Cannot Over Expose?

[Tin Can]

Watched this youtube, where they claim the above

A VERY IMPORTANT TIP Large Format Photography with the Deardorff 8 by 10 (https://youtu.be/xWwo6VL9N6U)

Lots of babble, but obviously they got paid very well for the image

[Drew Wiley]

Instead of moving a piano, Laurel and Hardy decide to lug aroud a Dorff. I don't believe for a second that they got away with overexposing the film 9 stops. Probably didn't know how to correctly use a light meter to begin with. But they do seem to be fast learners, giving out advice after only two whole frames of cumulative experience. At least they had fun.

[Tobias Key]

Is this the same guy perchance?

https://www.vice.com/en/article/qbx9dd/has-celebrity-photographer-tyler-shields-ripped-off-other-artists-on-his-way-to-fame

[Tin Can]

I don't know, but that is a very good exposé

Thanks for posting the evidence!


Is this the same guy perchance?

https://www.vice.com/en/article/qbx9dd/has-celebrity-photographer-tyler-shields-ripped-off-other-artists-on-his-way-to-fame

[djdister]

I stopped watching about 30 seconds in - couldn't stand the pseudo-techno-babble.

[Tin Can]

I watch all YT without sound, and jump ahead to see WTF

Then I might turn on the sound

[jnantz]

Is this the same guy perchance?

https://www.vice.com/en/article/qbx9dd/has-celebrity-photographer-tyler-shields-ripped-off-other-artists-on-his-way-to-fame

not sure why he is a rip off artist. most every photograph has already been taken already there is very little that is new.
I did like the lady with the Kirby vacuum cleaner she was doing a good job and it wasn't even plugged into the sun.
I've overexposed film by 9 stops maybe 10 ... maybe he was ripping me off.

LOL

[Maris Rusis]

Sure enough I've exposed Tmax 400 8x10 film with the shutter speed set for f64 and then completely forgot to stop the lens down. That's seven stops over and the negative looked very dark indeed. Amazingly when contacted out the resultant positive was a little down on contrast but all the tones were there if I chose to chase after them. No depth of field of course. Not recommended.

[ic-racer]

My ad blocker is detected by YT and won't let me see certain videos, so I was saved from having to see or hear the video link in the original post.

I'd be pretty comfortable thinking every experienced LF photographer reading or posting here has at least once forgot to stop down before exposing film. So everyone knows already.

[Michael R]

not sure why he is a rip off artist. most every photograph has already been taken already there is very little that is new.
I did like the lady with the Kirby vacuum cleaner she was doing a good job and it wasn't even plugged into the sun.
I've overexposed film by 9 stops maybe 10 ... maybe he was ripping me off.

LOL

I don’t know, John, normally I’d kind of agree with you but some of those were clearly all-out copies. I’ll give him a pass on the biplane/crop duster because if you rip off a rip off it’s fine.

[lenicolas]

I find that Tyler Shields challenges some of my notions of Art, success, aesthetics...

On the one hand, his pictures often appeal to me. Beautiful people, cleanly lit, what’s not to like?

On the other hand, his work seems to be devoid of any knowledge or understanding of Art history.
Even when he obviously rips off others, his pastiche seems to miss the point of the original and always ends up a lesser work.
Shield doesn’t have a formal training as an artist, and has been quoted saying he doesn’t look at the works of others too much, even though he presents his work as Art, and insists that he shoots specifically with the goal of making prints and books. It almost feels like a form of arrogance ; [I]I think (my) Art is important, I have the ambition to have my work out in galleries, but I can’t be bothered to study the Artists that came before
The resulting work feels extremely shallow, and devoid of a unifying theme or unique perspective. In a word, it’s not self-aware as Art.

But then there’s a third thing about Shields :
He seems to have a sincere love of photography as a process.
He uses a lot of film cameras, from medium format to 8x10, he often has his B&W work printed on platinum/palladium, and has printed color work with dye transfer...
Even the fact that he has a YouTube channel sharing the kind of stories that sparked this thread : there’s no way videos like this help his sales in galleries, and they won’t raise his profile as a celebrity... I think the guy is genuinely excited about all that stuff and loves to geek out about photography.

