When Does A Photo Stop Being a Photograph? | Editing, Intention, and Art

In this video, I examine the question: At what point is an image so edited that it can no longer be considered a photograph? I touch on the themes of perception, deception, intention, and ignorance- and answer a few tangential questions along the way. I dive into various perspectives on this topic and seek to define photography in a way that includes both its artistic and documentary functions.
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[@FluffyMonoc]

Much love for the visual jab at 4:23.

[@YvonneHansonPhotography]

Hehe I couldn't resist

[@FluffyMonoc]

@@YvonneHansonPhotography Current times create paranoia in some ways. I.e. it has happened more than once now a creator I had kinda liked and who for years hadn't mentioned anything 'political', suddenly mentioned in passing people like me shouldn't even exist, are a danger to women and/or children, and at the very least shouldn't be allowed to pee in a public restroom. Not just the wizard lady. So I really appreciate it.

[@YvonneHansonPhotography]

@@FluffyMonoc It seems to be the conservatives new fear-point- an ideology that requires fear to exist now grasping at straws pointing fingers at people just trying to go about their lives. I'm sorry you gotta deal with that.

[@OneCameraOneLens]

For me, as a working photographer, a "photograph" in its most basic form can have exposure and colour tweaks, along with crops, but not have things added or removed from the image. I have nothing against software edited images beyond that point, as long as these changes are mentioned by the photographer so it explains the artistic intent.

[@arikkavanagh]

love love love this video, such a great job Yvonne. I've had this talk with my non-photographer friends and tried to explain that editing is all about intent. I edit my images to best represent my memory of a moment. You did just a fantastic job of explaining this

[@chrismarquardt]

Thanks for the deep dive and for brilliantly putting all this together. The nerd in me appreciates this big time, very compatible with how my brain ticks 😊

[@MJohnson-qp9he]

Wow, that was a really, really, really great video! You always explain things so clearly. So smart and gorgeous too!

[@GSPonsonby]

A kindred spirit prone to over-analyzing the hell out of things. You should hear my inner debate over the expression/necessity/messaging/impact of shooting photos of beautiful women. Good video.

[@demitemudrin163]

absolutely worth it ... one of your best videos ❤❤❤ .... and däng, it got me thinking and questioning on so many levels and angles. Very well done!! Thanx for the hard work and the inspiration i will be drawing from it for the next few years (that probably the time itll take to unpack and eventually seep into my photography journey)

[@edkraken7011]

Great video! This channel has way too few subscribers, you deserve hundreds of thousands Yvonne🔥

[@YvonneHansonPhotography]

Aw you flatter me! Thanks for watching!

[@KristiChan1]

Speaking of how phones take photos, that reminds me of an article about a woman who was getting married and trying on dresses. Someone took a photo of her with a phone while she stood in front of three mirrors; because like you say phones actually take multiple photos and compiles them together, each of her "mirror selves" had slightly different poses.

[@xtactic]

I think we are generalising the use of the word "editing" . Colour, contrast, light corrections have almost always existed in photography through different techniques. We use these processes to "improve" our interpretation of something that objectively exists. Recreating reality by adding or removing elements is a form of interpretation. However, I debate if it's still photography. God, I love this channel 😂

[@michael.trimboli]

This is such a great video! I feel like this debate is like saying a Van Gogh painting of sunflowers is how those sunflowers objectively looked to any observer. No. It's how they looked to Van Gogh. That's why they're considered masterpieces. To me, intention is the key factor.

[@zoneVgroup]

This is so good by the way. Well done! I agree 100% with you.

[@shang-hsienyang1284]

As always, your video is informative and provides many interesting insights.

[@daniscally770]

Great video.

[@thrashermosher419]

You worked hard for this one! Good points, really something to think about. I disagree about memories being photoraphs, as a memory is more about what you feel than what you see. You could say, that a memory is more than a photograph, AND less than a photograph. This is all subjective of course!

