The Photographer as Artist

[CameraQuest]

Maybe its just me, but when I work with film and print my own analog prints, I feel connected to the final images as an art form.

In contrast with digital images and digital printing, with digital photos I feel the same as if I am working on a word.doc document.
Sure the image is there, but I feel no personal connection to it.

Analog or Digital, does it makes a difference as far as art?

 

[bmattock]

Not to me, but I am sure that others feel as you do.

 

[oftheherd]

This will probably break down into a digital versus film thread.

But to answer your question, I think it depends on the person. Many people still enjoy or even prefer traditional printing over digital. Many prefer digital. My son-in-law enjoys both.

I personally rather prefer film and traditional darkroom. I only use a 6 MP P&S (and now sometimes my cell phone in digital. They both work for that. But something serious (at least to me), I prefer film and darkroom printing. I just wish I could do more of it.

 

[back alley]

kodachrome...

 

[Ko.Fe.]

I used to be computer graphic artist, officially for two years. I never feel as an artist looking at my work on TV screen. I don't know how another few millions viewers did feel about it 🙂 The work on graphic stations itself didn't made me feel as an artist. But I remember my colleagues with art education and it was very artistic atmosphere to work among them and learn from them. They were and are traditional artists, architects, musicians. I miss them here...
These days, manipulating with images in photoshop and combining them in layers guided by your imagination could lead to results worth of the art nomination. But I'm still not finding it to be "atmospheric". Instead, I learned (still learning) darkroom printing. And this is where I feel naturally creative. And this is where my vision is meeting my results. I like OOF, mirky, lith prints. 🙂

 

[jsrockit]

I'm connected to my photographs from a content / framing point of view. That is where the art of photography happens for me. It's that act / process that is most important to me. Everything else is just finishing it as a final photo. I like the output better from an inkjet better than a c-print (I do mostly color). If anything, digital has allowed me to do every step of the process at home AND be efficient (i.e. keeping up with what I shoot). I was never enamored with the darkroom (color or B&W) anyway... I don't have romantic notions about film being magical (both CAN be of course). The only thing I like about film better than digital is the cameras. Film cameras just feel better in the hand. That said, I've never used a 8x10" camera and I could see how that could be magical in its usage / output.

 

[Swift1]

I imagine it depends on what you learned on. I have made a few darkroom prints, but really learned most of what I know by shooting film, scanning, and inkjet printing. I feel like I put a fair amount of work into my photos getting them to the point of ready for final print, and I take pride in the final print.
I imagine that if I was able to do darkroom printing, I would feel differently and would enjoy it. The value of an inkjet print can't really match a well done darkroom print.

 

[back alley]

I'm connected to my photographs from a content / framing point of view. That is where the art of photography happens for me. It that act / process that is most important to me. Everything else is just finishing it as a final photo. I like the output better from an inkjet better than a c-print (I do mostly color). If anything, digital has allowed me to do every step of the process at home AND be efficient (i.e. keeping up with what I shoot). I was never enamored with the darkroom (color or B&W) anyway... I don't have romantic notions about film being magical (both CAN be of course). The only thing I like about film better than digital is the cameras. Film cameras just feel better in the hand. That said, I've never used a 8x10" camera and I could see how that could be magical in its usage / output.

exactly how i feel about it too!

 

[sebastel]

no difference, however it seems easier for me to get what I intended with film. digital is just a bit different, and requires more effort.

 

[Vics]

kodachrome...

Oh baby!!!

 

[MIkhail]

Maybe its just me, but when I work with film and print my own analog prints, I feel connected to the final images as an art form.

In contrast with digital images and digital printing, with digital photos I feel the same as if I am working on a word.doc document.
Sure the image is there, but I feel no personal connection to it.

Analog or Digital, does it makes a difference as far as art?

Analog or Digital feel the same to me.

Try asking the same question here
http://www.burnmagazine.org/
and observe the different feedback.
Wonder why? 🙂

 

[daveleo]

It depends on how physically (intimately?) you feel connected to your computer. If you don't bond with it they way you bond with your cameras and lenses, then that aspect of image making will not feel "artful".

(NOTE: Stephen, if digital editing gave me the same feeling as using MSWord, I'd never make another digital image.)

EDIT: In life, I made computer models of things and did shock, stress and transient heat transfer analysis. I have always felt a great deal of art involved in doing that; at least as much as making pictures.

