Natalia_Taffarel wrote:

Neuroscience

Can you point us to the studies?

Natalia_Taffarel wrote:

I never said you need to know science to make pictures.

Read the post I was disagreeing with.

"Beautiful" creates a reaction in the brain - several parts of the brain. Some relate to objective some relate to the subjective.

It's not all emotions and personal.

This is not my opinion is a fact.

Correct - electrical and chemical, but what do you think emotions are?

Emotions are how we describe the brain chemistry we experience.


Photography, like music, is about manipulating brain chemistry.

Drew Smith Photography wrote:

On some level everything is a chemical reaction in the brain.

Falling in love. Chemical reaction. Desire to stay with your partner for at least 18-24 months. Chemical reaction in the brain. Programmed to ensure stability in the relationship until fertilisation, incubation and early months or raising offspring. Fact.

The expectation of the dopamine and desire for serotonin and oxytocin are powerful motivators. Fact.

But surely you do not want to boil love, sex, and art down to the predicable secretion of certain chemicals in the body, do you?

I would never boil love, sex and art down to that. I'd boil every aspect of life down to that.

Natalia_Taffarel wrote:

Pretty much, yes

But it's not beautiful, or beauty - I used the word beauty because its commonly accepted and I referenced Kant.

Positive/negative creating reaction images would be maybe more accurate?

But maybe is better if I just said something related to magic and the soul of a picture then every idiot failed photographer would agree

You have to specify film. There's only soul in film.

I learned that here recently.

Giacomo Cirrincioni wrote:
galleristas and curators, bemoaning the fact that so many new artists simply have lost the plot when it comes to print making.

The only people who've lost the plot are the ones still making prints.

How many thousands of years have we had prints, and we haven't found something new and better?

Print making should be obsolete.

And there should be no professional inject printing in the mean time, only projections of digital on to photographic paper that gets developed.

I'd be shocked if that didn't make for better results, and it's probably way cheaper than buying printer ink.

Fred Greissing wrote:

Can you point us to the studies?

You'd probably find a ton through Google.

There's Dr Oohashi's hypersonic effects, which are not directly related, but do demonstrate the point.

There was one study that made the mainstream regarding waist to hip ratios.

I'm sure finding those would lead to plenty of others.

Mikey McMichaels wrote:
The only people who've lost the plot are the ones still making prints.

How many thousands of years have we had prints, and we haven't found something new and better?

Print making should be obsolete.

And there should be no professional inject printing in the mean time, only projections of digital on to photographic paper that gets developed.

I'd be shocked if that didn't make for better results, and it's probably way cheaper than buying printer ink.

I have no idea how to parse out your response. An image fixed on photographic paper is a print...  Inkjet printing has has nothing to do with what I was saying.

Prints may be obsolete for you, but certainly not for most.  The print is the product. The artifact.

Why does the fact that something has existed for generations mean that something new is automatically better?

Zack Zoll wrote:

Zack Zoll wrote:
Depends on how broad you want to go.

"A beautiful woman" is attractive to every culture.  Not every culture will agree on which women are beautiful, but there's nobody that doesn't like "a beautiful woman."

Al, you're reading too deeply into it, and getting way too specific.  Do you like beautiful women?  I'm not asking you to define one ... I'm just asking if you do.

I'm guessing you do.  I'm also guessing that if you ask that question across cultures, almost everyone will say yes.

So beautiful women are a "universal" idea.  Reubens was painting beautiful women.  We may not think they were now, but back then - hubba hubba.

Like I said ... if you go broad enough, almost every idea of beauty becomes universal.  Ruin porn becomes synonymous with memory and nostalgia, etc.

That's like asking Hitler if he was a good person. He'd say yes. You're not actually making a point because you are referring to a word that has positive connotations without defining the word. Silly.

Al Lock Photography wrote:
That's like asking Hitler if he was a good person. He'd say yes. You're not actually making a point because you are referring to a word that has positive connotations without defining the word. Silly.

why/how are you relating hitler to a beautiful woman?

Mikey McMichaels wrote:

You have to specify film. There's only soul in film.

I learned that here recently.

Glad I was able to help. 

Giacomo Cirrincioni wrote:

I have no idea how to parse out your response. An image fixed on photographic paper is a print...  Inkjet printing has has nothing to do with what I was saying.

Prints may be obsolete for you, but certainly not for most.  The print is the product. The artifact.

Why does the fact that something has existed for generations mean that something new is automatically better?

Something new is not automatically better. Given enough time, which we've had, we should come up with something better than prints. I have no idea what that would be, but it should exist.

I think for most people, like a gallery customer, the product is actually the print and the frame together. Donald Judd might argue the entire wall.

Let's go back to a time when chemical prints were the only option. We'd all have been pursuing the best paper and best chemicals. New wouldn't by default mean better, but the opportunity for better, so we'd be looking for the next new improvement in paper or chemicals. Of course you can argue it's just an option as "improvement" is subjective.

My bigger point  is that we haven't had any conceptual steps forward in displaying images like we have in making them. There are no "gallery quality" monitors or thin digital frames. There's no subscription based corporate art - Muzak for lobby imagery - monthly or weekly photos.

We don't even have paired monitor/printer sets designed together so that calibrating one automatically calibrates the other. Calibration may be impossible to connect, but the concept of designing them to be used as a pair doesn't exist as far as I know.

