The Next Revolution in Photography Is Coming

[TimmyG]

You have to appreciate I'm talking about the future, and I'm talking mainly about the consumer market. The fact that the majority of consumer images taken on smart phones end up processed as a matter of course, through choice is pointing the way towards cameras that more will see this kind of feature becoming more and more commonplace. Everytime I look at my Facebook feed now, I see images from phones that are clearly processed a long way from reality, and this seems to be the preferred method for most casual smart phone users. There's no reason to suggest that this will not become more and more common, as "real" cameras become less and less used by most people. Only those with an interest in photography seem to have any interest in reality, or dynamic range, or any of the things you've talked about. I'm not sure these effects are seen as a gimmick, as they've been around for a long time now.. as long as Instagram has any way, and show no signs of abating.

Only time will tell of course... none of us can read the future, but there's definitely a wider acceptance in unreality in casual, consumer photography these days.

Agreed but as you say, if photographers maintain their interest in representing reality, it shouldn't be too much of a concern if the masses choose an alternate direction.

 

[Pookeyhead]

Not immediately, and not for us, no. Still interesting though. Consumers have always been easily swayed into making all manner of dubious photography decisions. Anyone remember the Kodak Disc camera?

 

[TimmyG]

Not immediately, and not for us, no. Still interesting though. Consumers have always been easily swayed into making all manner of dubious photography decisions. Anyone remember the Kodak Disc camera?

But the Kodak Disc camera was only doing what the majority of new innovations do; attempting to make things more convenient for the consumer. In that regard it should be commended. Where it failed is where it introduced more compromises than could justify the solution to the problem it was trying to address. Had it offered image quality to match it's competitors it may well have taken off, and even been adopted by the prosumer market (although other factors may have prevented that).

What I look for in a technological innovation is more choice. If it can offer that, then it can only be a good thing (apart from maybe having your facebook profile filled with more neon wonders). If technology gets to a stage where it removes options for me, then I'll start worrying about it; but I haven't really seen any signs of that happening yet.

 

[simonblue]

Why because Stephen Mayes said so

 

[Pookeyhead]

Why because Stephen Mayes said so

That it? That's your sole contribution?

 

[Pookeyhead]

But the Kodak Disc camera was only doing what the majority of new innovations do; attempting to make things more convenient for the consumer.

Convenient? By making the images look so terrible everyone who bought one just shoved in a drawer and forgot about it? It was hardly less convenient than 110, and while that was crap too, it was a larger format. I can't remember how big the negatives were from the disc camera, but probably slightly larger than the average pee hole judging by the quality.

 

[TimmyG]

Convenient? By making the images look so terrible everyone who bought one just shoved in a drawer and forgot about it? It was hardly less convenient than 110, and while that was crap too, it was a larger format. I can't remember how big the negatives were from the disc camera, but probably slightly larger than the average pee hole judging by the quality.

I didn't say it did, I said it was trying to

 

[simonblue]

That it? That's your sole contribution?

Yep,because the article is a load of old b*****ks

 

[Solo man]

Yep,because the article is a load of old b*****ks

Although perhaps your comment was tongue in cheek, I think the article raises some valid points, especially if you dig a bit deeper...
I followed the article and then read a bit more about the author, that led me to reading about Craig Mod and his 'Goodbye Cameras' article.. link HERE
I also followed that with reading Taylor Davidson's article 'Software is eating the camera' ... link HERE
As well as the article 'Beyond better images' ... link HERE

All interesting stuff if you fancy doing a bit more reading.

 

[Pookeyhead]

Although perhaps your comment was tongue in cheek, I think the article raises some valid points, especially if you dig a bit deeper...
I followed the article and then read a bit more about the author, that led me to reading about Craig Mod and his 'Goodbye Cameras' article.. link HERE
I also followed that with reading Taylor Davidson's article 'Software is eating the camera' ... link HERE
As well as the article 'Beyond better images' ... link HERE

All interesting stuff if you fancy doing a bit more reading.

Ahhh... a fellow scholar. It's nice to see someone researching instead of reacting

That was tongue in cheek to BTW before anyone says I'm being mean.

Merry Xmas TPers...

