Why Am I Bothered?

[aprilS]

Ah-hah? You want to be the composer and musician; choreographer and the dancer.

As a dancer, I was honored to interpret a choreographer's vision and try to convey that onstage with my "instrument." But in photography, unless I understand everything that goes into an underlying treatment of my image...I'm not comfortable with the performance.

I'm working on a series just now that's applying applications of the AlienSkin Brokeh and SnapArt filters.

Mine is an incomplete response to a thought-provoking question...

[Ted Byrne]

I'm thinking that modern techniques are allowing artists to escape craft constraints. They punch a hole into the cerebral pots which hold our thoughts, feelings, imaginations and allow them to flow directly into the senses of others. Increasingly the apparatus or craft which had to be mastered to channel between artist and viewer is dissolving. Today, if we conceive it... we can blurt it all over everyone.

Artists who have spent their lives mastering craft are enraged that those hours, weeks, years of effort are merely historically interesting - and not to many people.

I suspect they feel exactly like an aging naturally well-endowed beauty that looks at a newly dyed young blond who's sporting a recently installed set of large boobies.

"How DARE she???" she mutters through clenched teeth.

There are a lot of shameless hussies jiggling about out there in today's photographic world. And I sense a certain degree of resentment among the aging masters of chemistry, mechanics, optics, engineering, and light.

And perhaps that's another of my problems as I consider the NoMi bunch who have transcended not only all of the hard earned technique I have mastered, but who have leapt over photographic creation entirely.

"How DARE they?"

[eob]

You have a valid point, Ted. However, I look at the problem differently. In my opinion, we now need to employ our gift of seeing, our imagination, intellect and skills in a more subtle and refined ways, so that people who simply take advantage of improved computers and software to create their "marvels", still can not compete with true artists who have something important to say through their images.

[habakuk]

Right, eob and Ted. It has certainly to do with this feeling of "how dare they" and we know this feeling has always been there, when a new evolutionary step "threatened" the established way.

And while I think those who take photos and create something new in photoshop need a vision, a good eye too, I am also kind of confident there always will be a noticeable difference between a collage/postprocessing product and a genuinely taken shot that really touches those marvels that eob once asked: "what is it that makes a good shot a good shot?".

I might repeat myself, but this is where Miksang chimes in... have a look at some of those shots. They are too simple, too unspectacular in their nature to be created by (most if not all) todays photoshoppers.

But... is it really so, that this can only be done with a camera? I am not sure about that.

cheers
®

[eob]

But... is it really so, that this can only be done with a camera? I am not sure about that.

Certainly not, Roland. There is plenty of space in art for 'photoshoppers', too. But only those, who contribute a valid, creative, innovative way of using Photoshop as a means of a visual enhancement and refinement rather than a "one-click-solution" creating a boring special effect being a goal and an end product in itself. Composites done with Photoshop can also be as valid and as artistic as single shots - as long as they have something important to say/show...

[fourth]

I suppose this is all wrapped up in postmodernism and technology. Personally, I have very defined peramiters for how I take an image and how I put that image together. For me, if I can do it in the darkroom with film, I will do it in Photoshop. However, I have never sort to apply that to others or the way they choose to create their images. If it the image works, it it works and I am happy to view it. However, I draw the line at someone hot taking a shot calling themselves "a photographer" Artist, yes, perhaps. But not a photographer.

Nigel.

[Ted Byrne]

"However, I draw the line at someone hot taking a shot calling themselves "a photographer" Artist, yes, perhaps. But not a photographer.

Nigel."

And I think that is where I am as well Nigel. Question... if they are not photographers, are there works, "photographic"? Hmmmm.... but if there works are photographic... completely photographic... then we are caught in some sort of logical hell, right? AAARGH!

[habakuk]

Well, and what happens if I make a "real" photograph and then use Photoshop and it's artistic filters to create a oil or aquarell painting. Is my work then photography or a "painting" and regardless of that, am *I* then a digital painter? And regardless of that too, am I a artist after all? Hmmmm.

cheers
®

[eob]

"Multimedia", I guess? Any medium can be a vehicle for an artist, an amateur, or a "kitsch" producer. So, the medium does not make an artist. The way we use that medium determines whether or not we are artists.

If the photograph you've used to make a painting is still recognizable as a photograph, you are a poor painter. If the photographic effect is completely obliterated in your painting, your work can not be called photography any more.

Those, of course, are only my private opinions...