PixInsight Forum (historical)
PixInsight => General => Topic started by: Geoff on 2020 March 03 02:52:54
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From time to time the topic of documentary criteria is mentioned in a post. Can anyone point me to (or give me) a succinct summary of what exactly is encompassed in the term “documentary”?
Clearly, arbitrary selections and painting are not “documentary”, but a histogram stretch is. Where is the line drawn?
Geoff
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Can you define what exactly what is meant by 'painting' and what context 'painting' would be used....just for clarity?
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I will attempt to give a short answer to this very tough question which require both knowledge of history of photography and science. I don't claim expertise in both subjects. Given the fact that astrophotography reached the masses later than photography, one may look for answers through the history of photography.
If astrophotography belongs to the genre of documentary photography (https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/d/documentary-photography), it must provide a straightforward and accurate representation of objects and events.
But...
Contrary to popular belief, any photograph is a subjective representation of reality. Even the act of seeing a photograph is subjective, since our eyes are poor optical instruments (http://ilab.usc.edu/retina/) and require the intervention of the brain to conceive the image.
With that in mind, the question becomes, "what we want to achieve by presenting the viewers an astrophotograph?". Some possible answers may be:
To attempt a faithful representation of an astronomical event.
To educate the viewer about astronomy/astrophysics and the scientific method.
To demonstrate our processing skills.
To show off our expensive equipment.
To earn prizes in well-established contests.
To earn "likes".
Depending on the answer(s), one chooses where the line is drawn.
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Can you define what exactly what is meant by 'painting' and what context 'painting' would be used....just for clarity?
See, as one example, this thread https://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?topic=14582.msg87172#msg87172
Both Juan and Vicent frequently refer to “documentary criteria”, but nowhere can I find a definitive statement of what its parameters are. I think I understand what they are getting at, but I’d like some confirmation.
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You may find interesting the article The Ethics of Digital Manipulation (http://www.astropix.com/html/j_digit/ethics.html) by Jerry Lodriguss.
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Some years ago, a group of people (including Juan) published a manifesto about the documentary astrophotography. Since then, the web page has been lost, but Google cache can still access it:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:kojS-aFcXMUJ:astro-photographer.org/dsa/statement.html (http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:kojS-aFcXMUJ:astro-photographer.org/dsa/statement.html)
Since the page is no longer active, I don't know if the people of this group still stands by this.
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Thanks Andres
I am glad to be able to recover this document which I read some time ago but have never been able to find it again. However, I still find it to be quite vague about its actual meaning. For example, we have the statement
The Documentary School only accepts as valid image processing practices those procedures having a documentary basis. Documentary criteria are those intended to communicate some properties of the objects photographed, as part of nature.
OK, so the documentary school only wants to use image processing practices with a “documentary basis”, but there is no really detailed explanation of what is meant by a “documentary basis”
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You may find interesting the article The Ethics of Digital Manipulation (http://www.astropix.com/html/j_digit/ethics.html) by Jerry Lodriguss.
Quite interesting, but I think he goes to far in what he regards as ethical. One pertinent point he does make though, is that every photo is subjective:
The fundamental fact that we usually forget is that when we take a picture we do not make a perfectly objective recording of reality. What we make is an interpretation of reality.
It set me thinking. Galaxies are typically 100000 light years in diameter. They are 3D. They emit x-rays, radio waves, ... And yet we fool ourselves into thinking that a 2D representation on a small computer screen captured with a limited bandwidth is an accurate representation of the object.