It's impossible to fully be solely responsible for any image captured. Let's
say you went to the extremes of building your own pinball camera, film (a
piece of glass plate, say, coated by a solution of silver halide cystals
that you made), photographic paper (using something like egg albumen or
whatever), ground your own glass lens (if you wanted to use a lens on the
pinhole camera you made), etc. Still someone else somewhere will have had
some 'input' to the process. Is a resultant image (however obtained what you
saw with your eye? The answer is no - but is the image yours if you took the
photgraph? The answer is yes. How close said image is what you saw with your
eye is subjective - and so up to you to put a figure on its fidelity. It can
never be 100% because what the eye sees in a viewfinder is necessarily
different to what the camera sees due to 'top-down' processing by the
brain/mind. Howe many of us have taken a picture of a bird in flight that
'looks' huge and perfectly clear in the viewfinder only to get a picture of
a tiny black thing the size of a dot on a standard print? I do believe that
when taking the picture, the mind knows its a bird and so alters our
perception to clearly see a bird. The camera menawhile just (hopefully)
faithfully records the image it sees - which is invaribaly inferior to what
the mind saw. One of the reasons we use different lenses, filters, etc. is
to try and get what camera sees to match (as far as possible) what the mind
sees. Because the camera can never quite make a perfect match, is why
photography is art - every photographic image ever taken is an abstraction
of what 'reality' was at that moment. Sometimes photograhers seek to get as
close a match as possible, at other times, photograhers seek to
deliberately make a mismatch that makes an interesting image. Who, in SLR
photography, hasn't used a 'tobacco' filter to make the sky look more
interesting? Or not taken advantage of the DOF limitation effects of lenses?
Or not made creative use of the 'contrast' in B & W? Photographers , even
point n' shoot 'snappers', modify, inadvertently or otherwise, what is
'there' to make an image. That's the beauty and problem of photography in
general.
Allan
PS No trees were harmed in the sending of this message and a very large
number of electrons were asked their permission to be terribly
inconvenienced. (And threw a party for them afterwards for being really cool
about it).
Disrupting the unnatural balance that you, as a conscious human being and a
confused mass of energy, have created.
-Disturb the mind -
>From: NSURIT@xxxxxxx
>Reply-To: olympus@xxxxxxxxxx
>To: olympus@xxxxxxxxxx
>Subject: [OM] Re: Homepage picture updated
>Date: Sat, 18 Nov 2006 09:19:32 EST
>
>
>In a message dated 11/18/2006 7:14:55 A.M. Central Standard Time,
>agschnozz@xxxxxxxxx writes:
>
> > Did you say it's G-R-E-E-E-E-N?
>
>I had to go back and look at the slide again. Yup, the web
>image is pretty faithful to the original.
>
>Ken, I like both your answer and the image you created and . . .
>
>
>
>It always amuses me when sitting in a print critique at our photography
>club, and the person doing the critique asks a question of the photographer
>that
>is something like, "Is that the way it really looked when you made this
>image?" The answer given close to 100% of the time is, "Yes." The
>correct answer
>100% of the time is, "No." Irrespective of whether you have done the
>printing or not, there are too many variables over which either you or
>someone else
>had control or no control over that go into what the final print looks
>like
>to give a "Yes" answer.
>
>IMHO, that is both the good news and the bad news (if you happen to be
>looking for bad news) about photography. From the point of my wrapping my
>big
>paws around a camera and lifting it to my eye until when the print is
>framed and
>on the wall, it has been my creation . . . an interpretation of something
>that was "real" only at the moment of capture of the information.
>
>I will be going to an arts and craft festival on Sunday and when someone
>buys an image from me it will be (again IMHO) not because of the
>truthfulness of
>the way I recorded something, but rather because of the way I interpreted
>and
> manipulated what was there. They will be purchasing what was created
>rather than what was recorded. Now, that is certainly the good news. It
>is the
>results of your "vision" or "eye" that people want to display, rather
>than
>your ability to faithfully record something you have seen. If you don't
>agree,
>take three photographers out to the same location at the same time and ask
>each of them to record the scene. They will each "record" it differently
>and
>each record will reflect it differently. Each will interpret and
>manipulate
>it in a different manner.
>
>Next time someone asks me the "question", I'll probably use some variation
>of your answer or I may say, "Heck no, I just like out of focus purple
>stuff
>and that is why it looks the way it does." Given the work I do, either
>answer
>might be close to the truth. I will remain amused by the questions and the
>answers given. <{8^) Bill Barber
>
>
>
>
>
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