Personal hero gone astray

[fhovie]

OK - This should not bother me. I also do digital when no one is looking. There - I said it. But not as art! Jeepers. One of my personal heros has moved in that direction. The one who, through his books, taught me so much about chemistry and the harmony of all things in creating a photograph to make it sharp. I bought a Rollei based on his observations. I love his Catechol based brews. Yes, Barry Thornton is being pulled in by the dark side. I am so dissapointed. It is like hearing that Weston put his cameras away and only paints now. Or finding out that Kodak will stop making TRI-X. Or worse! that Gordon is now advocating XP2 films! I know this is a silly rant. But I still think there is too much to do with silver and chemistry that is beautiful and lasting to focus future energies on a technology that will fade or decay in optical or magnetic media. It is just so ... inorganic.

I know I sound crazy - and - I'll get over it.

Frank

 

[clogz]

Frank,
Don't be disappointed about your hero. He's an excellent photographer but also a businessman that knows how to move with the times. What's nicer than to have your bread buttered on both sides?

As to the whole analogue - digital debate: apart from the sensible discussions as to the relative merits of those two systems, isn't the whole debate about the fear of being the only "old-fashioned" photographer left and peer-group pressure?

I for me am not going to worry: I like the analogue approach and will stick with it as long as there's material like films etc. available and should digital become really good and worth the money.....I will just wait and see. In the meantime I just want to take pictures and print them and have fun with this wonderful medium.

Keep up the good spirit

Hans

 

[Jorge]

I wonder what that is going to do for sales of DiXactol?
I dont know, the temptation is great to not have to do any more developing, or standing for hours in a darkroom, etc, etc. But if quality is a major factor, he will be back to analog. Of course if he is doing 35 mm or medium format, and he is being sponsored to use the newest digigizmo with a zillion pixels....well then he might be trapped by the darkside. Ah well, such is life.

I have yet to see a digital print that rivals a contact print, but for smaller formats like MF or 35, well.....things are rough for the analog people. The quality of digital is very good and I have seen some awsome prints done this way....as someone in this forum said, quality is quality and crap is crap no matter the capture method. I have also seen some horrid digital prints as well as analog.

But back to your rant, I dont know maybe he wants to learn photoshop and keep with the times. Who knows why, maybe he explains this on hsi web site.

 

[JHannon]

Frank, I learned a lot from Barry Thornton's articles on developing etc....I think he is still using film but scanning/enlarging his negatives to larger sizes for contact printing. I just don't see how you can get fine prints from this "digital negative" process.

His motto used to be “You can’t make a fine print from a coarse negative”. Careful film testing, development and proper exposure was essential. The disturbing thing is that his new book implies that you can just "fix" the digital neg in photoshop, (provided you exposed properly to get enough information). I guess he is getting the results he wants. It just does not interest me.

At least he is not using digital cameras....

 

[lee]

maybe we should consider that our heros are just people and maybe we should look closer at our heros and be wiser in our choices of heros. food for thought? would entertain responces.

lee\c

 

[fhovie]

Well - If I was doing commercial work, I'd do digital in a heart beat. I have nothing against digital except the techno-wienies that think film is dead. They said print is dead too. It isn't. I have friends that shoot digital and look at their colletions on their computers and that makes them happy. - That is fine. Then they print them out and that is fine too. It is not my cup of tea - although some of them look really good. It is just not what I am into. For the monochrome art I am interested in, digital is a tool but never the end result. Scanning 4x5 color slides and printing them on photo paper with a lightjet 5000 printer is fine ... but not with ink. Ink is for writing and for magazines. Repairing bad negs by going digital .... Well - fine, I guess. Might as well get out the paintbrush. It is art - but is it photography? Probably not the way I think of photography. Sure - we do darkroom manipulation all the time - and a flat piece of paper is only a symbol of how we feel about what we see - It is not 3D with 180 Deg of view and a highlighted area of interest that our brains are scoping out like a 500mm telephoto all at the same time. A photograph is by ist very nature a manipulation of what we saw. But it is an image that is faithful to the glass and chemistry involved in the capture. Darkroom image manipulation is different than what many folks are doing in PS. Fine .. call it art - but call it like it is - computer imagery - not photography.

As far as Barry being my hero - well, I exagerate.

