Why are manipulating the pictures?

My personal answer to your question is:
As cameras tend to be precise in the reproduction of a given scene (historically to be distinguished from a painting) , the trueness = quality of a camera is often given by technical characteristics like sharpness, true colours, the absence of distortion or vignetting etc. But I like to get more a mental reflection of the scene, mood and feelings and not optical fidelity. The pictures of cheap cameras are often a better reflection of the special mood of a scene than high-fidelity and especially, I have to say, technically spoken clean digital camera pictures. In getting the results I want, I let the camera, the film and the chemical lab work on the scene and do not post-process the pictures in photoshop very much. Doing this for about 2 years now, I have a pretty good picture in mind what the camera will do with a certain scene. But I defenitively give accidents and fortune a chance too, and the results are often better than if I would have done it by purpose. The craftmanship feeling and the joy with some very moody pictures overcompensates the frustration with spoiled photos in lo-fi analog photographie.
Regards, Albrecht

Thank you for your detailed answer. I find it very interesting what you wrote and it is indeed a deep analysis of this subject. Maybe by adding this "atmosphere" you are adding an artistic dimension, a layer of feeling, whereas technically flawless pictures are just a duplication of reality. So, by converting my pictures to Polaroid like effects would give them the feel of a dream or old memories?
As for the method used to make a picture laden with such an atmosphere I personally regard it as very secondary, at least if we are looking at the pictures using Internet. To me It does not matter how you achieve an effect, by analogue or digital means. The end picture is what matters. This, however, might differ when you want to make an exhibition with large prints.
Any other opinions about this subject?

My humble opinion is this. The camera is a tool and in order to do a good job i.e producing a good quality end product the tool is essential. However, the camera is just one of the tools and I like to think of the product as the finished product ready for display. The camera output--film or digital file--is the raw product a canvas with a lines and a sketch of the painting is a good analogy: there is work yet to be done to end up with the vision one had when the shutter was released. Ansel Adams for example spent a lot of time fine tuning the print to get the vision he had when he photographed the scene. The work to be done to the camera output could be extensive and could be minimal but I don't really know of anyone not doing post capture work to get to the final print.
In order for the final work to be good one must start with a good input (the same saying for computer programs applies here too: garbage in garbage out !!) It does not matter if in the process of getting to the end result you alter the colors, distress the picture, convert it to black and white, etc... The reason why it is important is because of the greater control one is able to exercise in reaching the end result.
I suppose consistency of the tool is the key operative word here. If the product of the camera is reliable, consistent and repeatable then I think the camera is good and can be trusted to produce the product you expect. Does this make any sense?

I like the discussion and estimate the range od opinions. Anyway I disagree with three points here which are interconnected in a certain way:
- the way to the resulting picture doesn't matter
- a good camera has to be reliable, consistent and repeatable tool
- the artist has to have full control over his tools
and I like to stress it with the Polaroids as an example. In my opinion character and uniqueness is an essentail part of art. Photography is difficult in that respect, especially digital pictures which are reproducible in many ways. Think about the differences of print graphics and unique singular oil paintings and compare it to a photographic print, a celluloid negative and a digital file in a standard format . Polaroids have proven to be an photographic art form, because they are unique (no one is like the other), and they give accidents and fortune a chance. The erraneous way of doing the job makes them a creative tools, which is remarkable. Digital fakes of polaroids can look like polaroids and this pictures are really fine but they do not cover this uniqueness aspect. In the same way cheap plastic lens cameras offer uniqueness. They don't have extensive quality control. Each lens and shutter behaves different and this in an erraneous manner. In fact you can distinguish between the lomographic multi-lens supersampler of different photographers because of the different exposure time of the frames. The wonder for me in my experience is, that the erraneous nature of the cheap cameras adds to the creativity of the photographer and does not interfere with it!
- albrecht -

Of course you are right if the artistic expression you are after relies heavily on accidents. Accidents do happen and they can be very expressive and are certainly one of the tools an artist uses. However, if you are after something else then a different tool maybe necessary.
Sometimes the artist has a definite idea and needs more control to achieve that end: Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Alexander Rodchenko for example come to mind. It is hard to imagine that either of them but particularly Ansel Adams relying on a Lomo or a Polaroid. The point is that a camera is only a tool some cameras are versatile in the sense that they allow the photographer a certain degree of control to achieve the idea in mind. The more control the wider is the range of end results which could be achieved--including accidents and experimentation.
Yes a Polaroid is unique but what if you make a "fake" Polaroid from a digital file and after printing it you destroy the file and all you are left with is that print on paper. Isn't that a unique picture then? What I am trying to say here is that we cannot generalize and say absolutely that one approach or one tool is better because this judgment is relative to the end result. Of course a Polaroid picture taken with a Polaroid camera is better than a digital picture emulating a Polaroid. There is no doubt about that. But lacking a Polaroid camera, one can approach and emulate the result with various degrees of success and this depends on the available tools and know how among which the camera occupies a seat at the front row.

