Sharpness - an unnatural obsession

[paulr]

Bruce, not a generalization at all. I'm not talking about all photographs It's a simple observation that some painters produce work that's sharper and more detailed than many photographs.

check out work by this random selection of painters:

http://www.lorraineshemesh.com/index.html
http://www.toypaintings.com/
http://www.kingneonbooks.com/

and there's the guy who paints digitally, who makes the sharpest, most detailed images of any kind that i've seen (not sure his name ... there was a thread about him a while ago).

compare to typical newspaper pictures, pictorialist work, snapshots, or to deliberately soft work by holga/diana people or guys like Sugimoto.

[Gordon Moat]

. . . . generalizations . . . . Otherwise, they could paint (if they had the required talents) which can be a lot less demanding of cash flow.

Good morning Bruce Watson,

While in college, my painting classes were the most expensive classes I took. Even after graduating, the materials and expendables cost for me to do an oil painting is three to four times the cost of having a lab do the same size print for me. Watercolor might be less expensive, and acrylics can be close, but oil paints are fairly costly per tube of paint.

I take from 30 to 80 hours to finish a painting. That does not include the time figuring out a concept, researching ideas, nor gathering source images (I often take photos to use for images in my paintings). It is slower doing oil on canvas than producing large photographic prints, so perhaps with a high enough volume of images photography might cost more overall, but not on other comparisons.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat
A G Studio

[Bruce Watson]

...the materials and expendables cost for me to do an oil painting is three to four times the cost of having a lab do the same size print for me. Watercolor might be less expensive, and acrylics can be close, but oil paints are fairly costly per tube of paint.

My large prints are done on an inkjet printer. For the same sizes, my canvases cost at least as much if not more than a canvas for oil painting (properly gessoed of course). My ink costs aren't inconsiderable either, IIRC my ink is about $0.35/ml USD or about $350/liter USD.

On the equipment side, there is no comparison. To do my work which involves considerable hiking into the wilderness I have to have a modern lightweight camera outfit, tripod to camera to lenses, etc. While I know painters with huge brush collections, I suspect that I can buy a lot of brushes for just one of my lenses. Then there is the required computer, scanner, printer.

I take from 30 to 80 hours to finish a painting. That does not include the time figuring out a concept, researching ideas, nor gathering source images (I often take photos to use for images in my paintings). It is slower doing oil on canvas than producing large photographic prints, so perhaps with a high enough volume of images photography might cost more overall, but not on other comparisons.

I'll concede that it does, on average, take longer to finish an oil painting, depending on the painter. The biggest difference is that a painter can (I'm not saying that you do, just that you could) paint in his/her studio. You can paint what's in your head. Indeed, that's one of the prime reasons to paint.

I on the other hand, must go on location to make photographs. I can't photograph what's in my head (while that might be really interesting to me, I doubt it would be for anyone else).

Once I get home, my workflow (film processing, drum scanning, photoshop work, making test prints, etc.) takes at least a couple of days for any image, some considerably longer. And, to do this I have to buy the computer, scanner, and printer. Alternatively, I would have to build and buy the equipment for a darkroom.

The main cost flow differences I see are the equipment outlay (would that I were 20 cm taller and 25 years old, then I could buy cheaper but heavier equipment) and the requirement for plane tickets and accommodations (I've tried tent camping on location, but having destroyed enough film with fingerprints and dirt from doing the film holder dance without the required cleanliness I retreated to hotel rooms), local transport and meals (I can't hike for 12 hours, cook, and do the film holder dance all in one day -- just takes too much out of me).

Oh yes, and the local art markets. Oils sell for more (a lot more in my area) than photographs of the same size. But that's comparing apples to rocks. Even I don't want to go down that snake hole.

But what does this have to do with sharpness?

[Bruce Watson]

"Most people ... " How do you know that you're speaking for most people?.

I didn't say "most people." You did.

[Struan Gray]

There is a grammar of blur, and it changes with time.

