Pure photography or art?

[Allyance]

the “Ansel“ point is one carefully to consider - thank you for that.

It is unfair to say Ansel Adams did it all in the darkroom. His 'control' starts long before the shutter clicks. He would study his subject for hours or even days to choose proper lighting. Once he was set on his composition, he then very carefully calculate his exposure, deciding how much shadow detail and control of highlights he wanted (better know as the Zone System), he then controlled the development of the negative to complete the Zone process. For him the printing of the negatives was just as much a part of his total process. I am fortunate to have a real photographic picture taken by him a printed by an approved student at the University of New Mexico. All I can say is that it is flawless. One has to decide whether a photograph is be a forensic record or an artistic result of the photographer's abilities. Today's hardware technology and software programs allow many more people to achieve their desired result in a lot less time.

 

[Clix Pix]

I am not sure - most RAW/DAM programs include his function. And it seems that there is a market for presets - which include LUTs to produce a certain look.
I personally have extracted the LUT of a photo taken some interval into the “golden hour“ more or less (🥳😂🤣) at the same spot as another, applied it to the other, and I like it much more... “color matching” photos seems to be quite common, or isn’t it?

"Color matching" photos? You've lost me, which suggests that, no, this is not common in stills photography, but I'm betting that it is in videography.

 

[Clix Pix]

This is exactly what made me wonder if this is the new norm.
It's fine to me if those are the rules for that contest, but when I want to see beautiful garden or landscape pictures I'm looking for the real thing, the one I see and make me wish to go to some places because I saw the photos.
I love art and admire the work done but I think the label "photographer" is misleading.
Art photography would be more appropriate .
Maybe I'm just naive.

"Overcooked" images do not please me at all and it is why several years ago when suddenly HDR became a "thing", and it seemed as though everyone and their cousin was shooting photos and their subsequent processing was OTT, I grew to detest it very quickly. That is not at all reflecting the natural world and what we see when we are in a flower garden or looking over a spacious landscape. Thankfully the HDR craze seems to have died down a bit in general, but obviously it has not gone away totally -- at least for those people who were submitting images to that particular competition.

Yes, many of those photos in that contest are what I would call "digital art," rather than "digital photography."

 

[mollyc]

In my opinion (for whatever that's worth), it makes things less real, less genuine, that the "raindrops," whether pure water or water-and-glycerin, were applied to the leaves. In other words, what would be "real" or "authentic" and the scene reflecting what was reality at the time would be actual rain drops and if the photographer had taken the shot very soon after a rainstorm. It looks to me as though that is not the case here, and that indeed the artist "styled" the photograph by adding something in that wasn't really there in the first place in order to achieve a specific effect. That's fine, it is always the prerogative of the artist to do whatever they are going to do with their image.... And, yes, sometimes something like adding a few "raindrops" or doing something else prior to shooting the image does make for a more interesting and compelling image.

DXO PhotoLab 5 includes LUTS but I will have to admit that I've never bothered investigating just how I would use that function (feature?). Somehow, somewhere along the line I did get the distinct impression that they were more related to videography and cinematography than to still photography. Interesting that this isn't the case.

Okay, you can dial back the snark on the bolded, because I am genuinely trying to have a conversation with you and the rest. If I didn't want a conversation, I would have started with snark. Your use of quotations all over the place don't indicate that you are open to considering alternate points of view. And when talking about art, it's all subjective anyway. So if you want to be closed minded, fine. Then don't participate in the discussion. I asked for your opinion, so of course I think it's worth something (at least I originally did...now I'm not so sure, so there is some snark back at you, stooping to your level).