[@coryajonesvideo]

Great video Yvonne, I must say this conundrum has haunted my mind for a good fifteen years now. It's part of the reason I never abandoned film even when the digital takeover was in full effect. My theory has always been "The truth is on the negative", granted this only applies to analogue, but it works for me. It's a way of appreciating that there is always a physical source to the image. Sure, a little editing is usually needed for the sake of a solid final print, and that's been the case since the beginning, but the camera negative still preserves the raw capture. If the image there is the same as the final photo, save for a few adjustments, I'd say that's all the assurance I need that I got it in camera, and the rest is just left to the content of the image to be defined as special or not. If anything, I've just become more traditional over the years with the introduction of newer tech, but I wouldn't claim to be a total purist because I'm aware that this is a question that'll likely never have a definitive answer because it is so subjective, and believe me, I've wracked my brain as much as you did in this video, lol. These days, I keep my editing limited to what we'd call "digital darkroom" editing (Contrast, S-curve, occasional spot removal, and that sort of thing), and I avoid anything beyond that. Honestly, I'm hoping I won't be bothering with digital photography at all in a few more years, lol. I'll have my darkroom, and it'll be all celluloid from there. Then editing will be fun, and by fun I mean tedious, time consuming, and difficult. Like god intended, lol. And no, AI is not photography. AI is digital nonsense on the internet, and nothing more. I will be a purist about that. 🤠 Always great stuff Yvonne. Cheers! P.S. I think you broke your record for use of air quotes in this one, lol. 😁💙📸

[@pashketchup]

I really enjoyed this video!

[@YvonneHansonPhotography]

Thanks for watching it :D

[@JamieMPhoto]

I love this video. I agree with pretty much everything and love your takes. The lens is an edit. The shutter speed and aperture are edits. Perhaps it is our denial that we cannot control time or reality that we are avoiding by debating the purity of photographs?

[@calvinchung-2qsh807]

I think its all subjective to the individual person - just like what food is tasty? I do like hearing each persons take as it shows how their individual brain works...

[@heatonize]

very good video

[@prizepictures1]

Great video with nice topic. You are going deep. I think I’m more of a purist in that I like my photos to be realistic. It’s easy to go overboard with the editing but it’s fine as long as it’s tasteful which is not at all subjective, LOL 😆

[@khevenrenan9927]

Just to contribute to the conversation, I typically define photography as the process of creating visual representations by capturing various forms of energy on a photosensitive medium or digital sensor. With this definition, we can include photography without cameras and without photons (instead, utilizing electrons). This approach allows us to exclude memories and AI-generated images. Regarding the photograph itself, I suggest categorizing them similarly to literature, distinguishing between fiction (including edited and computational photography) and non-fiction (currently considering only C2PA-compliant photos, where the authenticity of the image can be verified).

[@irgendwr]

Wouldn't eyes+brain still be included under "photosensitive medium"? Also, according to the last point: Wouldn't this mean that all analog photography is fiction? And that all digital editing isn't, as long as the original was signed via C2PA?

[@plre2030]

I used to get into many heated arguments over this with my local photographers but ultimately we've reached pretty much the same conclusion that you have. However, to reconcile this with cases of edits which look weird or out of place, we've ended up adding the plausibility constraint to that definition: does it look like it could be real? A good example of this would be sky replacements which don't make sense due to being misaligned with where things would be at that time of year (i.e. shopping a winter's dawn onto a summer landscape).

[@imxg]

very interesting and deep-diving look on this topic! with most of my photos, I only do some technical edits, like removing vignetting, saturating colors, cropping, etc. I did publish two photos I edited using Luminar. although I like their look and they became two of my most popular ones, I'm still not entirely happy because when I compare them to the originals, they look so far off. Luminar managed to change the entire lighting situation's appearance drastically. when shooting film, I typically edit the scans in such a way that they represent the original slides as faithfully as possible. I try to reduce the impact scanning had and try to make them look like I see them on the (calibrated) light table next to me. I think that AI "photos" do not actually count as photos because there never were any photons captured in the process. there is just no relation to anything "real", it's all made up. with photos, memories, whatever, there were actual photons of reflected light captured. just my 0,02€ ;)

[@mikaelheinonen232]