Love
David.

 

[big soft moose]

I got one to reinterpret one of my pictures:

48de1289-b93f-400b-949a-259139cb17d6 by Tim Garlick, on Flickr

I must admit my puny mind hadn't seen elephants and Yorkshire terriers in that shot. Maybe when we get to the point where we can replace critics with computers, then there will be a real revolution.

Repeat after me, LSD is bad m'kay

 

[Solo man]

Ahhh... a fellow scholar. It's nice to see someone researching instead of reacting

That was tongue in cheek to BTW before anyone says I'm being mean.

Merry Xmas TPers...

Love
David.

To be honest I only researched it because I didn't really know what the article was trying to say...
Aside from the other articles I've read, the one I found the most interesting was the article 'Photography, hello' ... link HERE (written as a follow on from Goodbye, cameras).
Really interesting reading for a rainy day.

 

[TimmyG]

To be honest I only researched it because I didn't really know what the article was trying to say...
Aside from the other articles I've read, the one I found the most interesting was the article 'Photography, hello' ... link HERE (written as a follow on from Goodbye, cameras).
Really interesting reading for a rainy day.

You are such a Teacher's Pet!

 

[Solo man]

You are such a Teacher's Pet!

Haha! lol

 

[TimmyG]

On a serious note though, that last article was doing alright, until the link to the "social experiment" on Flickr with the HCB image.

"This is why Cartier-Bresson can take blurry masterpieces (although this was greatly, hilariously, mortifyingly debated by the Flickr community)"

I mean, that's one way of looking at it. That the illiterate masses don't recognise a masterpiece when they see one, and that they simply dwell on insignificant technical details (admittedly it's concerning that nobody seemed to recognise the image). Personally I think it's because many of the early, ground breaking works can't hold up when compared to more recent works; even when compared to the work of amateurs. What is perhaps an interesting question to answer is if this is purely down to improvements in technology, the accessibility of the technology (and therefore a higher chance of it falling into the hands of more talented individuals), or that the skills passed on by previous generations have been improved upon. I suspect it's a combination of all those things, but perhaps most driven by improvements in technology.

 

[Pookeyhead]

To be honest I only researched it because I didn't really know what the article was trying to say...

That's why anyone researches - to gain understanding.

 

[Pookeyhead]

I mean, that's one way of looking at it. That the illiterate masses don't recognise a masterpiece when they see one, and that they simply dwell on insignificant technical details (admittedly it's concerning that nobody seemed to recognise the image). Personally I think it's because many of the early, ground breaking works can't hold up when compared to more recent works; even when compared to the work of amateurs.

Ok.. I'll bite. Care to expand on that? Furthermore... care to post examples?

 

[petersmart]

What you did there David sounds exactly what I mentioned earlier - steganography.

No.

Steganography is a cryptographic technique which encodes data (images, files, messages etc), within an image and the data can only be recovered by using the password the data was originally encoded with.

GPS co-ordinates and other data such as EXIF data etc are embedded within the image as metadata and can be viewed in a program designed for this.

The two things are quite different in that metadata can be preserved if a picture is edited but data encoded using steganography is usually lost in any editing, even resizing will make it unreadable.
.

 

[StewartR]

I found it a very annoying article. It was full of overblown rhetorical analogies intended to impress but which didn't advance the argument. I was often unsure whether the writer properly understood the technical details of what he was talking about, or had just got carried away by his grandiloquence.

This is exactly what I thought, except that I couldn't possibly have articulated it as well as you did.

 

[ZoneV]

No.

Steganography is a cryptographic technique which encodes data (images, files, messages etc), within an image and the data can only be recovered by using the password the data was originally encoded with.

GPS co-ordinates and other data such as EXIF data etc are embedded within the image as metadata and can be viewed in a program designed for this.

The two things are quite different in that metadata can be preserved if a picture is edited but data encoded using steganography is usually lost in any editing, even resizing will make it unreadable.
.

Yes, I know what steganography is. If you read my posts, you can tell.

 

[petersmart]

Yes, I know what steganography is. If you read my posts, you can tell.