He really did make a lot of things make sense to me. I did get a Rollei (and no regrets) I do like DiXactol for medium format (Pyro is better for 4x5 IMHO) My favorite is still PMK in 4x5. I am grateful for his insights.

Frank

 

[Donald Miller]

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (lee @ May 11 2003, 08:04 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> maybe we should consider that our heros are just people and maybe we should look closer at our heros and be wiser in our choices of heros. food for thought? would entertain responces.

lee\c </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'>
Lee,
I think that "heroes" are a subcatagory of "experts". Someone once told me "that an "expert" was someone who at that moment was more then twenty five miles away from home". Nuff said...

 

[Robert Kennedy]

Hold it!

What is wrong with XP2?

 

[Jorge]

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Robert Kennedy @ May 11 2003, 04:17 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> Hold it!

What is wrong with XP2?

</td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'>
The sorry sob that prints it blue at the local 1 hour place......

 

[Sean]

For me, it mostly deals not wanting to use a crt screen, mouse, scanner or ccd/cmos chip, and inkjet printer to create art. When I work on computers all day, the last thing I want to do is create art on one. I think "electronic art, imitating traditional art -yuk". This is one reason people will always stick with traditional methods, simply because they enjoy it. I've been seeing a lot in the news lately about carpal tunnel syndrome, and XBOX hand, mobile phone txt thumb, etc. The new generation is quickly developing terrible physical problems related to their use of electronic devices. Maybe traditional will win in the end? Maybe people will be unable to load their 5 gigabyte images and click their mouse 250,000 times to get the best result. I know no matter how bad my hands get, I can always turn the big knobs on my Zone VI enlarger

 

[Nige]

Sean, I 'mouse' left handed at work now because of problems associated with how ever many years I've been driving a mouse around the desk for 8hrs a day! At home I mouse right handed for variety. As software has changed, my need (or requirment) to use the keyboard has demished to the point where my only salvation is online forums

I actively seek out keyboard shortcuts!

 

[glbeas]

Mouseitus is the biggest reason I got a trackball. I dont have to move it around and I can put it anywhere I want it. Damn thing looks like a one eyed sea creature, maybe another one of the reasons I like it.

 

[Nige]

I've got one of those around somewhere (from when laptops didn't come with inbuilt pointing devices maybe I should get it out and try that for a few years (would need to find a plug convertor for it though)

 

[Aggie]

..

 

[Sean]

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Aggie @ May 11 2003, 06:16 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> oh just get voice recognition </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'>
Oh gawd! I can see it now "click, click, click, click, brush size 200 pixels opacity 75%, click, click, click, a little higher, click, click, click, click..."

 

[Robert Kennedy]

Jorge - Or sepia like one lab I USED to use. They never could figure out that XP2 should be moved over to the B/W machine.

 

[Jorge]

I should show you the ones they try to print here, they were completely yellow. When I complained they could not understand what was wrong...lol......and that was the "professional" lab here in Querètaro.....

I like Tmax CN a lot for my hassy, and used to use the prints as proofs, but here I can onle get development, and even then I would not trust these people so I quit using it.

Aggie, do you have one of those voice recognition things? do they work? now remember you are talking to a person who knows absolutely nothing about computers and has bad karma with them.

 

[Ed Sukach]

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Robert Kennedy @ May 11 2003, 01:17 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Hold it!&nbsp;

What is wrong with XP2?

</td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'>
Nothing at all.

The major difficulty arises when the local "one hour lab" prints on color paper, instead of black and white - even though the film is chromogenic - based on color dyes - the results are ... not good. I have memories of trying to print ordinary silver-based black and white negatives to color paper, as an alernative process - wothout satisfactory results either.

Print XP2 ... and the other "chromogenic" films as black and white negatives - noting that the contrast filtration will be slightly different, and the results can be quite good.

 

[Aggie]

..

 

[glbeas]

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Aggie @ May 11 2003, 10:16 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> oh just get voice recognition </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'>
Hah, I can just see the results from me talking my Arkansas drawl and it trying to make sense of what it "hears". Hard to do photoshop by telling it" get rid of that piece of lint over the eye, now darken the corner some, thats it.... save it as a 800x600 jpeg and send it to APUG".
When a computer gets that smart it will probably have more sense than to listen to what I have to say!