Fatali prints: digital ?

[QT Luong]

I just noticed, buried in my thread about Lake Tahoe and Fly Geyser, this:

I live right by Fatali and know most the people who do his darkroom work. What Fatali says in his gallery and talking up his work and what he actually does are two different things. He takes his shots, scans all of them, then makes digi negs. He manipulates them via the computer, then half the time will ink jet print them. This is not told to the people who buy his pictures. to them there are no filters, no digital anything, and they are all wet darkroom printed. He found people would pay more for the traditional prints. So he flat out lies about his process.

After my wife and I visited his gallery in Springdale, she commented that he must be "cheating" since there is no way to see those colors in the real world. I replied that I could see them produced with Velvia and fortuitous light conditions. But now, having been to some of the locations he shot in Zion, I'm not so sure anymore. So do you think this could indeed be achieved on film ? In the chemical darkroom ?

Other questions raised by the quote: If you scan your film and output a digital transparency to be printed in the chemical darkroom, is your print "digital" or "traditional" ? Did you also found out that prints produced by the chemical darkroom command higher prices ?

I also don't understand why he would use inkjet, though. I know that his prints are sold mostly framed, but yet it is possible to tell a inkjet from an ilfochrome under those conditions, or if the customer unmounted the print for some reasons. Without going into the ethics of it, from a business point of view this sounds pretty risky.

[Kirk Gittings]

Frankly I always thought Fatali's claims of not manipulating color etc., of being true to "God's Light", was a bunch of baloney and sales hype. He also used to claim he did all of his own printing which was not true either. Nothing he would do would surprise me.

[David A. Goldfarb]

I thought it was "Nature's light," which apparently includes Duraflame logs.

[Brian C. Miller]

Do you guys think that the shots are through an unfiltered lens? I betcha dollars-to-donuts (although if you visit me bring the donuts and I'll supply home-roasted coffee) that he has a nice Lee system. Earth Spirit Rising looks like two ND gradient filters at 45-degree angles. Look at the top-left and top-right corners. Should they be black like that? He may also have one coming up from the bottom, too. I remember Galen Rowell had a whole system worked out for controlling exposure using filters. He said he could get a 10-stop range on E6.

I have an image of a yellow catenary crane that has "impossible" colors. Well, it was photographed at sunrise on a very clear day with Kodak E100SW and an enhancing filter. If that doesn't pop the colors up, nothing will.

[Brian C. Miller]

From his Nature's Light blurb: "No computer imaging, artificial lighting, or unnatural filtration"

Since a Lee system with ND filters doesn't change the color, that would fit in with the statement.

[Ed Richards]

On his WWW site he says he PREFERS natural light with no filters and no computers. Don't we all! But he does not claim that he actually makes his prints without filters and computers, you just assume that. Maybe he was a lawyer in his past life.

[vinny]

Wwmd?

[Bill_1856]

Does it matter?

[Brian C. Miller]

WWMD? What Would Meatyard Do?

[Brian C. Miller]

On his WWW site he says he PREFERS natural light with no filters and no computers. ... Maybe he was a lawyer in his past life.

No computer imaging, artificial lighting, or unnatural filtration were used in the creation of these photographs. I use only natural light for all the images made for the gallery collection of handmade photographic prints.

(emphasis added to "No")
OK, then bring up perjury charges against him.

If you look at the "field notes" on the picture, you'll see stuff like "three minutes at f22, Fujichrome 100". Now, does anybody remember what E6 reciprocity failure looks like? A red shift? Fatalis isn't using Fujichrome 100/1000 here.

The field notes for "Earth Spirit Rising" say 1sec at f32 with Ektachrome 100. Hello, like there were no ND filters here? Expose any E6 into the sun and see what it looks like. ND has to be used.

I'm sure that there is lots of darkroom work to bring out the best in the photograph. Duh! There's three knobs on that there color head! There's some dodging that can be performed. He never says that its an unfiltered lens and a straight print.

I'm guessing that he is deliberately underexposing the film to saturate the colors. I've done the same thing. DUH HERE! Anybody remember how to use film?

Seriously, whip out a 35mm, load some E6, and experiment with it. See what you get. Then transfer what you've learned to your view camera, and make some cool photos!