Maybe Tyler Shields is the most accomplished of all forum photographers?
A guy who is passionate about the medium and the gear even though he doesn’t have any groundbreaking ideas, but he knows what the average Hollywood rich guy will like and he’s not embarrassed to give them just that.

[ColonelKurtz]

Just my opinion... but Tyler Shields is 100% a phony. Living here in Los Angeles long enough, you eventually either run into everyone who's doing things, or you hear about them through the grapevine. A (photographer) friend's girlfriend modeled for Tyler, and when he went to pick his girl up, he saw tons of Helmut Newton books, and many others by photographers that Tyler claimed to have no knowledge of. Some (not all, but at least half, in my opinion) of the pictures in the Vice article are way too close to be coincidental. I gotta give it up to this kid for copying more than a couple of those images verbatim, then saying he doesn't look at other photographer's work. It seems to me that's the only way you could go, when the plagiarism is this bad, but the critique by the Yale person that "The issue with the work of Tyler Shields isn't so much that he's copying so many artists' work—though his shouldn't be an artistic model to aspire to—but that his appropriations replace the unique vision of the original with the cheap ploys of shock or nostalgia" is spot on, in my opinion. There's no end to the amount of kids driving around Hollywood, with trust funds (rumor has it he is a trust fund kid), using art as a cover. Just look at his pictures, then look at the originals. Especially the Sally Mann. Wowzers. His success may lie in the fact that he actually enjoys this bizarre odyssey, and if so good for him (I think?) Ok, rant over. Its low hanging fruit, anyway.

[jnantz]

I donÂ’t know, John, normally IÂ’d kind of agree with you but some of those were clearly all-out copies. IÂ’ll give him a pass on the biplane/crop duster because if you rip off a rip off itÂ’s fine.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It’s just the world we live in.
The author died years ago..

[paulbarden]

Tyler Shields cannot count: the difference between f5.6 and f45 is not 9 stops.

After watching that video (unapologetic self-aggrandizement malarkey, IMO) I am annoyed by the misinformation he's promoting - namely "you cannot overexpose film". I would like to see him overexpose a sheet of film by 15 stops and then dare to persist in pandering this message. There is a limit to what you can get away with.
Also, he's a blatant copycat - not an original idea in his portfolio, as far as I can see.

[jnantz]

Tyler Shields cannot count: the difference between f5.6 and f45 is not 9 stops.

39.6 stops?
8D

[Bill Burk]

I've long searched for the elusive "shoulder" that causes "soot and chalk" and found by trying to develop Tech Pan shot at EI 200 the real "soot and chalk" comes by overdeveloping.

That boggled my mind a bit because I have been thinking exposure could cause it. Or that old film has a shoulder. Or that I might simulate it by using a superproportional reducer.

But I think now that I found it. It's overdevelopment that causes that look that Ansel Adams invented the Zone System to help beginners avoid "soot and chalk". And the good negatives he helped us all achieve are simply not overdeveloped.

[Drew Wiley]

Underexposure causes it because you can't print detail that's not even there in the shadows to begin with (the soot).Chalk would be due to uprintable highlights due to either overexposure or overdevelopment, or both. Tech Pan is pretty uncooperative in the highs and lows anyway. It can be bullied into low contrast by the right developer, but was designed as a technical (not pictorial) film, just like the name implies. The Zone System was thought up long before Tech Pan arrived, and certainly didn't solve all the problems. Otherwise, AA wouldn't have had so much grief printing his own negs. Thank goodness the two bozos on the linked video didn't try to explain the ZS.

[Bill Burk]

Yup, you saw the pictures and the graph. It was your comment that made me realize that I'd finally found the silver bullet (for ruining negatives).

All it takes is gross underexposure and gross overdevelopment... and that's something I never really tried before. I hate pushing.

[Drew Wiley]

Tech Pan was a wonderful forensic film. Some guy was convinced he had discovered a missing Carravagio painting. Everything about it certainly looked old, but from clear across the room it looked like a fake to me. But instead of him spending thousands of bucks for an expert opinion, I offered to IR photograph it for a few hundred using Tech Pan. Sure enough, the underpainting was some 1920's theme.

[ColonelKurtz]

Tyler Shields cannot count: the difference between f5.6 and f45 is not 9 stops.

