Lenswork - what do you think?

[tim atherton]

You are correct. They have updated their submission guidelines. Just a few months ago they were only accepting gelatin silver prints or so I thought I read. I stand corrected.

Hi,

it's been significantly longer than that ( two or three years at least? if not longer)

[paulr]

do they still only accept prints for submission?

[tim atherton]

do they still only accept prints for submission?

http://enhanced.lenswork.com/submissionguidelines.pdf

[David Spivak-Focus Magazine]

Sometimes Lenswork really seems to be on top of things. I listen to every podcast by Brooks Jensen. I agree and I disagree. At times he seems to be harsh towards the art market and his sour views on abstract art are quite blatant. Although his own work seems rather abstract at times. This also opens up that age old question about what constitutes art. Let's not discuss that here, not now. Lenswork is also exclusive to silver gelatin printers, which will inevitably limit their portfolio submissions, but that is probably a good thing. I think he has done a great job at expanding coverage of that magazine by adding the Lenswork Extended, and his podcasts have certainly helped me when I've been in a photographic slump. For the most part, I think Lenswork is doing a fine job at providing quality reproduced work in a magazine.

~nate

??? There isn't one magazine on the market today that's open to just traditional photographers. Maybe they have a bias to traditional, but I know LW accepts digital/inkjet.

[Jim Chinn]

??? There isn't one magazine on the market today that's open to just traditional photographers. Maybe they have a bias to traditional, but I know LW accepts digital/inkjet.

I am curious. Does any magazine actually ever have real prints in hand (inkjet or silver gelatin) before selecting them for publication? It seems to me that everything is done via a CD or transmitted file. For example when B&W magazine publishes one of its special editions all the submissions are on digital media. I guess i am old school, but it seems to make sense you would want to have an actual print in hand when making editorial decisions.

[PViapiano]

Early in this huge thread, there was a lot of talk about LensWork losing it, not very good anymore, etc, which I disagreed with. Obviously, every photographer will not always like everything in any particular magazine.

But one thing I do notice lately, is the ubiquitous application of a digital diffusion technique in so-o-o many images, and that bothers me a little. Adam Jahiel's images of Kyrgystan almost look like 3D stereo pics without the red and blue glasses. Very disturbing and plain ugly to me. I was frankly surprised, since his older cowboy images don't exhibit that, and then I saw that he was using a dSLR in addition to his Mamiya 6.

It's just so overdone that it calls attention to itself rather than the image. There's been a lot of that lately. I don't mind digital in LensWork or any other magazine, heck, I use one myself about 10-20% of the time, and I love Photoshop and all its magic, and I love the whole hybrid marriage of analog & digital, but when I can see an obvious artificial effect or it looks amateurish, that's what gets me.

[paulr]

But one thing I do notice lately, is the ubiquitous application of a digital diffusion technique in so-o-o many images, and that bothers me a little. Adam Jahiel's images of Kyrgystan almost look like 3D stereo pics without the red and blue glasses. Very disturbing and plain ugly to me.

could you explain? i've been printing digitally for a while and i've never even heard of this!

[MIke Sherck]

...But one thing I do notice lately, is the ubiquitous application of a digital diffusion technique in so-o-o many images, and that bothers me a little. Adam Jahiel's images of Kyrgystan almost look like 3D stereo pics without the red and blue glasses. Very disturbing and plain ugly to me. I was frankly surprised, since his older cowboy images don't exhibit that, and then I saw that he was using a dSLR in addition to his Mamiya 6.

It's just so overdone that it calls attention to itself rather than the image. There's been a lot of that lately. I don't mind digital in LensWork or any other magazine, heck, I use one myself about 10-20% of the time, and I love Photoshop and all its magic, and I love the whole hybrid marriage of analog & digital, but when I can see an obvious artificial effect or it looks amateurish, that's what gets me.

I have to agree 100%: to me the images look almost like photographs on infra-red film shot through a deep red filter. And, there seems to be a *lot* of this in B&W digital "art" photography, not just in Lenswork (although there has been a lot of it there, too.) Personally, I've seen too much of it and wish folks would find another fad to follow!

Mike

[paulr]

any techniqe that has an obvious "look" is easy to abuse and overuse. i'd be happy to go to may grave without seeing another dramatic western landscape with a black (red filtered) sky!

the issue is more about visual fads than digital/analog/insert-your-dead-horse-here.

[MichaelA]

The lenswork extend is the best and the podcast are great to listen to in the car on the way to work.