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Re: [OM] Camera bag getting a little heavy?

Subject: Re: [OM] Camera bag getting a little heavy?
From: Moose <olymoose@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2012 13:49:07 -0700
On 10/25/2012 7:21 AM, Dawid Loubser wrote:
> Oh, I am not by any means saying that art and photography is mutually
> exclusive. Nor that something cannot be both art and photography.
>
> But when the activity is compositing, the end-result is *not* a
> photograph. It is a composite. A collage. A mixed-medium artwork.
> Whatever you want to call it.

OK, at this clear end of a continuum, I can agree.

> The meaning of photograph is well-understood by most people on the
> planet to not include structural modification or re-arrangement of the
> captured reality. The implication of some form of authenticity must be
> retained. This is very different to, for example, altering contrast or
> colour hues.
>
> In this age of easy manipulation, if we can't be very clear about the
> two forms of work (most basically by using different words for them) we
> have a problem.
>
> It's all about messing with the structure for me - as soon as you do,
> it's not a photograph anymore. This is why the darkroom, and film-based
> photography is so important to me.

Is this a photograph? 
<http://galleries.moosemystic.net/MooseFoto/index.php?gallery=Travel/NorthEast_2010/Coastal%20Maine/Mt_Desert_and_Acadia/Cadillac_Mountain&image=_MG_1154ia80.jpg>

I would argue that it is. I saw this scene, composed and took the shot. Other 
than tonal/contrast manipulation that you 
allow, it is as I meant it to be.

However, at the "decisive" moment, a woman ran across the lower left, in an 
awkward, hunched over posture, and moving 
fast enough to be slightly blurred. The image in the photograph was not what I 
'took'. So I removed her.

Because it was digital, removing her was perhaps easier, but photographers 
having been doing similar things from the 
beginning. Does that make their work, or this image 'not photographs'?

Here's another example, from my book "Three Days in Brooklyn". 
<http://galleries.moosemystic.net/Brooklyn/People/All%20People/slides/_MG_3450-51.html>

When I took it, I knew DOF would likely not be adequate to render both the 
people and the sign sharp. My idea for the 
shot required both to be sharp. So I took two shots, focused at different 
depths. As I anticipated, neither shot had 
both in sharp focus. So I dropped the sharp sign into the image with the clear 
people, covering the soft one.

Leaving aside whether the image is any good, or the quality of my vision in 
including it with the other images around it 
in the book, is it a composite, or a photograph? If I had chosen different 
camera settings, or perhaps had a camera with 
better high ISO performance, and achieved the same degree of apparent DOF in a 
single shot, would that then be a 
photograph, while this is not?

No one who has seen the book, including at least a couple of accomplished 
photographers, has ever guessed what I did. 
None of the few non-photographers to whom I've explained what I did while they 
were viewing the book took any 
exception.The image is a highly realistic representation of what I saw. What is 
it, photograph or non-photographic art?

I'm not trying to be difficult, but the truth as I see it is that you are 
trying to put relatively hard and fast, black 
and white rules onto something that's really a continuum.

Obstreperous Moose

-- 
What if the Hokey Pokey *IS* what it's all about?
-- 
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