Perhaps I was confused because what you actually wrote was: "Is this similar to a common technique employed by cryptographers who "hide" data within digital images (e.g. some elements of Cicada 3301)?"

I was simply trying to explain the difference.
.

 

[RedRobin]

Agreed but as you say, if photographers maintain their interest in representing reality, it shouldn't be too much of a concern if the masses choose an alternate direction.

....But it's not just the masses who are interested in having fun with the photographic medium.

Digital manipulation allows more freedom of expression and releases more of an author's artistic talent (if they have such talents). You will only feel threatened by this if you are a conventional (meaning 'traditional') photographer tethered to only representing a scientific reality and nothing more. That doesn't mean that you'll necessarily be out of work but the scene has already started to change.

It's simply all about the image.

 

[Pookeyhead]

Digital manipulation allows more freedom of expression and releases more of an author's artistic talent (if they have such talents). You will only feel threatened by this if you are a conventional photographer tethered to only representing a scientific reality and nothing more.

I'd say that's a minority already. Taking the images posted in this very forum as an example, it's a minority.

 

[RedRobin]

I'd say that's a minority already. Taking the images posted in this very forum as an example, it's a minority.

....Yes, certainly a minority in this forum and you would expect that to be so because the majority of photographers in this forum are either 'traditional' or haven't yet moved towards the future being discussed. Some may even be rather fixed in their ways and resistant to change or to more freedom of expression. Traditionalists tend to frown on more artistic individual expression in photographic images. How many times do you see photographers posting here and saying rather sheepishly "Sorry, it's a bit arty"? Or "It's a bit arty but I like it"?

This forum, excellent as it is, does not reflect the whole international photographic community - The posters here are a relatively small group of people and, please correct me if I am mistaken, aren't most of them wedding photographers? Wedding photography is doubtless an area where portraying the bride's expensive wedding dress in (for example) the colours of the rainbow would not go down too well! On the other hand I have seen some wonderful creatively manipulated wedding images posted on TP. So, just as film media has continued to exist in the digital world, so will 'traditional' images always continue to exist. There is no need to be afraid of whatever the future holds - You can't do anything to change it anyway!

Ansell Adams said many decades ago: "The camera takes the photo, but the photographer makes it" - The photographer continues to make what he or she wants to make it and the previous conventions do not have to be obeyed.

The bottom line surely is that there is room for both 'traditional' and 'artistic' photography. Each to their own and why not do both? I think that the future being discussed is potentially exciting and inspiring. Some people will do it badly but I still welcome the potential future. The subject of 'Photography as Art' has always been controversial and hotly debated by photographers but not by the public who simply judge what they see and don't care how it's created.

 

[chris malcolm]

There's a lot of talk about unmanipulated (or at least not improperly manipulated) photographs representing reality. The fact that we can easily agree with each other about what we see in front of our eyes gives us a false sense of security about this "reality" business. Take for example the famous snap of the blue or gold dress which some people could not agree about -- due it turned out to inherent differences in the way their brains did auto white balance.

What about "real" colour? It's an optical illusion for example that mixing yellow and blue paint makes green, caused by the fact that we perceive colour via three colour filters in our retinas, which find causes the illusion of there being three primary colours. An animal with more colour filters in its retina wouldn't be fooled by this blue plus yellow makes green illusion.

Nor do our eyes take a photograph and pass it to the brain to be examined at leisure, as we would a physical photograph. Our eyes, which only have a tiny high resolution spot in the middle surrounded by increasingly vague edges which check for movement or high contrast as places to jump the high res center to next, flicker very rapidly all over the field of view, concentrating on the interesting bits. An astonishing experiment with a text filled screen demonstrates this. Fix someone's head in position and monitor what they're looking at with an eye tracker as they look at a page of text on a screen. The high resolution bit of the retina, the fovea, sees only a word or two at a time, the rest being pretty blurred. A program alters the screen display to show what the fovea is looking at sharply, and jumbles the rest of the screen into an indecipherable mess. The person using this gets the impression they're looking at a perfectly stable high resolution screen of text. Everyone else sees a wildly flickering indecipherable jumble. In other words what you think of as the image in your mind's eye which you're contemplating is actually the result of a very clever adaptive ongoing dynmaic high speed stitching process of many images. This sophisticated stitching process incorporates auto white balancing, focus stacking, dynamic range blending, some perspective and geometry corrections such as vertical parallelisation, and more. Optical illusions are the result of tricking these very fast automatic brain post processing and snapshot stitching processes into doing something silly.

