Best Nikon color photographers

[MattKing]

I don't recall any DT's of Shore's work.

The Gardens at Giverney: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/215860

 

[DREW WILEY]

Interesting. A handful of the Giverney ones. Don't know why; maybe the Museum wanted something more permanent than Ektacolor 74. But DT's would have been done in editions, for sake of potential collectors too. The color signature is still blatantly Vericolor, and probably printed using pan matrix film by a particular big lab that wasn't very good at it. I always felt the muddy CN hues with its cyan-inflected poison greens of that time were a total mismatch for the gardens of Monet anyway.

A few of that era gang have had some their early 35mm work recently reprinted in DT, namely Meyerowitz and Eggleston. 35mm
suited Eggleston best; many of the others predominantly transitioned to 8x10 for quite awhile. I got to see a variety of their early contact prints; only Meyerowitz had the patience to make high quality contact prints, but even he switched to enlargements made by a pro lab. A very innovative time, with a number of iconic images, but plenty of bellyflops too. They were experimenters.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

That really is a good question Andreas.
In general i'm not a huge colour photography fan. Galen Rowell was widely published and gained renown IMO because he photographed adventure that most people don't experience. As a photographer, of mountains he certainly is not in the same class as Vittorio Sella, Bradford Washburn or Ansel Adams. Rowell's highly saturated images almost pre-saged the HD stylings of the digital era.
As far as colour photographers Elliott Porter and any number of photographers working with the dye-transfer process produced more compelling work.

Rowell switched to Velvia 50 and did most of his work for Outdoor Photography.

 

[koraks]

Don't know why; maybe the Museum wanted something more permanent than Ektacolor 74. But DT's would have been done in editions, for sake of potential collectors too.

These particular prints were gifted to the museum by gallerist Peter MacGill and were apparently part of an edition of 50. So they were not made because the museum 'wanted something more permanent'. The prints were made in 1984 when Shore's reputation was already pretty solid, so in all likelihood these prints were intended to be sold commercially. I expect MacGill played a role in the prints having been made; he opened his gallery just a year before and may have commissioned these prints as a matter of 'business as usual'.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Thanks. I just recall that the Giverney project was based on a grant, and certainly seemed to be a misfit for Shore's own style.

As far as Galen Rowell goes, he doesn't belong in the same conversation. He was an accomplished endurance climber who lived next door to a backpacking pal of mine, and made his living as an auto mechanic until he got a lucky break with NG. Best known as an adventure travel guru. A machine gunner who wasted hundreds of shots for an occasional lucky one, of the ski poster and SUV commercial ethos; made most of his money on stock shots for advertising, prior to the GoPro craze. A lot of tasteless filtration fakery, and eventually blatant PS abuse. Real "mountain light" wasn't his forte. More humble in person than his marketing persona. Just another climber with a camera, and he knew it. Another friend of mine who had a local lab made his R prints. Later bit inkjet prints were made for his short-lived gallery in the Eastern Sierra - obnoxious touristy fare, gussied up with fake color. That venue is now gone.

 

[koraks]

certainly seemed to be a misfit for Shore's own style.

I'm not intimately familiar with Shore's work, but at first glance, I found those Giverny photos kind of puzzling as part of his larger body of work. There's Monet, of course, and I wonder whether perhaps Shore was kind of 'stuck' with this subject matter and then saw himself forced to make the best of out far outside of his comfort zone. Just speculation though...

 

[Paul Howell]

A couple of years ago I saw a Nikon F2 with a charred body at a camera repair shop. It had been used, along with a bunch more, to photograph a rocket launch. But the assistant forgot to securely close the latches on its protective enclosure and the camera nearly melted. However, it was later serviced and continued to be used. The photographer (from Lockheed, I think) liked to use it to shoot executive portraits to hint that he needed new equipment.

When I worked for Reuters I used my personal gear which I had serviced at the London Nikon service center. The manager told me that he thought the F2 was the strongest pro level body that had been made to that time. I don't know how he came to that conclusion, but I took his expert opinion. I upgraded to an F3P, never had an issue with it and most seem to be good working order.

 

[benjiboy]

Do we know if his mama ended up taking it away or not?

She didn't, Kodak did it

 

[DREW WILEY]

Koraks - Shore was brilliant by how he so carefully balanced what would have otherwise been an obnoxious clash between his pumpkinish warm & flesh tones versus off-greens. It was a matter of exact proportionality, and most evident in the early book, Uncommon Places (with the sole exception of that Chevron gas station image with its dominant blue instead of green). But at Giverney, that whole strategy or template falls apart. But if Eliot Porter, for example, had shot those gardens using chrome film instead, it would have been a whole other story, and a better fit for DT too.

