Charles Sdunek wrote:
At 08:15 PM 3/24/02, you wrote:
I admit you have made a logical point, I would like to suggest
though, that while you seem to be interested in recording the world
as it is, I am more interested in expressing the world as I would
like it to be.
Seems to me that a camera always records the world as it is. It is a
mechanical device after all, not a paint brush. Beyond framing and the
usual camera adjustments there is not much room for expression in
making the exposure.
Well, I certainly did not mean to dismiss anyone elses work. Each
person expresses themselves in thier own way. What I meant by
"expressing the world as I would like it to be", is that I look for a
place, or a thing that inspires me to take the photograph, and by
framing it the way I like I cut out the things I dont want there. By
waiting until the lighting is exactly as I want it (or pretty close
anyway) and then making my exposure, I have recorded one perfect moment
in my eyes and not the millions of others. I can present a view of my
own little world within our world as a whole.
There certainly is a lot a photographer can do to make a
photograph *not* an unbiased representation of the scene as it
really was, from composition (excluding artifacts we don't like
in a natural scene) to filtration (your eyes don't really have a
polarizer, or a warming filter, or a graduated ND, etc.) to
manipulation in the darkroom (dodging and burning, contrast
manipulation, etc.)
Personally, I'm split in my preferences for landscapes, either
extremely fine-grain films like Technical Pan to record
excruciatingly fine detail, or infrared films that record a scene
like no one has ever really seen it. Take a look at, for
instance, http://www.phred.org/~josh/photo/isw_view.jpg -- that's
not what the view looks like to human eyes if you go there and
look at it, not at all.
--
josh@xxxxxxxxx is Joshua Putnam
http://www.phred.org/~josh/
Updated Bicycle Touring Books List:
http://www.phred.org/~josh/bike/tourbooks.html
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