What Is A "Good" Photograph? What Is "Real" Photography?

July 16, 2012  •  Leave a Comment

"As long as you are worried about whether or not you will be able to make good pictures, or are concerned about enjoying yourself, you are unlikely either to make the best photographs you can or to experience the joy of photography to the fullest."

Freeman Patterson

Photography And The Art Of Seeing

 

 

http://www.freemanpatterson.com/book2.htm

 

Fear of mistakes is the single greatest enemy of the creative spirit. It haunts me in my business dealings, it looks through my lens, it stands at my shoulder every time I’m on the platform. Constantly it intones, “Don’t take the risk. Don’t try something new. Do it the way it’s always been done.” Again, it’s my photography that shows me the foolishness of this kind of thinking.

Dewitt Jones
Seeing the Ordinary as Extraordinary

http://www.dewittjones.com/resources/seeing_the_ordinary.htm


What Is "Real" Photography?

 
If a photograph has been substantially manipulated, does it cease to be a "real" photograph?

Compare this classic composition from Robert Frank
http://www.pacemacgill.com/selected_works/detailspage.php?artist=Robert%20Frank&img_num=9

to this later image. Does the latter still represent "real" photography?
http://www.pacemacgill.com/selected_works/detailspage.php?artist=Robert%20Frank&img_num=3

Manipulation of a photograph is nothing new. Canadian photographer Barbara Astman won acclaim for her manipulation of a Polaroid SX70 film image.
http://www.corkingallery.com/?q=node/53/album&g2_view=core.ShowItem&g2_itemId=2780
 

 
 More recently, she moved to digital. Do you consider these to be "real" photographs?
http://www.corkingallery.com/?q=node/53/album&g2_view=core.ShowItem&g2_itemId=4249
 


http://www.corkingallery.com/?q=node/53/album&g2_view=core.ShowItem&g2_itemId=543
 

http://art.webesteem.pl/10/astman_en.php (her bio)

 

What do you think "makes a real photographer?"

http://paulindigo.blogspot.com/2011/02/what-makes-real-photographer.html
 
 

 

 
iPhone Photos
 

What about the camera itself? Are iPhone photographs, and manipulation through the use of their many apps, "real" photography?
 
 
 

 
Film vs Digital

"Going back to real photography"

http://www.apug.org/forums/forum221/83813-going-back-real-photography.html

"Are Your Photographs 'Real'?"

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/essays/abstraction.shtml
 

 

"What is real photography? Retouching images, versus the ‘Good Old Days’ of the truth of Film …"

http://glamourphotography.co/photo-retouch/what-is-real-photography-retouching-images-versus-the-good-old-days-of-the-truth-of-film/
 

What is "real" photography?

http://www.availablelight.cc/section157083_48239.html
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

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