Sky Replacement

[Anbaric]

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I bet this guy wouldn't have been too enthusiastic about sky replacement sofware:

'They not only make use of every appliance and process known to the photographer's art, but without the slightest hesitation -- as Steichen in his "Moonrise" and "The Portrait of a Young Man," and Frank Eugene in his "Song of the Lily" -- overstep all legitimate boundaries and deliberately mix up photography with the technical devices of painting and the graphic arts. Both men are guilty of having painted, more than once, entire backgrounds into their pictures. Steichen's highlights are nearly all put in artificially, and Eugene invariably daubs paint and etches on his negatives to realize artistic shadows. There is hardly an exhibitor, Photo-Secessionist or not, who does not practice the trickeries of elimination, generalization, accentuation, or augmentation; and many of them, who have not the faintest idea of drawing or painting, do it in a very awkward and amateurish way. But the striving after picture-like qualities and effects is the order of the day, and throughout the pictures hung -- although practically nothing wantonly eccentric or repellant in its artificiality had been admitted -- there was hardly one which was not influenced by the prevailing clamor for high art.'

http://www.nearbycafe.com/photocriticism/members/archivetexts/photocriticism/hartmann/hartmannstraight.html

- Sadakichi Hartmann "A Plea for Straight Photography" (1904)

 

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[pgk]

1 hour ago, Anbaric said:

..... and most won't write their own.

I'm sure that there must be some software available to do it for them😉.

[Jeff S]

On 6/11/2022 at 6:04 AM, pgk said:

This is a far cry from printing bits of two negatves together. 

 

You mean the way Jerry Uelsmann produced his prints in the darkroom? And people still called them photographs.  

Nothing new in this debate.  Only the tools have changed.

Jeff

Edited June 12, 2022 by Jeff S

[pgk]

I thought that it was Maxwell-Lyte who started adding skies?

[Jeff S]

Uelsmann manipulated far more than skies, often using multiple negatives and multiple enlargers. 

But his famous self portrait used sky to great effect.

https://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2022/04/jerry-uelsmann-19342022.html

Jeff

[Anbaric]

On 6/12/2022 at 2:52 PM, Jeff S said:

You mean the way Jerry Uelsmann produced his prints in the darkroom? And people still called them photographs. 

From what I can see of Uelsmann's work, there was no attempt to disguise that he was creating montages, often with surreal juxtapositions - that was the whole point. But the typical use of sky replacement software, to prettify a dull image while leaving no obvious evidence we have done so, seems more or less the opposite of that. We want our montage to look like the ideal photograph we imagine we might have taken if we'd gotten up a couple of hours earlier, or made the trip in August with the sun out rather than September in a light drizzle.

[Jeff S]

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11 minutes ago, Anbaric said:

From what I can see of Uelsmann's work, there was no attempt to disguise that he was creating montages, often with surreal juxtapositions - that was the whole point. But the typical use of sky replacement software, to prettify a dull image while leaving no obvious evidence we have done so, seems more or less the opposite of that. We want our montage to look like the ideal photograph we imagine we might have taken if we'd gotten up a couple of hours earlier, or made the trip in August with the sun out rather than September in a light drizzle.

As I wrote, old debate.  There are countless examples beyond Uelsmann. All photography to me. YMMV.

Jeff

[jaapv]

On 6/14/2022 at 1:32 AM, Anbaric said:

From what I can see of Uelsmann's work, there was no attempt to disguise that he was creating montages, often with surreal juxtapositions - that was the whole point. But the typical use of sky replacement software, to prettify a dull image while leaving no obvious evidence we have done so, seems more or less the opposite of that. We want our montage to look like the ideal photograph we imagine we might have taken if we'd gotten up a couple of hours earlier, or made the trip in August with the sun out rather than September in a light drizzle.

I mentioned Rembrandt’s Night Watch. It is supposed to be a realistic group portrait, quite a commercial painting actually. Do you really think that he had a spotlight on the little girl? That light was painted there to prettify the image. It was never there. 

[ianman]

On 6/11/2022 at 5:18 PM, pgk said:

I'm sure that there must be some software available to do it for them😉.

