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That depends on what kind of photography it is. Photojournalism is almost always about the story and what the picture evokes. It could be a simple pic of a boy

That depends on what kind of photography it is. Photojournalism is almost always about the story and what the picture evokes. It could be a simple pic of a boy covered in dust, but made evocative because the dust is from a bomb explosion that killed his father and not from playing in the park. But in case of a lot of landscape photography, the content is intrinsic to the picture itself—the photo does not get its value from anything external to it. Likewise for portraits.

deleted 9y ago
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dheera 9y ago
Not sure I agree with that. There's good landscape/portrait photography, and there's really great landscape/portrait photography. Great landscape photography takes you to an interesting location or interesting angle. A post-processing algorithm cannot take you somewhere interesting. Good landscape photography makes you say, "Wow, that's beautiful!" Great landscape photography makes you say, "Holy crap, what is that? Where is that?" https://500px.com/photo/4505244/rainbow-glass-by-junya-hasegawa https://500px.com/photo/4505244/rainbow-glass-by-junya-haseg... https://1x.com/photo/41156/portfolio/60972 https://1x.com/photo/41156/portfolio/60972 https://500px.com/photo/103746295/the-white-silence-by-daniel-kordan https://500px.com/photo/103746295/the-white-silence-by-danie... http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/08/photo-contest/steinmetz-text http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/08/photo-contest/stei... http://hongwrong.com/verical-horizon-hk/ http://hongwrong.com/verical-horizon-hk/ https://500px.com/photo/103960697/one-thousand-and-one-nights-by-%C4%B0lhan-eroglu https://500px.com/photo/103960697/one-thousand-and-one-night... https://500px.com/photo/5211062/harvest-by-rob-kruyt https://500px.com/photo/5211062/harvest-by-rob-kruyt
- gervase 9y ago
  Thank you for taking the time to find some examples supporting your argument; I found them quite persuasive.
- Retric 9y ago
  I significantly prefer the article's photos to those. Buildings are boring as is snow, photo of person or animal / shadows not landscape, and over edited. Now, I suspect as someone that's looking at a lot of photos those pinged some novelty feeling in you, but that does not mean they are objectively good. By comparison the article's photos (and those linked: http://google.github.io/creatism http://google.github.io/creatism) generally evoked that I wish I was there feeling.
  - eru 9y ago
    I see what you mean, though I do like buildings. (But I always had a soft spot for Hong Kong.) I predict a similar divide will crop up in computer generated music: very soon normal people will prefer their pleasant sounds, even while more discerning (semi-) pros will deride their lack of artistic merit for a lot longer. Computer generated art will shine as Gebrauchskunst first---eg get a 'professional level' soundtrack and video editing for your youtube video shot on a phone.
- beojan 9y ago
  > Great landscape photography takes you to an interesting location or interesting angle. A post-processing algorithm cannot take you somewhere interesting. This isn't just a post-processing algorithm. It also picks the place from Google Street View.
  - CWuestefeld 9y ago
    I believe the point is that even before you can process the photo, the photographer has to see the potential in a scene and actually take the picture.
- BeetleB 9y ago
  At least 4 of those photos are heavily post-processed. While they may look nice without the post processing, they would not look anywhere near as nice. I struggled for years to make good photographs until I learned to post process well enough. For an average viewer, the difference is one of "side glance and ignore" and "wow, great photo". It's instructive to look at photographers who post their originals. Even ones that appear to show an "interesting angle" can be quite distorted to show just that angle (as in if you travel there, you will never see the nice angles you saw in the photo).
- kinkrtyavimoodh 9y ago
  Not sure how your examples refute my point. I didn't say that you can't have great landscape photography or that there can't be mediocre photography. I was talking about how there typically isn't an 'external' story to landscape photography the way there is for photojournalism.
e12e 9y ago
> But in case of a lot of landscape photography, the content is intrinsic to the picture itself—the photo does not get its value from anything external to it. Likewise for portraits. Any photo is a tiny square cut out of an infinite number of 360 degree spheres taken at a single point in time. For every photograph there will always be much more outside of the frame than in it. That doesn't even begin to touch on things like lighting for portraits - but to think that even a landscape photo is anything but subjective expression is naive at best, dangerously so at worst.
- tormeh 9y ago
  The algorithm does do cropping from panoramas, though.
  - e12e 9y ago
    I'm not arguing that machine learning can't take great photographs, just that there are great photographs (and so, also many not-so-great photographs). I suppose one could get into deep philosophical discussions about if a machine intelligence can make art, if it does so, does it have to be regarded as a higher level of intelligence, or does the art have to be regarded as inferior art, etc. Interesting stuff, but not my point at this time.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

