Posted by David Frank on October 23, 2014 at 9:53am
Is This Film Or Digital?While this post can certainly be read on its own, it is actually part two of my previous post “Invitation to a Narrative.”So we were discussing some of the questions folks sometimes pose when they visit my art fair booth. I saved the most difficult to answer for last - “Is this film or digital?” Difficult because I don’t really know what they are getting at. Is the question, which is often also posed, “Did this really look like this or was this photoshopped?”What notions do I imagine are being expressed with such questions?That photographs from film are somehow more “real,” more unmanipulated than those produced digitally.That film is real “art” and that anyone can do digital - after all they walk around with a pocket full of digital images captured on the device they occasionally use to make phone calls.That film-based images, being more mysteriously manufactured, somehow have more value.My response to such notions is that it is always the image that matters - not how it is made. When looking at art in general, and no less photography, folks need to bring a healthy measure of Willing Suspension of Disbelief (WSOD). It is the same WSOD that makes a novel moving, a film funny, a play make us cry. In our heads we know that the book, movie or play is a constructed work of imagination. We know these are actors pretending, saying words that someone else wrote, about stories that didn’t actually happen. Yet we love them if they ring true. If they are plausible. Or even, frankly, if they are exciting sci-fi, blockbuster, outrageous, big-budget fantasies that actually are, quite literally, photoshopped.Now, when considering photographs I understand the issue of WSOD is complicated by the various ways photographs are used. In advertising, for instance, they most assuredly want you to see the photographed object as tantamount to the thing itself. You see the beautifully photographed coke can covered with water beaded just so, letting us know how icy cold it is. Of course they want the photo to move you - off the couch, into your car, into the store, etc. etc. But it ain’t necessarily so in the world of fine art.In fine art photography, resistance to WSOD is a depriver of feeling, an impediment to emotion. It is so “in your head” there is no room left for heart. So the question shouldn’t be did this scene truly look like this, rather does this scene show me something that is “true.”The camera is used to collect reflected light. That is all a photograph is - the ephemeral tracings of reflected light rendered fixed. On the one hand collected onto an emulsion crammed with light-sensitive silver salts. On the other hand collected onto a silica wafer crammed with light-sensitive pixels. Each has its place. Neither determines the successful transmission of a look, an idea, an emotion.The artist is always involved with interpretation - a take on the encountered world that is not the encountered world. But there is no trickery employed for trickery’s sake. Trickery in the name of truth, perhaps.So no, my images are not rendered with any necessary sense of fealty to the “real” world. They are constructs of eye, heart, training, experience, and technique. And whether brought to life through the chemical magic of a traditional darkroom, or the precise distribution of pigment ink on paper the intent is always to make images that are not just “real - but, rather to make images that are, like a satisfying novel, a thrilling film, or a wonderful evening of theater - “realer than real."
I also tell people that the camera does not filter because it does not have a brain. Our brain filters what we see with our eyes. Who among us photographers has not taken that picture of the beautiful sunset only to find the glaring radio tower in the middle of it that we didn't even notice.
People regularly ask me whether or not my photos are edited or photoshopped. I unapologetic-ally and enthusiastically say "Absolutely!" I follow up by explaining that the camera sees with one "eye" and we see with two...so the computer work that I do with each photograph helps to bring back the depth and dimension...so that people can feel the same emotion that I felt when the photograph was taken. That is always met with smiles and nods...because everyone has had the experience of enjoying a beautiful place, and then being disappointed with their snapshots after they got home.
I have never seen my sales suffer as a result of this explanation.
That's been a new set of questions over the last year or so. My answer is simple; there is no such thing as a straight print right out of the camera. I work on the photo to produce what I "saw" it as, how I interpreted what I saw. A painter or water-colorist interprets what they see, and we're right along with them. If this isn't the way it was, it's the way it should be.
The other question that bugs the hell out of me is "what camera do you use?" Geez, which photo? I've got stuff shot on half-frame 35mm, 35mm, medium format, and several different digital cameras. I like to show a couple of 20x30's that were shot on a 3MP cell phone camera, then explain it's not the camera, it's what's behind the camera that makes the difference.
Great, very thoughtful answer. I photograph doors (with my Canon EOS, or my iPhone, if I don't have it with me). People also ask me if I manipulate them in Photoshop. I tell them yes, that my goal is to have people see them the way I saw them (gesturing my emotion). They are very willing to accept that as my artistry, and then see them as something special.
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I also tell people that the camera does not filter because it does not have a brain. Our brain filters what we see with our eyes. Who among us photographers has not taken that picture of the beautiful sunset only to find the glaring radio tower in the middle of it that we didn't even notice.
People regularly ask me whether or not my photos are edited or photoshopped. I unapologetic-ally and enthusiastically say "Absolutely!" I follow up by explaining that the camera sees with one "eye" and we see with two...so the computer work that I do with each photograph helps to bring back the depth and dimension...so that people can feel the same emotion that I felt when the photograph was taken. That is always met with smiles and nods...because everyone has had the experience of enjoying a beautiful place, and then being disappointed with their snapshots after they got home.
I have never seen my sales suffer as a result of this explanation.
That's been a new set of questions over the last year or so. My answer is simple; there is no such thing as a straight print right out of the camera. I work on the photo to produce what I "saw" it as, how I interpreted what I saw. A painter or water-colorist interprets what they see, and we're right along with them. If this isn't the way it was, it's the way it should be.
The other question that bugs the hell out of me is "what camera do you use?" Geez, which photo? I've got stuff shot on half-frame 35mm, 35mm, medium format, and several different digital cameras. I like to show a couple of 20x30's that were shot on a 3MP cell phone camera, then explain it's not the camera, it's what's behind the camera that makes the difference.
Great, very thoughtful answer. I photograph doors (with my Canon EOS, or my iPhone, if I don't have it with me). People also ask me if I manipulate them in Photoshop. I tell them yes, that my goal is to have people see them the way I saw them (gesturing my emotion). They are very willing to accept that as my artistry, and then see them as something special.
you put it very well! great article...