That out of the way, I do wonder if some of the disparity in how we all view photography is somewhat generational. I have been drawn to photography because it is art without drawing. I don't shoot to document, I shoot to feel. Most of the photographers I follow are also in the "shoot to feel" side as well. Here are a few photographers I follow:

https://www.instagram.com/meg_nlo/ (she is also a Profoto and Sigma ambassador)

https://www.instagram.com/nicolekristinphoto/ (she is on Nikon's 100 Photographers to watch list)

https://www.instagram.com/smittenandswoon/ (she is a Profoto ambassador)

https://www.instagram.com/therealdanaleigh/

I think if you are using light and shadow in an interesting way and you capture it with your camera, it makes you a photographer. (Actually I think it's much more basic than that. If you use a camera, you are a photographer.) The photographers I linked all do that, but they also have very distinct editing styles, and their voice and style is very much their own based on editing.

Many here seem to think that editing is just an afterthought, something to just clone out some sticks that you can't move out of the way. I maintain that a well balanced photographer shoots AND edits with intention.

These photographers aren't just documenting things, they are using light and shadow and stylized clothing/locations to make fine art with a camera. This is no less photography than documenting something, but it is very different.

 

[mollyc]

A corollary to my post above would be, why does photography have to be real? Why can't it be art for art's sake? If it isn't billed as photojournalism, it should be whatever the photographer wants it to be.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

It is unfair to say Ansel Adams did it all in the darkroom. His 'control' starts long before the shutter clicks. He would study his subject for hours or even days to choose proper lighting. Once he was set on his composition, he then very carefully calculate his exposure, deciding how much shadow detail and control of highlights he wanted (better know as the Zone System), he then controlled the development of the negative to complete the Zone process. For him the printing of the negatives was just as much a part of his total process. I am fortunate to have a real photographic picture taken by him a printed by an approved student at the University of New Mexico. All I can say is that it is flawless. One has to decide whether a photograph is be a forensic record or an artistic result of the photographer's abilities. Today's hardware technology and software programs allow many more people to achieve their desired result in a lot less time.

Yes, and you’ll hear this sort of study and planning performed by the more accomplished landscape photographers of today—they scout out key locations online, hike out shooting locations by day, do research on where the sun will set (this is where technology and smartphones make things much easier to calculate), and then return at the key time to get the scene they were looking for. About the only thing they leave to chance is atmospheric conditions. At popular destinations (like National Parks), they’ll get to their spot well before others try to show up so they have the ideal location reserved. It certainly still takes dedication, but the technology is helpful with the planning. Being able to check your shot or use the mirrorless camera’s ability to live preview an exposure should help significantly when on the scene.

 

[katbel]

A corollary to my post above would be, why does photography have to be real? Why can't it be art for art's sake? If it isn't billed as photojournalism, it should be whatever the photographer wants it to be.

I agree with you till a point: you need to tell up front if you are doing or publishing art or photography.
The contest International Garden Photographer of the Year is misleading because you think it would be photography
when it's not: it's art-ography.

P.s. The name has been used already I just found out: artography.com even if Siri doesn't know it and keep trying to correct it

 

[Clix Pix]

Molly, the part that you bolded was not intended to be snarky. Read it again. It was not aimed at anyone other than myself, inasmuch as by using that phrase I was being self-deprecating. I can be very opinionated but I also realize that these opinions may not be welcomed or of value to anyone else.

I agree with you that yes, along with individual personalities and traits there is definitely a generational thing going on here with approaches to life and to photography, and while I am at the older end of the span many other members on here, including you, are at the younger end or somewhere in the middle. Each generation has its own approach to things. I am at the very end of the "Silent Generation" cohort, which is people born from 1928-1945, which encompasses world war years, too. We have more in common with each other and with many of the members of the generation who came immediately before us than we do the baby boomers who came along right after us at the end of WWII. I still remember how striking the differences were during my college years between my freshman year and my senior year. All of a sudden the kids who were coming right behind us had different attitudes towards things and were actively speaking out about their concerns in a way which most of the members of my cohort simply didn't do. It was that noticeable!

Rather than allowing myself to get off on a sociological or historical tangent - clicking the "pause" button! OK, back to photography. I sometimes shoot to document, sometimes shoot to explore what happens when I approach something in a different way, sometimes just to celebrate colors and the interplay of light. Sure, in the past there have been times when I've documented celebrations and gatherings of family and friends, but that hasn't been much of a focus for the last several years.

