Friday 29 June 2012

Digital Photography



Today's post is not so much about the picture but something I have been thinking about recently while laying computer games.

The question is simple, if "Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation..." then is it also photography if you take a picture or screenshot during a interactive computer game?

Now, this might sound like a stupid idea and post but taking the above screenshot while playing the game meant I was recording a durable image by recording the light on the screen. I essentially 'composed' the picture, set the field of view up and decided when to press the 'shutter'.

So my question to you, is taking a screen shot in a game already photography or is it when taking a picture of the computer screen with a camera, as the picture below shows, or maybe it is something more? Maybe the answer is I should not play computer games on a Friday evening. ;)

A very interesting article on this can be found here: The Art of in-game Photography


The pictures/screen shots are from the game 'Dear Esther', which itself is not really a game but more an experience or art so it was fitting for this post.

8 comments:

  1. The trouble and discussion is in all the content you give to the word photography. First the borders must be clear to define your position but in the end it stays photography. Thats for shure.

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  2. In photography everything is relevant.

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  3. I have no trouble with images of images, or layers of images. Personally, I would ask myself if my image is adding an additional layer of meaning to the original one. But that of course has nothing to do with any official definitions. Though provoking post, Cristian.

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  4. Thanks for your comment Björn!

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  5. I saw something today, which reminded me of this post... An article on the slowly emerging art of video game photography. Quite interesting maybe.

    http://www.petapixel.com/2012/07/25/the-art-of-video-game-photography/

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  6. Thanks for the link Bill, this is very interesting and I have added it to my post.

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  7. I liked this site very much as I like photography very much. I have recently shot many photographs of nature and buildings when I went for a trip.
    MyPhotoSharingSecrets.com

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