DOF Vs. Focus Stacking?

I think it is important to note that around the time photography became a "thing" the world of the painter started to shift dramatically. Photographs were able to capture and record the visual world with greater accuracy and because of this many painters began exploring much more abstract avenues of self expression. And there were plenty of people painters and non painters alike who didn't like the shift.

The same can be said for film and digital photography I think. As we move further into the digital age and cgi becomes more powerful.. A photographer of his/her times is going to be one who embraces the shift and explores the unreality of photography... We've had decades of exploring the reality.

We know there are things that seem to be universally pleasant in an image... Artists have been building that store of classical knowledge for generations. Posing, lighting, shadows, gesture, ratios... On and on in an eon of iterative advancement. The challenge, from the "of their times" perspective is not in replicating the past, but rather in crafting the future. What universally pleasant things haven't we found yet? What else works? What's the next step?

Rome is the mob... Fickle and bored. What will you do the day you realize you are no longer culturally relevant? When the product you are creating is outdated and outmoded? If you don't have your finger on the pulse of the society around you and you openly criticize where the society is taking the medium, how do you expect to continue selling to them? How do you expect to grow when you speak in definitives about a medium that isn't even fully born yet?

Sent from my VS990 using Tapatalk

I admire you for typing that on a mobile device, mine would have been full of auto(in)corrects.

However, I disagree with you. Who decides who is 'culturally relevant'. And should those that are 'culturally irrelevant' care a fig about it? Art shouldn't be defined by technology, and it is kind of sad that technology is too often seen as being more important. We've seen what technology has done to music - how many people think that people sing the way they do on 'Glee' and High School Musical? That for me is the musical equivalent of HDR and hyper sharp images. They grate. They are like fingernails down a black board. Not only that, there is no smooth gradation. Overuse of autotune in music and the overuse of computer tools in photography rids us of the smooth gradation.

Selective focus is a compositional tool, and making things hyper sharp so the whole scene is hyper sharp won't make the scene look more real or '3D'. A 2D image is just that. We can use shadows and softer focus to make an image more pleasing, and in many ways have more shape.

In art we have the ability to interpret an image and by using compositional tools (including not all of the image being tack sharp), we can guide our viewers to our interpretation. We should be guiding them through, not scratching their eyes out with oversharp images that don't look realistic. Think of bad HDR/tonemapping and that's where we will end up with sharpening...
 
I think it is important to note that around the time photography became a "thing" the world of the painter started to shift dramatically. Photographs were able to capture and record the visual world with greater accuracy and because of this many painters began exploring much more abstract avenues of self expression. And there were plenty of people painters and non painters alike who didn't like the shift.

The same can be said for film and digital photography I think. As we move further into the digital age and cgi becomes more powerful.. A photographer of his/her times is going to be one who embraces the shift and explores the unreality of photography... We've had decades of exploring the reality.

We know there are things that seem to be universally pleasant in an image... Artists have been building that store of classical knowledge for generations. Posing, lighting, shadows, gesture, ratios... On and on in an eon of iterative advancement. The challenge, from the "of their times" perspective is not in replicating the past, but rather in crafting the future. What universally pleasant things haven't we found yet? What else works? What's the next step?

Rome is the mob... Fickle and bored. What will you do the day you realize you are no longer culturally relevant? When the product you are creating is outdated and outmoded? If you don't have your finger on the pulse of the society around you and you openly criticize where the society is taking the medium, how do you expect to continue selling to them? How do you expect to grow when you speak in definitives about a medium that isn't even fully born yet?

Sent from my VS990 using Tapatalk

I admire you for typing that on a mobile device, mine would have been full of auto(in)corrects.

However, I disagree with you. Who decides who is 'culturally relevant'. And should those that are 'culturally irrelevant' care a fig about it? Art shouldn't be defined by technology, and it is kind of sad that technology is too often seen as being more important. We've seen what technology has done to music - how many people think that people sing the way they do on 'Glee' and High School Musical? That for me is the musical equivalent of HDR and hyper sharp images. They grate. They are like fingernails down a black board. Not only that, there is no smooth gradation. Overuse of autotune in music and the overuse of computer tools in photography rids us of the smooth gradation.

Selective focus is a compositional tool, and making things hyper sharp so the whole scene is hyper sharp won't make the scene look more real or '3D'. A 2D image is just that. We can use shadows and softer focus to make an image more pleasing, and in many ways have more shape.

