Everything Can Be Virtual

Impressions from a Country Garden

Photos: Hadi Teichmann

By Hadi Teichmann

Does a photograph really depict objective reality? Incorruptibly so? If you affirm this - why, in so many cases, are people disappointed about their photographs, because - as they say - they "did not get what they saw"? But what did they really see when taking the picture, and what did the camera see for them? And why did the camera not record their portrait of reality? One of a couple of answers is that a camera is a technical device, an "apparatus" without feelings and reflections - very much in contrary to the person operating it, the photographer. But even the camera changes, manipulates (in the neutral sense of the word), alienates the objects of the real world - by the setting of the diaphragm (depth of focus), of exposure time, by the choice of the lens (focal length), by using (colour and other) filters - to mention only a few facets. This is why there are three - as a rule competing - realities: the photographer's, the camera's, and last-not-least the reality's reality, the "true" (whatever that is) world.

Computers have brought us another mode of manipulation: digital imaging up to (artistic?) "virtualization". PC-programs like Photoshop, Photo Paint, Paint Shop Pro, Photoimpact, and many others - some of them very specialized like the Virtual Painter plug-in, which tries to convert photographs into paintings of different painting styles - offer a bandwidth of tools and filters for subsequent picture processing, which photographers had always dreamed of. Gone are the good old days of sticky dark rooms with their limited possibilities of improving, "changing", and "alienating" pictures.

In "Everything can be Virtual" I would like to show you some of my own results of using software for digital imaging, especially for virtualization: creating a virtual image of reality on the basis of photographic reality. Nothing very spectacular as you will see. My aim is to encourage you to make your own experiments with virtual and other realities, perhaps with better (and more spectacular), maybe artistic results. Believe me: Whatever you try - it will be a lot of fun. You will be surprised...

The first series of pictures show an identical reality in so far as they are all based on one and the same photograph of an early morning at Sjöbodskogen on the Åland Islands taken by a simple digital camera. The original, which will show up when you move the mouse cursor over one of the virtualized pictures, was slightly "tuned" by Photoimpact. The five digital images are the result of manipulating the original by changing (substituting) colours, adjusting colour saturation etc., and finally virtualizing them by applying filters, which simulate different painting styles as artists use them, like water-colour, gouache, collage, and others.

Later in this exhibition, I shall neither comment any picture nor shall I unveil its photographic original. The pictures have abandonned their parents. This is as it should be. I leave you on your own with them.

Early Morning at Sjöbodskogen

Photo: Gerd Gerbig

Above: water-colour (left), coloured drawing (right); right: gouache; below: collage (left), silk screen (right)



	The Bay Photo: Gerd Gerbig Water-colour



			Lynnet Photo: Hadi Teichmann Collage





			Linas Traum mit dem Laufrad (Lina's Bicycle Dream) Photo: Matthias Teichmann Coloured drawing/Colour composition



			Kolkwitzia Photo: Hadi Teichmann Oil/Silk screen





						Everything's in Bloom Photos: Hadi Teichmann




	Scenes from the Odenwald Photos: Hadi Teichmann

The End

Click on the picture to go back to the Menu