NickTrop
Mentor
Yes. You get it. Thanks for this add, a huge factor regarding my original point. The SW keeps changing because of the SW business model. The output? The same, but you keep having to re-go-through the learning curve every 5 years to achieve the same results... treading water, never growing... Add this to the "too many many manipulable variables" position and we see the literally hopeless prospect of photography as an evocative art towards the future. Artists must master the tools of the trade to the point of being extension of themselves, which is clearly an impossibility in the digital world given what Barrett and I have so astutely pointed out.
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Harry Lime
Practitioner
PS and a lot of the other software isn't THAT complex. You also do not need to relearn PS from scratch every time they release a new version. The fundamentals remain the same and only a few features are added, that are relatively simple to learn.
If anything is an impediment to artistic expression with PS it is the user hostile, overly complex, clumsy and ancient interface. Adobe is a victim of it's own success. I'm certain they would like to upgrade the GUI and workflow from it's 1990's roots, but they would be skinned alive by their diehard user base if they did.
But regardless, no matter how complex program is, it only does what you want it to do. Nothing more and nothing less. An artist has a vision in their mind and that is the result they will dial in with the software.
Take a bow and give yourself a pat on the back.
I agree that you need to master your tools, but there is no piece of software on the market that is so overly complex that a person with an average IQ couldn't master it in a reasonable amount of time. Case point being the millions of professional photographers around the world performing this very task every day.
20 years ago I was using fractal models to generate synthetic images. All written in FORTRAN running on an Intel Hypercube. It was an 80MFlop personal computer, used four array processors and cost $80K. It took days to generate my "synthetic images". I had to tell people that they were not looking at real clouds. No camera involved, just mathematical models turned into images, cranked out with a computer.
You can make a lot of things look like an image to a human. I could write a FORTRAN program to analyze your image and determine that you did not use film.
What I do not understand, is why anyone would bother to make a digital image look as if it were done with film?
We spent a lot of time, effort, and money making Digital Sensors put out smooth images. It wasn't easy! You don't even need to run non-uniformity correction and store data from calibration sources into each frame anymore!
Are photographers that use digital just afraid to let go of concepts like grain? Why keep the pretense?
As far as mastering the tools of the digital trade- I had my own image processing and graphics software in the Mid 80s. I wrote it. Of course, I got paid good money to write it.
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40oz
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I understand. But I also know that in software you can identify what is being done and modify the output to match expectations. The user is going to assume that since it is a digital process it is inherently more accurate than other processes. And from my perspective in computer science, I know this is a mistaken belief. In other words, I'm strongly skeptical of the inherent accuracy of consumer digital imaging systems.
That isn't to say I am a blind adherent to the color accuracy of all films - we know films have intentional variations in color response, beyond just the limitations of chemistry. If it wasn't intentional, there would be no difference between Velvia and any other E-6 film. Or Tri-X and HP-5.
And in thinking about what you wrote (the entire post, not just the color accuracy comments) I realized that perhaps one reason that you, I and others find digital images less pleasing is the fact that films are all probably a result of more subjective aesthetic testing than a purely by-the-numbers analysis that guide digital sensor/image processing design.
If you compare the product of an entirely functional or math-based approach to the results of an entirely aesthetic process, one is likely to find the aesthetic process generates a more pleasing result. A Honda Element compared to a Ferrari F430, for example, shows the difference between A) solving a simple transportation problem in the simplest and most straightforward manner and B) creating a vehicle that isn't intended to do anything but entertain.
Or to put it another way, wine vs. grape-flavored cough syrup
It's a concept I hadn't considered until I read and thought about your post.
NickTrop
Mentor
Time will certainly prove me correct, and you incorrect. You will see that 100 years from now the work of Ansel Adams and others from the film era will be viewed with reverence, the evocative nature of their body of work unmatched by digital "artists", who will be at best "one hit wonders" because they are unable to master - again MASTER being the key term, and therefore develop and sustain a compelling and evocative signature style for the reasons I cited.
Picture a highly computerized automated kitchen, like in the Jetsons cartoon, that introduces technology that introduces an overwhelming number of variables at the chef's control. What chance would the chef have to match the greats in culinary arts who spent a lifetime to only master a few techniques and control only a few process variables to the point of complete mastery?
