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gbogatko
17-Jan-2010, 11:13
First, an opinionated analysis. :)

After having read many of the publications of the early pictoralists, I came to the conclusion that at least part of their approach to making pictures stemmed from their being in cluttered environments. Over and over I read about their hatred for "wiry sharpness" because it caused confusion in the result. Examples abound where they show the straight shot followed by the final print, and the final print has had most of the mess reduced either by erasing it or blurring it. This makes sense when one considers that the bulk of their available subject matter was cluttered with stuff -- twigs, branches, overgrowth etc. that really made a mess of things. Various methods of deliberately softening (blurring) the result are discussed and so forth. Cheap achromatic lenses advocated over astigmatic lenses, a transparent layer between the negative and the emulsion, true soft-focus lenses...

A random run thru the current forum for large format landscapes reveals a lot of West coast shots; grand Adamsesque vistas of rugged coastlines, mountainous regions, brooding deserts and so forth. A minority address the 'clutter' problem that East Coast photogs face. Out in the great West, surgical sharpness is warranted, and indeed encouraged since the tradition is so strong, and softness discouraged since the tradition is less so. (Some, in fact, dismiss softness and the use of soft focus lenses as the musings and ravings of cranks.:) :mad: )

Hence my wanting to have a different thread -- one that is limited to the problem of landscape photography in the kind of flat cluttered environment as exemplified by the U.S. East Coast area, in particular the southern New York, New Jersey, eastern Pennsylvania area (because that's where I live). Here, the mountains are not so high. There's no such thing as being above the tree-line, and on the rare occasion when you are high up and not much is in the way, the view is of more flatness. For landscape subjects, this leaves you with: 1) Urban settings -- cities, towns and the like, and 2) Rural settings -- quaint towns, state forests, abandoned places and so forth.

In this setting, I find it very difficult to produce good and satisfying landscape pictures that are other than closeups, anthropomorphic cartoons, cute horse and cow stuff, and so forth. Sharp focus simply produces a mess. The smaller the aperture, the worse the mess. Wider aperture starts to help, but is still difficult to gauge (and the subject of endless debate as to just where to set the narrower focal plane). Really wide open sometimes helps de-clutter the foreground branches, but not always.

Hence the first paragraph. The early pictorialists lived and practiced in similar surroundings. Their pictures (in the main) are not of west coast subjects. I believe part of the reason for the very softness of their landscapes, the brooding darks against blinding highs, the times when things look almost deliberately blown out is their answer to de-cluttering their pictures.

SO.... To start the ball rolling, here are three shots of the same subject -- a watershed area in Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area as the sun was coming in at a low level producing lots of contrast and so forth. The first and second are taken with an ILEX Acutar 14 3/4 inch lens at f/32; the second being a crop of the first. The third is taken with a Wollensak Verito, wide open at f/4. The one with the Verito has been photoshopped to simulate a typical pictorial Gum Bichromate print -- brooding shadows against contrasting highs. #3 is definitely de-cluttered as compared to #1 and #2.

I would like to see other examples of how y'all have tried to deal with the "East Coast Clutter Problem" in landscape photography (other than chain-saws, which are not looked on very kindly by the park rangers).

Lay on!!!

George

Greg Miller
17-Jan-2010, 17:33
I agree that a pictorialism type of approach can help deal with the chaos of the eastern forest, and have dabbled with hat a bit myself. As an example of "straight" photography that deals with the chaos, and if you don't mind color work, Robert Glenn Ketchum's book "The Hudson River and the Highlands" has many examples of using the chaos in as an asset and not a liability (not to mention the east coast work of Eliot Porter).

Toyon
17-Jan-2010, 17:41
"Clutter" isn't necessarily a problem. As a lifer in such environments, I have learned to find coherence in busy scenes. Although I like Adams' work, a lot of mountain shots are pretty dull to me. East coast scenes are so layered with history, you just need to know how to read them. However, I can see you point in the scene you illustrated. I like the way that the Verito reduces or crystallizes a scene that has no particular focal point, or much change in scale, into one that more purely focuses on the light and shadow cast by a young forest. Here you are using the technique to reduce variables and highlight the overall sense of the place. Another interesting feature of soft-focus lenses, is that the give far greater depth of field, in rendering subjects near and far in relatively the same degree of (softish) focus. A number of early lens designers exploited this capacity in devising "multifocal" lenses that increased depth of field at the cost of some sharpness.

Ken Lee
17-Jan-2010, 18:09
Respectfully:

Perhaps the issue is less about clutter versus simplicity - and more about finding a subject that is really beautiful and worthy of your photographic attention.

brianam
17-Jan-2010, 18:26
Here's a link to work by Stuart Rome, which takes on forest clutter with abandon:
http://www.gallery339.com/html/artistresults.asp?artist=6
Nazraeli published a book of this work:
http://www.nazraeli.com/bookdetail.php?book_id=100096

Just submitting it for discussion.
Personally, I love it, and own the book as well. My only complaint is that the photos aren't large enough. :-) I could get lost --in a good way-- in some of the photos, and spend a good while soaking in the entanglement. (pun intended)

JR Steel
17-Jan-2010, 19:02
I am certainly not a photography historian or expert but I always thought pictorialism was more a movement borne out of romanticism in the world of painters at the time. I've read that realism was considered a flaw of early work presented as art.

I live in the west but grew up in the east and understand your perspective. BTW, your NY, NJ and Penn are destinations if you live in the cornfields of northern Indiana. :)

Any land has it's charms. No, you are not going to have the long views of the west but interesting compositions are everywhere whether your view is from a romantic perspective or a more classical approach.

Bill_1856
17-Jan-2010, 19:24
Thank you, George, for introducing an interesting concept. Your illustrations are particularly pertinent.

gbogatko
17-Jan-2010, 21:23
Perhaps the issue is less about clutter versus simplicity - and more about finding a subject that is really beautiful and worthy of your photographic attention.

Absolutely, and your pictures are exemplars of this.

Just after your reply is one from Brian Midili with the link to Stuart Rome. His is truly embracing the chaos with abandon. I have to assume that his pictures work when viewed on a grand scale. Lee Friedlander has also "embraced the chaos" in his Olmsted park photographs.

Perhaps this holds a clue to a solution of how to make more modern sharply focused pictures of this kind of subject matter, but I can't put my finger on it, hence this thread. Color certainly helps, but probably not so much in winter?

Thinner planes of sharp focus?

My only encouragement is also from an early "pictorial landscape photography" book (not at hand at the moment) in which the author says that a) it's really hard to do, and b) expect to expose lots of "plates" before you get a really good result.

George

gbogatko
17-Jan-2010, 21:26
Thank you, George, for introducing an interesting concept. Your illustrations are particularly pertinent.

