Brooks Jensen's Questions

[Jim Galli]

A lot of blather in the other thread. Folks should read what Brooks wrote before they get so emotional.

[Editor: As pointed out by Jensen later, you can download the editorial from http://enhanced.lenswork.com/lwcollection.htm. They are in the free overview PDF for LensWork #73.]

Let me pose this question also posed by Brooks but I will extend it a bit. Suppose that photography does in fact become a hobby for the very rich because the ultimate print can only be achieved by an offset press putting the likes of us pedestrian photographers who can only afford silver or ink jets in second place. Suppose also 15 years has passed and no one questions this any longer. What will the museums and collectors want? The original having begun life on a very expensive printing machine can be one or 80,000. In that case who's collecting what?

Will photography become more like it's sister art, music. Will the original capture be like writing the score as Ansel said long ago, and fame, commercial $$$, or whatever the artist is after will be decided by pop culture, as music is now?

Things are changing much faster than my comfort zone was padded for. I'm pretty much stuck with silver or platinum or collodion because I truly do not have the geek gene. I hate my Epson 2200. Things are changing whether we like it or not. I was joking with another photog the other day that in 15 years some one will pick up one of my prints and gasp. "Look at the dirt and mustache hairs! The tones are all wrong, like they used to do. This is a bonafide piece of shit. It's priceless. It's real!"

:o OK, it might take a lot more than 15 years for mine :(

[Donald Miller]

I guess that whether the questions posed are from Brooks Jensen or someone else the issue that remains is that, it seems to me, one must decide for what purpose they are pursuing their efforts, no matter what they may be. I really do not get into the analysis of whether my photographs will be used as napkins or wipes for the other end. I just do it because what I do pleases me...nothing more needed on this end.

However, in saying this, I recognize that others may wish to engage themselves in this activity and if that is so I wish them well. If they have a clear view of the future than I wish they would tell me how much per barrel my oil interests will sell for six months from now.

[Kirk Gittings]

Will the original capture be like writing the score as Ansel said long ago, and fame, commercial $$$, or whatever the artist is after will be decided by pop culture, as music is now?

Pop Culture only defines Pop Music. It does not now nor ever has defined MUSIC. You are overgeneralizing. Serious artists will always strive to control technology for the sake of their vision no matter what the technology or genre. It was that way before photography and will remain so regardless of where creative technology goes. A computer is no more the antithesis of art than a gun is the antithesis of peace.

[Merg Ross]

I agree with Jim, folks should read what Brooks wrote. From what I observed on the previous thread, very few even read his comments, but were quick to declare war.

[Kirk Gittings]

Unfortunately, since I have never bought, read much or subscribed to the magazine, I have to go on the paraphrased statements here.

[Merg Ross]

Kirk, well said. My point exactly, one should read the entire Jensen article before forming an opinion.

[Kirk Gittings]

I try not to let the facts get in the way of my well reasoned arguments.

[Merg Ross]

"Well reasoned arguments". Thus is the state of modern photography.

[Eric Rose]

Like my dad always said "don't confuse me with the facts, my mind is already made up". I'm with Donald on this. I do it for me, and only for me. If someone else likes it, that's great, for them. I don't feel any better or worse either way.

[Nicolai Morrisson]

I haven't seen the issue yet, was he just talking about mono- and duotone, or full color reproduction as well?

[Bruce Watson]

I'm pretty much stuck with silver or platinum or collodion because I truly do not have the geek gene.

I hate to break it to you Jim, but you have a huge and actively expressing geek gene. You my friend are at the very least a lens geek extraordinare. That you are not a computer geek also doesn't make you any less of a geek. Just about all of us who participate on this forum are geeks of some kind or other; predominately LF geeks of course. So don't go feeling left out. ;)

[Toyon]

Does someone have a link to Brook's article? I often like what he writes, except for a fairly ludicrous piece a while back on print pricing.

[Ole Tjugen]

... I was joking with another photog the other day that in 15 years some one will pick up one of my prints and gasp. "Look at the dirt and mustache hairs! The tones are all wrong, like they used to do. This is a bonafide piece of shit. It's priceless. It's real!"

:o OK, it might take a lot more than 15 years for mine :(

I've seen an original print by Julia Margaret Cameron - replace "mustache hairs" with "chicken down", add some dust and a cobweb, and the description is pretty accurate.

"Pop music"? What's that?

Not only was a large part of what is now "classical music" the "pop music" of the day when it was first made, but there is also a large (and interesting) part of "pop music" directly influenced by classical music. No - I don't mean those who add "string sauce" to everything, but to the classically trained composers who write the music of bands like Kraftwerk and Rammstein. :)

[David Spivak-Focus Magazine]

Does someone have a link to Brook's article? I often like what he writes, except for a fairly ludicrous piece a while back on print pricing.

It's a great article along with a great magazine. You should pick it up at your local bookstore. Only $9.95...which imho, is too inexpensive for a magazine of this quality.

[Brian Ellis]

Unfortunately, since I have never bought, read much or subscribed to the magazine, I have to go on the paraphrased statements here.

In the previous thread Jim Galli provided an excellent summary of Brooks' basic point and of course Brooks himself summarized the article and explained his basic point. If you read those two messages you'll have an accurate understanding of the article. Just ignore most of the other responses if you want to know what the article really said. About 90% of the critical responses in that thread indicated that the person posting the response hadn't read the article and knew nothing about it but nevertheless felt free to criticize it. And of course there was the usual frothing at the mouth from the usual people over digital in general, which had nothing to do with the point of the article.

[Joe Lipka]

Well, it is possible to download a .pdf file summary of the current edition of LensWork from the LensWork site. The Editor's comments are always reproduced in full.

So you can read the article for free.

[Duane Polcou]

... but to the classically trained composers who write the music of bands like Kraftwerk and Rammstein. :)

Kraftwerk! Used to burn Cannabis Sativa to "Trans Europe Express". I didn't know I was being a classico-phile. I was just trying to get the German girl down the hall to sleep with me.

[janepaints]

One of the 1880's british masters of photography gave it up when his preferred materials became unavailable or too-expensive. Sorry--his name escapes me: middle aged memory syndrome. Was it Emerson? Anyway...

However, my memory does recall what he said about the situation: "The artist is beholding to their materials.".

Materials and technology change all the time. It's happened in music and my approach to musicmaking and recording have been altered, like it or not. Same with photography and writing and, well, plenty of other stuff.

I witnessed it up-close-and-personal in the fields of typography, reprographics and graphic design. I've never seen any typesetting more lovely than expertly-done hot type, handcast. But Hasta La Vista baby! Early (1980's) designed-for-commercial-use dedicated typesetting computers (such as the Varityper Epics systems) ran rings around anything I've ever seen come off a PC or Mac. It's like comparing a Rolls Royce to a Tinker Toy. They made Hot Type obsolete and they themselves were made obsolete, all within a roughly 30-year timespan.

Laser, inkjet and dye printers & copiers litter earth today, for both text and image applications. Yes, they are marvels compared to the Xerox machines of 20 and 30 years ago. How do they compare to the image quality of the stuff I made daily as a know-nothing lunkhead kid running process & stat cameras for a day job until I could figure out how to become a Rock N' Roll Starlet? They were Deardorffs to today's Dianas. Example: the shop which employed me had clients like Pratt & Whitney Aircraft. When reproducing blueprints or tooling patterns for such firms, dimensional accuracy of the copies was required to be within .0001" of the originals. Otherwise the customer would reject them.

Every light has an accompanying shadow and vice versa.

CAD, robotics and nano have revolutionized so many aspects of our world. Products are now manufactured at speeds, tolerances and quality-control standards previously unimaginable. However these same techno-advances create situations where the lack of hands-on human contact can allow SNAFU's to go more-easily undetected, with mega-disasterous results in worst-case scenarios.

And these processes are coming at us and evolving/morphing faster and faster. The faster they come, the faster-yet they WILL come. Modern Times ala Charlie Chaplin. Brazil ala Terry Gilliam. Everything is speeding up, including the speed of the speeding-up.

The painter Delacroix had a quick and nimble mind. Upon seeing his first photograph he understood the new paradigm quite clearly and said "From this moment on, painting is dead." He didn't mean 'painting as medium', he meant painting's previous functionary roles in society. Goodbye local oil portraitist. Hello Mr. Newcomer Daguerotype Maker in our village. Goodbye "this painting is so lifelike you can see every blade of grass", hello Large Blurry Paintings With Existentialist Titles.

For the users of any medium there are always choices. There is no sacred ground. Sands shift. Ozymandias. Images will still be made, sounds will still be made and recorded. 78 rpm records made of shellac were all staticy & teensy & shrill.
Then vinyl made things slicker. Then cassettes plus dolby made things smaller and still good-sounding. Then digital and CD's made things PERFECT. Then mp3's made everything staticy and teensy and shrill again but nobody cared because you could carry 2,4567,27,8748 songs around with you on your iPod until it got stolen so then you pasted a 'mean people suck' bumpersticker on your car.

Dwight Eisenhower: Things are more like they are right now then they've ever been before."

I like Ike.

Pick and choose. Pray to some icons, smash others. As long as you can do what you want to do, how you want to do it. Mix and match.

In a digital world of ones and zeros is PERVASIVE POLARIZED SYNDROME so surprising? Red state-blue state. Either-Or or else. Jihad or Waiting For The Rapture.

In my earlier Photo Obsession Years (1979-1989) I'd spend hours in the darkroom, trying to get that one Perfect Print. After I got it I was so worn-out I rarely made more than one. I did my best to understand Zone system and LV and the like. Studied page after page of formulae and arcana. Wandered the photo swap meets looking for that perfect (and cheap) magic lens. A new enlarger seemed to soon require a new easel which in turn required a better paper which in turn required a new film tank ad infinitum.