In art we have the ability to interpret an image and by using compositional tools (including not all of the image being tack sharp), we can guide our viewers to our interpretation. We should be guiding them through, not scratching their eyes out with oversharp images that don't look realistic. Think of bad HDR/tonemapping and that's where we will end up with sharpening...
Hi! Sorry for the long silence, it's been a busy weekend. Writing on the phone isn't too bad. Using Swype I can actually type fairly quickly and accurately which is a godsend since I'm on the move so much... Getting out a laptop can often be entirely too confining so I don't get much computer time until the end of the day usually.

Thanks for the reply! I think I understand your view point... And I can agree with some of what you said.

I'd say there is no-one who decides anyone is no longer culturally relevant... It's probably more accurate to say a decision is never made at all, rather a person finds society just continues marching on long after they themselves have been walking a completely different direction or stopped walking altogether. Most people probably reach a point where they lose synchronicity with the world around them. It's not a bad thing necessarily... Unless you've got something to sell.

A good example of this is film itself... It just really isn't culturally relevant anymore. Historically it is and always will be relevant... But it gets harder to find every year... Camera stores are closing down... Places to get it developed are disappearing... It's becoming a phantom item you have to buy from virtual store fronts online because increasingly the only way to make profit from dealing with it is to have a super low overhead and be able to serve a dwindling global consumer pool.

The problem I find with your argument is that it is exclusionary and doesn't allow for the type of progress that society makes.

It is exclusionary because it allows for selective focus to be a compositional tool but does not allow for the idea of non-selective focus to be a compositional tool.

Why is that? Isn't composition nothing more than a series of decision points intended to create an aesthetic? Are we talking about a Michelangelo aesthetic or a Picasso aesthetic? In my mind even though they were both painters the decisions they made when creating their work had wildly divergent paths... Which I would argue was a direct result of the times they lived in and what had come before them. For that matter, art is a conversation that has been going on since the canvas was cave walls. Technology doesn't drive man... Mans culture drives technology. Mans culture drives everything, including art... And art is such a broad spectrum.

Cuisine is an art... And we eat very differently than we used to. Not because it was decided that people who wanted to cook and eat their food off sticks were bad and wrong... But because the number of people who preferred to take all their meals that way dwindled off into extinction.

So... No the culturally irrelevant don't have to give a fig at all... They have every right to eat their food any way they would like and I fully support them in that endeavor... I like my food cooked over a fire sometimes myself. But if they want to make a living cooking and selling food to everyone else it might not be a really good idea to only serve food the one truely aesthetic way that exists... Burnt over a fire on a twig.

While we are on the subject of music... What's up with that punk rock? Most of those guys didn't even know how to play their instruments "right"... They just sort of banged away at them while yelling at a mic. But Holy Cow did punk have a big impact on the world... Rippling right into a future we haven't imagined yet. And then there's that devil music... The rock and roll... Truly the downfall of music as an art form, some people cried. One could argue it's little better than shrieking cats in comparison to the divinely inspired succor of Gregorian Chant.

I honestly can't even imagine what it would be like to try making a decent living today as a Gregorian Chanter. Monasteries certainly aren't in every town... I'd wager there's fewer now than in the past. Beautiful beautiful music though... It's a real shame it's so hard to find. You can find some cds of Gregorian chant on Amazon though. That's some pretty low overhead.

There's a pretty strong argument that can be made concerning the modern aesthetic. The way people consume media has changed and so has the way they interact with the world. People have been watching television and playing video games for decades... Both of those are extremely common mediums in modern America which feature extremely augmented realities and methods of visually communicating in those augmented realities. I think that's actually a really interesting thought to explore but I've already written a short book.

I should take a moment to note my response was actually directed at all the hate being lobbed at the use of filters and other processing techniques. Though I'd say focus stacking certainly fits into that category.

Sent from my VS990 using Tapatalk
 
Last edited:
After these 6 pages, I understand how a sparrow must feel hopping around on huge piles of crap after a circus parade goes by, wondering if there is anything palatable to be found in the middle.
 
From reading and watching so many things on photography I can firmly say that photography in the end has to be taken with a grain of salt... I feel like some principles need to be exercised For a photo to work but in the end how you post process it's up to a personal taste... in the end I feel like if you can sell your work and make a good living equals success
 
in the end I feel like if you can sell your work and make a good living equals success

Economic reward is not a marker of success for everyone.
There are many reasons why people buy images, I can't imagine that 'quality' is high on that list.
 
Commenting just to be notified of new comments, very interesting thread! Can't wait to read the rest of it tonight after work.
 

Most reactions

Back
Top