Is photography reality? No.

TheFlyingCamera · Apr 12, 2024

George Mann said:
Digital cameras produce an indirect artificial facsimile! A film image is a direct facsimile requiring only development of the latent capture.

No- a digital image just records the photons passing through the lens in a different way - it still requires the action of light upon a light-sensitive receptor. You're getting hung up on some notion of purity and moral superiority for a physical, chemical transformation of an object. It's every bit as artificial as a digital image. If anything, it's the ultimate alchemy - transforming one thing into another (a three-dimensional object in space and time into a two dimensional object, most likely a negative of that object, to then re-transform it into another, inverted, parallel object. A digital image skips the negative stage so you have positive to positive, so arguably more "true", although the same could be said for color positive film, at least as far as the multiple transformations go.

TheFlyingCamera · Apr 12, 2024

Alan Edward Klein said:
A photograph is a depiction of reality. Only the original object can be the real thing. Even then, it's not the real thing. Because what it looks like is only a construct in the mind's eye.

But is it even that? A certain kind of photograph is a depiction of reality, or at least is INTENDED to be a depiction of reality. But not all photographs meet that qualification. Not all photographs depict something that can be observed and correlated 1:1 with what one sees with the human eye - solargraphs, for example - because of the duration of exposure (months), they show something that is not observable - the repeated, changing transit of the sun across the sky.

Or what about chemigrams that do not involve a lens at all? Or a collage? All the components of the collage appeared before a camera, but the scene depicted never happened (see the Henry Peach Robinson image in my article for an example). You can't call that "reality" or some kind of "truth" because it never actually existed.

George Mann · Apr 12, 2024

TheFlyingCamera said:
No- a digital image just records the photons passing through the lens in a different way - it still requires the action of light upon a light-sensitive receptor. You're getting hung up on some notion of purity and moral superiority for a physical, chemical transformation of an object. It's every bit as artificial as a digital image.

This tells me that you haven't a clue about how digital cameras work.

Saganich · Apr 12, 2024

Don_ih said:
I'm not going to argue against that, because there's no point. But actually believing that is fairly dangerous, as it can be used to justify absolutely anything from trampling flowers to committing genocide.

Language is generally used to justify anything, not experience and understanding through relationships, which are the core structures of reality. It's the idea of seeking and knowing truth, not reality, that gets humans into mass graves.

TheFlyingCamera · Apr 12, 2024

George Mann said:
This tells me that you haven't a clue about how digital cameras work.

I know full well how they work. They're not witchcraft; any camera requires a light-sensitive receptor (sensor, film) that is responsive to light. When exposed to light, the sensor responds and forms an image. Whether a physical transformation (chemical reaction in a piece of film) or an electronic signal is sent to a computer that records the impression on the sensor to a removable media (a memory card, an external drive), it's very much analogous. In fact, while the data used to record the impression of the image on the sensor is a recording using a binary code, it does have a physical manifestation in magnetic switches on the disk where the file is recorded. There's that whole conservation of mass/energy thing at play here - you can't make something out of nothing. Just because the data store is so compressed you can't see it doesn't mean it doesn't physically exist. If that were true (the data was purely virtual) then the massive data farms along the highway near Dulles Airport wouldn't exist.

MattKing · Apr 12, 2024

Milpool said:
It’s rather arbitrary to bring up quantum mechanics here, not to mention the problems with how quantum mechanics is represented. Any sort of “connection” between quantum/classical physics and the topic of this thread is truly silly.

Unless of course, you happen to be interested in quantum mechanics and its history, as well as how photography is experienced and perceived, and see some analogies.
This is, of course, a thread about reality and analogies to it.
As a former university physics graduate, and a lifelong photographer, I am probably more likely to see a correlation than someone who is, for example, a dentist.
For most of my career, I was a practicing lawyer, so law related analogies also occur to me.
We tend to find explanations and understanding within analogies that resonate with us, and that varies with the individual.
That is a major reason why discussions like this often become heated - we have different life experiences, and therefore tend to relate at least slightly differently to the issues raised.

Arthurwg · Apr 12, 2024

Perhaps there is no such thing as "reality."

BrianShaw · Apr 12, 2024

Arthurwg said:
Perhaps there is no such thing as "reality."

... if there is, it's fleeting.

Milpool · Apr 12, 2024

I see. Well, you’re missing a lot of quantum theory if you really think that makes sense but who am I to stand in your way.

