Is digital photography a lie?!

[akash.nu]

With the various techniques and post processing we all get involved in these days I have been asked by a few of my friends if I’m lying to them when I ask for their opinions on some of my shots.

Some of my friends are off the opinion that a digitally enhanced / edited picture is essentially a lie and shouldn’t be classed as “real photography”.

I came across this video randomly and thought of sharing it here. I want to start a conversation around it to see what people thought about it.

 

[deep diver]

Great video and an interesting question. I have a lot of thoughts running around in my head that I will flesh out as the day goes on. (I generally write in my head and then commit to paper only after the composition is complete.)

My initial thoughts:

I think we can ask this question about all art forms. My short answer is that photography (analog or digital) or any art form is incapable of lying. By this I mean that an image simply is what it is, and nothing more. The question is not whether digital photography is a lie, but rather what is digital photography as an art form. (It is a given that some manipulate photographs for nefarious purposes or intentionally misrepresent their images, and I am excluding those images from my ideas. Even in those cases, however, the photographer is the liar, not the image.)

Do I want an abstract image to convey reality? No. If it did, it would not be abstract. That makes it art, not a lie. If we shoot a scene from one vantage point vs another, and do not manipulate the images themselves, is one or both or neither a lie? Perhaps they are nothing more than different perspectives on the same reality. That all by itself is reflective of the richness of the human experience. Perhaps I want to show the real experience and I process the image in a way that emphasizes one aspect of that experience over another. We don't question the veracity of a biography simply because the author emphasizes one part of the subject's experience over another. Perhaps I want to tell a fictional story through my image. Is that any more of a lie than a good novel. We don't ask if King, Clancy, Heller, or any other story teller is lying.

Most people use photography to capture an image of what they see in the moment: a vacation snap, the group picture at the reunion, etc. Those are great moments that should be captured. I suspect, however, (although I hope I'm wrong) that many people do not recognize photography as an art form the way they might recognize music, sculpture, or literature as art forms.

I don't think we should defend our medium if asked that question. I think we should treat the question as an opening to a conversation about the nature of art, including digital photography.

As for your friends....... Asking for their opinion is not a lie. A question, because it is not a statement, can't be a lie. You could theoretically be lying when you imply you want their opinion, but we know you welcome feedback.

Just my initial thoughts.........

 

[akash.nu]

I agree with you @deep diver , so many people seem to forget photography is not just about snapshots of family or vacation pictures.

 

[anotherscotsman]

A bit like any tool or technique in that it is the intention behind the processing or manipulation of the data that classifies the product. A ‘scientific’ or ‘technical’ image may be trying to be as accurate as possible but still requires manipulation to produce an image that humans can read and interpret in two dimensional form. An ‘artistic’ image may not have the same accuracy constraints (whatever accuracy means) but is still not misleading. The ‘lie’ comes in when the photographer is deliberately attempting to mislead the viewer.

just my personal view with no attempt to persuade anyone of its virtue 😀

 

[deep diver]

The ‘lie’ comes in when the photographer is deliberately attempting to mislead the viewer.

At the same time, misleading might be a part of the artistic intent. M. C. Escher created an artistic style based on this.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

We've been able to retouch photos for a long time, and it can be just as much a part of the art. Most of the time, my adjusting of photos in post is an attempt to get the scene to how I remember it, though sometimes it's styalized. Our eyes and brains are so dynamic, and cameras don't always capture the emotion or the intent, so that's what post is for, IMO.

To me, it's only "lying" if you claim you haven't manipulated the results when you actually have. As long as there is honestly when asked, it's just part of the art. You don't have to reveal your secrets, just don't claim it's straight out of the camera when it isn't. I'd assume most competitions set these expectations, right?

 

[deep diver]

To me, it's only "lying" if you claim you haven't manipulated the results when you actually have. As long as there is honestly when asked, it's just part of the art. You don't have to reveal your secrets, just don't claim it's straight out of the camera when it isn't. I'd assume most competitions set these expectations, right?

