I would like to hear what people think of this. People in my photography class are scanning away pictures onto the computer, altering them via dodging, burning-in, solarization, making negative sandwitches, combining multiple pictures, and adding texture and color to black and white photos, but again all via computer and done with simple presses of a button. Perhaps I'm being old-fashioned, but I'm skeptical of this new scanning photography art, especially with b+w photos. I view this as cheating, finding the easy way out, not genuine, etc. I plan on aviod the scanner method at all costs, and will do my altering and experimenting in the dark room. People in my photography class at school are mounting these computer photo prints as if they were genuine. I suppose this brings up the question, does the art of photography lie in the subject (i.e. what the photo is taken of), or the presentation (alterations, the final product)? Is anybody with me? It is an open ended question. I would like to hear of any pro's or con's over the issue.

-- Ray Ostendorf (r_ostendorf@hotmail.com), January 23, 1998

Answers

If anyone comes up with another "Pepper #30" using PhotoShop ver 4.0 let me know. And I just entered the digital age by popping for an Agfa ePhoto 1280. I sure hope that sucker does good black and white.

-- Dell Elzey (potog@mindspring.com), January 24, 1998.

This question has cropped up on various forms that I visit. It has been stated in a number of ways about a variety of photo/computer related issues. I think that in the end the discussion is going to be moot. I am sure that when people went from glass to plastic negatives and from black and white to color these same concerns were debated hot and heavy. If computers, scanners and soft ware are going to evolve another branch of photography, it is going to happen. If you, as I , are more concerned with producing your prints the " old fashioned" way, then I think WE need to be sure to label them as such. Why worry about what the other guy is going to call his work? Mine work is going to be done as silver gelatin prints, and so labeled. As of yet there is no way to produce silver gelatin prints by computer. That being said, in the latest LensWork quarterly they have an actual press sheet from the Agfa Chromapress digital printing press. These two images are color, but if the black and white's are of the same quality, there is some real hope for the future of publication photo reproduction quality. Because most of us will never be able to afford a large body of origional work, I welcome any technology that can bring us closer to the look of an origional print, be it in quality magazines or photo books. It is going to be a fine line that we have to walk between what we do in "origional" work and "reproduction" work. If you have a real conviction that origional work should be done in traditional methods, then by all means do what ever you can to promote these methods. But don't be surprised if a lot of people go for the easy route, in this case, the use of a computer, to do what you do by hand. It is hard to produce photos the traditional way, and if you do use traditional methods, you will be one of the few not the many. If you do stay true to your roots, and work in the medium as a traditionalist, you will gain knowledge and experience that no computer whiz will ever have. You will actually have made an "complete" image. By complete I mean you found the scene, set up the image in the view finder, took the picture, developed the film, and made a print. It is completely yours, from begining to end. And on top of it all you actually got out in the world, and did something. You didn't talk about it, or ask about it , or have a meeting about it, you did it. In the end that is the thing that bothers me the most about computer generated "photos". They really don't represent anything real. They are not an experience, and photography for me is just that, an experience. I can remember the taking of just about all of my images, the cold the hot, the bugs and the smells. I wouldn't trade that for all of the"perfect" prints in the world.

-- MTHOMPSON (MTHOMPSON@CLINTON.NET), January 24, 1998.

Response to B+W enters the computer age...

I've read similar discussions regarding "I got up at 5 o'clock in the morning to capture natural light and would never in a trillion years use a polarizing/orange/red/whatever filter".

Some people prefer to capture the scene as it actually was; others will have an image in their mind which they will attempt to create in the darkroom. If this image can be created or manipulated on computer then so be it. You can get into all kinds of debate regarding what is or isn't art, but ultimately its a very personal thing.

As long as no-one misrepresents the origin of the picture, I can't see any harm, and will enjoy the skill/artistic merit regardless of technique.

-- Andy Coverdale (acoverda@netcomuk.co.uk), January 24, 1998.

In Ray's original post, I'm unclear whether the other students are scanning and manipulating their own pictures, or other people's. If they don't use their own originals, they are missing a vital part of the picture-making process, to say nothing about copright. In either case, the value is in learning (a) the capabilities of a new process, and (b) how pictures work (or don't).

It seems inevitable to me that some time in the near future affordable digital technology will give similar quality to chemical. But it doesn't change the aesthetics. Learn what makes a good picture in one medium, and you've got it for both. Most picture-making occurs in front of the camera, and if principles of lighting etc are not known, computer manipulations will just scream "fake". And the characteristics of the two mediums will stay different. With traditional methods, you can readily make full-size full-figure portraits, with hardware costing a few hundred. Try doing that with digital stuff for less than a few tens of thousands. On the other hand, comping on a computer is quicker than in a darkroom, to say nothing of selective modification of colour casts, gamma curves, and the rest. But perhaps it has more to do with painting, or collaging, than photography. And how much do people using computers really understand what is happening? The impositions from Kodak and Ilford seem bad, but are nothing compared to those from Microsoft and Adobe.

They are two different media. Learn them both. Maybe the long-term future for chemical photography is as a craft, with practitioners remaining close to the process. That suits me.

-- Alan Gibson (gibson.al@mail.dec.com), January 26, 1998.