This is actually a very good example of the issue here. Users could have an original piece of music with a perfectly written score created by the software, without any need of composing knowledge or skill. The computer may play the music, but the user does not have to be a musician.

We all know and, I presume, agree that photographic manipulation has existed since day one. But there is a massive difference between, for example, an experienced printer (person not machine) using his knowledge to get the best possible print from a negative or file, and someone using software that makes all of the decisions based on stats or or a plugin made by some anonymous programmer in the hope of getting a “better” result.

[pgk]

On 6/14/2022 at 12:46 AM, Jeff S said:

As I wrote, old debate.  There are countless examples beyond Uelsmann. All photography to me. YMMV.

Yes & No. From wiki: He [Maxwell-Lyte]was one of the pioneers of inserting an imported sky into a landscape photograph to mitigate the problems of sensitivity of the collodion plates, a process that he justified in a letter of 6 November 1861 to the journal Moniteur de la photographie.^[9] 

My Bold - it was a solution to a technical problem caused by poor sensitivity so had a rational reason not specifically intended as manipulation per se. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farnham_Maxwell-Lyte

[pgk]

4 minutes ago, ianman said:

This is actually a very good example of the issue here. Users could have an original piece of music with a perfectly written score created by the software, without any need of composing knowledge or skill. The computer may play the music, but the user does not have to be a musician.

At some point in the future perhaps we will have photographic imagery entirely created by computers at the behest of the computer user. Maybe a command which produces an image in the style of .... [Ansel Adams for example]? And perhaps it could be linked into GIS mapping software so we may specify a location, direction and upward/downward angle of view, link it into live weather conditions in the area at the time of production and also location of sun, etc., etc.. We could photograph anywhere in the world without even getting up. Would that still be accepted as photography I wonder?

[ianman]

38 minutes ago, pgk said:

Would that still be accepted as photography I wonder?

Technically it is photography,... but without a photographer. Still as more and more people are incapable or to lazy to do things themselves, even such simple tasks as mowing a lawn, maybe they will enjoy such images.

Having said that, and to be completely honest and open, I have a book called "This is Mars". The photos are stunning... all taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. I find them fascinating because they are such amazing pictures of an alien world.

Edited June 16, 2022 by ianman

[Jeff S]

2 hours ago, pgk said:

Yes & No. From wiki: He [Maxwell-Lyte]was one of the pioneers of inserting an imported sky into a landscape photograph to mitigate the problems of sensitivity of the collodion plates, a process that he justified in a letter of 6 November 1861 to the journal Moniteur de la photographie.^[9] 

My Bold - it was a solution to a technical problem caused by poor sensitivity so had a rational reason not specifically intended as manipulation per se. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farnham_Maxwell-Lyte

So what?  Just another point in the history of photography. Doesn’t negate a word I wrote, which is just my opinion on the topic of picture editing.

Jeff

[pippy]

On 6/11/2022 at 11:04 AM, pgk said:

Post processing is essential in the same way that a negative has to be printed and adjusted. This is a far cry from printing bits of two negatves together...

Out of curiosity, Paul, what about a print made from a negative which was the result of deliberate double-exposure? Would that be 'A Photograph' or 'Photo-Manipulation'? What about a print made from one negative where the photographer had used the (Shock! Horror!!) Cokin 'Double Mask' filter?

WARNING! : People of a Nervous Disposition are advise to NOT click on the following link. Signed; 'The Management';

http://www.geocities.ws/cokinfiltersystem/double_mask.htm

Philip.

Edited June 16, 2022 by pippy

[ianman]

27 minutes ago, pippy said:

What about a print made from one negative where the photographer had used the (Shock! Horror!!) Cokin 'Double Mask' filter?

Well that's just plain and simple bad taste. 

[pippy]

32 minutes ago, ianman said:

Well that's just plain and simple bad taste. 

Yet surprisingly popular in its day!

I am slightly ashamed in having to plead 'Guilty As Charged' having sold many sets as a student whilst Serving Time as a photographic salesperson during the term holidays. Possibly in even worse taste was the Rainbow Filter from the same company. As the accompanying blurb says;

"Add color and excitement to an otherwise boring image..."

