thomas my comment was about not about your statements, it was with regard to Ray's veiled statement.

so, here i am Ann, what do you want to say about my "veiled statement"?

it was not meant to be veiled, i thought i quite openly stated, in that other posts, the members of this site don't want to post images, offer critiques or discuss aesthetics

go look in the critique forum, not much action there

of course this forum was set up after the members demanded a gallery that doesn't allow critical comments, "wow this is nice" and similar is ok but nothing remotely opinionated is allowed, why is that?

Ray

...of course this forum was set up after the members demanded a gallery that doesn't allow critical comments, "wow this is nice" and similar is ok but nothing remotely opinionated is allowed, why is that?

Ray

Ray,
That is not really true. I forced the critique forum onto the members due to the fact that i do not believe in the type of critique gallery one finds on most forums, including APUG's. The only requests made to me regarding the galleries were that there be divisions based upon process; I did this as well as added divisions based upon intent.

I do think that as a temp. fix that people could 'talk' to those posting images if the information is not complete or leaves you wondering. Later I will see how hard it is for me to add form fields to the upload forms.

Ray,

I will not meet you at sunrise with sabers or pistols. I was trying to be polite .

I don't know what you want or expect when posting in a gallery and franky to be honest and not polite i don't care. I personally donot pay much attention to the gallery work unless someone specifically ask me to look at something and then we discuss the image off line.

I find that viewing prints on a monitor to be iffy at best. I get paid to critque work and will also do it for free when i feel the individual will pay attention and not waste my time nor theirs.

I critque work everyday and have never been told i am "too nice".
But there is a big difference IMHO to sitting down face to face with someone and discuss their work, their vision and what they are trying to protray; sharing information about strengths and weakness.

My reputation seems to be "tough but consist" and that is just fine.

I don't post my work , because i don't cared what others think,. I have my own standards and my work is only for my benefit. If others like the work, fine, if they don't fine. If they buy something that is nice, but that is not my end goal. I have spent my life time learning my craft and continue to learn everyday and hopefully will have many more years to add to that body of knowledge but i figure 60 years of work gives me some sense of what i am talking about.

Well , personally, I am still at the point that I value others' opinions and look forward to discussing my work and others' too. Online and offline. I see the gallery and image discussions as an interactive, visual resource for newcomers to the field. And I'd like for traditional and hybrid processes to be kept alive for many decades to come so... this is what I think we need to do, show people what can be done and talk about it in an amicable but honest way.

That's all I'll say on the matter, my intention is not to foment conflict.

Ann, I admire your stance. I wish I could afford to have my work be for me only. It's a very admirable position to be in which I'm sure you both worked hard for and deserve. Perhaps some time in the future I can show you my work. I'd like that discussion I think and I'm sure I could learn a lot.

Keith, I think that if we want analog and hybrid techniques are to survive, we have to promote them. Hybridphoto.com is a perfect place to demonstrate what results can be had, although I agree an online gallery may not be ideal, I think it's better than nothing.

- Thomas

thnx Ann, conversely i wasn't trying to be polite, i was telling it as it is

photography has many definitions and many meanings, some even believe it can be art, others disagree

whatever any us of may hold to be our personal truth, photography is about visual communication

if photographers don't show their work, for whatever reason, photography, as a practice suffers and fails

Ray

I was not suggestion that people shouldn't show their work or search for feedback, i was responding to the only explanation i can address and that is why i don't post images nor critque them on line.

Why others don't i can't respond or comment.

thnx Ann, conversely i wasn't trying to be polite, i was telling it as it is

photography has many definitions and many meanings, some even believe it can be art, others disagree

whatever any us of may hold to be our personal truth, photography is about visual communication

if photographers don't show their work, for whatever reason, photography, as a practice suffers and fails

Ray
Ray,

What makes you think that Ann doesn't show her work or needs to show her work here?

I know Ann personally and believe me she doesn't need to post her work in the gallery for critique or validation of her vision. Ann is a connsumate photographer and has taught thousands of individuals photography over her career.

And FWIW, I agree that gallery postings for the sake of critique is just an iffy proposition.

Frankly I find your posts to be churlish, insipid, insulting, antagonistic, argumentative and arrogant. I would suggest that you make efforts to learn how to communicate effectively with people and then you might find people are willing to respond to your posts positively.