In 1990, for a variety of reasons, I left photography. I began to paint, daily. In the same amount of time it took me to make one (kinda but not really) Perfect Print, I might end up with one finished 3' x 5' painting, all kindsa colors and shapes and no rules, zones, data or diagrams in sight while making it.

Which is not to imply a superiority of painting over photography. Apples and oranges. I missed photography. Daydreamed of someday again doing simple contact prints, for fun.

I've spend hundreds (probably thousands) of hours lost in pleasure looking at the book Walker Evans--First And Last, as well as many other photographic monographs. Not once did I think 'Hmm these reproduction are okay, but they surely aren't any match for an original Evans print." It just didn't come to mind. I was seeing what Evans had said not how perfectly or imperfectly the transmission device had delivered Walker's ideas to me.

The medium is NOT the message. Unless you happen to be the guy who owns stock in the joint which manufactures the gizmos that everybody has to buy to use the medium.

The message is the message.

I listen to vinyl, CD, minidisc, cassette, 78's.

When i listen to Charlie Poole tunes recorded in 1927 I don't think 'Dang what crappy fidelity." I think "What amazing music. hot damn!" Same as I might think listening to some hi-end Audiophile digital recording just released.

Is the message any good? That's an key question to keep in mind in this, the Mess Age. Todays highest-end drum scanner is next decade's can't give it away at the rummage sale pile of carbon, plastic and silicone.

Pick and choose.

Inkjet B & W prints, seen online, made from scanned 4x5 negs, triggered my desire to make photos again. The gear used was 'prosumer' quality--nothing fancy or too pricey. I've seen high-end color all-digital prints that were amazing. And I've seen stuff done with the same gear that was "so-what?".

Everybody is right and everybody is wrong and it's all okay, bona-fide & valid--as long as truely human messages keep getting through to the human sensitory receivers.

Many years ago, poking through a box at a garage sale, I came across two photographs. Any item in the box cost 25 cents. I bought both photos. One was an original print by Arnold Genthe, one was an original print by J.K. Hillers.

I bought the Genthe print thinking "I can make some money offa this because this Genthe guy was famous." The photo was a bore. Genthe's bread-and-butter commercial portraiture. Soft-focus, some Wall Street Society Type being immortalized by his era's version of Richard Avedon. Arnie had signed it in silver-pigmented ink. Vanity and ego at work, money shaking hands. The message coming off that print was Gentleman's Swindle Agreement All Around. It was empty.

The Hillers print was breathtaking and I could hardly believe I owned such a treasure. Albumen or POP. 11 x 14" contact. One of the first photos ever taken of the Grand Canyon. Hillers was the snapshot guy on the expedition. I never dreamed of selling it. Stared at it for years. All kinda great messages coming offa it: "Holy Shit, LOOK AT THIS!"...."the handiwork of creation & nature & god or whatever the heck ya wanna call it is beauteous and awesome beyond compare"...."what's over the next ridge I wonder?"...."wow, does this look amazing on the ground glass"....I don't know how much Hillers was paid but that photo had no reek of money, ego or vanity to it. Nor any reek of Technology Worship. It was a profoundly human document in formal, spiritual, emotional and creative terms. That picture defined 'Agape' and communicated it about as good as good can be.

If the technology which Mr. Brooks describes can convey some of that which Mr. Hiller's print did--great! If a Polaroid does--great! A brownie snapshot or a Jim Galli Reading-Glasses-Taped-To-The-Lensboard image--great! Ansel--great!! Cindy Sherman wacked on drugs in her downtown beatnik loft--Great!! Elvis portrait done with crayons on black velvet--great! Just as long as the message is the message.

If that Genthe portrait had been a 600-foot wide hologram with fireworks and Surround Sound which whispered "Janey, you've made a wise, very wise investment", it still woulda stank. :)

I sold the Genthe a month later to some speculator for $10 and kept the Hillers for about a decade, until circumstances of No Dough forced me to sell it. I miss it still. That picture oozed soul.

[Kirk Gittings]

Jane, I like the way you think.

[Wayne Lambert]

Jane, I don't like the way you think.

[Brian Ellis]

Jane, I don't like the way you think.

What a surprise.

[Jim Galli]

Jane, I like the way you think too. Not long after I posed the questions the answer came in a much shorter version. Pasted on my dark room wall. "It's the picture, stupid!"

As a distant aside, my dad was a typesetter and at one time or another worked in every large Los Angeles shop. He agonized through that changing process. He loved setting real type. He did it all but as a very small boy my only real memory was the sounds smell and clatter of a hot lead linotype machine setting a newspaper article. I was awestruck.

[sanking]

The medium is NOT the message. Unless you happen to be the guy who owns stock in the joint which manufactures the gizmos that everybody has to buy to use the medium.

The message is the message.



Art is form and content. Always has been, always will be.

Sandy King

[Wayne Lambert]

Jane, here is why I don't like the "message is the message" concept. First, when you say the "message is the message" you are saying "all that matters is the final print," and, as I have said elswhere, I don't believe that. Second, I believe the strict acceptance of this attitude can lead to the photographic equivalent of tinny recordings, the beautiful landscape photograph marred by dust spots in the sky or a moving portrait printed on a Xerox machine. Good messages in both, but, as presented, probably not acceptable to most of us in this forum. (If they are unique prints then that is what we'll have to accept. In this case it is "It's the picture, stupid.") Craft is important, be the print traditional or digital, and if one accepts the premise that craft is important then one is accepting the idea that the medium is a big part of the message. In other words, I believe what most of us want, and really only should be satisfied with, is both the medium and the message. I do like the way you write, though. And, yes, I know that's the message. Or is that the medium? And if I've missed something or misinterpreted what you are saying, let me know. If you don't, I'm sure someone else will.

[Marko]

The medium is NOT the message. Unless you happen to be the guy who owns stock in the joint which manufactures the gizmos that everybody has to buy to use the medium.

The message is the message.


If the technology which Mr. Brooks describes can convey some of that which Mr. Hiller's print did--great! If a Polaroid does--great! A brownie snapshot or a Jim Galli Reading-Glasses-Taped-To-The-Lensboard image--great! Ansel--great!! Cindy Sherman wacked on drugs in her downtown beatnik loft--Great!! Elvis portrait done with crayons on black velvet--great! Just as long as the message is the message.


Jane, I like the way you think too. And also the way you express that. :)

To mix and match comments from different threads that all touch on this, we do live in great times indeed, the times which brought us technology with a real potential to liberate the message from the medium more thoroughly then ever before.

Bruce describes one of such technology improvements with a real potential to increase the choices we already have and he gets shot at for his effort by half of the audience in the other thread (and especially on the other board). One of the best "Shoot The Messenger" examples I've seen lately.

But upon closer examination, the shooters are mostly the ones whose message is their medium of choice. They stand to lose their message such as it is with the change because ornate and sophisticated as it maybe, their vessel is essentially an empty one.

[zoneVIII]

i think the best photography journal now is lenswork, thanks to Brooks Jensen to bring it.
One of his podcast make me laugh rolling the floor is about a book that u dont want to buy, a book about how to sharpening an image in adobe p******** whole book just about it.

[Marko]

Zone VIII, your shadows look too dense, your highlights seem burnt out and you are definitely on the wrong board.

:rolleyes:

[Donald Miller]

Addressing this from the standpoint of music, as some have done here, I wonder if we had at one point determined that 8 track renditions were the only means by which "real music" could be presented. That, arising from that viewpoint, by consequence, everything that followed...(those damned plastic discs that are capable of playing digital music, in other words) was not "real music" collectively what a bunch of fools we would have been.

The point, as I see it and as Jane has adequately stated, is that music is music and that photography is photography no matter the means by which it is conveyed. Those who are fanatical in holding on to the past are like an owner of a Victor gramaphone hugging the stinking carcass of the dog listening to "his masters voice".

[Marko]

Addressing this from the standpoint of music, as some have done here, I wonder if we had at one point determined that 8 track renditions were the only means by which "real music" could be presented. That, arising from that viewpoint, by consequence, everything that followed...(those damned plastic discs that are capable of playing digital music, in other words) was not "real music" collectively what a bunch of fools we would have been.

But we did and we have. Virtually every new technology in the history has experienced the backlash of the same sort, even military technology.

I still remember the arguments when CDs came out. Most of them centered around "a bunch of 0's and 1's" or the imperfections inherent to vynil that provided for what we now call "The Artist's Touch". There were even Analogue Recording Clubs formed - I guess that's the source of the term Analog was imported into photography. The difference being that recordings were indeed analog... :)

[Jim Galli]

I think it's interesting although not pertinent that each gain in recording fidelity had an = or greater loss in stability of very long term survival. It's interesting that the library of congress is saving recorded sound on 78rpm shellac while the copyright office is burning CD's and throwing away the "originals". Nothing to do with photography, I digress. Perhaps pertinent that the 1927 recording artist used the very best media he had available.

[Kirk Gittings]

Jane is making a play on words off of Marshall McLuhan's famous statement that "the medium is the message", which was very influential in art circles in the 60's and 70's see:http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/probe/docs/mcluhan.html

This ideology led to ideas like "painting is about paint" and photographs that were solely about the process and not content. Not being able to divorce itself from use, architecture followed with the late modernist concept of Form follows Function. Thomas Barrow's famous Cancellation Series was about the photographic process. Sorry I can't come up with a link to that series, but some of you are familiar with it. It was in Newhall's history, I think.

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

Well, to me art should be a melding of talent and craft, where the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts. This idea that the content is everything diregarding the mastery of craft is to me a cop out. The true artist chooses the medium that best fits the work, the wannabes choose that which is easier, and the tell us the content is everything..... :rolleyes:

[roteague]

Well, to me art should be a melding of talent and craft, where the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts. This idea that the content is everything diregarding the mastery of craft is to me a cop out. The true artist chooses the medium that best fits the work, the wannabes choose that which is easier, and the tell us the content is everything..... :rolleyes:

Amen. You are Wayne are spot on.

