent - the point is that the currently available technology provides amazing possibilities for manipulation. Possibilities one could not have dreamed of 40 yrs ago. And therein lies the issue, where does photography stop and CGI begin?
 
Roma said:
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but as of now all of the investigative photography has to be done on film, so hopefully at least those guys and us will keep some players in the game. Plus, I'm quiet confident that fine-art folks will want to use film too.

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I don't believe that is true. At least it is changing and many jurisdictions do accept digital. The only real test is usually someone looking at a photo and swearing that it accurately depicts the scene as they saw it.
 
If digital capture technology was around at the time of photography's invention, we never would know about film. Technology marches on. It doesn't matter how an image is captured, either by sensitive silver or light sensitive pixels. Bottom line - it is basically the same.
 
Doping in photography...

Doping in photography...

I guess to make sense of Erwin's writings (for the few who don't want to just bash him) :
The point is like "clean sports" nowadays. Who believes that there is something like a clean athlete in todays business of sports? See Tour de France...

Photoshop is like "doping for photography" versus the clean i.e. straight print from the negative. Adjust contrast, doging, burning here and there. Where do you draw the line between the authentic document of the scene and the photo that comes close to the impression of the photographer when he pressed the shutter?

Compare acoustic instruments vs electronically generated sounds, freshly prepared food from scratch vs convinience food from the microwave. There is progress in every field of life and you just have to decide what is authentic for you and you prefer and what you regard as fake, doping or whatever type of "unfair advantage".

Not all have the same expectations or use the same rules. As long as the alternative is still avaliable (film photography) and the option to NOT photoshop your digital file, then Erwin's statement that "photography is dead" is hollow at best.

As usual his essay's are always good to stirr up a post 😀
 
CJP6008 said:
By "in a film like way" i was rather inelegantly meaning, just taking a picture and doing the minimum of fiddling with it afterwards. A film like workflow?

Finder - images were not as manipulated in the film era (pre scanning, photoshop etc I mean). They just were not. It just was not possible to do anything like what one can do today. The technology did not exist to enable it to be done. If they could have, they would have. Of course images have always been fiddled with to an extent - the point is that the currently available technology provides amazing possibilities for manipulation. Possibilities one could not have dreamed of 40 yrs ago. And therein lies the issue, where does photography stop and CGI begin?
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So you think stripping in different backgrounds photomechanically or retouching with air brushes is somehow different? The vast majority of commercial photography is simply doing the same stuff digitally. Having been part of that film era and been involved with that kind of work, I would say your view of the past has nothing to do with my experience.

BTW, if you really want to see how bad the photo-mechanical process does with this kind of stuff, check out one of the masters:

http://www.uelsmann.net/
 
icebear said:
I guess to make sense of Erwin's writings (for the few who don't want to just bash him) :
The point is like "clean sports" nowadays. Who believes that there is something like a clean athlete in todays business of sports? See Tour de France...

Photoshop is like "doping for photography" versus the clean i.e. straight print from the negative. Adjust contrast, doging, burning here and there. Where do you draw the line between the authentic document of the scene and the photo that comes close to the impression of the photographer when he pressed the shutter?

Compare acoustic instruments vs electronically generated sounds, freshly prepared food from scratch vs convinience food from the microwave. There is progress in every field of life and you just have to decide what is authentic for you and you prefer and what you regard as fake, doping or whatever type of "unfair advantage".

Not all have the same expectations or use the same rules. As long as the alternative is still avaliable (film photography) and the option to NOT photoshop your digital file, then Erwin's statement that "photography is dead" is hollow at best.

As usual his essay's are always good to stirr up a post 😀
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Are you saying that Jimi Hendrix's or Jimmy Smith's music is somehow "inferior" because it is "electronic"?

Dishonesty is a problem with people, not technology. There is no reason you cannot do "straight photography" with a digital camera. Certainly changing image tones was not a new with the advent of Photoshop. Certainly the practitioners of "straight photography" did manipulate their images, so how do you argue for a"clean sport?" And since the majority actually end up scanning an image and putting it in Photoshop, where is the digital/film divide? I could argue the original digital file is as pure as the original film. I think Puts is just romanitising film photography and it has nothing to do with the reality of photography.
 
greyhoundman said:
"a silver halide grain structure creates a final picture that can hardly be altered. "


What a can of tripe. He has obviuously never studied the work of Stalin's master darkroom people.