Merry Christmas,

Don Bryant

Katherine, I don't see how to decouple this discussion from the fact that there is no activity at all in the gallery. Newcomers (like me) should come in and see that this is an active site, then we will feel motivated to stick around. I gather that this site has been here for quite a long time now, but frankly it looks to me like it's totally stagnated. That is disappointing to me because on the surface it did seem like a good place to discuss the hybrid approach.

My honest and brutal assessment is that little or nothing is getting posted or discussed in the gallery, and there are no discussions outside the gallery except which printer or scanner to use or whatever......

Keith, I misunderstood your earlier comment; when you said this thread is moot because there's no discussion in the gallery, I assumed you meant that the thread should be tied to some specific discussion going on in the gallery in order to be a viable discussion, which made no sense to me.

Now I understand you to mean that the thread is moot because there's "no activity in the gallery at all." I guess we have different perceptions about that. It seems to me that activity both in the gallery and in the forums has picked up lately; it's practically bustling now compared to the glacial pace of last spring. So I'm having a little trouble finding common cause with your comments about stagnation.

As to promoting more general discussion here, people have tried to get such discussions going, perceived that there seemed to be little interest, and given up. If you're interested in getting an idea of the true spirit of hybridphoto as I know and love it, you might try a read through some of the ongoing threads; the handcrafted silver gelatin thread in the Handcoated Wet Prints forum would be a good place to start. And of course there's a wealth of information in the digital negatives forum; I reread some of those threads every now and then as my understanding of digital negatives grows.
Katharine

I do think that as a temp. fix that people could 'talk' to those posting images if the information is not complete or leaves you wondering. Later I will see how hard it is for me to add form fields to the upload forms.

Thanks jd. I didn't know whether it was an easy thing to do or a hard thing to do; it sounds like it's probably harder than I hoped, and I agree that it's reasonable to ask the person if it's not clear. But I've also noticed more than once that when images identified as taken with digital cameras and not specified as to output are uploaded to the gallery and someone has asked, "How is this hybrid?" there's been no response to the question. At any rate such images tend to get relatively few views and almost no comments, so maybe it will become obvious from lack of attention that such images might be better appreciated at flickr or wherever people go to post digital images.
kt

Ray,

What makes you think that Ann doesn't show her work or needs to show her work here?

I know Ann personally and believe me she doesn't need to post her work in the gallery for critique or validation of her vision. Ann is a connsumate photographer and has taught thousands of individuals photography over her career.

And FWIW, I agree that gallery postings for the sake of critique is just an iffy proposition.

Frankly I find your posts to be churlish, insipid, insulting, antagonistic, argumentative and arrogant. I would suggest that you make efforts to learn how to communicate effectively with people and then you might find people are willing to respond to your posts positively.

Merry Christmas,

Don Bryant

g'day Don

i don't know Ann and i don't know her work, that is precisely my point

posters on this site could be anybody, to me, a photographer's credentials are not their words but their work

gallery postings for the sake of expression, communication, teaching and learning is a wothwhile endeavour

as to my communication skills, churlish/arrogant etc., better that than being afraid to express a contrary opinion

i don't need people to respond positively to me, i want them to respond passionately

Ray

Ray,

What makes you think that Ann doesn't show her work or needs to show her work here?

I know Ann personally and believe me she doesn't need to post her work in the gallery for critique or validation of her vision.

Don, I appreciate the provocation that led you to these remarks, but just the same I can't leave unchallenged the veiled (that seems to be the word of this thread) suggestion that those who post images here do so because they "need" a place to show their work or they "need" some validation of their vision or to be instructed in what they're doing wrong.

There are all kinds of reasons to share work here. Hybridphoto members, many of whom are well-established photographers and teachers and who show their work in serious art venues, upload work here for the fun of sharing, to illustrate a method, to inspire their fellows, to teach, to learn, to provide different examples of how a process can look under different hands, etc. etc out of sheer generosity rather than out of any "need" to do so. I am grateful to everyone who posts images, because I enjoy looking at the work people are doing, and I think we're gathering (very slowly, albeit) a remarkable collection of hybrid work, both amateur and professional, that we have every right to be proud of. I agree with Ray's comment:


gallery postings for the sake of expression, communication, teaching and learning is a worthwhile endeavour


I do agree that no one should be browbeat into showing work in the galleries here if they don't care to, but there's no reason to belittle those who do in the process of defending those who don't. Thank you,

Katharine

As I read it, the issues being considered in this thread are: (1) whether there's a way to encourage people to give more process information with gallery uploads, such as adding an "output" field to the image information array, and (2)whether there is, or should be, a policy that images uploaded to the hybridphoto gallery should be hybrid images? These are general questions of procedure, policy and philosophy of the site...

