Sebastiao Salgado

Nathan King

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Sep 27, 2013
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248
Location
Omaha, NE
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35mm RF
I'm curious about Sebastiao Salgado's images, or more specifically, his prints. They have an extremely long range of extremely smooth tonal gradations. Even more impressive is the fact that there is detail absolutely everywhere and all of the tones, from the most extreme shadow to brightest sky, show good contrast on the print despite the limited luminance range of photographic paper.

How is this done? I have never achieved anything remotely approaching this look with Tri-X for either 35mm or 120, even with pulling development. Is it extensive dodging and burning? If so, how does such a heavily dodged and burned photograph not show artifacts of the process (light/dark halos around dodged/burned objects, etc.)?
 

BradS

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Sep 28, 2004
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8,120
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Soulsbyville, California
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35mm
Interesting. My recollection of some of his prints from a series he did in the Galapagos was just the opposite. I remember them as 'chalk and soot' extreme contrast.


Anyway, it is all about the lighting I think.
 

Nuff

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Feb 16, 2013
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Tokyo, Japan
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He used to use some sort of wizard of a printer in France, his name escapes me at the moment. That was before he switched to digital.
 

Xmas

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Sep 4, 2006
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6,398
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UK
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35mm RF
Split grade printing with burning and dodging.

His printer could print like Rory gulf on a good day.

Look at Ansells prints.
 

darkosaric

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Apr 15, 2008
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Hamburg, DE
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Early work - nikon camera, unknown films: book "Other Americas" --> bad print quality (I am guessing because of bad film developing, not printing) but best photos I have ever seen, pure genius. His best work IMHO.

Leica cameras, TriX and Tmax 3200 films: books like "Migrations", "Workers" ... --> excellent print quality, Paris Picto Lab did those prints - this was the lab that all Magnum guys used in golden time.

Late work - digital special modified canon 5D camera: book "Genesis" --> excellent print quality (here you can see what can be done when you have money to convert digital in 4x5 negative and print on Silver gelatin print, and when best Lab in Paris is doing this for you), but pictures are far away from his best work "Other Americas".
 

darkosaric

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Hamburg, DE
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baachitraka

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Apr 6, 2011
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Bremen, Germany.
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I am not a native of Germany, came here to pursue my higher education. I personally find Bremen a very nice city...

On bright summer day there is chance to see one of the biggest biergarten on the banks of Weser.
 

darkosaric

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Apr 15, 2008
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Hamburg, DE
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baachitraka said:
I am not a native of Germany, came here to pursue my higher education. I personally find Bremen a very nice city...

On bright summer day there is chance to see one of the biggest biergarten on the banks of Weser.
Click to expand...

I am also not native German, don't have German citizenship, but any patriotism that I have - it goes to Germany. I love Germany more than any other country.
I saw that Bremen has one of the most beautiful Town Halls in Europe, in the list of UNESCO Heritage.
 
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