Photograph vs. Digital Image: Your Thoughts?

[Harlean Carpenter {★}]

Digital photography is, in many ways, as different from taking pictures with film as sculpting clay is from carving wood. The requirements of lighting, composition, and that indefinable quality we usually just call “the eye” still apply, but after the picture is taken, what you have is what is now very often considered to be only the middle of the process that ends with the finished product we call a “photograph”. And as I’m perusing photos here and elsewhere, I find myself asking one question more and more often:

At what point in the retouching/editing/manipulation process does a photograph cease to be a photograph, and become a digital image?

I look at a lot of photographs, but there are some that, even as I am saying I like them, I say simultaneously “but it’s not really a photograph.” Which brought me to the question of where I draw the line. Which makes me curious about where other people draw that line. It’s one of those things where there will likely never be a clear, precise definition.

And don’t get me wrong. I love digital imagery, the possibilities and the fun you can have with it, the things you can bring out of an image that just weren’t there in the “original”. I have an entire gallery of overly-manipulated images that I’ve had a blast creating. But I don’t call them photographs any more than I would call a package of clay a sculpture. Photographs were just the medium I used to create the final product.

To me, if I can look at a picture and tell immediately that it’s been manipulated, it isn’t a photograph, it’s a digital image. That’s my line. Where’s yours?

[Edson Carlos]

Hey Michael people don't come into the forum having absorbed the internet and all the worlds art schools into their souls. The original poster took the time to explain her train of thought, have some manners, they are worth something, even on the internet. Calling anyones question lame is pretty f****** lame.

I believe that when you alter a photograph to the point where what is done is not what was in front of you or pretty much unachievable with conventional lighting and craftwork such as hair sculpting and/or makeup, it becomes a digital image. Altering hair length, styling, body shape etc....

IMHO enhancing what was there already by making it pop is ok and considered retouching.

[Edson Carlos]

Now THAT is a great community building reply. We love your brain, not you calling peoples thoughts lame. Wanna ride bikes?




Michael Harrington said:

So, you can call my reply F****** lame, but I cant say lame? A lecture on manners then F****** lame? Two wrongs dont make a right.

The point is a moot one. Lets apply this process to the different types of photography.

When Joseph Nicephore Niepce used a Camera Obscura to produce heliographs he was the first photographer. Then Louis Daguerre took it to another level and created the daguerreotype. Then Henry Fox Talbot invented the calotype. Then the wet plate process, then the dry plate process, then tin types, then Eastmen with cellulose nitrate (Film) then color cellulose nitrate. What about the Argentotype, Kallitype, Vandyke, Cyanotypes the list goes on and on. Are any of these processes less a photograph simply becasue a different process was employed?

Now bring in digital photography. Simply another process in a 190 years of experimenting with the medium.

[Auburn Hills]

My thoughts on this as a fan of photography, not a photographer.

I love traditional black & white film photographs. Lighting, developing and all kinds of tricks I know nothing about make for a great photo. For example, the work of Ansel Adams, George Hurrell, Ernest Bachrach, Man Ray.

I hated digital for a long time but it's growing on me. Like all art forms, you get the good the bad and the downright ugly. If the manipulation is well done and subtle it becomes a sum of the final image.

I consider an image that evokes an emotional reaction art regardless of what medium was used. I kind of like seeing the line being blurred between photo and art.

[Edson Carlos]

When we meet, I'll buy you a beer if you buy me a coke. Thanks for having internet thick skin man, and thanks for elaborating on your thoughts. Many of our members are fairly new to forums and online discussions so a fairly tame response on most boards comes off as very harsh here.




Michael Harrington said:

Yeah sure....a bike ride sounds cool. As long as it is not a lame bike ride!

[Harlean Carpenter {★}]

Edson, I appreciate your gallantry, and Michael, believe it or not I do appreciate your input

I'm not arguing that a photograph taken with a digital camera is still a photograph. In that sense, yes, it is no more than the next step in the evolution of the medium. But the same tools used to alter those photographs can be and are also used to create images from scratch. So approached from that angle, it actually is a different medium. If you tack a photograph to a canvas and paint over it with oils, is it still a photograph, or has it become an oil painting?

Yes, it's completely subjective, I never believed otherwise. And perhaps beaten to death in art schools, but not yet in media ecology, which is where this conversation actually started for me


Edson {PL Team} said:

Now THAT is a great community building reply. We love your brain, not you calling peoples thoughts lame. Wanna ride bikes?




Michael Harrington said:

So, you can call my reply F****** lame, but I cant say lame? A lecture on manners then F****** lame? Two wrongs dont make a right.

The point is a moot one. Lets apply this process to the different types of photography.

When Joseph Nicephore Niepce used a Camera Obscura to produce heliographs he was the first photographer. Then Louis Daguerre took it to another level and created the daguerreotype. Then Henry Fox Talbot invented the calotype. Then the wet plate process, then the dry plate process, then tin types, then Eastmen with cellulose nitrate (Film) then color cellulose nitrate. What about the Argentotype, Kallitype, Vandyke, Cyanotypes the list goes on and on. Are any of these processes less a photograph simply becasue a different process was employed?

Now bring in digital photography. Simply another process in a 190 years of experimenting with the medium.

