Re: Computers in competition

[P3D Marvin Jones <72657.3276@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> One concern is the situation where you have software so powerful that will
> create computer 3d images that beat a good original 3d image with very
> little input/effort from the user!  Imagine having a little 3d button that
> will transform your 2d image to 3d with minimum fuss.  You can have 3d
> photography from 2d images.  Is that OK?  

I think you are over-exaggerating the power of the computer. Software is, after
all, only a tool. Creating original images requires the user to bring a great
deal of talent and imagination to the table. And as Lincoln Kamm, who is a
master of the technique, can tell you, it takes hours and hours and hours of
minute, tedious work to create a 2D to 3D conversion.

> Another concern: One of the rules of competitions is that the image must be
> the original work of the maker.  What if you start from some stock flat
> image and create a 3d modified version of it?  Is this still your work? 
> Boundaries are getting fuzzy.

This, and not the question of computer vs camera, was actually the basis of the
discussion at the SCSC board meeting; a first-place award had been made to
Lincoln for a 3-dimensional conversion of a painting which itself was not done
by him. It was my contention that people who photograph Half Dome are not
required to have piled up the rocks themselves, and people who photograph the
Eiffel Tower are not required to have designed and constructed the tower from
their Tonka Toys set. Spending 70 or 80 hours at a computer console
painstakingly applying minute alterations to a painting to create a second-eye
view, as Lincoln did, seems to me to be the equivalent of spending a few minutes
negotiating just the right angle on a high-rise building. A competition is (or
should be) judged on the skill and imagination of the competitor in choosing and
rendering a subject, rather than on the subject itself, be it a national park, a
family picnic, or a painting. And again, there was never any discussion at SCSC
of not allowing computer images; only of whether it was fair to either party to
judge them cheek-to-jowl with "normal" images captured in the "normal" way.


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