The success of Shore's early work revolves around the native idiosyncrasies of Vericolor L and Ektacolor 74 C prints. His later work seems more cerebral rather than visual to me - disconnected from his original formula.

When someone asks about a great Nikon color photographer I think of Ernst Haas. He didn't shoot just Leicas.

 

[Don_ih]

at first glance, I found those Giverny photos kind of puzzling as part of his larger body of work

Me also, but only in terms of subject matter. The viewpoint seems pretty Shore to me. And those photos make you think, "Well, that's a crummy park. Someone really needs to whack the weeds."

@Alex Benjamin likely disagrees with me

 

[DREW WILEY]

I like overgrowth and weeds, although I certainly whack down those on my own property due to fire hazard. I just thought that Shore's Giverney pictures were ho-hum, and could have been done by anyone using a misfit film.

 

[Alex Benjamin]

Me also, but only in terms of subject matter. The viewpoint seems pretty Shore to me. And those photos make you think, "Well, that's a crummy park. Someone really needs to whack the weeds."

@Alex Benjamin likely disagrees with me

Hey !!!


Oh wait....


You're right .


Actually, I don't know what to make of these. I can't figure out what he was going for, other than a purely documentary purpose, which is actually what he might have been asked to do. He was commissioned by the Met Museum to chronicle the restauration of the Giverny Gardens, but that doesn't say anything about how he approached that job, or what he thought of it afterwards. None are shown on his website, and he doesn't mention these in Modern Instances, even though there is a short chapter about the aesthetics of gardens, with two of his photos, one of the Stourhead Gardens in the UK, another of Tivoli, in New York. He might just have seen this assignment as an interesting challenge, which is fine.

That said, there are some I really like in the portfolio, like the view from afar, putting them in perspective with their surroundings.

The Giverny Portfolio

saksglobalartcollection.com

 

[Don_ih]

Alex, let's just say they're not really his most compelling work.

 

[Alex Benjamin]

Alex, let's just say they're not really his most compelling work.

Oh that's a given. And Shore might actually agree with us. Still, if I ever get to meet him, I would ask him about what he had in mind, what he was aiming for, and if he thought he succeeded or failed. Would make for an interesting conversation, I'm convinced.

 

[RudyMerz]

John Shaw ( John Shaw Photography ) - Great educator and photographer.

 

[George Mann]

Kodachrome is no longer made

And todays color films are crap!

 

[DREW WILEY]

It's all about understanding the color signature of various films. Kodachrome had its own special look; but so does and did the various Ektachromes, Fujichromes, and Agfachromes. A lot also depends on how the image is reproduced. Sure, I'd like to be shooting some 8x10 Kodachrome; but if ordinary E6 chrome film is now running around $50 a shot with processing, what would Kodachrome that size hypothetically cost per sheet today - $400? And what would be the point unless it were Kodachrome 25, and not that subsequent K 64 "crap". Those would sure be some long exposure times at f/64. (The largest Kodachrome film shots I've ever seen were taken on 5X7 sheet film - and wow!)

... "Best Nikon photographers" should include those who use Nikon large format lenses!

 

[George Mann]

not that subsequent K 64 "crap".

Delusional!

 

[jeffreyg]

Having read many of the comments, I wonder which/how many of the well known photographers mentioned were gifted cameras, lenses and film by manufacturers so their products would be associated with excellence and sought by a wider market ? Cheap effective advertising.

 

[DREW WILEY]

There were obviously a few, Jeffry, Galen Rowell being one of them in his later years, around the time he was experimenting with a Nikon N90 and being given a lot of Fuji 35mm film for sake of his classroom. He distinctly taught his students to "shoot as much film as possible" in order to get the best shots. I don't know if that advice just mimicked his own personal style, or more likely was done to please Fuji. I had a short incidental conversation with him about it. But my own approach as a large format photographer was the radically different sniper philosophy, rather than machine-gunning and hoping to get lucky. Let's just say we didn't see eye to eye, but were mutually polite.

I primarily worked in a non-photographic field in a purchasing agent position which included many equipment reviews and endorsements, and was gifted all kinds of things to test for decades, and certainly not just expendables or little stuff. My published reviews were especially thorough, objective, fair, and unbiased. They understood that from the start; I made it clear up front. No exceptions. But that inherently attracted manufacturers of the best and most reliable quality, so it was a win-win. And I had an especially close relation to my pro clients; they trusted my recommendations. That client or customer base included some big lab owners; and I got gifted some serious gear from them too, when they decided to move on.

 

[villagephotog]

OP, first to your original question, two additional names:

Franz Lanting, the greatest wildlife photographer who has ever lived, used Nikon for much of his best work (though later used Canon, I think).