Thanks Aref for your reply!
yes, I agree the range of photograhic art is wide and everybody should follow his own rules or better no rules! Also everybody should follow his own definition of art. I just want to substantiate that is hard to achieve a character and uniqueness in photography when you can do it on a mouse click with a tool ready available for everyone and publication is instantaneous and world wide.
You quoted the work of Anselm Adams. He waited hours for the right moment and light and spent even more hours in the dark room. Material and equipment were expensive for amateurs and only available for a few at his time.
Art is work and committment and this is true also in the age of digital photography. The way achieving the result matters in my opinion, because very different skills are needed to get a nearly indistinguishable result. So to say, a real Polaroid is not better by itself than a digital produced look-alike, it is only different and should kept apart. In general the art community appreciates the effort of any kind put in a workpiece, although it sometimes does not show.
- albrecht -

Thank you for a very thoughtful response. I don't disagree with you at all. In fact I concur. Art is very hard work and like you say it takes hours in the darkroom or in front of the computer to get the final result sought and to transform the image which resides in the mind into an image. One click thing does not cut it for me either.

I am very happy that my posting here initiated this discussion and I really enjoyed reading your arguments. I agree on many points you both are saying, tend to be on Aref's side of the arguments and still have some comments:
Creativity: what is this? Wikipedia says: "is a mental and social process involving the generation of new ideas or concepts, or new associations of the creative mind between existing ideas or concepts. An alternative conception of creativeness is that it is simply the act of making something new.". If we take this definition for valid leads me to conclude that using a toy camera, plastic lens or expired film is not an act of creativity itself. To my understanding creativity are acts based on ideas created in your mind. A random outcome of such lens or film is not creative. It is simply a random product. Now, you would say, but you know what such a lens or film like that would yield more or less as a result and you use these, to me tools, to achieve such a result. Here, I would say that the tool doe not matter as far as the picture expresses that what you had in mind that it should express. So, I am agreeing with Aref, it is a tool. There is also nothing that is better or less better in achieving such a result.
Art: Looking at Wikipedia once more it says that “Art is the process or product of deliberately and creatively arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions. In its narrow sense, the word art most often refers specifically to the visual arts...”. By the way, it is interesting that this definition (if you continue reading it at Wikipedia) does not include photography! OK, this is one of thousand definitions of art. Assuming its correctness if a a blurred and vignetted picture is regarded as art then it does not matter how this art has been made, with a bad lens or a few photohsop layers. The act of creating these by the way per PS does not necessarily mean that everything is made using a macro. The photographer can process each picture individually. So what about Uniqueness? Perhaps it is important if you want to give that particular piece of work a value and values depend on quantity. Are Warhol's popart prints art? They are also a reproduction using silk screen at the “factory”. Anyway, many people do not agree on calling photography an art including a some photographers. I read once the retrospective of Jean Loup Sieff “40 years of photography” about his feelings about his work and photography he says in (page 67, the 60s, translated from the French text): “In these good old days very photography books were published and there were no galleries that exhibited photographs. At least photography concerned only photographers and it was not yet granted the gift of empoisened official recognition. It was not yet invaded by the theoritising gurus, the chatty apparatchiks and all sort of losers. We were among each other and we did not talk about art but we were talking about lenses, trips and hopes. We did not put on white gloves to look at our pictures that were still not “vintage” and we only wanted to work with pleasure.”. So, I regard him as a master photography and he does not seem roregard photography as an art. I agree with him. I only want to make pictures and enjoy doing this with any means or tools. And no, I am not making art. I only don't understand why I am looking forward to change the pictures and give them another dimension.
And Aref, you are presumin that the “artist” or let us say the photographer here is doing things by design I.e. he exactly knows how things should look while shooting them. Well, there might be some photographers doing so. Still, I tend to think that most people discover the potential of the picture afterward and emphasise certain features in it or discover its potential while processing it. Perhaps professionals work by design and most others not. I am one of the latter sort. I tend to explore the picture not only while shooting it as it certainly appealed to me then and I took it with a certain light and composition but also during the post-processing. Perhaps this is not serious work but this is how I am making my pictures and hope that I (and you) keep on enjoying that no matter which means are used.
Probably by citing Jeanloup I am putting myself and the friends discussing with me here under the definition of theoritising gurus or chatty apparatchiks. It is not my intention to offend anyone. I am simply looking forward to make some pictures, sometimes understand what I am doing and see your beautiful pictures through this marvellous medium, Ipernity.