The idea that a print is "the" method of displaying an image is unnecessarily limiting.

Mikey McMichaels wrote:
The idea that a print is "the" method of displaying an image is unnecessarily limiting.

If one is wanting to collect jpgs of art, then pretty much anything will work. If someone is wanting to collect a piece of art, then nothing, so far, has surpassed the silver print in black & white (I am only talking black & white here because that's all I really care about).

Zack Zoll wrote:
Al, you're reading too deeply into it, and getting way too specific.  Do you like beautiful women?  I'm not asking you to define one ... I'm just asking if you do.

I'm guessing you do.  I'm also guessing that if you ask that question across cultures, almost everyone will say yes.

So beautiful women are a "universal" idea.  Reubens was painting beautiful women.  We may not think they were now, but back then - hubba hubba.

Like I said ... if you go broad enough, almost every idea of beauty becomes universal.  Ruin porn becomes synonymous with memory and nostalgia, etc.

Al Lock Photography wrote:
That's like asking Hitler if he was a good person. He'd say yes. You're not actually making a point because you are referring to a word that has positive connotations without defining the word. Silly.

Its nothing of the sort.  If you really want to bring up Hitler(why?!), all I'm asking him is if he likes good people.  I'm not asking for a definition, or explaining what "good people" are.  Just, "Do you like good people, yes or no?"

Of COURSE I'm referring to a word that has positive connections without defining it - that's the entire point of a 'universal truth.'  If we had to define it, then it wouldn't be universal anymore!

You continue to get hung up on, and argue with me about, something that I'm not saying at all.  I've already made it quite clear that I'm not making any judgement calls about what is or is not beautiful, and only saying that everyone likes beauty.  I don't know why this is causing confusion.

Mikey McMichaels wrote:
We don't even have paired monitor/printer sets designed together so that calibrating one automatically calibrates the other. Calibration may be impossible to connect, but the concept of designing them to be used as a pair doesn't exist as far as I know.

While there are no 'calibrated sets' - and I'm not even sure that anybody makes high-end monitors AND high-end printers - there are many monitors and printers that are specifically designed to be used as part of a complete colour-managed system.  Even going back as far as the late 90s, our photo lab began every day by calibrating the monitor to that machine's test print, although we use Eizo monitors and Noritsu printers.  We may have been doing it even earlier than that, but I wasn't there to see it happen.,

You can hop on B&H or wherever and buy an X-rite system to calibrate your own monitor to your printer.  Costs start at about $500 for the consumer versions, or around $1,200 for the pro versions.

Mikey McMichaels wrote:
My bigger point  is that we haven't had any conceptual steps forward in displaying images like we have in making them. There are no "gallery quality" monitors or thin digital frames. There's no subscription based corporate art - Muzak for lobby imagery - monthly or weekly photos.
(snip)

The idea that a print is "the" method of displaying an image is unnecessarily limiting.

A print may be limiting, but that's the whole point of it - at least as far as gallery sales are concerned.  Galleries DO show slideshows and display images on-screen(and have for many years), and that will only get more common with the new 4K displays.  But if you're talking about gallery sales then people want prints, because they want something that they can physically own.

Pandora is a better example than Musak, since Musak is used for businesses that would otherwise need to pay huge licensing fees to play 'regular' records.  So we'll use Pandora as an example   Play-on-demand music works as a business model because you're using an established delivery system:  you pay for music, and it comes through your speakers.  Regardless of how you get the music, you still have the same feeling of "ownership" when you listen to it, and it still sounds the same to anyone that doesn't have a kickass stereo.  To 95% of listeners, Pandora works the same as a CD, and sounds exactly as good.

Prints are different, as people buy them because they want to own something - an artifact, as Giacomo said.  With digital delivery, there is no artifact to own.  Prints are less like CDs, and more like records.  People that want to own artifacts buy records over CDs for just that reason.  I've been in the audio business long enough to tell you that unless your stereo cost several thousand dollars, there is no difference in quality between listening to something recorded for a record and recorded for a CD - almost all of the quality difference comes from adapting one album to a different format without going back to the master tapes and remixing it from scratch, and this happens a lot more often than you'd think.

Unless you could sell your stereo for enough money to buy a nice used car, then you're buying vinyl because you want an artifact - something to hold in your hands.  And there's nothing wrong with that - I buy records too.

But that desire to hold your purchase in your hands - or in a gallery's case, say, "There are only ten of these and I own one," is why prints are unlikely to go away any time soon.

L A U B E N H E I M E R wrote:

why/how are you relating hitler to a beautiful woman?

I'm referring to the failure to define a subjective word...

Zack Zoll wrote:
I'm not asking for a definition, or explaining what "good people" are.  Just, "Do you like good people, yes or no?"

And without defining what you mean by "good" (or have it understood within that culture/context) - it means nothing.

Which seems to be the core of your comments. To actually say nothing.

Natalia_Taffarel wrote:

You calling out bullshit is not something that stops others from sharing thoughts.

Any debate is good debate

I'm reminded that the ancient Greeks debated ad infinitum how many angels exactly could stand on the head of a pin.  ;-)

Al Lock Photography wrote:

And without defining what you mean by "good" (or have it understood within that culture/context) - it means nothing.

Which seems to be the core of your comments. To actually say nothing.

Sigh.  Okay Al, I give up.  You win.  My comments have never really been about anything.