It is for this reason that digital is now in the process of destroying photography as an art. That day is approaching rapidly. It may be already here. Where you are certainly and clearly wrong, and I am certainly and clearly correct - as any fool can plainly see, is that you confuse proficiency - even a high level thereof, with complete and utter mastery. You can not master all the process variables introduced in SW like Photoshop like Ansel Adams mastered developing and darkroom technique. Ansel Adams would be an unknown, for this very reason, if he was born a photographer in the digital era. All those attempting to match Adams - or truly produce photographic art in the digital era, who chose to work in non-traditional modern "Photoshop" and with pixels instead of film, are doomed for this very reason. Their careers will be wasted in futility as we collectively continue to turn to the masters who worked with wet process and silver FILM into the future. The fools will scratch their heads and remain completely unaware why this is so. It is happening already. When film and the darkroom is lost, photographic art will cease to exist.
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emraphoto
Mentor
the "art" of producing a great image has little to do with the medium in my opinion. the "art" is in the relationships, the trust, the vision and the nitty gritty it takes to get oneself in the position to produce the works.
i don't buy into the silver being the imperative link between depressing the shutter and the art form.
i don't buy into the silver being the imperative link between depressing the shutter and the art form.
> You can not master all the process variables introduced in SW like Photoshop
You just don't need too. That would be foolish. You would be driven by a software engineer's view of every possible process that can be performed on an image. Better to master the techniques that produce the image that you like.
If you like film and darkrooms, stick with it. A lot of great images are created with brush and paint; film, paper, and chemicals; and CCD's and computers. You cannot, of course, produce art with CMOS. That's a joke. Imagine the sense of humor that the Photoshop engineers have with some of their subroutines.
You just don't need too. That would be foolish. You would be driven by a software engineer's view of every possible process that can be performed on an image. Better to master the techniques that produce the image that you like.
If you like film and darkrooms, stick with it. A lot of great images are created with brush and paint; film, paper, and chemicals; and CCD's and computers. You cannot, of course, produce art with CMOS. That's a joke. Imagine the sense of humor that the Photoshop engineers have with some of their subroutines.
NickTrop
Mentor
Time will prove me correct, and dissenters incorrect. As stated earlier, and for the reasons I astutely pointed out, digital will reduce photographic art to a trickle of "one off" accidents. Not only is the extent to which you disagree with my position the extent to which you are wrong, but also the extent to which your artistic endeavors, if you choose to work with digital/SW instead of traditional techniques, will be exercises in pure unadulterated futility. When the day comes that traditional techniques no longer exist, it is the day photography ceases to exist as an art form.
benlees
Well-known
I think history has already wiped the above argument into the waste bin of pure comedy. The Brownie and 35mm (for "toy" cameras) are the usual examples that are used to suggest new formats don't really kill off this very hard to get a grasp on concept that is PHOTOGRAPHIC ART. The medium seems only to matter in the ego of photographers. The audience does not care.
NickTrop
Mentor
You, of course don't have to use all of the process variables introduced in Photoshop. But you will. You are hardwired that way and there is no way to escape. You will pull up this slider or that... Try this plug in or that in an endless cycle, as opposed to ever refining how you develop and how you print. Look again at Gibson. Great photographer, right? Decades of experience. What does he use? TriX and Rodinal and a very set processing method. He recently admitted to using digital scans but only for a small portion of tweaks as a convenience over the darkroom - as I recall (don't quote me). But for the most part, it's TriX, Rodinal, and a rigid process he refined, refined, refined until he mastered all the FEW process variables over an extensive career lasting decades and 10's of thousands of frames. Since no other process variables other than a handful are available, that's all that's needed, and no others exist, and those that do exist are the critical ones, that is what is mastered. There is no other choice. With more variables - endless variables, available you will NOT be able to resist the temptation to expriment. Therefore, your limited time will be diluted over gaining "proficiency" of many and importantly ever changing process variables, rather than achieving mastery over a handfull of needed ones. To say you won't do this is delusional. You will. It's unavoidable, it's a trap, and your output will suffer. Heed my warning if you have aspirations of ever becoming an photographic artist. You will also be unable to replicate your process, due in part to the endless software revisions, addition, new CCDs and the ceaseless churn necessitated by the electronics and software industry business models... As an artist you will be rowing with one ore, around and around in circles because of it, never moving forward. Stagnant. The digital process destroys the ability for the artist to achieve consistency and mastery needed to elevate your work to the level of art. Disagree with this assessment? You are among the lost, sorry to say.
