Sky Replacement

[jaapv]

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Of course not, but that does not justify a denial of the existence my definition. The fact that only 0.00001% of all words written end up in literary works does not mean that literature  does not exist.

Coming back to the original subject, even by regarding photography as a blind copy of reality, the only thing sky replacement does is combining two realities in one image. Why not?

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[pgk]

9 minutes ago, jaapv said:

Why not?

Because it is showing something which is not what was seen and passing it off as reality. So it is deceitful. Its like telling an embellished story which is ok provided that's what everyone knows that it is. It all depends on whether 'truth' matters I suppose.

[willeica]

I see that I contributed on this topic some time back, but when I saw the title again this morning I thought that this must be about changing a TV service provider. A true sign of ageing 😀?

William 

[jaapv]

38 minutes ago, pgk said:

Because it is showing something which is not what was seen and passing it off as reality. So it is deceitful. Its like telling an embellished story which is ok provided that's what everyone knows that it is. It all depends on whether 'truth' matters I suppose.

My point is that it is not passed off as reality. It is passed off as an interpretation by the photographer. 

It would be a different story if it were labelled "This is exactly as I saw it"(*) - which would be a lie anyway, as there has been a choice of focal length/perspective, exposure (which influences the reality of the light) and choice of angle and framing which excludes 90% of reality. 

(*) Which would make it a non-photograph in my book, just a photographic record. 

Have a look at "Rhine II" by Gursky. Dog walkers and a factory were photoshopped out. Deceitful? The photographic collector community did not think so. 

[frame-it]

10 hours ago, SrMi said:

The most common deceit in photography is when it’s claimed that it depicts reality.

my favorite example: https://medium.com/vantage/nikon-awards-photography-prize-to-photoshopped-image-hilarity-ensues-933e28b2aa04

 

😇

[PeterGA]

I came to the conclusion very early on after becoming fairly adept in making photographs in a darkroom - that the  very word 'photography' is a marketing deceit - a lie from the get go.

I think people who wish to define what making photos is and what it is not by referencing the invented word are chasing clouds. Call using cameras and software and or chemicals to make images whatever you like- but to me it is just another craft.

Replacing skies sure why not and who cares ? A bad image is a bad image and a good image is a good image and everyone has an opinion on what is what.

 

 

[SrMi]

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A quote from Richard Avedon:

A portrait is not a likeness. The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph, it is no longer a fact but an opinion. There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.
 

[pgk]

So I assume that everybody who thinks that photographs are not trying to convey reality simply see images on the news as ..... what?

[SrMi]

On 8/2/2022 at 10:29 AM, pgk said:

So I assume that everybody who thinks that photographs are not trying to convey reality simply see images on the news as ..... what?

I like to read news from opposing sides. Both sides use photographs to prove thoroughly opposing views.
E.g., photographs of the same person, without the need for any captions, can show either a power-hungry monster or an empathic philanthropist.

Photographs convey an opinion, an emotion, not a reality.

[LocalHero1953]

There is a well-known UK politician - anyone in the UK can probably work out who - who has become notorious for bringing her their own photographer wherever she goes they go, and getting herself themself photographed in suitably impressive locations (wearing a helmet in a tank) and dressing like Margaret Thatcher.

Are those photos accurate, truthful, opinion, objective, misleading, lies, or what? They are certainly propaganda. And does propaganda show truth? Or only a certain sort of truth (the shapes, the colours) combined with a lot of untruth (what that person is really like).

[pgk]

43 minutes ago, LocalHero1953 said:

Are those photos accurate, truthful, opinion, objective, misleading, lies, or what?

They show (or should show) what was in front of the camera. Whether that is in itself accurate, truthful, opinion, misleading, etc. is something else.

[willeica]

3 hours ago, LocalHero1953 said:

There is a well-known UK politician - anyone in the UK can probably work out who - who has become notorious for bringing her their own photographer wherever she goes they go, and getting herself themself photographed in suitably impressive locations (wearing a helmet in a tank) and dressing like Margaret Thatcher.

Are those photos accurate, truthful, opinion, objective, misleading, lies, or what? They are certainly propaganda. And does propaganda show truth? Or only a certain sort of truth (the shapes, the colours) combined with a lot of untruth (what that person is really like).

