Photographer Baiting Bighorn Sheep

[Michael Kadillak]

A photographer in Montana was convicted of baiting Big Horn sheep to secure an optimal photographic background that may have resulted in them being near a road and several killed in the process. I thought that this is what Photoshop was for? What a shame.

[Kerik Kouklis]

He and Fatali should get together.

[Peter York]

Yes, the first can attract the animal, the second can set it on fire to achieve natural lighting.

[cdholden]

I've seen some of Michael Fatali's work, but wasn't aware of his background.
I have a hard time reading about his NPS shenanigans and comprehending how he could come up with "Sacred Earth Images" for the name of a gallery.

[vinny]

I've seen some of Michael Fatali's work, but wasn't aware of his background.
I have a hard time reading about his NPS shenanigans and comprehending how he could come up with "Sacred Earth Images" for the name of a gallery.

Add a religious theme to see an increase in prophets:)

[Drew Wiley]

Maybe we should bait photograhers. Set up a mechanical bighorn like those mechanical
deer they use to catch illegal hunters. Then it would be the photographer who gets
run over. Fatali is a different subject. He didn't get along with Smokey the Bear very
well. But he is a superb darkroom technician. Anybody who thinks Photoshop is the
ticket should see his Ciba prints. He claims not to use colored filters and to wait days
on end till the ligting is right - well, it's right when he seamlessly sandwiches several
transparencies together to get remarkable scenes which are astronomically impossible.
But not all his shots are "fake" by any means. I don't care for either his marketing
etchics or tourist-based scenic content, but the dude can print.

[Michael Kadillak]

Maybe we should bait photograhers. Set up a mechanical bighorn like those mechanical
deer they use to catch illegal hunters. Then it would be the photographer who gets
run over. Fatali is a different subject. He didn't get along with Smokey the Bear very
well. But he is a superb darkroom technician. Anybody who thinks Photoshop is the
ticket should see his Ciba prints. He claims not to use colored filters and to wait days
on end till the ligting is right - well, it's right when he seamlessly sandwiches several
transparencies together to get remarkable scenes which are astronomically impossible.
But not all his shots are "fake" by any means. I don't care for either his marketing
etchics or tourist-based scenic content, but the dude can print.

I was in Ridgeway Colorado having breakfast with Michael Roberts on a recent photographic trip when we heard a group of guys a couple of tables away talking about photography. I was tempted to go over and meet them until I heard the conversation shift to discussing Fitali in a similar context. Your would think that your reputation is something that you should guard at all costs particularly in the public domain as an artist, but that does not always seem to be the case.

[Brian C. Miller]

AFAIK in Washington state it is legal to bait animals for photography. A couple of years ago there was a bill introduced about it, but the bill was defeated. Ilwaco banned feeding wild animals (link (http://tdn.com/news/local/article_dd4a5924-8733-11df-bcc9-001cc4c002e0.html)), so any banning goes city by city or county.

[Heroique]

Maybe we should bait photographers. Set up a mechanical bighorn, like those mechanical deer they use to catch illegal hunters.

I proposed this in Yellowstone to slow tourist traffic during the late-season.

The ranger didn’t even chuckle. :mad:

“I manage ‘wildlife jams’ in the summer,” he said. “I’m enjoying my respite.”

[Frank Petronio]

Any links to pictures by Mr. Baiter or the flame-lit photos by Fitali? Just curious....

[Kirk Keyes]

Any links to pictures by Mr. Baiter or the flame-lit photos by Fitali? Just curious....

http://www.fatali.com/

I don't think his "Delicate Arch Burning" photo is online, though...

[Scott Davis]

He "Doesn't" use filters and.or photoshop???? What does he do then, give LSD to his Velvia? I wonder if he's the one who broke the Teapot... after all, if he set fire to Delicate Arch, the odds are favorable he could have climbed up to remove a birds' nest or something else that he didn't like and broke it off...

