learning from photos on line????

[stradibarrius]

When you look at photographs that have been posted on line, here and other photo forums, what are the things you look for or hoping to learn?
Do you just look at it or do you hope to learn anything from the photo?
Because the image is digitized can you expect to learn anything about the film, developer, lens etc.?
I hope this question reveals the question I am "trying" to ask.
I spend a lot of time looking at others photo trying and hoping to learn something.
I think I will leave it at that and see what responses are posted.

[Martin Aislabie]

I'm sure my composition has improved from looking at the photographs of others.

I'm not sure you can get anything else from them though.

The nuances of tones on a forum are nothing like as rich as a real print.

Martin

[Ken Lee]

Not everyone is interested in beauty - or even has it as a priority - but if you are, you can learn about it everywhere.

[Kirk Gittings]

A properly exposed linear scanned negative can be pretty much made to look like virtually any film/developer combination by a skilled worker. So no I don't think you can tell much about an image online beyond composition and final presentation of tones.

[Peter Lewin]

I enjoy seeing what others are doing for inspiration and ideas. I also do some amount of private critiquing, asking myself "why did the photographer make/post that image?" or "wow, what a great perspective" and sometimes "gee, I wish I lived in the Southwest or California, we just don't have that in NJ!"

[Jac@stafford.net]

[...]Because the image is digitized can you expect to learn anything about the film, developer, lens etc.?

Well, when I started there were only halftone photo reproductions. Still, except for the very rare Scitex equipment there existed nothing common like our current post-processing tools. I rarely trust that a digital image has not been overly processed.

IMHO, once a film has been scanned it enters the uncertain world of monitor presentation.
.

[Jim Jones]

Traditional darkroom manipulations have long simulated some of the effects of digital editing. Several dissimilar examples of Ansel Adams' Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico are available online for comparison. More dramatic are the darkroom alternations of William Mortensen as seen in some of the links in the thread
http://www.largeformatphotography.in...the-Antichrist. We can't always tell from either prints or online images what the photographer initially saw or captured on film. However, either source should be a useful guide for most of us. Certainly they can be inspiring.

[ic-racer]

When you look at photographs that have been posted on line, here and other photo forums, what are the things you look for or hoping to learn?

Not much. All have some digital manipulation or are not products of darkroom photography. Not many people have scanners that can even accept a typical 16x20 image. I know I don't, so there is no way to see my images on a computer.

[John Olsen]

Some of us may be looking at the question too narrowly. I took a long hike and decided there were three reasons why I look at the on-line images:
1. They nudge me to get back out there and try again.
2. Some may push me in a new direction, e.g. the paper negative portrait thread here.
3. Properly presented details can teach even at web resolution (this is how I selected my infrared films over the years)

Frankly, I don't need to see an entire 16x20 print in all its glory on the web. If the composition is wonderful it will be apparent. If the concept is an inspiration, it won't be dependent upon the resolution. Conversely, if you're locked into a banal repetition of Half-dome in Yosemite, more resolution won't help.

As technicians we may get too involved with magnifying glass details that the art-buying public may not even recognize. Please keep sharing your efforts, even if the resolution is not up to your standards.

[mdarnton]

I don't know what digital manipulation has to do with anything. The student who will only learn from something that's been made according to his own specifications is a very dull student and probably can't learn from anything at all, so don't pay any attention to those people. :-(

I've learned from paintings, other art, advertising illustrations in newspapers and magazines, and from watching films on the TV. When I was first interested in photography, at about 11 years old, I went to the library and checked out every photography book they had, multiple times, then I started in on the art books. When I wanted to be a newspaper photographer, I immersed myself in Cartier-Bresson and Gene Smith, because they were the people whose work in that genre I most admired, and looked at every news magazine and newspaper I could get my hands on, for ideas. I will still pick up any magazine and flip through looking at the photos to find people doing things I wish I had done, and try to figure out what they did to make that happen, and what it is that makes the picture click for me, compositionally and otherwise.

Currently I'm learning about portrait photography by diligently reading fashion magazine and advertising photos, books by famous portrait photographers, looking at portraits in art books, and buying old manuals on portrait photography to learn and understand the original rules of the game. I'm categorizing, dividing, cataloging, developing preferences for lighting, poses, framing, contexts, and getting ideas I'd like to try out in my own studio. I'm thinking up different ways to hammer "portrait" plus other words into Google, so different new results will come up in the image search every time to give me more to look at. I'm finding portrait photographers doing work I wish I could do. When I see a portrait, like it or not, I try to figure out the lighting, and how the pose might have come about, what the hands are doing, where the subject is looking, his expression, etc....... everything.

First you try to figure out what you like, then you try to do that. That's how you learn. Then when you have that under control, you play with what you have learned to make things that are your own. This is how artists have learned--by copying other artists--for the last millenium or so, at least. That goes for technical things as well as artistic. Photographers have manipulated photos ever since there was photography. Ultimately, you will find your own way to make the pictures you want happen, and you shouldn't limit yourself as to what you'll do to get what you want.

But first you have to teach yourself to see. Looking at pictures and learning to see comes ahead of everything else. Technical things are dead last--they're only needed when you finally know what you want to see in what you do, to make that happen. The technical stuff is the tiniest little bit of the whole process, meaningless without solidly conceived and executed subject matter. On on its own, it doesn't mean a thing.