First of all, sorry for the lengthy comment. I think the subject is both interesting and relevant since I meet young folks with questions like this every year (I have been teaching photography for more than 30 years now). Just to make my self clear I do not have any definitive answers to any of the questions posed in this video, but I obviously have opinions on the subject. I actually think it might be the question that creates the problem. Photography is and has always been a way to produce pictures. Historically photography from a photographer perspective has had nothing to do with reality outside of the photographers mind. The pictures produced does not necessarily nor do the intend to depict reality or anything that actually exist outside the photographer/artists/creators imagination. What is really ”real” has very little to do with pictures no matter how or why they are produced. The notion that a photograph is depicting reality, is to me a, misconception perpetuated by readers of photography. I believe that it might originate from the fact that photographs are mechnographicaly produced and our perception of things registered though mechancographical devices are that they are somehow more objective than pictures made by hand. Again another misconception in my mind. Digital has not really made a difference in this regard nor has AI. Look att Oscar Rejlanders ”Two way of life”, a montage consisting af thirty-two images combined Ito one image in 1857. It is photoshop done entirely in the analogue domain. Look at Alfred Stieglitz pictorialism period working with bromoil photography, gum bichromate and early colourfilm photography. All those images are more akin to paintings both when it comes to technique and choice of subject. Most of Henry Fox Talbots photographs were emulations of paintings in black and white. So they were much more removed from reality than most paintings at the time. His main insetive for inventing the the technology for photography was to be able to speed up picture production. The same motivation fueled both Daguerre and Niépce. A more pure definition of photography would be going back the etymology of the word photography wich would be (a free translation) ”writing with light”. That encompasses all photography throughout history. I for one would not like to live in a world where Man Rays ”The Kiss” isn’t a part of our photographic experience, wich is a ”rayogram” or photogram as we call it today, meaning no camera was used. I am very amused and fascinated by the fact that every post WW2 generation has been struggling with this question in their own way. For me it was in the 80ies with postmodern theories competing with the modernist paradigms. There was this notion that documentary photography had to be objectively true. For me photography was always a subjective story told to share a particular point of view. Much like Richard Avedon did with his ”In the American west” or what Diane Arbus did with her pictures. Your reference to Dorotea Lange as documentary photography in the sense objective truth is interesting in this context because I’m my mind it is a subjective story told to further a point of view. In this case it really had an impact to create engagement for a very real situation (even though the woman and the children depicted didn’t see any real improvement on their situation directly). But it is Doroteas Langes artistic ability and sensibility that made this particular image make a difference. There were several other images from that particular moment that did not have the same powerful impact. To me that is testament to the power of artistic storytelling at its best. It does not necessarily have anything to do with any objective reality but it has everything to do with an empathetic view of the world. That is art at its finest, and art can and really does change the world.

[@onnoweb]

My own brain cramp is film photography vs digital photography. Photos that I have taken with a digital camera, I happily edit and tinker with in Lightroom and other apps like Prisma and Moku. For photos that I have taken with a film camera, that feels wrong to me and so with those I only do exposure, contrast and such adjustments in Lightroom. 🤷‍♂️

[@b00ty]

The literal definition of photography encompasses anything that involves the recording of photons represented in the human visible spectrum. By this definition premises such as intent, deception, ignorance and editing become redundant - whether those are present or not is irrelevant, given that the underlying subject matter is either a recording of photons, or not.

[@coaxproductions]

I think the purists are talking about the ethics of photography and saying that the element of deception inherent in photography should be resisted and minimised as a moral issue not a definitional issue. When I make what the purists call digital art I am using photography skills learnt through making other photos. But I have also noticed my language is different. I “make” photos but the purists “take” photos. Which goes to intention. But I don’t intend to deceive so the purists will say because you don’t intend to deceive and photography has a strong history of technical and realistic uses then you should tell people that you are a artist that uses photography techniques not a photographer. I get it. The Hitchcock definition of “Drama is just life with the boring bits edited out”

[@RickLeMon]

A couple nights ago, I was brushing some cyanotype solution onto paper, and I don't know if it was the humidity or something, but it would not go on evenly. So I just went with it and intentionally left voids and then really put it on heavy in other spots just to see what would happen. A few hours ago, I made an abstract piece, using packing straw to cover the cyanotype. While it was exposing, I brought in the mail, which included some redscale negatives from the lab. And then I sat down and watched this video. So my entirely rhetorical questions are: is the cyanotype a photograph or a painting? Somewhere between the two? If I took a photo with a digital camera and then tweaked the colors to look like the redscale photos, where would it land on the photograph-not photograph spectrum? In the first case, I suppose it is a question of intent (FWIW, my intention was just to see what would happen). In the second case, the redscale photo and the edited digital photo show the similarly distorted realities. Does process matter?

