[fooqux]

I believe you and the parent are arguing from two different axis.

You seem to be arguing from a perspective that photography is an opportunity to use technology to show humans what's impossible to see, be it because our eyes don't register the low light (thus needing long exposures or composites), or because we experience time differently than a long exposure photograph shows it.

Meanwhile, the parent is arguing from the perspective that photography should reflect only what our eyeballs can see, without embellishing (or at least as much). Capturing the moment, as it were.

You can both be right, and (I would argue) are. There's room for both (and many more) perspectives in art.

[dylan604]

If we only ever “saw” the universe through naked eye observation, we’d “know” a lot less about our universe. Creating waveforms or spectrographs of sound would be similar since humans can’t see sound, should we never be allowed to use those. We can’t see x-rays, so should doctors just have to guess at where your bones are broken?

The fact that humans can over come their limited abilities from their natural senses to be able to experience real world in wider gamuts is a very cool thing. These types of astro images are real world data. It’s not some genAI made up from thin air. People are not rendering things in some 3d software and passing it off as real, or making obviously impossible comps. These are just presenting data that exists that we can’t “see” without help.

Again, I’m all for managing expectations. Every time I let someone look through my telescope, I remind them it is not going to be what they’ve seen from Hubble or anything else online.

[fooqux]

> We can’t see x-rays, so should doctors just have to guess at where your bones are broken?

Hey if I wanted to see strawmen, I'd watch The Wizard of Oz instead of trying to have this conversation.

Actually, I'm unsure why you're arguing with me. I literally said you were both right. Unless your stance is that GP's definition of art is incorrect? If so, that's a far more slippery slope than I wish to go down and I bid ye adieu.