[Kirk Gittings]

No one that I can tell is arguing that content is everything. Who? Jane was saying that MM was wrong, that the medium is not the message.


The medium is NOT the message. Unless you happen to be the guy who owns stock in the joint which manufactures the gizmos that everybody has to buy to use the medium.

The message is the message.


See my next thread to go on with your question.

[Ted Harris]

I have been reading this thread, and others like it over the past few years, with great interest. The one thing that seldom gets mentioned is, from my point of view, how lucky we are.

We have choices, lots more choices than we had in the past. Yeah, I know some films and some papers are no longer available but we have many many mroe choices in terms of how we produce the final image, in how, to reparaphrase Jane and MM, we make the message the message we want to make it.

I have found the advent and the increasing excellence of ink-jet printing and digital image capture exciting. Today, I have so many more options, so many more ways to express myself than I had when I was starting out 50 years ago. Not only that, things that used to take me long, tedious hours to accomplish I can now accomplish in much shorter times.

As an artist, all my images start inside my head and then the struggle begins to capture them and finally to release them, to get them out in a form where someone else can (hopefully) see what I saw. Nothing to moan about today, we live in exciting times.

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

No one that I can tell is arguing that content is everything

All you need to do is peruse all the threads about film vs digital and you will find those that tell us that content is everything, that the final product is all that matters but then run and buy the latest digtal "silver" paper (what a stupid name) or tell us their ink jet prints look like platinum prints but better. As far as I am concerned this only show they either did not know how to expose the film, print, or both.

Of course, there are some exceptions like you, Brian Ellis or Jordan, who have chosen the medium they think best represents the intended result. But you are the exception rather than the rule, in most cases these new technologies are chosen because they are easier to master or the assesment is biased and seen through rose colored glasses.

What a coincidence that this all was started by someone who spouses $20 photographic prints, but when it comes to his magazine and the offset printing we all of the sudden are looking at magnificent reproductions better than the original..... could it be because he now needs to justify a 30% increase in price...nahhh...I am sure I am being too cynical.... :)

[Annie M.]

'Oh, I'm out shooting all the time, I see something and I go "Click." In my head - you see, I don't carry a camera. That way I save enormous amounts of money, never spend nights in the darkroom. And I am improving all the time.'

- a student in Garry Winogrand's class, 1967

[Kirk Gittings]

As I have seen it. Most of the advocates of digital printing argue that they can make beautiful prints digitally, not that good prints don't matter. I am not sure we aren't experiencing some semantic issues in this discussion.

[roteague]

I have found the advent and the increasing excellence of ink-jet printing and digital image capture exciting.

And I find it sad. Just another example of the shallow, "fast food" mentality of our society. Gone are the days of craftsmanship, where a photographer can spend time and effort creating a finely crafted print, hand mount and frame the print - only to be confronted by someone spitting junk out of their home ink jet printer. Now, everything is only about the final print, who cares of a sky is photoshopped in.

[janepaints]

Recording and Photography are kissing cousins. Maybe even siblings. Diana and Orpheus. Both are recording mediums--capturing evidence of the Universal Waveform.

Photography records evidence of lightwaves. Recording records evidence of audiowaves. Photography is not light itself, nor is recording sound itself. Art can be made via either medium but neither medium itself is art nor should they be confused with art.

Both are Information Storage & Retrieval Systems No more, no less. Light and sound are both information. Matter in formation and in motion through a spacial-temporal continuum. We are all bathed in such stuff, indeed we are all formed of such stuff.

So we exist in this arrangement of waveforms, particles and time and we each have our individual experiences therefrom--resulting in sensations, emotions, consequences and results.

Trying to make some sense of all this--to communicate/express/translate/question--sometimes result in what some call art, which can exist in many forms and varieties.

Anne Frank owned a diary and a pencil. She lived in wave/particle/temporal circumstances which profoundly impacted her as an individual and she recorded what she experienced, felt and thought using the tools at hand--a diary & a pencil.

Her results deeply affected many, many other people. The information Anne had recorded was eventually retrieved by others and understood.

Q: How much of the power/beauty/worth of Anne's effort was due to her medium--i.e. diary & paper? (and afterwards via published/distributed book)

Q. How much of it was due to her message, i.e. her thoughts?

----------------

Related, tho as wonderfully goofy as Anne's story was profoundly not:

NASA spent Large Chunks Of Money to study the problem of Writing In Space. They sought Writing Devices which would work in zero gravity. Pens whose ink would always flow and wouldn't dry up. Think tanks & labs were set up. Bright minds were employed. Calculations, formulas, theories, tests, more tests. Contracts were awarded. Hands were shook as flashbulbs popped at Press Conferences. Eureka!

The Russians faced the same problem. So the Soviet Space Program went down to the office supply store and bought a bunch of pencils.

Hee hee. True story.

Whatever does the job as long as the job gets done. Just ask Job, he'll tell ya :)

[Marko]

As I have seen it. Most of the advocates of digital printing argue that they can make beautiful prints digitally, not that good prints don't matter. I am not sure we aren't experiencing some semantic issues in this discussion.

I think the issues we are experiencing in this and many other similar discussions are ideological, not semantic.

It is exactly this notion that digital printing can produce beautiful prints (and that therefore digital itself has come out of age as a fully fledged form of photography) that draws the ire of the fundamentalist crowd.

They certainly won't let facts get in the way of a good ideological fight - it's much easier to distort the meaning of something the other side says than to argue their point on reason alone.

[Kirk Gittings]

And I find it sad. Just another example of the shallow, "fast food" mentality of our society. Gone are the days of craftsmanship, where a photographer can spend time and effort creating a finely crafted print, hand mount and frame the print - only to be confronted by someone spitting junk out of their home ink jet printer. Now, everything is only about the final print, who cares of a sky is photoshopped in.

If you think a finely crafted print from inkjet is quick or easy or anything approaching fast food, you are profoundly misinformed.

[janepaints]

And I find it sad. Just another example of the shallow, "fast food" mentality of our society. Gone are the days of craftsmanship, where a photographer can spend time and effort creating a finely crafted print, hand mount and frame the print - only to be confronted by someone spitting junk out of their home ink jet printer. Now, everything is only about the final print, who cares of a sky is photoshopped in.

Unknown, Pissed-Off, Suddenly Out-Of-Work Painter, circa 1840:

Merde!!! I find it sad. Just another example of the shallow, "machine age" mentality of our society. Gone are the days of hand craftsmanship, where Ze Artiste spent time and effort creating a finely-crafted canvas, hand varnished, and then gold-leafed the frame - only to be confronted by someone spitting junk out of an idiot-eye lens & fumigated-paper contraption. Now, everything is only about the 'perfect likeness', who cares if a sky isn't rendered artistically but just captured by a soulless device?. Merde!!!

:) :) :)

[Donald Miller]

Being a user 0f both film and digital, I believe that I have the right to pose this situation to those fanatics on the film side of the equation...The next time that you see a backhoe digging a ditch go tell the operator that you want him to give up the use of his artificial machine and join a group of about twenty men that you want to dig the ditch with shovels since that is the only true measure of ditch digging.

That may seem ridiculous but no more so than a film fanatic that says that his prints are better since he/she works harder.

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

As I have seen it. Most of the advocates of digital printing argue that they can make beautiful prints digitally, not that good prints don't matter. I am not sure we aren't experiencing some semantic issues in this discussion.

Not really, there are some in this forum and specially one who claims is tired of the people spousing fine craft but continues to sing the praises of digital and when he is caught in a quandry he then claims the "final product" is what matters. Of course, he shows his open mind by claiming he does both....well, sometimes a mind is so open your brain falls out, and a jack of all trades is master of none.. :)

Another thing I find funny is that many claim they now don't need to spend hours in the darkroom, but spend hours in front of the computer. Hard work is not the same as a lot of menial work. The same people that claim they now don't need to clean, wash, etc...are now sitting in front of the computer fixing pixel by pixel and they call it hard work.... go figure.

[Kirk Gittings]

And I find it sad. Just another example of the shallow, "fast food" mentality of our society. Gone are the days of craftsmanship, where a photographer can spend time and effort creating a finely crafted print, hand mount and frame the print - only to be confronted by someone spitting junk out of their home ink jet printer. Now, everything is only about the final print, who cares of a sky is photoshopped in.

Just curious, do you do your own Crystal Archive printing? Your website doesn't say if you or a lab does your printing.

[Brooks Jensen]

What a coincidence that this all was started by someone who spouses $20 photographic prints, but when it comes to his magazine and the offset printing we all of the sudden are looking at magnificent reproductions better than the original..... could it be because he now needs to justify a 30% increase in price...nahhh...I am sure I am being too cynical.... :)

Jorge,
May I ask you for a favor? In another post elsewhere, you mentioned that you had not read (and would not likely read) my article. Would you mind doing so before commenting upon it? If you were to do so, you would realize that nowhere in my article did I claim that LensWork is printed so well as to look better than the originals. In fact, I said exactly the opposite -- that because of the budgetary restrictions in our magazine, we cannot push the limits of the printing technology that are now possible. You look silly when you make statements like this that are so clearly mischaracterizations of the original and it diverts the conversation from the points that really do need our best efforts to think about and discuss.

I know you are firmly set against LensWork for philosophical reasons and wouldn't want to support it financially. You can, however, download the Editor's Comments for free from our website at http://enhanced.lenswork.com/lwcollection.htm. They are in the free overview PDF for LensWork #73. Your perspective on the the things I actually wrote might add important content to this discussion.
Thanks.
Brooks

[QT Luong]

Just curious, do you do your own Crystal Archive printing? Your website doesn't say if you or a lab does your printing.

