The Capture vs The Processing

droj said:
There is a lot of confusion about what 'art' is. A lot of people use the word to describe what is actually not art but craft. But language itself is a bit loose - words often have several meanings and they change over time. But idiosyncratic HDR whimsy, for instance, certainly is not art. Not in any dignified sense of the word.
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Again, that’s exactly what they said to Picasso.. Art changes and evolves, as does our vocabulary.
 
THIRTYFIVEMILL said:
Again, that’s exactly what they said to Picasso.. Art changes and evolves, as does our vocabulary.
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Are you seriously comparing hideous HDR to Picasso?

Do you expect us to take you seriously?
 
I personally hate obvious HDR (well, most of it, which seems to serve no artistic purpose other than "I can so I will") but I'm also aware that in the history of art the hideous has become an accepted form before now. It was not for nothing that one book on modern art was titled "The Shock of the New".
 
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Phil V said:
Are you seriously comparing hideous HDR to Picasso?

Do you expect us to take you seriously?
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LOL! I'm not comparing anything in particular but Picasso was ridiculed for his work in his day and few called it "art". What some people class as art I personally don't. Doesn't mean to say it's not, though. If one person loves "hideous HDR" then so be it. In fact, it wasn't so long ago that HDR was all the rage and people couldn't get enough of it.

The point is, if you have an idea in your head and you execute that idea and the finished result is what you wanted then you've succeeded with an image. Someone coming along and telling you it's "wrong" based on either their personal tastes or what they believe is "technically right" is utter garbage. If those who pushed the boundaries of art listened to those who told them constantly that they were wrong then art would not have developed and nor would anything else.
 
I think Alfred Stieglitz said/wrote somewhere that there was no such thing as good art and bad art - there was art and non-art.

And to add to my opening remark in post 45 - I do make a sharp distinction between things I like and things I think are good.
 
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StephenM said:
I personally hate obvious HDR (well, most of it, which seems to serve no artisitc purpose other than "I can so I will") but I'm also aware that in the history of art the hideous has become an accepted form before now. It was not for nothing that one book on modern art was titled "The Shock of the New".
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Spot on! I wonder how many people were ridiculed for lauding the work of contemporary artists such as Picasso:

"Are you seriously comparing hideous abstract "art" to Monet?

Do you expect us to take you seriously?" they ranted, chewing on their easels and spitting the chippings across the art-room tables..
 
Phil V said:
hideous HDR
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Yes, I too despise, hate HDR renditions… but I have to
recognize that it work splendidly in interior architecture,
but ONLY there!
 
THIRTYFIVEMILL said:
That went straight over my head
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No matter how hard I try, there are things I can't say, translate.
Thanks for people like you, it is swept under the rug but some-
time got me in trouble! :(
 
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StephenM said:
Stieglitz said/wrote somewhere that there was no such thing as good art and bad art - there was art and non-art.
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Which replicates my point. And contary to what many might lazily like to think (often to romanticise and validate their own adventures), the difference is to a large degree explainable and not merely subjective.
 
droj said:
Which replicates my point. And contary to what many might lazily like to think (often to romanticise and validate their own adventures), the difference is to a large degree explainable and not merely subjective.
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I'm sure it is but I'm not sure the OPs question demands quite that level of dissection.
 
THIRTYFIVEMILL said:
LOL! I'm not comparing anything in particular
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But you did!

THIRTYFIVEMILL said:
LOL! I'm not comparing anything in particular but Picasso was ridiculed for his work in his day and few called it "art".
.
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Citation?

THIRTYFIVEMILL said:
...What some people class as art I personally don't. Doesn't mean to say it's not, though. If one person loves "hideous HDR" then so be it. In fact, it wasn't so long ago that HDR was all the rage and people couldn't get enough of it.
.
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Why do you keep setting up a straw man rather than responding to what’s said.

Whether you class something as Art is irrelevant (to the point where it’s a stupid statement) whether you, me or anyone else ‘likes’ something is again irrelevant.

Whether a photograph has successfully achieved its aim isn’t just down to whether the photographer is happy with it though (that’s naive in the extreme).

