Why do people say they like “art” and “photography”, instead of just “art”?

Question

Always puzzle me to hear people list photography (in the context of it being art) and something different than art. Is there a reason for this historically?

Asked by blunders

Answer

Not all photography is art, not because it's bad, but because it never meant to be. Some documentary photography may be art, but most isn't. Much photography is just decoration, or otherwise functional, not meant to be art, let alone upper-case a Ahhrt, or Fine Art.

"What is art" is a constant question — in fact, it's a question with no fixed answer, but a continuing conversation. See some of this in the context of photography at What makes "fine art" fine art?

But you don't have to even be concerned with this question to appreciate the craft of photography, as many people do.

And of course, there's no question that there's plenty of art that isn't photography.

Answered by mattdm

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Where can I learn about the History of Photography?

Question

I am taking a semester long independent study class on photography, and one of my goals is to learn a brief history of photography; are there any great resources that, without going into too much detail, outline this from the 1800s till recent times?

Asked by Dylansq

Answer

Jeff Curto of the College of DuPage releases podcasts recorded from the History of Photography course that he teaches. While a whole semester's worth of lectures would not count as "brief," a couple of early lectures each semester consist of an overview of the history of photography, and may be sufficient. Subsequent lectures address particular topics in greater detail.

• Photo History – Class 2 Spring 2012 – History Survey Part 1
• Photo History – Class 3 Spring 2012 – History Survey Part 2

Answered by coneslayer

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What's the Reason 35mm Film is As Wide As It Is?

Question

I'd like to know if there is a reason why Dickons and Edison chose exactly 35mm as the width of their films.

Asked by Max Ried

Answer

Yes, they took normal 70mm film stock used to make movies, and cut it in half. It was cheap. It was really not a big deal at the time.

Answered by Pat Farrell

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What makes this Eggleston picture great?

Question

Being a little provocative here, I actually like the picture, but...

It is just a rusty toy, you can find one like it almost everywhere. OK, the perspective is a bit unusual, but the framaing is not flawless, we can see a bit of a car in the right. Besides that, what else do we have here? If I hadn't seen The Shining the picture would be more pointless to me.

Is it a piece of art just because we know the photographer who made it is an artist? It is quite easy to make a shot that looks alike, while all the real visual art before the 20th century actually required some serious technical skills.

Picture taken from http://www.mobrules.net/?attachment_id=756

BTW: Who came first Kubrick or Eggleston?

Asked by Paolo

Answer

I think the popularity of that image comes from its historical context. Up to then, the most highly regarded photographic work was black and white. Ansel Adams landscapes for example. Eggleston took images of everyday things, and in color. Reminds me of Andy Warhol, whom he seems to have been affiliated with.

He seems to have influenced a lot of other American photographers like Stephen Shore and John Baeder, with their shots of diners, road signs, rusty cars and other ordinary scenes.

This image makes me smile. Maybe the perspective, looking up, not at a mountain, but a tricycle! I don't really think it's about composition. It's possibly thumbing your nose at the art establishment of the time?

Answered by MikeW

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Where does the ¹/shutter speed = focal length rule for hand shake come from?

Question

The generally accepted rule of thumb is that the shutter speed must be the same or larger than the inverse of the focal length.

As is, it seems that it makes no sense as is:

1. On a 24 Mpixels full-frame camera, at 100%, the blur from camera movement will be more visible than on a 10 Mpixels full-frame camera.

2. A photo intended to be printed small can have slight blur at 100%: nobody will see it when scaled down for printing. When doing a high-quality large print, even a small blur will be noticeable.

3. Image stabilization (vibration reduction) affects the blur when shooting handheld.

4. The blur will not be the same on a cropped vs. full-frame sensor.

I imagine that the rule of thumb appeared first when there was no DSLRs yet, and photographers were talking about SLRs with 35mm film. Is this that fact that makes the three of four points irrelevant? If yes, what about the second point? If not, what is the origin of this rule?

