We ALL Already Know This

[Walter Glover]

but worth a look:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlC93dig40E

[Alastair Moore]

An interesting enough watch, thanks Walter!

[Maris]

Not bad for a light-weight presentation. And I'd have to agree with the implication that if (if!) photography is making pictures out of light sensitive materials then photography, future, present, and past, will keep it's seamless identity probably as ART. I doubt that photography will play much of a future role in the production of industrial quantities of commercial illustration. Electronics do that quicker, cheaper, easier.

[Alastair Moore]

A bit of a whinge but recently I've been finding myself being doubtful as to the authenticity of images made and posted online. I'm not referring to anything here, of course, but I've generally been fairly trusting of images I've seen online and elsewhere. More and more recently, I keep seeing composite after composite which is making me incredibly cynical about modern photography. I look at images posted on facebook on the photography pages and more often than not of late, I almost immediately think "that's a composite".

While I realise that I probably should just take the image at face value - if it's a beautiful photograph, does it really matter how it was made? Actually, I think it does. And while I also realise that there is a skill in working with Photoshop, I think there is more skill, and patience, in creating an image from nothing more than the elements in front of you. I'm not going to say anyone can Photoshop in or out different elements into something resembling an authentic image but I believe if you're going to present a photograph, all I think I'm asking is to be honest and I think I'd personally appreciate the photograph for what it is much more.

Rant over (for now).

[Lachlan717]

I often run an EXIF check on photos to check if there's embedded digital camera data.

Found it a couple of times...

[Maris]

I'm certain that photography was, is, and always will be, making pictures out of light-sensitive materials. Crikey, that is what the word was invented to describe. But there are lots of other ways of making pictures.

Pictures not made out of light-sensitive materials have established names like painting, drawing, etching, lithograph, ink-jet print, monitor image, web-offset print and so on. In addition to those old names there seems to be a new naming convention (innocently ignorant?) where any picture that has a lens-based first step is called a photograph irrespective of its final form. I'd suggest the exact opposite is true.
What makes a photograph a photograph is the last step that actually produces the object under inspection. Light-sensitive materials used? Yes, therefore photograph; no, therefore picture.

By way of amusement (forgive me) I often do a mental edit of internet banter on "photography" and insert the word "picture" wherever someone has used "photograph". Amazingly it make scarcely any difference. The discourse conducted on the web doesn't (can't?) distinguish between photographs and pictures. I'm with Alastair in being skeptical of facebook pictures representing photographs. In the interests of honesty it might good to know whether an internet picture depicts a real photograph or merely offers a pleasant visual fiction with lots of bright colours, nice shapes, and clever eye-candy. Both kinds of picture are legitimate within their purposes but it's needful to tell one kind from another.

Embarrassing incident: Years ago I almost took an interstate flight to visit a "photographer's" atelier to see their wonderful portfolio of "photographs". At the last moment I learned there were no physical pictures at all, just electronic files that I may as well view on my computer monitor at home. Been a bit cynical (but not dangerous) ever since.

[Walter Glover]

I would never have thought that expectations of veracity in any discipline could be appropriate to Facebook.

[gabrielrays]

nice to watch