Thanks. I was beginning to think I'd proposed something really stupid.

gb

gbogatko
17-Jan-2010, 21:41
I live in the west but grew up in the east and understand your perspective. BTW, your NY, NJ and Penn are destinations if you live in the cornfields of northern Indiana. :)

I have relatives in Indiana, one of which lives next to a corn field. They present their own photographic challenges. Talk about FLAT!!

gb

h2oman
17-Jan-2010, 21:49
I live in the west but grew up in the east and understand your perspective. BTW, your NY, NJ and Penn are destinations if you live in the cornfields of northern Indiana. :)

Take a look at some work by Wright Morris or David Plowden. Cornfield type country didn't (past tense for Plowden only because I think he is not photographing any more) seem to be a handicap for either of them! I guess they don't count if you are talking about uninhabited landscape...

gbogatko
17-Jan-2010, 22:03
I am certainly not a photography historian or expert but I always thought pictorialism was more a movement borne out of romanticism in the world of painters at the time. I've read that realism was considered a flaw of early work presented as art.

Yes. A wonderful history, "Impressionist Camera -- Pictorial Photography in Europe, 1888 - 1918" proposes Eugene Carriere (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eug%C3%A8ne_Carri%C3%A8re) as a very strong influence.

On the other hand, there's that revulsion of Kodak's allowing any fool into the game ("you click the shutter and we do the rest") as an equal influence.

The Buffalo group, in their "Pictorial Landscape Photography (http://books.google.com/books?id=QFwXAAAAYAAJ&pg=PR9&lpg=PR9&dq=%22Pictorial+Landscape+Photography%22+by+The+photo+pictorialists+of+buffalo&source=bl&ots=Y7FnIgV_uY&sig=8ScB_fFATCIcINuLHX7YpqhOU-s&hl=en&ei=lupTS-rMMIGPtgf6pr2tDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CBQQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=&f=false)" (Page 15 "On Lenses") go into the subject of lenses as a means of reducing clutter ("wiry sharpness") fairly deeply.

The rest of the book, incidentally, is a wonderful read, especially for you carbon and gum printers out there.

GB

KOG
17-Jan-2010, 23:01
George, you make some good observations.

I think the original pictorialists were faced with the same problems. Clarance White taught his students to simplify compositions. Karl Struss typically used a 12in lens for 4x5, to tighten compositions and flatten the depth of field. Even Ansel Adams had to shoot through trees (Winter Scene, Yosemite [Trees in Snow from the Ahwahnee Hotel, Yosemite National Park, California], c. 1928.)

When I look through my books on pictorialism, grand vista's (typical of AA) were not an important part of the pictorialist aesthetic. I think this was mostly because scenic views were what tourists took pictures of, not what a dedicated amateur would aspire to. California pictorialists concentrated on detail just as much as their east coast counterparts.

You also have to consider that a 4x5 camera of the day, would be considered a point & shoot camera today. Not the same image quality that a large glass plate negative would be used to record the necessary detail for a landscape photograph. They had to concentrate on smaller slices of their surroundings to gain the visual impact needed for smaller print sizes.

For ideas on how to handle your tree problem try to find "Gradient Light" and "Creative Elements" both by Eddie Ephraums. He has some examples on how to separate the tree from the forest.

Kevin

jp
18-Jan-2010, 06:52
First, an opinionated analysis. :)

SO.... To start the ball rolling, here are three shots of the same subject -- a watershed area in Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area as the sun was coming in at a low level producing lots of contrast and so forth. The first and second are taken with an ILEX Acutar 14 3/4 inch lens at f/32; the second being a crop of the first. The third is taken with a Wollensak Verito, wide open at f/4. The one with the Verito has been photoshopped to simulate a typical pictorial Gum Bichromate print -- brooding shadows against contrasting highs. #3 is definitely de-cluttered as compared to #1 and #2.

I would like to see other examples of how y'all have tried to deal with the "East Coast Clutter Problem" in landscape photography (other than chain-saws, which are not looked on very kindly by the park rangers).

Lay on!!!

George

The use of pictorial style is a valid way to reduce the impact of clutter. I think your chosen scene is a challenging composition to adequately portray; it's sort of a 3d scene scaled back to 2. The height and layout of the trees is 3d, the texture of the ground is not. It is nice to explore the options of course.

Eliot Porter produced my favorite east coast landscape method of non-pictoral photography. Get in closer. I bet some of the grass enveloping the downed logs in your photos have some good potential. Find compositions defined by color if you do color. Seek ways to represent chaos. Borrow one of his books to see.

Sometimes I've take my dSLR with a 300 2.8 and a 50mm macro into the woods to see what I can get. It's quite productive. I've only done LF for less than a year now, so we'll see what happens next year for LF landscape.

gevalia
18-Jan-2010, 07:27
I get what the OP says, but I just don't agree. I grew up in CT, spent a few years working in Phoenix, and came back. I don't see it as clutter but I do see that I get to familiar and my creativeness needs to recharged from time to time. So I travel out west. And when I return, I always see things differently. I can't force this. It needs to come as a result of being out of my environment.

Now, that being said. My relatives were all from PA and whenever I drive thru, I love the scenery. October is amazing with the colors. I travel I80 to Nebraska and down into CO and UT. I'm refreshed with every state. Foggy mornings in IN, OH barns, morning light over the fields in IL, the patterns in the cornfields of IA, the light just before sunset as it hits the silos in NB, and that I80 stretch in western CO the morning after a storm. Every state in this country is freakin' amazing and I would have no problem spending a few months in PA shooting or in any other state.

I'm told I will be layed off come the end of February. 1 of my plans is to spend a month walking around the city I have lived in for 11 years photographing. Walking everywhere. And while my passion is large sweeping landscapes, I'm taking the time to pull myself out of my comfort zone.

So clutter? Are you pushing creativity or letting it come to you?

Have you noticed how cool "frost" is in B&W?


My 2 cents.

Greg Miller
18-Jan-2010, 07:43
It is clutter, or chaos. But, while challenging, it is possible to organize it in impactful ways, whether using pictorialism techniques or not.

On a side note, fog can be a great tool for simplifying with the chaos.

Ken Lee
18-Jan-2010, 07:48
These were made - not with a view camera - in a woods in Illinois. No blur necessary, but walking along, lots of "just say No".

Some of us find the forest to be a difficult subject. We have to be willing to return home empty-handed.


http://www.kenleegallery.com/images/forum/img2008-07.jpg

http://www.kenleegallery.com/images/forum/l931.jpg

gbogatko
18-Jan-2010, 09:30
I'm told I will be layed off come the end of February.

So clutter? Are you pushing creativity or letting it come to you?


Layoff's suck -- try to enjoy yourself when photog'ing.

"Are you pushing creativity or letting it come to you?"

Could you elaborate on that?

GB

Toyon
18-Jan-2010, 09:48
Respectfully:

Perhaps the issue is less about clutter versus simplicity - and more about finding a subject that is really beautiful and worthy of your photographic attention.

