----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Stenquist"
Subject: Re: How to make Good Pictures (Let's Free the Captured Images)
Good point. But I'm only using the grayscale example to illustrate the
absurdity of an argument. Obviously, we have long been able to see a
grayscale image as a photographic representation of reality. And all but
the blind now realize that a digitally manipulated image is likewise a
photographic representation of reality. We have most certainly been taught
certain ways of seeing. For example, my children are all in their late
twenties. When they were six or seven years old, I put a Computer Eyes
card in our old Apple II and attached a video camera. They took pictures
of each other. Then they started playing with them in Dazzle Draw.
Eventually, they were swapping heads and making composites. Today, my
second daughter earns a nice living as a Graphic Designer and PhotoShop
artist. She grew up in a digital world and accepts digital manipulation as
a completely normal and desirable part of the photographic process. People
don't "see" the same way today that they did a quarter century ago, and
our ways of seeing our constantly evolving and changing.
I don't agree.
I believe that if you put a picture in front of someone, and there is no
visible evidence to the contrary, they will believe that it is a true
likeness, probably without giving it much thought.
The deciept may be completley harmless, or it may not be, but it is still a
deception.
We expect pictures to attempt to deceive in some contexts (advertising
photography being the prime example), and we accept it by looking at the
picture with a different mindset, but we don't expect it in other contexts
(news photography as an example).
The degree of manipulation is where problems arise.
Cloning out a bit of garbage in a background is one thing, changing the
background completely is something else.
William Robb