I think this second question needs to be answered one way or another, as I don't think the present uncertainty is conducive to progress and harmony on the site. I think many of us assume that the answer to question (2) above is yes, there should be a requirement that the images uploaded to the gallery should be hybrid images, since the site is supposed to be dedicated to hybrid photography. But as far as I know, that's never been explicitly spelled out by administration, and there's nothing in the galleries that spells it out, that I can find. When I click on "gallery rules" nothing comes up, so I guess that page isn't set up, and when I upload images to the gallery, as far as I can remember, there's nothing that comes up that says anything to the effect: "images uploaded here should fit the definition of hybrid, that is there should be an analog component as well as a digital component to their creation." So if this is an expectation, how is that expectation communicated to people?

When it comes to digital "captures" that are directly uploaded, then it becomes more complicated; I suppose the question then becomes, what's the eventual printing process that's intended. If the intention is to print it as an inkjet, then it's not a hybrid image; if the intention is to print it in some sort of wet process, then it's a hybrid image? I'm not sure that logic makes sense to me, because the image that's uploaded is the same either way. And slide scans are fine here because they're film after all, and one assumes that they are here because they're going to be printed to some dry (digital) process. But in the same way as the digital upload, the image that's uploaded isn't in and of itself a hybrid image.

In the case of the digital capture, the uploaded image is digital, not hybrid, and in the case of the slide scan, the uploaded image is analog, not hybrid, although technically they both fit the hybrid definition if the final product reflects some analog and some digital part in the workflow that made it. So for images that are uploaded from the original "capture" rather than from the print, it's not clear what makes the image "hybrid," since the answer is not inherent to the image itself but to the intention with regard to the print, and that's why many of these images evoke the question "how is this hybrid?"

This logic, that it's the eventual print that decides whether an uploaded digital image or scanned slide is hybrid or not, seems somewhat illogical to me, and I don't know if anyone's noticed it, but this is opposite the philosophy at APUG, where many people, I've noted from remarks in threads about negative scans, upload slides or negatives that they intend to print digitally. As long as the image that's scanned is analog, no one cares (for the purpose of being acceptable in the gallery) what it might become later. To be consistent with that rule, it seems that here where our interest is neither analog nor digital, but hybrid, we'd say uploads should be hybrid, not analog or digital. I'm not arguing for this, just saying that this inconsistency between site philosophies may be a source of some of the confusion.

I think this whole issue reveals a fault line that divides the constituencies here into two groups: those who are interested in process, and those who aren't. As someone who's interested in process, when I see an image, I want to know how it's made. I imagine that someone who isn't interested in process finds that question inexplicable, and that's why the question "how is this hybrid?" is almost never answered, or as in a recent case, was answered in an incomprehensible and unhelpful way.

I'm troubled by the removal of images from the gallery as the result of such questions. I'm not trying to run anyone off by asking the question; I'm just really curious about process, and I'd much rather have a dialogue about the process that created the image, whatever it is, than have someone just take their images and leave. At the same time, I agree with Thomas way earlier in this thread when he said that if we don't set some boundaries around what hybrid is, then it will be just another open photography site, and I hope that's not what we want. But on the third hand, there are hybrid "processes" that don't really have any "process" component to them, and people could be discouraged from uploading such hybrid images if people ask process questions like "what makes this hybrid?" Should we stop asking this question?

Katharine

Fair enough, maybe the best way to ensure that gallery posts are truly hybrid is to require two fields of information be filled out, namely digital and analogue techniques.


If Keith's suggestion (from sometime in December) could be implemented (and I do understand that this could require some work, but I think it would be worth it) then there would be no need for threads like this or for questions in the gallery; it would solve the whole issue. People who are interested in process could look at the fields and see what process is used, no need for a question. If it's a digital capture that's going to be a wet print, or a slide that's going to be an inkjet, then you know. That's really all anyone wants, as far as I know, is to understand what it is they're looking at.
kt

g'day all

so what happened?

anything?

i note we still have the "under construction" banner