The problem is that your understanding of "beauty" is not universal, and may be quite limiting. In addition, not all subjects are on the surface "worthy", some work to take a mundane subject and bring out something powerful and resonant. I think George Tice's work sometimes achieves this.

http://images.artnet.com/artwork_images_111766_423614_george-tice.jpg

Ken Lee
18-Jan-2010, 09:52
Perhaps the issue is less about clutter versus simplicity - and more about finding a subject that is really beautiful to you, and worthy of your photographic attention. :)

mandoman7
18-Jan-2010, 10:27
What's up with the "ism's" in the first place? I would guess that the crafstmen being discussed were relatively unconcerned with categorization, but rather responding primarily to what looked good to them. Categorization seems to be helpful for academic discussion, while practicing a craft seems to benefit from ignoring it, at least as far as being original is concerned.

Bruce Watson
18-Jan-2010, 10:40
As a life-long resident of the right coast of NA, I find this discussion odd. It's not about east vs. west, and it's not about pictorialism vs. f/64 vs. whatever. It's about finding a style which works for you. That's all it is. Really.

East vs. west is about different opportunities. It's true that vast wide vistas are in short supply in the east. But that doesn't mean that photographic opportunities don't abound. These opportunities don't just scream at you like a view from a mountain top; you have to look for them. So you develop a different way of working, of thinking, of observing your environment.

Pictorialism vs. f/64 isn't about clutter. It's about photography as wanna-be oil painting, vs. photography that recognizes that it's a different media from painting, with different strengths and weaknesses. In particular, it's about photography exploiting it's strengths.

All of this discussion can be easily illustrated by the work of one of the great east coast photographers. Someone who really understood his subjects and how to show them -- Elliot Porter. A man who learned how to show the simplicity through the clutter if you will. We could all do worse that to study Porter; he has a huge amount to teach us.

Drew Wiley
18-Jan-2010, 11:09
I think the original premise behind this thread is sheer bull, but so are a lot of things
stated by professional art critics. I cut my teeth on high Sierra photography and have
taken shots as complex and tangled as anything out there, though these images are in sharp focus. We have plenty of thick woods here in the West too! But in the 70's it was popular for trendy photographers to go out in the So. Cal desert and shoot tangled soft-focus views of cacti on b&w or color neg film. Made quite a round in the
Museum circuit, though I personally found it a cheap gimmick. Misrach did quite a bit
of that, plus his bellyflop "Lousiana Swamp" series shot at night with flash, but similarly
tangled and out of focus. Eliot Porter was a whole different breed, with a kind of
Thoreauvian philosophy of natural tapestry. Ketchum I find pretentious.

mandoman7
18-Jan-2010, 11:27
I agree Drew. Its as though they worked up an artsy sounding description for the museum placard and then shot the pictures with the hopes that they'd fit. More art in the descriptions than the work itself. The Friends of Photography shows in SF were particularly guilty of that.

Mark Sawyer
18-Jan-2010, 14:23
There were quite a few different reasonings behind pictorialism, early and current.

But, with apologies for being a bit blunt, I think "maybe a soft lens will work, because I just can't deal with the chaotic subject matter with a sharp lens," may be one of the weaker philosophical approaches, regardless of how successful the images come out...

Sorry... :(

gbogatko
18-Jan-2010, 14:50
Sigh. :-|

I just knew this would devolve into ad hominem, but I had to try anyway. Let's try again. How do you deal with clutter?

To quote myself: "I would like to see other examples of how y'all have tried to deal with the "East Coast Clutter Problem" in landscape photography." So far I see:


choose different subjects.
you're just being lazy.
emulate Elliot Porter.
pictorialism sucks.
ism's suck.
it's not just New Jersey!! We have that stuff in (your state here).

etc. etc.

.. but only a few (just one) contributor has actually posted pictures: Mr. Ken Lee, whom I admire greatly, and some web references.

Should I just assume that this is wide open territory and should I figure out how to make it work, then I'll be world famous, soon to become a millionaire having become the king of the genre?:D Somehow I doubt it.

Com'on. Submit examples, not just put-downs. Lee Friedlander's made it work. Anyone else who actually posts pictures here?

gb

Bruce Watson
18-Jan-2010, 15:17
Sigh. :-|

I just knew this would devolve into ad hominem, but I had to try anyway. Let's try again. How do you deal with clutter?

To quote myself: "I would like to see other examples of how y'all have tried to deal with the "East Coast Clutter Problem" in landscape photography." So far I see:


choose different subjects.
you're just being lazy.
emulate Elliot Porter.
pictorialism sucks.
ism's suck.
it's not just New Jersey!! We have that stuff in (your state here).

etc. etc.

.. but only a few (just one) contributor has actually posted pictures: Mr. Ken Lee, whom I admire greatly, and some web references.

Should I just assume that this is wide open territory and should I figure out how to make it work, then I'll be world famous, soon to become a millionaire having become the king of the genre?:D Somehow I doubt it.

Com'on. Submit examples, not just put-downs. Lee Friedlander's made it work. Anyone else who actually posts pictures here?

gb

"A man maie well bring a horse to the water, But he can not make him drinke without he will." -- John Heywood

Mark Sawyer
18-Jan-2010, 17:08
Com'on. Submit examples, not just put-downs. Lee Friedlander's made it work. Anyone else who actually posts pictures here?

gb

Okay, although these were made in the west, a landscape I find often just as "cluttered and chaotic" as the eastern landscape I grew up in...

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g139/Owen21k/tree.jpg

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g139/Owen21k/tree-1.jpg

These were made with a sharp-cutting tessar, stopped down. If you look at Wynn Bullock's landscapes, I think you'll see the western forests an be just as "chaotic" as their eastern counterparts. For eastern work, I'd suggest looking to Paul Caponigro and Paul Strand. Josef Sudek worked very well in the eastern European landscapes, which were similar.

I'm very fond of soft-focus lenses, but I'd maintain that it's a very rare scenario where a bad photograph with a sharp lens becomes a good photograph with a soft lens.

Drew Wiley
18-Jan-2010, 17:30
If one carelessly steps back into a minefield of one's own making, he shouldn't complain
about the result. As far as I'm concerned, there's no such thing as "clutter" in nature.
I've been crawling through brush and photographing it my whole life, and am more at
home with this kind of subject matter than anything else.