I have found that in general people who do their own printing emphasize it, as it does demonstrate more craftmanship than sending out to a lab where people will "photoshop" the image for them.

Craftmanship is not limited to in-camera capture. "photoshopping" an image that is printed on the Lightjet is part of craftmanship. Do you think you'd get a great print straight out of the scanned file ?

Some may prefer the look of silver processes, but there is no denying that the level of quality of inkjet printing done by a competent operator is extremely high. Conversely, a Lightjet can spit out junk as much as an inkjet printer.

They are just tools. However, inkjet printers have given the control of printing back to photographers, while in the initial days of digital imaging they had no choice but to send out to a lab. Therefore in my opinion, inkjet printers have contributed to more craftmanship, not less.

The fact that Aunt Mary can use her inkjet otherwise is simply irrelevant.

[janepaints]

Another thing I find funny is that many claim they now don't need to spend hours in the darkroom, but spend hours in front of the computer. Hard work is not the same as a lot of menial work. The same people that claim they now don't need to clean, wash, etc...are now sitting in front of the computer fixing pixel by pixel and they call it hard work.... go figure.


We must quit using these modern soul-less computers for communication and henceforth carry on these conversations the only proper way!

...via letters written on handmade watermarked paper using quill pens dipped in india ink, envelopes sealed with stamped wax....and our servants, summoned, shall fetch them from our hands and thence convey them on horseback through bandit-riddled forest paths to the proper recipient.

The entire process will be extremely difficult, time-consuming and imprecise--and thus real good for our souls or something. :)

I eagerly await all replies to this idea and expect to receive them any month now.

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

I have found that in general people who do their own printing emphasize it, as it does demonstrate more craftmanship than sending out to a lab where people will "photoshop" the image for them.

Well, Robert scans his transparencies and prints the digital file. So accusing him of being misinformed or emphasizing the craft is not accurate.

Brooks:

I am not opposed to Lenswork at all, in fact I have written here and in other places that I think it is one of the best photography magazines and certainly the best printed. Heck, I did not even care you featured digital photography. I could always find something I liked in your magazine. What I am opposed to is your philosophy and approach to faster is better photography photography, as well as your fascination with digital as the "way" to go. Your editiorial is one more example of how fundamentally different we are in the way we think about photography.

You quantify being "better" by comparing dot density to reflection density of the Bullock print. If I am to beleive your assesment, then I guess all platinum prints are crap, few can print a pt print with densities higher than 1.7 and this is a stretch. So if the sole measure of the print being better is how black or how white a print is, then you are correct.

In my case I beleive in having the picture finished before I press the shutter, the rest are just mechanics. I choose to photograph those things that I believe will be enhaced by the process, where the process becomes an integral part of the image. You might be able to reproduce one of my photographs with deeper blacks, whiter whites, sharper, etc, etc.... but it is not how I intended the photograph to be and as such your reproductions would not be better than my originals since they would loose the tonal relationship I originally visualized.

Which brings me to your closing statements. You take a very cavalier attitude towards originals, this idea that the original will no longer be the best only cheapens photography and once more does a disservice to photographers. Why would I want to pay more than a $100 for a print? I might as well wait until the book comes out, cut off the pages of the pics I like frame them and display them.....

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

We must quit using these modern soul-less computers for communication and henceforth carry on these conversations the only proper way!

...via letters written on handmade watermarked paper using quill pens dipped in india ink, envelopes sealed with stamped wax....and our servants, summoned, shall fetch them from our hands and thence convey them on horseback through bandit-riddled forest paths to the proper recipient.

The entire process will be extremely difficult, time-consuming and imprecise--and thus real good for our souls or something. :)

I eagerly await all replies to this idea and expect to receive them any month now.

Oh brother, do you think you are the first one to write this on this forum... :rolleyes:

[Brooks Jensen]

Why would I want to pay more than a $100 for a print? I might as well wait until the book comes out, cut off the pages of the pics I like frame them and display them.....

Jorge,
Precisely my point. Many, many people are now doing exactly that, especially with higher quality reproduction via calendars, etc. We may not like it, but if the offset reproduction and the original print are indistinguishable won't folks be tempted to do so?

The point of my article is to draw attention to how the quality of offset lithography has improved over the years, and how more and more people -- especially non-photographers, people who are not trained in the subtleties of fine art photographic printing -- find that they no longer need originals to satisfy them. What's at the heart of the matter is that we photographers had better think about this and take this phenomenon into account in our marketing strategies. I fear that we might become (if we are not there already) a group of hypersophisticated artisans whose work can only appeal to other peers who are trained to see the extreme subtleties in our prints. If this happens, the only audience for photographs will be other photographers -- all the while the general public is finding offset prints so satisfactory that the market for original photographs suffers.

In short, I suspect we photographers have a challenge in front of us to educate and explain to a disbelieving public why our work is worth more than an offset print when they can't see any difference. We either rise to this challenge, or we find ourselves producing our originals for a smaller and smaller audience -- maybe an audience of one, the guy in the mirror. Indeed, I know many photographers who are already in that camp today.

Brooks

PS. In my original article, I was quite clear to differentiate between technological comparisons and aesthetic ones. Better? Depends which ruler you prefer -- and there is no right answer. When discussing offset versus silver, I simply used technological criteria to compare and contrast the two technologies and their evolutions in the last 40 years. Obviously, aesthetic considerations are an entirely different issue -- and one I did not discuss at all in the article.

[QT Luong]

The market for posters is already orders of magnitude more than the market for prints, so it's just a small evolution in the same direction. A few years ago, I received a few posters that were made from my images by one of the best (if not the best) poster producer in France. The first reaction of my wife (used to examine photographic prints) was that they were as good as prints.

Regardless of quality, there are two things that posters do not offer: the satisfaction of obtaining a limited edition, signed piece directly from the artist, and the much larger choice of images (offset printing is economical only for large print runs, therefore images need to have a relatively wide appeal). Both are certainly built into my business model.

[roteague]

Just curious, do you do your own Crystal Archive printing? Your website doesn't say if you or a lab does your printing.

Would you like to apply to the State of Hawaii for a Hazmat license for me, and arrange shipping with Matson?

[tim atherton]

Just curious, do you do your own Crystal Archive printing? Your website doesn't say if you or a lab does your printing.


So these are just digi prints spit out by a machine? Our local pro lab does this - granny turns up at the lab with her memory card, the guy shows her how to plug it in, she clicks around on the screen for the crops etc she wants and then orders her Fuji Crystal prints and picks them up later in the day.

It's the embodiment of Benjamin's art in the age of mechanical reproduction (never mind the limited longevity)

I remember when Paul Graham first put up his large machine made colour prints in the UK in the 1980's and he was lambasted left right and centre as some kind of photographic heathen...

:-)

[roteague]

If you think a finely crafted print from inkjet is quick or easy or anything approaching fast food, you are profoundly misinformed.

In your opinion.

[QT Luong]

Why don't you explain to us why a Fuji Crystal Archive printed by a Lighjet in a commercial lab is less akin to fast food than an inkjet crafted by a photographer on his printer ?

[Kirk Gittings]

Would you like to apply to the State of Hawaii for a Hazmat license for me, and arrange shipping with Matson?

I guess that means no, you don't print your own Crystal Archive? It was a simple question.

"Gone are the days of craftsmanship, where a photographer can spend time and effort creating a finely crafted print......."

I don't agree with your whole premise, we simply have more options for craftsmanship, but I guess in that statement you were partly referring to yourself since you don't print your own work? As I said though this whole point of view is silly.

I have worked in labs, years ago, printing exhibition prints for artists in Cibachrome, Ilfochrome, chromagenic, b&w and some RA-4. Just like doing inkjet, all the effort went into the first print and from there on it was just pushing prints through "spitting" them out.

Frankly as a matter of taste, I don't do any art work in color, and part of the reason was I never liked very much any of very plasticy light sensitive papers that were and are available. They all remind me of resin coated coated b&w papers. At least in inkjet there are real art papers.

[roteague]

Why don't you explain to us why a Fuji Crystal Archive printed by a Lighjet in a commercial lab is less akin to fast food than an inkjet crafted by a photographer on his printer ?

Try reading my post above.

[QT Luong]

Which post above ? Care to quote it or give a link ?

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

Precisely my point. Many, many people are now doing exactly that, especially with higher quality reproduction via calendars, etc

And do you think this is the right position for the editor of a magazine which depends on photographers to take? This is exactly why I won't buy Lenswork, I will not recommend it to any photographers I know and have never heard of it here in Mexico and why I won't submit work to you.

It is one thing for you to think this way, to even comment on the great work that is being done by printers, it is another to claim that "originals" are no longer needed and that an offset print is just as good and that the experience, work, and years of learning a photographers puts into this art has no longer any value. Don't buy any of his prints, wait until he puts out a poster and get it for $20 or buy the magazine that has good printing.

As to the marketing strategies, well, this is nothing new and painters have been doing it for years. In fact two weekends ago a attended an opening where the "paintings" were ink jet reproductions on canvas, the guy had sold all the paintings and was now selling the reproductions, all of them priced at greater values than what most famous photographers get for original prints.

You say:


In short, I suspect we photographers have a challenge in front of us to educate and explain to a disbelieving public why our work is worth more than an offset print when they can't see any difference.

Aren't you in the best position to do this? Your editorial is 2 columns 10 pages long, yet nowhere did I see "Yet, with all these wonderful advances, I would still buy an original because......" In fact you actually go the opposite way and declare you have no idea what the meaning of an "original" is.

