Wrong?...or right?

[pErvinalia]

I give up. I'm going to bed. Someone else explain it to him.

I understand what you're saying, but you are having trouble with my end. That's yours to fix.

I understand what both of you are saying.

rEv, you're wrong. A B&W photo isn't an interpretation. It's a recording, albeit a "limited" one. Just because we see things in colour and the photo was B&W... it doesn't make it an interpretation of the event.

Of course it does, in the same sense that you are claiming that manually colouring an image is. If manually colouring an image to make it more reflective of reality is interpretation, then B&W certainly is even more so. ALL photography is an interpretation of reality. In the film days that interpretation was made by the kodak technicians in a film production lab in Japan et al. and then by the developing and printing process. These days with digital it's still the same, although a lot of people do the 'developing" (and printing) themselves, these days.

Else photographs of dog history would be recorded without "interpretation", seeing as how they only see in B&W.

Huh? We are talking about human interpretation here. Not dogs.

Don't make me release qualia on your arse.

But you should, because it is the same principle. Photographic processes (whether film or digital) add another subjective interpretive layer on our own subjective interpretations of reality.

[pErvinalia]

I do not approve. Absent well detailed reports of what people were wearing, what colour the sky was, what shade of green the grass was, the colour of the ground, the complexion, hair, and eye, colours of each person, etc.. it is not more accurate. It's a fanciful tint. History is shades of grey not technicolor.

Lol. Not for the people who observed and lived it. To say that a black and white image is more realistic than a colour image (however gaudily produced), is absurd. The world isn't black and white. A black and white photo is about as far from the "real" world as one can get. The reason why so many people have trouble accepting this* is a cultural phenomenon.

* I know this, as I have contributed to some of the biggest photography forums on the web, and this type of issue gets discussed all the time. Digital photographers understand this concept without a problem. More and more film photographers are starting to get it. Basically, it is only the inexperienced in photography who don't get this point.

[JimC]

One point though...

It was black and white images that people of that era were seeing, when photographs were published. To an extent, a black and white photograph evokes an era, and the experiences of the citizens of that era, more than any modern re-interpretation could ever do...

[pErvinalia]

That's what I meant by a "cultural phenomenon". This belief of some people is only based in cultural context. But in a scientific physical sense, ALL photography is interpretation.

[JimC]

Well, that's why I prefer the original - they evoke the times for me effectively...

[rasetsu]

Some of them are going to become avatars.

Stephen Hanks, whose paintings look like oils, but are actually water colors, paints predominately nude female forms. His take on it is that painting the human form is one of the most challenging things that a person can paint, because of all the subtleties of tone, hue and shape. I can see, given that, how color can add an important element to our appreciation of these forms. The human eye depends on hue, tone and other color dependent characteristics both for bottom level processing of dimensionality, but also higher level things like contour recognition, emotion recognition, body language, and so on. Without color, a lot of that is going to be handicapped or completely prevented.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

That's what I meant by a "cultural phenomenon". This belief of some people is only based in cultural context. But in a scientific physical sense, ALL photography is interpretation.

Actually, it's all physics and chemistry.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Well, that's why I prefer the original - they evoke the times for me effectively...

They invoke your memory of the times. The actual events were not in b&w.

[pErvinalia]

That's what I meant by a "cultural phenomenon". This belief of some people is only based in cultural context. But in a scientific physical sense, ALL photography is interpretation.

Actually, it's all physics and chemistry.

And how does that address anything? The selection of the chemistry involved (in film photography and chemical printing) is part of the interpretation process, as I explained further above. People need to drop this quaint, but thoroughly naive, idea that taking a photo is capturing reality, and that any modifications to that photo is somehow bringing in a false interpretation.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

That's what I meant by a "cultural phenomenon". This belief of some people is only based in cultural context. But in a scientific physical sense, ALL photography is interpretation.

Actually, it's all physics and chemistry.

And how does that address anything? The selection of the chemistry involved (in film photography and chemical printing) is part of the interpretation process, as I explained further above. People need to drop this quaint, but thoroughly naive, idea that taking a photo is capturing reality, and that any modifications to that photo is somehow bringing in a false interpretation.

That's the objective end. The subjective end a hydra.

[pErvinalia]

ok.

[Jason]

Well, that's why I prefer the original - they evoke the times for me effectively...

They invoke your memory of the times. The actual events were not in b&w.

They likely weren't in the colours they're being changed to either. It's like if someone where to rework the Giza pyramid with a gold pyramidion and install limestone around the rest claiming it made it more 'real' or if the cave paintings at Trois Freres were repainted because the colours have faded and it would look more like it did originally. These are poor examples as they would be 'restorations' of something that was supposedly physically there originally whereas with black and white photographs and films there was no colour there originally. It is not a restoration. It's more like reworking the Mona Lisa to be more masculine because many suppose the model was a man.

Other than being something I can say "that's neat" about, I don't see that there is any upside to this colouring in of old photographs and/or films. Who is so intellectually limited that they need a paint-by-numbers photograph (however imaginative and skilfully performed) before they appreciate the reality of the scene? Silly argument.

[Jason]

That's what I meant by a "cultural phenomenon". This belief of some people is only based in cultural context. But in a scientific physical sense, ALL photography is interpretation.

Actually, it's all physics and chemistry.

And how does that address anything? The selection of the chemistry involved (in film photography and chemical printing) is part of the interpretation process, as I explained further above. People need to drop this quaint, but thoroughly naive, idea that taking a photo is capturing reality, and that any modifications to that photo is somehow bringing in a false interpretation.

So by re-interpreting an interpretation of reality we're getting a more accurate facsimile of that reality? That's absurd.

I might as well say that a photocopy of a photocopy has more verisimilitude to the original than the first photocopy or that a third hand account of an incident is more accurate than a second hand account or that a tertiary source is more reliable than a secondary source. Rubbish.

[DaveD]

It's like if someone where to rework the Giza pyramid with a gold pyramidion and install limestone around the rest claiming it made it more 'real' or if the cave paintings at Trois Freres were repainted because the colours have faded and it would look more like it did originally.

It's not like that at all, as in those examples the originals would be irreparably damaged. The photos being digitally coloured still exist in their original form.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

They likely weren't in the colours they're being changed to either.

Assumption, I think. Grass is green.