You have to admire the sheer chutzpah the firm displays in their choice of viewpoint for illustrating the effect achieved with the filter;

https://cokinfilter.com/products/rainbow-2

If Only Ansel had known how to transform his "otherwise boring" 1935 image 'Yosemite Valley'...

To be fair to them Cokin did - and apparently stil do - manufacture a great many very versatile, highly usable filters so these 'novelty' items should be regarded as being exactly that; Novelties.

Philip.

Edited June 16, 2022 by pippy

[ianman]

Ansel is spinning in his grave!

3 minutes ago, pippy said:

these 'novelty' items should be regarded as being exactly that.

Analog plugins?  (I had to make sure my spellchecker didn't decide to take away a few letters there!!!)

[pippy]

21 minutes ago, ianman said:

...Analog plugins?  (I had to make sure my spellchecker didn't decide to take away a few letters there!!!)

Anagram Puzzlers will have a feel day with that one...

Philip.

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[Anbaric]

5 hours ago, jaapv said:

I mentioned Rembrandt’s Night Watch. It is supposed to be a realistic group portrait, quite a commercial painting actually. Do you really think that he had a spotlight on the little girl? That light was painted there to prettify the image. It was never there. 

It's a painting. Nothing was ever there. Nobody turned up to his studio with a chicken dangling from her belt. Probably none of the subjects stood around in anything like that arrangement. The most I'd expect would be that the figures on the canvas resemble the people who commissioned it well enough for them to recognise themselves. But expectations about photographs may be different, because (unmanipulated) they have a more direct relationship with reality. It's the same relationship that leads some people to conclude that photographs can't possibly be Art (I don't agree with this, just as I wouldn't say a literary non-fiction book can't be Art). But the typical goal of techniques like sky replacement is to give the impression that this relationship has not been violated, when in fact it has been. We go to great lengths to conceal the manipulations, to make the final image look like it might have been what we captured with the camera. To, in a sense, deceive the viewer. The viewer of a painting isn't deceived, because they don't expect anything like this close relationship with reality. They are, after all, looking at brush strokes.

Visual artists should, of course, be absolutely free to do exactly what they like. But perhaps we need a different vocabulary to describe photography-based images, depending on their degree of manipulation. While we might broadly call all of them 'photos', I don't think a heavily manipulated, sky-replaced image is the same thing as the kind of photograph that might be honoured by World Press Photo (which can still be a significant work of art, and quite often is). I once made a composite 'group photo' of a group of colleagues (let's call it the Day Watch) from some snaps taken at different times, with a fake sky as backdrop, with no artistic intent. Would I call it a photograph? Not really. It's a photomontage, just like any other sky-replaced image.

Since this is a Leica forum, and we are only supposed to post Leica photos, at what point does an image cease to qualify? With a bit of sky replacement and a few other commonplace manipulations, we might easily reach a situation where more than half the pixels were not recorded by any product of Wetzlar. Using a library from an image editing package that includes artificial skies, they might not even come from a camera at all.

One thing I find interesting is that the supposed benefits of this process often goes unchallenged and unexamined. In the Skylum video on the first page of this thread, it's taken as read that sky replacement will 'instantly improve' your photo and 'can really take your photo to the next level'. The result is not unlike the synthetic equivalent of using one of those novelty Cokin filters ('Graduated Tobacco', perhaps?) to muck up your Kodachrome back in the 80s. Will we perhaps see a backlash against digital manipulation in the same way that earlier generations rejected traditional retouching and gimmicky filters in favour of 'straighter' photographs, for aesthetic reasons and from a desire for 'authenticity'? Maybe that's one of the things behind the recent popularity of 'analogue' and instant photography, where you can't just apply an Instagram filter to the print.

[jaapv]

It was a group painting meant as a military group portrait so it was painted from life. I fail to see the essential difference to present-day group photographs, except the technique used. If it had not been regarded as a true depiction of a real scene Rembrandt would have failed his commission. By your restrictions on photography this cannot be classified as art.