Fair or Foul

I don't for a second claim this is as creative or clever as what Jackson Pollock was doing with his spatter canvases, but it does look a bit like a Pollock. Now the real question is, is it fair?

Can a photographer take a marginal photo and run it through the editing software and create a fine art print of value?

The value of any piece of art isn't in the artist's eye, all of an artist's work is valuable, right? No, unfortunately the public, that amorphous mass decides what is valuable and what isn't. So is doing something like this which takes a coupla minutes in the computer fair when it will be compared to a work which a painter labored over for weeks and weeks?

Certainly it is not if the photographer does not clearly state this is a photograph. I might be a bit prejudiced  but I consider photography in all of its forms as fine as any painting is in fine art terms, but it is still photography. It takes less time and maybe less creativity to produce.

Or does it? the painter composes on canvas, the mind is the archive of images from which the painting is composed and the light comes not from the heavens but from the clever fingers of the painter.  Need a winter scene? No problem, just call up the right memory and there you have it, a scene worthy of Currier and Ives.

The photographer is limited by what the camera sees. The composition is done in the camera and what you see is for the most part what you get. Sure, with the advent of powerful photo editing software that isn't as true as it was back when I started and I'm glad. the guys working with cameras now don't have to feel their way along the walls and use a seeing-eye dog to get close enough to capture a good shot. Time was when a zoom lens cost more than a mid-sized house, oh that was yesterday wasn't it, and for a fine camera lenses could cost as much as the first Apollo program.

The skills needed to be a good photographer, I wouldn't know about great cause I never made it that far, come with repeated failures and repeated attempts. Did I mention seasons, sunsets and wildlife have to be caught where they are and not in the warm, dry studio? Sure some of that can be done with a good editor, the high priced spread can make L.A look like the dark-side of the moon, but it can't make it look like a salt marsh or put low-flying pelicans on the horizon. someone has to go out to that salt marsh and shoot the pelicans. they just don't show up at the Oscars.

And it is true that you have to know what to shoot. Just any old thing will not make for a Jackson Pollock clone or even a bad Picasso. You have to be able to see and know that when you work with it it can be made into something better than it was.

So back to where we started, is it fair? That is a question which only time can answer.