Drew Wiley
18-Jan-2010, 18:07
Forgot to add - for me "clutter" means shopping malls and subdivisions - that's where you need a fungus-filled lens! Always considered Friedlander's compositions
half-baked; more of the 70's mush for the sake of artsy novelty - not really a sophisticated use of selective focus at all. Don't give a damn if he's canonized or not. I do a lot of selective focus with the Nikon, but with 8x10 it's f/64 - I want every little twig in focus if possible. Waste of time putting anything on the web - every knothead shrugs his shoulders - hey, it's more trees or whatever. Get in front of a real print, especially a big one with all the detail, and it's a whole different level of experience. Learning to manage the plane of focus takes some experience, as does handling the rapidly shifting light in the woods (luck doesn't hurt, or extra filmholders). Sometimes I'll visit the same patch of brush three or four times before I'm satisfied. But the more complicated the problem, the better I like it.

gbogatko
18-Jan-2010, 19:00
If one carelessly steps back into a minefield of one's own making, he shouldn't complain
about the result. As far as I'm concerned, there's no such thing as "clutter" in nature.
I've been crawling through brush and photographing it my whole life, and am more at
home with this kind of subject matter than anything else.

Minefields I expect. Granades I don't.

;)

gbogatko
18-Jan-2010, 19:17
Okay, although these were made in the west, a landscape I find often just as "cluttered and chaotic" as the eastern landscape I grew up in...

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g139/Owen21k/tree.jpg

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g139/Owen21k/tree-1.jpg

These were made with a sharp-cutting tessar, stopped down. If you look at Wynn Bullock's landscapes, I think you'll see the western forests an be just as "chaotic" as their eastern counterparts. For eastern work, I'd suggest looking to Paul Caponigro and Paul Strand. Josef Sudek worked very well in the eastern European landscapes, which were similar.

Now, THIS is what I'm talking about. Hey folks, why do these work? They're great! (hint -- light, composition).


I'm very fond of soft-focus lenses, but I'd maintain that it's a very rare scenario where a bad photograph with a sharp lens becomes a good photograph with a soft lens.

I'll absolutely accept that. I confess to starting off with a bad photo and seeing what could be done with darkness and vagueness to clump the parts together. I think some are thinking that I'm advocating shooting landscapes with a Verito. Not so. I presented the possibility that pictoralists, especially the Buffalo school, deliberately used aberrant lenses to address the clutter problem presented by the subjects available to them. So, I did shot #3 on purpose to see if it made a difference.

The landscapes that work (for me) occur too haphazardly, and I'm tired of that. Hence this thread.

gb

brianam
18-Jan-2010, 19:29
Per my earlier reply referencing Stuart Rome's approach, here's one of mine, which I admit is rather reminiscent.
Taken last month, at an open space area on the San Francisco peninsula:
http://www.midiliphoto.com/images/PeninsulaHike_45_1.jpg
info: Speed Graphic, Nikkor 135mm/f5.6, FP4

gbogatko
18-Jan-2010, 19:36
Per my earlier reply referencing Stuart Rome's approach, here's one of mine, which I admit is rather reminiscent.
Taken last month, at an open space area on the San Francisco peninsula:
http://www.midiliphoto.com/images/PeninsulaHike_45_1.jpg
info: Speed Graphic, Nikkor 135mm/f5.6, FP4

Good. More, people, more. Discuss. Interact....

:)

Drew Wiley
18-Jan-2010, 19:47
Brian - that looks like poison oak (one of my favorite things, photographically at least). All I can say is just do it. Waste film, experiment. Shoot, print. Eventually it
gets second nature, and you can visualize an incredible amount of complex detail and make it harmonize almost subconsciously. A cool experience, but doesn't come easy. Whether you do soft focus or hard focus is a matter of personal taste. Here on the coast, a lot of the time we don't even need a soft lens - the fog does it for us!
Just mounted a print of some intricately tangled laurels from an 8X10 neg taken up on Mt Tam - I don't think any lens in itself could gives all those subtle variations between hard and soft which the coastal fog does, if you observe it carefully!

Greg Blank
18-Jan-2010, 19:54
Hits the nail on the head. Refinement of vision.



Respectfully:

Perhaps the issue is less about clutter versus simplicity - and more about finding a subject that is really beautiful and worthy of your photographic attention.

gbogatko
18-Jan-2010, 20:21
Just mounted a print of some intricately tangled laurels from an 8X10 neg taken up on Mt Tam - I don't think any lens in itself could gives all those subtle variations between hard and soft which the coastal fog does, if you observe it carefully!

Oh, please.... share this. On the east side of Dayton, (at least where I live), it's all smog.

gb

-- "Beyond the Hudson, it's all Dayton" -- Dorothy Parker

gbogatko
18-Jan-2010, 20:26
Hits the nail on the head. Refinement of vision.

Yep. Show us yours!!!

gb

John Kasaian
18-Jan-2010, 21:18
Uhhh...what do you guys mean by "chaotic?" Or "cluttered?"
I can understand "busy" since there is a lot that seems to be going on in the shape shadow and texture department but where is the chaos of a forest being a forest?
Where is the clutter in a forest full of growing trees and no trash littering up the place?
Sorry but I just I don't get it.

Drew Wiley
18-Jan-2010, 21:20
Sorry, don't have a digital cam. Just a copystand and el-cheapo slide scanner. I
perused my long-neglected website and noticed only one image which might qualify
for your immediate topic. It's on my "Bio" page, if you scroll down, at www.drewwiley.com. A conspicuous buckeye tree image, but not impressive as a
tiny crude jpeg. Nor are the all-important margins fully visible, let alone the significant detail. But a clue at least.

Merg Ross
18-Jan-2010, 22:17
This thread is reminiscent of the comments from some photography curators over the past fifty years, with the result of turning photography into a combat exercise. I have been there, talked with them, and my conclusion is simple; photography is about vision and the ability to interpret what is before the lens. That is the role of the artist.

Whether one is in Maine or California, the challenge remains the same. I do not understand why clutter would be an obstacle to creative vision; it did not deter Strand from producing fine work in New England or, likewise, Adams on the opposite coast. I have photographed in both areas, and find them equally challenging.

jp
19-Jan-2010, 08:19
Uhhh...what do you guys mean by "chaotic?" Or "cluttered?"
I can understand "busy" since there is a lot that seems to be going on in the shape shadow and texture department but where is the chaos of a forest being a forest?
Where is the clutter in a forest full of growing trees and no trash littering up the place?
Sorry but I just I don't get it.

Chaotic could be understood on a couple different levels pertaining to landscape/nature photography. Mix and match to your delight.

On one level, we know every single snowflake is unique and truly chaotic. They lack predictability, aren't organized, etc.. but they are beautiful and fascinating, wild and uncontrolled. Leaves, braches, trees can be the same way. Rain is another aspect of chaos.

At another level, depicting chaos is showing the disorder and death/renewal in nature. Eliot porter does this with crab legs and junk washed up on the beach.

Our job as photographers is to see compositions that complement these concepts and apply our interests and skills in (hopefully) masterfully showing these interesting things. I don't think you have to fully understand the concept to be attracted to the theme, either as a photographer or viewer.

I'll leave clutter for the urban photographers and radar operators.

