cat_bounds_me wrote:sean_mcr wrote:"A fine technician may be a very bad artist, but a fine artist usually makes himself a fine technician to better express his thought" Edward Weston
- I would add here: but the technician can be the artist's teacher in the use of the tools.
sean_mcr wrote:
The former is with out doubt the easiest part to learn. Learning to see, to express what you see and feel is the hardest thing to learn, and some people master manual exposure long before they have any idea on how to express themselves, in fact they never learn. Spending 10k to and go shoot a ducks head and marvel at how sharp and well exposed the shot is
So learn to see the rest will follow
As for Photoshop, like Sheila i've given the link on Frank Hurley to many people that have asked the same question. Those instances are out and out manipulation which is nothing new, i do admire Hurley he was a very courageous war photographer. I don't even crop my images, and i certainly would not manipulate them, but i use photoshop as a dark room to enhance not manipulate what was taken, which is just what has always been done and still is done in the darkroom today
I agree in almost everything you say. I don't pretend to call myself an artist neither a photographer, but I saw great photoshop artists. Nowadays there is some high class real digital art in the world and photoshop is a good tool to it. I don't believe the photoshop or any digital tool is out, it's changing as it was with oils and tempera, remember the old master were making paint from pigments and eggs by themselves, etc. etc. The same as the photographer's tools changed with the modern times. Boy, I still miss my student's years taking black&white photos, dark room, exposition time, darker or lighter, ghost images on the photograph, the projector... I don't take photos for many years, even don't have one of this digital cameras.
I think when get get in to the realms of digital art, we are talking about a completely different matter and genre.
Artists trying to create paintings with photographs is nothing new at all
I will have to quote the genius that was Edward Weston once more
"The real harm lay in the fact that the false standard became firmly established, so that the goal of artistic endeavor became photo-painting rather than photography. The approach adopted was so at variance with the real nature of the medium employed that each basic improvement in the process became just one more obstacle for the photo-painters to overcome. Thus the influence of the painters' tradition delayed recognition of the real creative field photography had provided. Those who should have been most concerned with discovering and exploiting the new pictorial resources were ignoring them entirely, and in their preoccupation with producing pseudo-paintings, departing more and more radically from all photographic values."
"People who wouldn't think of taking a sieve to the well to draw water fail to see the folly in taking a camera to make a painting"
Edward Weston 1930
I have no issue with original art created and born out photoshop, whether i think it's art or not is another matter and a subjective issue. I won't get in to that, but taking a photograph itself and trying to make it pseudo-painting is gilding a Lilly at best and it ceases to be a photograph.
This is not an attack on your creations my friend, they are just two different mediums and should not be confused.
In regard to the artistic side Vs the technical side. Ultimately the goal must be for the technical side to become like breathing so we can concentrate on art, myself i struggled trying to learn anything from somebody that i felt no connection with.
As Ansel Adams once said,
"There is nothing worse then a sharp image of a fuzzy concept"
Photography is such a powerful tool in the right hands. When Eugene Smith was wounded in Okinawa, Later in hospital he said:
"I forgot to duck but I got a wonderful shot of those who did... my policy of standing up when the others are down finally caught up with me."
The war correspondent Ernie Pyle, said of smith:
"Gene Smith is an idealist, trying to do great good with his work but it will either break him or kill him."
Eugene smith is in my view the greatest photojournalist that's ever lived; He was a master of this great art, both in the field and in the darkroom, he was very protective of his images He resigned from Life magazine on more then one occasion over his artistic and moral integrity, which eclipsed any photographer i've ever loved.
He never fully recovered from a bad beating in Minamata when covering the the devastating effects of pollution in the water on the inhabitants. Those who beat him were hired by the chemical companies smith was trying to expose. He came away with one of the most recognised and respected photographs in history.
http://www.geocities.com/minoltaphotogr ... namata.jpg
Such art, such conviction needs little gilding, it is true photographic art. It is photography at its most powerful and passionate, and is something to admire and to aspire to
Smith said
"My principle concern is for honesty, above all honesty with myself..."
He represented everything that is good in this art. Courage, conviction, integrity, truth and beauty.
That comes from within, not from photoshop.
Thanks for the debate
Sean
Wed Jan 24, 2007 10:01 am 
