On 6/10/2017 2:10 PM, Bob Whitmire wrote:
Did they happen to have the first print of the negative, the one that
proves St Ansel was photoshopping long before photoshop ever came on the
scene?
As I recall, St. Ansel said that his printing of this negative varied over the years. Even if he didn't intend for that
to be the case, working in the darkroom from notes, no matter how detailed and careful, is going to vary more than
running off a few more prints from the same processed digital file. He said so himself, likening the negative to the
score and the print to the performance.
So . . . no 'pure' comparison may be possible.
OTOH, I certainly agree with you that he made very strong changes in his "performance" prints from straight printing. I
had the pleasure quite a few years ago of seeing exactly what you propose, a fully realized print of "Hernandez" next to
a straight print. The differences were startling. In a gallery of prints, and had this image not become famous, it would
be easy to miss the straight print.
OTOH, I have long been interested in the differences between what, or perhaps how, a camera sees and how people may see
the same thing. If it is true that they are different, should I prefer to carefully render how the camera 'saw' a
subject, or try to duplicate something like how I saw it when I clicked the shutter?
Galen Rowell expressed the problem well: "One of the biggest mistakes a photographer can make is to look at the real
world and cling to the vain hope that next time his film will somehow bear a closer resemblance to it"
There seem to me to be two levels of the question.
-------------------------
Does it look as I recall?
-------------------------
As to the first level, I've recently been deep* in playing with one aspect of this, DoF. Those who have been looking at
my posts over many months have seen a lot of focus stacked images. Some of the nicest comments seem to me to have been a
result of the focus stacking, although I haven't always mentioned it and I suspect the viewers often didn't realize I
had used it.
This little Viola happens to be in the ground in our yard. To spare knees, imagine it is in a pot on a table.
<http://www.moosemystic.net/Gallery/tech/Focus%20Stacking/DeepViola.htm>
The first two images are slices, and not super shallow, shot @ f8 - it's just a deep subject. Which image most closely
duplicates the way you would visually experience such a plant in person?
We have all spent our lives viewing photos with DoF shallower than our own visual experience of the subject would have
been, because there was no alternative. Just because we are used to living with the limitations of optical physics
doesn't mean it's the best way to represent the subject.
-------------------------
Does it recall the feeling I had when looking at the subject, perhaps the feeling that led me to take the shot in the
first place?
-------------------------
St. Ansel's description of the genesis of 'Hernandez' emphasizes the impact the subject had on him, that put in motion
the frenzy of rushed activity, quite unlike his usual approach, that got the shot.
Monochrome is already a considerable abstraction from the way the vast majority of us see the world. To process the
camera capture in such a way as to reproduce some of the feeling of the photographer in seeing the original seems to me
to be as close to "correct" as is possible.
AG's recent spate of images where he has, as he says "crashed the sliders against their stops" seem to me to largely be
inaccurate at least a bit, by the first criterion, and accurate by the second. I can't imagine that seeing that late
light on the silos, for example, didn't have a profound feeling affect on him. Reproducing that, to some degree or
another, seems to be one way that photographs become powerful and desirable to others.
I wrestle with this question every day, as I imagine you used to do. Yesterday evening, late light caught a fading
flower in our kitchen window, with the outside screen throwing a grid of shadows on it. Just knocked me out. A shot
straight out of the camera - blah - bit bucket. A little PS, and it becomes something rather like what I "saw"
<http://zone-10.com/tope2/main.php?g2_itemId=22086>
But, as Galen R. says, not quite. The light/color was somehow more, well,
golden?
What Reality Moose
* ;-)
--Bob Whitmire
Certified Neanderthal
On Sat, Jun 10, 2017 at 3:53 PM, Michael R. Collins <
MRC.OlympusList@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Not sure how many prints of this get exhibited, but the current Georgia
O'Keeffe exhibit in Toronto at the Art Gallery of Ontario has one;
apparently Adams was a friend and visited from time to time when she had
moved to NM. The drama is quite evident looking at an actual print close-up.
Michael
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What if the Hokey Pokey *IS* what it's all about?
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