I did it…

[Greg7579]

post this in the Retouching forum instead of the Medium Format forum, and use a more informative subject line rather than click bait?

Disagree. That is a good post and a very important subject. But I think the Mods will hire you as the new Forum Cop to keep us straight.

Just kidding you, but we all wonder where the boundaries are now. I don't think there are any, especially since AI will soon outperform our MF results with no camera at all.

 

[Teila Day]

If we're making art, we can do what we want. There are no universal rules artists have to follow (barring ethical and legal rules of course).

Yes.

Is it still a photograph, and does it matter whether it's a photograph? That's a debate that has been around since photography.

It seems to me that the definition of rather clear and descriptive for a reason. A "photograph" describes to me something particular - a recorded image to a medium using a camera. A Photogram describes to me the same process involving "other" than a camera. Several photographs blended together using software is just that... a creation from a photograph(s). Several photograms blended together using software... is a creation from a photogram(s).

I think the established descriptions keep things from getting mucked up.. like 10 people talking about a Canon 5d "classic" and 50 readers never hearing the term, wondering if that's a special edition of the Canon 5d series -- like Classic COKE

I know what I think, but I also know I don't get to decide for you.

For what it's worth... I don't think it's a photograph anymore.

Agreed.

It's a nicely done piece of photo art, or photography-based art, or digital art, or whatever term we want to use for images that started with a photograph and were made into something else.

Hitting the nail on the head.

But it's now in part an image from your imagination. That doesn't diminish it as a document of what you saw and felt in that moment, or as a piece of art; it's just that it's no longer a photograph in my particular way of thinking.

.. and by the straight forward most typical definitions of the word from what I can gather. Creations can be just as or even more compelling.

Last night I spent a pleasant bit of time enjoying the photographs at the 2023 Natural Landscape Photography Award site. I enjoyed many of the images as images, but also because I was confident that if I had been there with the photographers when they made these images, I could have seen what they saw. The fact that these are images of the world I live in, rather than images that exist only in the imagination of the artist, is important to me.

I've noticed over the years that there's relatively very little photography depicted anymore, mostly creative work, though no less wonderful.

The fact that this competition exists, and that 11,176 photographs were submitted by 1,023 photographers who came from 54 countries, says I'm not alone in how I feel about photographs. At the same time, this is a drop in the bucket. The vast majority of people making images today don't share my perspective.

I think long established terms/definitions should be kept intact in most cases, as it keeps descriptive contexts and nuances nice and tidy.

--
Teila K. Day
http://teiladay.com