I just wanted to make a public correction about a thread that was posted several weeks ago about Nick Brandt. Among other comments from many that suggested digital trickery with his images, I contributed much too hastily and misquoted from an article in Photo Pro Magazine. To correct myself, he does not clone in animals.
To quote correctly in full:
"Even though I use heavy ND grads and red filters, there's still a lot more grading that is usually done in Photoshop. Pulling more details out of the highlights and shadown is the main thing, and I draw the line at adding in animals, cloning them, etc, and my skies will all be from the actual time and place. I do bracket sometimes if I get a chance to get a better exposure on the sky from another frame, but it's shot at the same time. I only ever added in one sky, in a photo called 'Giraffe Fan' in 2000. I don't soften the images in post at all - any 'softening' is all done in-camera at the time of shooting, with a low-tech, on-the-fly crude version of swing and tilt"
I've just come off the phone with Nick and we had a good chat about his work. In between my continuous 'I can't believe I misread that' apologies, he talked quite candidly about his process and where he draws the lines in post production. He does stich panoramas (a 6x17 is too impractical for the wild!) and he does dodge/burn in PS. His platinum prints are made with what sounds like an amazingly involved process with multiple negative and so on, and he is no longer as fond of the polaroid borders he added to earlier images.
Nick, I'm so sorry for misquoting, and so releived I'm not a journalist! If you should ever contribute to a thread on this forum, I am quite sure people would love to hear your thoughts direct, rather than as second hand news!
PS: Nick has offered to send me some contacts of the original images. While I will take him at his word re: digital manipulation (or lack of), the opportunity to hold the raw material he creates his artwork with certainly sound appealing
Mods: please ammend comments in the previous thread.
To quote correctly in full:
"Even though I use heavy ND grads and red filters, there's still a lot more grading that is usually done in Photoshop. Pulling more details out of the highlights and shadown is the main thing, and I draw the line at adding in animals, cloning them, etc, and my skies will all be from the actual time and place. I do bracket sometimes if I get a chance to get a better exposure on the sky from another frame, but it's shot at the same time. I only ever added in one sky, in a photo called 'Giraffe Fan' in 2000. I don't soften the images in post at all - any 'softening' is all done in-camera at the time of shooting, with a low-tech, on-the-fly crude version of swing and tilt"
I've just come off the phone with Nick and we had a good chat about his work. In between my continuous 'I can't believe I misread that' apologies, he talked quite candidly about his process and where he draws the lines in post production. He does stich panoramas (a 6x17 is too impractical for the wild!) and he does dodge/burn in PS. His platinum prints are made with what sounds like an amazingly involved process with multiple negative and so on, and he is no longer as fond of the polaroid borders he added to earlier images.
Nick, I'm so sorry for misquoting, and so releived I'm not a journalist! If you should ever contribute to a thread on this forum, I am quite sure people would love to hear your thoughts direct, rather than as second hand news!
PS: Nick has offered to send me some contacts of the original images. While I will take him at his word re: digital manipulation (or lack of), the opportunity to hold the raw material he creates his artwork with certainly sound appealing
Mods: please ammend comments in the previous thread.