Answer

I did some quick Google Books searches, and while I can't pinpoint the origin, there are a number of references to it as a rule of thumb or general guideline in the early 1970s, and none that I can find before that. There are plenty of earlier references to the idea that a longer focal length requires a faster shutter but they're all general advice.

The first reference I find is from Popular Photography in 1972:

A rule that will help you determine the slowest hand-held shutter speed to use is: place the number one over the focal length of the lens (in millimeters). For example, with a 100-mm lens, one over 100 is ¹⁄₁₀₀ (¹⁄₁₂₅ would be the closest speed to set); with a 250-mm lens, the rule gives ¹⁄₂₅₀ sec. Use this rule as a guide. You may be able to hold for somewhat slower speeds if you're steady and your camera holding technique is good. If you're shaky, you may have to shoot at a faster speed than the rule indicates. Experience will tell this. If in doubt, use a tripod or other firm support and a cable release, when possible.

A year or so later, I found this

You can minimize or completely eliminate camera movement if you remember this rule: For hand-held shooting, don't use a shutter speed any slower than the focal length of the lens. The normal lens on a 35mm camera is is 50 to 55mm. When using this lens, set the shutter at ¹⁄₆₀th second. ... — Walter Chandoha, How to Photograph Cats, Dogs, and Other Animals, Crown Publishers, 1973

I doubt that either of these is the first occurance, though. There's a whole bunch of examples from around the same time, like this:

A rule of thumb is to use a shutter speed at least as high as the focal length of the lens: a 60th for the 50mm, 125th for the 105mm, 250th for the 200mm, and so on. But experience may show you are steadier or shakier than this rule assumes. — Robert Foothorap and Vickie Golden, Independent Photography: a biased guide to 35mm technique and equipment for the beginner, the student, and the artist, Simon and Schuster, 1975

So, I don't know exactly where it came from, but it's definitely an idea for 35mm film, and it's clear that in its early form, it was seen as a general guide, not a law.

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How to reproduce Renaissance painting styles in photography?

Question

Rembrandt lighting is a well-known technique to produce Chiaroscuro, presentation of depth using light and shadow areas.

But in addition to Chiaroscuro, there were three other painting modes in the Renaissance - Sfumato, Cangiante and Unione.

Are those styles also applicable in photography, and if yes, how would one reproduce them?

Answer

Purely photographic implementations of cangiante (literally "changing", but figuratively "tone forcing") are actually quite common, using warmer light in the key (main light) and cooler in the fill. Every time you use a gold reflector to light a subject against an inky blue sky at twilight, you are using cangiante. The actual greyscale tonal value difference between highlights and shadows is much smaller than with chiaroscuro; the difference in colour temperature between the two gives the same sort of impression of depth with a much smaller value variation. The Impressionist painting (and photographic) style is similar, playing warm highlights against cool shadows to give the impression of greater tonal variation. This allows images to be relatively high in key while maintaining "body" in the subject shapes.

Sfumato can be approximated with nearly-direct (axial) soft light (either a large softbox or a ringlight), often combined with soft focus or a diffusion/star filter. Getting to the point of actually losing all sharpness of detail would probably be unacceptable for "straight" photography due to the viewer's expectations of the medium, though it might work well in a fantasy fine art mode.

Pulling back from the edge of blurriness and giving some substance to edges without emphasizing them (as one would in chiaroscuro), you arrive at unione. Again, the tonal key tends to be relatively high, or at least the darks are moved up the tone scale somewhat as compared to chiaroscuro. (Originally, that was more of a limitation of the medium than anything else -- it is hard to get real darks in egg tempera or fresco other than black, and easy in oils.) Soft light, not too far away from axial (call forty-five degrees either side of the camera an absolute limit unless the source is large enough to provide substantial wrapping at larger angles) combined with a relatively high degree of fill ought to get you close to the Renaissance ideal. The exact placement and depth of shadow is a matter of personal preference, but if anything falls off to total darkness, or if the shadows are too well defined, you are in chiaroscuro territory.