"I maintain that a well balanced photographer shoots AND edits with intention."

Oh, OK, that's fine. For you. I've always known I am not well-balanced anyway! 😀

I don't "shoot to feel" or to evoke feelings in others or usually with intention, I just shoot, usually spontaneously and off-the-cuff when something strikes me as an interesting idea or if I see some action going on among the birds on the lake. I like sparking the tiny little bit of creativity which lives within me. I don't take a measured, methodical approach to shooting, I rarely plan out ahead of time what I'm going to shoot or how I'm going to shoot it. I like to just grab the camera and a lens when an idea comes to mind or when it's a nice afternoon for a walk around the lake. I'm not in this to earn money, I'm not in this to impress people, I have no images hanging on gallery walls anywhere, and that's fine with me. I just like to take pictures.

Sometimes I spend all of five minutes shooting, other times I may spend an hour with a subject. I like to present something different, I like to share something which I find interesting, and I don't like to bore people with the same-old, same-old time after time after time. I'm not building a portfolio. I definitely never have considered myself an artist, and as a photographer I'm just average. As we've discussed before, there is clearly a difference in our viewpoints on who could be described as a photographer....and that's fine, we're each entitled to our opinion on that and other things.

Unfortunately post-processing and editing cannot really be ignored if someone is shooting in RAW, and those who are into photography eventually tend to grasp the significance of shooting in RAW rather than .jpg and so take on the challenge of editing. Maybe this comes naturally to some people, I don't know, but it sure as heck does not to me and to some other photographers. I will admit that over the past couple of years I have gotten a little less crappy at editing, and although I still don't love it, at least I no longer approach it with dread.....

Possibly one has to be both an artist and technically skilled in software programs in order to be able to happily and contentedly spend time in the editing/retouching realm and come out with beautiful results. That just doesn't happen to be the case for everyone, and there are those who simply prefer to shoot and then do just the basics, whatever is needed and for some of us, that is enough.

 

[Clix Pix]

I knew there was something else upon which I wanted to comment, and it is this comment by Molly:

"It's just that for most of history, photographers didn't see the editing because they sent their photos off to a lab to be processed, so someone else edited for them."

Yep, true, in the old days there were many people, usually the P&S crowd, who shot their roll(s) of film and took them to the drugstore to be developed and printed, and the drugstore in turn sent them to a local commercial lab for processing. For a long time it was the norm for many people who owned and infrequently actually used cameras to simply retrieve them from a drawer, buy a couple of rolls of fresh film a few times a year for special occasions -- usually taking pictures while on vacation or at family/friend celebrations. This kind of camera user really didn't have a clue as to the magic that happened after they put their film in an envelope and handed it over to someone else to be processed. They returned to the drugstore and looked at the prints and that was the end of it. Some people used their local camera shop for this purpose if there were one available in the community.

However, also, through the years there have been those who had access to a darkroom, either for work or school or because they had set up their own home darkrooms. This process did involve doing everything themselves, from shooting to developing the film to then working with a light table and a loupe to review the resulting negatives and following that, viewing the strip of negatives again, this time under the light of an enlarger and adjusting each image as appropriate. Photo paper was expensive so it was best to be selective and thoughtful about which negatives were going to be worth actually exposing on photo paper and printing. Most of the time people who had home darkrooms printed images on 8x10 paper, which definitely could reveal any flaws so it was good to be mindful of that. It was a matter of spending time with the negative under the enlarger light before then getting out the paper and adding it to the mix and exposing the negative on to the seemingly blank paper. Next came the "wet" processing, involving spending time in a dimly-lit darkroom with trays of chemicals and then the final water bath before setting the new print aside to dry fully. This whole darkroom thing was a time-consuming but also challenging and rewarding process from start to finish. Anyone who has never had the opportunity to experience this is really missing out on something.

