Virtual Photography

[Taneli]

I have noticed this coming strong now.

"Virtual photography is an emerging art form specializing in photos taken inside a video game or virtual environment."

Discover Virtual Photography on Flickr

Flickr is home to EVERY kind of photography, and that covers a vast range of subjects, styles, and categories. Today we’re excited to introduce a new kind of content category for the bulk uploading…

blog.flickr.net

Their photo contest of this year also included this category.

I feel a little fragmented about this. Don't know what to think. What do you think?

 

[Grinsaround]

To me “virtual” just means a replacement for real. Not conflicted at all about it. Fake, imitation photography in my opinion.

 

[Taneli]

yes, my biggest issue is that they call it "photography". I have no problem with the art form itself, but it shouldn't have been called "photography". Don't have a better word, pictures? art? "Virtual Art", that would work!

I think it is really fun doing "Virtual Art", I mean, back in the days I used to raytrace images, it could take whole days before the image was done on your computer. After spending several days constructing it before you didn't even knew how it looked like. But now it is like this, we use maybe a virtual environment, in many games now there is "Photo modes", where you can pause the game, setup your scene, lightning, depth of field, poses, whatever. To make your screenshot look really cool. In some games you even do everything from scratch, not even playing, just setup the scene anywhere and do your thing. Here is an example from last years blockbuster 'Cyberpunk 2077'. Is this "Photography"!?

 

[JensM]

Digital pop-art of sort, not photography atleast not was is normally understood as photography.

My character using a camera in-game in Red Dead Redemtion2, is about as much photography, as it is murder, when the same character shoots up a saloon...