MattKing said:
Unless of course, you happen to be interested in quantum mechanics and its history, as well as how photography is experienced and perceived, and see some analogies.
This is, of course, a thread about reality and analogies to it.
As a former university physics graduate, and a lifelong photographer, I am probably more likely to see a correlation than someone who is, for example, a dentist.
For most of my career, I was a practicing lawyer, so law related analogies also occur to me.
We tend to find explanations and understanding within analogies that resonate with us, and that varies with the individual.
That is a major reason why discussions like this often become heated - we have different life experiences, and therefore tend to relate at least slightly differently to the issues raised.

Don_ih · Apr 12, 2024

@Alex Benjamin -- I'm leaving, too.

George Mann · Apr 12, 2024

TheFlyingCamera said:
I know full well how they work. They're not witchcraft; any camera requires a light-sensitive receptor (sensor, film) that is responsive to light. When exposed to light, the sensor responds and forms an image. Whether a physical transformation (chemical reaction in a piece of film) or an electronic signal is sent to a computer that records the impression on the sensor to a removable media (a memory card, an external drive), it's very much analogous. In fact, while the data used to record the impression of the image on the sensor is a recording using a binary code, it does have a physical manifestation in magnetic switches on the disk where the file is recorded. There's that whole conservation of mass/energy thing at play here - you can't make something out of nothing. Just because the data store is so compressed you can't see it doesn't mean it doesn't physically exist. If that were true (the data was purely virtual) then the massive data farms along the highway near Dulles Airport wouldn't exist.

Sorry. That's not how digital cameras work.

TheFlyingCamera · Apr 12, 2024

George Mann said:
Sorry. That's not how digital cameras work.

Then explain your understanding of how they work...

George Mann · Apr 12, 2024

TheFlyingCamera said:
Then explain your understanding of how they work...

Every time I have attempted to explain it to someone it has turned out to be a waste of my time.

Andrew O'Neill · Apr 12, 2024

George Mann said:
Every time I have attempted to explain it to someone it has turned out to be a waste of my time.

If you explained it to someone, somewhere on Photrio, could you please provide us with a link to it? Thank you.

CMoore · Apr 13, 2024

Andrew O'Neill said:
If you explained it to someone, somewhere on Photrio, could you please provide us with a link to it? Thank you.

I would like to hear how the Gain/Amplification works in digital compared to film.
Is the ASA the same in both.?
Do some sensors really allow (good quality) 6400 ASA or even higher.?

I kind of assume so....... i see videos shot with digital where the quality is quite good, but there is so damn little light.
Film would never catch what i see modern digital cameras get for still or video

What happens when you turn the gain from 100 to 6,000.
Is it the same as using 100 ASA film Vs 6,000 ASA
Are you actually "Turning Up" the sensitivity of the sensor, as if you were switching to film with a higher ASA.?

MattKing · Apr 13, 2024

CMoore said:
I would like to hear how the Gain/Amplification works in digital compared to film.
Is the ASA the same in both.?
Do some sensors really allow (good quality) 6400 ASA or even higher.?

I kind of assume so....... i see videos shot with digital where the quality is quite good, but there is so damn little light.
Film would never catch what i see modern digital cameras get for still or video

What happens when you turn the gain from 100 to 6,000.
Is it the same as using 100 ASA film Vs 6,000 ASA
Are you actually "Turning Up" the sensitivity of the sensor, as if you were switching to film with a higher ASA.?

Perhaps you would like to start a thread asking this in the Digital Camera sub-forum.

Ivo Stunga · Apr 13, 2024

When I take a picture I'm not interested in the objective reality of it. Reality is boring anyways, I see it with my own eyes and am accustomed to how my senses interpret reality every day.

What I am interested in, however, is taking my film camera to a location and asking its opinion on the scene.
And after that it's a sitting of some very important people in a dimly lit room - Mr. Lens and Mr. Developer will have something to say for sure, and I'll even entertain what Ms. Crop and Mr. Paper has to say on the topic, although his opinions are rather moot in slide discussion where Mr. Projector has the final word.
And maybe together we can come up with something interesting - maybe Mr. Scanner has something on this too...

CMoore · Apr 13, 2024

MattKing said:
Perhaps you would like to start a thread asking this in the Digital Camera sub-forum.

10-4 ..... will do

chuckroast · Apr 13, 2024

Don_ih said:
I'm not going to argue against that, because there's no point. But actually believing that is fairly dangerous, as it can be used to justify absolutely anything from trampling flowers to committing genocide.