I agree with many of the responses that at this point in time it is hard to duplicate the beauty of a really great print, which I might add, not every (darkroom) printer can make. I think it will take awhile yet before home computer printers can meet these standards since there is a physical barrier and no amount of RAM is going to solve that. Frankly I don't know whether you can say burning and dodging one way is cheating while another (traditional) way isn't. There are some who would argue that any manipulation while printing is cheating anyways. You mentioned the word 'art' in your question and I think that the computer is a valid tool for producing art, especially when in the hands of a creative and talented person. As for traditional printing, there will probably always be enough practitioners to make sure that the paper and chemical manufacturers have a reason to produce...at least I hope there will be.

-- Andy Laycock (agl@intergate.bc.ca), January 26, 1998.

I think the end result is what counts and the means can be traditional or digital.I'm currently using both and find that using a computer is considerably slower than working in the darkroom and with some negatives ( ones with high contrast for instance ) simply doesn't work. On the other hand I can get better detail in the shadow areas using a computer and also do some things which are impossible in the darkroom. The biggest advantage of the computer seems to be in the ease of making extra copies. Working in the darkroom you have to go back and do a print all over again.

-- Dafydd Jones (Dafydd K@aol.com), February 14, 1998.

Personally, I think the end product is what we really need to judge, not the process. One means of producing art is just as valid as another. Whether the art that's produced is any good, that's the interesting question.

I've done some scanning and manipulating in order to put things on my website, but I spend a lot more time sniffing darkroom fumes. Currently, none of the consumer products I've seen can even get close to the quality of a well-made (in the darkroom) b&w print.

Right now, I think most of the "digital darkroom" manipulation is done because it's so easy to do, not because it benefits the picture. It's extremely rare that slapping on special effects will improve a photo. If you start with crap, you end up with crap. The current fascination with digital imaging effects is of the "gee whiz! I didn't know you could do that" variety rather than an appreciation of the quality of the final image. In a few years, the "gee whiz" will be gone. In music, there was initially some fascination with electronic synthesizers because they could make so many neat sounds and sound like other instruments. Now (thankfully) they're just another tool for creating music.

Mike

-- Mike Dixon (burmashave@compuserve.com), February 22, 1998.

Speaking from a viewpoint that is 30 years old (the amount of time I made my living this field) I would answer that the art of photogrpahy lies in both the image the presentation. Further, I would say that when an image is formed not of paper and silver but dots on a page, it becomes something else. It's not photography any more, its computerography or whatever you want to call it.

Much of the charm of a fine B&W photographic print lies in its beauty. Texture, gray scale, sharpness, an attractive juxtaposition of tones--its ability to show us more that we might see with the naked eye.

When I was a kid and learning my trade I used to travel regularly from Philadelphia to New York just to visit the Museum of Modern Art, where fine photos were often on display, to learn what superb prints looked like. How cold I make a fine print, I thought, if I had nothing with which to compare them?

Genuine black and white photo prints can be appealing in a way that computer generated images cannot.

There's nothing wrong with computer-generated images if your purpose is merely to convey information. But for something beautiful to hang on your wall, computer prints do not as yet not approach the aesthetic appeal of the fine black and white print made with traditional materials and methods. Maybe someday they will, but that day is not yet here. It's the difference between a fine painting and a mechanical reproduction of that painting. There is always something lost in the translation. Harry Gehlert

-- Harry Gehlert (cantabene@aol.com), March 14, 1999.

by Alan Gibson above.

I doubt whether the development of computeropraghy and photography will go like that in the future. I see it in comparison with photography coming up while painting was still THE way to make portraits or war-reportages. Oil-painting remained at last, but became a different, more specialized branch of art than before photography. Paintings like 'Who's afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue' by Bruce Naumann or even the work of Van Gogh, would perhaps not have been made if photography hadn't come up. In the same way silver-gelatine prints will stay when digital prints are becoming better and better in the near future and more widely used, but both ways will evolve into separate and specialized contents and ways of expression.

Only very few 'chemic' photographers addicted to fiber-based prints, will turn over to digital picture-making. The digital image-makers will be a new 'race'. Chemical photographers will love the process of their craft, not only because of their results.

This is not to say that digital imaging cannot be art. It would be non-sense to say: 'a bad fiber-based print will always be better than a digital print.' The 'artness' of a digital print will be in the unbiased usage of this medium to express something. Future artist will find out the specific strong points of digital imaging, for instance the fact that there is no grain, but little blocks that form the image, or other characteristics of the medium.

-- Lot (lotw@wxs.nl), March 14, 1999.

The quotation didn't come through at the top of my last post. It was:

"Learn what makes a good picture in one medium and you've got it for both"

-- Lot (lotw@wxs.nl), March 14, 1999.

My old posts come back to bite me...

I wrote that over a year ago, and a year is a long time in digital photography. Although I have done no digital work in that time (except for post-processing for the web), I have seen more digital work by others. I still favour the view that the aesthetics are the same, but I'm not as convinced as I was. Relative costs have a heavy influence: producing a high-quality 16x20 image digitally needs a lot of capital. But compositing digitally is much easier than in a traditional darkroom.

>> "...both ways will evolve into separate and specialized contents and ways of expression." and "The digital image-makers will be a new 'race'."

A year ago, I would probably have disagreed. Now, I am more inclined to agree. A lot of interesting work is coming out of the new generation. I sometimes don't like it, but I realise my grounds are 'traditionally' photographic. New aesthetics are evolving. Doubtless, some will not survive. But some will.

-- Alan Gibson (Alan.Gibson@technologist.com), March 15, 1999.