The lack of knowledge in new photographers

[reub2000]

All I have to say: Jerry Uelsmann

 

[Antje]

The photoshopper has the freedoms of both to product some really exceptional junk. Therein lies the problem.

I do think that film photographers have just this same freedom. I just got a flyer for some (film) effect filters when I bought a simple red filter. The things you can do with these cause instantaneous eye cancer. Is that better because it's on film?

It has just become easier to create crap. Bad taste has a new playground. But if people want that, and if they even want to buy that, that's fine by me. We can agree it's awful, but that doesn't even touch the OP's original topic.

It's a loooooong way from shooting RAW to producing health-threatening eyesores. I fear the ones with no skill and bad taste and huge ego. But they come in all flavours of photography.

Antje

 

[Antje]

All I have to say: Jerry Uelsmann

But that's not lack of knowledge, that's lack of taste. SCNR

One photographer I truly abhor is David Hamilton. Which proves that photographs that give me a rash can be produced in either film or digital. Nothing more, nothing less.

Antje

 

[Daniel_OB]

Still not moved... Is this site moving into digital or hybrid venture.

 

[removed account4]

If you post process your vision you are no more photographer, what you have to show is not what you saw, but rather sick phantasy that have "negative value". Negative value means educating people around through that vision that never existed, false vision represented as a photograph with sole intention to be shown as a truth for it is "a photograph". You are printer and have to know that even in darkroom some move away is permissible to some extend, but tolerance are there. It is up to photographer to set his own tolerance range, and get a risk that curators, critics, ..., tolerances are not the same. Sory you disappointed.

www.Leica-R.com

hi daniel:

i am a bit confused -- are you suggesting that darkroom work = post processing vision ?


do you shoot wet plates or dags or make contact prints using POP paper ?

seeing your website name has to do with leicas,
i am guessing that you make enlargements and darkroom manipulations
(burning/dodging, filtering enlarger light, toning &C )
and you post processing your vision too.

just wonderin'

-john

 

[Daniel_OB]

Jnanian

Yes I take a risk that some my pictures will come out of photography range by selective painting the same. As experienced painter too I always try to add colors as they were (or I remember). But it is just some of them. 99.9999 percent of my work is not postprocessed AT ALL. They represent my vision of the scene at the moment I saw it (no cropping in my photographs too), not my cumulative experience about the same (which is subject for paintings, drawings, and computer made images, …). I do not do burning/dodging, I do filtering. However any post-process can go up to some limits and still be within photography. When I make selective painting it is what the customer asked for. I also do not think Uelsmann is out of the range. But it is what I think for some my own reason.
Darkroom is not post processing in the sense you ask, but can be if it get out of control. However so many just do not have any tolerance in postprocessing and think that just anything on the paper is a photograph (believe or not for some guys, and text made on computer is a photograph…. ) not thinking that a photograph has its physical properties just like leather, steel,…. Whatever, hope all clear.

www.Leica-R.com

 

[Curt]

http://www.peteturner.com/

One time, a long time ago, I read in Popular Photography that someone asked Pete Turner what his special processing was for his color film because they were way above the crowd.

He answered that his special lab was about a block away, just around the corner. In the article he explained that the lab was the drug store where he dropped off his film where it was then sent to the Kodak processing lab. He was shooting that stuff called Kodachrome. Remember Kodachrome 25 and Kodachrome 64?

 

[bjorke]

My ake on all this is mostly that people have their egos and sense of identity entirely too tied up in their notions of process.

A kajillion crap photos are made. SO WHAT? If anything it makes the good ones more treasured -- no? Heck, I use my celphone all the time for note-taking: where was the car parked, the covers of books I'd like to buy, funny license plates... not a remote whiff of "art" in them. I have absolutely no problem in distinguishing those snaps from photos that I would work hard at (chemically or digitally) because I feel that a picture might have some lasting artistic value in itself.

This is analagous to a pen. You might use your pen for beautiful poetry or to draw something of great value. Or you could use it to sign the rent check. Chances are, both. Why do we understand the distinction for a pen and not a camera?

I can only imagine self-induced magical thinking.

