[thegooley]

An interesting viewpoint, but I think the differentiation here lies in the degree of "artistic" creation. Put 10 photographers in a room with Miles Davis and you'll get 10 pretty distinct photographs of the man. Have 10 people create a pixelated version of a photograph, and you'll have 10 pretty similar results.

Creating a pixelated version of this photograph is more akin to taking a photograph of the Mona Lisa - sure you can get a cool angle or do it with infrared film to get a different color palate, but it's still a picture of someone else's original work. You wouldn't say that the Miles Davis cover photo is "based on a Miles Davis concert", but rather it was created _at_ a Miles Davis concert.

Similarly, in music, remixing a song can be a very creative process - but it is still a derivative work in that it wouldn't exist without the original which was created "from scratch".

(Disclosure: I am/was a photographer who used to earn a living solely from licensing my photos for editorial purposes)

Edit: I'm not attempting to discuss copyright laws (which are pretty clear), but rather the philosophy and justification behind the creation and copying of artistic works.

[chc]

On the other hand, one could easily argue that there's a greater degree of artistic and stylistic transformation in creating pixel art than there is in moving two feet to the right and snapping another photograph and hoping this one turns out better than the last one.

Heck, just look at the tie in the two versions. It would be hard to make it look that different in two photographs from anything like the same angle. Because the pixel art is an artistic representation of a tie rather than a blind copy of the photograph, the details are radically different even though it gives the same impression. It's a very artistic and skillful work.

Additionally, as a newspaper editor and sometimes judge at competitions, I often look at many different photographs from different photographers at the same event. A lot of the time, the photos are barely distinguishable — a speaker saying "think" from one angle doesn't look vastly different from a speaker saying "should" a second later from a slightly different angle — yet none of the photographers would dream of suing the others for copyright infringement, despite the fact that one took the shot first and the other shot looks WAY more similar to the first than "Kind of Bloop" does to "Kind of Blue."

[ars]

> Put 10 photographers in a room with Miles Davis and you'll get 10 pretty distinct photographs of the man. Have 10 people create a pixelated version of a photograph, and you'll have 10 pretty similar results.

Interesting because I would have said exactly the opposite. 10 photographers (all using the same pose from the same location of course) would make nearly identical photos. But the pixel artists would have been totally different.

Take a look at how the cuff or the diamonds on the tie were drawn - you really think everyone would have done it exactly the same?

[ralfd]

There are many pictures of Miles Davis but all are different to the one on the kind of blue album. That was the point of the OP.

[duck]

How about if you gave the photo to 10 people and told them to do whatever they wanted to in Photoshop. You would definitely have 10 unique pieces then right?

[thegooley]

Sure, but I bet you could still look at all 10 photoshop manipulations and say "yep, those are all based on that original photo".

[FlemishBeeCycle]

I don't follow your argument.

If a painter and a photographer both depict the same scene, your argument seems to be suggesting that the "degree of 'artistic' creation" from the photographer would somehow be greater than that of the painter? How would that work? Although painting from real life allows for perhaps better capture of a scene, it is arguably similar to painting from a photograph of the same scene.

There's a much higher degree of creativity / variability inherent in drawing / painting / pixelating over than in photography simply by the mechanical process alone.

[potatolicious]

> "There's a much higher degree of creativity / variability inherent in drawing / painting / pixelating over than in photography simply by the mechanical process alone."

I'd argue you don't understand photography at all if you're making this claim, particular when one is talking about fine art photographers (as opposed to, say, sports). This is especially true today, where photographers are making pixel-level adjustments after squeezing the shutter.

Photography is not as simple as pointing the camera at something and pressing the shutter. Hell, just off the top of my head:

- What sensor size/film size? Your choice influences the depth of field, resolution, sharpness, and dynamic range of the result.

- What film? Your choice influences the color balance, reproduction opportunities, dynamic range, grain structure of the final image.

- What lens? Your choice determines the perspective of the image, as well as the requisite warping or flattening that comes with it. It also determines contrast (both macro and micro), sharpness, not to mention specialty lenses where you're determining the shift and orientation of your plane of focus. Lens selection also determines the look of bokeh (out of focus areas of the image) and flare - controlled by the size and shape of the diaphragm.

- What filters? Polarizers alter your composition significantly by eliminating certain forms of reflections. Neutral density filters allow for longer exposures to increase the effect of motion blur (or other creative uses). Colorized filters allow for a conscious control of particular tones in monochrome images (think of it like a transfer function).

- What shutter speed? This controls the amount of blur you have, the sharpness of the final image, and creative use of it can be used to isolate subjects in motion, freeze them, or any combination of the above (and that's just one common use of fine shutter speed control).

- What aperture? This determines the sharpness of the final image, as well as contrast, and the depth of field (e.g., the blurry "out of focus" areas of the image). A skilled photographer controls depth of field precisely, including exactly the things he/she wants, and nothing that is unwanted.

Nooow we get beyond gear selection into composition:

- Perspective. Where are you shooting from, where are you shooting to?

- Exposure. How is the image lit? What is the dynamic range of light? (the range from brightest to darkest portion of image) - the decision here affects the look of the image in a huge way.

- Framing. This is self explanatory really. What subject(s) do we include and how?

- Focus. How thick is our depth of field? What do we want to include in focus? What do we want to exclude?

And nowadays you have the litany of tools (Photoshop being just the beginning) where photographers are exercising a great deal of control over their images, often at the pixel level.

I highly object to your claim that photography is inherently less creative/variable than drawing, painting, or pixelating. This reflects a complete ignorance of what is required to create a photograph. The fact that modern DSLR cameras have essentially thrown all of the above on full-auto doesn't remove the fact that professionals and serious practitioners are using all of these creative variables to their benefit.

Your view of photography is akin to looking at a photocopier and saying "well, drawing isn't that creative".

[FlemishBeeCycle]

I understand your position, and perhaps I should have better clarified my own. I did not mean to imply that photography was not a technical or creative field, rather by "mechanical process", I meant the physical act of creation.

I put a brush to canvas, or a pencil to paper. My gestures are effected by micro muscle movements, the interplay between the grain of the canvas and the camelhair in my brush, the way I personally perceive my subject. No two lines drawn by my hand, no two drops of ink flecked from my pen will ever be the same. My emotional state at the time will felt in my brush strokes.

All your points I agree with, but ultimately photography (by its process) has less potential for a physically variable and personal experience (for example the connectedness that a sculptor feels with the work physically formed by their hands) specifically in the dimension that I am talking about.

Also, your points on composition (perspective, framing,focus,exposure) are present in other visual mediums (although focus and exposure aren't generally terms that I hear a lot of painters use, it's still there), and arguably more under your creative control.

Finally, with photography you are limited to that which exists already in this world (once you start getting heavily into post-processing, it's hard to call keep calling it "photography").

[greendestiny]

Oops, I didn't read this thread closely enough when commenting. I've totally stolen you're argument in my reply to another comment here. Don't sue me :)

[dreamux]

> An interesting viewpoint, but I think the differentiation here lies in the degree of "artistic" creation. Put 10 photographers in a room with Miles Davis and you'll get 10 pretty distinct photographs of the man. Have 10 people create a pixelated version of a photograph, and you'll have 10 pretty similar results.

Bad analogy, you're assuming that each of the 10 people is recreating a single image and getting 10 similar pixilated results -- this is akin to the 10 photographers being in the room with Miles and being told to stand in the same spot and shoot at the same angle at the same time... you'd end up with 10 similar but not identical results then too.

Instead; pair your 10 photographers with 10 pixilators, and you end up with 20 pieces of art.