I don’t see how what you wrote applies, and no, I would not consider them photographs. The definition is that the image is focused onto film or digital, and then made visible.
Finished.
I suppose they would be called High Dynamic Range Images.
Not what I’m thinking about, different topic…
To me, this is getting silly.
Can we agree to just disagree, and end this?
But they are not “feeding”. Without your say so, there is no indication that what is in front of them is food - it could just as well be sawdust.
The camera only did that because you let it. No way, with such a static subject, distance wise, should you be using more than single spot auto-focus.
So, we are in agreement that any image that the camera is capable of saving into a single file is a photograph? That must include combined multi-exposures, HDR, JPEG images which have been edited in-camera, etc. As long as that latent image is “developed”, without any further editing, it qualifies, according to your definition, as a photograph.
Absolutely not! That is a very minimalist definition. It says nothing about all the other methods of making a photograph.
Nice one Mark!
But which dictionary? Here’s the definition from the French Robert dictionary…
Procédé, technique permettant d’obtenir l’image durable des objets, par l’action de la lumière sur une surface sensible - (A process or technique for obtaining a durable image of objects by the action of light on a sensitive surface)
Technique, art de prendre des images photographiques - (Technique, art of taking photographic images)
Image obtenue par le procédé de la photographie (le cliché positif) - (Image obtained by the photographic process (the positive plate).)
Absolutely no mention of needing a camera, just “the action of light on a sensitive surface”.
But it is a photograph, just taken over a period of time longer than a single, brief, exposure.
Not if they are all taken at the same exposure, under the same lighting conditions.
Actually that’s not what your definition says at all. You need to read it more closely. The word visible was only used with regard to film processed chemically, followed by “or stored digitally”.
But getting beyond your misreading of the definition. the JPEGs I’m talking about are automatically created in camera like any other jpeg. So if some JPEGs created in camera are photographs and others are not, it would appear you would need to amend your definition of a photograph to be much more specific to handle all the possible cases that fall outside the very simple definition of a photograph you provided.
Mark
I give up.
You win.
That’s why I added the title.
Would you have preferred “Cows in love” ??
Here is a more complete image:
Mike,
This was not a contest. And it’s not a question of winning. You can call a photograph anything you want and I really don’t care.
This whole exercise was merely to point out to you that your definitions and standards are nothing more than self-imposed biases. They are based on a lifetime of following rules set up by photojournalism to avoid the publishing of doctored photographs or any other professional improprieties.
They have nothing to do with the art of photography itself. The point that I, Joanna, and others have been trying to make is that you are no longer restricted to those rules or definitions. We have been attempting to try to help you understand that and to change your mindset so that you can explore photographic possibilities that never occurred to you before.
Mark
Thank you, but where did “photojournalism” come into this discussion? Not from me. I know if/when I am taking photos for me, or for “photojournalism”, and act accordingly. I disapprove of using the word “photograph” when the image isn’t. Personal habit. For me, in this forum, photojournalism is not relevant. For submitting photos elsewhere, for me, it usually is relevant.
At any rate, I gave up. Besides, I don’t have any foreign language dictionaries, and couldn’t read them even if I had them. I stick to American dictionaries, American Encyclopedias, and Google.
yes, you are waisting yours and others time
Okay, Mike. I’m just going stop right here. It appears you don’t understand what we’re really talking about and honestly that’s fine. I hope Joanna realizes that any attempts to expand your vision to see new possibilities beyond your self-imposed restrictions is doomed to failure.
Mark
Agreed. It is useless to go on about other things, when we can’t even agree on “what is a photograph”.
Instead of talking about expanding someone’s horizons, better to talk mostly about how to get the most out of PhotoLab. That way there are clear answers and understandings.
We certainly agree on that, however It appears that recently you have been focused almost exclusively on your camera and lenses rather than on PhotoLab.
If you want to discuss PhotoLab, any mention of cameras and lenses and other hardware you’re using should be primarily for informational purposes.
Mark.
Well, I do have a question. In Massachusetts, I got an opportunity to take photos of lots of flowers. So far, so good. But then these large bees started to land on the flowers. I was speculating that 1/800th of a second would be fast enough, and it sort of worked, but certainly not for the wings on the bees.
I had a lot of patience, and a lot of time, and the lighting seemed fine, or so I thought, bright sunlight, but most of the time the bees landed in the most un-photogenic places, facing away from me. In retrospect, perhaps 1/2000th might have been more appropriate. I enjoyed taking photos including both the full, opened, flower, and a young flower bud preparing to open.
The colors seemed to come out well, and I could find compositions that I liked, but I got into this mindset that I needed to capture the bee on the flower. I have no idea if this is what flower photographers like to do.
I found red flowers the easiest to work with, followed by blue or pink or yellow, and the larger the flower, the better. Next time I will bring a macro lens - I wasn’t expecting to do this.
The bees never landed on me, or interfered with me in any way. Perhaps I should look up tips for bee photography, rather than flowers.
