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fuss#3
#3 The socalled flaws
selection of pixels #1
There is no more “bad” photo. If you talk about resolution: high resolution has become a very basic requirement of camera when compare to those newly invented 15 years ago. If you talk about style: cameras offer tons of convenient “beauty modes” for the users to take photographs with specific style without any effort needed; just a click can apply fancy filters on a photograph on mobile apps. If you talk about retouching: photo retouching is no longer something privileged, we don’t need any specific skills to edit the photos, and software is made user-friendly, easy and convenient.
selection of pixels #2
With all these, we have the feeling that our photographs are getting “finer and finer”. Our photographs are “improved” with the above. We can make “better” photographs now even we don’t really know much about photography. Behind these, we seem to equal the refined photos to “better” photos, they have “higher” quality and are much more presentable. Most of us would undoubtedly prefer those photographs with such so-called “better” quality. And naturally we prefer less those unrefined, raw, plain photographs. We think they are inferior when compared with those refined one.
selection of pixels #3
It is interesting to see our pursuit of a specific aesthetic of photographs between this inferior/ superior concept, which we may not be aware of it. The raw, plain images without undergoing any extra processing are considered inferior when compared with those well-retouched photographs. We always love and pursue the details and delicacy on a photograph. We want the images look fine and fancy. We want eyes-candies. We even hope that the scene re-presented by photographs can look better than the reality.
selection of pixels #4
Such pursuit somehow blinds us in the way that we naturally ignore the beauty of the other side: the low resolution of the camera lens, the grains, and the obvious pixels shown because of the digitalization of photographs. They are actually the characteristics of digital images in natural: photographs are a combination of data and shown in terms of pixels. While we let our fantasy of photographs judge them as something inferior or even (so-called) “flaws�, we may lose the chance of tasting the expressive power of them. But it seems most of us are much more willing to shut our eyes and ears.
selection of pixels #5
There is not only one kind of aesthetic in photography. There is no right or wrong about aesthetic too. While we are all having our preference about certain aesthetic, what more important is to aware and realize what are preferring actually. Otherwise we would just being trapped and ignore its potential, then finally lose the ability to imagine things about photography.
This issue’s photographs All the visuals shown in this issue are made by selection of specific part of pixels in these following (digital) photographs, by “magicwand” tool in photoshop. Photographs and their specific part of pixels are chosen due to their specific expressive quality.
selection of pixels #1: compression of pixels made by instagram’s “Inkwell“ filter. #neat #disciplined #hear tless
selection of pixels #2: big grains made by autocontrast function in instagram. #intense #solid
selection of pixels #4: noise made by poor camera resolution. #dir ty #sticky
selection of pixels #3: noise made by high ISO setting. #stimulated #annoyed
selection of pixels #5: poor pixelization of large scale of grey tone. #average # anonymous
fuss is a self-initiated project focusing on the scene of daily life photographs influenced by nowadays’ technology. It aims to reflect on the new nature of daily life photography we made today and to find the value in it. Concept, text, photographs and design are all by Fuse Tsang.