So it could well be argued that a post-processed or "manipulated" image which has done lens geometry corrections, tone mapping of the high dynamic range of the RAW file down to print or screen dynamic range, some mild keystoning correction, not to mention the usual auto white balance and autoexposure, is actually representing reality better than an unprocessed image -- if the definition of reality is what we think we see with our eyes.

 

[sirch]

So it could well be argued that a post-processed or "manipulated" image which has done lens geometry corrections, tone mapping of the high dynamic range of the RAW file down to print or screen dynamic range, some mild keystoning correction, not to mention the usual auto white balance and autoexposure, is actually representing reality better than an unprocessed image -- if the definition of reality is what we think we see with our eyes.

Perhaps the definition of reality isn't strictly speaking what we see with out eyes but I couldn't agree more with the sentiment of your post and isn't that one of the key aspects of photography? Not to produce a scientific measure of light colour and intensity at a given point in space/time but to show a scene as it was interpreted by the eye/brain so that someone else experiences a similar view of the world to the photographer.

 

[RedRobin]

Perhaps the definition of reality isn't strictly speaking what we see with out eyes but I couldn't agree more with the sentiment of your post and isn't that one of the key aspects of photography? Not to produce a scientific measure of light colour and intensity at a given point in space/time but to show a scene as it was interpreted by the eye/brain so that someone else experiences a similar view of the world to the photographer.

....Exactly, and we each can have differing interpretations and express them in our post-processed resulting images.

When we compose in the viewfinder we are already taking a big step to our own individual interpretation of what we perceive what is in front of us.

 

[TimmyG]

Ok.. I'll bite. Care to expand on that? Furthermore... care to post examples?

Aside from the example already given, how about this one?

Pop that in a pool of work from contemporary amateur landscape photographs and I bet it won't stand out. To really appreciate it you need more context, the least of which was a "when." Add a "who", and you can then associate it with a wider body of work, and it becomes more interesting. On it's own, and outside of any context, it is lost in a sea of similar images by lots of different photographers, and many of which I would argue are "better". Is that the accessibility, the technology or just building on the work of the earlier photographers though? I don't know...

To be fair, I take your point. It is a struggle to find good examples of what I am trying to describe. There are so many great photographers (especially in the late last century) who's work does hold up exceptionally well and stands the test of time.

 

[Pookeyhead]

Aside from the example already given, how about this one?

Pop that in a pool of work from contemporary amateur landscape photographs and I bet it won't stand out. To really appreciate it you need more context, the least of which was a "when." Add a "who", and you can then associate it with a wider body of work, and it becomes more interesting. On it's own, and outside of any context, it is lost in a sea of similar images by lots of different photographers, and many of which I would argue are "better". Is that the accessibility, the technology or just building on the work of the earlier photographers though? I don't know...

To be fair, I take your point. It is a struggle to find good examples of what I am trying to describe. There are so many great photographers (especially in the late last century) who's work does hold up exceptionally well and stands the test of time.

That's an Ansel Adams.. Death Valley.. and a really crap JPEG of it too. Having seen decent prints of it, I can assure you that's not at all representative. Plus.. colour or black and whit eis irrelevant. You said that most early ground breaking work can't hold up when compared to more recent works; even when compared to the work of amateurs. So please go find me an amateur black and white landscape that is clearly better than an Ansel Adams one... pick any one you like... Half Dome.. Moonrise Hernandez.. take your pick of classic Adams and show me how they can't hold up to modern day amateur images.

 

[RedRobin]

Aside from the example already given, how about this one?

.....I really like this. It has a strong graphic composition and the colour is bold - It's a very graphic image.

However you want to judge it, it could have been shot on an iPhone or a full-frame D-SLR on a tripod and post-processed either by a standard app preset or a RAW editor - It doesn't matter which. What you see is only the final image and the photographer could be anyone whether famous or not. Again, it doesn't matter - It's simply whether you the viewer like it or not.