Our equipment is sophisticated enough that some of the manipulation can be done before the image gets to our computer. How does your idea apply to the image that is already manipulated straight out of the camera.?

 

[deep diver]

Click Pix and scepticalscribe often look philosophically at what we do. I'm looking forward to reading their thoughts.

 

[MacNut]

Film was manipulated as well when it was processed. Digital just give the photographer more control.

 

[anotherscotsman]

At the same time, misleading might be a part of the artistic intent. M. C. Escher created an artistic style based on this.

Agreed and Escher’s work is a good example of where manipulation that tricks the eye is not a deliberate attempt to lie to the viewer; we know it can’t be real.

 

[Steven-iphone]

People are using the available tools. At one time it was physical dodging and burning as a light shined on a piece of paper. Some may have thought this to be too manipulative. Each to their own; I prefer the image to be more natural - less manipulated. Though I do use Lightroom's 'magic' spot healing/cloning tool.

When I shot film, I was more deliberate in my choice of images. More selective. More thoughtful. I am returning to those traits, while shooting digital.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

Our equipment is sophisticated enough that some of the manipulation can be done before the image gets to our computer. How does your idea apply to the image that is already manipulated straight out of the camera.?

Good question. Is the camera doing it automatically, or are you taking about in-camera PP? I shoot jpg, with a few tweaks to the jpg engine, but it’s mainly to get me started with how I post process. I pretty much never post an untweaked photo.

 

[r.harris1]

For me, photographs I take record a scene that I was emotionally drawn to in some way, shape or form. A landscape, animal or social scene, among others. Part of that photograph represents "the thing" - the landscape, say - and the other part represents "the emotion". The emotion may drive me to put emphasis on the light, color or other aspect that wasn't technically there. I may also remove an element that gets in the way of "the emotion", a piece of trash, for example. I personally find all of this totally legitimate. Manipulating what comes out of a camera, whether digital or film has a long and proud(?) history going back to the 19th century: The excellently named Henry Peach Robinson is an example.

If you are a documentary or news photographer, you may have more narrow bounds to navigate in, but in other areas of photography, I tend to be more lenient in my outlook. It's art.

There's an interesting discussion on a thread in the GetDPI medium format forum (I think it's the "Fun with Medium Format Images" one). It's around adding an element from one image to another to make the final a better image. I liked the final and it made a compelling photo in its way. A lot of people like changing out a sky. Not something I am interested in but take real estate photography - cloudy and dreary doesn't sell houses, for example.


There's a lot to unpack in this simple question .

 

[redshifted]

Photography has been telling the truth and lying since the early 1800s ...

• “All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.”
  — Richard Avedon
• “Photography is truth.”
  — Jean-Luc Godard
• “You don’t take a photograph, you make it.”
  — Ansel Adams

I would say the jury is still out on the fundamental veracity of photography ...

Do you see in color or B&W?
Do you see with selective focus?
Do you have cataracts?
Do you have color-blindness?
Do you have one eye or two?
Do you take a picture with a wide lens or a telephoto?
Are you tall or short?
Do you tilt your camera or level it?
What do you include or exclude when you take a pic?
When exactly did you take the pic?

Is writing real if you use a burnt stick or a pencil or a quill ink pen or a fountain pen or a typewriter or a word-processor or a laptop or speech-to-text or ... ?

"Cheating" has been baked into photography since it's origin as a visual medium
It's a depiction of reality but not the actual reality
It's all a big fat visual cheating lie in service of human storytelling or just sharing a point of view

For me it's simple - photography is a way to share things visually with other humans
I'm a lying cheating truth-telling photographer - and proud of it lol

 

[Clix Pix]

By its very nature, photography can capture a scene "in the moment," but even that is not always the entire scene, the entire context in which the scene is seen by observers.... "Lying" is too strong a word. Is it "lying" when Mom dresses the kids up in their best clothes, dresses herself in her own best, and puts on a little makeup and makes sure her hair looks nice before having Dad get out the camera and take a family photo or the entire family goes off to a professional photography studio for formal photos? Everyone's faces are their faces, their hair coloring their hair coloring, etc. -- but we all know that most days Mom, Dad and the kids aren't that dressed up!

