A bit of historical context.

DaireQuinlan · 02-09-2008 1:01pm #1

Just happened across this as a result of a conversation about ortho paper in cameras and various techniques people used to use in order to get round the limitations of slow ortho film. This lead to a discussion about Henry Peach Robinson. Turns out people were having arguments about HDR and Photoshop back in 1860 :-)

Here's a historical precis .. http://www.rleggat.com/photohistory/history/robinson.htm

"when, in 1860, Robinson outlined his methods at a meeting of the Photographic Society of Scotland, he was greeted with howls of protest from people who seemed to feel that they had been deceived. There was much discussion about what one correspondent referred to as "Patchwork", rather than composition"

And a bunch of the pictures ...

http://www.museumsyndicate.com/artist.php?artist=262

sheesh · 02-09-2008 1:17pm

However, in "Pictorial Effect in Photography" (1867), a major literary work, Robinson wrote:

"Any dodge, trick and conjuration of any kind is open to the photographer's use.... It is his imperative duty to avoid the mean, the base and the ugly, and to aim to elevate his subject.... and to correct the unpicturesque....A great deal can be done and very beautiful pictures made, by a mixture of the real and the artificial in a picture."

excellently put

In 1867!!!:eek:

nilhg · 02-09-2008 1:19pm

Thanks for that, just shows nothing really changes.

The pages of Amateur Photographer must have been the equivalent of internet forums back then.

I liked this quote

"Purely as a light incidental comment, Robinson married in 1859, his wife recalling in later years that when they were married, she had been told in no unequivocal terms that it must be "photography first, wife afterwards", so she may have the distinction of being the first recorded photographic widow! "

They made men of sterner stuff back then, never get away with that now.

DaireQuinlan · 02-09-2008 8:02pm

I have a photography book from 1900 (actually called 'photography in a nutshell' !) which actually has a chapter on combining negatives of skies and grounds to make a print. It advised photographers to collect a library of sky negatives and choose one for the skies in their final picture to convey the mood they wanted for the scene.

Calina · 02-09-2008 8:13pm

so some things never change then.... :-)

DaireQuinlan · 03-09-2008 8:24am

Calina wrote: »

so some things never change then.... :-)

Sure looks that way ... so the next time someone gives out about something 'not being photography' you can tell them people were doing exactly the same thing back in 1860 :-)

Although of course maybe you could counter that even in 1860 it just wasn't photography :rolleyes:

A bit of historical context.

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