Tom, you have touched very sensitive topic. I agree and I don't. Basically we accepted black and white photos for decades but they have nothing to do with reality. 🙂 Because photography is a form of art it's very subjective. If we just think about Picasso and his famous distorted portraits. They were a conclusion of something. And I think we can use this approach to photography as well. At the end the photos we re creating are a conclusion or interpretation of our mood, circumstances, creative possibilities and so on. I would say they are a reflection of the message we want to convey. We just don't have to label them as "reality".
Is photography necessarily a form of 'art' though? It is certainly different from what were called the 'Fine Arts' - the key difference being that photography has to begin with an actual-factual from the world without (that then may be manipulated), whereas Picasso didn't require any real-world starting point, and nor does a musician or a sculptor. I know that this calls on a distinction that is largely ignored today, but the distinction is still real - without an external reality of light and forms to Record, photography doesn't exist. The idea that B&W has 'nothing to do with reality' is also debatable. B&W is reality without the evolutionary emergence of cones in the (mammalian) eye - an inability to differentiate wavelengths of light doesn't alter external reality one bit; only a specific organism's perception of it. Now i know that these two points don't really undermine the point you are making - we can do as we wish with our images, for whatever reasons we may have - and most of us probably have boundaries around how far we think it is acceptable to go in securing or in messing with 'the scene' (or maybe not?).
Skies have been swapped out since the beginning of the photography medium in the 1800's. Nothing wrong with that as long as they are real skies and not A.I. created.
Depends on every photographer's own bounderies. I have swapped out skies, not very often, but my bounderies are not only "no AI", it's also "it must be a sky I took a photo of".
Thank you for this rather inspirational video. It was thought provoking indeed.
keep up the good work tom
Tom, you have touched very sensitive topic. I agree and I don't. Basically we accepted black and white photos for decades but they have nothing to do with reality. 🙂 Because photography is a form of art it's very subjective. If we just think about Picasso and his famous distorted portraits. They were a conclusion of something. And I think we can use this approach to photography as well. At the end the photos we re creating are a conclusion or interpretation of our mood, circumstances, creative possibilities and so on. I would say they are a reflection of the message we want to convey. We just don't have to label them as "reality".
Is photography necessarily a form of 'art' though? It is certainly different from what were called the 'Fine Arts' - the key difference being that photography has to begin with an actual-factual from the world without (that then may be manipulated), whereas Picasso didn't require any real-world starting point, and nor does a musician or a sculptor. I know that this calls on a distinction that is largely ignored today, but the distinction is still real - without an external reality of light and forms to Record, photography doesn't exist. The idea that B&W has 'nothing to do with reality' is also debatable. B&W is reality without the evolutionary emergence of cones in the (mammalian) eye - an inability to differentiate wavelengths of light doesn't alter external reality one bit; only a specific organism's perception of it. Now i know that these two points don't really undermine the point you are making - we can do as we wish with our images, for whatever reasons we may have - and most of us probably have boundaries around how far we think it is acceptable to go in securing or in messing with 'the scene' (or maybe not?).
Skies have been swapped out since the beginning of the photography medium in the 1800's.
Nothing wrong with that as long as they are real skies and not A.I. created.
Depends on every photographer's own bounderies. I have swapped out skies, not very often, but my bounderies are not only "no AI", it's also "it must be a sky I took a photo of".
Of course, the fact that something has been done for a long time doesn't mean that it's a good thing to do.