By capturing a sliver or a portion of a scene or an object, the photographer is not lying when he or she shows just that image rather than an image depicting the entire scene or entire object.... He or she is artistically dissecting the subject to reveal new, intriguing aspects of it which otherwise might go unnoticed. At times a partial display of a subject or a scene still tells the whole story. The whole IS the sum of its parts.....

Is the photo I put into today's POTD a "lie" because it is an abstract view of an object, shot while playing with light to get a desired effect? Sure, OK, the shot is not showing all the reality there, as the viewer sees only what I want him or her to see, not the backdrop, the rest of the items on the table, the actual surface of the table itself, etc.

All that's even before the photographer takes the memory card and sticks it into the card reader to bring it up on the computer screen! The process of shooting digital photos is quite different from the process of then choosing what to do with the image afterward -- how much to edit it? Are there bits which could be eliminated from the image because they are distracting? Could a thoughtful crop result in a much stronger image with more impact?

I used to hate post-processing and I'm still not overly fond of it but at least I have made peace with it and have learned a few more skills along the way, as well as appreciating that the folks who develop and provide the editing software also have been making it a little more intuitive, a little easier and therefore less time-consuming, too. I shoot in RAW in order to provide myself latitude when working on an image, especially when I'm doing something a bit "artsy." When I edit images of nature, such as birds, squirrels, etc., I prefer to keep things pretty realistic and as I saw the subject or the scene.....that said, though, the other day I DID post a sort of dramatic shot of a Hooded Merganser, deliberately underexposing and playing up the darker tones in the water. I went a bit further with that darkening effect once I was editing the image. Was that "lying" because in reality when I shot that scene the sun was shining brightly and the way it was lighting the water was creating an interesting darker effect. Most of the time, though, my birds and squirrels and such look just as they are supposed to look!

When doing an abstract or tabletop image of some sort, that's when I start playing around more creatively, seeing what happens when I do this or do that with the light. Then, once seated at the computer with the image on the screen I sometimes go a bit further with that, even occasionally using filters to create a totally different effect than the way the image originally looked. That's more getting into the realm of "digital art," wouldn't you say?

For a while people were going kind of nuts with HDR and I saw some mighty garish examples of it, where the photographer ruined a perfectly decent landscape scene by presenting it with such vivid, popped-out colors that it became unattractive. Trying to strike the fine balance between "enhancing" and "overdoing" or "overcooking" can be a delicate process and it's not surprising that some people just don't bother to take the time to make the landscape scene look somewhat realistic.

I'm not someone who'll ever go putting in clouds where there were no clouds in my original image, nor will I ever create any sort of composite scene -- to me that is going a little far, and aside from that, I don't have the skills, nor do I care to learn them. This is the area, though, where the whole concept of "lying" could come into play if the photographer presents a composite image or a scene with really striking cloud formation and allows people to think that this scene is exactly the way he or she shot it. If someone is upfront and honest about their digital art, their composite, their clouds that were installed courtesy of Luminar or Photoshop, that's fine.... Unfortunately not everyone is that forthcoming and just smiles at the compliments.

There's "Digital Art". There's "Straight Photography". Photography is an art AND a science, built on chemicals and technology. Some forms of photography need to be absolutely ruthless in the truth of what they are revealing -- documentary photography, forensic photography, etc. Other forms offer the photographer a bit more latitude. I daresay most of us reside in that in-between area....

 

[kenoh]

I agree with everyone here on the points made. I suppose as I don't make a living from my images and I don't have the first clue about art appreciation then I am afforded flexibility in not having to classify or authenticate my output.

