Ken Rockwell and the popularity of film photography

Dinesh · Aug 26, 2013

cliveh said:
Because I don't feel it is an ethical development of photographic technology. .

I'm not sure I follow. Are you suggesting that digital photography is somehow unethical?

cliveh · Aug 26, 2013

Dinesh said:
I'm not sure I follow. Are you suggesting that digital photography is somehow unethical?

Not at all, but I am suggesting some aspects of the commercialisation of digital photography are.

clayne · Aug 26, 2013

cliveh said:
Not at all, but I am suggesting some aspects of the commercialisation of digital photography are.

Absolutely agreed.

Roger Cole · Aug 26, 2013

I insisted from the beginning we should use some other word for digital, like maybe the original "imaging." I got into a weird exchange on LFPF about that where someone basically dared me to contact some war (digital) photographer and tell him he wasn't a real photographer, which of course is not what I ever meant or implied. I didn't mean he wasn't "real" or his work wasn't valuable or legitimate. I meant that it was inherently something else.

Others point out that photography means something like "painting with light" and you're still doing that. Yeahyeah, but it's still something else - not necessarily worse but different.

I seem to be a voice in the wilderness aside from maybe here on APUG though.

bobwysiwyg · Aug 26, 2013

Roger Cole said:
I insisted from the beginning we should use some other word for digital, like maybe the original "imaging." I got into a weird exchange on LFPF about that where someone basically dared me to contact some war (digital) photographer and tell him he wasn't a real photographer, which of course is not what I ever meant or implied. I didn't mean he wasn't "real" or his work wasn't valuable or legitimate. I meant that it was inherently something else.

Others point out that photography means something like "painting with light" and you're still doing that. Yeahyeah, but it's still something else - not necessarily worse but different.

I seem to be a voice in the wilderness aside from maybe here on APUG though.

I'll bet 19th century painters said the same thing about the first photographs.

blansky · Aug 26, 2013

cliveh said:
When digital photography appeared I had no problem with it and found it a great addition to analogue to further the boundaries of what could be achieved. The problem I had was when it was hijacked by marketing men to make money and put digital as a technological replacement over film.

But to 90% of professional photographers, portrait, commercial, product, fashion, forensic, photojournalism, etc it DID replace analog.

And to 95% of amateur photographers it DID replace analog.

It wasn't hijacked by marketers, the marketers worked for the companies that invented/developed the medium.

And it did replace analog for very good reasons, or all these pros would not be using it. They weren't sold a bill of goods, the advantages were and are very real.

Now you can argue that it's for better or for worse but nobody was hoodwinked into this conversion. I converted very late in the game for the main reason I wasn't convinced yet that the materials were archival, now I am.

And nobody is denying its not a cash cow for corporations but if the benefits were not there, the conversion would not have followed.

I know, everyone has a story of someone who "went back" but one in a million is not a trend, it's just a personal choice.

Roger Cole · Aug 26, 2013

bobwysiwyg said:
I'll bet 19th century painters said the same thing about the first photographs.

Huh? That doesn't make any sense. Photography was NEVER called "painting" as far as I am aware (other than by the linguistic meaning of the term) so why would painters "say the same thing?"

I'm just saying that the two media are sufficiently different they should be CALLED different arts, just as painting is not the same as sculpture, though a better analogy might be watercolors versus oils or such - both are painting but they are definitely not the same art form.

blansky · Aug 26, 2013

Roger Cole said:
I insisted from the beginning we should use some other word for digital, like maybe the original "imaging." I got into a weird exchange on LFPF about that where someone basically dared me to contact some war (digital) photographer and tell him he wasn't a real photographer, which of course is not what I ever meant or implied. I didn't mean he wasn't "real" or his work wasn't valuable or legitimate. I meant that it was inherently something else.

Others point out that photography means something like "painting with light" and you're still doing that. Yeahyeah, but it's still something else - not necessarily worse but different.

I seem to be a voice in the wilderness aside from maybe here on APUG though.

I don't disagree that it should have different terminology but language rarely seems to work that way. The word photography, even before digital had a lot of avenues for pursuit. A photograph had a lot of different processes and still ended up in someone's hand as a photograph.