Yes you are of course right. Some people work by design, I am thinking of Ansel Adams for example and others like him for whom darkroom work was to be kept to a minimum and not to be used to alter the image but to enhance it. I tend to previsualize but often I also snap. I think everybody does that even the professionals. Yes experimentation has room in photography and like you say sometimes the potential is only discovered later. There is nothing wrong with that. I personally find it a lot of thrill to discover something in photograph I hadn't seen before and work to enhance it. Photography is about making images not simply shooting pictures and that involves both pre and post shoot work. Some people think of this as art some call it something else but whatever we think we shouldn't transform it into dogma because the boundaries of expression and of seeing are infinitely malleable and deformable.

I personally distinguish between picture taking and art in a very practical way: If I take pictures for the family album or to document our holidays it's picture taking and it has its value. When I just take pictures for nothing else than publish them for others to see, then I try to do a kind of art piece.
Not to be boring but repeating it: I'm an adherer of the motto "the journey is the reward" and thus I disagree with the statement that only the result matters. I take the effort but also the fun out of my personal journey to the picture. It starts with the hunt for expired films in larger quantities on the internet, putting the medium format film with cold fingers in the fractious back of the cameras plastic body while the action goes on around me, employing the camera without light metering and auto focus, don't forget to take the lens cap off!, getting the film to the lab asking for several stickers on the order like "do not cut the film" , "push to 400 ISO", "XPRO!!!", "development only" ..., then I return after a week of suspense asking the counter lady for a light box and a magnifying glass, getting enthusiastic (or not) about the results, at home I scan the negatives waiting anxiously for the final result, store the negatives in special pockets for later use, than select and prepare them for web publishing ...
For me it's like hunting! Although the beast is dead at the end, the way matters how to hunt down in a sportsmanlike manner. And here we are at the tools. I don't use a military automatic weapon but a sporting gun for my hunt. And in my opinion it has a limited value to use an automatic weapon to emulate the sporting gun characteristics. But I agree, the result may look very similar and everybody is free to select his personal way of achieving results.
- albrecht -

Thank you both. By reading you you remind me of so many kinds of pleasure of making a picture. I find Aref's expression "we shouldn't transform it into dogma" very fundamental and in this context it does not contradict at all with Absche's "the journey is the reward" in the context explained. Yes, Absche, I fully agree with you this time regarding the thrill of making all these steps that take effort and need a lot of patience in order to get your images. Taking time to put the film into the camera, set the camera up, wait impatiently for the development of the pictures. All this is a great thrill and give the pictures such a great value, and what I mean here emotional value to the photographer who shot them. I also red about another famous photographer: Richard Avedon. He was given a digital camera and after a while he decided not to use this medium anymore. He was asked why and he said (translated from a German article) : "Today photographers make 3 pictures and then they run to the computer to see how they were. This way one is permanently interrupted and nothing can develop. I see on the pictures of today: They have no depth". In another discussion he said he did not like it because by suing it one has no time to think. So, I think this time to think is essential and taking it by doing these rituals you described is a key factor indeed. At the end we come to Sieff's words: "we only wanted to work with pleasure". So, we should make the image (using now Aref's word image and not simply picture) in the way you like as soon as it gives us pleasure.
I have my personal problem with the word "art" as I am not able anymore to distinguish what is art and what isn't. I thought that art is about (as Wikipedia above said):".... elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions". As many of the works of modern so called art do not have anything with the above mentioned aspects in my opinion I ceased to know what art is. I have the impression that it is now more about public relations and "selling ideas". So, as I cannot distinguish what art is and what isn't then I prefer to step back from it. Maybe the word art also induces high expectations in me that I cannot fulfil. So I prefer not to get near it.
Therefore, I am making images (often only pictures) that I enjoyed making them and looking at the result and I hope that somebody else enjoys looking at them too. I am also happy to have the chance to look at your images too, enjoy their beauty when they appeal to me and also learn a new way of looking at things.