At the end of the day, art is subjective. If you look at what some people pass off as "art" then photography lies or not are arguably the least of our issues. I mean I have seen classical portraits framed then dipped in black paint, I have seen people take a photograph and splash red paint on it is that a lie? I think so.

We also need to consider context of the image. If it is documentary or news reporting images, then they should be accurate and honest to the scene but a 100th of a second slice of time can easily be used to mis represent a situation as we know - how many times have you took a picture of friend or family mid facial express change and it completely skews the thought of what was happening. I am sure the classical sculptors played the "reality vs instagram" game when making their works. Correct me if I am wrong but I don't recall seeing a statue of David scratching his man bits with his stomach hanging loose and a finger in his nose... all of the busts we see have been optimised to be on the good looking side... 99% of the naked Sculptures have gymfit bodies... or they are carved in loose fitting lockdown chic... so manipulation has been around since the beginning of time. Hell, think of painting, start with a blank sheet, add what you "see"... a painter could have added anything whether it is there or not we'll never know... photography is the opposite, start with a scene and take stuff away - either physically or digitally later.

With my camera, I am trying to take an image that is nice to look at. Has something of interest, is nicely composed. It doesn't necessarily have to be mar a bha (Scottish gaelic for As it was).

Do we think that someone who creates a compelling composite is excluded from art on the grounds they manufactured an image from composite parts? that take movies out of the equation and 99% of advertising campaigns. Is this not what a sculptor does? except the digital creator uses a stylus rather than chisel?

I don't know, to be honest, if I get an image the way I saw it at the time after removing spots, that red fire extinguisher i failed to see in the moment and adjusting the colours - because I am crap with a camera not because I want to pass it off as something it is not, then you can call it a lie, a truth, an accurate recording, hell call it Susan.... all I seek is to make something nice to look at...

At the end of the day, they are my creations, my memories. For good or bad, they will be around after I stop walking the earth. If people like them, great, if they don't, that's also great. Like the TV, if it ain't your cup of tea, switch channel.

Unlike @deep diver I type from the hip... so this is likely gibberish

 

[kenoh]

For me it's simple - photography is a way to share things visually with other humans
I'm a lying cheating truth-telling photographer - and proud of it lol

I love this...

 

[deep diver]

I don't know, to be honest, if I get an image the way I saw it at the time after removing spots, that red fire extinguisher i failed to see in the moment and adjusting the colours - because I am crap with a camera not because I want to pass it off as something it is not, then you can call it a lie, a truth, an accurate recording, hell call it Susan.... all I seek is to make something nice to look at...

This is interesting to me. A lot of times I will shoot something knowing there is a good image in there, but I'm not able to find it until after I start to do even the most basic processing. I've always been a little jealous of folks that can compose the image in the viewfinder.

I'm not quite sure how this fits into the conversation except that so much of what we are talking about is the process of photography.

Having just made that last point, I wonder if akash.nu's friend sees photography as an event or a process.

 

[akash.nu]

Having just made that last point, I wonder if akash.nu's friend sees photography as an event or a process.

Bearing in mind none of these guys in particular actually understand “photography” as a passion or an art. When I showed them some before and after shots they said - you’re basically painting an incorrect picture. That’s cheating. I tried to explain to them that most good looking pictures you see on the internet today is never straight off the camera but they seem to not grasp the concept. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[deep diver]

Bearing in mind none of these guys in particular actually understand “photography” as a passion or an art. When I showed them some before and after shots they said - you’re basically painting an incorrect picture. That’s cheating. I tried to explain to them that most good looking pictures you see on the internet today is never straight off the camera but they seem to not grasp the concept. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I think we all know people that never look at a photo online except for the social media selfies. I concede that might not be your friends, but such folks, sadly, are out there.

 

[mollyc]

Digital photography is no more lying than Renoir sitting by a lake and painting it. The medium is different but the effect is the same.

all art is an attempt to simultaneously describe your personal view of reality, while recognizing that reality is fractured in some way.