[Bill-E-BoB]

From the other side of the same coin, can you really call a digital illustration an original piece of art if it's just a desaturated posterized photograph? To be honest, I had never questioned whether the digital photographs I see are still photographs or not. But when I was in design school my instructors made it abundantly clear that anybody who thought they could get by with just slapping a filter or adjustment layer on a photo & calling it a design wasn't going to make it in the "real world" and I can tell you so far in my career, they were right. But at the same time, judging by most magazines, wedding photos, and portraits I've seen in recent times...if you're a career photographer and think you can get by WITHOUT some digital tweaks, you may be in a world of hurt too.

I guess in a way, to me a digitally altered photo is almost a form of mixed media. There's the photo itself, light focused through a lens being recorded on an image sensor or film in relatively the same manner. Then there's the work applied to it in photoshop or your editing software of choice. 2 very different medias to create one final product. That final product may be a completely realistic photo that could have existed on the other side of the lens, or it might be one step away from Dali. Either way, it's still a photograph + digital effects.

[calendar girl]

Imagery is conceptual. I use both digital and I still use ortho film with my 8x10 view camera. Sometimes I likethe covenience of using digital and in my work its necessary. We are a society that thrives on instant gratification and customers want to see their images immediately after a shoot. However, if i'm doing something for me and I have a willing and patient subject I get out the ortho film~nothing can give you the deep shadows and wild contrast of ortho film. I've reproduced the effect with digital images and honestly with the fine grain of 50 iso ortho, the difference to the naked or untrained eye is minimal, if any. I understand what you're saying, but the level of manipulation that used to be done to film images is no different that digital manipulation. They used to paint over negatives, positives, they would splice negs together, put vaseline on their lenses to soften aging starlets wrinkles, I mean the list goes on and on. Photograph in its simplest definition is writing with light and if you used light to create and capture an image, manipulated or not, technically its a photograph.

[2d1jh4f6bcokc]

As a Photographer .... I love Film ( Medium format ) out of all the options out there... I also love the darkroom process that goes with it ... I also love the Digital aspect of photography. There are so many more things you can do to create the image you have in your head and bring it to life ....
Now .. to answer your question , I feel that however you capture the " image " via film or digital .. you have taken a photograph !!! If the image has no photoshop done or alterations to it then yeah I'd say it a photograph and if it's played with even a little bit then it's a digital image

I shoot as close as possible to what I want and then "pump" up my colors or whatever to get my final image .. when I shoot digitally. With film ... It is what comes out of the camera those are my 2 cents ............. Flat Black Photography

This was shot via my Mamiya 645af with a Kodak DCS PRO 16mp back( the closet Digital back to shoot like film) NO EDITING !!

[Bill-E-BoB]

Not sure how many of you are familiar with groupon.com, but todays deal in Atlanta is for photography lessons so their description included some key differences between film and digital photography I thought I'd share:

* Although it is widely known that vampires will not show up on film, it was only recently discovered that in digital photographs, vampires show up as spooky skeletons.
* Nighttime digital photos of cars on the highway cannot capture the cars themselves, but reveal a streak of red taillights trailing behind them, proving definitively that cars move faster than light.
* Traditional film records pieces of dust or unfocused light sources as glowing "orbs," which are often misinterpreted as ghosts. Hi-res digital images of these orbs, however, reveal them to be harmless Langoliers, who are more afraid of eating you than you are of eating them.

[richardwangphotography]

Harlean Carpenter

Your question concerning film versus digital images is a false dichotomy.

Are this above images photographs?

Because using your definition, they may not be since they are highly manipulated or as we used to call it "re-touched"

Understand that Photoshop merely replicates and makes easier what you once did in a photoshop.

Instead of using a computer, you used to use chemicals, enlargers, airbrushes, sharp needles and erasers. It was actually quite easy to retouch large format neg's and glass plates

So it isn't between film or digital, it's about image manipulation.

[Harlean Carpenter {★}]

That... is fantastic

Bill-E-BoB said:

Not sure how many of you are familiar with groupon.com, but todays deal in Atlanta is for photography lessons so their description included some key differences between film and digital photography I thought I'd share:

* Although it is widely known that vampires will not show up on film, it was only recently discovered that in digital photographs, vampires show up as spooky skeletons.
* Nighttime digital photos of cars on the highway cannot capture the cars themselves, but reveal a streak of red taillights trailing behind them, proving definitively that cars move faster than light.
* Traditional film records pieces of dust or unfocused light sources as glowing "orbs," which are often misinterpreted as ghosts. Hi-res digital images of these orbs, however, reveal them to be harmless Langoliers, who are more afraid of eating you than you are of eating them.

[Edson Carlos]

MUAHAHAHAHAAAAA WIN!



Harlean Carpenter {★} said:

That... is fantastic

Bill-E-BoB said:

Not sure how many of you are familiar with groupon.com, but todays deal in Atlanta is for photography lessons so their description included some key differences between film and digital photography I thought I'd share:

* Although it is widely known that vampires will not show up on film, it was only recently discovered that in digital photographs, vampires show up as spooky skeletons.
* Nighttime digital photos of cars on the highway cannot capture the cars themselves, but reveal a streak of red taillights trailing behind them, proving definitively that cars move faster than light.
* Traditional film records pieces of dust or unfocused light sources as glowing "orbs," which are often misinterpreted as ghosts. Hi-res digital images of these orbs, however, reveal them to be harmless Langoliers, who are more afraid of eating you than you are of eating them.