I've attached a photo of slightly chaotic rain. it's not LF, but we're talking generalities that transcend camera format, so I hope that's OK.

http://www.f64.nu/albums2007/album151/DSC4726.sized.jpg

More pix of rainfall, plus a few random shots of my new enlarger.

http://www.f64.nu/gallery2007/view_album.php?set_albumName=album151

A good rain highly chaotic cropped image:

http://www.f64.nu/gallery2007/view_photo.php?full=1&set_albumName=album151&id=DSC4656c

Drew Wiley
19-Jan-2010, 10:50
Complex patterns of raindrops or moving waterfowl on a pond are indeed analgous to
constanting shifting complicated shadows in the forest, and require a similar level of
discipline. Did a fair amount of pond shooting and printing myself over Christmas. But
I was unaware that ther was an Alford Lake in Maine. The complete contrast to this
is Lake Alvord in the eastern Oregon desert - starkly beautiful, rarely photographed,
an a major haven for migratory ducks, who certainly need to behave if you're trying
to take a second-long exposure right around sunset. Talk about timing! (or another
fifteen bucks down the drain for another chrome!)

Ken Lee
19-Jan-2010, 12:17
Hits the nail on the head. Refinement of vision.

gb -

It may be that you are experiencing something pretty familiar: The subject looks promising. The ground glass looks promising. The final print is, in one way or another, disappointing. Not technically, but aesthetically.

The more subtle and nuanced we go, the more likely this is to happen, because we are pushing out towards the the limits of what can be captured. Some times, the aesthetic content just doesn't make the journey from subject to print.

(What makes it an adventure and a discovery, is the uncertainty involved in the process. If it were all dead certain, we'd have lost interest long ago.)

Perhaps you should consider inviting others here, to interpret a few of your images, printing or cropping them a little differently. They might bring out something that was there all along.

Daniel_Buck
19-Jan-2010, 12:57
... A minority address the 'clutter' problem that East Coast photogs face. Out in the great West, surgical sharpness is warranted ...

I find that fighting the "clutter" is more about finding softer lighting (late in the afternoon, or on an overcast day). I sometimes like shooting larger apertures when I shoot trees (a favorite subject of mine) but I more than likely will shoot them stopped down. Stopped down with more even/soft lighting, the contrast is more pleasing (to my eyes anyway) and the "clutter" fades away into nice detail and subtle tones, versus the more harsh highlights and shadows when the light is stronger and more direct.

http://www.buckshotsblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/4x5_tunacanyon_01.jpg

cowanw
19-Jan-2010, 13:50
Okay, although these were made in the west, a landscape I find often just as "cluttered and chaotic" as the eastern landscape I grew up in...

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g139/Owen21k/tree.jpg

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g139/Owen21k/tree-1.jpg

These were made with a sharp-cutting tessar, stopped down. If you look at Wynn Bullock's landscapes, I think you'll see the western forests an be just as "chaotic" as their eastern counterparts. For eastern work, I'd suggest looking to Paul Caponigro and Paul Strand. Josef Sudek worked very well in the eastern European landscapes, which were similar.

I'm very fond of soft-focus lenses, but I'd maintain that it's a very rare scenario where a bad photograph with a sharp lens becomes a good photograph with a soft lens.

Sharp cutting tessar aside they look soft on my monitor and remind me of Anne Brigman.
Regards
Bill
PS I like them

Bill_1856
19-Jan-2010, 15:20
Sharp cutting tessar aside they look soft on my monitor and remind me of Anne Brigman.
Regards
Bill
PS I like them

Ditto, and PS, me too.

John Kasaian
19-Jan-2010, 15:41
This thread is reminiscent of the comments from some photography curators over the past fifty years, with the result of turning photography into a combat exercise. I have been there, talked with them, and my conclusion is simple; photography is about vision and the ability to interpret what is before the lens. That is the role of the artist.

Whether one is in Maine or California, the challenge remains the same. I do not understand why clutter would be an obstacle to creative vision; it did not deter Strand from producing fine work in New England or, likewise, Adams on the opposite coast. I have photographed in both areas, and find them equally challenging.

Thanks Merg!

Eric Biggerstaff
19-Jan-2010, 15:49
I have seen the images Mark posted in real life, and they are very lovely. I believe some of the softness comes from the printing paper he used which has a canvas like texture, I believe it is a Foma paper (and it is warm). Also, if I remember correcly the light was sortof hazy / foggy which made it soft appearing as well.

They are just really, really nice images.

gbogatko
19-Jan-2010, 15:58
gb -

It may be that you are experiencing something pretty familiar: The subject looks promising. The ground glass looks promising. The final print is, in one way or another, disappointing. Not technically, but aesthetically.

Oh, yes. That's exactly it. Looks great, even thru a cardboard view finder, one eye closed, yellow filter to "hide" the color -- it still fails.


The more subtle and nuanced we go, the more likely this is to happen, because we are pushing out towards the the limits of what can be captured. Some times, the aesthetic content just doesn't make the journey from subject to print.

Yep. My only solstice is that advice from the Buffalo folks that since I can only get out on weekends and rare days that I should consider 6 pics in a year to be good going.


Perhaps you should consider inviting others here, to interpret a few of your images, printing or cropping them a little differently. They might bring out something that was there all along.

Sure!! I'll just get out the flame-retardant, and oceans of Maalox and give it a whirl. Perhaps 2 at a time -- one that I think worked and one that failed.

GB

Nathan Potter
19-Jan-2010, 16:16
Like Merg, I have worked both coasts. Of course subject wise, one can see some great differences but the challenges in recording on film are the same. Once one establishes a sense of place and real intimacy with an area then capturing what's there is much easier. Then, at another level of sophistication, it is obligatory for the photographer to unambiguously communicate the scene as he sees it. This may be in cluttered fashion or it may be in minimalist style, or variants thereof. The two coasts are simply different as with many other coasts. The master photographer will simply find and elucidate what is intrinsic to the place.

Nate Potter, Austin TX.

Ken Lee
19-Jan-2010, 17:31
My only solstice is that advice from the Buffalo folks that since I can only get out on weekends and rare days that I should consider 6 pics in a year to be good going.

Dunno about the 6 pics part, but many of us are in the same boat, myself included. Occasional weekends.

Greg Blank
19-Jan-2010, 18:08
I thought my response out perfectly last evening, however the site logged me out and I lost my pain staken thoughts. There are many hack photographers in the world...where one lives makes no difference in deciding that.

Duane Michals once stated: if you are going to be a photographer, you are going to be a photographer for life. To that I add: many people however merely think they are going to be photographers without the commitment of refining their vision and technique therefore; they are not realizing with what they do. But every photographer goes through changes, which contribute to the statement they end up making with their body of work.

I started LF photography about a quarter a century ago. One of my college photo teachers convinced me to buy a 4x5 Omega Toyo E that a friend of his needed to sell as an estate. I started with one 210 Ilex lens which came with the camera.

