when is a digital photo "creative" - Philosophy Of Photography Forum

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Q. when is a digital photo "creative"
Asked by Jon O'Brien (K=10435) on 12/15/2006

My local camera club is still wrestling with certain aspects of digital photography as it pertains to classification and judging. One of the categories is "Digital - Creative". While some images are obviously products of digital manipulation, at what point does processing end and "creative" begin? By way of a starting point, if I limit myself to the kinds of things which I could do in my darkroom downstairs, eg., dodging, burning, cropping, contrast manipulation and mild toning (warming, mostly, as one might do through the selection of different papers) is this "creative"?

Jeroen Wenting

(K=24610) - Comment Date 12/15/2006

to me, never.
I loath all those "creative" filters, both digital and real. They completely ruin what might otherwise have been a nice image, or are used in attempts (doomed from the outset) to mask fatal flaws in poor images.

Sometimes a coloured grad filter might give a nice effect, but that's as far as it goes (and as soon as it looks unnatural it's too much, which is very soon if the same effect couldn't have been achieved by taking the image at another time).

Andrzej Pradzynski

(K=21021) - Comment Date 12/16/2006

Jon,
for me digital and creative have nothing common to be linked by the case. We all want the art to be creative and it doesn't really matter what media one picks. It's more about the talent/skills one have to express things right rather than technique chosen. I know many creative digital artists and I've seen a lot of poor nature art guardians that cannot make sense of their job. I would like see no boundaries for art, Frankly an art can only be good or not be an art.

Anyway I would like to wish Happy Holiday Season for all forum participants.

Cheers for New year too.

NJ

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