a thought provoking blog post

Luke

Legend
Location
Milwaukee, WI USA
Name
Luke
I devoured a lot different bits and bobs about photography around the internets today. This post here was pretty thought provoking (and also features the excellent photos of our own Gubrz {and a couple from his young niece})

Gleanings: Man Ray, Photography purists, group f64 and the new limits of photography - F8 | Wedding documentary photography | Fort Lauderdale

I liked that the writer doesn't force his particular vision of what photography is down the the reader's throat (and still acknowledges it).
 
Thanks for calling attention to a good article Luke.And thank you,Eliot for your contribution to the art.The f64 group violated their own tenets right out of the gate by processing in B/W.
 
I see and enjoy (in small doses) the intent of this approach to photography. That the camera is just a short cut to the intended medium outcome. But my own approach is to capture the reality before me as accurately as possible. I can appreciate both, but have a personal preference, as most people do. But, it demonstrates what is possible today, with the digital medium, if you care to learn and work it.
 
I see and enjoy (in small doses) the intent of this approach to photography. That the camera is just a short cut to the intended medium outcome. But my own approach is to capture the reality before me as accurately as possible. I can appreciate both, but have a personal preference, as most people do. But, it demonstrates what is possible today, with the digital medium, if you care to learn and work it.

For me,it never seemed possible to capture a view of the world that we see,not just with our eyes, but with smell,sound and peripheral vision,onto one little slice of screen.We can attempt to interpret what we experience when we take the picture,the viewer then interprets what we give him.So reality is, at least partly out the door to begin with.By selecting out a partial view of a whole scene,we are injecting an artistic view of our world that is not realistic.Taking a picture of the beautiful flowing stream and choosing not to include the trash in the shallows is not showing the reality of the scene.How far beyond reality we want to take it is our call.
 
For me,it never seemed possible to capture a view of the world that we see,not just with our eyes, but with smell,sound and peripheral vision,onto one little slice of screen.We can attempt to interpret what we experience when we take the picture,the viewer then interprets what we give him.So reality is, at least partly out the door to begin with.By selecting out a partial view of a whole scene,we are injecting an artistic view of our world that is not realistic.Taking a picture of the beautiful flowing stream and choosing not to include the trash in the shallows is not showing the reality of the scene.How far beyond reality we want to take it is our call.

^this - just by making the decision as to what to include in your frame, you are imposing your vision. As such, it can be argued that a photo is never an accurate representation of reality.

I found the article very interesting particularly the part about visualizing what the finished image will look like when you shoot it. I think that is one advantage of settling on a singular or limited set of processing styles.
 
There is documentary photography, shooting it like it is and I don't mean professionals staging children on the street with semi-automatic guns in a bad neighborhood or war zone, but you and I shooting what we saw on a particular day like a colorful fruit stand or demonstrators or a woman in a nice coat and boots--- and there is interpretative art photography. You see a beautiful sunset in the sky over the local junkyard and you are reminded of the majesty of the world but to include the junkyard will inspire a lot of negativity from those who view your photos so instead you separate the chaff, cropping, and show only the treetops and the multi-hued sky so that others see more easily and without obstruction, what you saw. Processing afterwards whether it's just a little tweaking of contrast and noise reduction or converting to black and white-- or full blown HDR illustration with cross-processing, cropping, etc.. is just further means to expressing what you see, realistic or illuminated. Who is the real purist, the one that shoots a scene and lets the camera process it calling it realism or the one that tries to convey what they felt at that moment by altering/enhancing their image-- also calling it realism. Hey that sunset was glorious.. who cares if the junkyard was below.. look up and revel in it!
 
It's unfortunate he seems not to have quite a thorough grasp of photographic history, or perhaps I missed the bit where he mentioned that Adams later rejected the f64 group's approach he had once espoused.

I think "visualisation" has been around as long as visual art hasn't it? It's only latterly - with the advent of digital photography - that the idea one can take photographs without intent and create the image later from the base material has become widespread.

Adams (and Weston and White) were all proponents of "visualisation" - the three Adams books (The Negative, The Camera & The Print) are worth reading - or just skimming - even if you're not a film photographer.
 
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