[Drew Wiley]

Scott - many of Fatali's prints actually describe incredible color situations in the canyons with reflections and so forth; in other words, not fake and not over the top
due to Velvia (which would be very difficult to use under that kind of contrast - more
likely Astia was often used). But then all this got supplemented with "what will sell"
theatrics. The use of fire shows actual light - i.e., what he saw when he photographed
these places lit up by fire. Neat idea, except that fire has certain side effects potentially classified as vandalism. Hence the court order - he's not allowed to make
money on, or in any manner publish or display, those particular shots. The statement
that colored filters aren't used is also true, because if he did that, there would be an
overall color cast in the scenes. Rather, he has used intensified color in the darkroom
and sometimes sandwiched different transparencies together to create otherwise
unreal scenes. People do this in Photoshop all the time. His sleight of hand is better,
and the only objection I have to it (other than taste), is that he claims he has sat
around for days on end to behold these wonders of lighting, which in certain cases
never did occur. Why not just sell them honestly - without the fake claims. People
would still buy his prints if they gravitate toward his subject matter and presentation.
Heck - they buy Photoshopped fake scenes too. Sad, because the guy has serious
technical skills, gets out there, and could really do some nice stuff if he wasn't addicted to glitz and snake-oil marketing.

[Brian C. Miller]

Previous Fatali thread (http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?t=24842)

I think that Fatali uses ND filters. The colors aren't changed, but there's no way that E6 can handle the range of light demonstrated in some of his photographs.

Drew, could you please point out an instance of a sandwiched Fatali photo and walk me through it? I looked over Fatali's site, and nothing seemed to spring out at me. (Nothing that a Lee ND wouldn't explain, anyways.) Come to think of it, the only ones that seem out-of-place are the big moon photos, and those could be done with a double-exposure.

[Drew Wiley]

Hi Brian - there's no way Fatali could be using something like split grads or Lee filters over the lens and come out with an immaculate 40x60 Cibachrome. You have to look
at these prints in person. I'm working from memory, but as an example, I think the image is titled, Earth Spirit Rising, or something like that, and is presumably a sunset
shot of a well-known aritifical geyser out in the Blackrock Desert in Nevada. Of course
it helps to have a background with Ciba, or at least printing chromes, to understand
the subterfuge. The live print is spectacular. The first thing you notice it exactly the
same crescent moon in the same place in a deep blue sky as several of his other images - a pretty obvious giveaway. Then within a few degrees apart, there's also a brilliant orange sunset (or sunrise??) - not only would this be impossible to record on the same sheet of film with respect to luminance, but the whole way it lights up the scene is conspiciously impossible. It results from sandwich-printing three different chromes, each of which has been selective masked to effectively dodge/burn the way it colors an overall section of the image. I suppose it would just be easier to carry
around a portable air compressor and spray-paint gun. We could have Delicate Arch
in bright purple!

[Brian C. Miller]

Thanks, Drew! I had looked through all of his online images, and based on those I didn't see anything like the moon being in exactly the same place. I'm guessing that Ciba is good for multiple exposure, like Jerry Uelsmann?

[Steve Sherman]

Admittedly I am a bit naive.

All this time I have been roaming the landscape looking for something to create with the only tools of lens, exposure, development and an occasional filter. Weather, lighting and wind conditions completely out of my control

A few years ago a friend returned from a Photo Safari in Alaska and show me some of his work. Really impresssive, albeit digital, that is until he told me that most of the animals were lead into staging areas where workshop photogs such as he were allowed to stand at a safe and slightly elevated position to be assured of a close and three dimensional perspective.

In the end it comes down to either staging or creating a photograph, I'll take the latter, and it's free too!

Cheers!

[Drew Wiley]

Brian - I've only seen a couple of Fatali prints that looked like multiple composites.
But there are some others that are simple dubbed-in moonrises from a second
chrome. So I wouldn't compare them to what Uelsman routinely did. Uelsman
moved the paper from enlarger to enlarger with separate negs in each ones. What
Fatali does involves punch and register gear and sandwiching the chromes. I just
finsished registering some masks for printing this weekend. But I do it for tonal
and textural control, not to create imaginary scenes.

[Vaughn]

I stopped off at the gallery in Bishop of Galan's work. He had a wonderful eye and got out there. The recent printing of many of his images, though, disappointed me in the supersaturated colors and manipulated light. I hate to say it, but many reminded me of the "Painter of Light" guy.

His vintage prints I saw there had none of this.

[walter23]

Hah, first two I looked at on his site.

