I don’t want to be a whinger but ….

[XenPix]

I’m a bit late to the party here, but I’d like to add some thoughts.

In the original thread, swampa made the point that this “effect” is not available to digitial photographers, as the border exceeds those allowed within the Farktography rules. I can see soosh’s points and reasoning as to why they should be allowed, but it does place a disparity on the rules depending upon your format of choice. I cannot add a film border to any digital shot I take, but the same shot, if taken with my film SLR would be submittable with the border effect. I call this an effect because it is not actually a part of the physical composition. It may be a part of the mental composition process that soosh (and others) go through when they frame up a shot, but it is not something that is physically visible at the time of shooting. Whilst I have nothing against the border for a final composition in any other area, within farktography, it is something that is a selective addition to photographs. The fact that the selection is done by which camera you pick up is not something that I see as making it OK. It’s not an in camera effect (it’s just in camera, har har). I see this along the lines of HDR. It’s something you can do, and many find it an attractive addition to their photographs. However, it could also be classed as a spot treatment. Not all of the photo is affected by this addition (if you look at it from a stand point of digital photography, you would have to do changes to only certain parts of the image to achieve the effect). It is a border. It was designed to help feed the film through the camera and provide protection to the edges of the film/negative and a border between images for ease of processing.

My feelings are that something that is not available to both digital and film users should really be considered a no go area (edit: I didn’t make this very clear. If I can’t add a film border to my digital photos, why should I be able to add a film border to my TLR or SLR photos? Things like vignetting (ie holga) can be achieved with lensbaby or you can get some dodgy filter to stick over the end of your camera.).

What I’m trying (and failing) to say, is that I believe if you see it through the viewfinder, it’s fair game. Anything outside of that is an addition or added effect to the photograph and should be universally within the Farktography rules. So IMO we either take away the film border, or we allow a new type of border for digital images.

I ramble, so I hope you can get what I’m trying to say.

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