Of course if the photographer is happy with what they’ve achieved, that’s fine, but if they share it, it will be judged by others, and others will decide for themselves whether it has merit. Again, not whether they like it, whether they consider it Art, or whether it’s ‘good’ but just whether it succeeds as a photograph.

Art is always the thorniest issue, which is why I never went there, and as most photography is a million miles from art it’s not really worth taking that further.
 
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THIRTYFIVEMILL said:
I'm sure it is but I'm not sure the OPs question demands quite that level of dissection.
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You’re the one who keeps bringing up Art you don’t understand in order to justify s*** photography others don’t appreciate.
And you don’t understand how ridiculous a premise that is.
 
Phil V said:
You’re the one who keeps bringing up Art you don’t understand in order to justify s*** photography others don’t appreciate.
And you don’t understand how ridiculous a premise that is.
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LOLOL! Jeez Phil, did someone just pour 95 lead-free into your lap or have you just had a tough day? I think I'll leave it there as it wasn't my intention to have you doing summersaults around your MacBook.
 
THIRTYFIVEMILL said:
LOLOL! Jeez Phil, did someone just pour 95 lead-free into your lap or have you just had a tough day? I think I'll leave it there as it wasn't my intention to have you doing summersaults around your MacBook.
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I’m completely chilled.

And it’d help the discussion if you didn’t throw in irrelevant statements and then pretend others were overreacting rather than either justify your daft stance or admit it was nonsense.

I believe the accurate description of the above is trolling.

Happy to discuss,
 
Phil V said:
I’m completely chilled.

And it’d help the discussion if you didn’t throw in irrelevant statements and then pretend others were overreacting rather than either justify your daft stance or admit it was nonsense.

I believe the accurate description of the above is trolling.

Happy to discuss,
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Haven’t been called a troll before but there’s always a first for everything. I don’t see any of my posts as any more nonsensical than your derisory rant about muddying the waters and the claptrap that preceded and proceeded it.
 
Largely it is a question of when you "discover" or "create the image.

Good "anticipation" and the abitility to "see" an image comes first.

An important part of that, is in knowing what you need to do in "setting up" and taking the photograph,
And just as importantly, knowing what you will have to do later in post processing, to complete the transformation...

I find it far too late, to see the images out of the camera, as some sort of discovery process. Where you treat them like a box of leggo to see what can be made of them.

As Kodiak suggested it should all be part of a continuous process.
 
I think we all know what "crap photography" looks like. It's the pictures we were publishing a few years ago thinking they were our best work! At least I would hope so... :) My stuff from 2013 is pretty awful for the most part. No regrets.

I don't see why anyone feels the need to complain about anyone else's photos. Are we worried that if we don't stand up for "good photography", the world will go to hell in an overprocessed hand basket? People are where they are. Next year they will be somewhere else. No big deal.

Moving on, to answer the OP, I'm with the "no separation" crowd. It's one process from capture to process to print, and it all needs as much as care as you can give it.

Yes, there's no substitute for "getting it right in camera". But what "right" means depends on what you intend to do next. It certainly need not mean "getting a good-looking picture". it means getting what you need for the next step, as best you can, no excuses.

"Post" processing is not for fixing mistakes made in camera. It can fix some of the shortcomings of reality and some of your camera's inability to translate your vision correctly, but the one thing it absolutely won't do is to change what you did in camera.

Some people like to leave their digital processing to the camera company R&D people, or "shooting JPEGs" as they generally call it. I can understand that. Personally, I do my own processing but send my files to a print lab. Not ideal no doubt, but I last printed in a darkroom in the early 90s and revisiting it is currently not on my horizon. Horses for courses.

The process of photography is about using your vision and craft to translate reality into a piece of paper using a series of steps. All the steps matter. You can outsource them, but they matter. If you think any of them don't matter, you're effectively saying your picture doesn't matter.