[@YvonneHansonPhotography]

Does process matter is an excellent question, and certainly one I wish I had asked more specifically in this video! I love the red scale thought experiment!

[@SloopJohnBee-vq6dw]

I am quite happy to use what I frame as it comes out of camera, just as I do/did with film. Of course I don’t 🙄🤣 But I could happily do so. 👍📸

[@sergiofranco-to5kg]

I agree with you, but... One of my biggest disappointments with photography was when I discovered that photos were edited. But I understand that when it comes to art, to creating something, especially to creating something impossible, editing is inevitable. And of course, if it's a product then, I know there will be a lot of editing, and maybe, today, the product doesn't need to be there, maybe you don't even need a camera. But I'm not a professional, and I like to keep my photos as real as possible... 🙃

[@YvonneHansonPhotography]

Haha I feel It. I sometimes have an emotional reaction to super edited photos, because it's "cheating". Really I'm just jealous that the photographer has better editing skills than me...that my photos are good raw ingredients but I suck at cooking with them. Then I try to follow a Photoshop tutorial and lose interest 0.5 seconds in lmao

[@gavinjenkins899]

Plenty of photos are un-edited. Yvonne has about 200 examples of un-edited photos right in your face, visible in frame during this entire video.

[@MJohnson-qp9he]

AI cannot make a photograph according to the dictionary reference, it takes a camera to do that. Only cameras can make photographs if we are going by the actual dictionary meaning. However, we usually change that around to whatever “we” want it to mean.

[@ThingOfSome]

There is a TON of literature about this and it is far from a new question. Also, mixing up "image" with "photograph" is already creating ambiguity, and the use of the term "edit" is also ambiguous.

[@sprout995]

Ignorance is bliss

[@zoneVgroup]

I think is all an edit. I think photographer is too much into gate keeping regarding what is real or not. Only photojournalism need follow ethics the best they can. I personally feel photography is just a tool for a medium. In the end it’s art. I feel like photography is maybe the only medium that plague artist cause it’s constantly being question whether is photography or not. I think the most important is the intent and the end result. Art is art. I feel like no one is questioning if other art form is suddenly something else at the end.

[@iansimpson9351]

It's a picture, they are all pictures.

[@xiaodu87]

Well, I'm more of the purists faction. To me a photograph stays a photograph as long as it is not retouched or distorted. If I add or erase something from a photograph of an existing situation, I produce art in the sense a painter does, whose intention is not depicting reality. The same goes, if I pull the sliders in a way that clearly distorts the image. I am not, however, so pedantic as to deny every edited photograph its existence as such. And obviously there's no way to deny an edited, even retouched picture its existence as art. (Or as another commentator put it: both are pictures).

[@ezpoppy55]

Quite the rabbit hole you’ve thrown yourself down! Best wishes on finding an exit 👍🏼. Me? I’m going to consider this (and other similar rabbit holes) much like birds regard ornithologists. I’ll carry on with my photography, and let everyone else busy themselves with pedantic activities. “Is it possible for a camera to lie? It certainly is. It almost always does.” - Walker Evans “A still photograph is the illusion of a literal description of how a camera saw a piece of time and space. How the camera saw the piece of time and space is responsible for how the photograph looks.” - Garry Winogrand By the most basic and fundamental of choices (where to stand and when to push the shutter), the photograph is edited. That’s its very foundation. The photographer chooses the framing and the moment of exposure. Photographs are not truth. They’re lies and illusions. Once you accept that, the rest is all immaterial.

