Howard, I share your vexation with the sloppiness of language about media. The term "straight" photography is still useful if only photographers and some bone-head curators will use it. All else is mixed media, collage, or whatever (there's a whole lot of whatever) Let's please not call them photographs. I'm not knocking photo-based art - far from it. I was really put off last year at seeing a big room in the photography section of the Chicago Art Institute full of highly manipulated inkjet prints very loosely based on photographs They should have been in the print department with the silkscreen and litho prints, etc. (I was with some other cranky old guys who, having traveled four hours to see photographs, were equally grumpy about it!) One has to draw a line somewhere to mark where straight pictures become something else. Excluding mainly tonal balance (as a photo curator or juror sorting pictures by medium) I would insist it has to do with the degree to which the original recording is changed . Once you screw with formal qualities you've departed to illustration and collage land. There are other departures. The material qualities of the print itself can also be an issue. For example, does an applied emulsion or a process artifact differ from simulated? I say YES - applied picture content goes in the collage pile. AZ Build a Lookaround! The Lookaround Book, 4Th ed. Now an E-book. http://www.panoramacamera.us > -------- Original Message -------- > Subject: What is a photograph anyway? > From: Howard <home@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> > Date: Sun, March 05, 2006 4:37 am > To: List for Photo/Imaging Educators - Professionals - Students > <photoforum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> > > Following on from the CC v. Photoshop filters debate... > > Can someone now define what we mean by a "photograph" in these days of > "digitised images"? > > If you look through many magazines, go to photography competitions, > visit exhibtions, so many exhibitors are displaying images which have > been excessively modified, not just using PS filters, but including > brushwork, text, multiple images some of which are not originally > photographic images. Thr end result is thus a long way from the original > capture. > > So, what is a photograph today? > > Howard > > P.S. (!) > I do use PS, but to adjust colours slightly to give more pleasing tones, > just as a lab might have done when printing, to sharpen the image a > little, and maybe to re-touch skin tones and flaws slightly. > But I try to keep the final image along the lines of a traditional photo > print, i.e. the scene as I saw it.
