ontime
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: Off
|
 p.6 #12 · The word 'Organic' is really annoying! | |
cogitech wrote:
Indeed. Furthermore, "micro-contrast" is an objective, measurable term. Somebody didn't just make that shit up. It is also referred to as "local contrast" and it is exactly what you are modifying when you adjust the "clarity" slider (or similar) in your RAW app. The "3D" aspect is a combination of many things; some measurable, some more subjective. None of it is BS.
It's like all the terms people use to discuss wine. Until you really make an effort, it all sounds like BS. I know for a fact that it isn't, just like I know that these so-called "colorful terms" are not BS either. Just because one doesn't understand something does not necessarily mean it is BS.
Many people do care to use these terms, because they do convey meaning. What else is language for? So either learn what the terms mean or just "roll with it". Complaining about the words or rejecting them entirely has no effect on what meaning they convey for those who use them.
As an example, I know for a fact that I can use the following terms to discuss bokeh in the Alternative forum and 90% of the photographers there will know exactly what I mean:
- Smooth (creamy, buttery, etc.)
- Charged (nervous, electrified, edgy, etc.)
- Funky (bubbly, wacky, etc.)
- Swirly (twirly, spinny, etc.)
- Ugly (fugly, dizzy, distracting, etc.)
These terms do have meaning, whether anyone likes them or not. Those who would express their annoyance with these terms would only be displaying their ignorance....Show more →
What you're talking about resembles the concept of bounded rationality, except geared less toward decision-making and more toward description-making. Describing a photograph requires a whole lot of information processing. Often, people are unable to break down what they are seeing into processable, communicable bits, thus they oversimplify a series of complex characteristics into a single buzz word, i.e., "organic."
I don't know a whole lot about "micro-contrast," but just because it is associated with a set of values that can be tweaked using a slider in a computer program, doesn't mean it's quantifiable by the human brain. Well, at least not in a way people can articulate properly. When the brain is able to process something you can't articulate meaningfully through language, you try to express how you "feel" about the subject.
Feelings are the issue at hand here. You see, the brain is awesome (have I identified myself as a moron?  ) at processing data even while you may not necessarily be aware of the computations. It's something we've come to label as intuition. When Warren Buffett has a gut feeling that it would be an excellent investment in company X, it's not a baseless judgment. Buffett's spent years making these calculations based on available data and at his level intuition is likely due to the brain processing large amounts of data in a short amount of time. But I doubt he, or any other stakeholders, would make a decision based on a gut feeling.
Buffett presenting a possible investment move to a set of shareholders based on a gut feeling would lead to the same type of scenario as we're seeing here with certain people getting irritated with buzz words. His gut feeling derives from his brain taking a pool of data, simplifying or possibly oversimplifying the data, then making a calculation based on that processed data. It all makes sense to him when he feels what he feels, but to anyone else, they can't understand what he's talking about. People who are annoyed at buzz words used to describe photographs have good reason to be irritated. It's only natural - they have no idea what that person is talking about because of the phenomena I've described above. In sum: people "feel" a certain way about a photograph because it's the way the brain downconverts information resulting from complex processing, but conveying this feeling to someone else is difficult because these calculations have not occurred in their brains.
"Organic" is extremely vague and based on this type of intuition. "3-D" is in the same category, except that's based on your brain processing a whole heap of data collected by your eyes in a certain way which has been well studied by psychologists at this point, so that's more easily explained. In fact, you could probably just ask an expert 3-D animator to tell you how this works. Jump into any modern video game on the Xbox 360 and you'll see thousands of examples of how illusion is used to create the perception of 3-D on a 2-D plane: motion parallax, perspective, texture gradients, lighting, etc. are all manipulated toward this goal. Your brain processes all of this information too quickly for you to break down through reasoning, unless you sit down and study it for a long, long time.
|