This is a notion inflicted upon us by the Postmodernists - that all "truth" is personal, contextual, and variable. As you say, this is a pernicious notion and opens up the door to all manner of mischief, both intellectual and behavioural.

chuckroast · Apr 13, 2024

George Mann said:
Digital cameras produce an indirect artificial facsimile! A film image is a direct facsimile requiring only development of the latent capture.

They are both "artificial facsimiles". Digital deconstructs the captured light onto pixels. Film deconstructs the captured light onto grains of silver.

While the mechanisms of capture, storage, and reproduction are wildly different, neither one of them is a perfectly faithful rendering of the scene in question. We get away with this, because our brains are able to look at the macro image produced and not get distracted by the very tiny elements individual, but rather sees them as an integrated whole.

This is generally true across a range of other technologies: analogue tape recording vs. digital audio leaps to mind.

I would suggest that this property of being an artificial facsimile applies - in one degree or another - to any attempt to mechanically capture what our biological senses can.

Vaughn · Apr 13, 2024

Saganich said:
Language is generally used to justify anything, not experience and understanding through relationships, which are the core structures of reality. It's the idea of seeking and knowing truth, not reality, that gets humans into mass graves.

When we started to talk is when we got into this kind of trouble...

In reality, language shapes and manipulates our experiences and understanding of relationships.

As the Zennies say, the mind cannot know the Mind.

bluechromis · Apr 13, 2024

Through the years philosophers have proposed that we cannot directly experience the world outside our minds (if it exists), but only our mental representations of it. With recent research empirical evidence is mounting about how true this is. It appears that we don't directly sense things or see things in the world--ever. We experience a mental simulation of it that scientists are calling a controlled hallucination. I think the word hallucination has some unfortunate connotations of pathology and simulation might be a better term. But the way that the brain generates dreams, hallucinations, and our perception of the world is very similar. Perception differs by having more error correction. If our mental simulations were a perfectly accurate depiction of the outer world perhaps it would not matter. But it turns out that it is far from a perfect likeness. So, photos are not an exact likeness of the material world, and neither are our perceptions.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-neuroscience-of-reality/

bluechromis · Apr 13, 2024

Maris said:
I may have been harmed or helped by having done philosophy at a university level but I am sure that this essay on the reality of a photograph would not fly in basic Philosophy 101.
The problem lies not in enumerating the properties of a photograph, these are arguably well known, but in correlating those properties with the corresponding properties of reality.
What constitutes reality is ontological question in metaphysics and the several answers to that question do not necessarily form a closed set.

Rather than the original essay a more rigorous approach would be to list the properties of reality and then list the properties of a photograph. Comparing and contrasting both lists
could generate useful insights into what true and false statements could be made about a photograph. But it wouldn't be easy going.

Maris I have seen you repeatedly critique comments for lacking philosophical rigor. On the one hand, we have all the seen the discussions go in circles with people talking past each other because a lack of precision in language has people talking about different things. If that is a problem, what is the solution? Does everyone need to take a philosophy course?

On the other hand, most discussion comments on subjects that are remotely conceptual could probably be dismissed out of hand for failing to be philosophically rigorous. Is that reasonable? What is an appropriate standard for discourse in a setting like Photrio? If we really think there is merit is striving for greater precision in communication shouldn't there, at least, to be detailed sticky about how to structure statements more logically? I appreciate drawing attention to the need for clarity in statements, but other than identifying the problem over and over, what should we do about it?

Alan Edward Klein · Apr 13, 2024

chuckroast said:
They are both "artificial facsimiles". Digital deconstructs the captured light onto pixels. Film deconstructs the captured light onto grains of silver.

While the mechanisms of capture, storage, and reproduction are wildly different, neither one of them is a perfectly faithful rendering of the scene in question. We get away with this, because our brains are able to look at the macro image produced and not get distracted by the very tiny elements individual, but rather sees them as an integrated whole.

This is generally true across a range of other technologies: analogue tape recording vs. digital audio leaps to mind.

I would suggest that this property of being an artificial facsimile applies - in one degree or another - to any attempt to mechanically capture what our biological senses can.

The print process is different since digital printing with inks does not use light as chemically printing does with an enlarger.

koraks · Apr 13, 2024

Alan Edward Klein said:
The print process is different since digital printing with inks does not use light as chemically printing does with an enlarger.

What about chromogenic prints? They're made with light and about 99.9999998% of them are from digital files.

Is photography reality? No.

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