dheera 9y ago

Not sure I agree with that. There's good landscape/portrait photography, and there's really great landscape/portrait photography. Great landscape photography takes you to an interesting location or interesting angle. A post-processing algorithm cannot take you somewhere interesting. Good landscape photography makes you say, "Wow, that's beautiful!" Great landscape photography makes you say, "Holy crap, what is that? Where is that?" https://500px.com/photo/4505244/rainbow-glass-by-junya-hasegawa https://500px.com/photo/4505244/rainbow-glass-by-junya-haseg... https://1x.com/photo/41156/portfolio/60972 https://1x.com/photo/41156/portfolio/60972 https://500px.com/photo/103746295/the-white-silence-by-daniel-kordan https://500px.com/photo/103746295/the-white-silence-by-danie... http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/08/photo-contest/steinmetz-text http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/08/photo-contest/stei... http://hongwrong.com/verical-horizon-hk/ http://hongwrong.com/verical-horizon-hk/ https://500px.com/photo/103960697/one-thousand-and-one-nights-by-%C4%B0lhan-eroglu https://500px.com/photo/103960697/one-thousand-and-one-night... https://500px.com/photo/5211062/harvest-by-rob-kruyt https://500px.com/photo/5211062/harvest-by-rob-kruyt

gervase 9y ago
Thank you for taking the time to find some examples supporting your argument; I found them quite persuasive.
Retric 9y ago
I significantly prefer the article's photos to those. Buildings are boring as is snow, photo of person or animal / shadows not landscape, and over edited. Now, I suspect as someone that's looking at a lot of photos those pinged some novelty feeling in you, but that does not mean they are objectively good. By comparison the article's photos (and those linked: http://google.github.io/creatism http://google.github.io/creatism) generally evoked that I wish I was there feeling.
- eru 9y ago
  I see what you mean, though I do like buildings. (But I always had a soft spot for Hong Kong.) I predict a similar divide will crop up in computer generated music: very soon normal people will prefer their pleasant sounds, even while more discerning (semi-) pros will deride their lack of artistic merit for a lot longer. Computer generated art will shine as Gebrauchskunst first---eg get a 'professional level' soundtrack and video editing for your youtube video shot on a phone.
beojan 9y ago
> Great landscape photography takes you to an interesting location or interesting angle. A post-processing algorithm cannot take you somewhere interesting. This isn't just a post-processing algorithm. It also picks the place from Google Street View.
- CWuestefeld 9y ago
  I believe the point is that even before you can process the photo, the photographer has to see the potential in a scene and actually take the picture.
BeetleB 9y ago
At least 4 of those photos are heavily post-processed. While they may look nice without the post processing, they would not look anywhere near as nice. I struggled for years to make good photographs until I learned to post process well enough. For an average viewer, the difference is one of "side glance and ignore" and "wow, great photo". It's instructive to look at photographers who post their originals. Even ones that appear to show an "interesting angle" can be quite distorted to show just that angle (as in if you travel there, you will never see the nice angles you saw in the photo).
kinkrtyavimoodh 9y ago
Not sure how your examples refute my point. I didn't say that you can't have great landscape photography or that there can't be mediocre photography. I was talking about how there typically isn't an 'external' story to landscape photography the way there is for photojournalism.

e12e 9y ago

> But in case of a lot of landscape photography, the content is intrinsic to the picture itself—the photo does not get its value from anything external to it. Likewise for portraits. Any photo is a tiny square cut out of an infinite number of 360 degree spheres taken at a single point in time. For every photograph there will always be much more outside of the frame than in it. That doesn't even begin to touch on things like lighting for portraits - but to think that even a landscape photo is anything but subjective expression is naive at best, dangerously so at worst.

tormeh 9y ago
The algorithm does do cropping from panoramas, though.
- e12e 9y ago
  I'm not arguing that machine learning can't take great photographs, just that there are great photographs (and so, also many not-so-great photographs). I suppose one could get into deep philosophical discussions about if a machine intelligence can make art, if it does so, does it have to be regarded as a higher level of intelligence, or does the art have to be regarded as inferior art, etc. Interesting stuff, but not my point at this time.