Is it art? For me, it's about intent. if you seriously think you're engaged in producing art, then you are producing art, no matter what anyone else thinks, and regardless of what it looks like. If you think you are engaged only in craft, you are also most likely correct.
 
dave.hallett said:
Yes, there's no substitute for "getting it right in camera". But what "right" means depends on what you intend to do next. It certainly need not mean "getting a good-looking picture". it means getting what you need for the next step, as best you can, no excuses


Is it art? For me, it's about intent. if you seriously think you're engaged in producing art, then you are producing art, no matter what anyone else thinks, and regardless of what it looks like. If you think you are engaged only in craft, you are also most likely correct.
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Many great replies to the thread - I could pick many out that nail it for me, but as these are the last ones I read, they sum up my feelings on the subject nicely Dave
 
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dave.hallett said:
Is it art? For me, it's about intent. if you seriously think you're engaged in producing art, then you are producing art ...
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Dave you've just neatly skipped the possibility of delusional behaviour ...
 
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droj said:
Dave you've just neatly skipped the possibility of delusional behaviour ...
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IMO, there is no contradicting the intention to make art. That doesn't mean others will experience it as art. That's up to them. If I want, I can experience my local road works as performance art. I just stop and watch and imagine that this is all being done with an artistic purpose. Call it delusional if you like, it makes no odds to me. Elephants make some pretty good art. The process of rusting metal creates art. If you want it to.

IMO, art is a transaction, an experience. An artist is someone who sets out with the intention of giving others that experience, invites them to experience it as art. Others accept the invitation or not, as they see fit. it needs a certain generosity on both sides. Some art more than others :)

That's why we say someone is "not really an artist", no matter how good their product is, if their fundamental intent is to make money by providing a product. It's a different transaction and a different experience.
 
As many have already said, image capture and image processing (RAW) go hand-in-hand like a marriage.

A photographer may have a personal preference to spend more time and effort on the capture and less on the post-processing or vica-versa but that's all it is > a personal preference.

In spite of our best efforts to capture an image to reflect what we want to express as a result, we sometimes make mistakes. However, by keeping an open and creative approach, such images can sometimes be rescued and can even turn out much better than as originally intended. Wildlife is always difficult to consistently never make mistakes! But we learn best from our mistakes.

Operating a camera, capturing an image worth keeping and post-processing are all skills to be enjoyed. As @Kodiak Qc said earlier, it's a chain of decisions.
 
Ed Sutton said:
Hmmm.. Where does that leave various works of art which are intended to be ephemeral and possibly only experienced by the artist? e.g. http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/long-a-line-made-by-walking-p07149 The photograph isn't the art work.
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Well obviously it's possible for the artist to be the only person who experiences their art. But the fact that this artist deliberately took a photo surely implies that he is inviting us to look at it? Otherwise why take it?

It's true that it's not an image that communicates much without its title, and even then, it needs some explanation, perhaps. It then becomes (IMO) a sort of question about art, as a lot of contemporary art is. Is this a record of a piece of performance art, assuming we know what that is? Or is it an artwork in its own right? Is it actually an intent to play with the idea of the photograph as record vs the photograph as artistic endeavour? Is it asking how minimal art can be?

To me, it's a piece of art that I probably don't have the necessary background to approach in the way that the artist intended (and maybe that's fine with them). There's a lot of that in the world :) But if I make the effort, I can definitely engage with it as art. No problem there.
 
dave.hallett said:
An artist is someone who sets out with the intention of giving others that experience, invites them to experience it as art.
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Not necessarily at all - many an artist (and indeed a craftsperson too) might produce something just because they are driven personally to do so, without an audience being found. That doesn't deny it as art, if it is art.

As for Ian, the poor old initiator of this thread, I should acknowledge your questions but they've been answered pretty well already. Production is about process. Creative process involves control, but also a willingness at times to embrace accidents. However to maximise control (and thus choice) with a digital camera you would normally shoot raw, after which moving sliders is the default. It's all to do with positive purpose, not guilty secrets. And pretty parallel to using an enlarger and developing dishes. The only key thing is for the result to mean something - if it doesn't, then isn't it a waste of time?
 