As for the "Brownie" and old formats dying off, your argument is a non-starter:
1. The Brownie was never intended as a tool to create photographic art. Neither Ansel Adams nor any other photographic artist used a Brownie. That said, the Brownie was more capable of creating photographic art than any digital camera because it requires the use of traditional processes.
2. No new format introduced the number of unmanageable and ever changing - and therefore unmasterable, process variables. Not only that, the critical ones are lost, buried somewhere. Your counter argument is a non-starter.
You too are among the lost.
As for the "Brownie" and old formats dying off, your argument is a non-starter:
1. The Brownie was never intended as a tool to create photographic art. Neither Ansel Adams nor any other photographic artist used a Brownie. That said, the Brownie was more capable of creating photographic art than any digital camera because it requires the use of traditional processes.
2. No new format introduced the number of unmanageable and ever changing - and therefore unmasterable, process variables. Not only that, the critical ones are lost, buried somewhere. Your counter argument is a non-starter.
You too are among the lost.
NickTrop
Mentor
You too are among the lost. Review my posts on this subject, heed them - blindly if you must, and be saved.
NickTrop
Mentor
HCB famously used what focal length? Why? Answer: he mastered it over a career. That's just ONE process variable - focal length. In order to achieve the necessary level of mastery to hope to produce art, you must focus on a few key critical process variables, not experiment with the endless and ever changing array introduced through software and the digital process.
40oz
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I agree with the gist of what you are saying. However, to put the lie to the idea that one mustn't experiment lest one risk's never mastering anything, HCB was a photographer of renown early in his career, long before he had spent 20 years mastering the 50mm lens and 35mm film.
But I think most would agree that mastering a limited palette of tools is a more successful path to mastery than attempting to be adept at all tools ever invented.
New features of photoshop aren't automatically destroying the ability of people to master their palette. Many of the additions version to version are workflow modifications rather than new inventions/tools. It takes only a few cursory tries to discover the new filter in photoshop does nothing for me. It's only the neophyte that feels compelled to try each and every one on each and every image.
It's kind of like a box of 8 crayons vs. 128. As a child I longed for more options in the crayon box. Once I had my precious and coveted 128 colors, I found that perhaps 64 or even 32 would have been more than adequate, but my personal required/desired 32 crayons weren't available in a box of 32. I needed the box of 128 to have the complete subset I used regularly. I wasn't the only one - looking at the boxes of others told the tale - the basic red, blue, brown, & black were nubs, while the silver and copper crayons typically were hardly used. More options are a good thing, even if we ignore most of the new options. Someone else might well exclaim, "At long last, the only tool I have ever needed!" And their vision will surprise the world in a way that never could be realized without that new invention.
Kind of like the invention of the airplane and the birth of acrobatic flyers, or the invention of photography and the birth of photographers. Or the written language and poetry. The list of innovations that set free a new art form is never going to end. And it never seems to negate the art that came before.
back alley
IMAGES
kirk - who is that pointy eared *******?
mccoy - i don't know...but i like him!
mccoy - i don't know...but i like him!
emraphoto
Mentor
actually i have read what you have said and find it the realm of punters really.
semordnilap
Well-known
It's funny... I actually get that feeling in real, moving life when I see some people with too much makeup, or who are excessively dressed-up, or both. It's amazing how overdoing things can make them seem so tawdry, whether in a magazine, in a film, or on the street.
