I really think it's a product of the equipment we like the most. I absolutely can't do this when shooting a film. I have to get evereything perfect otherwise I'd get fired so fast...
Just the same, you can't do this when you shoot LF. It just takes more time to do everything and then add the cost of each frame you shoot.
With the quality of modern auto focus and auto exposure systems, I'm pretty sure a monkey (trained or otherwise) could shoot sever thousand frames and come out with a hundred keepers.
I've heard more than a couple of well known photographers (including one widely published reportage/street photographer) say in one way or another that they feel lucky if they get 10 -12 keepers a year - if that.
I guess I suppose it depends on what you mean by "keepers', but in these contexts it was generally photographs they felt would stand the test of time. As opposed to ones that were merely "good"
You'd be amazed how small the demand is for pictures of trees... - Fred Astaire to Audrey Hepburn
www.photo-muse.blogspot.com blog
Productivity can be measured in many different ways. Yield relative to the storage medium is important only to the extent that the storage medium is scarce or expensive. For all we know, measured per dollar spent or per hour spent, MR was every bit as productive on this trip as he was on past such trips when he took film cameras.
Bottom line is: Reichmann has been there, and most of us haven't. Who cares what I would have done? I didn't.
Captains think tactics, Colonels think strategy, Generals think logistics. If they can get an IMAX camera to the top of Everest you can get an LF camera to the Antarctic Peninsula. It's not magic, just effort.
Most of the national antarctic research organisations have some sort of artist in residence program. With them you can get to some of the less touristy parts of the continent, and if you are dedicated and persuasive enough you can overwinter too.
I've posted this before, but here's Sweden's homegrown version of Friedlander with an 8x10 in Queen Maud's Land:
http://www.xpo.se/prints/scroll_phot...asp?photoid=24
Come now, Christopher et al, no need for snide little snipes, the guy actually earns the money he spends on his equipment, so he must be good for something, right? When you really think of it, he spends more on equipment in a given year than most of his critics earn altogether. So, I'd go easy on denigrating him on artistic side, unless I could outperform him on the business side too, otherwise it would all sound a little hollow.
Now, as for the number of shots he took and the equipment he selected for the trip:
If you find yourself in a situation when you have to (ac)count (for) your exposures, chances are you haven't picked the right equipment. The most expensive shot, especially on exotic trips like that, is the one not taken due to some constraint or the other.
There is something to be said about horses for courses.
The big advantage of digital is that, once bought, the cost per exposure is exactly zero and one can afford to shoot as many as possible and later discard 90%+ in order to reduce the number of missed oportunities and increase the quality of keepers if not their number. As a matter of fact, under such scenario, one can afford to be more rigorous deciding on what represents a keeper.
I didn't read his article but if I went to Antaractia I'd damn well go to shoot a bunch of pictures in any weather with whatever works. And IMHO anything with fast film and covered with a plastic bag will work just fine.
I think there is a minor cult around Michael, Luminous Landscape, and the Photoshop dignitaries and digitrati. I like reading some of his reviews and comments but am not a fan of his travel photos. He did cue me into Toronto's brickworks though.
Cults can be fun. The LF community seems to have a few itself: APUG, Polaroid 110 controversies, Point Lobos stalkers.
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