The Purity of Photography as an Art Medium

I've been playing photographer since the early 90s. First in high school where I learned the ins and outs of the dark room and had my first experience with an SLR camera and then again as an active duty soldier in the Army when I bought an SLR for documenting my travels and experiences.

I continued taking pictures and re-acquainted myself with the darkroom while taking the obligatory art credit in college. It was about this time the first digital SLRs were making it to the consumer market and digital darkrooms quickly replaced the need for gallons upon gallons of chemicals, basins and red lights.

It also ushered in the age of digital manipulation. 

Image added because this is a photography blog after all

In the dark room manipulation of the photograph can happen: filters can be applied to result in a specific outcome, burning, dodging, letting the paper swim a little longer to over develop or removing it early to under develop. This, coupled with in-camera techniques, gave the film photographer what we once thought of as a lot of leeway in regards to post processing -- or perhaps, parallel processing -- of the image.

During my college photography course our instructor had us using a new technique she'd read about in a photography journal: developing the image for the highlights and the shadows separately. In the darkroom it took a lot of trial and error per image to develop the negative once for the highlights and then again for the negatives. The technique also involved a lot of math. 

Today this technique is called HDR (http://goo.gl/OFoAb).

A few years later and there are gazillions of photo and image manipulation software options to be found (http://magicelfbox.blogspot.com/2013/05/editing-pictures-is-hard-work.html). Photographers are editing with manual adjustments, automatic adjustments with filters and textures to give their images certain looks and feels.

Like many things in life there are opposing opinions on the pure (conservative) form and the radical new techniques. We've seen this recently with the backlash regarding free online universities, automatic cars versus manual transmissions and even running a text-based operating system (unix or linux) versus a GUI system. A recent metaphor I used when trying to explain this was website design: hosting services like Wordpress allow users to manipulate and customize their web presence, but does that make them website designers?

Hey look, a black and white tree!

As photography is my art medium of choice and having started in the days of film when a photographer would capture as much of the photograph in-camera as s/he could, I find myself somewhat annoyed at the current crop of whipper-snappers (yes, I said whipper-snappers) who take pictures, push a couple of buttons and let the computer -- and software -- do most of the work for them.

This is very prevalent in the current trend of HDR, letting the camera, the cell phone, the HDR software plug-ins compile the highlights and shadows into an image without the photographer ever overtly being involved: point, click and let the software do the rest.

Where is the art? Where is the capturing of a moment in time? Where is the knowledge, experience and know-how?

In my opinion, good photographers will all tell you the same thing: you always want to try and capture the image properly in-camera; that's why they're always watching the Sun, looking at light sources, adjusting their position and adding/removing items from the camera's field of view. Post processing should be relegated to fixing errors and make minor adjustments to what the camera caught.

There was an old adage once that photographers, especially street and photojournalists, would run through a hundred stills, multiple rolls of film, hoping they have one usable image once they've developed their rolls. These days it's the same, but with digital cameras capturing gigabytes of information so quickly it's practically grabbing stills from video.

About a year ago, I went on a photowalk with some other photographers. I was amazed at the number of photographers out there who just held down their shutter button, capturing dozens of shots at a time. I learned during out lunch break they had their cameras set to bracket (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracketing) hoping to obtain a single image of quality or to combine multiple poor images (with HDR) into one perfect image.

Where is the art? Where is the skill?

Sleeping Dogs on my blog

At the end of the walk we were comparing notes: most people were taking between 200 and 300 images. I had taken somewhere around sixty-five. Each snap of the shutter was a carefully framed, composed and camera set to capture a good image the first time.

Can someone call themselves a photographer when in fact they're nothing more than an image manipulator  with a camera? Can someone who doesn't understand how light works, how shadow-play can change the emotion of an image, who cannot look at a scene and know exactly how to set up his or her camera to capture the image they see in their mind call themselves a photographer? If they're holding their shutter down, hoping for a single usable image, are they truly giving respect to their artistic medium of choice?

Or was Marissa Mayer right (http://goo.gl/WHVRR)? Is the role of photography as an art medium dead?

I do not like overly manipulated images --  HDR, or high dynamic range annoys me. 

When I see an image with massive amounts of manipulation, for me, it appears as though the photographer isn't adept at his/her art, but must instead rely on software cheats and deceptive practices. 

Are you a good photographer, or are you a good software manipulator? That is the question.

I think that's the core discussion of this article. When we photographers capture an image, we're capturing a moment in time. In nature or on the street we're capturing that 1/250th of a second that can never be replicated again. Sure, we can get close but will that cloud always be there, will the Sun glint the right way, will that rock or those ripple on the water be just like that ever again? Will that bird fly by at just the right moment?

On the street (and photo-journalism) there are even more variables: background, time of day, activity, subject and more. Will everything line up perfectly all the time, every day?

This article talks about a rating system for the level of manipulation in photojournalism. I think this is a great idea. Especially for images people are purchasing. When a buyer of art looks at art, they're not just buying the emotional feelings the art provokes, but they're buying the knowledge and skill of the artist, the time and effort -- the blood, sweat and tears -- if you will. 

Oooh, look, it's Denver!

Does a table set made by a machine in Taiwan have the same sort of artistic quality as a hand tooled oak transformed into furniture? Which one costs more? Which one is more sought after by people who appreciate the effort put forth to design, choose the lumber, cut, carve and tool the designs on a one-on-one basis? 

Which is more coveted, the factory knock-off or the hand stitched jacket/purse/boots?

If I can just hold my shutter down with a finger or a remote, then pop a couple of images into a piece of software and let the algorithms do the work for me, was there any real effort put forth? Is it art?

There is a certain level of respect for people who know their craft.

A couple of years ago I entered a discussion about the level of image manipulation that individuals found acceptable. A very prominent HDR photographer admitted he knew nothing about photography and so he learned the HDR technique as a way to compensate his lack of skill. his opinion: who cares how the image was reached if people are buying it?

That's right, who cares about the process if people are buying it? Who cares if it's the truth as long as people buy it? Who cares about the means as long as we can justify the ends? I mean, I can paint by numbers, too. That doesn't make me an painter any more than speeding makes me a NASCAR racer.

Most recently a friend discovered HDR as an app for his phone's camera. I had this discussion again: HDR vs. capturing in-camera. he liked the HDR due to the end result and the minimal effort he had to put forth in order to achieve his result.

Which, I suspect, is fine for someone just looking to share their pictures with their friends with the least amount of post-production as possible. Fast, quick, easy. 

But for someone trying to make a living as an artist or as a photo-journalist capturing a moment in time, do you really want fast, cheap and easy?

Added because... well, it's a photoblog

When do you ever really want fast, cheap and easy? 

There is an inherent negative connotation with "fast, cheap and easy" and for good reason. Usually, that ideology results in other hazards down the road: another car repair, diabetes or ill health, a loss of job, or having your roof leak because your contractor was fast, cheap and easy.

If we don't choose the short cuts in our regular lives, why should we accept shortcuts in art or history?

In my photography I never use HDR. Aside from filters and the occasional texture, I adjust each image individually and manually, for better or worse. As you can see in my other blog posts, I try and capture a good in camera image and then manipulate for a specific look and feel. No matter what techniques I use, I perform these adjustments manually and have -- in many, many, many occasions -- had to toss specific shots due to the amount of effort needed to adjust them into something usable. 

My general rule of thumb is: if it takes more than 10 minutes to adjust the image then the original image wasn't a good capture to begin with.