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Representational travel photos or digital art?

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Isca

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I was watching a training video by a travel photographer and in short, his view was that as long as it is representational of the destination, if you needed to edit to romanticize it then it’s perfectly acceptable.

where do you draw the line? Given that we may only have a few days at a location we can’t always be out at sunrise/sunset, or you’re fighting crowds. Some edits that he was comfortable with.

1. Taj Mahal - remove all people

2. Utah some red rock canyon, colour grade to reddish

3. sky replacement at will

So, whee do you draw the line?
 
First, I think this is something every photographer has to decide for themself. I can tell you what I think about this and what I do in practice, but nobody should take that as a suggestion as to what they should do.

My rule for making digital art is that the photograph comes first, and for me a photograph is honest and creates the illusion of truth. I will manipulate my framing and exposure but not my subject. I don't take out people, cars, power lines or garbage cans. (Crop them out, yes, remove them, no.) I don't replace a sky-- awkward and corny at best, repulsive at worst in my opinion, and usually so obvious, when the lighting on the subject doesn't "match" the light coming from the sky.

I do indulge in digital effects fairly frequently, from a simple black and white conversion through a warm filter (fairly frequently) and an occasional vignette. I love a good vignette. And then sometimes I go crazy with an overlay filter or a heavy grain package or even a reimagining with processes like posterization or various "painting" effects. When I do enough stuff that I consider the result a piece of digital art based on a photograph rather than a photograph itself, I label it as such.

When I do apply a filter or effect ( or several in succession) my personal rule is that I apply it to a finished photograph I consider honest, and that I apply it to the image as a whole.

I never trust other people's travel photos as far as I can throw them. A lot of them look like postcards or travel posters to me, rather than photographs made by photographers with their own points of view. There is nothing more potentially boring than a famous "sight" or bit of "scenery". You can make an interesting photograph of such a thing, but it is a real challenge.

--
Instagram: @yardcoyote
 
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Definitely no sky replacement. Cloning out rubbish and debris is OK. I guess taking multiple shots and eliminating people is OK if you are trying to create a clean image of a place, but I want to create memories, so people are part of the context.

Adjusting the tone curve to represent what I saw and manipulating shutter speed to freeze or smear movement are also OK.

We had a thread on sky replacement a while back on the MFT forum and I was complimented on my skill, with some pointers about how to make the images more realistic. I pointed out that reading my post would have shown that they were are natural skies.

I consider these acceptable.

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Ultimately they are your photographs - unless you are producing them for a competition or to client requirements, you decide what works for you.

Andrew

--
Infinite are the arguments of mages. Truth is a jewel with many facets. Ursula K LeGuin
Please feel free to edit any images that I post
 
And the beat goes on. If they are your travel photos for you enjoyment - you can do whatever you want.

If you are trying to represent "photoshopped" photos as the "truth." then there is a problem as they are not a the truth.

What is the difference between graphic arts and photography? A photograph is a recording of a volume of space at an instant of time (or more precisely over a segment of time). To insure that is the reason the content Authenticity Initiative started.

Loading…

contentauthenticity.org

A significantly altered photo (sky replaced, people added/deleted, etc.) qualifies nicely as graphics arts. For example much of Andy Warhol's work is graphic arts.

A camera club which I am an "outside judge" for has multiple categories. One is documentary and street. There was a lot of discussion on the guidelines and standards on this topic. It got heated from time to time. I threw some fuel on the fire when I pushed for a rule that forbid cropping as a standard for that category. Henri Cartier-Bression and Gary Winogrand believed the image should be composed in the viewfinder not in the darkroom so there is precedent for such a criteria. I did that to just stir discussion as it would be very difficult (but not impossible) to determine if an image were cropped.

It has a specific set of rules. Those rules state that only global adjustments are permitted along with local exposure control, e.g., dodging and burning. That is one can change exposure, contrast, sharpen, apply curves and dodge and burn. However, all those edits have to be applied globally with the exception of dodging and burning. When that category was introduced, we got a lot of entries to the monthly competition that did not quite understand and we ended up disqualifying entries until the rules were understood.

BTW most of these types of edits you refer to are easy to sport. Sky replacement is probably the easiest. The issue with sky replacement is light direction. Light direction is encoded in just about every element in a photo - including in the sky. I have yet to see a sky replacement that is synergistic with the lighting in the picture elements. Once you know what you are looking for you can't unsee it.

So I see it as a continuum, photographic art to graphic arts. The problem is not that AI fueled local manipulation is bad or good. The issue is your image is presented honestly and at what point on that continuum does an image cross from a photograph to a piece of digital art based on a photograph to a piece of graphics arts based on a photograph ah la Andy Warhol.

If images are for personal use - have at it and replace people, outhouses and skies to the hearts content. It is when the altered photographs are passed off as "straight photography" or a recording in space and time has been significantly altered without full disclosure that graphic arts techniques have been use.
 