Yet I wonder if that's an aesthetic choice on my part, too. My comment before, about aesthetic expectation, really wasn't meant to be glib. We know that our eyes and brain perceive color and light in a very different way from films/sensors–we are much more adaptable at color balancing, for example. So to find any ideal color balance in a photograph, we're looking to reproduce a certain relationship of colors that we perceive as normal, or balanced. However, we run into an issue. Because we don't always expect photographs to look like the ideal color balance we see with our eyes, we tend to desire a specific 'look' in photographs, something that makes them 'photographs'. This, I see, is the film/digital issue. I think we are accustomed to looking at images and categorizing them into styles based on their color balance, general compositional approach, and a host of other factors. For how many years has this been done with only film? We are trained to expect that certain look, to the point of preference and comfortability with the image, which conveys "I am photograph–you may consume me as such."
I wasn't around, but some here may have been... what was the transition from B&W to color like? In journalism, in art, in magazines? Were there complaints of color being 'too close to reality'? Of being too 'everyday' to achieve the level of abstraction necessary to communicate the essence of things? I don't know the answers, but I have a hunch. And I think, from one side, it is the same with digital. Aesthetic preferences do change over time, and differ between cultures...
If we return to the issue of color vs. B&W, and here I'm only guessing, didn't it take the creation of new 'looks' by new photographers to change perceptions? With this idea of 'look', I return to Bill's initial point from his first post:
I think these individual 'looks' or 'qualities' can later become associated with a particular technology (or style–different from 'look'), perhaps even be grouped together with that certain technology as an organizing principle, but without those individual 'looks', the technology (or style) would neither have made a name for itself nor have worked its way into our psyche. I still remember the first time I saw certain images, and years later those images still define something for me. Frankly, some are the reasons I started using rf's in the first place–I'm sure the same is true for many here. But humans can make art with ANYTHING, and by and by some are bound to make something good with each!
Harry Lime
Practitioner
You make some good points, 40oz.
You know, I can't find much work done by Ansel Adams in color. All of the prints available are monochrome.
Does that mean that color photography is not art? In a hundred years will people declare that artistic photography can only be done in black and white?
http://www.anseladams.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWCATS&Category=14
If you can't figure out how to use a computer then stick to your darkroom. To announce that you have to learn every trick in Photoshop because we are "hardwired" that way- another stupid statement. A professional uses the tools to get the job done. Not to play with the little pointy-clicky things like a baby with toy over the crib. Give some people credit for a brain, and not declare everyone is a digital lemming.
Does that mean that color photography is not art? In a hundred years will people declare that artistic photography can only be done in black and white?
http://www.anseladams.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWCATS&Category=14
If you can't figure out how to use a computer then stick to your darkroom. To announce that you have to learn every trick in Photoshop because we are "hardwired" that way- another stupid statement. A professional uses the tools to get the job done. Not to play with the little pointy-clicky things like a baby with toy over the crib. Give some people credit for a brain, and not declare everyone is a digital lemming.
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Good news. I found the code that generates the synthetic cloud imagery.
This seems like a good thread to upload it to. Wrote it in 1988. I still use the same FORTRAN compiler that I used for it. I still use the same assembly language drivers for the screen I/O. It's great for writing code for embedded processors running Intel architecture. And I get paid about 3x what I got when I first started using it over 20 years ago. And writing image processing code in the 1980s paid well. Why use anything else?
This seems like a good thread to upload it to. Wrote it in 1988. I still use the same FORTRAN compiler that I used for it. I still use the same assembly language drivers for the screen I/O. It's great for writing code for embedded processors running Intel architecture. And I get paid about 3x what I got when I first started using it over 20 years ago. And writing image processing code in the 1980s paid well. Why use anything else?
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Mcary
Well-known
Agree!
If a photographer needs to spend hours playing around with a photograph in Photoshop or some other image editing program the problem isn't with the program the problem is with them. Simple put they either know little or nothing the most basic areas of photography such as exposure and/or composition or their just mindlessly pressing the shutter hoping to get a half way decent photograph through pure dumb luck. On the other hand for people who have clear vision of what they want to portray with their work Photoshop and/or other image editing programs are simply a small intuitive step in the processes that involves very small rather then dramatic changes. In other words if its a lot easier to achieve a given result if one has some basic idea of the final results from the beginning of the process, that being when they press the shutter.