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Thread: Moonrise Hernandez 2007

  1. #21
    jetcode
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    Re: Moonrise Hernandez 2007

    I don't get it - everyone complains because life continues to evolve - had Ansel shot the scene before the church existed everyone would be complaining about the new church and cemetery ruining the scene - shoot the orange trucks - call it moonfall over road crew

  2. #22
    Resident Heretic Bruce Watson's Avatar
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    Re: Moonrise Hernandez 2007

    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Galli View Post
    Set up the Nikon D3 in roughly the same place St. Ansel did. The D3 has more resolution than his 8X10 but you can throttle that back later. You can't see the crosses or the church very well anymore because everything is different. No prob. Take the picture mid day or whenever is convenient for you. Now the hard work begins. In PS10 remove all the other crap in the way that wasn't there in 1941. Add crosses or whatever. Light them up. Darken the sky and add some floating clouds. Go get a moon from some night shot. Put it in. Fiddle with every pixel until it's BETTER than Ansel's.
    You really haven't used Photoshop much have you? You should try doing some of the above some time. Might calm you down a little.

    I'm always amazed, no matter what the issue at hand, how often the "grass is always greener on the other side of the fence" comes up. It seems that everybody thinks their job is the hard job and that everyone else has it easy. Until they for one reason or another end up having to do someone else's job for a while. Then they get quiet, for a while.

    Just about every serious photographer I know, film capture or digital capture, knows, KNOWS, that they have to do the very best they can at capture time. None of them have ever said in my hearing "I'll fix it in post" because they all know better.

    And what makes this funny to me is that I was, centuries ago, a sports photographer for the local newspaper. I have forgotten more dirty tricks about how to fix bad film captures in post while I was printing in the darkroom -- everything from rubbing the print with hot straight developer to ferricyanide bleaching -- than most Photoshop users have learned yet. Three years of that and I was pretty good at the analog version of "fix it in post" although it wasn't very satisfying. But you should try shooting American high school football in low light without modern zoom lenses and with M3 flash bulbs (!!! at least they could stop action better than a strobe) and see what kind of exposures you get. Fixing it in post was the only available option.

    Now that I'm doing my own art photography I can take the time and exert the control to expose the film properly in the first place. As a result a surprising number of my film scans have gone straight to inkjet print without any manipulation at all.

    It's a weird and twisted world. And big enough that there's room for just about every workflow you can imagine and some you can't. For a while longer at least.

    Bruce Watson

  3. #23
    Eric Woodbury
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    Re: Moonrise Hernandez 2007

    As we go to wind power in this country, every picture henceforth will have one of those big white towers with the propeller on it.

  4. #24
    jetcode
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    Re: Moonrise Hernandez 2007

    Quote Originally Posted by Bruce Watson View Post
    You really haven't used Photoshop much have you? You should try doing some of the above some time. Might calm you down a little.
    What I can do with PS curves in 1 minute would take me 1-2 days to master in the darkroom and I still will not get that close to absolute translation.

  5. #25
    Bob
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    Re: Moonrise Hernandez 2007

    Last time I drove by there about 10 years ago there was a big sheet of plywood that said "No photos taken here"
    I hadn't realized where I was, just saw the sign and pulled over out of curiousity and quickly realized what was up and what I was looking at. The 4x5 stayed in the car.

  6. #26

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    Re: Moonrise Hernandez 2007

    Quote Originally Posted by jetcode View Post
    What I can do with PS curves in 1 minute would take me 1-2 days to master in the darkroom and I still will not get that close to absolute translation.
    But you had to master the concept of curves first! I doubt someone who never used Photoshop could get to that point in a week, much less in a day or two...

    What Bruce said about things that other people do looking easy is absolutely right. It takes great skill to make what you do look easy to others. I've seen it happen enough times that now I instinctively approach with caution most anything that looks easy when someone else does it.

    Photoshop is a great program, but nobody ever learned it in a hurry. I've done my fair share of wet darkroom work back in the 70's, very similar to what Bruce describes, low light (but not sports) and lots of pushing and "fixing", most of it 35mm, but only as a hobby, on a much smaller scale. Now that I am mostly Photoshopping (and trying to equip a makeshift darkroom), I can tell you that whoever claims "photoshopping" to be easy is either a dunce or a master of it.

    And frankly, most of the people who talk about "simply pushing buttons" or "photoshopping the sky in or people out" here definitely do not strike me as masters...

  7. #27
    jetcode
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    Re: Moonrise Hernandez 2007

    Quote Originally Posted by Marko View Post
    But you had to master the concept of curves first! I doubt someone who never used Photoshop could get to that point in a week, much less in a day or two...