David Doubilet, who is certainly one of the most under-recognized great artists of the second half of the 20th century. To me, he is the first real visual artist (as opposed to technical documentarian) working underwater, in either still or motion. Doubilet used a lot of Nikons, including underwater Nikons.

On the other question you seem to be asking, there is no correlation between camera brand and preferred type of color film. (Although maybe you could make a thin case for Leica and B&W film.)

In terms of preferred film type, the actual correlation, and it is a strong one, was between film type and intended end use, as Matt King pointed out. If you were shooting color for a 4-color offset printing process -- so that means primarily magazines, books, and catalogs -- you almost certainly used slide film, which was what the 4-color offset printing industry was set up to work with and preferred. A few photographers did shoot color negative film for magazines and books, but it was fairly unusual.

The one exception to this was professional newspaper and wire service photographers. Newspapers were also printed in 4-color offset. They did not shoot slide film if they were covering an assignment in color, which became more common starting in the 1980s. Both Kodak and Fuji made "press" films for that market, which were color negative emulsions, typically in speeds from ISO 400-1600. Very few newspaper photographers ever became famous; this is a function of what the art-industrial complex values. But there were orders of magnitude more of them than the big name fine-art and documentary photographers named here. Many were hacks, a majority were decent but no great shakes, and a few were great photographers. From the early 1960s until the mid 1990s, more than 70% of them used Nikon. So tens of thousands of pro Nikon photographers using large volumes of color negative film.

Go up another order of magnitude in numbers and you have portrait and wedding photographers (what in the UK they call "social" photographers), then and now the most numerous breed of professional photographer by far. Again, they don't really become famous outside their industry, so you won't see any named here. How many were/are actually great photographers? Plenty. Can any of us name them? No. Of course, a few portrait specialists do become famous and recognized by the art world, but a lot of those specific people start out on an editorial path -- i.e. they are shooting portraits for magazines and then books, not directly for people and families.

Wedding and portrait pros overwhelmingly used a professional color negative film from Kodak called Vericolor (several versions of it over the years; it evolved into the present-day Portra films). At the pro-oriented camera store where I worked in the 1980s, we sold brick after brick of that film from our refrigerator every week -- far more than any other film used by professional photographers. There were huge factory-sized labs in several places around the US that specialized primarily in developing and printing that film. Every Monday, those labs would take in thousands of rolls of Vericolor shot by wedding photographers in their region on the preceding Saturday. It was literally an industry within an industry built around one film. Here the end use is wet chemical prints on medium-contrast semi-matte surface photographic paper, and color negative was by far the superior starting point for that use. Per your title question, however, the large majority of wedding and portrait pros used Hasselblads and other medium format cameras. Nothing to say about Nikon there.

Among the great unwashed crowd of enthusiast amateurs -- many of whom are also great photographers -- a lot shot slide film. That's primarily because up until the 1990s, most slide films at ISO 200 or below were objectively sharper and more colorful than color negative films in those ISO ranges. That's especially true in the 50s, 60s, and 70s when color negative films were rough going. However, by 1990, at ISO 400 or above, color negative was typically better than slide. But not good. Not very many non-newspaper photographers ever shot color film above ISO 400. Digital cameras really revolutionized color photography above ISO 400.

Because of a job I had in the 1990s, I knew 1000+ Nikon-shooting professional photographers; they shot all kinds of film. And I knew hundreds of Canon and Hasselblad and Sinar-shooting professional photographers; they, too, shot all kinds of film. End use, not camera brand.

Forgot to add: the owner of the camera store that I managed started in the industry in the 1950s. He and several other people of his generation that I spoke with insisted that no other color film was ever as good as Kodachrome II, discontinued in the early 1970s over, I believe, environmental concerns. (Maybe Matt knows.)

 

[KinoGrafx]

The one exception to this was professional newspaper and wire service photographers. Newspapers were also printed in 4-color offset. They did not shoot slide film if they were covering an assignment in color, which became more common starting in the 1980s.

Sooooo, just for the historical record, I shot for Gannett newspapers (remember USA Today?) from 1989 to 1996 and we shot exclusively chrome for our daily work (fujichrome 100 and higher speed ektachrome when needed) I believe it was mostly because the editors didn’t really know how to look at negative film.

 

[DREW WILEY]

In the US, Kodachrome began its nose dive once most of the processing was subcontracted to a company called Kodalux (independent of Eastman Kodak itself). The quality control was poor, with an inordinate number of rolls coming back scratched. In the meantime, Ektachrome with its far simpler E6 processing was widely adopted. It was already standard for sheet film applications; and once Fujichrome also arrived in multiple formats, it was yet another nail in the coffin.

