art or accuracy

[neil groves]

I have just been playing with a shot I made a few nights ago and have lots of different outcomes all of which I like, what is the idea of this hobby?.....accuracy to what you saw in the scope or an artistic piece that is beautiful but no resemblance to the actual object?

for example some of my versions now include star spikes that I placed using photoshop, the main stars of the cluster being gold with the background stars blue and many other different end results....what are we actually looking for, artistic merit or accuracy to the object itself?

Neil.

[jambouk]

You take away from this hobby whatever you want.

If you want to get published in the Journal of the British Astronomical Society then you likely need to be at the accuracy end with data on a stars variability, or some such scientific observation. At the other end of the spectrum you might want to do an oil painting like Van Gough's starry night and have it up in a National gallery...

Or you might just like to spend some of your spare time tinkering with bits of equipment and spending hours on reducing your periodic error for no other reason than you find it fun and rewarding and gives you an opportunity to escape the wife, kids, husband, parents...

Or the fact you can image the heavens, even if the results are very basic in comparision to others on SGL, but sharing those images on Facebook or the like gives you and others something to talk about.

Everyone is different and we probably have different aspirations for the hobby at different times.

James

[pete_l]

There is no single answer and no correct one, either.

One thing that might help is that if you find yourself preferring the creative aspect: adding elements to your images, is to consider writing an artist's statement for the work. This is essentially a small narrative that describes what you wish to achieve from the piece. Apart from guiding those who view it, it can also be helpful to the artist to work out in their own mind what they are wanting to achieve.

The artists I know feel that each piece is more about the "journey" to it's creation than about the final result.

In the end, it's what pleases you that matters.

[Alien 13]

A lot of the nominations for image of the year events are often arty and to be honest I prefer them that way, if we had to be perfectly correct scientificly most images would be grey smudges.

Alan

[ollypenrice]

It's your choice.

My choice is to follow certain rules, but those are mine. I like star colour to be accurate (in following the known spectra.) I like overall colour to be close to what the camera measured.

I don't invert any brightnesses, so I don't make 'x' which was really brighter the 'y' now dimmer than 'y.' But I do make the faint stuff much brighter than it was measured. (So do we all, that's the point of stretching. I just never put in a negative curve in crurves.)

Olly

[Uranium235]

As soon as you start to apply curves to an image so you can see the bits thats are otherwise buried, you are stretching the data in a non-linear way and hence taking it away from its scientifically correct state. But if you didnt do that (and just used levels for example), you end up with burnt data and a poor dynamic range. This is even more true in narrowband, since you are always using the data as more of an artisitc interpretation of its true colour - especially when creating synth green (ie: Cannistra method), otherwise it would be nothing but a whole bunch of red.

edit: ^^ gahhh... Olly beat me to it!

[michael8554]

If you stick to RGB filters you are presenting your images in a form we could see if we had ISO 64000 eyesight.

The Hubble Palette produces stunning images that are totally false "colours" but are scientifically very revealing.

As very well said already, be true to yourself and don't overly worry about what we think.

Michael

[JamesF]

Agreed.  If you're doing it for you, do what makes you happy.

James

[Zakalwe]

Technical artistry.

[glowingturnip]

...or in my case, artistic license to mask technical incompetence.

But seriously, nobody can tell you how you should be doing something that you do as a hobby, do whatever you like.

If you want images to be compared with other images on this forum then they would probably need to lean towards the technically accurate-ish, but if you wanted to go more arty, a simple 'edited for aesthetic impact' or something to accompany the pic, and it should be accepted for what it is.