Can hardly be altered, yeah right.
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Well I also thought that, but they altered the prints and not the negatives.
And even in the eastern states people soon saw those alterations.
Í wonder if there are somewhere reequirements to document evidnce with film and not digitally as it is very hard to alter or manipulate the negatives of 135 films.

It's interesting that nowadays the traditional idea of craft is changing as most people are trying to do things themselves even a craft like goldsmithing seems to be something you can learn in a weekend seminar.

And about elitist artists:
The quote "I can do that" comes to my experience very often at the moment when people want to get things cheaper. That's a tough sentence for the aspiring artist/writer/whatever, as he has to sell many of his works very cheaply....


About quotes in foreign languges: I once found a sciebtific book in our city library "On the erotic customs in ancient India" the general content was in German, whenever ist started to get a bit closer to the subject the strted to write in English and the taboo passages were written in Latin"
 
So what must be the conclusion?

A lot was said about digital vs. analog. A lot of people wrote about the dead of real a.k.a. film based photography. Maybe as many people wrote their statements to photography as an art.

Some of them said interesting things, made me think about one thing or the other. Well, I´m sorry: Mr. Puts didn´t.

What do I believe? Going digital can change the way to take pictures, but it must not. "Real" photography can be digital, but it needs a print. Just 1´s and 0´s saved on a harddisk, CD or DVD are never photos - at least not to me.

Thomas
 
If the ease of creating "technically perfect" photographs was indeed the death knell of true photography, I would have thought that photography died in the early 1990's with auto-focus / auto-exposure film cameras.


If there is one great constant in human history, it's the perception that we're going to Hell in a handbasket. In Erwin's article, I'm seeing echoes of aristocratic rants against the growth of infantrymen with primitive firearms in the 16th century.

--Chris

P.S.
Thomas... Are slides thus not real photographs?
 
There's a quote I wish I could remember...can anyone help?
It addressed the perception that the best time for anything is always in the past and the best place is always some where other than where you are.

The older I get, the more I have to fight those feelings myself.
 
It is quite easy to see if a negative has been manipulated, not so a digital file.
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Well actually there is data attached to all digital files that is not easily messed with. I have worked with computer forensics people and there is a digital "paper trail" to everything you do. if the Legitimacy of a file will ever be called into question a smart digi photographer will burn an image to cd directly from camera. the date and time the photo was shot and last manipulated if manipulated at all is there.

oh yeah and negatives "get lost" all of the time does that mean the photo would not be taken seriously?

maybe it is because I grew up during the switch from many analog to digital devices took place but I am not scared for the art form. people still paint with water colors, still write with fountain pens. People don't get rid of a medium completely. there are still people messing with wax cylinders out there but it is not a good way of transporting data so it is not used.
If the quality of film exists (which I think it does) it will still get used.
 
I also don't think the medium is the art. because I have seen some beautiful images done with color and B&W photography. is one more or less photography than the other? Also aren't we just using tools? isn't the goal to get an image of what we see? I know that many of the photos I have taken that I don't like are just because they don't convey the message that I want. If there is a medium in which I am able to do that better I say bring it on.
I had a roommate who was a painter and would design some of his paintings in Photoshop before painting. At first I thought that this was cheating but after he explained that it was merely a tool that saved him paint and there was still a creative process going on I was easily convinced. I feel the same way about digital photography. there are new tools that can do new things but at the heart all it is, is someone capturing an event in life, if they choose to edit it to oblivion tha is their perogative.
 
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Hendrix inferior ? Don't think so !!

Hendrix inferior ? Don't think so !!

