Clyde Butcher

Roger Cole · Apr 4, 2015

That's probably not far off for an all-in price including chems for most medium formats, not including printing which of course you needn't do for the sub par ones. I enjoy 4x5, don't do larger yet, but if I had to use just one format it would probably be 6x6 or 6x7, maybe 645. I don't speak for Parker of course.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk and 100% recycled electrons - because I care.

alexfoto · Apr 5, 2015

-For me, the core of photography, i mean the personal ''character'' of this type of art and is absolute power used to be its tie with reality: what you photographed was real and existed!!
With digital and photoshop this now is gone!!.. I am not sure with digital pictures if what i sho is real!!
I don't care if digital is better in term of tonality or sharpness technically, i am sure anyway one day they become better. but the importance for me is that they lost connection with reality.
-I respect digital as a new medium to open a new opportunity in art, is very handy and creativity but is not photography for me, maybe need a new name for this type of art. A digital manipulation?

Bob Carnie · Apr 5, 2015

Jerry Ullesman and photocomp 1970 and 80's

many other examples that pretty much make real and existed baloney.

alexfoto said:
-For me, the core of photography, i mean the personal ''character'' of this type of art and is absolute power used to be its tie with reality: what you photographed was real and existed!!
With digital and photoshop this now is gone!!.. I am not sure with digital pictures if what i sho is real!!
I don't care if digital is better in term of tonality or sharpness technically, i am sure anyway one day they become better. but the importance for me is that they lost connection with reality.
-I respect digital as a new medium to open a new opportunity in art, is very handy and creativity but is not photography for me, maybe need a new name for this type of art. A digital manipulation?

removedacct1 · Apr 5, 2015

Bob Carnie said:
Jerry Ullesman and photocomp 1970 and 80's

many other examples that pretty much make real and existed baloney.

+1
If light passes through a lens* and is detected by a technology to generate a record of the light that passed through that lens, it is a photograph.

I frequently encounter dismissive statements that make it clear that the person issuing the statement has strong feelings about digital technology and will use any argument to support their position, no matter how illogical or patently false.** Photographers have been manipulating their images forever; sometimes in totally harmless ways to create entertaining fantasies and fictions - sometimes to perpetrate misleading untruths that belie an agenda. To suggest that either of these is solely the property of digital image making is absurd, as if digital technology played midwife to lies and deceits.

You don't have to like digital cameras or photoshop, but railing against the technology (and ranting to support analogue technology) only serves to create an artificial gap that any self-respecting artist would dismiss in a heartbeat as baloneyism.

*what qualifies as a "lens" can include things like pinholes, of course.
** yes, I realize this is specifically a group for and about analogue processes and their practitioners.

Bob Carnie · Apr 5, 2015

I only use film but every single image I create does not exist as I have portrayed it.. Where would we be without Man Ray.

removed account4 · Apr 5, 2015

why is it that these threads always end up with analogies chest thumping
and instead of shrugging their shoulders and saying
"whatever makes whomever ( fill in the blank ) happy, good fo them"

regarding mr butcher good for him !
i wish him well and hope he continues to make great and inspiring photographs

bob i couldn't agree with you more.

Ken Nadvornick · Apr 5, 2015

paulbarden said:
+1
If light passes through a lens* and is detected by a technology to generate a record of the light that passed through that lens, it is a photograph.

I frequently encounter dismissive statements that make it clear that the person issuing the statement has strong feelings about digital technology and will use any argument to support their position, no matter how illogical or patently false.** Photographers have been manipulating their images forever; sometimes in totally harmless ways to create entertaining fantasies and fictions - sometimes to perpetrate misleading untruths that belie an agenda. To suggest that either of these is solely the property of digital image making is absurd, as if digital technology played midwife to lies and deceits.

You don't have to like digital cameras or photoshop, but railing against the technology (and ranting to support analogue technology) only serves to create an artificial gap that any self-respecting artist would dismiss in a heartbeat as baloneyism.

*what qualifies as a "lens" can include things like pinholes, of course.
** yes, I realize this is specifically a group for and about analogue processes and their practitioners.