I've been looking at this a lot lately:

http://www.shorpy.com/files/images/3c13114u.jpg

When made, this would have been a simple piece of Easter Kitsch, and the blur and the emulsion defects were transparant, necessary evils. Now, they are anything but transparant, and they add a note of the surreal. I keep thinking Witkin is somehow involved here and something squirm-making is being implied.

[Richard Fenner]

I don't think there's anything inherently contradictory between softness and using LF - sometimes (as in this shot) it's necessary to use LF for the movements needed for the differential focus. Other times, maybe I just want to enlarge a soft shot as much as possible, yet retaining just the right level of softness.
When I first saw Bill Jacobson's book I thought it looked like rubbish, but because I try to be open to ideas I spent some time going through it, working out why some shots worked and others didn't. Now, sometimes as I'm focussing on the gg, I suddenly see a really blurry version of the shot I want to take, and think "that's really good!"

[Gordon Moat]

My large prints are done on an inkjet printer. For the same sizes, my canvases cost at least as much if not more than a canvas for oil painting (properly gessoed of course). My ink costs aren't inconsiderable either, IIRC my ink is about $0.35/ml USD or about $350/liter USD.

I was looking more at cost per sq.ft., which is how many labs charge for large prints. Inkjet is a completely different comparison, especially at larger sizes. Then the economy of scale comes into being a factor, with larger (wider) printers like ColorSpan running extremely low cost per sq.ft. The only way to reduce that for oil paints is thinning out the paint, or just using less. So about $30 to $50 per sq.ft. expenses to produce one of my oil paintings, compared to around $15 to $20 per sq.ft. to have a lab print one of my 4x5 images onto RA-4 paper. What would you guess is your inkjet cost per sq.ft?

On the equipment side, there is no comparison. To do my work which involves considerable hiking into the wilderness I have to have a modern lightweight camera outfit, tripod to camera to lenses, etc. While I know painters with huge brush collections, I suspect that I can buy a lot of brushes for just one of my lenses. Then there is the required computer, scanner, printer.

I do own lots of brushes, but those are expendables. They only last a few painting, then they need to be replaced. However, the cost to start out oil painting can be less than the cost of a used 4x5, just on initial equipment.

. . . . . . .
I on the other hand, must go on location to make photographs. I can't photograph what's in my head (while that might be really interesting to me, I doubt it would be for anyone else).

Sounds crazy, but it might be interesting to explore that. Maybe more conceptual.

Once I get home, my workflow (film processing, drum scanning, photoshop work, making test prints, etc.) takes at least a couple of days for any image, some considerably longer. And, to do this I have to buy the computer, scanner, and printer. Alternatively, I would have to build and buy the equipment for a darkroom.

I just use a lab, which streamlines the process. However, I understand computer time, since I sometimes create composite images for commercial clients. An oil painting can be re-worked many times, even days (or months) later, which would be similar to making several variations of prints of the same image. People can create fast oil paintings, and do fairly fast photographic prints, so probably not a good comparison basis. I just wanted to point out that I can make more photos in a given period of time than I can produce oil paintings, simply a difference in productivity.

. . . . . . . . . . .
Oh yes, and the local art markets. Oils sell for more (a lot more in my area) than photographs of the same size. But that's comparing apples to rocks. Even I don't want to go down that snake hole.

Similar observation at most areas I have been, with oil on canvas sometimes going for prices at several multiples of similar sized photos. I don't see this changing, despite that some photos have recently hit very high levels . . . . what happens at the top of the art world does not always trickle down to lower levels and lesser known artists/photographers.

But what does this have to do with sharpness?

The comment was made about artists choosing painting to express ideas that were not sharp; I suppose that implies a lack of resolution. I don't know that photographers producing images with large defocused areas, or unsharp areas, are trying to emulate painting, any more than photographers outputting images onto canvas using inkjet printers are trying to make their works look like paintings.

The trick with painting is not to create every single detail (though that happens in hyper-realism), it is only to give enough detail that the mind's eye (of the viewer) fills in the details. This approach can be used effectively in photography, and not result in a blurry image (nor an unsharp one).

Where I see too often an issue of over-emphasis on sharpness in photographic prints often comes from people overdoing Unsharp Masking in PhotoShop. There is a style of heavily sharpened images, but I see that too often. This to me has a different appearance than sharp contact prints, or images printed enlarged (computer, scanner, or enlarger) without over-manipulation.