    What Bruce said about things that other people do looking easy is absolutely right. It takes great skill to make what you do look easy to others. I've seen it happen enough times that now I instinctively approach with caution most anything that looks easy when someone else does it.

    Photoshop is a great program, but nobody ever learned it in a hurry. I've done my fair share of wet darkroom work back in the 70's, very similar to what Bruce describes, low light (but not sports) and lots of pushing and "fixing", most of it 35mm, but only as a hobby, on a much smaller scale. Now that I am mostly Photoshopping (and trying to equip a makeshift darkroom), I can tell you that whoever claims "photoshopping" to be easy is either a dunce or a master of it.

    And frankly, most of the people who talk about "simply pushing buttons" or "photoshopping the sky in or people out" here definitely do not strike me as masters...
    What's to master? Believe me I'm no guru at PS. You look at the greyscale strips on the X/Y axis. You pick a point near highlights or shadows, move the point until you get the results you are looking for. Don't like it? modify or start over. I literally stumbled onto greyscale curves last week after trying to do everything with levels. In a matter of minutes I was getting results that were leaving me wondering how I ever managed without curves!

    Here is a case in point:

    http://www.largeformatphotography.in...6&d=1195098643

    crop, curves, extend, spot, dodge, burn, size. I did have to back off on black because converting to jpeg/web affects the black point on my monitor.

    crop: 2 minutes
    curves: 2 minutes
    extend: 5 minutes (top black fill, which I would have done in the darkroom)
    spot: 20 minutes
    dodge: 5 minutes
    burn: 5 minutes
    size: 2 minutes
    web: 2 minutes

    Less than an hour or so to process this image from a raw greyscale scan. I would have to stand before a darkroom genius to watch how they could get this effect because I with my darkroom skills mostly likely could not.

    For the record I am an poor printer in the darkroom. Mostly because of inexperience, mask registration, split contrast printing, and the enourmous time it takes to get an image to the point where I like it, and then being able to repeat the process verbatim. I went through a lot of paper trying to perfect this process, relatively speaking.

    For the record I am a computer geek of sorts but mostly in dealing with low level embedded applications. I know much less about word or consumer applications then I do about microcontroller internals.

  8. #28

    Re: Moonrise Hernandez 2007

    What's to master?
    LOL...thank you, curves have been around for many decades, what you see in photoshop is nothing new.

  9. #29
    jetcode
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    Re: Moonrise Hernandez 2007

    Quote Originally Posted by Jorge Gasteazoro View Post
    LOL...thank you, curves have been around for many decades, what you see in photoshop is nothing new.
    Jorge,

    What you see in PS is quite new because no longer are these constructs in imaging resigned to a chemical process. The concepts as you state have been known for a long time and I applaud those who are skilled masters in the darkroom. Believe me I know how difficult it is to become a master in the darkroom. PS isn't all that different in that you have to apply the same skills however there are some really beneficial features like limitless editing, fast turns to view a modification, and insane amounts of control over spotting, color balance, and on and on. PS is a very powerful tool.

    I am quite content to know that you and Jim and many others are dedicated to the darkroom. I am all for this work because I fail where you succeed admirably. I also enjoy alternate processes and traditional prints but I do find that what most moves me is the image itself. One of my favorite books is a Stieglitz collection of images from the turn of the century. Some of these images just blow my mind and we all know PS was not around during that period in time.

    Joe

  10. #30

    Re: Moonrise Hernandez 2007

    Quote Originally Posted by jetcode View Post
    Jorge,

    What you see in PS is quite new because no longer are these constructs in imaging resigned to a chemical process. The concepts as you state have been known for a long time and I applaud those who are skilled masters in the darkroom. Believe me I know how difficult it is to become a master in the darkroom. PS isn't all that different in that you have to apply the same skills however there are some really beneficial features like limitless editing, fast turns to view a modification, and insane amounts of control over spotting, color balance, and on and on. PS is a very powerful tool.

    I am quite content to know that you and Jim and many others are dedicated to the darkroom. I am all for this work because I fail where you succeed admirably. I also enjoy alternate processes and traditional prints but I do find that what most moves me is the image itself. One of my favorite books is a Stieglitz collection of images from the turn of the century. Some of these images just blow my mind and we all know PS was not around during that period in time.

    Joe
    I disagree Joe, the chemical process is a limitation not something new you are seeing in PS. In fact, knowing sensitometry and knowing what the curves mean can greatly enhance your use of PS. For example, you mention how you moved the points in your main layer to better define the tones. If I were to use PS instead of just doing the curve ajustment directly on the main layer I would create layers that with local curves, pretty much like we do when we create contrast reducing or increasing masks, or unsharp masks.

    The fact that this is much more easily done in PS does not mean it is new, it is only easier.

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