Is it the 'real' scene as seen? It's how the photographer, amateur or professional, wanted to express what he saw with his naked eye.

EDIT :

I had posted before reading it's by Ansell Adams! Which actually goes to further prove what I have said above.

 

[TimmyG]

That's an Ansel Adams.. Death Valley.. and a really crap JPEG of it too. Having seen decent prints of it, I can assure you that's not at all representative. Plus.. colour or black and whit eis irrelevant. You said that most early ground breaking work can't hold up when compared to more recent works; even when compared to the work of amateurs. So please go find me an amateur black and white landscape that is clearly better than an Ansel Adams one... pick any one you like... Half Dome.. Moonrise Hernandez.. take your pick of classic Adams and show me how they can't hold up to modern day amateur images.

I also said

To be fair, I take your point. It is a struggle to find good examples of what I am trying to describe. There are so many great photographers (especially in the late last century) who's work does hold up exceptionally well and stands the test of time.

but lets not let context get in the way of an argument eh?

 

[TimmyG]

.....I really like this. It has a strong graphic composition and the colour is bold - It's a very graphic image.

However you want to judge it, it could have been shot on an iPhone or a full-frame D-SLR on a tripod and post-processed either by a standard app preset or a RAW editor - It doesn't matter which. What you see is only the final image and the photographer could be anyone whether famous or not. Again, it doesn't matter - It's simply whether you the viewer like it or not.

Is it the 'real' scene as seen? It's how the photographer, amateur or professional, wanted to express what he saw with his naked eye.

EDIT :

I had posted before reading it's by Ansell Adams! Which actually goes to further prove what I have said above.

Yes, and I'm not saying it's a bad image. I like it very much. I do think there is more to it when you know it is Adam's work though, and you can appreciate it more because it is ahead of it's time almost. I'm still only dabbling in landscape though and only just beginning to look into historical works.

 

[StewartR]

I wanted to contribute to this discussion, but it's jumping all over the place. I think that's because the article which started it is so vague. The author didn't seem to have a lot of coherent thoughts in his mind when he wrote it, and that's sparked a certain degree of incoherence in the responses to it here.

There's this issue of manipulation vs reality. Is there anything new to say here? I mean, we can have interesting discussions about tastes and public perceptions, but I don't see how the author's breathless hyperbole is in any way justified. Maybe this aspect of the discussion would have made more sense 20 years ago when Photoshop wasn't ubiquitous

Then there's computational photography. Again, some interesting issues here regarding the role of the photographer if absolutely everything can be altered in post, but I think that's just intellectual masturbation. The vast majority of people have no interest in altering things in post, even with the tools available today. It really doesn't matter how the image was created.

And then there's this guff about images being enriched with more dimensions of data. Accelerometer, GPS, thermometer, microphone, etc. It brings to my mind any number of dull multi media art installations whereby ones appreciation of imagery is supposedly enhanced by being simultaneously exposed to other sensations. Combine other sensory data into a 2D still or moving image and what you've done is called data visualisation, which isn't new. Combine other sensory data into something which isn't a 2D still or moving image and you've thrown away the ability of human beings to perceive it and appreciate it without specialised equipment, if at all.

Steganography? That might be interesting when somebody works out how to make it survive image compression, resizing, etc. I'm not holding my breath.

Still, I guess the author of the article got paid. Good for him.

 

[odd jim]

This strikes me as making an issue out of something that's a non issue as most of this is technical progression that would pass above and beyond normal traditional photography after a while, though its an interesting but jumbled read.

"....something has changed so radically that we need to talk about it differently, think of it differently and use it differently." Why?

If this is the answer - "Failure to recognize the huge changes underway is to risk isolating ourselves in an historical backwater of communication, using an interesting but quaint visual language removed from the cultural mainstream." it makes no sense. If we don't conform to new thinking, does it make our photographs obsolete? No, of course it doesn't.