The insipid giclee floated around for a while, not sure if its still here or not, but galleries used to specify silver halide vs giclee or platinum. But I agree different terminology could be helpful.

I still say I'm going for a jacuzzi, and someone else will say you mean go sit in the hot tub, and someone will correct them and say no a hot tub was that round wooden barrel thing. You mean you're going to sit in your spa. And I say no, a spa is where women go when their husbands go golfing ........whatever.

I'll be in the water trough thing with the bubbles.

Roger Cole · Aug 26, 2013

Yeah, giclee is still around. My art loving wife asked me what it meant and I think was a little disappointed when I explained it was just high-brow speak for "ink jet."

Not that ink jet prints can't be really good - I've seen some - but it's still an ink jet. Dressing it up in pretentious French doesn't change anything but make the one doing the labeling look pretentious if not downright silly, IMHO.

blansky · Aug 26, 2013

Roger Cole said:
Yeah, giclee is still around. My art loving wife asked me what it meant and I think was a little disappointed when I explained it was just high-brow speak for "ink jet."

Not that ink jet prints can't be really good - I've seen some - but it's still an ink jet. Dressing it up in pretentious French doesn't change anything but make the one doing the labeling look pretentious if not downright silly, IMHO.

Giclee actually comes from the French word to spurt or squirt. Use your imagination.

Officious lady in a gallery....yes ma'am, this picture was spurted and squirted on. And it costs $10,000.

Ken Nadvornick · Aug 26, 2013

Roger Cole said:
Not that ink jet prints can't be really good - I've seen some - but it's still an ink jet.

This illustrates, after all is said and done, the essence of the issue in only 18 short words...

Ken

markbarendt · Aug 26, 2013

A Vivian Maier show is open at our local photo gallery and I grabbed a couple of my no photographic buddies to come see it.

They were amazed at her photos. My buddies asked what silver gelatin was so got to explain the difference. Fun stuff.

bobwysiwyg · Aug 26, 2013

Roger Cole said:
Huh? That doesn't make any sense. Photography was NEVER called "painting" as far as I am aware (other than by the linguistic meaning of the term) so why would painters "say the same thing?"

I'm just saying that the two media are sufficiently different they should be CALLED different arts, just as painting is not the same as sculpture, though a better analogy might be watercolors versus oils or such - both are painting but they are definitely not the same art form.

Your take was more literal than I intended, but I get your point.

Roger Cole · Aug 26, 2013

blansky said:
Giclee actually comes from the French word to spurt or squirt. Use your imagination.

Officious lady in a gallery....yes ma'am, this picture was spurted and squirted on. And it costs $10,000.

Oddly enough, my "art loving wife" is also fluent in French, or used to be (faded with lack of use but still fluent in written French) having minored in it as an undergrad and done six months study abroad in France, making straight As all in French - but wasn't familiar with the term. I guess they didn't teach that at either her US or French universities.

blansky · Aug 26, 2013

Ken Nadvornick said:
This illustrates, after all is said and done, the essence of the issue in only 18 short words...

Ken

Sadly, that comment illustrated a lot about you.

After pages of discussion and a sort of a meeting of the minds that different photographers have different goals and ideas of photography, you need a parting shot across the bow like that.

An absolute obsession and an unwillingness to let something go.

Ken Nadvornick · Aug 26, 2013

C'mon 'blansky'... You're still doing it. As are the others.

It really DOES illustrate the point. But to see that one cannot overlay the literal meaning of the assertion with layer upon layer of their own pejorative interpretations.

No matter how many people might really, really want to believe that a silver photographic print is a crayon drawing, it's not. They can come up with a gazillion reasons why they are convinced that it really is a crayon drawing. But when all is said and done... it's not.

A silver print is still just a silver print. A crayon drawing is still just a crayon drawing. And an inkjet print is still just an inkjet print. (And by the same reasoning, a dog is still just a dog and a cat is still just a cat.) Things are what they just are. And calling them exactly what they just are, and recognizing that they are exactly what you just called them, is not a pejorative exercise.