----

(Oh, and BTW, to the original thread topic: Many newer photographers are probably dismayed by the lack of photographic knowledge of older photographers. Heck, they don't even know who Brian Sorg or Rinko Kawauchi are, or why Ansel's brand of smug is so different from Sugimoto's)

 

[removed account4]

Jnanian

Yes I take a risk that some my pictures will come out of photography range by selective painting the same. As experienced painter too I always try to add colors as they were (or I remember). But it is just some of them. 99.9999 percent of my work is not postprocessed AT ALL. They represent my vision of the scene at the moment I saw it (no cropping in my photographs too), not my cumulative experience about the same (which is subject for paintings, drawings, and computer made images, …). I do not do burning/dodging, I do filtering. However any post-process can go up to some limits and still be within photography. When I make selective painting it is what the customer asked for. I also do not think Uelsmann is out of the range. But it is what I think for some my own reason.
Darkroom is not post processing in the sense you ask, but can be if it get out of control. However so many just do not have any tolerance in postprocessing and think that just anything on the paper is a photograph (believe or not for some guys, and text made on computer is a photograph…. ) not thinking that a photograph has its physical properties just like leather, steel,…. Whatever, hope all clear.

www.Leica-R.com

i understand a bit more where you are coming from ..

sometimes it is a difficult line to draw
between "enough" and "too much"

thanks for explaining

--john

 

[Curt]

My ake on all this is mostly that people have their egos and sense of identity entirely too tied up in their notions of process.

If I know what you mean by process then what if say a Pete Turner, example, photograph was made by the dye transfer process by the photographer instead of a machine print from a lab. Would it have any bearing on the image?

Knowing how complicated the dye transfer process is would that mean anything? When if ever is the difficulty of getting or the making of an image important; or is it?

 

[HerrBremerhaven]

Since Pete Turner was mentioned, a couple unusual things he use to do might be in order. One was double exposures, at which he was actually quite good. The other was re-photographing a Kodachrome onto another piece of Kodachrome; the leopard through the grass image is one done that way. So these are basically in-camera manipulations. The unfortunate thing today is that many people using film in such a way (or doing other things like cross processing) might get accused of PhotoShopping an image, since anything not strictly appearing to be a straight image with natural colours could be suspected of computer manipulation.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat
Dead Link Removed

 

[roteague]

Knowing how complicated the dye transfer process is would that mean anything? When if ever is the difficulty of getting or the making of an image important; or is it?

While it doesn't change the aesthetics of the image itself, it would change how I feel about the image. I would always place more value on an hand-printed photo. So, yes the value of the image would be increased.

 

[Curt]

While it doesn't change the aesthetics of the image itself, it would change how I feel about the image. I would always place more value on an hand-printed photo. So, yes the value of the image would be increased.

That's how I feel about it too, I just wanted one person to say it. I personally reward, in respect for work done, anyone who masters a concept and does the work required to do it. For me the process does matter.

"The lack of knowledge in new technologies" I don't work in a vacuum, I have digital cameras and a computer and photoshop, indesign, illustrator, etc. and know how to use them. I see a process, check it out, then decide for myself what is best. That's why I still use film and paper and log on to this forum.

 

[roteague]

"The lack of knowledge in new technologies" I don't work in a vacuum, I have digital cameras and a computer and photoshop, indesign, illustrator, etc. and know how to use them. I see a process, check it out, then decide for myself what is best. That's why I still use film and paper and log on to this forum.

Same here.

 

[Sparky]

I don't see it that way at all... I see the digicam and computer, etc... as something entirely DIFFERENT. Not competitive. Just different. If my camera is a set of paints and a canvas - then the digital stuff is like a swatch book. I think we shouldn't be closed to the idea of using the technology to help us out in some circumstances- and maybe even useful in supporting the 'sketching out' of ideas that we use in our photographic work.

 

[bjorke]

If I know what you mean by process then what if say a Pete Turner, example, photograph was made by the dye transfer process by the photographer instead of a machine print from a lab. Would it have any bearing on the image?

Would it look any different?

Knowing how complicated the dye transfer process is would that mean anything? When if ever is the difficulty of getting or the making of an image important; or is it?

It's not, unless it shows. A photo from the top of Mt Rainier is difficult and it shows -- the difficulty is in gaining access. But if you mistake the goodness of a shot for its difficulty, you are on the road to disappointment.

This is an EXTREMELY common disease in filmmaking. I have fought this battle many times, e.g.:

Production Manager: "We had eight guys wearing fire suits getting triple-bonus pay and this shot cost almost $100,000 just in burned-down sets! It has to be in the movie!"

Editor: "The truth is, that shot is too over the top wthout delivering any new story content and we need to focus on the actions and reactions of the fireman's buddies and wife -- it will ruin the movie"

Productions that side with the editor in this sort of argument almost always create the better movies. The other kind usually involve Michael Bay.

 

[jstraw]

Would it look any different?

It's not, unless it shows. A photo from the top of Mt Rainier is difficult and it shows -- the difficulty is in gaining access. But if you mistake the goodness of a shot for its difficulty, you are on the road to disappointment.