 

[OldMacs4Me]

First off every computer probably has the monitor adjusted differently. It is quite possible for me to look at an image and think great highlights but the shadows have lost all detail, while 1000 miles away someone else looking at the same image will say the highlights are completely washed out but I love the exquisite shadow detail. Someone else may have forgotten to readjust the contrast after cranking it up to watch an old movie, and is absolutely convinced that detail is missing at both ends.

What it comes down to is that 99.99% of my images are not printed. So what I am trying to accomplish is have them display on my monitors in a way that either captures a mood or creates one. I hope others will like those images I choose to share, but whether that is so may depend on their hardware and their personal tastes more than anything I do. My images may look artificially too vibrant when viewed on a retina monitor, as both of my monitors are more conventional and my images are balanced to display well on these.

I tend not to splice in skies or remove power lines, although sometimes I am more than a little tempted. OTOH I will do everything I can to makes sure my highlights do not wash out. Shadow details depend largely on my mood, sometimes I let them go black others I try to bring them out. It really depends on whether that detail contributes something to the image. In the middle I will try to make things pop just a shade more than it comes from the camera.

Almost every image I shoot on my little Fuji XP gets a minor red or magenta shift. This is because Fuji biases its color to match good old Fujichrome film which means the images are a bit biased to the cyan. This is exaggerated when you shoot at moderate or high altitudes.

Lacking RAW I will sometimes compensate by underexposing to maintain highlight detail. When I do this, it requires some effort post camera, to bring the rest of the image back into the normal range. This is essentially an updated form of the old simplified zone system. With negs I always exposed to capture the shadows and let the highlights fall where they might. With slides I exposed to maintain details in the highlights, which is the approach I use with digital imaging.

In my mind an image is a lie when the intent is to maliciously deceive. Where one is representing an object to someone that cannot view it in person there is an obligation to be as accurate as possible. Ditto if the imaging is for scientific research or archival use. Otherwise there is an element of art and there is no shame in using every tool available to us.

 

[cdcastillo]

With the various techniques and post processing we all get involved in these days I have been asked by a few of my friends if I’m lying to them when I ask for their opinions on some of my shots.

Some of my friends are off the opinion that a digitally enhanced / edited picture is essentially a lie and shouldn’t be classed as “real photography”.

I came across this video randomly and thought of sharing it here. I want to start a conversation around it to see what people thought about it.

Every perception our brains get from the "outside" world could be constructed as a lie. (outside as out of the body).

 

[mollyc]

I hadn't watched the video when I commented earlier but found it really interesting with a lot of good points. I do think non-photographers often think that a photo should just be a photo. And even a lot of older pre-digital photographers. For something like journalism, for sure there should be less manipulation, but I wouldn't even say none if the editing doesn't push the truth. Like the image they showed from Steve Curry, what he cloned out in no way affected the story or truth of the image, but it did make it more impactful. I honestly don't see a problem with that.

For a photo contest, I do think if it's a composite it should be disclosed. But for general photography as art, anything goes, IMO.

 

[AlaskaMoose]

I hadn't watched the video when I commented earlier but found it really interesting with a lot of good points. I do think non-photographers often think that a photo should just be a photo. And even a lot of older pre-digital photographers. For something like journalism, for sure there should be less manipulation, but I wouldn't even say none if the editing doesn't push the truth. Like the image they showed from Steve Curry, what he cloned out in no way affected the story or truth of the image, but it did make it more impactful. I honestly don't see a problem with that.

For a photo contest, I do think if it's a composite it should be disclosed. But for general photography as art, anything goes, IMO.

I don't think it matters if the person criticizing a photo and saying that it is a lie or not, nor that the person does not understand photography. As you mentioned before, a photo is like a painting, and as such plays with the emotions or perceptions of those who can see it. Yes, a photo can also be "real" to be used as evidence, but also can be edited to be "not so real", just like it can be done with a painting.

The way one "sees" things in life is all about one's perceptions.