FAQ 5 - “Light”

  • 501. Why is “light” such a big deal in photography?

    Because “recording onto a light-sensitive surface” has from the beginning been at the heart of most definitions of the word “photography.”

    The word “photo” actually comes from the Greek word for “light,” and advanced photographers often say that “understanding light” is the key to successful photography.

    “Light” is one of photography’s six foundational elements that shape TTG.

  • 502. Why does TTG make such a strong distinction between “light”-related changes (tones and colors) vs. non-“light”-related changes (forms and shapes)?

    Because viewers do.

    That distinction is so much a part of the public’s knowledge about photography — their “photographic literacy” — that there’s rarely a need to talk about it.

    But here’s more talk about it

  • 503. And that public awareness of how “light” behaves in photos affects the degree to which people trust photographs?

    Yes, definitely. Non-“light”-related changes are naturally regarded more skeptically than are “light”-related changes.

    Viewers are always going to be more wary of...

    . . . “changes that wouldn’t happen unless someone intervened to change them” (changes to forms and shapes)

    than of

    . . . “changes of a type that would have happened anyway” (changes to tones and colors).

  • 504. But the behavior of “light” in photographs hasn’t changed, so why is this an issue now when it wasn’t 50 or 100 years ago?

    Because of the introduction of digital technology, which for the first time made NON-“light”-related changes easy to make.

    More

  • 505. Why doesn’t TTG spell out which specific “light”-related changes are allowed, the way allowable non-“light”-related changes are carefully spelled out?

    (This is a reference to TTG’s Allowable Changes)

    The answer is, “Because there is no limit on the light-related changes that photographers can perform in order to meet P7.”

    TTG spells out no limits on the nature or degree of light-related changes

  • 506. Technically speaking, most changes to non-“light”-related aspects of digital photographs are really just changes to the “light”-related aspects — tones and colors — of individual pixels.

    So what’s to keep a photographer from making “light”-related changes to accomplish deceptive non-“light”-related changes (like making things disappear) and then labeling the result as TTG?

    ______________

    P7     is there to prevent that.

    The fact that TTG doesn’t spell out which “light”-related changes are allowed (see #505 above) doesn’t mean that TTG photographers can make any “light”-related changes they want. See “D” on this page.

    All “light”-related changes have to combine to produce a result that meets the rinairs standard in P7 or the photograph cannot qualify for the TTG label.

  • 507. What does the “light” vs. non-“light” distinction mean for TTG photographers?

    It means that TTG photographers should record non-“light”-related aspects (forms and shapes) the way they want them to appear in the final image.

    Unlike the situation with “light”-related aspects (see #505 above), only a select few kinds of changes can be made to the non-“light”-related aspects of a photograph without disqualifying it from TTG.

    Many of the most popular post-exposure changes that photographers have in recent years been performing on non-“light”-related aspects (forms and shapes) will disqualify the photograph from the Trust Test.

    “Why doesn’t TTG allow my favorite manipulation?”

 

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