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What is the Adam-Salomon style of lighting?

Question

In researching aspect ratios, I came across this charming article from an 1875 journal of photography, which mentions as changes in fashion of photography the "Adam-Salomon and Rembrandt styles". This wasn't relevant to what I was looking for, but caught my eye as interesting.

Rembrandt lighting is considered one of the fundamentals today. Adam-Salomon didn't completely fade into the mists of time, but I doubt many people have heard of him. The Wikipedia article says:

Adam-Salomon's portrait photographs were considered to be among the best examples in existence during his lifetime, and were renowned for their chiaroscuro produced by special lighting techniques.

I have a basic understanding of chiaroscuro — one of a handful of things I remember from high school art class! — but what was Adam-Salomon's special lighting technique? I assume it is related to Rembrandt lighting, but is it identical? In modern usage, a "trademark" of Rembrandt lighting is a triangle of light under the eye; is there something similar implied by this style?

Is it really as distinctive as the references make it seem to be? What exactly are the "special lighting techniques" referred to in the Wikipedia quote? Is it something which has survived today, perhaps by a different name?

What do I need to replicate this technique, and how might I go about it?

Answer

It's actually the same as Rembrandt lighting in the classical wider sense (not necessarily having the triangle, like in Rembrandt's paintings). Being a sculptor, Adam-Salomon recognized its ability to bring out three-dimensional features in subjects and was the first to use it in photography. He also borrowed other elements from sculpture and paintings, such as poses and preference for luxurious fabrics (e.g. velvet); and even retouching of prints.

To replicate his technique, ask your model to take some formal pose from an old painting, use velvet drapes for background and Rembrandt lighting. Using contemporary elements from the time such as black-and-white, non-coated lens, low ISO, collodion/albumen process will get you more authentic-looking results.

References:

• Robert Hirsch. Seizing the Light: A Social History of Photography
• Naomi Rosenblum. A World History of Photography

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What historic reasons are there for common aspect ratios?

Question

The most common width to height ratio rates in the "old good" paper photography seems to be 3:2, which was adopted by today's DSLRs. Early (non-professional) digital cameras adopted 4:3 aspect ratio, which was the industry standard for computer monitors and for consumer TV sets. Prints are often 5:4 (as in 4"x5" or 8"x10"). Wide-format monitors are 16:9. Does anyone have any idea where and why these aspect ratio conventions were adopted in the first place?

Answer

Some common formats and a bit about their history:

4:3

This was the aspect ratio chosen as the standard for for silent film. Adding room for the soundtrack changed the standard slightly, but it's still the foundation. That translated to television sets, and then to computer monitors, and therefore was a natural choice for early digital cameras, and of course continues to today.

Somewhat ironically, wider formats came to cinema largely as a way to distinguish the awesomeness of theaters from home viewing. See this for more, or search for "Academy ratio" and you'll get lots of information.

3:2

This is the format of 35mm film and the de facto standard for digital SLRs. Oskar Barnack of Leitz invented a small camera using cinema film rolls, and chose to use a double frame — and a double 4:3 frame is 4:6 — which is to say, 3:2 when you turn it 90°. This is the origin of the 35mm film format, and here we are today.

(Beware when searching for more on this; there's an oft-repeated article out there full of unwarranted golden-ratio mysticism.)

When the Advanced Photo System standard was invented, "APS-C" was defined to follow this Classic aspect ratio (in a smaller size). APS also defined APS-P (a 3:1 panorama), which didn't really catch on; and APS-H, which is close to but not exactly 16:9 (but probably chosen for its similarity).

1:1

Squares are obvious, and nice to compose in. There's no concern about "portrait" or "landscape" orientation. Interestingly, analysis of historically-preferred aspect ratio in painting show that with no inherent restrictions of format, artists tended towards more square.

5:4

This is a common large format aspect ratio. I'm not sure why exactly it was chosen, but I wouldn't be surprised it simply fits with the historical preferences for almost-square frames as noted above. The popular 8"×10" print fits this format.