 

[Pioneer]

Over the years I have personally struggled with this. I learned in a darkroom so I feel that I should prefer to work there. But the only time I work in a darkroom anymore is with large format film, and most of the time that is doing contact printing, not enlarging.

I am not sure I have really come to any strong personal conclusions but my actions seem to indicate that I am voting with my feet even if my mind still wants to struggle.

I shoot film and develop it in the old manner, then I scan the negative, and print on a nice inkjet printer. I do own some very nice digital cameras but I shoot them only rarely, then mostly based on convenience, not preference.

But to answer the question, I am not sure I feel like an artist when I am sitting at my computer screen. However I do occasionally feel that artistic magic when looking through a viewfinder. The trick, of course, comes when I can make that same magic come out of the printer. That magic rarely seems to print direct from my original photo, so the technician does have to do some work with the computer to get the photo from the camera to the printer.

 

[Bill Clark]

To me, it depends. Not really, it's digital all the way for me!

What is art?

Is it art when someone like Vermeer may have used the camera obscura?

For me, gosh, I sure like all the things I can accomplish during the process stage with a computer and software. Much better than the darkroom. The darkroom is mostly static limited by the negative and very few tools to change things. So here I Am and that's it! Maybe the camera doesn't lie but I look to create a good story with my photographs and a little change here and there folks like. Maybe some folks lie a little about themselves! Embellish that just a little!

Where, to my way of thinking, the computer turns the image into a canvas and, with software, I can accomplish much as most painters as I can do things, like the old masters and put things the way I see them not just what the camera sees with film.

With that said, scanning film then puts the ball into the digital court.

I can accomplish what folks in the image want to see of themselves. Didn't/don't painters do this? Poetic license!

 

[mfogiel]

I don't make any digital photography.

 

[Nowhereman]

...Analog or Digital, does it makes a difference as far as art?

If you see an oil painting and an acrylic one, are you going to feel the latter one is not art just because it's not oil? If you paint are you going feel more connected to the painting as art because you painted it in oil and not in acrylic? If you answer "yes" to either of these questions you're simply confusing your enjoyment of the painting process with the artistic quality of the painting — or, in your case, simply confusing the enjoyment of the photographic process with the artistic quality of the photograph.

Ultimately, if you're an artist you'll paint in the medium that you prefer, or the one that is more practical for you at the time; the same thing with photography. Whether something is art is a matter of whether the artist thinks it is. Process, and how you feel about the process, is not what makes art.

 

[Keith]

The main difference for me is with a roll of film I may get a few keepers but I'm also owner of the rejects because they live on the same strip of celluloid and will always be there. I don't have to keep my digital dross ... I can single the little devils out and eliminate them. 😀

Seriously though ... it makes no difference to me and I feel no less of an artist when working with one medium or the other because art shouldn't be about the medium. It's about achieving a result that expresses your vision in the way you imagined before you engaged the process.

 

[Canyongazer]

I feel it ought not matter,
and yet...and yet...

There is an undeniable sensory difference in the print's creation (not so much the "capture")

The glow of the screen, the hum of the computer cannot, to me, compare well to the inspiring, comforting, atmosphere of
sloshing Dektol, a sinus clearing glacial acetic acid stop bath, pungent thiosulfate fixer, gurgling print washer, glowing OC safelight.

it might well be, as some have suggested, simply a matter of "where and when you started."

 

[CMur12]

Regardless of how I feel about it, it is clear to me intellectually that analog and digital photography are both equally valid paths to art. Each has its own particular strengths and each is a paradigm unto itself.

I'm 64 years old, so my most basic concepts of photography developed around film and old mechanical cameras that you set and focused yourself. My first major technological upset was autofocus. So, I'm still emotionally wedded to film. We used to see the art in film photography determined largely by how one dealt with film's limitations. Much of the appeal here to me is in the tools, the approach, and the tangibility of film.

Digital image creation allows photography to become the almost completely plastic medium that other arts, such as painting and sculpting, have always been. I see great potential here, but I personally haven't been able to take it in.

I'm still trying to get back into photography after a long dry spell. I see myself shooting film and scanning it, eventually adding digital capture to the mix. At present, I can't imagine ever abandoning film altogether.

- Murray

 

[bmattock]

However I feel about it is the way everyone should. I am RFF. You will fall in line or be shunned.