I used them for a time before I felt compelled to show my work in portfolio review, my first external portfolio review outside of classes was having one Mr. Elliot Porter look at my work. I was somewhat reserved in what I showed Mr. Porter I chose some recent work which was a mix of slides prints, color and Black and White. At that time Mr. Porter was in his eighties. I really did not have the best idea of what to send him. I was somewhat timid to send my best work because what if it got lost? After all what I was doing was "priceless" ;)

To my dismay after locating him and sending him the work he informed me I was not the fabulous photographer I thought I was, my initial reading of his response letter I took as very critical of my work. However the statement that he made I read over and over it was: "Although I am not against photographing sunlight, your use of it in general I find to be a distraction not an additional element. - However images # X & Y are better compositionally and more visually interesting. These were two different media one a chrome the other a B&W print. Over the years I have used that letter to drive me to making better images compositionally and better light wise, I have also realized that letter was encouragement, since the two images were the most recent one taken in the group and they represented a more current refinement of my work.

I have trekked to many places on the east coast. I think over the course of time one's vision changes and one realizes that well lit clutter can be beautiful :)
Most important if you don't like the scene, don't waste the film...but hard work is what produces the best end result and many times a better image is contained within the first image you see. Which is not saying to vignette merely to be aware.





In this setting, I find it very difficult to produce good and satisfying landscape pictures that are other than closeups, anthropomorphic cartoons, cute horse and cow stuff, and so forth. Sharp focus simply produces a mess. The smaller the aperture, the worse the mess. Wider aperture starts to help, but is still difficult to gauge (and the subject of endless debate as to just where to set the narrower focal plane). Really wide open sometimes helps de-clutter the foreground branches, but not always.
George

gbogatko
19-Jan-2010, 18:41
Perhaps you should consider inviting others here, to interpret a few of your images, printing or cropping them a little differently. They might bring out something that was there all along.

Ulp. Glug. Here goes. Maalox and flame retardant firmly in place.

#1 is real close one to what I saw, #2 is almost, #3 doesn't make it.

George

jp
19-Jan-2010, 18:46
http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g139/Owen21k/tree-1.jpg


Great job; this is the sort of thing I'd expect in a 100 year old book, thumbing through yellowed pages and peeking behind the occasional glassine at the neat photogravure style print of your trees.

gbogatko
19-Jan-2010, 18:53
Maalox and flame retardant still firmly in place.

#1 is light and dark.
#2 is embracing the clutter.

George

Greg Blank
19-Jan-2010, 19:03
Number one IS the only worth while image compositionally, loose the others. Depth of field has no bearing on pictorialism in landscape or inanimate objects so shallow is fine if it works. But as Adams said nothing stinks as bad as a fuzzy picture of a fuzzy concept. Why did you even take the picture of what you saw ;)

The pictorialists were dedicated to a form of story book telling where pretentiously children, adults and animals were dressed up to illustrate classical fairy tales. On par with the whole wedding, portraitraiture and photo colorists that think they are creating art by painting photos. ;) Although those things are acceptable if you want to make money that way <g> They don't really add to refined vision especially since every hack in world can do it with PS.



Ulp. Glug. Here goes. Maalox and flame retardant firmly in place.

#1 is real close one to what I saw, #2 is almost, #3 doesn't make it.

George

Bill_1856
19-Jan-2010, 19:14
George, I'm still in full agreement with you.
Merg, my favorite photography book of all time is Paul Strand's "Time in New England," yet when you brought up his name I couldn't recall a single landscape image in the book. I just had another look, and have decided that the few true landscapes are more in the nature of "fillers" than as Ikons. (The seascapes, close-ups, and buildings are on a different level, however.)
I think the best New England landscape work was done by Paul Caponigro (in his early years), of a quiet little woods and stream.

Merg Ross
19-Jan-2010, 19:32
George, I'm still in full agreement with you.
Merg, my favorite photography book of all time is Paul Strand's "Time in New England," yet when you brought up his name I couldn't recall a single landscape image in the book. I just had another look, and have decided that the few true landscapes are more in the nature of "fillers" than as Ikons. (The seascapes, close-ups, and buildings are on a different level, however.)
I think the best New England landscape work was done by Paul Caponigro (in his early years), of a quiet little woods and stream.


Bill, I am not sure with the Newhall's somewhat West Coast bias, that Strand's best New England landscapes survived editing. Perhaps I am wrong, but I certainly agree with you about the early Caponigro work done in that area; the woods and stream series comes to mind. Yes, the "Time in New England" book has some excellent work to complement Strand's work produced elsewhere.

Drew Wiley
19-Jan-2010, 19:49
Greg - I am not a pictorialist, but have you ever been nose-to-nose with one of Julia
Cameron's platinum prints? These were about as stereotypically Victorian and staged as anything can get, but as portraits they nonetheless are unsurpassed. Steichen did
fuzzy-wuzzy landscapes fully entrenched in the whole Pictorialist genre, but which
are still deeply moving today. It's not the style which counts, but how well one
handles it. As far as so-called "chaos" is concerned, I'm just as comfortable visualizing a composition of tangled rebar from a demolition site as I am from a
tangle of weeds or vines out in the woods. The only difference is, I don't want my
camera smashed by rude pedestrians, and I prefer solitude during my private time.
I also like hard exercise. Therefore, I take many more wilderness shots than urban
ones. But East Coast vs West Coast, urban vs woodlands - all the same. Good
compositions arrive everywhere.

Drew Wiley
19-Jan-2010, 19:54
George - Despite taking you to task for the vocabulary of things, I think both of your
shots show you have a real affinity for cultivating complex images, and I belive you
should be encouraged to experiment more in this direction. There often is a real difference between how we articulate things and define the problem, and how we
actually see. The latter is far more important.

gbogatko
19-Jan-2010, 20:24
George - Despite taking you to task for the vocabulary of things, I think both of your
shots show you have a real affinity for cultivating complex images, and I belive you
should be encouraged to experiment more in this direction. There often is a real difference between how we articulate things and define the problem, and how we
actually see. The latter is far more important.

Thank you!! My purpose in all this is to improve -- the more help the better!

George

gbogatko
19-Jan-2010, 20:41
George, I'm still in full agreement with you.
Merg, my favorite photography book of all time is Paul Strand's "Time in New England," yet when you brought up his name I couldn't recall a single landscape image in the book. .... I think the best New England landscape work was done by Paul Caponigro (in his early years), of a quiet little woods and stream.

Thanks. The basis for my first posting is from reading the book from the Buffalo Group -- found earlier in the thread -- and noting their preference for single Rectilinear lenses so as to avoid the "wiry detail" that was so loathed in the anastigmats. The rest is extrapolation. Being in roughly the same location in the country, it struck me that the available subject matter probably had an influence on their choice of lenses and printing methodology, so I decided to try that approach. Sometimes it helps, sometimes not. I'll take the same shot with different lenses, all the way from a 1864 petzval, thru a casket-set, Heliar, Schneider -- the whole gamut from surgical sharpness to Verito schmutz.