"Taylor Davidson has described the camera of the future as an app, a software rather than a device that compiles data from multiple sensors. The smartphone’s microphone, gyroscope, accelerometer, thermometer and other sensors all contribute data as needed by whatever app calls on it and combines it with the visual data. And still that’s not the limit on what is already bundled with our digital imagery." This is simply technical progression, but not a camera. But as individuals WE choose what we shoot with and WE decide how to shoot and what to do with it. Just because its there, do we have to conform (if using is conforming)? No of course not. If this instrument becomes the norm I suspect that traditional photography, perhaps even film, will become stronger, perhaps not commercially, but certainly with enthusiasts. Even in the commercial world, such as wedding photography, the traditional side of it would actually become marketable.

 

[simonblue]

....But it's not just the masses who are interested in having fun with the photographic medium.

Digital manipulation allows more freedom of expression and releases more of an author's artistic talent (if they have such talents). You will only feel threatened by this if you are a conventional (meaning 'traditional') photographer tethered to only representing a scientific reality and nothing more. That doesn't mean that you'll necessarily be out of work but the scene has already started to change.

It's simply all about the image.

Or to cover the fact that some photographer are crap,and they use an lot of pp in the hope of covering the facts and calling it art

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

Photography and music both change with the times.
However there are far more recognised and continuing genres in music than in photography.
I tend to listen mainly to classical music but far from exclusively.
The avant guard classical music of the early to middle of the 20th century such as by schoenberg and twelve tone music was never popular even amongst classical musicians. And is rarely performed today. Most might ascribe such past modern offerings as plink-plonk or by other derogatory terms.

There is a real chance that photography might be equally derailed for a number of years, until the digital world achieves an idiom of its own. And one that can be understood by both the academic and working photographer, and more importantly by the end consumer.

The article in the Op makes little sense on its own, but is perhaps a minority view of a possible way forward. Let us hope that it does not lead to a "PLINK-PLONK" dead end.

 

[TimmyG]

Sorry to interrupt, and agree I'm dragging this thread somewhat off topic, but I found another example (and it's a black & white landscape too!).

I tried to find similarly composed amateur images, containing similar elements and came up with this one:

I struggled to find anything with boulders so prominent in the foreground that i thought might be a fairer comparison, but I did find plenty of other mountain based b&w landscapes that I would choose over the Adam's piece.

I'd be very interested in understanding what makes the Adams piece stand above the alternate I have suggested.

 

[Solo man]

Sorry to interrupt, and agree I'm dragging this thread somewhat off topic, but I found another example (and it's a black & white landscape too!).

I tried to find similarly composed amateur images, containing similar elements and came up with this one:

I struggled to find anything with boulders so prominent in the foreground that i thought might be a fairer comparison, but I did find plenty of other mountain based b&w landscapes that I would choose over the Adam's piece.

I'd be very interested in understanding what makes the Adams piece stand above the alternate I have suggested.

Sometimes it's good to go off topic...
I too would be interested in a reply to your question...

 

[Pookeyhead]

However you want to judge it, it could have been shot on an iPhone or a full-frame D-SLR on a tripod and post-processed either by a standard app preset or a RAW editor

Not if you hadn't picked that over compressed low res JPEG it couldn't

I also said but lets not let context get in the way of an argument eh?

I'm not arguing. WE are debating.

Then there's computational photography. Again, some interesting issues here regarding the role of the photographer if absolutely everything can be altered in post, but I think that's just intellectual masturbation. The vast majority of people have no interest in altering things in post, even with the tools available today. It really doesn't matter how the image was created.

I agree to an extent. In a way, I can't WAIT for complete automation... utter and complete auto everything and the ability to alter focus and aperture, and perhaps even shutter speed as well as exposure post shoot. Then everyone will be able to take perfect images... technically. Why? Then all that remains as the variable is the subject and what the images are about. Then finally, perhaps we'll start to judge the images by something more important than technical ability.

Steganography? That might be interesting when somebody works out how to make it survive image compression, resizing, etc. I'm not holding my breath.

Been done already. I used to use a digital watermarking system called Digimarc. It withstands cropping, compression, image manipulation etc. To break it, you needed to alter the image to the extent to where I'd probably no longer notice it was mine any way. It worked very well indeed.

