Steve Pearce Photography - Digital vs Film Article

STEVE PEARCE PHOTOGRAPHY

Digital vs. Film –

From Camera to Print - Image Manipulation and bringing photography closer to art?

Currently, there is a lot of discussion in the photographic press and in online forums about the advancement of digital photography and whether it is "real photography." I have been thinking quite a lot about this and how the processes of getting to a final image compare. This is simply my personal view of the current technological developments and how they add to the art. If you read on, I think you will conclude that I am pro-digital, but I would also like to point out that I am not anti-traditional photography, far from it! I just choose to embrace all the tools at our disposal – whether they are new or old is neither here nor there in getting the final result I want.

The (simplified) Image Making Process:

The traditional route:

The purely digital route:

An intermediate route that many traditionalists (or people not yet ready/willing to shell out for a high end digital camera) are following, in order to cut out (or because they don’t have the space for) a darkroom:

When considering traditional photography and pure digital in terms of these process steps, it seems to me that the capture-to-print process flow is identical. Different tools and medium are being used, but the steps are exactly the same.

The diagrams above are simplifications, as there are other factors of course, such as paper choice, but these things, although different, apply in some way to all the process streams.

So when it comes to the process of taking an image and getting to a print - other than using a USB cable or measuring out chemicals, and working in the dark or working with a mouse - I can’t see any difference.

Image Manipulation:

Darkroom jiggery pokery has always enabled a skilled photographer or technician to improve or modify an image. These improvements are generally dodging and burning to bring out details in highlight or shadow areas, or small touch-ups by hand, to remove the spot or whatever from a model’s face. For example, it has always been possible to create a downright fake image by combining negatives.

When you take a look at the tool box in Photoshop, most of the tools are directly derived from dark room methods to reproduce a similar effect digitally. The tools can be used to make up for the fact that the camera image is not quite a perfect representation of what was actually seen – to bring the image closer to what was actually witnessed. The tools can also be used to create a total fake.

Again, in both the darkroom and on the PC, other than the physical (or not so physical) means of getting the final image, in my eyes the processes are broadly speaking the same. Both can be used to enhance the representation of reality – to help overcome the technical limitations of film, sensor, lens etc. and both can be totally abused to produce a fake image. How believable the fake is, depends on the skill of the person in the darkroom or on a computer – they are different skills, but if believable, are both hard learned and well-practised skills.

There is of course some middle ground on these points. Is removing a spot from a model’s nose faking something? Well kind of, yes. This is enhancing what was captured to a point beyond what was actually seen.

In photojournalism, this is obviously an extreme abuse of the medium and methods. To maintain any belief in news media (if you still have any), the avoidance of any manipulation must be upheld with the utmost vigour. From what I can see from examples of abusive photographers being fired from quality papers, the need to keep the media’s reputation will for the most part take care of such issues.

My view is that in general photography, enhancing the image beyond reality simply turns it from reportage into photographic art. If the intention of the manipulator was not to fool people and not to make them believe that something was real when it wasn’t, but only to make something more beautiful than it actually was; to reproduce it as seen in the mind’s eye; then this is simply art. This is what painters and other artists have done for centuries.

I think that through advances in digital imaging, the public’s awareness of how images can be manipulated will increase, and it will become assumed that all artistic photos have been tweaked to perfection. Take a look at Photo.net – when images are uploaded, you have to click a box to state that the image has NOT been digitally modified – the assumption is that it has.

Looking again at the tools available in Photoshop, there are all the traditional darkroom techniques, but these are also being supplemented by new digital tools. Some of these effects are no more special than the gimmicky filters that were over-used in the 80’s, but the tools are continually being added to and improved. By having more tools available through which to manipulate images, surely photography is being brought closer to art – more tools give photographers more methods through which to express themselves and to interpret a scene.

As long as film lives on, and old tools are not made obsolete, digital developments only add to our art.