Earth "bones":
http://www.fatali.com/gallery/details.php?id=77&gid=5&

Fruit of temptation:
http://www.fatali.com/gallery/details.php?id=45&gid=5&

[Drew Wiley]

There's so much beauty out there and so many ways of looking at it, that I don't know why anyone would even want to create a fake scene. Like I've said before, it's
like taking nature and making a cheap whore out of it. Some of the stuff coming out
of the Bishop gallery mentioned is complete digital fakery, even dubbed in animals,
etc. Nothing new. Photographers way back when would take shots at the zoo and
figure out how to patch them into the wild. Now I notice the little AAA magazine I
get each month has some fake scenes, ones where they don't even bother to correct
the orientation of shadows. Probably no one pays attention. But for a purported travel magazine, I wonder if some tourist will actually end up at one of those places
scratching his head. My boss has a screen saver on his computer with a pack of
wolves howling in a shaft of light coming through the Humboldt redwoods. Didn't
know they had color film back at the turn of the century before the wolves were all
shot off.

[Scott Walker]

Why exactly is it wrong to bait Bighorn Sheep to get a picture yet it is perfectly acceptable to do the exact same thing with sharks.

[Vaughn]

Why exactly is it wrong to bait Bighorn Sheep to get a picture yet it is perfectly acceptable to do the exact same thing with sharks.

Well, the sharks won't get hit by cars, and there is always the chance the photographer will be dinner. But LF shark photography does sound like an interesting challange.;)

[Scott Walker]

But LF shark photography does sound like an interesting challange.;)

I messed with it 15 years ago but lack of money at the time made it impossible to get to where I wanted to be so I gave up on the project. Not so much sharks either, my idea was more landscape of wrecks and towns inside reservoirs. Now I have the money and no time, maybe some day.

[Brian Ellis]

Admittedly I am a bit naive.

All this time I have been roaming the landscape looking for something to create with the only tools of lens, exposure, development and an occasional filter. Weather, lighting and wind conditions completely out of my control

A few years ago a friend returned from a Photo Safari in Alaska and show me some of his work. Really impresssive, albeit digital, that is until he told me that most of the animals were lead into staging areas where workshop photogs such as he were allowed to stand at a safe and slightly elevated position to be assured of a close and three dimensional perspective.

In the end it comes down to either staging or creating a photograph, I'll take the latter, and it's free too!

Cheers!

If the images were great why would it matter how they came to be made? Of course there would be an ethical issue if he passed them off as having been made in the wild but he obviously didn't do that and to me the circumstances surrounding the making of the images wouldn't otherwise be important.

Paul Caponigro's famous running deer photograph was staged. To me it doesn't detract from the photograph.

[Jim Becia]

Hi Brian - there's no way Fatali could be using something like split grads or Lee filters over the lens and come out with an immaculate 40x60 Cibachrome. You have to look
at these prints in person. I'm working from memory, but as an example, I think the image is titled, Earth Spirit Rising, or something like that, and is presumably a sunset
shot of a well-known aritifical geyser out in the Blackrock Desert in Nevada. Of course
it helps to have a background with Ciba, or at least printing chromes, to understand
the subterfuge. The live print is spectacular. The first thing you notice it exactly the
same crescent moon in the same place in a deep blue sky as several of his other images - a pretty obvious giveaway. Then within a few degrees apart, there's also a brilliant orange sunset (or sunrise??) - not only would this be impossible to record on the same sheet of film with respect to luminance, but the whole way it lights up the scene is conspiciously impossible. It results from sandwich-printing three different chromes, each of which has been selective masked to effectively dodge/burn the way it colors an overall section of the image. I suppose it would just be easier to carry
around a portable air compressor and spray-paint gun. We could have Delicate Arch
in bright purple!

Drew,

On the "Earth Spirit Rising" shot, I don't see your so called subterfuge. I have probably been to his gallery more times than I can count. Usually 3 or 4 times a year going back to when I worked in Zion in 1987. I have "studied" his work as much as possible. (By "studied" I mean I have looked at these images time and time again whenever I'm in Zion. I don't pretend to be an expert on him.) When I first saw Earth Spirit Rising, I first thought it to be logistically impossible. That changed one morning in the southwest when I saw a rising sun and a crescent moon on the same horizon. It does happen. And as for the same moon in several shots, just don't see it. With the sun coming through that much mist/fog, the exposure gets toned down extensively. Also having looked extensively at Burkett's work also, I realize that both Burkett and Fatali can pull more out of Ilfochrome than one would ever imagine, especially in the case when you realize that Burkett is usually shooting Velvia and Fatali is usually shooting E100VS. Their use of masking materials is pretty damn amazing. While I can question Fatali's "selling points" and his use of super saturation, I just don't see what you are referring to in his this photo.