Just an aside on this aspect, I had a conversation with a few photographers about someone all of us knew that we considered as a chronic over-sharpener. We were baffled why he would do that, until one in our group noticed that this over-sharpener had not so great eyesight. While I doubt that applies to anyone else, it might suggest people are relying too much on what they see (like on a computer monitor) when creating or manipulating an image, sometimes over-doing it.

It might be debated that images with blurred or out of focus areas are over done, or a fad. I notice people without a connection to photography, or with little experience in photography seem to comment more on images with out of focus areas, than images with everything (seemingly) in focus. Maybe that comes from the small lenses and sensors of P&S cameras experience, were the plane of focus is often not obvious (or everything seems sharp or in focus).

I might paint loose, or I might have well defined edges on the painting. Sometimes those could be combined. Some of what I know from painting I apply towards creating large format images. I wish I had something of the work I have done over the last year to share examples. I keep going back and forth between photography and drawing/painting to allow the thought processes to combine a bit. A painting can be sharp, without containing lots of detail, though obviously lower resolution than most photographic images. Anyway, I hope some of what I typed makes some sense.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat
A G Studio

[Ed Richards]

Anyone remember the scene in the Wheeler Dealers where Jame Garner is working on the per acre price with a trendy modern artist?

[Shen45]

Photography is a journey. We're all in different places. [snip]

....... In the 810 and ULF world the tonality takes over and you can begin to mess with the subliminal with some of the old lenses.

...... I'm exploring and exploiting this phenomena for all it's worth. It is a deep mine and I doubt I'll ever get to the bottom of it, but I'm having the most fun in the journey thus far.

...... I still make the tack sharp pictures when the subject matter suggests that is what is needed.

........But I'm proudest of the softer images when they work well.

The statements I have selected from Jim are very much a point I have arrived at. In the past I held a belief that every part of an image had to be so sharp you could cut your eyes if you got too close.

I don't think it was so much obsession but more so the desire to extract all the craft photography could achieve. Photographing people I had always tried to be "kind" to my subjects but modern glass [even back to the '60's] was reasonably clinical and precise.

Through these types of forum I started to see the emergance of images with old glass and saw for the first time something of what I would like to achieve with my personal photographic journey.

On my second trip to America last September Kevin Saitta and I met up with Jim at Tonopah and I saw first hand the magic of old glass. Jim had focussed up a tailstock of a lathe on his 2D [?]. I must admit I did wonder what image there was. Lets face it sharp front to back at F32 how clinical is a piece of metal? I had a look under the darkcloth. I had to look a couple of times at the actual subject and back and forth at the GG. The lens makers at Wollensak had reached out over nearly a century and shaken my creative bones quite a bit.

http://tonopahpictures.0catch.com/Ca...Campbells.html

Extrordinary. The image was still sharp where it needed to be but the image was now the important thing not he sharpness.

Jim and I spoke about life, the universe and other things and we agreed that a photographic image can be sharp and soft and still beautiful.

I have shot commercially for a long time - products and people and client demands for resolution have always been high. My demands were probably higher. But for me, and I am speaking personally, sharpness no longer by itself does it for me when shooting personally.

I left America with a Veliostigmat, a Verito and a Petzval and 7 months down the track I'm just begining to scratch the surface of these lenses. I shoot 5x4 so the lenses have a different look again compared to 10x8. Old glass is sharp where it needs to be and sharp soft else where.

Sharpness, softness, lens errors and many other elements are tools to create with. I don't consider one more superior to the other but over the last few months I have taken a turn off the paved super sharp highway down a dirt track marked "interesting". It is not a track for everyone but for those who do there are creative possibilies to add to the sharpness kit.

Oh and don't be fooled, old glass can be very sharp. Much sharper than I thought.

[Mark Sawyer]

Funny, how in a thread started about an obsession with sharpness, so many of those replying seem, if not obsessed, then at least very interested in the aesthetics and feelings of softness...

And yeah, I can sympathize...