Finder said:
Are you saying that Jimi Hendrix's or Jimmy Smith's music is somehow "inferior" because it is "electronic"? .
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Hi Finder,
no I didn't 😀 . It's just different and it's a matter of preference. It obviously is just another example of a similar problem that Erwin addressed - which for me - does not exist. You can use a digital camera to take photos the same way you do it with film - other options but your choice.
The singeled out headline "Photography doesn't exist anymore" is BS. Don't imply that I share Erwin's point of view just because I tried to explain that I get his point - allthough it's a bit hidden in his typical style of phrases.
 
lushd said:
A purely personal view here - the standard of news photography is in terrible decline in the UK. I do wonder if this is to do with valuing speed of execution and distribution via electronic media over all else?
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Perhaps heretically, I do think the "bitstreaming" of the media process has something to do with the decline in photojournalism. The faster it gets spit out, the less significant the imagery. Also remember that the photographers caught in this media grinder now have to shoot, "process", edit and upload, all on their own. A decade or two previous, a PJ would shoot, hand off the film to be sent back, then either continue shooting or head home or the next assignment, depending. She or he would concentrate on the shot, not the rest of the process. Having the other stuff thrust upon you, with a tighter deadline to boot, means something has to give. The "good enough" is the enamy of the Good here, and this is where I really see "photography" being marginalized as a medium.

And the digital cameras themselves? I think some of them (at least) will likely improve significantly. For my temperament (and I stress that I'm talking about me here), they'll have to, because I really don't like working with any of them. I can use them, and have, and under certain circumstances will continue to, but for the impoortant work I do, I won't bother with them, as they do "change the game" for me, and not much for the better. It's not so much a "film-good/digital-bad" thing here, but simply the feeling I have that, technologically speaking, this digital baby is barely on its two feet, let alone off and running.


- Barrett
 
> Being less facetious, it isn't the same. A film user has hard copy and proof of authenticity in his negatives. A digital shooter doesn't.

Negatives can be faked. Look at a lot of 1950's "UFO" pictures and any science fiction movie. Manipulated digital images can be "found-out", compare the original's histogram with the photoshopped version. Compute a spatial gradient to find if an edge is "too sharp" or "too soft". Spectral response of the detector against the spectral content of the image. Computers are good at that sort of thing.

With all that said, for a true lover of film photography, digital cannot come close to the sense of satisfaction of producing a picture that is admired by family and friends. But most people just want an image. When the Disc camera came out in the 1980's, Kodak did a study showing most people shot one roll of film every 6 months. So they had non-replaceable batteries in the camera that were supposed to last 10 years. Most people that used instamatics now use digital point and shoots. Most pro's "have" to use digital to stay competitive.

But those of us that love real cameras and the look of film will be around for a long time. I don't worry about film disappearing anytime soon. I've heard that rumor for the past 20 years. And fretting over it just takes time away from shooting it.

So quit typing, and go take some more pictures.
 
Off on the wrong foot.

Off on the wrong foot.

Photography has NEVER been art. It is a craft. St. Ansel (Peace Be Upon Him) never really accepted that photogrpahy was any more than that. I met Cartier-Bresson in the late 70's at a workshop and I think his take on it was that photography is a sort of journalism of the human condition. My old man was formally trained in photography as a craft at the California College of Arts and Crafts in the 30's (you remember, WPA art and all that?), and he would never agree that photography was art.

He would be rolling in his grave if someone told him photography is anything but craft. I used to argue with him over this and I tried to sell him the idea that if an artist made photgraphs then photography could be art. He never bought it.

Photography is like basket weaving, pottery, wood craft, glass blowing and so on. It is not music, painting, sculpture, dance, poetry or architecture, theater, etc. It comes close to drawing and painting in appearance and form, but it is still just a craft.

All you would be artists (who most likely have never studied art) take your heads out the clouds and get back to throwing your pots and taking your snapshots.

Manifesto?! Ha! (And bah, humbug!). How about a slice of humble pie?
 
So...are we putting "art" above "craft", or what?

Side note: Andrew Wyeth has often been dismissed as "merely" a good craftsman, and not an artist (an opinion I seriously disagree with). And we are talking painting here. Does your viewpoint possibly make "digital art", in whatever form it takes, an oxymoron? I don't stay up nights worrying whether photography is or isn't Art (haven't we had enough arguments about this since way back in the last century?), but flat statements about what photography is – or isn't – cut little ice with me. Like any other art (or craft...why not both?), it's what you make it, what you put into it.

The important question to me is: is art easy, or hard? 🙂

- Barrett
 
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