What is "photography"

All photographs are images but not all images are photographs. That's very profound.

You can see photograms for whatever you like. It might be a little man in the box making drawings. But we are talking about definitions here and that means general acceptance. You could have looked this up for yourself. Check out the work and acceptance of Moholy-Nagy and Man Ray for example. I noted Man-Ray previously.
The major Australian Photographic award won by photograms went to either Ponch Hawks or Ruth Maddison in the 1970s. Can't remember which one it was now, probably Hawks.

Photography is a process with more than one part. It hasn't happened until the image is fixed. That's the big difference between a camera obscura and the making of a photograph.

That's fine.

In reply to Alan's question in the thread title I have posted my definition of a photograph, the difference between a photographs and images and what I see as photography.

This thread is obviously not going to definitively define "What is 'photography'" which everyone must accept so all it will produce is people's opinion on what is photography.

Electromagnetic radiation from 380 to 780nm is visible light.

All electromagnetic radiation is light and is carried by photons. There is radio wave light (radio wave photons), X Ray light (X Ray photons), gamma wave light (gamma wave photons), infra red light (heat photons), etc.

Any image (a writing, a graph) produced by the action of any photon, (any light) is a photograph.

Rich

Of course we could expand on that to say visible light to humans. Some other organisms perceive light from different wavelengths.

Can't argue with that.

Other than to say some photons may be offended by the categorization and argue that they are all the same. Their case being that it is the energy defined by the frequency of their oscillation that allows for the pesky human categorization... 😁

That's fine indeed. And that is what we were happily and civilly exploring until you responded to one of mine by saying it was much what you had said. It wasn't and I pointed out the differences. Everyone recognized the complexities of what we were trying to do. No one had reached or claimed to have reached an ultimate definition. Of course, you may continue to believe in whatever including the little man in the box.
Here's the difference. As others have said before, we aren't engaged in competitions. Instead of discussion you pontificate and then fall back on the "people can all have different opinions and mine's different to yours." Don't you think that a more productive course might be to share and build on the experience of others? You were happily going along with the joint effort to explore a definition until it became apparent that your suggestion needed more work. Sheesh, they all need more work. At that point however you lapse into "we all have our own opinions."

And we do all have different opinions so we'll just have to disagree.

I don't see anything wrong with that.

I can see quite a lot wrong with it.
Reread the posts here. It was a collaborative effort to get some consensus on a tricky question that is relevant to all photographers. Participants were building on each other's thoughts. That's how we grow. That's the value of forums.

I don't agree with some of the opinions posted in this thread just as some don't agree with my opinions.

There is nothing wrong with that.

Sorry, I didn't include the quote from Xpat USA "So "created" implies the Greek "written with light" and could be said to exclude processing because that is covered by "Fixing". I would however exclude post-processing of any kind because at that point photography becomes imagery."

This is a point I'd have to think about. "Post processing" is a very wide field. I can see that there could be a case for excluding some kinds of post processing as imagery, but not all. Anyone want to try to refine that further?

Define "Post Processing" because it seems to me from your comment that you shoot sooc jpegs only.

You cannot produce an image from a raw file without post processing, either in camera or manually using a raw converter.

Even people who choose to shoot sooc jpegs are instructing the camera to do the post processing from raw data to a jpeg image internally.

That's one heck of a conclusion jump and taken right out of context. You need to go back and re-read the thread, think about it and adjust your reply.
A PS. You will find I agree with you completely. I'm looking at discussion on where post processing is part of the photography process and where it might become something else. It's a difficult thing to pinpoint.

There is no need to adjust my reply.

I already posted my views on where post processing fits into "What is photography".

Perhaps practise what you preach and follow your own advice -

Yup.

Rich

Butting in:

I regard "Fixing" in your schema as including Processing, thereby including conversion to an image from raw. We could say that immediately after conversion from raw, the resulting image is still a photograph (just as a print made from film is properly called a photograph). The instant that a pixel in that converted image is altered, the image becomes post-processed and thereby not a photograph - just an image.

I'm claiming that conversion from raw to an image is "processing", not "post-processing".

That makes no sense at all because if you opened a given raw file in different raw converters set to different default colour spaces you would call the images photographs but if you opened a raw file in a raw converter and then changed the color space the image would not be a photograph because the pixel values changed.

You misunderstand. Each raw conversion results in a separate image, not a changed image.

ok, but it then depends on where someone chooses to put the borderline between pre- and post- processing.

I put the borderline at the ADC in the camera. Anything done to the raw data after the ADC (demosaicing etc etc) I see as post processing.

You seem to be putting your borderline after demosaicing the raw data, converting the raw data to rgb values via a working colour space and colour profile.

I haven't abandoned this discussion. I'm still digesting what y'all are saying and I'll get back to it.
I think it is a topic worth developing although I'm also unsure about why I think it is worth exploring. Something to do with setting my own boundaries about what I want to do with photography.

Well, typically the raw ADC readout data already gets processed in camera (°), before it gets stored in the RAW file.

(°): noise reduction ("star eater" if overdone), dead pixel elimination, PDAF pixel interpolation, sharpening, etc.pp.

Not to mention advanced camera techniques, say Hires, HDR, ND, and of course all other multi-exposure modes that always get even more pre-cooked before the data gets written to the presumatly "raw" file.

So how would you rate SOOC JPEG files?
They're already demosaiced, white balanced, and whatnot.
Polaroid: always processed.

Pardon the pedantry,
for some reason "etc.pp." shows as a bad link on my computer ...

I answered that question earlier this thread.

More thoughts. This discussion is going to go in lots of different directions and it will get difficult to hold the thoughts together and arrange them in logical lines.
I think I am doing this for my own benefit. The field that might be considered photography is changing on an almost hourly basis. Exploring all the byways and technology that might be argued to be part of photography is now a pretty big task. Deciding where you want to develop your own skills and keeping up to date just with your own bit of the sandpit, is now daunting.