This is an EXTREMELY common disease in filmmaking. I have fought this battle many times, e.g.:

Production Manager: "We had eight guys wearing fire suits getting triple-bonus pay and this shot cost almost $100,000 just in burned-down sets! It has to be in the movie!"

Editor: "The truth is, that shot is too over the top wthout delivering any new story content and we need to focus on the actions and reactions of the fireman's buddies and wife -- it will ruin the movie"

Productions that side with the editor in this sort of argument almost always create the better movies. The other kind usually involve Michael Bay.

Gives new meaning to "Remember Pearl Harbor."

 

[Daniel_OB]

jstraw
I would add to your comment - AND Nagasaki.

 

[Mark_S]

A couple of observations:

I have an image (actually I did a few of this series), which is a double exposure done completely in camera. Here is an example: (there was a url link here which no longer exists)
Very few people imagine that this could be done without photoshop - the concept of a double exposure doesn't seem to exist anymore.

As technology is made more user friendly, we do not need to know as much about it, and for the vast majority of the population, the underlying technology becomes akin to magic. Consider the automobile - 100 years ago, you had to have quite a bit of mechanical aptitude to operate a motor vehicle. Today, you don't need to know anything about how one works - you just put the key in it and use it. Cameras are becoming like automobiles in that they are doing what the manufacturer wants, not what the user wants. Manufacturers are doing a better job of bringing what their cameras do closer and closer to what the majority of the users want, but that makes it harder and harder to make the camera do what you want it to do, or to even understand what it is capable of doing.

I know that by adjusting the fuel/air mixture in my car, I can make a tradeoff between power and fuel efficinecy. I used to have a car where I could make this adjustment - the car that I drive today doesn't allow me to make that adjustment. The manufacturer has decided what I want, and has provided it to me. Today I find myself owning several cameras, none of which are younger than my children (who are mostly in college), some of which are older than I am. These cameras allow me to participate in the process of making a photograph - modern cameras start with the assumption that the only thing that matters is the final result.

 

[roteague]

jstraw
I would add to your comment - AND Nagasaki.

So, is your purpose here to cause trouble?

 

[Curt]

It's not, unless it shows. A photo from the top of Mt Rainier is difficult and it shows -- the difficulty is in gaining access. But if you mistake the goodness of a shot for its difficulty, you are on the road to disappointment.

This is an EXTREMELY common disease in filmmaking. I have fought this battle many times, e.g.:

Production Manager: "We had eight guys wearing fire suits getting triple-bonus pay and this shot cost almost $100,000 just in burned-down sets! It has to be in the movie!"

Editor: "The truth is, that shot is too over the top wthout delivering any new story content and we need to focus on the actions and reactions of the fireman's buddies and wife -- it will ruin the movie"

Productions that side with the editor in this sort of argument almost always create the better movies. The other kind usually involve Michael Bay.
__________________
 

Yea sure, but that's not what I was saying or what I was talking about. I hate to digress but I wasn't talking about standing in a burning building or walking to the middle of Death Valley in the Summer or he who walks the farthest has work that is...

I reread what you wrote and it does not relate to what I am saying. Sorry, try again.

 

[bjorke]

I reread what you wrote and it does not relate to what I am saying. Sorry, try again.

You said (and I quoted directly):

When if ever is the difficulty of getting or the making of an image important; or is it?

So how is what I wrote NOT about getting or making the shot?

I stand by what I said. If it doesn't show, if it's not directed to the message of the pic(s), NO ONE CARES HOW MUCH WORK IT WAS.

The only people who DO care are the people involved in that work: the photographer, lab techs, sherpa guides, editors, etc -- for whom "complexity == (time+$$)" (going out or coming in, depending on their role). But for viewers: NADA unless it shows.

No one (sane) likes classic Irving Penn prints primarily because they use ferricyanide touchups. LATER, after the pictures were already well-known, Penn has been doing elaborate platinum prints but he starts from a well-known image -- that is, access (in this case to his own intellectual property) once again trumps process.

 

[jstraw]

So, is your purpose here to cause trouble?

He didn't get my joke. Kevin did. It's ok.

 

[Daniel_OB]

And you still do not see what you write. Jstraw you are puting to much pepper on your joke, so next time think and try to distinguish things, is it really a joke? People from Japan also can read english... You work at University. I just wonder are you professor or cleanner there. I just cannot get it?

 

[roteague]

And you still do not see what you write. Jstraw you are puting to much pepper on your joke, so next time think and try to distinguish things, is it really a joke? People from Japan also can read english...

Likewise, you fail to understand that there are two sides to every story.