There is a real chance that photography might be equally derailed for a number of years, until the digital world achieves an idiom of its own. And one that can be understood by both the academic and working photographer, and more importantly by the end consumer.

I don't think academia give a toss whether it's digital or analogue... but instead about what the work does. The idea of it achieving an idiom of it's own is what the article is about IMO. I've no idea what it will be, or could be, but there's some interesting things going on experimentally: There are quantum cameras that can see around corners, and high speed cameras that can actually slow light down to the extent that you can actually see special relativity happen! Can you imagine that? A TIME camera that can see around corners?

I'd be very interested in understanding what makes the Adams piece stand above the alternate I have suggested.

Nothing especially, but that's not what you said. You said...

Personally I think it's because many of the early, ground breaking works can't hold up when compared to more recent works; even when compared to the work of amateurs.

So I was expecting you to show me a landscape by an amateur that far exceeds the greatest works by Ansel Adams. By posting those two, you're just demonstrating that it can hold up to more recent works, as you seem to be saying there's not a great deal of difference between them. Well.. kind of you are... as the amateur one is merely trying to copy the aesthetic of Adams and really doesn't have the same sense of grandeur and open, uninhabited spaces, and has that ugly fence in it. Unless the author was trying to make an ironic point about wilderness by including the fence, it's obviously an attempt to create something that LOOKS like an Adams print. Then there's the fact that if it's digital, you've stripped away the skill required to make it, which is something I keep returning to: Once something becomes easy and simple to reproduce, you stop appreciating it.

Also... I have a problem with you choosing a Bruce Barnbaum image, as your argument said that even amateur images are better these days. Barnbaum is quite an established, known photographer and environmentalist. It hasn't helped him in this case however... but still... kind of cheating a bit

 

[TimmyG]

I'm not arguing. WE are debating.

Fair dos

as the amateur one is merely trying to copy the aesthetic of Adams and really doesn't have the same sense of grandeur and open, uninhabited spaces, and has that ugly fence in it. Unless the author was trying to make an ironic point about wilderness by including the fence, it's obviously an attempt to create something that LOOKS like an Adams print. Then there's the fact that if it's digital, you've stripped away the skill required to make it, which is something I keep returning to: Once something becomes easy and simple to reproduce, you stop appreciating it.

Sorry David, all of that I class as context, and we are trying to compare without context remember?

Also... I have a problem with you choosing a Bruce Barnbaum image, as your argument said that even amateur images are better these days. Barnbaum is quite an established, known photographer and environmentalist. It hasn't helped him in this case however... but still... kind of cheating a bit

It's a fair cop! Although in my defence I'm not familiar with Barnbaum or his other works (I'm not very familiar with any landscape photographers in fact). I merely picked it out as a good match for the original image based on compositional elements and subject matter. So the fact they are quite similar was intentional, and I don't doubt that on is a derivative of the other. In all honesty it was not attempt to pull a fast one on you!

So I was expecting you to show me a landscape by an amateur that far exceeds the greatest works by Ansel Adams. By posting those two, you're just demonstrating that it can hold up to more recent works, as you seem to be saying there's not a great deal of difference between them.

Ok. You seem to be fixated on one particular line in my main argument (that you can't present an image out of context and expect most people to appreciate it's true value) so lets try rewording it slightly:

"Personally I think it's because many of the early, ground breaking works don't stand out when compared to more recent works; even when compared to the work of amateurs."

Is that more palatable? Because I've already stated that many (in fact the vast majority) great photographers stand the test of time very well. It seems to me that this should be the case, I don't think there is anything unusual in what I am saying; as a general rule, over time, things get better and improved upon. Yes, they may just be emulations of what came before, yes the technology might make it much easier to achieve and yes, the motivations may be very different. But that is why we need to understand the context, to get a better idea of a picture's true value.

To present an image in a format that removes any context (although it's a bit worrying that a pool of photographers didn't recognise the HCB image - even I in my ignorance, clocked that one!) then you have to expect it to be evaluated under the same criteria as current works of a similar nature. What the perpetrators and subsequent commentators of this little experiment seemed to miss, was that the responses were open and honest. That the image doesn't have the same impact as it might have done when originally published, and that yes, it is a bit "blurry."