To call an inkjet print just an inkjet says absolutely nothing about it's quality, or it's desirability, or it's difficulty to produce, or it's worth. What it says is... it's just an inkjet print. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Until, that is, the reader begins to overlay their own pejorative interpretations. Also known as reading between the lines. Also known as creating assumptions. Also known as hearing only what they want to hear.

If he said 'it's just an inkjet print' then he must really be trying to say it's inferior. Well, I know he didn't actually SAY that. But I just know that's what he really MEANS...

It is??

So tell me, if I can't call an inkjet print an inkjet print without offending people who like inkjet prints, just what the hell am I supposed to call it?

Loretta???

Ken

Roger Cole · Aug 26, 2013

Well to be fair I've always thought "silver gelatin print" is a bit of pretentious nonsense too. But "traditional darkroom print" probably doesn't actually mean much to the average person who even in the film heyday was only vaguely aware that film was "developed" into prints in a darkroom, and today may not even be aware of any need for a darkened room at all even in the past.

Wayne · Aug 26, 2013

Roger Cole said:
"

I'm just saying that the two media are sufficiently different they should be CALLED different arts, just as painting is not the same as sculpture, though a better analogy might be watercolors versus oils or such - both are painting but they are definitely not the same art form.

I've been giving that sermon for 10 years and I even get panned on APUG for it.

MatthewDunn · Aug 27, 2013

Ken Nadvornick said:
So tell me, if I can't call an inkjet print an inkjet print without offending people who like inkjet prints, just what the hell am I supposed to call it?

It wants to be called 'Loretta'.

Truzi · Aug 27, 2013

MatthewDunn said:
It wants to be called 'Loretta'.

LOL

Ken Nadvornick · Aug 27, 2013

MatthewDunn said:
It wants to be called 'Loretta'.

Poisson Du Jour · Aug 27, 2013

Most interesting. Working professionals around me, additional to my own work, never refer to print processes as "injket". Such a name is associated with a generally inferior quality and archival stability. And there is a big difference in what is actually done out there! What is wrong with referring to any photograph as prints? Or is getting bent out of shape over one process vs another and semantics all the go instead? Darkroom-produced prints are very commonly referred to as silver gelatin prints — neat; a quaint, old world term that elicits an aura of mystery and authority in the photographer. Then there is the alternative process camp: they are commonly termed "hybrid-X prints": colourimetrically synthesized RGB exposed to traditional photographic media (chiefly Kodak Endura Professional MET, among a swag of others, including, fibre, silk, RC-coated media now). Giclee is inkjet by definition, often favoured for quick proofing, but it is not a broad definition that sits easy with print processes that are off-hand or ignorantly referred to as "inkjet" when something is not produced by such a process.

Ken Nadvornick · Aug 27, 2013

Poisson Du Jour said:
Or is getting bent out of shape over one process vs another and semantics all the go instead?

Oh good grief...

Bill Burk · Aug 27, 2013

blansky said:
We have amateurs who like to dabble and see themselves as fine art or portrait photographers and who parrot whomever they are emulating even though they couldn't sell a print of anything whether it's analog or digital, and nor do they care. It's a fun hobby.

You pretty much nailed me with this one.

Think I found a term worth using...

Parmelian Prints.

Now I know, a print I make costs me $2.50 a sheet for the paper. And an inkjet print costs $2.50 a sheet for the ink. So it's not like I'm using MORE expensive materials when I do silver gelatin. I do like an assurance that a print I'm buying is special. So when I bought a print from a local photographer, instead of buying the print I was MOST attracted to (an 8x10 - obviously one of her popular ones), I selected one that I was most PERSONALLY drawn to from her series of 50 for 50. I am still personally pleased with my purchase. Last week's paper's headline reminded me - the local artists guild is having their 50th 50 for 50 (sic) show!

Ken Nadvornick · Aug 27, 2013

Bill Burk said:
Think I found a term worth using...

Just remember to leave off that final 's'. They already are plural...

Ken

Ken Rockwell and the popularity of film photography

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