My method of photography has always been driven by strong
pre-visualisation, coupled with the use of large format transparency and monochrome film often means
the choices made before capture are ‘baked in’ to the final image.
A photograph is a singular event, a slice of time presented
though the eyes of the photographer.
Where people get confused is when images are post processed; how that relates to ‘the photographers eye’ those choices made in the final presentation of a
negative or file are sometimes muddied by the increased options open to them; the subsequent lack of
direction often leading to playing with an image in an editor until it looks
good.
If we consider the long history of photography we find post processing manipulation were quite common. Early photographers were hampered by using blue only sensitive plates; making it difficult to record clouds so they would often add them in later.
The methods they used were to correct deficiencies in their materials rather than doing it for the sake of it, and the disappearance of ‘cloud plates’ from the market after the invention of Panchromatic film proves that.
But isn’t B&W itself a form of manipulation? Mono images must be a pre-visual decision, an obvious point being in the days of film you needed to pick a B&W film to give a mono end result.
This too has been muddied by being able to decide in post, I have often heard ‘do you think this shot would be better in mono?” The photographer needed to make a decision before the exposure, tones in the image might not suit a monochrome conversion.
We seem to have a group of people who are deeply confused by
the changes that have been brought about by a massive degree of control in post
processing. Those very changes have moved the singularity of the photographic
event into a realm where some final images have become derivative artworks of
several individual events.
The singular is often diluted in this way, producing a
lack of direction because of a set of wider choices, working without prevision means accidental brilliance is the only way to record that instant of
time– which failing that will have to be created in post.
Those issues are not to be confused with tthe artists who wish to
mix different images and make fantastic images from many captures some of which
look wonderful as finished artworks; to those people the final image aesthetic
is all that counts and pretty much justifies images that have no real world
existence.
These people aren’t photographers though, more digital artists who just use a camera. Many artists have
made such images but the final artwork is a fantastical invention; the genesis
of the work might be photographic but it is art and not a photograph.
That doesn't make me a purist, just that the digital artists are skilled in their own discipline which is wholly separate from the singular event which is a photograph.
I have read an article where an artist (who calls himself a photographer) describes himself as a 'data gatherer' who assembles his data in order to make computer generated composites to for a single work–I struggle to see how that is a photograph, I would call it collage.
That is not to say there is no right or wrong in the
creation of an image that you find pleasing, putting the pyramids in Antarctica
or making composites of a scene from several taken at different times of the
day to light your landscape from more angles are not photography because they
represent the impossible.
For me the photograph is a singular event.
—Preston Capes July 2015
