There is no doubt in my eyes that in landscape photography, the color straight out of a slide, particularly one with high-saturation film, is more pleasant than the one straight out of a digital capture.
However, if enough digital work is done, an image captured digitally can be made into a print with color at least as pleasant as the image captured on film.
But, you don't use a shovel when a wrench is called for. We don't know what Ansel may or may not have used. His statements are pure speculation, based upon technology that didn't exist when he lived and that he knew nothing about. No one knows what another person would do in a given situation until it happens.
Large Format photography is clearly about the process. I love the process, as I know all of you do. Some art isn't only about the finished piece but what it actually took to make the finished piece. I personally don't care for Photoshop other than to proof negatives. The thing that is bad about technology is that it often causes other means of doing the same thing to disappear. I like options, not whatever is the newest most simple way to achieve what is thought of as the ideal finished product. I have way more control in the darkroom over my print than on the computer. I am young and nostalgic all at the same time........ and a total photo geek!!!!!!!
As I posted on an earlier thread, Don Boyd and I were just at Tom Tills gallery. Great images, but I thought the prints were crap, oversaturate to the point of blocked patches of out of gamut color, out of register masks etc. I was extremely disappointed. Don had been there before and already was of the same opinion. While your methods may be the same, I hope your standards are higher.
Thanks,
Kirk
at age 73:
"The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep"
Areas of deep flat color. In this case, for instance, a print with red flowers in the foreground where the color saturation has been pushed up to the point where it reaches the limit of the papers color, the tones then flatten out and subtleties of color and tone get lost. It looks like a kind of posterization of the colors that are out of gamut. Does that make sense?
Thanks,
Kirk
at age 73:
"The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep"
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