I note that your most recent image upload to the gallery is a rendition of a small slot incision in a rocky shoreline that is being pummeled by pounding surf. It works for me in no small manner because the implied reality of the abstraction I see encourages me to mentally place myself in that same spot and imagine the sounds of the waves crashing, the cold spray in my face, and the solitude I also imagine might exist in that place.

I also observe, with not a small amount of irony, that the image depicted is not one of a dog. Nor is it one of ancient redwood trees in the mist. Nor is it one of an airplane in flight. Nor the detonation of an atomic bomb. Nor the surface of Mars.

I further observe that with the single exception of the subject that it does depict, it does not depict any other possibility in the universe.

There are staggering fundamental implications to these observations. Implications that cannot be simply wished away...

Ken

Roger Cole · Apr 5, 2015

I'm afraid you lost me there Ken. It is one thing and not any of an unlimited (or nearly so) list of other things. So?

Yes, he was probably there, but again...so? I'm missing the implication here.

It's true Ulseman and others have created rather elaborate fantasies in the darkroom, and it's true many prints are manipulated in the darkroom to a greater or lesser extent. Often enough the purpose is to make the scene look MORE like it appeared to the eye, compensating for the limitations of the medium, but of course this isn't always true. It's also true that any photograph, analog OR digital, is to some degree an abstraction. Take black and white (any technology.) Unless you are one of those very rare people who are completely color blind and see only in black and white it is always going to be an abstraction because the world is not black and white to human vision. Color is, at best, a more subtle abstraction because no color film renders color exactly as it appears.

While analog techniques can be used to create composites or other images that bear little or no resemblance to any scene that was before the lens, this isn't as common nor as easy as with digital. There is a certain provenance that goes with the piece of film in the camera having actually been at the scene and struck by the light from the subject. This is also true of a digital sensor of course but as soon as the signal is converted to electrons and moved to a computer, phone, across the Internet, whatever, it isn't true anymore. The result on the other end is more like a copy of an original than an original. The real question becomes, "does this matter in any real way or is it merely a thought difference, a difference which makes no difference?" I'm not sure it makes any difference really, but I do like the thought.

I'm rambling - Clyde or anyone else can use what they like and get no flack from me.

Ken Nadvornick · Apr 5, 2015

alexfoto said:
-For me, the core of photography, i mean the personal ''character'' of this type of art and is absolute power used to be its tie with reality: what you photographed was real and existed!!
With digital and photoshop this now is gone!!.. I am not sure with digital pictures if what i sho is real!!
I don't care if digital is better in term of tonality or sharpness technically, i am sure anyway one day they become better. but the importance for me is that they lost connection with reality.
-I respect digital as a new medium to open a new opportunity in art, is very handy and creativity but is not photography for me, maybe need a new name for this type of art. A digital manipulation?

I understand the premise behind what you say. You are absolutely correct. What you are describing is the unavoidable loss by abstracted digital photographic technology of the physical chain of creation provenance that is part of the fundamental definition of traditional non-abstracted photography.

Now that doesn't mean one technology is better or worse than the other. It just means that they are different. Each has unique strengths and weaknesses relative to the other. And there is also some overlap. But they are just not the same thing. No matter how many people and their axes might claim otherwise. Even a cursory comparison of the two processes should be sufficient to see that for even the mildly initiated.

Whether those differences matter for a given purpose or use is a judgment best left to each individual user. Provenance may mean nothing at all to someone who views a photograph as simply the image depicted and nothing more. Others with a deeper view of what it means to be a photograph, perhaps including yourself, may feel that it is a crucial part of the definition.

Ken

removed account4 · Apr 5, 2015

alexfoto said:
-For me, the core of photography, i mean the personal ''character'' of this type of art and is absolute power used to be its tie with reality: what you photographed was real and existed!!
With digital and photoshop this now is gone!!.. I am not sure with digital pictures if what i sho is real!!
I don't care if digital is better in term of tonality or sharpness technically, i am sure anyway one day they become better. but the importance for me is that they lost connection with reality.
-I respect digital as a new medium to open a new opportunity in art, is very handy and creativity but is not photography for me, maybe need a new name for this type of art. A digital manipulation?

hi alexfoto

I mean no disrespect .. but, manipulation of one sort or another has been used by photographers since photography was invented.