I imagine the history here roughly mirrors the history of standardized sizes for letter paper.

6:7

This is a relatively-common medium-format aspect ratio, and as I understand it, was historically chosen as a conveniently-close-to-8×10-for-printing way of dividing up a roll of medium-format film.

16:9

This is the standard for HDTV, of course, and it was simply selected as a compromise format by the committee designing that standard. Hooray for committees! This forum thread goes into the background of the decision, but really, committee compromise sums it up.

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How did they post process before Photoshop?

Question

So, yes, I'm intrigued as to how they post process pictures before Photoshop (or computers, for that matter) came about. Or is post processing a by-product of the computer revolution?

My understanding of film photography (all from the film equivalent of a point-and-shoot we had when I was a kid) is that light burns into film then film gets developed. And, well, unlike bits, your end-product is tangible and "permanent", for lack of better term.

I'm woefully ignorant about film processing but I guess this is where the post-processing takes place? How do they tweak color temperatures? Remove red eyes? Retouch skin blemishes? Do they use special dyes/inks to achieve better colors/contrast?

Answer

There was quite a lot you could do, actually.

Let's start with the basics -- overall exposure and contrast. This is something that anybody who had a darkroom would have done as a matter of course. Photo papers come in different contrast grades, and some black-and-white papers were variable contrast, reacting differently depending on the colour of the light you used in your enlarger. You could do a lot about changing the overall exposure and contrast merely by changing the time that the paper was exposed and the contrast grade of the paper. Changing colour temperature in colour prints was a matter of changing the filter pack (or the settings on a dichroic light source). Small shops would go by a keen eye; large labs would use a colorimeter.

Photoshop (and similar programs) have tools called "dodge" and "burn", and these come straight from the darkroom. You would use a shield to "dodge" light from hitting the paper, or a larger card (often with a hole in it) to let extra light "burn" the paper. This would let you make local contrast and brightness changes.

"Masking", including "unsharp masking" also comes from the darkroom. Contrast masking would be done by sandwiching your negative together with a piece of unexposed film (usually something with a very low sensitivity) and exposing the film through your negative. That made a weak positive image, which you would then develop with low contrast. Sandwich the two together again, and your shadow areas got some extra density, bringing the overall contrast down. Put a piece of clear film between the two when exposing the mask, and you get an unsharp mask, which could be used to enhance the edges in the image (the same way that the Photoshop effect works). You could also paint directly on the mask or bleach out exposed areas in order to remove areas of the image.

Retouching involved using pencils or dyes on both the negative and the print. Since you can only controllably add density (you can put more black or colour on a little at a time, but bleaching is more-or-less an all-or-nothing technique), you would lighten areas by retouching the negative and darken them by retouching the print. Red eye correction was usually done on a print using a cyan dye pen and a careful dotting technique. It was all hand work, and it was enough of an extra-cost option that most people wouldn't have bothered with it for their snapshots.

Then there were wholesale changes you'd make by airbrushing and collage. That was normally done at a very large size and then rephotographed to minimize the appearance of the handiwork.

Add hand-tinting black and white pictures, using ortho/litho film to transform a continuous tone image into line art or bas relief and so forth, and the arsenal of tools and techniques gets pretty big. It was nowhere near as easy as Photoshop, and there wasn't so much an "undo" as a "start all over again", but we weren't stuck with what you could get at the druggist's by any means.

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Why are Canon and Nikon the biggest camera manufacturers?

Question

Coming in new to the whole SLR world, I am yet to find a conclusive answer to a question that's been bothering me: why are Canon and Nikon the big two? My wife has gone down the Sony route because she has some good old Konica-Minolta lenses from a film SLR but I was wondering whether that's a bad thing.

Is their dominance because Canon and Nikon have the best image technology today? Because they have the biggest range of cameras, lenses and other accessories? Because they have a bigger install base? Or they were just in the right place and the right time with technology advances?

