• Members 273 posts
    May 5, 2023, 8:17 p.m.

    [quote="@NCV"]
    [quote="@LeeJay"]

    Well, I'm an engineer and scientist and mother nature is not flexible about her rules.

    I think of it more as a science. But it can and does involve creativity so, I suppose.

  • Members 273 posts
    May 5, 2023, 8:18 p.m.

    It might be very, very hard to find that elegance and beauty, at times.

  • Members 273 posts
    May 5, 2023, 8:18 p.m.

    I don't know. Is one reality and one different in some way? I'm not sure what that headlight looks like.

  • Members 1737 posts
    May 5, 2023, 8:20 p.m.

    I'm an engineer, and I don't think of engineering as a science at all. The scientists figure out how the universe works. The engineers harness the scientists' findings to make things that are useful, and sometimes beautiful.

    BTW, most of what folks call color science isn't science. It's engineering. Real color science is a branch of psychology.

    And most of computer science isn't science.

  • Members 1737 posts
    May 5, 2023, 8:21 p.m.

    Next time you see a Honda Odyssey on the street, look at the headlight.

    image.png

    image.png

    PNG, 513.7 KB, uploaded by JimKasson on May 5, 2023.

  • Members 1737 posts
    May 5, 2023, 8:24 p.m.

    And good engineering can be -- heck, should be -- elegant and beautiful.

    It can be well hidden. Under the skins or in the code, for example.

  • Members 50 posts
    May 5, 2023, 8:39 p.m.

    This definition is very questionable. Art is not typical in a visual form. We have music and lyrics. It is also not primarily to produce works to be appreciated for beauty or emotional power. Art can also be ugly and sometimes speaks to the intellect.

    I found this more reasonable definition in the net claiming to cite some Oxford dictionary: "the use of the imagination to express ideas or feelings, particularly in painting, drawing, or sculpture". This contradicts simple image shooting without an imagination, idea or feeling, i.e., most of my own images. I am okay with that.

  • Members 273 posts
    May 5, 2023, 8:40 p.m.

    Well, I've spent most of my career as a research engineer at a national lab using engineering to do science, so maybe that's colored my thinking.

    Here. Something I engineered (it's a test machine for a particular type of research).
    photos.imageevent.com/sipphoto/samplepictures/huge/IMG_2496.jpg

  • May 5, 2023, 8:50 p.m.

    The headlight would have been designed by a car stylist, not an engineer. Car stylists are trained in art schools.

  • May 5, 2023, 8:52 p.m.

    Most of it is, just nothing to do with computers. Or maybe it's maths.

  • Members 435 posts
    May 5, 2023, 8:52 p.m.

    Excellent shot. Nice button pushing that I do as well 😉

    Danny.

  • May 5, 2023, 8:54 p.m.

    Depends on where you're looking at them from.

  • May 5, 2023, 8:57 p.m.

    That's the best engineers. Engineering has, over time, evolved into a very conservative set of disciplines. You can see why - when you're designing things on which lives depend, innovation is not encouraged. So yes, most engineers work from the textbook and reconfiguring established solutions, because that is how they are trained.

  • May 5, 2023, 8:58 p.m.

    But your argument applies just as much to painting. That was the point.

  • Members 243 posts
    May 5, 2023, 9:04 p.m.

    I am of the mindset that stylists create the perimeter shape of the headlight, the aesthetic portion of it, and engineers fill that hole with function. I don't see a stylist designing that lens.

  • Members 435 posts
    May 5, 2023, 9:05 p.m.

    If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then art should be in the eye of the beholder .... IMHO.

    Danny.

  • Removed user
    May 5, 2023, 9:23 p.m.

    of course photography can be art . . . in the right hands.

  • Members 273 posts
    May 5, 2023, 9:25 p.m.

    I don't think defining something as art should be an aesthetic judgement. If it was, most art wouldn't be art.