Best image:
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I don’t shoot insects myself. As you point out, you generally need a good macro lens for that. I don’t believe that this counts as bee photography anyway. It is just a shot of a flower with a random bee interjecting itself. If you were really going for the bee the entirety of its body would need to be in very sharp focus,
If it were me, I think I would have shot the bloom with a greater DOF so that the upper opening flower was also in focus. As. it is, I think that out of focus area with deeper colors and textures is an annoying distraction that pulls my eye away from the main subject of your image. Frankly, because of it, I probably would not have made this particular flower the subject of an image in the first place, but I think if the upper section was in focus it would at least be less distracting. But that is just the way it affects me.
Mark
It was good that you explained in later post how you had edited this picture otherwise I would have suspected you had done a “color picker”-selection and changed the saturation with that. As I wrote earlier the color pickers picks by default use to have a too wide scoop which results in saturation changes tends to affect almost every nuance of green in a picture like this.
Still it looks like a nice place.
Remember I told you about this years really warm spring? After a terrible winter in the north at least we ought to get some nice days of sunny weather couldn´t we??
Well, in the spring some areas gets absolutely infested with mosquitos or “mygg” as we call them and it has got worse the last years with climate changes. If you haven´t ever been to the north in the summer you can´t even imagine how bad it can be in some areas.
Here an article in english about the situation now:
In some areas where it is the worst they are spraying the river banks with some repellants but that is just allowed for one species of these mosquitos and there is several thousands of species just in Sweden.
We have got even Tiger mosquitos, Nilefever mosquitos and Malaria mosquitos in the last years and are just waiting for the new diseases they use to bring.
I can understand why people like one of my cousins have emigrated to Spain for good. It is much dryer there and the last two times I was in Spain I didn´t see one single mosquito.
My brother’s wife planted all the flowers, and the intent of the photo was to send her. That the bee so rudely interrupted my original plan, I decided the bee was a bonus - but of twenty or so bee photos, this is the only one that I enjoyed. I did take a photo of the flower alongside the opening bud, which accomplished what you suggested, both being in focus, but my first goal was to see what I could do with the bee.
I’m not a “flower person”, and while I think they are beautiful, I rarely take time to photograph them. I will also try some of your ideas, and send all the photos to her. My brother didn’t seem all that interested in any of them.
The red flowers had much deeper colors, and I enjoyed them the most. I’ll do one of them tonight or tomorrow.
We spent one full evening learning about Ansel Adams, and his history, and his photography. It’s all wonderful, but it’s also sad to read that now his photos sell for millions of dollars, but apparently he didn’t make anything remotely close to that. Looking at his photos, and @Joanna and Helen’s photos, makes me want to go back to B&W, like what I did for much of my life. It’s constantly getting more difficult for me to “think” in B&W. I did take some photos in Massachusetts, with the goal of making them into B&W. Maybe tonight or tomorrow, I can see if any of them are worthwhile.
About B&W
According to the rules concerning the definition of what is considered as a “Manipulated picture” it is in the photo world I am living in it is OK to turn a color picture into a B&W. I can say I have never understood why that is considered to be compliant with that definition and for sure it will get even more weird when thinking about the modified concept of “Documentary picture” and “Non - Documentary picture”.
I think that the acceptance of B&W as compliant with the definition is strange and probably accepted because of the very long history of B&W-analog pictures.
Below you see a picture with the slightly “brownish” nuance I use to add to some of my historical pictures. It differs very little from a B&W and can also have the grain from Tri-X or another more fine grained B&W emulation but it is definitely considered as a “manipulated picture”.
It was these insights that made me add the following to my blogstories first page:
SINCE I BELIEVE THAT ALL POST-PROCESSING IN RAW CONVERTERS BASICALLY MEANS AN OPPORTUNITY FOR UNLIMITED CHANGE AND THAT IT CANNOT BE VERIFIED WITHOUT A RAW IMAGE, YOU CAN CONSIDER ALL MY IMAGES AS MANIPULATED.
I haven´t seen any reason so far to change that text.
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For three days, I struggled to decide how to finish this image, and after all that time, I went back to my first thought, render it in black & white. I photographed it early in the morning, mid-afternoon, and later in the day. This version was/is my favorite, shot after the sun had moved behind the rocks.
Mark, I photographed the flowers on two days; for the first day, there were no bees, and I felt as you describe, to capture a flower along with a bud which was ready to open. I suspect you will enjoy it more. As for me, before I got excited about capturing a bee, this was by far the best photo I got to take. I love the color, and the detail, and the two stages in the life of the flower. After capturing this image, I thought I was done. But, then I got intrigued by the bees.
From what you wrote, I’m pretty sure you will appreciate this image more than the other, and in retrospect, for similar reasons, I feel the same way. After this image, I put my camera away, feeling I was done. I’m always striving for “just one more” to see if I can improve, but I’m not talented enough to be able to do so. Maybe if I had a macro lens, I might have some other opportunities available to me, but this image is likely the best I am capable of.
I’m curious as to how you will feel, and even more so curious to read any follow-up suggestions from @Joanna.
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Yes, the results are much better without that distraction.
Mark
To my mind, apart from a record shot, it’s a bit of a “why?” shot. I find the metallic object (pump?) distracting - possibly moved a loose rock to cover it. Possibly composed it so the rocks on the left came from the top left corner and the rest formed a diagonal, but difficult to see what else that might have brought into the frame.
So, I just played with removing distracting highlights in the shadows using Control Lines and Points…