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Isca said:
I was watching a training video by a travel photographer and in short, his view was that as long as it is representational of the destination, if you needed to edit to romanticize it then it’s perfectly acceptable. <../..>
Click to expand...
That’s not an easy question... I’m not an English native speaker, I checked the meaning of ‘representational’ and apparently it refers specifically to art, and is the opposite of ‘abstract’.

That means, as long as I can tell what an image refers to, it is representational :



La Tour Eiffel tordue (Twisted Tour Eiffel) by Robert Doisneau
La Tour Eiffel tordue (Twisted Tour Eiffel) by Robert Doisneau

Joke set aside, I believe one has to be very naive if they fancy being the only one tourist visiting the Taj Mahal.

Personally, I believe that everyone can do what they want with their images, unless there is deceit involved for money. It’s a matter of intent, on both sides. Some people flock to visit places, expecting reality to be the faithful replica of what they’ve seen before... others choose to avoid the beaten path. My best memories are about places I had no preconceived ideas.

It’s a bit like jokes: one can laugh about every subject, but... not with anybody !

___
Photography is so easy, that's what makes it highly difficult - Robert Delpire
 
If it is meant for yourself, you can decide on that.



if meant for others, either it is obvious or it should be stated.
 
Truman Prevatt said:
And the beat goes on. If they are your travel photos for you enjoyment - you can do whatever you want.

If you are trying to represent "photoshopped" photos as the "truth." then there is a problem as they are not a the truth.

What is the difference between graphic arts and photography? A photograph is a recording of a volume of space at an instant of time (or more precisely over a segment of time). To insure that is the reason the content Authenticity Initiative started.

https://contentauthenticity.org

A significantly altered photo (sky replaced, people added/deleted, etc.) qualifies nicely as graphics arts. For example much of Andy Warhol's work is graphic arts.

A camera club which I am an "outside judge" for has multiple categories. One is documentary and street. There was a lot of discussion on the guidelines and standards on this topic. It got heated from time to time. I threw some fuel on the fire when I pushed for a rule that forbid cropping as a standard for that category. Henri Cartier-Bression and Gary Winogrand believed the image should be composed in the viewfinder not in the darkroom so there is precedent for such a criteria. I did that to just stir discussion as it would be very difficult (but not impossible) to determine if an image were cropped.

It has a specific set of rules. Those rules state that only global adjustments are permitted along with local exposure control, e.g., dodging and burning. That is one can change exposure, contrast, sharpen, apply curves and dodge and burn. However, all those edits have to be applied globally with the exception of dodging and burning. When that category was introduced, we got a lot of entries to the monthly competition that did not quite understand and we ended up disqualifying entries until the rules were understood.

BTW most of these types of edits you refer to are easy to sport. Sky replacement is probably the easiest. The issue with sky replacement is light direction. Light direction is encoded in just about every element in a photo - including in the sky. I have yet to see a sky replacement that is synergistic with the lighting in the picture elements. Once you know what you are looking for you can't unsee it.

So I see it as a continuum, photographic art to graphic arts. The problem is not that AI fueled local manipulation is bad or good. The issue is your image is presented honestly and at what point on that continuum does an image cross from a photograph to a piece of digital art based on a photograph to a piece of graphics arts based on a photograph ah la Andy Warhol.

If images are for personal use - have at it and replace people, outhouses and skies to the hearts content. It is when the altered photographs are passed off as "straight photography" or a recording in space and time has been significantly altered without full disclosure that graphic arts techniques have been use.
Click to expand...
 
Wholly depends on where the pic is ending up. If it's going on my wall in my house, there are no rules. I have never included any object that wasn't in the orig. pic but have blended layers for some cool effects. I never let some old stodgy rules stand in the way of creativity.There will always be some old clown on a forum looking down their nose at you for not displaying straight out of the camera photos. There was a time when SOC was all you could ever hope for unless you had your own lab. Not any more.
 
First, as Magritte would say of a photo of Windsor Castle. "This not a castle." IOW, photographs are artificial from the word Go. In a competition you follow the rules, whatever they are. Everything else is up to you personally.

I do a travel blog for a few friends and relatives. I want to show what I see as 'realistically' as possible, but I don't want to show dull photos. Since it's a travel blog, there is no time to sit and wait for the perfect light. You do what you can. Case in point, a trip down the Rhine in disgustingly dull light - overcast nondescript skies. All my photos of castles were stupid dull. I chose to replace skies with better looking clouds and said so. Otherwise why bore yourself and your friends?

OTOH in St Petersburg (Russia before the current unpleasantness) there are more phone and power lines than pigeons. I chose not to remove them because it would have been surreal to clean them up. The result was not publishing more than a couple of street scenes. Of course if a scene behind the power lines had been very very interesting I might have removed them. Didn't happen.

