The 50 Most Perfectly Timed Photos Ever (?)

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anonjedi2
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The 50 Most Perfectly Timed Photos Ever (?)

Unread post by anonjedi2 »

There are some great photos on this page but there are a few that feel wrong/off/fake to me. I added the question mark in order to start a discussion about these "perfectly timed" photos and whether or not people feel any of them might be manipulated. Here are a few of the ones I think are suspect.

http://twistedsifter.com/2013/03/most-p ... otos-ever/

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lux
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Re: The 50 Most Perfectly Timed Photos Ever (?)

Unread post by lux »

fake: all of the above.
hoi.polloi
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Re: The 50 Most Perfectly Timed Photos Ever (?)

Unread post by hoi.polloi »

The questions that comes to mind for me are: How touched up is fake? How selective is fake?

If you take two-hundred photos of an eagle flying around with a high-speed shutter, and then you get it in your head to try to capture it near an airplane, it's not really "perfectly timed" anymore is it? You've used the mechanical robotic assistance to achieve what you want. And if during development you nudge the contrail a little closer to the eagle's legs just because you 'know' you 'could' have done it right in the next batch of two-hundred photos, it's not 'really' a lie, is it? (Yes, it is. But you've convinced yourself it isn't.)

Photography has never been my favorite art form, partially because of this kind of "soft on truth" thinking that often comes from the gallery photographers. If a picture uses a bit of compositing, it's already a distortion of the truth. If it's snapped with a particular goal in mind, and that goal is mislaid during the artist's confusion between who they are and who they want to be, it becomes little more glamorous than a big fish story.

Photography - since it's very invention - has been used to tell and support the elaborate stories we invent. A photo is not reality but a simulation. Ergo, photos are as "fake" (i.e.; artificial) as paintings, to some extent, unless accompanied by very particular and rigorous circumstantial evidence (which none of the 9/11 stories seem to ever achieve). Its artform is equal parts creation and the artist's handling of power. This is a truth about realist photography, which very few realist photographers I've talked to seem to be able to discuss, which tells me most are not very great or memorable artists at all. Sorry if that sounds snobby, but I want artists to challenge my thinking, not place the burden of challenging them on me.

The difference between a fanciful painting and a photo is almost subtle: one's medium is deliberately, traditionally patiently applied patches of colored substances traditionally on a 2D plane. The other's medium is a mechanically realized manipulation of colored substances on a microscopic level whose initial state is shaped by a chosen perspective in space, affixed to a 2D plane. And from that point, the difference between painting and photography starts to blur, and they conceptually meet in Photoshop.

But even that initial state of the photo, just like the plain off-white roll of canvas, is just an artificial, chemical or digital launching point to illicit a universal illusion.

They are both artforms, arguably sharing very little with reality at all. So while art is a lie that reveals something true, the artform of "journalism" (recording of a populist-corporatist hybrid of truth) is highly difficult to achieve with any scientific reality - much more difficult than any of the hack journalists we have working in our media would have us believe.

Having said that, the second picture, with the moon and airplane "under" it, looks particularly wrong to me.
lux
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Re: The 50 Most Perfectly Timed Photos Ever (?)

Unread post by lux »

I stand corrected. Evidently the surf shot above was done with an actual underwater set/models:
http://blog.photoshelter.com/2008/07/ri ... -dopamine/

But, were the upper and lower portions of the photo taken at the same time or photoshopped together later? I suspect the latter but I am a chronic skeptic. :)
Last edited by lux on Thu Mar 28, 2013 12:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
brianv
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Re: The 50 Most Perfectly Timed Photos Ever (?)

Unread post by brianv »

Is the OP having a laugh? What's this junk doing here?
anonjedi2
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Re: The 50 Most Perfectly Timed Photos Ever (?)

Unread post by anonjedi2 »

Hi Brian,

I posted it in the living room because it's obviously not a politically charged topic or a psyop per se. Having said that, I did find it interesting and thought that others might as well. I think it's important to look at even what may seem as the most innocent stories on the web that could be used as "testing ground" so to speak, to see what they can get away with. Do you disagree?

How about these alleged photos from some Russian photographers who claim they hid from guards and climbed the pyramids... thoughts?

http://gawker.com/5992398/the-unbelieva ... at-pyramid

Edited to fix typo.
simonshack
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Re: The 50 Most Perfectly Timed Photos Ever (?)

Unread post by simonshack »

*

"Pyramid Climber" - with funny hand :

Image

Besides - what sort of spotlight is beaming up from bottom right ? The sun? Naah.
anonjedi2
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Re: The 50 Most Perfectly Timed Photos Ever (?)

Unread post by anonjedi2 »

Nice eye, Simon. I've actually been to the Pyramids twice in my life and I can tell you that security is thick. My cousin and I tried to sneak up to the top one time and we were caught within minutes of climbing. Secondly, I can tell you that if you did manage to get to the top, coming down would not be such an easy feat. It is extremely steep and I distinctively remember having great difficulty on the way down (and we were only about 1/4 of the way up, if that). I imagine it must be even harder from the top and in the dark? No way those guys got down safely at night.

EDIT TO ADD: Just found this silly story on CNN. Russian Photographer apologizes.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/28/travel/ru ... er-apology

He claims they made it to the top in 20 minutes (lugging their cameras?). I can almost guarantee this is impossible to do in 20 minutes.
brianv
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Re: The 50 Most Perfectly Timed Photos Ever (?)

Unread post by brianv »

anonjedi2 wrote:Hi Brian,

I posted it in the living room because it's obviously not a politically charged topic or a psyop per se. Having said that, I did find it interesting and thought that others might as well. I think it's important to look at even what may seem as the most innocent stories on the web that could be used as "testing ground" so to speak, to see what they can get away with. Do you disagree?

How about these alleged photos from some Russian photographers who claim they hid from guards and climbed the pyramids... thoughts?

http://gawker.com/5992398/the-unbelieva ... at-pyramid

Edited to fix typo.
This is teenage bedroom-poster pseudo photography/art. Nothing more.
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