KliX, Thanks for your statement. It makes my point. Regarding the definition of art I'm with Josef Beys "Jeder Mensch ist ein Künstler". So, lets join the artist club and build the "Soziale Plastik". By the way, it is evident that our art is not accepted as it by all people including sometimes ourselves.
- albrecht -

Good optics corrected for coma failures exist since before world war one, perfect documentary bw photograph were made already in the second half of the 19th century. This is not a matter of tool or technique, this is a matter of aesthetic taste and artistic choice. I respect every choice but some compel me more than other.

Remember also that old pictures look "old, blurry, vignetted, scartched" because they are old and suffered the passage of time. They were not always so.

Thank you!: Well you are mostly right about the availability of such corrected optic but probably the price was to high so many people had to buy the cheaper stuff (like Lomos), or maybe the fast stuff, as Polaroids. Probably most people shot their usual photos using such cameras without caring about quality or image characteristics. They wanted to make a picture of their child or dog and that was it. However, other people discovered the visual potential of these cameras and the atmospheres they produce.

for me it's very simple:
the charming look of the "old" pics touches my heart. ... that's all.

... and it all started when I joined my first photosite. a lot of really good photographers were fed up with all the possibilities of their really wonderful cameras. they were looking for new challenges and discovered the old cameras. trying to experience with that made them happier ... a kind of "back to the roots", back to photography.
:-)

Thank you too, Mona. So, I understand from that that using the camera to copy the world precisely as is objectively became boring and emotionless and then one started to use other techniques to give additional dimensions to the pictures, emotional layers and using the camera for producing images that are not merely connected to reality. Images then became surreal or something like that.

ist mir auf englisch echt zu stressig, daher noch kurz was auf deutsch:

es ging den leuten, die ihre superkameras weitgehend ausgeschöpft hatten, im prinzip darum, mit "einfachsten" mitteln ein möglichst gutes fotografisches ergebnis zu erzielen. "nicht die kamera macht das bild", sondern der mensch dahinter. ... das benutzen von layern ist wieder eine andere geschichte. :-)

Hmm, verstehe ich nicht so ganz. Kann ich verstehen, wenn man von vorn rein keine "gute" Kamera hatte und mußte damit gute Bilder hinbekommen, mit den Mitteln die man leisten kann. Aber, eine "gute! Kamera abzulegen um einfachere Apparate zu verwenden, weil der Fotograf eben wichtiger als die Kamera selber ist, leuchtet mir nicht ein!
Und was wäre die Geschichte der Layers? ;-)

... das ist aber genau der punkt, das suchen der herausforderung. ich kenne genug leute, die eine wahnsinnsausrüstung haben, inzwischen aber auf flohmärkten alte kameras aufspüren, damit fotografieren und sich zum entwickeln der filme treffen. ich kenne auch leute, die sich selbst lochkameras bauen und damit experimentieren. der charme dieser alten bilder ist unvergleichlich, schon die farben sind besonders. es ist eben keine konfektionsware, sondern (zumindest für mich) eine kunstform.
ich weiß nicht, warum andere layer benutzen, aber ich tue es, weil mich das aussehen der bilder anspricht und ich sie anders nicht machen kann ... eine ode an die alte form der fotografie quasi. die agfa isolette meines vaters benutze ich viel zu wenig. (ist auch ein teurer spaß, nebenbei). :-)

A great disscussion! Thank you KliX, (and the other contributors). All I could add is; Photography started as a 'trick'. From there photo-realism was expected evan though anyone that I ever saw work in a darkroom, did in fact, 'work' the image in persuit of that 'realism'. Today with digital images we know that nothing can be trusted to be pure, (unaltered), and therefore we are free to experience it as art. We must bring our own experience to it's viewing and it either will or won't resonate with that experience.

Thank you for your participation. Well, I came to the conclusion that there are 2 main streams in photography so called documentary and/ or journalistic that tries to show the world as is without manipulation while the other stream is heading toward artistic photography. This might be still showing the world as is without manipulation but often it is tending to manipulate to generate an additional atmosphere or accentuate certain parts of a picture or the impressions it induces.
What II find interesting in this discussion as well is the dispute on the method of manipulation.. Some swear on the uniqueness of using analogue media while others don't care or insist on using digital media. We have here 2 aspects that should be taken into consideration:
-The experience of the photographer in the process of generating the manipulated image
-The impression the finished picture leaves on the person looking at it.
While the first point interests the photographer personally as an artist or maybe the "market" in case the picture is to be sold, as a limited edition or uniqueness of each copy are valuable; the person looking at the picture would not care much how it has been made in exception for those interested in technical, artistic interest in the technique used or in the market value of "an object". what matters to the viewer is how the picture looks and the feelings / impressions that it induces while looking at it.
Anyway, the availability of digital techniques that rendered manipulation of pictures much easier than it was in the analogue era does not mean that all photographers want to change, modify or even manipulate their pictures. Many people still aim, shoot and look at pictures as they are. My question was in the first place was asking for the reasons why some people photographers tend to manipulate their pictures and I found in the answers above already many interesting points.