ETA: removing people? Take everyone out of the stands at a football game? Not really. What about the one guy that stepped in front of you in your photo of Vatican Square and you only saw it when editing? Sure.
 
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I don't replace skies and I'm usually not anal about trying for "golden hour" illumination.

I suppose if I had a one-click s/w solution to sky replacement I'd be more on board with it.
 
...if you make your living supplying travel photographs to travel magazines and they like your product (replaced skies, no people, etc...) it's part of what you do. I would also expect that they would likely have their own set of rules.

If I'm taking shots for myself, I routinely remove trash and sometimes people. Sometimes overhead wires (but with the s/w I have they're usually a PITA).

If you're looking at a photo in a travel magazine you should at least trust that the buildings are represented correctly or that all the mountain peaks are shown.
 
... and don't dare shoot anything in b&w because that is not reality
 
This is about an issue that's much more fundamental than photography. It's about truth vs lies, justice vs injustice, and it's very simple. If you believe that faking something like this is good, then fake it. If you believe that going against the reality in this way is bad, then don't fake it. Just remember that your beliefs may not define who you are, but your actions do.
 
A photograph is the image produced by the photographic process: exposing a light-sensitive medium to light. By definition, the light comes from objects in the frame. When objects that should be visible in the scene are removed or when objects that weren't present in the scene are added, the resulting image is something other than a photograph.

I don't care if a business or government agency uses photos, paintings, sculptures, sketches or other visuals to promote tourism. They shouldn't use an image that isn't a photo, but call it a photo or represent it as such. That's misleading and unethical.
 
WilyKit said:
This is about an issue that's much more fundamental than photography. It's about truth vs lies, justice vs injustice, and it's very simple. If you believe that faking something like this is good, then fake it. If you believe that going against the reality in this way is bad, then don't fake it. Just remember that your beliefs may not define who you are, but your actions do.
Click to expand...
It is NOT simple. An image is not capable of reproducing reality/truth/justice. It is already a "fake". If the edited image is not to your taste, then so be it, but that's all. If the editor chooses to misrepresent the image in some way, that's another story, but I feel no need to tell anyone that I moved the exposure slider.
 
ChuckB said:
WilyKit said:
This is about an issue that's much more fundamental than photography. It's about truth vs lies, justice vs injustice, and it's very simple. If you believe that faking something like this is good, then fake it. If you believe that going against the reality in this way is bad, then don't fake it. Just remember that your beliefs may not define who you are, but your actions do.
Click to expand...
It is NOT simple. An image is not capable of reproducing reality/truth/justice. It is already a "fake". If the edited image is not to your taste, then so be it, but that's all. If the editor chooses to misrepresent the image in some way, that's another story, but I feel no need to tell anyone that I moved the exposure slider.
Click to expand...
A picture is not a "reproduction of reality", it's a sample of a fragment of it, and if you've altered it with "sky replacement" or "people removal", you distorted and misrepresented it in a fundamentally different way than adjusting luminance and chrominance curves. You'll believe whatever you want, and I'll believe that being deceptive is being deceptive.
 
WilyKit said:
This is about an issue that's much more fundamental than photography. It's about truth vs lies, justice vs injustice, and it's very simple. If you believe that faking something like this is good, then fake it. If you believe that going against the reality in this way is bad, then don't fake it. Just remember that your beliefs may not define who you are, but your actions do.
Click to expand...
Photography is inherently fake. It's an interpretation of reality.

As soon as you use a shutter speed so fast that it stops a bullet; or reveals what a water drop looks like when it hits a pale of water or reveals that all 4 feet of a horse leave the ground in a gallop, all things the human eye can't see, you have created something that does not exist in reality to you or I. As soon as you use a slow shutter speed to blur a waterfall you have altered reality also. B&W, infrared, astrophotography, all visual lies to reality of what the eye can see.
 
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Isca said:
where do you draw the line?
Click to expand...
I don't have a 'line'. But I learned photography by shooting color slides for close to 30 years, so I became habituated to seeing the things that were captured - nothing more, nothing less - in the results. I now enjoy the ability to improve digital photos in ways that were unavailable to me in the past, but I still want the results to look like what I experienced. Of course, I take photos for my own purposes, not to market anything.
Isca said:
Some edits that he was comfortable with.

1. Taj Mahal - remove all people
Click to expand...
Not for me. I don't know why I'd want my photo to look like I was the only one there.
Isca said:
2. Utah some red rock canyon, colour grade to reddish
Click to expand...
Sure, if colors need to be adjusted to more closely resemble what I experienced.
Isca said:
3. sky replacement at will
Click to expand...
Not for me. If the sky wasn't great, so be it.

If you're asking if I think that other travel photographer should be doing the things he suggested for publication in travel promotions, and if the people running the travel promotions should be publishing those images, my answer is 'You can't believe everything you see and hear' has always been good advice.
 
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