It seems that you are on a campaign to cheapen and devalue photography and the efforts and sacrifices photographers make. $20 prints, offset prints better than originals, go digital it is easy and besides the process does not matter, the contents is all. I remember a podcast you made about the "drudgery" of photography, yet you failed to mention the drudgery of scanning, calibrating your rmonitor, calibrating your printer, buying raster image process software so that what you see on the monitor is what you get on the printer, learning how to use this software. Yes, cleaning print trays is not fun, but the learning process of darkroom photography is far more fun than sitting in front of a computer with a 10000 page manual trying to decipher it to learn the software.....

I am glad that you have such enthusiasm for digital photography, and that it has served you so well. But as the editor of a magazine which prides itself on showcasing photography, ALL kinds of photography without regard to process I think you should temper your opinion more and think more carefully the consequenses your comments have. I would venture to say that your magazine is also bought by those who enjoy photography but have no interest in doing it or learning how to do it, to them a $20 print, or a poster will probably make a lot of sense after your editorials. Thanks a lot for screwing it for me...

[Brian Ellis]

And I find it sad. Just another example of the shallow, "fast food" mentality of our society. Gone are the days of craftsmanship, where a photographer can spend time and effort creating a finely crafted print, hand mount and frame the print - only to be confronted by someone spitting junk out of their home ink jet printer. Now, everything is only about the final print, who cares of a sky is photoshopped in.

Adding a sky from another photograph was standard procedure with 19th century landscape photographers because the materials of the day were highly sensititve to blue and therefore the sky appeared white in the print if another sky wasn't moved in. That kind of thing was a normal and accepted practice for decades and as long as it was done in the darkroom it never bothered anyone. It's only when it started to be done digitally that some people seemed to think it was evidence that photography was going to hell in a handbag.

And as far as photographer spending time and effort creating a finely crafted print is concerned, I promise you I spend more time and effort making what you call junk from my ink jet printer than I ever did in the darkroom if you factor in the thousands of hours it's taken me to learn how to make that junk.

[Gary Nylander]

Posted by Brooks Jensen
"The point of my article is to draw attention to how the quality of offset lithography has improved over the years, and how more and more people -- especially non-photographers, people who are not trained in the subtleties of fine art photographic printing -- find that they no longer need originals to satisfy them. What's at the heart of the matter is that we photographers had better think about this and take this phenomenon into account in our marketing strategies. I fear that we might become (if we are not there already) a group of hypersophisticated artisans whose work can only appeal to other peers who are trained to see the extreme subtleties in our prints. If this happens, the only audience for photographs will be other photographers -- all the while the general public is finding offset prints so satisfactory that the market for original photographs suffers."


I have read Brook Jensen's editorial in the latest edtion of Lenswork which I thought was very good and have also enjoyed reading this discussion. Just a few thoughts so maybe I am off base here but in the future fine art photographers may have to take a lot more control of their work in how its is reproduced in books, magazines, calendars, etc and if it's true that an offset press can equal the quality of a silver print, then perhaps photographers will have to limit who they give reproduction rights to and how the images are reproduced and what size the images are reproduced in the said publication, maybe it will be like the web, where one does not want to post images on a website with too much quality or else people will simply download them and print them and frame them and hang them on their wall, which I'm sure many do.

[QT Luong]

Unless you license an image for reproduction as a poster, there won't be poster-size reproductions of your images. If people are happy with a page-size image from a magazine, fine with me, but if I didn't shoot large format to target those kinds of sizes.

[Brooks Jensen]

Jorge,
I am not the one pushing the offset technologies to these levels of reproduction -- the printing industry is doing that all on its own. Blame the messenger if you must, but I, for one, am not going to purposely ignore the issues I raised in my Editor's Comments and hope they simply go away so my precious originals aren't challenged by them. I don't have answers for the questions I raised -- in fact, that's why I wrote the article and asked them. I am not advocating the demise of the traditional original, but I am observing how people react, how people think, how the market is reacting, how the industries are evolving, and, most importantly, how photographers are adapting to these changes they cannot control. I am simply not willing to wake up in 5 (or 25) years and find my thinking about all of this has become archaic and I find myself emerging from the darkroom wondering what happened -- and why I am so out of step with both technology and society.

As to educating folks via LensWork, let's not lose sight of the fact that LensWork is a niche publication that has close to zero readership outside photographic circles. I think of my articles in LensWork as a way to communicate with my fellow photographers and photographic peers, not as a means to educate the non-photographic public at large. Gallery owners have a much better vehicle to communicate with the public than I do, even though individually their circle of influence may be much smaller than that available to a publisher. I think the primary challenge of persuading the public is in their hands -- and I would hope that my having brought up this issue via LensWork can help photographers arm themselves for better strategy planning with their gallery partners. It clearly won't, however, as long as we photographers keep taking pot shots at each other. It clearly won't if we keep pretending that the world we now live in is the same one that propelled the Westons, the Adams's, and the other photographers of a previous generation for whom the roles of "original prints" and "reproductions" were completely different than in our day.

Lots to think about, and the clock is ticking.

Brooks

[QT Luong]

Speaking of Ansel Adams should remind us that the situation is not really new. At the time when Adams started his career, there was virtually no market for original prints, and most photographers aimed at publication.

[Duane Polcou]

I fear that we might become (if we are not there already) a group of hypersophisticated artisans whose work can only appeal to other peers who are trained to see the extreme subtleties in our prints.
Brooks


Aren't we already there?
Print value is determined not by content and beauty alone. It is also determined by the medium of printing which reflects a certain level of commitment regarding time and skill in conjunction with the uniqueness of the process.

I look at a Cyanotype and I say I could do that in Photoshop with a color adjustment layer. But a Cyanotype is not created in Photoshop. To command value this print would require an accompanying explanation of the history of this process and the work involved by the practitioner to achieve success.

You cannot just slap an image in front of people that could have been created any number of ways and expect them to grasp immediately why one is worth more than another. It is the photographer's responsibility to educate viewers and potential customers why your work is worth what you claim.

If the art buying public doesn't understand why a contact printed Azo-in-Amidol print is worth more than something cut off of a calendar, it's because no one told them.

[Struan Gray]

If you are in the business of producing beautiful objects, then the existence of a different sort of beautiful object is only a threat if you are a) insecure, or b) in it only for the money.

If you are in the business of communicating visual ideas, the improvement of the communication channel can only be a good thing.

A concentration on print sales is very North American. In Europe and Japan, many photographers' ambitions centre on the publication of a book. For them, modern improvements in printing are a godsend: even if you don't use the additional subtlety and range, it's there for when you want to.

Modern printed scores of Beethoven's 9th are better to play from in every possible way than the manuscript copy, but the manuscript is worth more for reasons that seem obvious to everybody. The photography world is confused only because, like all contemporary works, the authority and reputation that says you made a good investment has not yet accrued. Those who complain are really just afraid of having to exercise their own taste and judgement.

It baffles me that the same photographic world places more value on a silver-gelatin print made for me by a custom printer or a lab than an inkjet print made by me in my own home. Cost of materials is the least important part of any art (well, except perhaps for things like diamond-encrusted skulls). If photographers are selling prints for the cost of materials, or even time plus materials, they are playing a mug's game. The contemporary point about an 'original' is not what it is made from, but that it has a more direct connection to the individual responsible for its creation, or is closer to the intial act of creation itself. By that standard - an *art* standard - my inkjets are better.

[Greg Lockrey]

How I dream of day of being able to make 8,000 @ 32x40's in an hour with better resolution and d-Max than silver gelatine just so that I can drum all the 12x20 types out of the market.:eek: :eek: :eek:

It's Friday and I'm getting loopy.:p

[jetcode]

If the art buying public doesn't understand why a contact printed Azo-in-Amidol print is worth more than something cut off of a calendar, it's because no one told them.

(don't consume the following personally)

Is it? When did process supersede imagery? My favorite example is a finely detailed image of a bunch of weeds and trees in LF B/W printed flat that makes even the most ardent connoisseur cringe and yet because the process was LF and (insert favorite traditional print process) I'm supposed to jump for joy or recognize process mastery?

What am I buying? A process or an image?

For me it's image content followed by process. I want to be knocked out by the content and come back the second and third time to inspect the process.

[Blacky Dalton]

But as the editor of a magazine which prides itself on showcasing photography, ALL kinds of photography without regard to process I think you should temper your opinion more and think more carefully the consequenses your comments have.

The exact point myself and friends of mine have tried to make with Mr. Jensen, with absolutely no results. For the life of me I can't understand why, as the editor of a respected magazine, Mr. Jensen has shifted from broad spectrum comments about photographic art (which I have followed and enjoyed very much) to such a narrow minded, and at times cynical, view.

There has been a definite shift in his editorial comments since he closed the LensWork darkroom. A friend of mine just commented that he feels that, "Mr. Jensen gives himself too much space in LensWork." My friend continues by saying, "He would serve the photo community better of he gave more space for others to comment and less to himself."

I could not agree more with both Jorge and my friend. I will be voting my opinion by not renewing my subscription to LensWork nor the Extended DVD.

B. Dalton

[Marko]

Print value is determined not by content and beauty alone. It is also determined by the medium of printing which reflects a certain level of commitment regarding time and skill in conjunction with the uniqueness of the process.

[...]

If the art buying public doesn't understand why a contact printed Azo-in-Amidol print is worth more than something cut off of a calendar, it's because no one told them.


A concentration on print sales is very North American. In Europe and Japan, many photographers' ambitions centre on the publication of a book.

Confusing value with price is also a very American peculiarity.

Price is something that the market will bear, an amount of money people will pay to own a piece of material or receive a service. Value, on the other hand, is defined by the inherent qualities of an object (or a man!) and doesn't carry a price tag.

Prints command a price, photographs have value (or not).

[Kirk Gittings]

Few have the outlook on straight photograpy that Paula and her husband, Michael A. Smith, promote. They realize that the final image is a culmination of all the work that went into it and do everything possible to make these final images the best work they can possibly produce.