It's all a grand experiment to find a vision that I can really call mine.

Cheers,

George

Mark Sawyer
19-Jan-2010, 23:19
Perhaps you should consider inviting others here, to interpret a few of your images, printing or cropping them a little differently. They might bring out something that was there all along.


Maalox and flame retardant still firmly in place.

#1 is light and dark.
#2 is embracing the clutter.

George

Well since you asked... here's how I would interpret this one:

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g139/Owen21k/FernsAndLight.jpg

Minor burning, dodging, warming, cropping, all would be done in the darkroom to be something like this. Hope you don't mind, and I'll delete it if you like.

Mark Sawyer
19-Jan-2010, 23:23
Oh, and with thanks to all with kind words bout the images I posted earlier, I rescanned a later print. Maybe it will give a better impression of the detail. (I've also forgone some oof the warmth of the earlier prints...) Still, the rougher-surfaced paper that I like so much (a Fomatone paper) doesn't agree with my scanner so well...

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g139/Owen21k/Untitled-1-1.jpg

Mark Sawyer
19-Jan-2010, 23:29
And one more thought... Frederick Evans' images of English cathedral architecture are some of the finest seen and realized landscapes I can think of.

Chuck Pere
20-Jan-2010, 07:09
Another photographer that has worked the "cluttered" landscape is Ray Metzker. He has a good book called Landscapes. Then again I like the look of complex forest landscapes.

gbogatko
20-Jan-2010, 08:35
Hope you don't mind, and I'll delete it if you like.

:eek: How could I mind! Let's be official about this: I am requesting this kind of participation and feedback. I'd lovethis thread to continue like this, with others participating with their own 'problem' pictures, and of course their examples of this genre, subject that they are proud of, and problems that can be helped by still others. Forest/woods/nature pictures are hard to do.

Your crop does two things that I had considered a) produce a vignetting effect around the light source which b) eliminates the ferns in front. I didn't do that because I wanted to see if I could use the ferns to lead the viewer "into the light" so to speak. I still vacillate between the two results. Perhaps there is a middle ground.

One 'solution' I'm leaning toward involves what, for lack of a better term, I'll call clumping. Recall the example that led off the thread (and ignoring the demerits of the straight shot for now). #2 has no decodable pattern to it because there's a lot of confusing stuff -- you can't see the forest, just a bunch the trees. #3, deliberately soft and darkened, has the effect of 'clumping' the stuff more which I think helps (but does not save) #2 because there is now less for the eye and brain to decode thus allowing one to see the forest. I think this may be why the pictures of Stuart Rome, as referenced by brianam, are decodable because the 'clumping' is more successful, thus helping the viewer do decode the picture more easily. Of course, once the initial decoding is accomplished, then there should be further opportunities to 'fall' into the picture. It's kinda like why Bach fugues are more successful than Mendelssohn or Reger.

In this regard, your crop has had the salutary effect of helping the eye and brain to 'clump' the central shape thus making the decoding easier. The picture(s) offered by Mark Sawyer do this as well, one more than the other. My crop tries to balance the two; there may still be a way to accomplish that via dodging the ferns somehow.

Sorry to sound so academic. Intuition has only gone so far, so now I'm attempting to sort out why some things have worked and some not. When you can only get out on weekends when weather permits, all you can do is reflect in preparation for the next opportunity.

George

Mark Sawyer
20-Jan-2010, 09:54
Your crop does two things that I had considered a) produce a vignetting effect around the light source which b) eliminates the ferns in front. I didn't do that because I wanted to see if I could use the ferns to lead the viewer "into the light" so to speak. I still vacillate between the two results. Perhaps there is a middle ground.



I debated about the ferns before cropping them out, but made my decison in a simple "I like the composition better this way" mode. It might have been more effective at leading the viewer into the light had there been a path through the ferns, but I still might have cropped it out. I think sometimes we analyze, rationalize, and rely on compositional rules and techniques, when we should simply go with what looks or feels best. I find I do my best work when I just accept that something looks right, rather than try to visually engineer the picture.

Then again, that's my approach, and it could be a terrible method for someone else.

I think maybe you can tell a lot about how a photographer thinks and sees by the lines and grids on his ground glass. Mine has none.

Drew Wiley
20-Jan-2010, 10:12
Mark - the problem with the damn web is that it can't translate the tactile quality of
the print or texture of the paper, let alone any significant detail. A print which can be
magnificent in person can fall totally flat online. This is especially true of subtle images
or those with sophisticated toning. It's bad enough with black and white work, but even worse trying to get across subtle color ones. All you can do is sort of heat them
up, and then they lose all that magic that made them special in the first place. I just
have to guess that there's a lovely 3D effect somewhere on your paper surface itself,
and try to imagine what the real print is like.

Merg Ross
20-Jan-2010, 10:35
[QUOTE=Mark Sawyer;550327] I think sometimes we analyze, rationalize, and rely on compositional rules and techniques, when we should simply go with what looks or feels best. I find I do my best work when I just accept that something looks right, rather than try to visually engineer the picture.


Good point, I am in total agreement. Instinct is necessary in the making of a well composed photograph. Also, a very important attribute to possess when one is working commercially, with little time to ponder composition.

gbogatko
20-Jan-2010, 11:29
[QUOTE=Mark Sawyer;550327] I think sometimes we analyze, rationalize, and rely on compositional rules and techniques, when we should simply go with what looks or feels best. I find I do my best work when I just accept that something looks right, rather than try to visually engineer the picture.


Good point, I am in total agreement. Instinct is necessary in the making of a well composed photograph. Also, a very important attribute to possess when one is working commercially, with little time to ponder composition.

Agreed. If I was working commercially (I don't) working by instinct would be a good work flow. I program computers for a living, and after many years, I am running almost entirely by instinct, so I know what you are talking about.

Instinct in photographic composition, for me at least, runs hot and cold, usually cold. The first thread post is a good example. Instinct told me this would be a wonderful shot. It is not. So, now I'm attempting a non-instinctual analysis of why wonderful looking subjects result in bad shots. Landscape photography is different. You can't pose the subject, so you have to consider the subject on its own terms. Sometimes the subject lies to you, or your brain lies to you -- thus a bad shot.

Instinct is good, but has to build on first principles. I have to define and internalize my first principles so I can then operate instinctually when in the field, where "things are different when they become real." Alas, I've accumulated some incorrect first principles, so my instinct fails me more often then not.

But ... I'm getting there, and this forum is helping.

George

rdenney
20-Jan-2010, 12:31
This is a "third-coast" image--from San Antonio, Texas.