The one image that does come to mind that might raise questions is "Sunkissed." My understanding is that this is a double exposure or so I have been told by his sales associate. Jim Becia

[Vaughn]

If the images were great why would it matter how they came to be made? Of course there would be an ethical issue if he passed them off as having been made in the wild but he obviously didn't do that and to me the circumstances surrounding the making of the images wouldn't otherwise be important.

Paul Caponigro's famous running deer photograph was staged. To me it doesn't detract from the photograph.

Not trying to speak for Steve, but I do agree with him. He seems not talking about so much about the quality of the image, but the quality of the photographic experience and why one photographs.

Paul's photograph works, not because he captured a herd of white deer on film, but due his personal response to the light and forms of the running deer.

Steve wrote, "In the end it comes down to either staging or creating a photograph, I'll take the latter..." For me, "creating a photograph" means to go beyond recording wildlife, a natural landmark, or a beautiful human form. It means to fully experience the place, light, person, form, and to bring that experience forward and into the photograph. I have a feeling (having never done it) that most staged wildlife situations lack this level of personal involvement.

When I was an assistant at a Friends of Photography workshop, Morely Baer has us out on the coast and this was his point he tried to instill in the participants (as I understood it).

Your mileage may differ.

[ROL]

I'm working from memory, but as an example, I think the image is titled, Earth Spirit Rising, or something like that, and is presumably a sunset shot of a well-known aritifical geyser out in the Blackrock Desert in Nevada. It results from sandwich-printing three different chromes, each of which has been selective masked to effectively dodge/burn the way it colors an overall section of the image.

Gee, I thought the whole point of the Black Rock was burning (http://burningman.com/)! )'(

The turn of this thread makes me glad I've forsaken color completely.

[Steve Sherman]

If the images were great why would it matter how they came to be made? Of course there would be an ethical issue if he passed them off as having been made in the wild but he obviously didn't do that and to me the circumstances surrounding the making of the images wouldn't otherwise be important.

Paul Caponigro's famous running deer photograph was staged. To me it doesn't detract from the photograph.

As with most things of lasting significance it's not so much about the end as it is the journey.

[Drew Wiley]

First of all, if there are some "painters" out there, that is your choice. Just don't go
around claiming this is what you actually saw, or waited days on end to see, to give
the false impression this is how things truly look. To a highly experienced Ciba printer like me, it is perfectly obvious when Fatali has in certain cases cooked something or printed from a sandwich. As I said, this can sometimes be done more seamlessly the old-fashioned way than using Photoshop. The Southwest does contain some dramatic lighting and he sometimes captures it, but plainly supplements this
with a lust for glitz and tourist appeal which requires some trickery. Burkett is just
the opposite and has a philosophy of "veracity". Any medium has its idiosyncrasies,
and anyone who prints on Cibachrome will use these to its best advantage; but that's
a whole different thing from outright concocting scenes and trying to sell them with
a deceptive line of marketing, which is largely characteristic of Fatali. In one instance, he claimed a print was appraised at $35,000 and have displayed it in
over twenty countries. If that had been the case, it would have already been faded
out, or be close to fading and relatively worthless.

[Drew Wiley]

There are plenty of ways to get animals into the shot. Cute little squirrels are attracted to peanuts and crackers. Bulls are attracted to red coats. With mountain lions you should walk arund on all fours wearing a hat with antlers. No need for a telephoto lens.

[Scott Davis]

Thinking of Fatali- he's selling a 270mm Computar in Copal 3 on a recessed Sinar board over on FeePay. http://cgi.ebay.com/Computar-270mm-Covers-up-12x20-sharp-/370497071360?pt=Camera_Lenses&hash=item564358a900

I was tempted to ask if this lens is also banished from the national parks...