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More than occasionally someone will comment that one of my colour images looks like a painting. As I never did colour work until I switched to digital, this leaves me a little uncomfortable. Are they telling me that the images don't look real, or that they are too manipulated, or that the digital process has for better or worse added something to images that wasn't there?
After 40 years of dodging, burning, bleaching and generally manipulating black and white images, it never occurred to me to not do the same thing in colour so it was certainly possible that these comments were 'fair'.
Oddly, though, the comments weren't necessarily directed at some of my more manipulated images or my more abstract images. They used comments like this at images which had little done to them and were fairly normal looking landscape photographs.
Could it be the matte paper - after all people are used to glossy prints - but they make these comments about images behind glass too so that wasn't it.
It's quite possible that I'm completely missing the boat - but given the wide range of non painterly images to which they apply this comment, my suspicion is that they make this comment using as a frame of reference their own colour snapshots of similar scenery.
They don't take into consideration (they simply don't know about)the effort we go to to pick lighting which will best show the subject, or the amount of work on the image to open up shadows and control highlights.
Their snapshots have black shadows and pure white highlights, haze obscuring anything distant and colours that come from shooting at noon.
Perhaps I'm completely deluding myself. Maybe digital is doing something to the images that didn't happen in film days. Michael Reichman has addressed this issue by simply defining the 'new' real, suggesting that digital is capable of doing things film was not and that the images more closely match what he 'saw' but in the past could not have recorded, putting the issue squarely back in the lap of the viewer.
Anyway, I'm interested in your experiences, your theories as to the explanation, and how you deal with such comments (assuming you get them).
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Yes. I get them, too. And it tends to rankle me a bit, because I also wonder what it is that makes them say this.
I have been printing on matte paper lately, and I have been really surprised by the reaction of some people. Several have said to me "It doesn't look like a photograph; more like a painting." One said, "I can't see the picture. All I can see is the surface."
Now, if I may say so myself, these prints are very high quality, and decent captures, too. So, as you can see, I have been somewhat mystified by this, too. I really am looking forward to hearing the experience of others about this topic.
I get such comments now and then myself. I generally think that it's intended as a compliment.
Most people simply have no understanding of the history of either photography or of "Art." Outside of those in the "Art Scene," it would appear to me that most people's exposure to painting is limited, more or less, to a hand full of watercolour landscapes seen in doctors' offices and such (and perhaps a giclee style reproduction of a Da Vince, Munch, or Piccasso).
Their exposure to photography (particularly colour photography) is usually similarly limited to glossy magazines, glossy pro portraiture, glossy one-hour prints, and now the internet.
Show such a person what is, essentially, a giclee photographic print and they try to relate it back to their own limited knowledge. Don't worry too much about it, within a generation or two things will be much better, it's been a long time since horseless-carriage was the common referent.
I wrote about this, from a slightly different viewpoint, in The Trouble With Color Photography on my blog.
Of course when someone says "It looks like a painting" it could be just that their limited terms of reference leave them with no other way to describe their experience of seeing Fine Art Color Prints. Coming from, shall we say, knowledgeable quarters the description "painterly" as applied to a photograph may not necessarily be a compliment.
As to Michael Reichmann's assertion I can only say that I have lived in the UK most of my life but I now see color landscapes made here that, with their highly "cranked up" color don't resemble any visual experience I've ever had. Then you have HDR now with the "cartoon skies" commonly seen with its overuse (see some Flickr HDR groups!) and often you could say that some photographs look "like paintings" because there is no other way to describe them. If that was the intention then fine - if not then something is wrong with this picture!
In parting, I might say that none of this really addresses whether any photograph is "real". What we see in the world "out there" is a total experience whereas you could say that a photograph is just another object in the "real world" to look at.
Still this is a very interesting post, George, and I'm very pleased to find someone else willing to address the issue.
I have the same experience. And I agree with many of the explanations: matte paper, carefully controlled tone, exceptional lighting (Galen Rowell wrote once about people assuming manipulation because they had never experienced the range of color nature provides), etc.
One other explanation: sometimes people say "painterly" when they mean "carefully composed." Some people I've questioned experience, but can't quite explain, that a good painting is very precisely controlled. They get the feeling that the painter is showing exactly what she wants, and nothing more. That is how they experience "painterly-ness."
The reason the same is not said of the well-composed black and white image is because you never encounter a black-and-white painting. Black and white is distinctly photographic, even if the composition is "painterly."
Better and better, thank you all for contributing your insights.
Yep. I got such a comment recently too. I've been working on an image from the waterfront in Seattle. I showed a print to my wife, who thought it looked too much like a painting, which she attributed to excess manipulation. I then turned off all the adjustment layers and printed it again. Still looks like a painting to her.... And she dabbles a bit in watercolor and pastels.
This image was printed on a satin paper, so it's not limited to matte. It was only 8x10, so it's not as though it were printed on a huge canvas either. I think it's just the fact that there's some pretty saturated colors and the reflections in the water.
At first this annoyed me, thinking perhaps I had gotten carried away in Photoshop, but when she still thought it looked like a painting with nothing more than a pretty straight RAW conversion it's obvious that she's seeing it differently that I do. She was beside me when I took the shot, which tends to reinforce the idea that she remembers the scene differently and can't tie the print back to the original scene.
I print essentially exclusively on matte papaer and usually fairly large on an Epson 7600 and do get that exact same comment. I have personally always taken it as a strong compliment (hope I am right about that). I never really thought that it could be anything other than positive. I think that most 'everyday' people that are not artists or photographers, I hate to say it, look upon painting as a 'higher' art form....don't shoot me, I'm only the messenger.....and thus, not 'looking' like a photograph is, I believe, meant to elevate the photo to a higher level.
I did ask someone once, just to be sure, and they indicated that it was meant as a compliment.
In fact, when I describe my work I like to say that printing on matte paper tends to give my images a 'painterly' appearance.
So, is Howard in denial, or using the arguement 'the best defence is offence', or being pragmatic, delusional, optimistic or simply sensible. I'm quite willing to admit I'm a bit neurotic when it comes to comments on my prints. I'm hoping he's simply being sensible.
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