Everyday Photography

The Camera Never Lies

26th January, 2010 - Posted by blazingcircle - No Comments

I was recently reading the September 2009 issue of Outside magazine.

The magazine as a whole wasn’t that good but it had a piece with several good points in it about photography, integrity and if images should be edited or not.

The first point that caught my eye was that the camera always lies.  Lens choise, film type and darkroom tricks have been used to change what photographs capture for decades.  Today digital photography only makes it easier and for the fakes can be better.

A second point was that the idea of unchanging photos began so that photography would be viewed as art that belonged in galleries.  The idea was that some sort of “situational integrity” was needed for photography to be taken seriously.

There’s something to be said for having the capability to capture exactly what was there and to know that’s the truth of a moment.  To me, this is the reason to get into photography.  I don’t take photos for the pretty scenes but to use a medium to capture as close to reality as possible.  It’s very rewarding to look at a photo and know that is what I experienced and be able to use the photo to give someone else the same experience.

But at the same time cameras are flexible on purpose.  Lenses can change how we view a scene.  A telephoto lens can zoom in and get a view of something much larger than the human eye can.  A tilt-shift lens can change the apparent shape of a building compared to how we see it in person.  Even basic photography techniques of adjusting the shutter and f-stop and using camera flashes can change the color, lighting and focus of a scene.  Going to the extreme, special filters with long exposures allow a photographer to photograph water, such as in a forest stream, in order to create a flowing pattern which no human eye could see otherwise.

How does this ties into digital editing?

The article made a point that I think goes to the core of the situation, that photography can be used to create a moment or to create an image.  To me this means photography is all about showing a scene and all about truth of that scene at the same time.  It’s not just one or the other.  Digital editing is just a tool to help show a scene.  The question is if a photographer digitally edits a photo does this make the photograph art or does it remain truthful enough to still be the truth of that scene?

I think this comes down to two questions.  Firstly, we must ask the photographer how they see themselves.  Are they an artist, someone capturing truth or somewhere in between?  Secondly, we must ask the viewer what they see.  Is this photograph clearly art, truth or somewhere in between?  It’s when the two answers contradict that we find ourselves confused about what photography is.