In between the drugstore providing prints to the P&S crowd and the serious photographer working on his or her own images in a home darkroom, there also were professional labs which served professional photographers and those who didn't have access to a darkroom but who wanted and needed more input into their images than was available at the corner drugstore. Photographers in the community could go to one of these commercial professional labs with their rolls of film and have the negatives developed and then printed on to photo paper, resulting in "contact sheets," which were the images then viewable as positives (like our "thumbnails" of today's digital imaging process) so that the photographer could then determine whether or not something was worth enlarging.

The photographer would spend some time viewing each contact sheet and marking up the frames which showed real possibilities. Markups would include what the photographer wanted cropped, anything that needed adjustment in terms of exposure, any burning or dodging that seemed appropriate, etc., etc. The lab would then process and print just the marked-up frames. Sometimes when viewing a finished print or two the photographer would have further adjustments that he or she wanted, and the negative would return under the lab's enlarger for another go at a print..... So, yes, there were photographers, both professional and serious amateurs, who used commercial labs for their prints, especially when color photography was involved, as the process for developing color negs and color prints is somewhat more complex than doing B&W. These days there are still well-respected commercial labs which primarily serve the professional photographer, but they are usually available online rather than being in many communities.

 

[Slartibart]

"Color matching" photos? You've lost me, which suggests that, no, this is not common in stills photography, but I'm betting that it is in videography.

I think that achieving a certain, maybe even distinctive look in your photographs or series of photographs involves quite a bit of colour matching/applying LUTs. I would guess that many try to stick to a certain color style at least for a series of photos.

EDIT: you can call it colour style.
EDIT II: which might of course not only be restricted to colour, but matching luminance, hue, saturation, et cetera.

 

[r.harris1]

I think that achieving a certain, maybe even distinctive look in your photographs or series of photographs involves quite a bit of colour matching/applying LUTs. I would guess that many try to stick to a certain color style at least for a series of photos.

EDIT: you can call it colour style.
EDIT II: which might of course not only be restricted to colour, but matching luminance, hue, saturation, et cetera.

Over in Capture One land, I think that they refer to it as colour grading (which is a phrase I know more from the video world). Across a series of portraits, for example, you'd want to achieve a certain look to skin tones, color temperatures in shadows, highlights, mid-tones or adjusting hues as needed to achieve a "look". Same idea across landscapes or whatever.

 

[r.harris1]

There are a lot of interesting thoughts and fun tangents in this thread. A fun topic @katbel because there's not one "right answer", just individual viewpoints informed by one's experiences.

Many things we see today, from composites, to over and underdone colors, filtering light or color to achieve a look, adding things in, taking them out and many other tricks have been there essentially from the beginning of photography. Some people skew towards the "let's keep it close to how we saw it" view of the world, others more freewheeling with many of us somewhere in the middle. I'm absolutely in the middle as a personal preference but if I had a tendency, I'd favor an "artistic freewheeling view" of photography and the liberal approach that it brings with it.

I do like doing a lot in camera where I can. So many creative choices can be made with aperture choice, focal length, ISO, filters (color, neutral density and IR), shutter speed and lens perspective (tilt/shift/swing) that it can keep me occupied for a lifetime. Then comes the many creative choices in doing raw processing, from colors, to clarity, to shadows and highlights, dodging here, burning there. And then comes printing for me. It's an entire art form in and of itself.

Shapes, tones, colors, textures, negative space all play a role in my enjoyment of an image. I'm enjoying a somewhat diverse group of photographers at the moment who span the "what I saw" to "what I want you to see" gamut. These include Rachel Talibart, Joe Cornish, Rodney Lewis Smith, Michael Kenna, local Colorado photographer Alex Burke, Michael Massaia, Edward Burtynsky, Antonio Saba, Kimiko Yoshida, Fay Godwin, Whitney Lewis-Smith and many others.

I enjoy a great mind, a personal point of view and an eye that sees interesting things.