[@Man-ej6uv]

this videos broke my brain. nothing is real

[@fiver-hoo]

once you realize there is no such thing as reality you can just stop worrying about it

[@albarca5084]

Adobe is pushing and advertising gen ai like crazy, and I losing my hecking mind

[@buranagel7827]

sony cameras definetly arent known for having richer colors, older models just make everything look low cri led/fluorescent and new ones make everything look like overprocessed plasticy phone photos

[@flogau4069]

The idea that an eye is a camera producing memories and that, therefore, memories could be considered photographs and AI imagery along with it is irrelevant to me. Because an eye uses a similar optical system to a camera does not make it a camera. Cameras produce pieces of evidence that a photo has been taken. Eyes do not. They will produce visual memories, sure. But not photos. The eyes (and the brain) are not capable of producing a piece of evidence, for memories are not evidences. A camera is capable of producing this piece of evidence. You wouldn't consider that a camera takes a photo because there is a sensor displaying a live image on the backscreen, right ? No, you'd have to push the shutter and record a physical / digital evidence that the photo has been taken. Photography is the process of capturing the light (photo-) on some kind of still media that is available at any given moment for the human eye to see (-graphy). Yes, it is a specific PROCESS. Something you don't really address in the video. Now, acknowledging the fact that photography requires the use of a camera of any sort to record a still image on a physical or digital media, AI is simply not photography for it does not require the use of a camera, or any sort of device capable of capturing light. As for intentionality, it really does not define what photography is. I took dozen of photographs by accidentally pressing the shutter on my camera. Yet, here I am with dozen of blurry images of my shoes. Are they not photographs ? Yes, they are. Hope my two cents were insightful. Thanks for making these videos. Good food for brain. Cheers Yvonne.

[@RS-Amsterdam]

Who watched this video in total without going fast forward 😂

[@onnoweb]

I did.

[@bulletsie]

Just call everything an "image" instead of a Photograph! problem solved.

[@FluffyMonoc]

AI imagery of course clearly does not fall under your documentary definition of photography. But to fall under the creative definition, it has to be an intentional creation with a conscious creator, and the 'AI' is not. AI imagery is not copyrightable as far as I know, for precisely that reason. So to me that lack of consciousness and intent behind the image's creation is what makes it nothing more than computer sludge. (And no, not even the most sophisticated prompt changes that.)

[@gavinjenkins899]

You literally have an entire wall of 100% *un-edited* photos behind you while you made this video: instax (unless you like, painted on top of some of them, or something)

[@YvonneHansonPhotography]

Did you uh....watch the video 😂 I do talk about Instant photography in it. In my view, since I make conscious choices while the photo is developing that impact the outcome of the photo, that's editing. I place my instant photos face down in a dark spot while they are developing in order to maximize the colour saturation. I avoid shaking the photo to maximize sharpness. I keep them out of direct sun to maximize contrast.

[@gavinjenkins899]

​@@YvonneHansonPhotography Yes, I watched the video. You tried to dismiss the actual definition by claiming unedited photos don't exist. If unedited photos do exist, then your basis for rejecting the actual definition no longer holds water, and we can just proceed with the dictionary definition. 1) Facing images down during development: They aren't photos yet. A photo is a *permanent* image, see dictionary you quoted yourself. if it's not fixed yet, it's not permanent yet, it's not a photograph yet, so you can't be editing a photograph that does not yet exist. 2) A person obviously could just choose not to do those things anyway, and leave it alone, which would be an unedited photo even in your POV. Just because you do them doesn't mean it's mandatory. (But ultimately doesn't matter because they aren't photos yet)

[@gavinjenkins899]

@@YvonneHansonPhotography Although I personally would suggest to the dictionary writers that they replace "permanent" with "durable"

[@YvonneHansonPhotography]

@@gavinjenkins899 I see your point, but in my view, if I am aware of how my actions (after pressing the shutter button) impact the outcome of the image, that is a form of editing. If I choose not to shake the photo in order to get a sharp image, OR if I choose to shake it in order to create a muddier, blurrier image- I'm making a choice that...in a way...edits the photo. I also appreciate your adherence to dictionary definitions, and I suppose we can say that unedited photos do exist, but not in a way that can be seen or shared, since making a print, scanning, digitizing, or changing the file format (in some cases) will edit the image.

[@gavinjenkins899]

@@YvonneHansonPhotography I see your point now with regard to "ignorance" more clearly than I picked it up from the video, re: "knowing the impact it will have". I would still maintain it's a moot point due to the image not being permanent yet for the first time, but it's interesting regardless. Sharing unedited photos: Online, perhaps not, but shared in person, I can just hand you an instax (building off of the "no impact AFTER permanent" from above). Also, positive slide film was originally engineered to be projected, in person, directly from the film onto a screen, with zero alteration or interpretation after it is chemically fixed/made "permanent".