But in your op you said you combined 3 images.
Why are those 3 images not referred to as photographs but their combination you do refer to as a photograph?
The way I see it, the 3 photographs you combined resulted in an image, not a photograph.
All photographs are images but not all images are photographs.
Not my point, whiuch is better illustrated in your comment below:
A photograph nearly always abstracts the view, but does it capture and retell info? How does DOF, or having a fixed point of focus (and therefore every other point defocussed) reveal detail you didn't see before? Because it was moving too fast for you to see it? So what part information does the photo omit? And what if you saw that same bird in a static situation?
The camera doesn't capture information that you don't see, or can never see. Really all you are doing is looking at a bird in flight in abstract, so are viewing it like a static object. Like an audiophile who listens more to the quality of the kit than the music, photographers zoom in to see the quality of their kit, not the bird. Sharpness in images is largely the illusion of boosted edge contrast viewed at the appropriate distance. Zooming into an image on the screen is actually the process of you viewing a fixed pixel screen at a fixed distance while you scroll through resizing algorithms until you get to as close to 1:1 as the process allows. But I bet you relate the process (automatically) to you moving closer to the bird until you can see the detail. But that's what we do, we relate what we see when viewing images to our experience of viewing the real world (a feather with a magnifying glass). You would be surprised by just how much of what you see when viewing a photo is you relating abstracted info to your memory and experience in the real world and how little of it is the actual data in the photo.
Much the same way in which we interpret blur as motion, (it is not motion captured but a pure abstraction of an object by the photographic process that we translate as motion), so we see other things in photos as a direct comparison to experience and not as a consequence of the recorded data. Are Victorians always stoic or is that just a consequence of holding a static pose for a long exposure?
"We capture your memories forever." One of the all time great ad slogans and one we still hold as true, but there's little truth in it apart from what we wish to believe. Photos basically represent the "truth" we wish to believe, often little more than confirmation bias. Even with family photos that meaning or memory is not fixed but changes with experience, memory and even the fading of memory. The point is that there is no inherent truth in an object through human eyes, just as that truth is never seen by human eyes when viewing a photo, it's always coloured by memory and experience.
So if I were to condense this to a binary argument it would be this:
We can either define photography by our understanding of how a the photographic process works and captures/displays an image, or by how we as humans respond to and react to different types of image. And which one gives you the better understanding of what a photograph actually is?
From where I sit looking at on screen jpegs as what was captured by the sensor, and relating screen zooming to zooming in on detail are the concepts in the meta-universe because they don't relate to the reality of what is actually happening, like a photo they are just your perception rationalised by experience and the need for an absolute answer.
Here you define by your understanding of how a camera works, and the truth of the scene. It is a photographic image because it uses a photographic process. Though it is fairly representative, in terms of colour/contrast it is enhanced and modified to convey a certain aspect of that reality, not all of it. Anyone researching the popularity of religion in the early 21st century might be misled. :-)
In years to come the meaning will change in the same was as if we looked at an old glass plate photo and see it as representative of the time rather than the truth of the object which it invariably was when it was first taken. It's an odd concept that we find it difficult to relate your photo of a static (and older) cathedral to how it looked in the mid 19th century and hard to relate a sepia tone glass plate image to how it looks today.
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A photograph is the image created from the light captured by a camera during a single shutter actuation.
That is an opinion, not an established fact.
What data are you basing your opinion on?
Photographs, as defined earlier, can be combined into an image, not a photograph.
There is still no definitive answer to the question posed by the thread title, just a variety of opinions.
We're just talking about the common usage of words in the English language, of course it's subjective.
And because it's subjective, as you correctly say, threads like this one can only go round in circles proving my earlier point that all you will ever get is a variety of opinions in reply to Nigel V's thread title question, not a definitive answer. -
Surely with the subjective it's the discussion that's of importance and the definitive answer that's pointless? I don't think we're going round in circles, plenty to think about.
That's just your opinion.
Defined where? Oh! Your definition! But that's just another opinion, as you say below.
"The word, "photograph" is a conjunction of Greek words and means 'mark produced by light'".
By definition, one image, two images or more, of the same scene, combined, still create a photograph. Where the photograph drifts from being a photograph is when excessive pp alters the scene - something you know a lot about.
Even Alan earlier asked if the question in the thread title is important.
By having a discussion that can at best only come up with a variety of opinions and not a definitive answer to the thread title question then I see that discussion as just going round in circles and nothing more.
That's quite a good definition.
By definition, one image, two images or more, of the same scene, combined, still create a photograph. Where the photograph drifts from being a photograph is when excessive pp alters the scene - something you know a lot about.
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Yes, this is a good definition, probably the most accurate. If I combine several exposures of the same scene with the camera fixed in one position, I am still just recording a mark made by light. You are right again when you say a heavily PP photograph, with things cloned out or colour relationships heavily exaggerated becomes an image.
The question is of some importance to some people. For example they may want to explore different definitions, discuss them and, if they can, come up with an agreed consensus. Very often this may not be possible, but it doesn't mean that they shouldn't try. And it can be good for "exercising the brain", improving one's logical thinking, etc
You seem to have already decided on your definition and it probably isn't going to change whatever anyone else says - in which case wouldn't be more sensible to state it once and then bow out unless you have something extra to add?
And what's wrong with going round in circles - some pay people pay good money to just that at fun fairs, etc?
Tim
I think that several exposures of the same scene with the camera fixed in one position is several "marks made by light" and is therefore several photographs, not "a photograph". If those several photographs are combined in any way, the result is an image of the scene but not "a mark made by light".
Pardon the pedantry.
I am not the only one who has stated their opinion more than once in this thread.
Let's see if they listen to your advice.
Let us take the story one step forward. Not a great picture, but it was an experiment to explore the usefulness, of hand held HDR. Yes, it works if you are careful with framing. I did not have my tilt shift, so I have added perspective correction into the mix. We see a buildings vertical walls as being vertical, as our brain carries out its own corrections. The dynamic range was well beyond any single shot with a digital camera. Shooting for highlights would probably mean noisy shadows. Here are three steps. The three frames are combined. Secondly verticals are corrected, and thirdly with masking and colour corrections, I brought the shot closer to what I experienced.
With my Z7, I set the bracketing menu, and self timer to 10 seconds, which fires of the three bracketed shots in sequence, automatically.
Our brain compensates for keystoning and very high dynamic range. The finished image is more "photographic" than the component parts, due to the fact it is closer to what our eyes record.
The final shot of the Austrian fortifications on the Reschenpass, between Austria and Alto Adige, in Italy
I believe these programs work by using the properly exposed frame and add the underexposed frame to increase DR in the highlights, and the overexposed frame to add detail into the shadows. I get a feeling we are not getting three frames simply mingled into one. Maybe sombody knows how these HDR programs work.
That is effectively repeating your original post but with a different example of combining 3 photographs into a single final image.
The HDR programs take for each element in the scene what they consider to be the best "exposed" corresponding element from the individual bracketed photographs and blend them into a single final image.
Just as with the image in your op, some will see the blended final picture as a photograph and some will see it as an image, not as a photograph.