I disagree in the asumption, that the technical development improved our pictures. I am a Minolta addict, so I want to give a Minolta example. Form the "nature" side, that is from the view of the object I want to photograph, the light has to go trough many lenses, a diaphragm, a shutter is involved, and then, at last, it will hopefully target on my film or my digital sensor. So the sensor or the film is the last step in the whole picture taking process. One of the best Minolta zoom lenses is the beercan, which was introduced in 1985. This is more than 20 years ago! This lens, I got mine for 60€ some time ago (lucky me...) is comparable to a new out of the shop 70-210 lens in the 1500€ price range. So, 20 years ago I could use lenses that are hard to beat even nowadays. This surely is true for Canon or Nikon lenses as well. And lets face it: The step to digital was a big step back regarding picture quality and the camera manufacturers had struggled hard to get back to a full frame sensor. If you are interested in some comparision between film and digital, between cheap and expensive, please look at Ken Rockwell's webpage, he has some interesting things to say.

Is a fake Polaroid a Polaroid? No. A fake Polaroid may show some digital darkroom wizzard skills, but at the end it is a fake. If one wants to take a Polaroid, one has to take a Polariod. Not easy nowadays... Sure, one can say that the digital darkroom part is an artistic part, too. The result may be an artistic picture, but no Polaroid. It is like a copied Mona Lisa. Artistic, but...

Ok. For me, the conclusion is that if I want to make a pinhole cam picture, I have to get my hands on a pinhole cam. If I want to make a picture that looks like analog, I have to carry a medium format or a 35mm cam and do the step to digital later in the process. With a scanner or with a lab that scans the pictures directly firsthand. This is a tedious process, takes some time, you have to carry some gear, may be, you even have to develop your pictures yourself. So one might try to get rid of this process by making the easy taken DSLR picture to something it isn't by digital artistic. I understand the reason behind that. I won't do that, if I want to make Lomo pictures, I would buy a Lomo.

Thank you for your opinion. I fully understand what you mean. Now, coming back to my last comment, let us say if somebody is looking at a picture of yours on Ipernity and did not look on how it was made and does not even care, would it to him change any in his impression of the picture if it is a true or false Lomo picture? It is surely a big difference to you because you know how you made it and and you experienced the whole steps that were necessary to make it. But by uncoupling the process of the production from the process of viewing the end result might look pretty the same, and I think that this is what matters to the person looking at the picture.
Now I would like to know your opinion about what can be achieved by making pictures using a Lomo or a pinhole camera. My question is more precisely that you are using these techniques because you know that the pictures would have certain characteristics. What is the role of these characteristics in the final expression of the picture? When would shoot with a Lomo and when would you shoot with your Minolta camera and the lens mentioned above? Some friends above said their opinion on that and it is interesting to know yours.

My experience in this area is really limited. If you browse my ipernity pictures, you won't see a artificial flavoured picture. Except for some B/W pictures, which were taken with my DSLR with in-camera B/W setting. But let's talk about me and a Lomo picture. Understand that the following is MY experience and I don't want to turn down anyone who makes digital Lomo.
Indeed I have some lomo-ed pictures that I wanted to bring to Ipernity. But - I photograph nature. On vacation or on mountain walks or wherever. And if I have a good and strong feeling for a picture, I put it on Ipernity. Some sharpening, some curves, may be a gradient filter, but that's it. Now there are pictures I am connected to, that are not really good. But I WANT to show them, because they say something to ME. And absolutely nothing to anybody else. So I grabbed these pictures and did some Lomo or other artificial thing. And in the end I got a nice picture. But for me it felt like a burned cake that gets a real big worked out topping to hide the underlying desaster. So they never made it to Ipernity.

I can't answer your second question because I don't have a Lomo or a Pinhole. But I think I would have to learn to use a Pinhole and to get pictures that could be uploaded here. But I suppose that a Pinhole or a Lomo requires an other approach in picturemaking. May be I try it this year, so we could talk again next January...