A Nomenclature for Photography

by

Jerry Buley, Ph.D.

Copyright 2007 by Jerry Buley, Ph.D.

All Rights Reserved

A contemporary problem in photography is the lack of nomenclature for describing different types of photography.   Our current set of words for categorizing types of photography does not communicate accurately what is going on.  Consider the following:

Portrait

Wedding

Landscape

Though each tells us much about the subject toward which the photographer points a camera, it tells us nothing about the process she/he used to create the final photograph.  Below are my suggestions as to what those terms should be.   Please be advised that others may use some of these terms differently.  I am suggesting that we need to use those terms more precisely.

For the purposes of the following analysis I will be discussing digitized pictures.  Though some photographers still use film, nearly all of them digitize the resulting pictures and then work with them in image-editing software.  Usually they use a high-definition scanner to create the digital file from the film version.  A rapidly growing number of photographers, in fact most likely the majority, now create the original photograph with a digital camera.  I am thus, assuming for the purposes of this article that we are dealing with a digitized picture.  That is, a computer file in the form of 1’s and 0’s.

What is not Photography?

Let's start with what may look like photography, but is not.  More and more fine artists are eschewing real paints, brushes, and canvas and are instead using image-editing software to create digital images from scratch.  I call these Synthesized Realism and Abstract Design.

Synthesized Realism:  A very difficult and time consuming process by which the artist, using only image-editing software, creates a realistic-appearing picture.  The picture may or may not be based on any existing reality.  The created pictures never existed inside a camera.  Every element, every bit of detail in the picture is created by the skillful hand of what has to be called a consummate  image-editing artist.  This branch of visual imagery creation is more akin to photo-realism in painting than it is to photography.  Once the artist is done, the real work begins.  Now, they have to convince potential buyers that it is not really a photograph, but a synthesized reality. 

Abstract Design  In this modality, the artist creates color, forms, and lines in a image-editing program to create an abstract image.  Again, the image never the saw the inside of a camera.   To abstract is to reduce detail, pare down picture elements to a minimum.  The final image may or may not have any recognizable association with the reality from which it was abstracted.

What is kind of like Photography?

Digital Artistry    This modality is not as easily classifiable because  sometimes the initial image is captured in a camera.  However, the digital artist uses the photograph only as a point of departure toward creating a well designed, painterly picture that ultimately may or may not bare a passing resemblance to the original scene.  Mary Ann Rolfe, is a very skilled digital artist.  She takes pictures with a point-and-shoot digital camera since she only needs the pictures to create the template from which she will be working.  While fine-art photographers (described below) are very careful to color calibrate their computer monitor and printer, Mary does not care whether her monitor is calibrated or whether her printer prints the same colors that are on her monitor.  The reason is she is only concerned with what the final print looks like.  If she likes the print, it is good regardless of how true it is to the original pictures. Beauty, not target/final image veracity is the goal of the digital artist.   For examples of Mary Ann Rolfe's work go here.  You can see other examples of digital art here.

What is Photography? 

Now that we have a pretty good idea of what is not photography and what is kind of like photography, it is time to categorize the different forms of photography

Archival Photography

Archival photography consists of photographs taken to accurately portray what happened or what existed at a particular point in 

time.   There is little or no editing of these pictures for obvious reasons.  Sub categories of Archival Photography are:

Journalistic Photography  pictures taken to provide an accurate portrayal of what happened in a crime, in a war, in a forest fire, and so on.   Any manipulation in a image-editing program has been done to ensure the final picture accurately depicts the original scene.  The photographer may choose to emphasize or de-emphasize something the digital image, but only to ensure that the final image is a better portrayal of the original scene.  There has been an instance when war pictures were made to look worse than what actually happened (by "cloning" smoke caused by bombs to multiply the effect, for example, and the photographer was penalized. 

 

         On the right is a versions of a picture I took during the 2006 Brins Mesa fire near my home in Sedona, AZ.  I took the picture as a helicopter was lowering its bucket to take on more water to drop on the fire to the left in the picture.  The original picture was pretty much obfuscated by the smoke.  This picture has been color corrected to remove much of the blue haze against the red rocks behind yellow helicopter.  I am showing you this to let you know what is possible.  In this case, it fails the journalism test because there really was blue haze there at that time.  But color correcting the picture I made it, perhaps, more beautiful, but less truthful. 

 

          Trust is crucial in journalistic photography.  If a photographer violates the viewer's assumption that what is depicted is what actually happened, the viewer will not  trust the photographer's work in the future.  If people were to find out that I added one of the helicopters to the scene at right (I didn't),  they would have trouble believing the veracity of other picture I might show them.

 

Forensic Photography.  Realistic pictures taken as evidence of a crime.  There is no manipulation of the photographs with image-editing software, though they may use specialty software to read the information in the digital file (for example a sharpening algorhythm to read a sign in the background).  For information about this go here.

 

Identification Photography.  Realistic pictures used as proof of identity or for other legal purposes.  Examples are pictures on passports, and drivers licenses. There is no manipulation of the photograph with image-editing software.

 

Historical Event Photography  Photographs taken in unique situations, usually under difficult conditions.  Such images and are often in rough form with bad lighting and little attempt at design.  They may or may not have been manipulated with image-editing software.  The famous picture of a soldier kissing a woman in Times Square when WWII was over, is an example.    For information about this go here.

Fine-Art Photography   In fine-art photography the photographer usually attempts to create an image that communicates something, usually an emotion, to others, an image  that others might want to buy.  The fine-art photographer is not constrained by the archival photographers’ need for truth.  For that reason, if she has a beautiful picture with flowers in the foreground and mountains in the background, but the sky is middle gray, she may use image-editing software to substitute  a blue sky with white puffy clouds to enhance the beauty of the picture. 

Of course, the image-editing craftsmanship of the fine-art photographer, just like that of Ansel Adams, must be perfect.  If this is not perfectly done, it will cause the viewer to doubt the photograph and ask the question, “Has this been Photoshopped?” 

Similarly, the fine art photographer may use image-editing software to retouch  persons or objects in a picture to make them look better than they look in reality.  Glamour and wedding photographers frequently take realistic pictures of their subjects.  In the studio they use image-editing tools to slightly blur facial wrinkles and other tools to emphasize eyes and hair. 

Branches of Fine-Art Photography

          Realistic Landscape Photography.  A realistic photograph of a something that is recognizable as land, water, mountains sky and so non. 

Abstract Realistic Fine-Art Photography.  A realistic photograph of a part, usually a smaller part, of a larger familiar object taken in a way that it is not recognizable (unless text accompanies the photograph).  Often the photographer is more concerned with design or simplification than she/he is with communicating to the viewer what they are looking at.

Surrealistic Fine-Art photography.   A bird with wings is real.  A man is real.  A man with wings is surreal.  Surreal photography contains two or more real elements that cannot coexist in reality.  Pictures such as these are created using photographs manipulated in image-editing software.  In some ways surrealistic photography is like enhanced realistic photography.  Where they differ in surrealistic photography the things put together in the image never could occur in reality.  Much photography used in advertising is  surrealistic photography.

Social surrealism  A surrealistic image based primarily on people and the interactions among them.  Imagine a photo combining photos of several dead U.S. Presidents interacting around a table.  The picture is made up of individual pictures of the presidents blended together.

Fantasy surrealism  A surrealistic image based  on mythical, religious, elements.  A picture of a man with wings is an example.

Find examples of fine-art photography here, here, and here. You will leave this site when you choose one of these links.