I assume that extends to Michael's new inkjet prints too?
http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?t=29577&highlight=Michael+Smith

[David Luttmann]

Brooks article is interesting. Deeper blacks and cleaner whites make the prints technically 'superior' to what we can produce in the darkroom now. The separation in the tones up and down the visual scale and the ability to control them is attractive and interesting. These images won't be one of a kind but on the technical end may well be just what he says, world 'better' than what we can produce in the darkroom. The reproductions in Lens Work show what can be done without spending for top end work. Much there could easily be cut out, matted and framed and shown in many fine art galleries across the world.



Dakotah,

One thing needs to get cleared up. A digitally printed image can just as easily be "one of a kind" as an image printed conventionally in the darkroom. The photographer can go back to the original digital Raw file or the film scan and begin the process of preparing the image for each print just in the same manner as the photographer who heads to the darkroom to create a new print each time from a negative.

While this may not apply to mass production of prints by offset means, etc, it most certainly does not mean that all digitally printed photographs are somehow not "one of a kind."

Regards,

[janepaints]

Confusing value with price is also a very American peculiarity.


AMEN!!!! AMEN!!!!

I think any object is worth exactly what someone is willing to pay for it, no more and no less. But the true value of an object? How much is a river worth? I wanna buy the Delaware. Own it outright. Hang it onna wall. :)

I own anonymous snapshots bought at flea markets--monetary value like a dime, tops--which delight me as much as images hanging on museum walls which are insured for zillions of dollars.

I once owned a woodburytype photo, flea-gotten. Took quite a while to learn that it was a woodburytype. Probably cost $2 or something. No idea who made it. Unsigned. Just a row of hedges. But it was a total treasure, easily among the most beautiful photos I've ever seen.

[Steve Duprey]

...and another Amen!

Value and price are totally different things and may or may not be related in anything but a subjective way. At the risk of sounding like a "durn furriner" (which I am NOT), a baseball player MAY be able to set a price of $200 million plus on his services (only in New York???), but to someone who is uninterested in baseball, there is no value.

A perfect print of an Ansel Adams "throwaway" neg would perhaps command a high price, but the value is (to me) far less that many of HCB's less-than-perfect (technically) images.

Is it ALL just a subjective thing? I don't know, and leave it to the Academics and the theorists. If I connect with a photographic image, regardless of technical details, it has value to me. If not, it doesn't. Is Jim Galli's portrait "Jesus" better or worse for the "less-than-tack-sharp" quality of the image? To me it is just right, as-is, and it touches me deeply. To others.....?

I guess, like pornography, I can't define art, but "I know it when I see it". :cool:

Of course, that's just my $0.02. Your mileage may vary.

Best regards,

-Steve "Doc" Duprey

[RobertH]

I'm new here, I feel new to photography even so I have been at it for 20 years (on and off).
May I give an answer to Brooks questions? thanks.
Wouldn't it be just great if the originals were the best they could be, maybe we will redefine what we can produce by pushing the envelope towards what is now achievable in the lithographic world. When print runs and prices lower themselves, which is what happens when "yesterday's cutting edge becomes today's commonplace", we will be able to produce the original on a press.
We can then sell our message, our vision to many people.
I buy CDs of a musicians message, their ideas, etc. for a small price. The reproductions whether pop or classic are fantastic. There seems to be a whole lot more musicians about than photographers, and they have a public profile, and their message (if they have one) is heard because people buy CDs and they listen in their cars, homes, out jogging.
High run, high quality, low priced photography is here. To bad we are not as successful as the music industry, imagine a photobar in each shopping center, photographers having household names.
Not gonna happen while heads are in the sand.

On another note, there was a comment earlier about reading 10000 page manuals in the digital world, etc. To the young generation all of this stuff with computers is a cinch, they create videos, sound mixes etc. with ease. I find it easy but then my day job is designing digital hardware.
Speaking to a professor here in Oz lately and he has set up a photography department ($4mill) that is going to concentrate on light/sound/text/movement. Maybe we all have our heads in the sand, it is not traditional printing at stake but still photography that is.

[D. Bryant]

A lot of blather in the other thread. Folks should read what Brooks wrote before they get so emotional.

[Editor: As pointed out by Jensen later, you can download the editorial from http://enhanced.lenswork.com/lwcollection.htm. They are in the free overview PDF for LensWork #73.]



Though I've not read every post in this thread and the other one here about Brooks' editorial, let me throw out this thought. Might we expect that Brooks / Lenswork may introduce a new series of collectors prints using this new printing technology? I don't know if it would feasable from a cost perspective but given the past history of the Lenswork editions I think it could be a possibility.

Don Bryant

[RobertH]

I fully expect a series of new prints done using this latest technology. Since it is still an expensive process for lower volumes maybe it will make most here happy to see a high price as well.

[Marko]

I buy CDs of a musicians message, their ideas, etc. for a small price. The reproductions whether pop or classic are fantastic. There seems to be a whole lot more musicians about than photographers, and they have a public profile, and their message (if they have one) is heard because people buy CDs and they listen in their cars, homes, out jogging.

High run, high quality, low priced photography is here. To bad we are not as successful as the music industry, imagine a photobar in each shopping center, photographers having household names.

Not gonna happen while heads are in the sand.

The problem is that music industry as we know it is a very baroque business model - some call it racket - which is rapidly failing. Another problem with this picture is that musicians themselves see very little if any profit from CD sales, save for the few superstars. It's the recording companies that do. Musicians mostly earn their money from concerts and they record CDs only to gain access to concert venues and as a marketing tool.

There is no such construct in the photography world, thankfully, because every photographer controls his own production and distribution. The closest marketing tools comparable to CDs that are available to photographers are magazines and books, but they shun them for all the reasons stated in this thread and more. Or perhaps rationalizations would be more accurate term, because lack of mass exposure (no pun intended) is precisely why there are no photographer celebrities.

[QT Luong]

There is this possible scenario in the future of the photography industry where the predominant distribution of stock would be micro or even free downloads. Then the only way for photographers to earn real money would be through "live performances", which would be assignments, events, and teaching.

[janepaints]

There are several related threads within this topic which I've been following with interest. This one, the 'artistic license' thread, the 'moonrise' thread--perhaps a few more.

Many thoughts've been percolating. None are intended as Universal Pronouncements, only personal views. They reflect my experience in multiple media. Painter, photographer, musician, writer.

Ye Olde Photography-As Art Quagmire. Art is a tricky word. I believe that the designation of any creative effort as art belongs to the audience, not to the maker. I say "I'm a painter" and leave it up to the viewer to decide if what I've done is art. Even then, who the heck knows? Yes, I went to Art School, but it's just a convenient term. The instructors made it clear: they could teach technique, craft, and history, but they couldn't teach inspiration, imagination or Art.

I believe that art can occur in any media. Some of my favorite artists are photographers. Atget as wonderful as Wyeth.

Tho not a fan of Springsteen, a line of his stuck in my head, seeming-linked to two aspects of photography. The poets down here don't write nothing at all, they just stand back and let it all be."--Bruce Springsteen

The two aspects which that line suggest:

1. The 'art' in photography being an art of recognition and/or acceptance. Seeing the marvelous all around us. Accepting the marvelous--or the possibility of the marvelous--all around us and in everything around us. I've wondered what it would be like to be blind for the first 30 years of one's life, and then suddenly to have 20-20 vision--How many everyday things which we take for granted, visually, would seem incomprehensibly beautiful?

I have a friend who's blind. She's often asked me to try to 'translate' or describe, somehow, what something 'looks' like. It's a maddening pursuit. It's made me aware of how essentially mysterious all sensory input is. Beginning in infancy we learn how to navigate and make sense of the senses. As we mature, we take things for granted. After awhile we can't see anythng around us very well for all our assumptions. We've forgotten how to 'let it all be' and have given over our sense of wonder to our Internal Dept. Of Tidy Categorization. Majestic: see Mountaintops, Dramatic Skies, Blaze Of Autumn. Or Ho-Hum: see Formica Dinette set, Spouse of 20 Years, Wal-mart.

Imagine being a stone-age person time-traveled to the present. Desert, rocky crags, exotic wildlife, unspoiled nature, mountain peaks, burbling waterways and fog: ho hum. That's the stuff of your everyday Pterodactyl-eat-dog world. Big deal. Any ol' Wal-mart: Like a mega-dose of LSD. Totally amazing. You'd go into shock.

2. Poetics. I see photography as the visual medium most akin to poetry. There's hardly anything there, yet when it works it works exceedingly well. It is alchemical in nature. Something golden derived from silver & photons. The sum far exceeds the whole of the parts. It's difficult to memorize an entire novel, but most of us have memorized poems. Likewise, it's difficult to recall every detail within any one scene in a movie and have it available to savor via memoryl. Yet most of us have favorite photographs which are easily & frequently summoned via memory. Even though movies are just sequences of still photographs, they lack the Power Of The Specific Image which photographs have as a birthright. By standing outside of time, something is gained. By 'standing back', something is more-powerfully and clearly allowed to simply be.

It's curious that many wonder why paintings are more-easily judged to be art, while photographs are deemed-so less often. Paintings are handmade one-of-a-kind objects while photographs are made using a machine and can be reproduced in editions of almost unlimited quantity. Lens-made images are ubiqitous. We are drowning in them. TV, newspapers, mags, movies, internet. Almost everybody owns a camera and makes photographs. Most homes have photos on display. Far fewer homes have original paintings on display. Far fewer people paint etc. Rarity and cultural notions of 'preciousness' do come into play regarding our ideas about what is and isn't art.

We might consider paintings to be a kind of handmade Precious Gem. There aren't diamonds all over the place and there aren't Michaelango's all over the place. But photos are like tree leaves. They're everywhere. We can't see the forest for the image-leaves we're all merrily vine-swinging through.