After watching that video (unapologetic self-aggrandizement malarkey, IMO) I am annoyed by the misinformation he's promoting - namely "you cannot overexpose film". I would like to see him overexpose a sheet of film by 15 stops and then dare to persist in pandering this message. There is a limit to what you can get away with.
Also, he's a blatant copycat - not an original idea in his portfolio, as far as I can see.

Yeah, that is why I didn't touch the "can't overexpose film" baloney. How many times does that conversation need to be had? If anyone is truly interested, they can certainly do exactly what he did and see for themselves.

[pjd]

Some thoughts:
1) He's telling people to try 8x10, and it seems to me the comment that you can't overexpose film is intended as a social media inflected hyperbolic recommendation, not as literal truth.
2) Cute that he went from a 2D to a Deardorff. It looks fancier than the 2D with home brew lensboard. I wonder if he can get higher rates with the fancy looking camera.
3) If he can recycle ideas and do well with it, good luck to him. There is nothing new under the sun.
4) He's telling people to try 8x10, you'd think users on this forum would be happy for that.

[Willie]

Some thoughts:
1) He's telling people to try 8x10, and it seems to me the comment that you can't overexpose film is intended as a social media inflected hyperbolic recommendation, not as literal truth.
2) Cute that he went from a 2D to a Deardorff. It looks fancier than the 2D with home brew lensboard. I wonder if he can get higher rates with the fancy looking camera.
3) If he can recycle ideas and do well with it, good luck to him. There is nothing new under the sun.
4) He's telling people to try 8x10, you'd think users on this forum would be happy for that.

Recycling ideas is fine. Copys are not. At first look a lot of his work looks nice. Bright and full of impact. Then the direct comparison with images done before and we see he is on the edge of Copyright infringement, not using the ideas or images for inspiration. Infringement would be for the courts to decide, but in looking these don't pass the smell test.

Yes, most everything has "been done", but when you go to re-do it(knowingly or otherwise) you don't do a direct rip off. Or, if you do it is generally a learning experience as in Art Classes where you paint what the Masters did - but you don't pass it off as your own and you don't put it in your Portfolio.

In looking at his portfolio online it is all over the place. Not a coherent body of inspired work. Maybe the product of copying so many different photographers work rather than inspired efforts at creativity?

As for moving to a Deardorff from a 2D. No problem at all. Some of us just 'click' with a particular camera over something else. Have friends who have tried Large Format and almost gave it up before using a different camera and finding "the right one" makes it enjoyable.

[Drew Wiley]

Bellows are known for their hot air potential too. If somebody can turn slag into gold that way, it's their option. I just don't want to be around that kind of stinky furnace.

[paulbarden]

4) He's telling people to try 8x10, you'd think users on this forum would be happy for that.

Yes, he's recommending large format photography, but in a "You should learn to drive a car! The best part is that there's no such thing as a speed limit, and you CANNOT hurt yourself!" kind of way. I can't get excited about people who recommend taking up a technology and then providing misleading information about how to use it. That's NOT helpful.

[jnantz]

Yes, he's recommending large format photography, but in a "You should learn to drive a car! The best part is that there's no such thing as a speed limit, and you CANNOT hurt yourself!" kind of way. I can't get excited about people who recommend taking up a technology and then providing misleading information about how to use it. That's NOT helpful.

doesn't bother me.
there's always been goofballs selling and using cameras, since like 1839 onward.. :)
if his viewing+buying audience isn't bright enough to do a little research on like IDK how you have to load
and unload and develop and print/scan the film and how film is like $10 an exposure. LOL not quite sure
why I should be upset about that...

[Tin Can]

I never drove a car or anything motorized until Drivers ED age 16. Strictly forbidden.

In HS within way less than 5 minutes I was told to stop, get in the back and let the instructor train the 3 others in the same car.

That was scary!

He said I knew how to drive and i did.

I learned from watching, when older brother drove I lay on the back floor as it seemed safest. Not a smooth driver ever.

If someone wants to buy any camera, let them learn in a way that works for them. Almost nobody gets hurt with film.

If they want and need help they will find a way somehow.

When I joined here, I fairly quickly started using learning with X-Ray film as it was cheaper then.

Many here kept telling me I MUST USE REAL FILM.

Glad I didn't listen.