Photoshop

Recently I have started using Photoshop---a very well known digital post-processing program from Adobe---not just for touching up my photographs, but for creating images that are classified as  “digital art”. The process of creating them is deeply satisfying and uses a different set of right brain neurons than does conventional photography. Using Photoshop, I have converted some photographs to images that resemble impressionist paintings (or so I think). Some have elements juxtaposed from different images, just for fun (like one I created by superimposing a polar bear from Arctic on an Antarctic landscape full of penguins).  Occasionally, I imagine a scene, say a science fiction landscape, and then try to create it using different photographs and techniques.

Interestingly, some of my Facebook friends are not too happy at my foray into this media. Although most are too polite to tell me on my face, I get occasional comments regarding how they appreciate my conventional photographs more than this stuff that I am now posting.

As I think about it, I see why they dislike Photoshopping. A major reason has to do with what they see as the purpose of photography. As I had mentioned in a previous Blog Post (July 2014), photographs are taken, broadly, for three purposes: to memorialize an event, for reporting a story (photo journalism) or to create a work of art.

For people used to using a camera for the first purpose, using Photoshop to insert a missing person is almost scandalous, unless the photographer says that that is what was done. Same is the case with those who think that an image is supposed to be telling a story that has happened in reality. For them, a polar bear in middle of penguins, in what they expect to be a story about Antarctica, is a willful distortion.

On the other hand, for people who think that a photograph has the third purpose, to entertain us as a work of art, a Photoshopped image should not come as a big shock. On the surface of it, what difference does it make if a butterfly in an artistic photograph (not one meant for an Audubon guide) was really there or imported from another photograph in order to serve as an element of composition?

I think the issue here is similar to what I discussed in a previous Blog Post on Authenticity (December 2009). Why should people care if a diamond is real or fake that looks like real?  For those whose intention is to use diamond as a fashion accessory, fake would be fine. However, if your intent were to show off wealth, only the real one would do---accompanied by a statement that it is not fake, in case the observer appears uncertain about its authenticity.

So it is with the observers of a digital image. There are those who are wedded to the notion that a photograph has to represent reality. For them, it is hard to accept that a photographer can manipulate pixels to create a work of art; only an artist does with paint and brush is allowed to do that. Then there are those who are looking for visual stimulation that comes from watching a work of art, no matter what media was used to create it. They should accept digital art without hesitation.

The decision to select fake or real diamond is based on what wearer wants viewer to do --- be impressed by the its looks or by the wealth of the wearer. Applying the same logic, but from the other point of view, the acceptance of digital art is based on what the viewer expects from the medium of photography---depiction of realty or pleasure of viewing a work of art.