My New Website, 8x10 contact prints.

[G Benaim]

Hi all,

Just wanted to let you know my new site is up and running, and I'd love to hear what folks here have to say about it, both its content and form. The address is:

http://www.gabrielbenaim.visualserver.com/

Thanks,

GB

[Tim Meisburger]

Sweet! I love the roof view, and dog's beach. I like the presentation as well.

[G Benaim]

Thanks a lot, Tim. Thanks, Jeff. Is it self-evident that you click on the photos to enlarge, and then to move on to the next one?

[claudiocambon]

The pictures are very interesting and the site is blessedly quick, clear and easy to navigate. This is what photo sites should look, and at least work, like!

My only suggestion would be to work on the tone of the images as they show up on the site. It may be my monitor, which is uncalibrated, and a bit bright, but I think you could coax a litle more out of them in terms of tonal range. Again, it may be me on my end that is totally off.

Congratulations!

[G Benaim]

Thanks for the feedback, Claudio. Do you mean the photos look too contrasty, or too pixelly, or both (hopefully not)? Could you give me examples of which photos seem to have too short a tonal scale? Thanks.

[John Kasaian]

I love your compositions---fine work! Navigating your web site seems pretty intuitive to me.
Beautiful! :)

[G Benaim]

Thanks for the kind words, John. Anything in particular caught your eye? How does the tonal range look from where you're sitting?

[boris]

to me the pictures appear to bright and to contrasty. often a thin negativ that was printed on hard paper shoes this kind of tonal range. i am shure that your contact prits are perfect, but on my screen they are not. i would also ad a picture of the photographer during composing under the dark cloth ( if you don't like your face), or yourself close to the camera... 8x10 is always very impressiv.
i like your site! the pictures are to intellectual to my tast. but are trained to think alot :)
all the best for your project.
tel aviv is very special !

[Oren Grad]

Boker tov! :)

I found the site navigation pretty easy to figure out.

I agree with Boris re the tonal character. On my calibrated display the scale looks fairly harsh, indeed an effect similar to what you'd get by trying to print underexposed negatives by using a higher contrast grade.

Also, many of them display some unevenness in areas one might expect to be tonally solid, a "bright edge" effect, or both. See, for example, "Roof View #2" from the Tel Aviv series, which shows both effects.

I see from your writeup that you're working from FB prints, which can be a challenge to scan cleanly if the prints aren't perfectly flat or there's any other surface irregularity. There's other troubleshooting that needs to be done if the unevenness and bright edges are in the negatives.

[G Benaim]

Thanks for the excellent feedback, Oren. I did in fact have a hard time scanning my azo prints, and may in the end resort to scanning mounted prints. We'll see. There's definitely a lot of skill and art involved in matching a scan to a print, I see it as sort of translating from one medium to another. I'll put up some more work and then get back to this stuff.

[G Benaim]

Thanks to everyone who's stopped by and/or left a message, it's great to get such support so early on.

GB