Digital BW, The Print

James Klebau wrote:

>I think Photoshop is a wonderful program, and computers make it easy to
>produce bad work. I once saw images by a photographer who had transfered
>cloud portions of some of his images into some of his other landscape
>photographs. I thought the result was dramatic  --  and corny.
>  
>
No argument there.. I feel similarly about digital sometimes... It's 
almost too easy to shoot technically correct images... It allows many 
more to pass themselves off as "photographers" or "artists,"  while when 
you look at their work it is trite, predictable, and/or simply apes 
someone else's..

There are legions of people who take bad initial imagery and want to add 
PhotoShop filters to create pseudo-art...

Here I always try and keep in mind something I learned from Galen Rowell 
about rainbows and apply it to digital.. As many of you know, Galen was 
famous for Rainbows, Mountain Light and other natural lighting phenomena 
in his photos..  He had a cardinal rule though... Don't create an image 
dependent upon that effect.  If it would be a good image WITHOUT the 
effect, then its addition to the image "can" make it a great one (not 
automatically "will"), and can make a "great" image "iconic."  I see 
digital much the same way..  Start with good or great imagery and IF 
digital adds something significant, fine..  If not, leave it alone.. 
 But don't hit me with crap that depends solely upon some "neat" digital 
effect...  The former images will be timeless, the latter will be old 
next week.

>I don't dislike photo collages. I just don't like fabrications that are
>passed off as realistic.
>  
>
Agreed again... Although I get more pissed at pj's who do it than anyone 
else.. It's that feeling of being deliberately deceived by someone who 
ostensibly is supposed to be illustrating reality..

>Images by photojournalists Salgado, Bresson, and many others are art without
>altering the content of the image. The art was in seeing and feeling the
>moment, the pure moment ­­­­ photography's forte.
>  
>
I dunno, kinda bad choice there...

Smith, Salgado, Cartier-Bresson, Bourke-White, etc.. real history shows 
they each staged images when need be...  Pre-visualization and staged 
images (IMHO) are close cousins of images recreated after the fact.. 
 The only REAL difference is that pre-digital it was REALLY tough to 
make believable after-the-fact alterations..  With digital we can all do 
it with ease (the trick is still to not look corny or trite),,

>Sure "the camera is just a tool." But if someone uses the camera as only an
>adjunct to a process, then the result is less of the kind of art that I call
>photography. I could take the lens off the front of a view camera, remove
>the ground glass, and pour paint through the camera onto canvas. The results
>might be wonderful, but I would call it a painting, not a photograph.
>
>  
>
I won't disagree there, understanding the tools of any art..  Their 
advantages and disadvantages is imperative to creating well with that 
tool.  Again that takes us back to creating great imagery in-camera 
first.. (and for me that "in camera" rule would include stuff like Sky's 
where much of what might be traditionally shot "in-camera" is actually 
created in Bryce or Poser, etc..)  For me, the real bottom line is this, 
if technique obscures, rather than enhances an image, or becomes THE 
point of the art, it'll be here today and gone tomorrow.  Even if it 
becomes truly popular in mass culture, and a moneymaker, others will 
copy it and reproduce the effect  at lesser skill levels and the 
technique will become hopelessly bourgeois.  "Elvis on Velvet"  (not 
that painting on velvet was ever a great technique) But, need I say more?
Keith

 

"Just some guy," and caretaker of the Multiverse's largest EPSON printer 
User Community (highly recommended by Vogon Poets and MegaDodo 
Publications), at:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EPSONx7x_Printers/
 
"For the rest of you out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together 
guys"

 






[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]