About Vericolor - when one of the most active portrait studios in this area closed with the death of its owner, the estate sale included not only many bricks of 120 Vericolor, but thousands of dollars worth of sheet film in 4x5, 8x10, and even 11x14 and 12X16. But in order to prove the sheet film boxes actually included the film, the idiot auctioneer opened up each box and even the inner pouches, so that the actual contents - the film itself - could be photographed and posted on the web ad. Those boxes had been on shelves unrefrigerated for quite awhile, and were probably of dubious utility anyway - but still ... talk about dumb.

 

[villagephotog]

Sooooo, just for the historical record, I shot for Gannett newspapers (remember USA Today?) from 1989 to 1996 and we shot exclusively chrome for our daily work (fujichrome 100 and higher speed ektachrome when needed).

Well, learn something new every day. None of the newspapers I ever worked with — a couple dozen — shot chromes. All Ektapress.

But I’m sure you weren’t the only ones. No blanket generalization goes unpunished. Maybe someday I’ll learn

 

[villagephotog]

Dad did have contact with Fred Herzog though - because Fred Herzog was convinced that the Kodachrome lab in Palo Alto was the very best at developing Kodachrome. So despite all the evidence to the contrary, he did his best to have all his Kodachrome forwarded there.

In the late 1980s, when I was working at a camera store in the Bay Area, Kodak organized annual tours of the Palo Alto processing plant for employees of camera stores that had relationships with the lab, which was every camera store in the northwestern US (not to mention thousands of drug stores, supermarkets, and curio shops, etc.). As you know, that plant was one of the original 7 (I think?) factory-scale processing labs that Kodak built around North America in, as I remember it, the 1950s and 60s.

I still remember being amazed by many things on that tour, but the clear star of the show was the Kodachrome line, which again, was one of the original factory-scale Kodachrome lines. I'm not sure how many they ever built, but I don't think even all KPL labs had them. It was an enclosed structure inside the larger factory building, something like 100 ft. long, and tall and wide enough to drive a car through. We could walk around it, but couldn't look at the actual machinery inside the structure because it was all in the dark, of course.

A couple of years later, a guy came to us from a startup business in San Francisco called The New Lab; he was going around the northwestern US trying to sign up camera stores to offer his lab as a service to customers. They had a new way to develop Kodachrome in a cine processor not much bigger or more expensive than a minilab. They charged a couple dollars more per roll than Kodak, but the pitch was a more carefully managed lab operating at the scale of a custom color lab, rather than an industrial factory lab like KPL Palo Alto. We did sign up with him, and they did a good job with Kodachrome, but they came along right as Kodachrome was losing a lot of ground to E-6 films, especially Fuji E-6 films like Velvia and Provia. Interesting technology, bad timing. I believe it was one of those same cine processor K-14 machines that was the last place to develop Kodachrome, somewhere in the US midwest, before it died.

In the US, Kodachrome began its nose dive once most of the processing was subcontracted to a company called Kodalux (independent of Eastman Kodak itself).

When I took my tour of KPL Palo Alto, it was still part of Kodak. But within a year or two Kodak spun all the processing labs (again, I think there were 7 around North America, or maybe just the US) into an entity they organized for that purpose, which used the Kodalux brand name.

But the processing labs were already a dying business. They couldn't compete with minilabs, which had spread like weeds across the photo industry landscape after Noritsu invented them in the second half of the 1970s. With a minilab, anybody with 150 sq. ft. of space and a half-decent credit rating could become a print film processing factory, and just about everybody did. The giant KPL processing labs had been a great business in the 1950s-70s, when they had relatively little competition for every family's color film rolls. And they were really in Kodak's wheelhouse -- handing over your film to Kodak for developing and printing was the pillar on which George Eastman built his empire.

At my camera store, in 1988-ish, we still sent a fair bit of film to KPL Palo Alto, which would typically come back for the customer to pick up in one or two days. They got a lot of our customers' slide film (and all the Kodachrome, obviously). Their pricing structure gave us a 40% profit margin on work we sent to them. Not at all bad.

But our own minilab in the back of the store could develop and print a roll of C-41 film in an hour, if you needed a rush, and it was never more than a day standard service. Your film never left our premises and we did a noticeably better job than the factory-scale system at KPL. You could talk to the guy who was going to print your film. A roll of film that we charged $9.95 to develop and print cost us about 80 cents in paper and chemistry, so roughly a 90% profit margin, excluding labor. We didn't bad-mouth KPL, but we didn't need to: most customers with C-41 had us do it in-house. So now we're making the fat margins on all those 3x5 prints, not Kodak (or any of the other huge, wholesale lab operations, all of which were doomed.)