I'm not saying this situation is right, or implying any form of natural, aesthetic or moral order. I'm just saying 'that's how things are.' I'm also saying this despite being someone who's long pondered--without reaching any conclusions--why major religions and philosophies have warned about making (and/or 'worshipping') representational images and/or 'graven images.'

Many of the photographs which most-appeal to me resulted when a photographer delighted-in and made a virtue of what I discuss above. Not the Grand Gesture but The Wonderful In The Commonplace. Walker Evans, Eugene Atget, Helen Levitt, Mike Disfarmer, Diane Arbus (I think here of her photo of a Christmas tree in a typical suburban post-WW11 home--how incredibly odd!), Cartier-Bresson and William Christenberry. So many more.

A book of Helen Levitt's work is here, borrowed from the library. No image is much larger than 5" x 7". Mostly stuff seen on NYC streets. Good but not spectacular photo-printmaking and offset printing. But what opera! Something oddly monumental gleaned from trivia & split-second juxtapositions.

I can only think of her as a poet. But such poetics aren't by-products of her use of Leica's, urban settings or her focus on people. Walker Evans and Christenberry exhibited similar sensibilities in rural settings using large cameras or instamatic crap cameras, with often no human in sight.

The poetry of selection.

Painting is essentially synthetic. A painter can make an image do almost anything, but it's always constructed. Notions, whimsy and figments Perfected Until Gleaming. Meanwhile, photographers primarily recognize and select. Selection shouldn't be considered second-cousin to construction. What is taste but a matter of selecting, of choosing and quantifying? In many ways photography might well be argued to be more artistic than the synthetic arts. It's just 'standing back and letting it all be', not harnessing bells & whistles in service of some Oz-like Grand Illusion. Yes, the illusions created via a camera remain illusions, but often they seem more genuine than those created via brush--and that's a large part of photography's mysterious allure: there's almost nothing there--so why are we so affected by it?

Perhaps any conclusions gotten from such lines of thought are linked to those old-time longtime warnings against making or focusing-upon 'graven images.' Chimerical. Fata Morgana. You can never really get there and whatever it is, it's never precisely what it seems to be.

Sometimes I wonder about the odd visual and audible similarity between the words 'camera' and 'chimera.'

The area where I live is a longtime 'art colony' and antiques-hunting/antiques-selling destination. The local flea market is open 3 days a week and it's not open to any & all merchandise. It's antiques & old-stuff only, though some new stuff falls through the cracks. I see tons of paintings and photos there all the time. Paintings by 'known' artists show up, but mostly it's paintings by unknowns or lesser-knowns.

Almost all the photos found there are by unknowns, by 'anon'. Family snapshots, studio portraits, yearbook pictures, publicity photos, stock photos, industrial photos, tintypes, daquerrotypes, cartes-de-visit, stereoviews, newspaper shots.

Here's why I mention all this flea-market stuff: The % of Cool Images found among the photos there is quite high while the % of Cool Images found among the paintings is quite low. Price plays almost no part in this. The only photos with high prices tend to be large or Mint Condition daguerrotypes, stereoviews or Celebrity Photos. The amount of cool images to be found in the cheap piles of snapshots and general what-not is staggering--as staggering as the number of paintings which are dreary or dull.

The vendors routinely ask Big $$ for almost any painting. IT'S A PAINTING! FRAMED! SIGNED! IT MEANS SOMETHING IMPORTANT! I'm not talking 'folk art', 'hobby painting' or 'naive art'. Those tend to be pretty good. They're honest and can be charming and thought-provoking. As is a lot of Paint-By-Numbers. I'm talking about paintings evidencing some degree of skill & craftmanship. It seems many mediocre paintings have resulted from Lofty Ambitions--ART MAKING!!

Meanwhile many-more swell photos resulted from humbler ambitions--or, seemingly, little ambition at all! Look at this!! I found this memorable or lovely. Now we are wed. This is my house/my child/my farm/my vacation/my car.

Perhaps photographers should fret less about art as in Painting and aim more towards art as in Photography. There's so much to be said for that 'art' which is photography's alone to summon.

I often buy photos at the flea. None cost very much. Most seem more marvelous than most of the paintings there. They tend to exhibit more of The Wonderstuff and less of the "I wonder why the heck anybody ever bothered to paint that?" stuff. :)

One of those "consider the lilies of the field..." deals. Poetics.

Don't have too much beer tomorrow or you'll be up that creek. Happy Thanksgiving everybody.

Below: Photo from Flea Market. Anonymous silver print. Probably contact-printed from a 6x9 neg. Archival Quality unknown. Crazy Bafflement Quality ample & obvious.

http://i58.photobucket.com/albums/g249/janepaints/pee.jpg

[matthew blais]

Jane, I'm a fan of how you paint with words..

[Mark Sawyer]

In the end, I think we all use whatever tools and medium we've come to know and grow fond of. Learning a medium well and working within it for years changes our own vision as much as living with another person changes us as people. I'm not surprised we are often slow to throw the past away...

I don't dispute Brooks Jensen's thoughts, but offer this. While he defines quality in terms of maximum density and resolution, so many of photography's finest practitioners, from Emerson to Strand to Steiglitz to quite a few photographers today, considered the platinum print to be the ultimate in photographic print quality and beauty. Platinum prints would compete poorly for maximum density or resolution.

Some of the best and most serious guitar players still wail with an old tube amp. There are better amps out there, but they aren't the same. Still, the technorati are working on filters so a computer can simulate the sound, maybe make it sound more like a tube amp than a tube amp. Then the guitar players can happily throw all those tube amps away.

Maybe what is resented about digital imagery most is that it sometimes, in some ways, outdoes analog at its own game, and challenges us to throw it all away...

[Jim Galli]

Jane, I'm a fan of how you paint with words..

Me too, but you better have a full cup of hot coffee before you start ;)

[janepaints]

Me too, but you better have a full cup of hot coffee before you start ;)

My Accelerant Of Choice is diet Pepsi or diet Coke--whichever is on sale at the supermarket this week. Me blab then.

But seriously, I LOVE to think about photography, probably moreso than any other medium. Something about it that eludes and provokes.

There seems little point in writing about writing--might as well just write, ya know? I briefly wrote pop music criticism but quit--all I was doing was being clever but the CD's I reviewed? No matter what I thought about them, most were labors of love which some young Hope To Become Beatles had invested time, money and sweat in, and I ended up feeling very bad about panning something or idiot-superfluous about praising.

Painting? Been at it too long from too young an age. I like painting but am kinda immune to looking at it, thinking about it or talking about it, save 'in reference to.'

Photography has SO many mysterious qualities, all the oddly-moreso for being everywhere & everyday-ish. An invisible but unavoidable guerilla force. The advertising slogan George Eastman rejected: You press the button and All Hell Breaks Loose. Sometimes I think photography is still so-new a medium that nobody yet can really get an objective grip on what it is or isn't. Maybe a few centuries from now.

Sorta-relevant quote from pianist Keith Jarrett, when asked why he gave up electric piano to focus solely on acoustic piano:

"Electricity? We don't even know what electricity is.."

Photography seems kinda like that.
What photography is bedevils me--unless it's just the diet soda talking. :)

[Donald Miller]

I think that Brooks' editorial was quite clear and informative. The set up cost using printing is still going to require a fairly sizeable press run or high per unit cost and that means that one must have either a proven sales record or deep pockets.

I would think that compared to the cost of self publishing a book this will be a more daunting decision since one must consider the appeal to potential purchasers. A book can contain numbers of images while I imagine that this will be of one image at a time.

[SchwinnParamount]

Regarding the value of a work of art: Each individual painting, sculpture or whatever, has some intrinsic value because the artist's creative effort was poured directly into that canvas. Each painting created required the same painstaking effort. Additional value is added if the painting is actually good. Of course, the most value is added if the painter is well known.

A piece of film exposed, developed and printed exactly once has great value as the creative effort is distilled into exactly one print...analogous to a painting or sculpture. Each additional print he makes from the original negative reduces the value of any previous print made. Surely you can amortize the entire original creative value of the artwork over the number of prints made. That works only if a set number of prints are made and the negative is never printed again. If that rule is violated, the original value of the artwork must be re-amortized over the larger number of prints made.

If the artist dies, the final number of original prints is known. The artwork extant typically rises in value upon the death. The sudden increase in value is a well-known artifact of an artist's death. Any print made by someone else from the original negative won't have the same "feel" as an original. The print might be very competant but because the printing process is non-deterministic, the final print does not stand a good chance of fooling an expert.

Imagine the challenge an expert collector might have if the original artwork resides in a digital file? The artist dies but leaves behind his computer and printer. The digital file and all of the necessary configuration information is available if somebody wanted to make hundreds or thousands of digital prints which look exactly like the artist's original prints. If it is not possible to tell the difference between the set of original prints and "fake" prints, the value of the art must be amoritzed over a theoretically limitless number of prints. If this is the case, the very first print that comes off the artist's printer must have zero value. It will help if the artist were to sign each of his prints. If this is done, then the felon who comes after him will need to learn forgery in addition to basic computer skills.

There was a time when famous photographers would deface or destroy their negatives after making a certain number of prints. They did this to guarantee the collector would not see their investment lose value. Even though you and I might cringe at the thought of a work of art being destroyed, the idea had merit.

This is also true for digital files. If a negative must be distroyed to insure the value of a set number of prints, so also should the digital file be erased. So I delete a digital file in the name of integrity. I tell you I deleted my file after making 10 prints but I don't tell you I backed up my hard disk onto DVD before deleting the file. How would anyone but me know the file wasn't really deleted? The answer? There is no way. Practically speaking, increasing the value of a digital print by asking the artist to delete their file is a dumb idea.

