New articles on Mamut Photo

janvanhove

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mark

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It is really hard for me to call Elsa Dorfman a photographer. Con artist maybe, but not a photographer.
Bummer.

Good job Deniz
 
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Sean

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janvanhove, sent you a pm regarding your posts promoting your site here, thnx
 

mark

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bmac said:
do tell Mark, do tell...
Click to expand...

Maybe it is not my style but look at the photographs on the site. With lighting equipment present, faces of subjects completely blown out. In my opinion she is sloppy and gets away with it because she is Elsa Dorfman and she uses a 20x24 polaroid. What she calls informal I call a waste of the clients' money. I mean is it necessary to let a light stand or some sort of support cut a client's face in half? It is shoddy work nothing more.

All my opinion of course.
 

removed account4

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its kind of funny, she shoots the polaroid, and then shoots a copy negative of it to be enlarged &C and give to her clients.

nice article deniz
love to take a nice portrait with THAT camera!
 

Aggie

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It is sad that as apug grows, it becomes more the target of thinly veiled commercial enterprises to come here and try and attract traffic without being a sponsor.
 

David A. Goldfarb

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I think Elsa Dorfman's portraits have a very consistent sense of personality and humor. It's not technically complicated, but it's a unified and recognizable style. I'm sure the big camera contributes to the way that she interacts with her subjects, and that's probably more of a factor than the issue of film real estate.
 

mark

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Never thought about the consisten part. But then again I am completely distracted by the extraneous crap that takes up so much of that realestate. Crop that stuff out and I think the work is really good expression wise but the execution is what kill the shot. Maybe she is able to relate to her clients but then she gives them a shot that looks like these. http://elsa.photo.net/dynasty2.html

Her work is definately not my cup of tea.
 

David A. Goldfarb

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Yup, it's certainly true that she doesn't try to conceal the mechanics of the process. That's also part of the style and I think part of the joke. She's well enough established by now, that if she wanted a studio with higher ceilings and wider rolls of seamless, she could have them.

Hmmm... no reversible back on that camera? I don't think I've ever seen a Dorfman horizontal. I've seen a Lotus 20x24, but don't recall whether it had a reversible back. I think it did, but I'm not sure it could do Polaroid. Maybe Wisner's 20x24 can reverse and do Polaroid.
 

Aggie

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Tracy Storer is an apug member. He is the one who has the San Francisco based 20x24 polariod camera. We should ask him about the quality of the images.
 
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janvanhove

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Glad for the comments, the images that Elsa does are not to everyone's liking of course, but I happen to like her approach to simplicity... And of course the web with 400 pixels wide images is not the best medium to appreciate fully what a polaroid 20x24 looks like, and it's the same with most of the work done in LF, the web just doesn't convey the depth of it...

As for commercial advertisement, Mamut Photo is not selling anything at the moment, and I'm not getting a single cent out of it, but I understand your concerns, so I'll stop announcing when new content will be added to Mamut Photo.

PJ
 

scootermm

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okay..... I know you werent asking for critiques or whatever..... but I couldnt help it...
is it possible for you to run your text through a spell/grammar check?
I ran out of fingers and toes counting all of them and that was in just the first article.
it just seems a simple check and helps with the presentation of the website and the article.
 

TracyStorer

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20x24 and Elsa

Hello all, just came across his thread.
The original Polaroid 20x24 cameras do only verticals. The Wisner 20x24 systems now available can do horizontals.
As far as the comments on Elsas Dorfmans work.... sure it's not to everyones liking, but please note that large groups are difficult in the best of situations, even with a small camera.
 
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