This goes back to well before the dawn of photography. Monarchs, aristocracy, politicians and wealthy people always had themselves portrayed in paintings and drawings in the best possible way as a visit to any portrait gallery or museum will show. Back in the 1840s, when photography was new, people such as the great Irish political leader Daniel O' Connell had themselves 'daguerreotyped' and then lithographs were produced from the daguerreotypes, so that printed copies could be made for their many followers. Below is a lithograph produced from a daguerreotype of Daniel O' Connell. The daguerreotype is no longer around, but another one of O'Connell from around the same time shows that, for the lithograph, he was considerable beautified to show him in the best possible light to his followers.

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Why then are we surprised when the 'here today, gone tomorrow' politicians of today do exactly the same thing? Today 'ordinary people' do it in an instant for their social media posts, so people with media teams around them can do much more.

Visual and digital literacy and, dare I say it, political literacy should be compulsory subjects for all second level students. 

William 

[Anbaric]

4 hours ago, LocalHero1953 said:

There is a well-known UK politician - anyone in the UK can probably work out who - who has become notorious for bringing her their own photographer wherever she goes they go, and getting herself themself photographed in suitably impressive locations (wearing a helmet in a tank) and dressing like Margaret Thatcher.

Are those photos accurate, truthful, opinion, objective, misleading, lies, or what? They are certainly propaganda. And does propaganda show truth? Or only a certain sort of truth (the shapes, the colours) combined with a lot of untruth (what that person is really like).

But what if it turned out they'd been sitting at home on their sofa wearing that helmet (it takes all sorts, especially in certain political parties) and then been photoshopped on to the tank later - wouldn't that be an entirely different order of misleading?

There are non-fiction books written from a highly skewed perspective where the interpretation can be questioned but nobody disputes the core facts. There are also novels based on true events (Wolf Hall, say) where of course the author is free to embellish and invent (just as Gursky does, and freely admits). But there is also a third category (especially certain memoirs and some notorious accounts of events in wartime) that have been presented as factual (or at least the author has allowed the reader to assume this) where it has later emerged that large parts have been fabricated, or borrowed from less well known but more authentic texts. This seems like a closer analogy to a typical sky-replaced photo, presented to the world without comment on the degree of manipulation.

[250swb]

Anybody who points a camera at something edits and manipulates the image by leaving out what is not shown. How the image is framed can radically influence the meaning as demonstrated by conceptual artist John Hilliard in his 'Cause of Death' set, which has the same photograph cropped four ways and each implying a different cause of death

https://www.loosenart.com/blogs/magazine/john-hilliard-aniconic-photography

and it ideally shows that photography is not objective for a viewer because looking at an image they only have one context to judge it by, the way the photographer presents it. The viewer doesn't know what has been left out of the shot as as much as the viewer doesn't know if the content in it is truthful. So distrust any photographer who says 'I only photograph what I see', because 'seeing' is riddled by the curse of editing in the viewfinder. Perhaps trust a photographer who says, 'just for the record this is my edit on the world'.

 

 

[willeica]

11 hours ago, Anbaric said:

But what if it turned out they'd been sitting at home on their sofa wearing that helmet (it takes all sorts, especially in certain political parties) and then been photoshopped on to the tank later - wouldn't that be an entirely different order of misleading?

There are non-fiction books written from a highly skewed perspective where the interpretation can be questioned but nobody disputes the core facts. There are also novels based on true events (Wolf Hall, say) where of course the author is free to embellish and invent (just as Gursky does, and freely admits). But there is also a third category (especially certain memoirs and some notorious accounts of events in wartime) that have been presented as factual (or at least the author has allowed the reader to assume this) where it has later emerged that large parts have been fabricated, or borrowed from less well known but more authentic texts. This seems like a closer analogy to a typical sky-replaced photo, presented to the world without comment on the degree of manipulation.

I have heard it alleged that Timothy O'Sullivan rearranged the bodies after Gettysburg for his 'Harvest of Death' photograph. And where would you leave Roger Fenton's cannonballs at the scene of the Charge of the Light Brigade in Crimea? Then there is the endless controversy about Capa's falling soldier.

In the 1920s, in my own country, the British authorities faked the aftermath of the Battle of Tralee, to show 'dead and surrendering rebels', on the peaceful and prosperous Vico Road in Dublin over 200 miles from Tralee. Nobody was fooled by this, of course. Michael Barry, a friend of mine, has written a book about this called 'Fake News and Irish War of Independence', showing this and several other examples of 100+ year old trickery with photographs. Both sides engaged in some of this, I might add. 

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There is nothing new under the Sun and give people a way of creating illusions and fake news and they will do use it. Compared to some of the things that have happened, 'dropping in skies' with Photoshop seems as harmless as it is pointless.

William 

Edited August 5, 2022 by willeica