What are we left with? I don't believe any print from a digital image can ever be worth as much as a silver print. No way. The simple fact is, even if the artist dies, someone can still load his file or a copy of his file in photoshop (or whatever) and make a practically unlimited number of prints. Each print can look as good as the very first print made by the artist himself. You and I will not know the difference unless the artist was in the habit of signing his prints.

I am not suggesting that the digital workflow cannot produce a gorgeous image that will stop your heart in the same way a Mapplethorpe or Weston would. Simply that the dollar value assigned to the digital print can never approach that of a silver print. I occasionally invest my hard earned dollars in collectable art. I've collected silver prints and also buy digital prints. I don't consider my digital prints to be collectable and won't pay nearly as much for them as I do silver prints.

[tim atherton]

I
don't believe any print from a digital image can ever be worth as much as a silver print. No way. The simple fact is, even if the artist dies, someone can still load his file or a copy of his file in photoshop (or whatever) and make a practically unlimited number of prints. Each print can look as good as the very first print made by the artist himself. You and I will not know the difference unless the artist was in the habit of signing his prints.

I am not suggesting that the digital workflow cannot produce a gorgeous image that will stop your heart in the same way a Mapplethorpe or Weston would.

and yet prices for digital prints can be incredibly high - greater than any silver print has sold for?

[Duane Polcou]

Tho not a fan of Springsteen, a line of his stuck in my head, seeming-linked to two aspects of photography. The poets down here don't write nothing at all, they just stand back and let it all be."--Bruce Springsteen


Bruce also wrote
- 'Cause the record company Rosie
Just gave me a fat advance...

That's the line I think of when I drive past his house in Rumson.

[SchwinnParamount]

I

and yet prices for digital prints can be incredibly high - greater than any silver print has sold for?

Strange isn't it? Have you ever seen a lithograph sell for as much as the original painting? I don't understand it.

[tim atherton]

Strange isn't it? Have you ever seen a lithograph sell for as much as the original painting? I don't understand it.

simply because they are seen as no more or less an "original" than any other kind of photograph as most photographs are seen as mechanical reproductions of one sort or another.

As with certain other forms of art (but unlike painting) in most photography the original is the matrix from which the prints are made.

[Jordan]

Maybe what is resented about digital imagery most is that it sometimes, in some ways, outdoes analog at its own game, and challenges us to throw it all away...

I think the reason we resent digital imagery is because it endangers our ability to get our hands on the analog materials some of us need to make our photographs the way we'd like to. Beyond that it certainly does take away from the process that most of us would consider part of the ART in making an image/print.

Fine, you can get "just as good" a results with certain digital technologies....... that really is not the point. Would anyone seriously want to collect digital drawings??????? If the Sistine Chapel were a decal or some weird type of inkjet that they could spatter the image all over the ceiling would it be nearly as amazing??????? Not saying that making an analog photograph is anything like being suspended and painting a masterpiece from the position of lying on your back, but I think you get the point. It is sometimes about the struggle to make that perfect exposure, developing the negative just right, using the right paper to print the image on, finding the balance in filtration, deciding where to burn and dodge and making sure you do neither to the point where it is noticeable, hovering over the darkroom sink, and taking all these steps to come to a final print........

Music has become quite similar and honestly it is too damn easy to make a song and share it with the public. Computers can seriously shit on the idea of craft. take after costless take these days to make the perfect recording can easily make almost anyone sound good. Not only that but what about the recording engineers and the knowledge of recording they have developed through there experiences and training????? There won't be a need for someone to sit at a mixing board and come up with miking arrangements to capture that optimal recording....... just some clicks and digital manipulation and the bassist has recorded the band's entire album. You can't seriously tell me that a recording engineer isn't an artist and that a mastering engineer is an artist either. The music industry is over-saturated with mediocrity. The art is fading in exchange for efficiency.

[Marko]

If the Sistine Chapel were a decal or some weird type of inkjet that they could spatter the image all over the ceiling would it be nearly as amazing??????? Not saying that making an analog photograph is anything like being suspended and painting a masterpiece from the position of lying on your back, but I think you get the point.

Well, no, not really. Looking from the perspective of a painter who not just painted everything by hand but also created his own paints, the difference between an inkjet print and a projected print would be quite negligible. In fact, the same arguments you are now making about digital used to be made by painters back in the 19th century regarding photography. We all know how that argument ended, but the sky is somehow still standing above us in all its glory.


It is sometimes about the struggle to make that perfect exposure, developing the negative just right, using the right paper to print the image on, finding the balance in filtration, deciding where to burn and dodge and making sure you do neither to the point where it is noticeable, hovering over the darkroom sink, and taking all these steps to come to a final print........

If you take out the "hovering above the sink" part and substitute "developing" for "processing", all of it applies still the same. After all, it is the same light, same lens, same camera and, last but not least, the same physics. The only principal difference is the lack of chemistry.


The art is fading in exchange for efficiency.

No, it is not, the art still remains and is even getting a boost. It is the craft that changes, mostly improving in efficiency, as you put it. Some of us see that as progress, not a setback. Actually, judging by sales, it would appear that a lot more people are seeing it as a progress than a setback.

BTW, computers are inanimate objects, they don't "shit on" anything, as you put it, they're just the tools in the hands of their users. Incompetent or inept users will produce corresponding output.

GIGO, in other words. Garbage In, Garbage Out.

[Mark Sawyer]

I find myself with an internal struggle some days... film or digital, old wooden camera or new dslr... And as much as I love the old plodding craft, the subtleties of a well-made contact print, the valorisation of light passed through old lenses (sorry!), and the general romance of the experience, I wonder whether the time taken is the best use of time. Time is, after all, all we have...

I have a lot of things inside I want to get out, and I wonder whether taking the slowest, most uphill road is the way to go. Given the time I have, I won't get as far.

I suppose it's partly whether you see your work as a journey or a destination. And there's always the nagging thought that very few others see the film/digital debate as important to the image and idea at all...

[Kirk Gittings]

The art is fading in exchange for efficiency.

The art is flourishing like never before. There has never been better access to historic processes or new technologies. Nor has there ever been broader acceptance of photography, in all its forms, as a collectible art form. The sky is not falling. This is the golden age.

[Greg Lockrey]

The art is flourishing like never before. There has never been better access to historic processes or new technologies. Nor has there ever been broader acceptance of photography, in all its forms, as a collectible art form. The sky is not falling. This is the golden age.

Dittoes.

[Gordon Moat]

The art is flourishing like never before. There has never been better access to historic processes or new technologies. Nor has there ever been broader acceptance of photography, in all its forms, as a collectible art form. The sky is not falling. This is the golden age.

Definitely agree with Kirk on this. We have so many choices today, and many great resources to find how to do all things photographic. In some ways this is a golden age of photography.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat Photography (http://www.gordonmoat.com)

[roteague]

The art is flourishing like never before. There has never been better access to historic processes or new technologies. Nor has there ever been broader acceptance of photography, in all its forms, as a collectible art form. The sky is not falling. This is the golden age.

I accept that. However, it is also obvious that some processes are dying; 35mm transparencies for example. Doesn't seem golden to me to lose a process that I enjoy so much.

[Gordon Moat]

I still use 35mm transparencies in some of my work, so I don't understand your comment . . . unless you mean Kodachrome, or a few other films no longer produced. Maybe slide shows are not as popular, but scanning transparencies (any film size) is relatively accessible to many.

I have several 10" by 15" prints made from 35mm transparencies. I have never had any comments about a lack in technology, nor too much grain, nor any other deficiencies for prints that size or smaller from 35mm. When I want something to be printed larger, then I start with rollfilm or 4x5 instead.

Quite simply, to me some aspect of convenience is not enough to have me using a D-SLR to replace a good 35mm system. Plus my F4S is 20x cheaper than a top of the line D3, so making it much easier to replace it in the event of a disaster. I am not anti-digital, nor anti-D-SLR, and rent went needed, but there is no financial advantage for me to work with that gear beyond renting it; plus medium format digital backs are substantially better, and another rental only item for me as needed.

Dying is a relative term in all this. Tougher to get processing in some areas, mail-order only for film, favorite emulsion no longer produced . . . all these still seem to be a lack of convenience. When there are no E-6 films, then I will figure out something else, but until then worrying about maybe is not productive.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat Photography (http://www.gordonmoat.com)

[roteague]

I still use 35mm transparencies in some of my work, so I don't understand your comment . . . unless you mean Kodachrome, or a few other films no longer produced. Maybe slide shows are not as popular, but scanning transparencies (any film size) is relatively accessible to many.

I have several 10" by 15" prints made from 35mm transparencies. I have never had any comments about a lack in technology, nor too much grain, nor any other deficiencies for prints that size or smaller from 35mm. When I want something to be printed larger, then I start with rollfilm or 4x5 instead.

Quite simply, to me some aspect of convenience is not enough to have me using a D-SLR to replace a good 35mm system. Plus my F4S is 20x cheaper than a top of the line D3, so making it much easier to replace it in the event of a disaster. I am not anti-digital, nor anti-D-SLR, and rent went needed, but there is no financial advantage for me to work with that gear beyond renting it; plus medium format digital backs are substantially better, and another rental only item for me as needed.

Dying is a relative term in all this. Tougher to get processing in some areas, mail-order only for film, favorite emulsion no longer produced . . . all these still seem to be a lack of convenience. When there are no E-6 films, then I will figure out something else, but until then worrying about maybe is not productive.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat Photography (http://www.gordonmoat.com)

I understand where you are coming from. I too prefer 35mm over a DSLR. However, 35mm E6 is dying, perhaps slowly, but it is dying. Yes, we have had some recent bad and good news, but in general, film, especially at the 35mm level is being ignored by the mainstream.

I have no problem with mail order, I've been buying film from the mainland for years (long before digital became as popular as it is today), and have had film processed in California for several years now.