By
John Creland DPAGB BPE2
(Buckingham CC)
I
had hoped to write with the concensus or opinion of my own club
- but there isn`t one! Individual
opinions vary as the understanding or the question varies.
Some think it shouldn`t be allowed, some couldn`t care less and
some are infavour.
I have a question from an article in a newspaper that I
noted some time ago and now carry with me:-
Innovation:
- often starts as a joke: then
it becomes a
threat: then it becomes obvious.
J. Treacy.
I
think we may be at the second stage with Digital Imaging!
My
view is that the use of computer for leisure and art and personal
communication is increasing and should not be shut out of photographic
life any more than we should legislate to shut it out of education,
business or the back bedroom.
Surely
it doesn`t matter how the image is generated, manipulated or printed
out, whether it is straight from nature or an abstract derivitive - if
there`s no imagination in it, it will be thrown out.
I`m
using a word processor to develop this document. The ideas it contains will be the same whether I do it this
way or sketch it out with a pen and then type it.
BUT because I can let it stew for a bit, come back to it and
amend a few paragraphs, it might be a little more polished when you
receive it.
Within
the Buckingham Club there are members who think digital manipulation is
"cheating". My
view is that you don`t need a computer to cheat:
an airbrush, paintbrush, storm clouds burnt in to a bland sky
with a separate neg. photomontage - who needs a computer to cheat?
We have a member with a PC486 who has had images scanned to Kodak
Photo CD, has manipulated them in a proprietary software programme,
similar to PhotoShop and has re-photographed the screen to produce the
final image. The slide has
been used in submissions to represent the club, is a fairly obvious
digital image because of the visible screen raster and has scored
reasonably well.
Two
or three members have produced slide sandwiches using the Mandlebrot
curves ("Fractals") as backgrounds.
These are computer generated patterns over which the operator has
little control. You run the
programme reject a few images, find the one you like and photograph the
screen. Sandwich the result with a suitable conventional image and you
have an interesting contrast - why not?
Surely this constitutes no more cheating" than sandwiching a
macro-closeup or the veins of a leaf a similar Chaos-theory pattern with
a suitable graphic object.
My
personal experience is that I have a slide of a figure study that I had
Colour laser-Printed (photocopied) and has been submitted as a print to
the BPE Exhibition circuit.
It is titled "Digital Sketchbook - Nude" and the
digital laser printing has produced a "posterisation" effect
on the image with some stripey lines - you can see that it is not a
conventional colour print. On the back of the mount there is a large label which draws
the attention of the organisers to the fact that it is a photocopy and
that if it offends, it should be sent back without delay.
It has never been rejected:
it has been accepted in several exhibitions and it formed part of
my recent successful DPAGB submission at Bristol.
It is the image that counts, not the way it is produced.
I
understand that a PAGB sub-committee, headed by David Marsh and Sir
George Pollock, is trying to define photography as something we do to
make a picture without drawing. (Such
a definition would disqualify images which have been manipulated using a
drawing programme on a computer). I
run a small studio as part of a printing company in Buckingham and my
team uses a suite of Applemacs. If
you can find me someone who can draw a picture with a plastic mouse so
that you can`t tell it apart from a photograph, they`ve got the job!
Electronics
can be put to good use. I
note in a recent PAGB Newsletter that they recommend a Video on the
technique or BROMOIL. Here
the new technology helps to preserve the old.
I can buy a CD from Phillips to show me the Time-Life Photography
course from which I can interact to learn the techniques of 35mm
photography at my own speed. Our
friend David Kilpatrick is advertising in Photo Club News for
submissions to be sent to his Compuserve mailbox (pictures can be sent
by modem using JPEG compression at 75%) and even offers a photo magazine
that can be downloaded from the internet.
On
the subject of copyright-free images on CD, we have found that often
only low-resolution "screen shots" are available and you have
to send MONEY to obtain the code to open the High-resolution printer
version. Where there are
real free pictures, they are of a very bland nature and certainly won`t
contribute to the winning of awards etc.
So probably no problem? in
any case if I wanted to use someone else`s image from a magazine or
book, I don`t need a computer to capture the image - do I?
It`s only being properly brought up that prevents me from copying
the work of others and passing it off as my own (that and knowing I`ll
be caught!).
I am not sure more that a
simple definition of "photograph" is possible. The attempts to define it make it sound so complex and
usually eliminate something that you were hoping to include but didn`t
think of at the time. Some
will have read Alf Lloyd`s "Actinic" definition - see what I
mean?
let`s
have more debate but PLEASE don`t fragment our activity with more
complex rules. Can we call
it an "Activity" rather than a hobby?
There are implications that we are all amateurs but as far as I
know we do not exclude professionals from joining camera clubs nor do we
prohibit their entry into the BPE and PAGB competitions?