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droj said:
Not necessarily at all - many an artist (and indeed a craftsperson too) might produce something just because they are driven personally to do so, without an audience being found. That doesn't deny it as art, if it is art.
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I agree. I don't mean to imply that the artist is making stuff *for* their audience. More that they make stuff for *an* audience, whoever it may be, and if it turns out that they are the only person who can relate to it as art, or who even gets a chance to, that's often OK with them. Once you start worrying about what the audience will think, big problems arise. In many ways, it's safer to keep it to yourself. But I think there is in the end something a bit suspect about an artist who completely refuses to share their work. Wouldn't that worry you a bit?
 
dave.hallett said:
I think there is in the end something a bit suspect about an artist who completely refuses to share their work.
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Right, Dave.
… specially when it is well known that a selfish
person is someone who doesn't think of ME first! ;)
 
We're well OT now, but that's half the fun of a forum.

I read recently about Damian Hurst being a little upset that so much of his work was being sold at high prices, and when the bottom fell out of the market the friends he'd given his work to couldn't sell it & instead had to store it carefully. He rhetorically asked the question "why not put it on the wall & look at it as intended?", apparently having failed to look at his work like 'ordinary' people did.

I've been lucky enough to see some of Picasso's early work in Barcelona, and it's a much more enjoyable experience than viewing the work he produced later, when he was trying to break something. A little like the punk movement of the late 70's, he and like-minded people certainly shook up the establishment and created new forms, but I wonder if they left the world poorer, rather than richer in the end.

This has little to do with the OP's post, but it's interesting to explore.
 
ancient_mariner said:
We're well OT now, but that's half the fun of a forum.

I read recently about Damian Hurst being a little upset that so much of his work was being sold at high prices, and when the bottom fell out of the market the friends he'd given his work to couldn't sell it & instead had to store it carefully. He rhetorically asked the question "why not put it on the wall & look at it as intended?", apparently having failed to look at his work like 'ordinary' people did.

I've been lucky enough to see some of Picasso's early work in Barcelona, and it's a much more enjoyable experience than viewing the work he produced later, when he was trying to break something. A little like the punk movement of the late 70's, he and like-minded people certainly shook up the establishment and created new forms, but I wonder if they left the world poorer, rather than richer in the end.

This has little to do with the OP's post, but it's interesting to explore.
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Well I may be odd, but I think the art world is richer post Picasso and punk definitely improved popular music.
 
Phil V said:
Well I may be odd, but I think the art world is richer post Picasso and punk definitely improved popular music.
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Based on popularity, I'm definitely the odd one out, at least as far as the music goes. As for the art side, I don't know enough to really tell.
 
I seem to recall that back in the 1970s(?) there was a movement in the art world which posed the question 'Is Photography Art?' There was even an exhibition in London which I went to but I don't remember where (I was probably stoned at the time). There was a nice hefty exhibition catalogue too but I doubt if I can find it, assuming I still have it.

Back towards the topic, you might say that the artist's brain is the capture and the actual painting is the post processing, all integrated together not in adversity and resulting in the creator's vision.
 
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Steve Smith said:
Exactly why I went back to film. I hated sitting at a computer doing post processing.
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....Which goes to prove how different we all are. I would hate to go back to film and the smelly darkroom and I love the fine control which the digital medium now offers us.

Do you ever post your film pictures online?
 
dave.hallett said:
But I think there is in the end something a bit suspect about an artist who completely refuses to share their work. Wouldn't that worry you a bit?
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Why should that worry anyone? If it was never shared then the wider world would never know it existed in the first place. There are many artists/writers who have been 'discovered' after their deaths. Some have demanded their work be destroyed when they died and their wishes ignored, others just hoarded their work for it to be found accidentally (eg Vivian Maier). No doubt there have been many we never hear about because they have destroyed their work themselves.

The pecualiar thing about making art is that, I think for most artists, it is the process of making the art which is important. It's about exploring and learning. My favourite quote relates to this and comes from The Heart of Darkness: "I don't like work - no man does - but I like what is in the work - the chance to find yourself. Your own reality - for yourself, not for others - what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means."

That sums up what art and photography are really about for me.
 
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