Answer

The biggest single factor I would suggest is the autofocus systems that both manufacturers introduced in the 1980s. This brought professionals to the brands, which demanded more lenses for versatility and thus, today we have very wide reaching lines of autofocus lenses that no other company can currently match.

Once a professional jumps on the ship of one of these brands, it can be quite difficult to switch. The lenses are for the most part not ones that you are going to use on a different brand body. The cost to switch becomes such that you need a compelling argument to switch to another brand.

New photographers often get hooked on the brand by a point and shoot, compact camera, or the less expensive entry level DSLR bodies. Upgrading to the professional or enthusiast lines is more comfortable if we have already been using that brand in some capacity.

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Why did camera manufacturers create crop sensor cameras?

Question

Why did camera manufacturers create crop sensor cameras? Was there a business reason? Did they figure that crop sensor cameras are cheaper to manufacturer, which would in turn lower prices and make it easier to penetrate the amateur photography market?

I'm under the assumption that full frame cameras were created first and crop sensor cameras have come along only recently (relative the entire life of cameras).

Answer

There were economic reasons, but they were not about getting to amateur market; it was more like getting any market. The main merit seen in early digital photography was speed of delivery (no need to develop films), so news agencies were the first targets.

During the dawn of digital photography, a full frame sensor would have been enormously expensive to produce. The technology was just not ready to produce perfect silicon wafers of that size; even the smaller ones were the price of a really nice car (or a top-notch medium / large format system). The first commercially available dSLR, Kodak DCS (1991, a.k.a. DCS100), managed to sell 987 units (with 1.3MP 1.8 crop factor sensors, some of them monochrome) priced at $20k...$25k (almost a median US household income). Provided that most professional photographers were convinced (and correct) that digital image quality was significantly worse than film, the market would have been too small for full frame cameras at their enormous price.

The first FF dSLR, 6MP Contax N Digital, came 11 years later at $7000, a sixth of average US household income. 11MP Canon 1Ds was announced at $8k the same year.

Smaller sensors were (and still are) several times cheaper, and with the 1.5 or 1.6 crop factor, the quality difference was (and still is) not that big to justify the cost difference for most people. At the same time with 1Ds, APS-C Canon 10D was announced at only $2k.

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Should I worry about making “mistakes” in Develop mode in Lightroom?

Question

Every edit action in Lightroom is recorded in the History for that photo. If I "try-on" various settings, say changing White Balance through the various modes to find one I like, it creates an entry for every setting I tried. When I finally decide on the setting I like, should I worry about undoing all the previous actions (ie. to simplify/clear the history), or just go with the final setting?

Somehow it bugs me to have all those entries in the History, especially since none of the ones preceding the one I selected have any meaning to me, other than as an experiment. I could see that having the history would be good if the intermediate steps were relevant

I suppose it would be great if Lightroom were smart enough to see that the last N changes were all to the same setting, and then be able to automatically or manually collapse that stack into a single entry in the History.

Ultimately, I can't imagine that having lots of history steps adds much in the way of file size to the catalog, but are there any other issues that I should be concerned about? (ie. slower rendering speed?)

Answer

I think this is ultimately a matter of personal preference, as with a fast, modern computer the difference is unnoticeable. You are correct that each additional step, from a storage space standpoint, is very negligible, and should not be a worrying factor.

To touch on the performance bit a little more...a significant amount of edits can affect the performance of Lightroom. You would need quite a few edits, many dozen at least, before it really exhibits as a problem. Performance degradation will often exhibit when zooming in/out of the work image, when panning quickly, or when trying to make fine adjustments (such as with curves). When processing RAW, the entire history stack must be applied to render the raw image data to the screen.

Additionally, if you keep very large history stacks in place on a lot of photos, I would expect that the filmstrip and the library to exhibit performance degradation as well. Any time lightroom decides to re-render previews (which it seems to do periodically, or if you have chosen to delete them from your hard drive to save space)...the entire history stack for each image will need to be processed.