while i understand what you are saying, using an electronic camera one never knows ... but using a silver or ? based medium no one knows either.

time is fluid, it is not "time based photography" ( long exposures ) or fractions of seconds. it is not black and white, burned or dodged, toned, vivid or muted colors, grainy, straight or manipulated it's the same thing

im not really sure what reality you are talkin about but photography isn't tied to any reality but like so many other things,
it is based on an interpretation of reality. maybe it is a fleeting feeling,or an impression, or a dream. how one can suggest a straight, unburned/dodged print is reality more than a digital image is beyond me.

doughowk · Apr 6, 2015

It's the "same as it ever was" strawman argument: we've always manipulated reality in our imagery. However, we've entered a post-photography world of visual imagery where we can not presume that the image has any relation to reality. The difference is analogous to viewing an Aaron Siskind abstract and a Mark Rothko abstract. With the former, we try to puzzle out what it is (reality); whereas with the latter we ask what he was thinking. Digital has potential for being a very creative media primarily because it can go beyond the real and create its own "reality".

alexfoto · Apr 6, 2015

-Of course some manipulation happen in film era, but this is easy understandable and so not destroy the historical evidence of photographs and after all the most photographer didn't use them except to retouch some wedding portrait or fix some scratch. For example if i so a picture from WW2 i now this picture is evidence of something in the past is really exist. So after 100 years you think our dogital photography have the same documentation?
-The problem is not the digital itself, the problem is the Photoshop program ho give to everyone the opportunity to manipulate images, but everyone didn't have the exact understandable what is the core of photography and overdoing thinks.
I am tired to look over sharpness and fake HDR images and fake color, without communicate with reality.
As i say is not bad art, but is not photography, and need some rules for no overdoing think and a new name. I am sorry for my English.

removed account4 · Apr 6, 2015

have you ever seen hand tinted post cards from around 1900?
they typically had a woman with a baby stroller adn a factory / smoke stacks in the background
and clouds n the sky. all 3 of those things were added to a bland image. the smoke stack to signify "progress"
the woman and stroller to show the place was alive, and the clouds because often times dry plate film recorded a blank sky.
and forget about the color, the colors they used were like an acid trip.
and there have been been plenty of newspaper photographs made with a telephoto lens that show a crowd of 5-8 people as a mob.

claiming that every digital image is a post production alteration of reality and you can't trust it IS the same as it ever was.
it is reality. people have been doing combination prints since the early days, retouching, removing things, adding things in.
when i learned how to retouch a film negative with leads, i could remove someone's braces if i had to, i could change someone's complexion,
i could print a black man or woman as a white person and visa versa, i could change the tonality of an image. i have removed telephone poles, cars
street furniture, even people from film images .... it is no different than digital ...
except that it is infront of a computer screen, and it isn't a tangible object that is being manipulated through a longer process but something in the ether.
if you ask me, NO photography can be trusted unless you can trust the intent of the person who made it.

in the end, none of this really matters to me, i do what i want just like you.
if mr butcher wants to use a nice digital camera to make his photographs he should, and if you decide you want to as well, you should.
it isn't upto me or anyone else to tell you it is wrong, and folks who thump their chest and say it is their duty to say it is wrong
well, it isn't very nice.

jovo · Apr 6, 2015

What I really appreciate, and was surprised by, is CB's use of bellows with his Sony digicam. That it matters to him to 'get it right in the camera' rather than rely on some photoshop trick is notable. He continues to work in black and white, has not embraced HDR or other ps gimmicks, and continues to create 'authentic' photographs (images of reality filtered through his personal vision of its best presentation.) that are no more nor less manipulated than his wet prints, so....what's not to like?