Part of what impressed me about the scene was how the tree had a disaggregating effect on the old church (Mission Concepción, ca. 1730's, photographed in 1992). Without removing the texture of the church, which is utterly important to its character, I still wanted to highlight the shape. The tree provides an interfering texture, but to my eyes both textures still read clearly. Softness would have undermined the crispness of that texture, it seems to me.

http://www.rickdenney.com/images/Concepcion022793-8_lores.jpg

To quote the composer Vaughan Williams, I don't know whether I like it, but it's what I meant at the time. It definitely seems to me to have that eastern look to it, despite the very western Spanish mission architecture, because of the dark interpretation and the trees with no leaves.

To the subject of a pictorial effect in east-coast landscapes, there is a truth that must be recognized: The fogginess of eastern landscapes may not be an effect of the photographer's doing, but, you know, actual, real fog.

The images below are pertinent to the thread but not to this forum, so if the moderators request, I will remove them. They were made using small format. All are from Maryland and Virginia and include typically cluttery eastern scenes. None seem to me consistent with the pictorial style, and all were intended to be sharply presented, selective focus and lens flare notwithstanding.

http://www.rickdenney.com/images/sunset-on-branches-lores.jpg

http://www.rickdenney.com/images/IMG_5981_deepcreek_lores.jpg

http://www.rickdenney.com/images/sun-through-trees.jpg

Rick "thinking each uses a particular light to separate the subject" Denney

Robert Hughes
20-Jan-2010, 12:51
As for the church being obscured by that tree, the old pictorialists had a simple (and predictable) message: carry a strong knife and cut away the unnecessary clutter. From Pictorial Landscape Photography, pg 44:

" Too much time cannot be spent in arranging the composition and quality of focus of the picture.... When the general features of a picture as seen on the screen appear satisfactory, it is wise, before exposing, to look carefully for details which might be improved. At this point a little exercise in landscape gardening is not infrequently suggested. There is no reason to include any removable feature of the landscape merely because it happens to be there..."

http://www.ohvec.org/galleries/mountaintop_removal/007/43_tn.jpg

What? It happened to be there, (and W Virginia is East Coast) and it was removable! ;)

gbogatko
20-Jan-2010, 13:28
What? It happened to be there, (and W Virginia is East Coast) and it was removable! ;)

Oh, that's toooo much!!! :D :D :D

George

Richard M. Coda
20-Jan-2010, 13:57
I find this thread fascinating as I, too, have lived on both sides of this country (NJ and currently AZ). We are actually contemplating a move back East (RI, CT, or NH) in two years when our daughter goes to college and I have been thinking about what I would photograph. My conclusion is all the things I never photographed when I lived there before. Once I visited CA for the first time NJ soured on me. Now, after living in AZ for 5 years I find myself taking very few landscapes (the desert doesn't do it for me) and more urban images. Going back East I think I would do more landscapes, cluttered as they may be. I will try to find a few example images when I have some time.

Drew Wiley
20-Jan-2010, 14:26
Rick - with your Mission Concepcion shot the way you can have your cake and eat it
too is with unsharp masking (in the original film sense, not PS). Then you can improve
local contrast and texture everywhere in a contrasty scene. Of course, once again, from a web image I can't tell what's really in the print and what's not.

Mark Sawyer
20-Jan-2010, 15:03
Mark - the problem with the damn web is that it can't translate the tactile quality of
the print or texture of the paper, let alone any significant detail. A print which can be
magnificent in person can fall totally flat online. This is especially true of subtle images
or those with sophisticated toning. It's bad enough with black and white work, but even worse trying to get across subtle color ones. All you can do is sort of heat them
up, and then they lose all that magic that made them special in the first place. I just
have to guess that there's a lovely 3D effect somewhere on your paper surface itself,
and try to imagine what the real print is like.

Very much so... the great tragedy of having a web-based large format community is that we see only suggestions of the original print. The reasons so many of us work with this cumbersome equipment and process, the fine resolution, the delicate tonal scales, the physical presence of alt processes like platinum, carbon, or wet-plate, so much of this is lost on a 450x600 pixel scan...

I liked the new scan I did last night on my monitor at home. It looks like crap today on my monitor at work...

Ken Lee
22-Jan-2010, 13:36
"Oh, yes. That's exactly it. Looks great, even thru a cardboard view finder, one eye closed, yellow filter to "hide" the color -- it still fails."

When filming, cinema directors like to watch on video when possible, before shooting with real film stock. They have learned at great expense, that things don't always "work" in two dimensions, in B&W, at a given image size, etc.

Similarly, there's a reason why people used to shoot test shots with Polaroid, before shooting with other film. Nowadays, we might use a digital camera to get a glimpse, before exposing a sheet of film - but I'd be surprised if many LF shooters do so. (I don't, anyhow).

Experience is the greatest teacher: Gradually, we learn to "Just say no" until a really suitable subject comes along.

We need to be willing to come home empty-handed, or be willing to experiment and see just what "comes out" - and not be too disappointed when we reach too far.

Greg Miller
22-Jan-2010, 15:57
For me LF certainly has the advantage when it comes to the 3D to 2D translation. I find that the image projection onto the ground glass provides a pretty realistic 2D experience (makes sense since it is pretty much 2D) whereas for some reason one eye looking though a viewfinder still looks very 3D to me (not sure why that is since my other eye is closed so the stereo vision effect should be eliminated).

Mark Sawyer
22-Jan-2010, 16:20
For me LF certainly has the advantage when it comes to the 3D to 2D translation. I find that the image projection onto the ground glass provides a pretty realistic 2D experience (makes sense since it is pretty much 2D) whereas for some reason one eye looking though a viewfinder still looks very 3D to me (not sure why that is since my other eye is closed so the stereo vision effect should be eliminated).

I suspect things look more 3D through a handheld viewfinder partly because there is some camera motion involved, and the brain can observe and process a moving point of view similar to seeing the two points of view. Also, a viewfinder still allows the impression of looking directly at a subject, whereas a ground glass is a surface of its own, inverted and with a texture very removed from seeing the scene through the naked eye. But yes, the ground glass on my Kodak 2D gives a very "2D" experience! :)

Nathan Potter
23-Jan-2010, 10:18
There is a saying by Einstein (from his essays in science, I believe) that I use to guide my photography.

"Out of clutter find simplicity.
From discord find harmony.
In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity"

It's a useful approach in clarifying your visual statement.

Nate Potter, Austin TX.

Greg Blank
24-Jan-2010, 17:22
Its interesting how Zen like that quote is.
Distilled, the truth is truth.

"Chance favors the prepared mind".


There is a saying by Einstein (from his essays in science, I believe) that I use to guide my photography.

"Out of clutter find simplicity.
From discord find harmony.
In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity"

It's a useful approach in clarifying your visual statement.

Nate Potter, Austin TX.