Photographs and images

It always bothers me when people mix up photographs and images, but this happens every day, even on photography forums where one might expect more discrimination. This post is about the difference between them.

I see images getting called photographs so often that I started wondering whether perhaps photography lacks a clear definition. So I went and checked several dictionaries and no, there is no lack of clarity in defining photographs. Here is how google defines it, for example:

"a picture made using a camera, in which an image is focused onto film or other light-sensitive material and then made visible and permanent by chemical treatment, or stored digitally."

The word photograph itself is very descriptive as well. From wikipedia:

"The word "photograph" was coined in 1839 by Sir John Herschel and is based on the Greek phos, meaning "light", and graphê, meaning "drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing with light"."

The point of these definitions is that all photographs are images, but not all images are photographs. A photograph is an image created using a special process of capturing light on a medium. This is also why photographs are often referred to as "captures" or "exposures".

Unfortunately, the definitions do miss one crucial aspect. Photography is a two step process and the definitions invariably mention only the first step, whereas we normally talk about the result of the second step. The steps are:

1. Capture of an image using a camera - the camera operator has only exposure control over the captured image
2. Processing of the captured image to produce an image for display - this is where the opportunity for a manipulation of the image appears

The definitions always focus on the result of Step 1 - Capture, but in practice we nearly always use the term photograph for the results of Step 2 - Processing. The question becomes: can anything coming out of Processing be called a photograph?

I think that there is a threshold of manipulation beyond which the results of Processing can no longer be called photographs. And here are two arguments for why a threshold should exist.

Spirit of definition argument: A photograph has to be an image captured by a specific process. This implies that we should not be calling "photograph" an image whose elements were not captured by such process. Thus, Processing should not be changing any of the Capture elements.

If the photographic process stops being the principal means through which an image was obtained, how can we still be talking about photography? Photography may be one step of an image creation process, but its mere use does not warrant calling the resulting image a photograph any more than the mere use of pen and paper can warrant calling the result "writing".

Historical processing argument: Historically, we can see a continuous progress in the amount of manipulation that one can do in Processing. This ties in with the previous argument, because this additional manipulation power is not covered anywhere in the definition and it pretty much started from zero. 

In film era, it was quite tricky to change elements of a photograph. One could mask the photographic paper and expose it selectively, but the process was painful. Most of the time, Processing was straightforward and did not involve any manipulation. One aspect that could be changed during Processing in film era, however, was exposure. One could expose incorrectly a capture but rectify the issue in Processing. All this changed dramatically with digital photography and with software that makes complex manipulation much, much easier.

Taking all these observations, we can now attempt to form a list of manipulations that can be done in Processing without losing the claim to producing a photograph:

• exposure adjustments (in Processing)
• by extension we can allow selective exposure adjustments as could be done by dodge and burn and combinations of multiple exposures into one as done with HDR
• overlapping exposures
• because this is actually performed as part of the Capture
• color adjustments
• because actual colors/tones were dependent on capture medium properties
• eliminating capture medium defects
• negative scratches, dust spots, dead pixels, noise

Put more succinctly, none of the perceptible elements of a photograph should be lost or introduced in Processing.

This approach is not novel or original. I am aware of this, but here I tried to provide the rationale behind it. And now let me address some of the comments that seem to pop up whenever this point is being discussed.

1. Art - some people become very defensive when you start commenting that their images are not photographs. They start talking about artistic vision as if their work not being a photograph would prevent it from being artistic. That is just nonsense.
2. Purist - this argument is a bit related to the previous one. Trying to make the distinction between photographs and images will get at least one random person to call you purist. Some people just seem to think that photography should have no boundary, as if it didn't have a specific meaning already. Some people also seem to think that having boundaries would seriously restrict their "creativity", as if artists have not been successfully operating within various boundaries for centuries now. But defining what a photograph is does not force anyone to just create images that fit that definition - it just requires them to not use the same word for images that do not fit the definition.
3. Reality - some people get confused about the purpose of such distinction between photographs and images. They assume that the point is to prevent images that lie from being called photographs. They then take pains to point out how photographs can lie too - a very interesting subject on its own, but totally irrelevant to the actual purpose of this distinction, which is just to set meaningful limitations on the use of the word photograph.
4. Technicality - A variant of the Art argument, this points out that such questions are about technicalities (as opposed to Art that cannot be bothered by such lowly concerns in their view). But what do they expect given that the definition of a photograph is itself based on a technical process?
5. Use - this is a self fueling argument that basically says that we can call any image a  photograph just because a bunch of other people are doing it all the time.

The Use argument is interesting because it points to what I think is a basic problem within photography - a kind of identity crisis. This was fueled in recent times by the digital era explosion of people that adopted the technology coupled with the pressure to produce striking images. Before that, glamour photography was probably the best display of this issue (these days it should not be called photography - it has more in common with special effects and prosthetics). And we could probably go further back and detect a temptation in the early times when photography was seen as a lesser art (if it was seen as an art at all), because it was "capturing" instead of "creating". It is ironic then that after some great photographers worked to show just how interesting "mere" captures can be, now that approach is seen as a purist goal not worth pursuing and instead of photographers, we have more and more image creators using cameras.

[UPDATE 2014/01/26]: I made some editing changes and I replaced the Wikipedia definition with a google one, which was better worded and more concise.