I think it is generally prudent to keep the history stack to a minimum when possible. I usually follow the same approach...try out a few edits, unroll and reapply the one I prefer to keep. Same thing goes for camera profiles or any other option I can select from a list. In the case of more fine-tuned edits, such as curves...I may tweak with the curves for a while until I like the result...then memorize/write down the current curve settings, delete all my previous fine-tuning, and edit each part of the curve by directly entering the final value. I should not that when tweaking photos that are experimental in the first place, I have built up some fairly large history stacks, with a few dozen edits. I have rarely found noticeable or problematic performance degradation even if I stack up around 50 edits or so, however much more than that and fine-tuning curves or panning while zoomed do tend to develop a bit of a stutter (not much, but enough to be noticeable. It would still take far more edits to actually become a real problem, probably in the area of a couple hundred...which would be kind of insane in and of itself.) (Note: those numbers are on a Core i7 920 @ 3.2Ghz and 12Gb of ram, software on an SSD, catalog and photos on a 7200rpm high density drive.)

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What can a photographer learn from art history?

Question

I normally wouldn't consider this a question of photography, except for the fact that several answers on this question made note that art history was something important to the education they received in art school.

What are important principles for a photographer taught through art history and what are resources (they need not be free or online) that I can learn them from (apart from art school - which will never happen for this working father)?

Answer

Having an art school background means that I've had to sit through any number (dozens, probably) of Art History classes... Some of the big 'principles' that come out of art history include:

• A strong sense of that which has come before. So many photographers approach photography in a vacuum... Having no idea (and often not caring) that art is built on the shoulders of who came before. Knowing something about Art History makes it possible to speak to whether a work is derivative (a capital insult in the art world), or homage (often a complement to both the person giving and getting the homage).
• Beginning photographers (especially ones who've only been photographers in the 'digital era') often rely on luck, volume (quantity of shots taken), and post-production corrections in order to get good photographs. An Art History education really trains the mind to be deliberate in all aspects of photography (lighting, subject, background, DoF, etc.) This is because spending a lot of time looking at the different ways others handle those same problems heightens awareness of them in the work you're doing, and having a library of techniques to draw on to emulate will often strengthen the work.
• Reoccurring patterns and motifs are illuminated. To watch how (for example) art's portrayal of the devil over the course of 500 years has evolved can inform my own work. Maybe a less extreme example... It is possible to see something like 'short lighting' being invented by observing painters draw inspiration from one another over the course of centuries.
• All of the above which leads to the 'big' principles of art history... A strong history of R&D in the art world- Rip off and Duplicate. Art evolves as the result of artists building liberally on other artists work over time, and there's no reason that Photography shouldn't draw from that well too.

In terms of resources:

• Crash on the floor in the Art section at a local 'big box' book store and leaf through all the big glossy books (and maybe you thought computer related books were expensive... I only manage to find $100+ books in the art section! I never buy, just look).
• The library can also great for looking at art. They also are less likely to frown at you if you spend hours looking but don't buy anything. :-)
• Paradoxically I often find the internet to be a hindrance to actually studying pieces of art... But that just may be me. I tend to find that most of time the pictures on the internet are too small to really get much out of... On the other hand, its never been easier to read the written histories of great (and more obscure) artists, which can really add depth to the works as you view them.
• Finally, there's absolutely nothing like actually viewing paintings (or photographs, for that matter) 'in person.' Visit a museum. Visit a gallery. Visit lots of 'em. If you're lucky enough to live somewhere that gets traveling exhibits that come to town, go see them, or go on vacation somewhere that has a reputation for great art.

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What camera did Ed White use during the first space walk?

Question

What camera did the astronaut Ed White use during the first space walk?

It was the mission Gemini 4 and the camera is visible in some pictures, for example here: http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/gemini_4_eva.html but I cannot recognize it.

Answer

history was made when the first picture of a spacecraft in orbit was taken by astronaut Ed White as he floated outside his spacecraft. He used a Zeiss Contarex 35mm camera mounted atop his gas-powered maneuvering gun.

From http://history.nasa.gov/printFriendly/apollo_photo.html

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