It's nice that that Sony camera will take lenses one may already have from a variety of major manufacturers. It's too bad, though, that it does not seem to be compatible with traditional lf lenses.

alexfoto · Apr 6, 2015

-I work for many years in prolab in film era and never i saw even a single manipulation image. This today is change drastically. The percentage here is the important, no if few photographer overdoing thinks in the past,
but even that manipulation in the past keep the form or silhouette of thinks and is easy to distinguish as you say.
-One evidence for what i mean is that court of justice no count any more photography as evidence. Any way you use what you like, as i say is not bad at all digital and open new opportunity to art.
-Just for me is not photography any more, is my opinion, sorry about that.

removed account4 · Apr 6, 2015

alexfoto said:
-I work for many years in prolab in film era and never i saw even a single manipulation image. This today is change drastically. The percentage here is the important, no if few photographer overdoing thinks in the past,
but even that manipulation in the past keep the form or silhouette of thinks and is easy to distinguish as you say.
-One evidence for what i mean is that court of justice no count any more photography as evidence. Any way you use what you like, as i say is not bad at all digital and open new opportunity to art.
-Just for me is not photography any more, is my opinion, sorry about that.

hey alexfoto

no need ot be sorry for your opinion ...
it is welcomed !

john

alexfoto · Apr 6, 2015

-Thank you for your understanding john!! All we have our vision in life, sometimes the reasons is more deep in society as anything come from this. Many thinks today lost they're mining because company's want to make more and more money from anything and throw the art to the dogs.. Any one think can make photography, painting or what ever because have money and company support this to take their money.. Full frame digital to photograph cat in the backyard...

removed account4 · Apr 6, 2015

alexfoto said:
-Thank you for your understanding john!! All we have our vision in life, sometimes the reasons is more deep in society as anything come from this. Many thinks today lost they're mining because company want to make more and more money from anything and throw the art to the dogs..

i agree with you
and the funny thing is i bet
large format users thought the same
thing when dry plates, and roll film came out

john

alexfoto · Apr 6, 2015

-Yes, as when the painters is again the photography and tell the photography is not art, in the beginning for many decades no one museum want to put photography inside..
-But slowly photography take their place away from painting, the same we have to make with digital, give the place to breath as a new medium, untouching the old one.

blansky · Apr 6, 2015

Did not this same argument exist back when Group f64 was started?

The "realists" vs the "pictorialists.

The people who wanted photography to capture reality vs the people who used photography to express their dreams/visions.

Real vs surreal and all the places in between.

Why would anyone think their way is the only way to do something.

Tribalism always amazes me.

CropDusterMan · Apr 6, 2015

Hey Alexfoto,

Don't worry about your English either....you've got a great accent in your writing!

alexfoto · Apr 6, 2015

-Τhank you CropdusterMan and all the rest for understanding, i am not good in English and is hard to express so deep situation as is the art if you don't now well the language.
-I don't think is so easy my friend Blansky as "realists" vs the "pictorialists'', that term use for painting not photography.
The photography start FROM the point of realism as black and white in the beginning and BECAUSE they want the best possible reality go to color when the technology is ready!
That the reason of existence after all for photography, otherwise there is no reason to move from painting if you want ''pictorialism''.
All that staff for colorizing picture is because try to simulate reality as close as possible BUT with a small pin of personality and character of art.
And that in the end - the small character - they lost control today, and we go to overdoing thinks outside of photography terren.

doughowk · Apr 6, 2015

Slightly tongue-in-cheek: Digital practitioners have an identity crisis. When they output to paper, they wish to be known as photographers. When they only output to computer monitor, they still are photographers? What if they output to a 3D printer, are they sculptors? Why not just be satisfied with being known as artists working in digital media?

blansky · Apr 6, 2015

alexfoto said:
-Τhank you CropdusterMan and all the rest for understanding, i am not good in English and is hard to express so deep situation as is the art if you don't now well the language.
-I don't think is so easy my friend Blansky as "realists" vs the "pictorialists'', that term use for painting not photography.
The photography start FROM the point of realism as black and white in the beginning and BECAUSE they want the best possible reality go to color when the technology is ready!
That the reason of existence after all for photography, otherwise there is no reason to move from painting if you want ''pictorialism''.
All that staff for colorizing picture is because try to simulate reality as close as possible BUT with a small pin of personality and character of art.
And that in the end - the small character - they lost control today, and we go to overdoing thinks outside of photography terren.

http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Group_f/64

alexfoto · Apr 6, 2015

-Interesting Blansky, thank you.
I understand wrong, i think you mean reality vs the rest of style in term of painting.

Clyde Butcher

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