Mastering craft, technique, equipment and process is but a flea bite on the arse of the image.
Spoken like a true fauxtographer..........
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Mastering craft, technique, equipment and process is but a flea bite on the arse of the image.
Spoken like a true fauxtographer..........
"Mastering craft, technique, equipment and process is but a flea bite on the arse of the image."
And that flea weights 440 pounds, has jaws of steel, red glowing eyes, jumps farther and faster than Superman, and a real thirst for your blood! :-)
I agree with Paul's statement 100%.
Digital won't make a great photographer out of a crappy one!
I know I can make good prints using any technique as long as I master the tools. I used to make great silver prints and I can make great prints using digital methods now that I've learned enough of the technology. I don't think one is better than the other. I use a 4x5 and a DSLR depending on what I'm shooting, for instance. For spontaneous natural light photos of people, the DSLR can't be beat. For landscape, LF can't be beat (yet). How you choose to print your photographs is just a matter of personal choice, like choosing the type of paint for a painting.
Digital won't make a great photographer out of a crappy one!
Isnt this true for just about anyhting we talk about here? pt/pd printing wont make a great photographer out of a crappy one, neither will carbon, Kallitype, silver printing etc, etc.
This is what I dont get, even the most ignorant person about digital printing (like me) knows that you can dodge, burn, bleach, unsharp mask pixel by pixel if you guys wanted to. But is this control really necessary or just overkill, or maybe OCD? Frankly for me this is one of the tell tales of digital photography or more precise ink jet prints. You look at a print and there is this naked tree that looks to be a mile away with branches siluetted against a background and you know it should not have any detail no normal person could see detail, yet invariably with ink jet prints the tree has detail in the branches and trunk. It is almost as if you guys are saying to yourselves, you know the detail is in the scan and by god I am going to work on these tiny branches for 6 hours so I can bring the detail in the print because I can. Not only do I find this degree of control foolish, but IMO once the print is finished it looks artificial.
Another example, look at this image:
www.afterimagegallery.com/barkerwalkingrain.htm
What do you see? I will tell you what I see. I see an oncoming storm where all of the sunflowers by the road are perfectly still with exception of one or two (which I am sure the guy probably missed working on them with PS.) To me this looks unnatural. If this is the result of greater control, then I am not so sure it is such a good thing.
(BTW, this is not to say the guy cannot do some great shots, this is my favorite www.afterimagegallery.com/barkeradoberuin.htm )
Within this thread you will see that those of use who have chosen classic methods agree uniformly that in addition to making photographs with great content, the process, mastering the technique, learning the craft are also important. In contrast we have Butzi telling us how he had to improve his technique and then just below him we have a guy telling us technique, mastering the craft, etc are worthless......I guess for him all that was necessary was to learn how to be really good with Photoshop. So who is right on this one? Am I to conclude that the "the image is all that matters" is just a red herring to hide the fact that if you become a really good graphic artist with PS you dont really need to master the craft and techniques of photography? You guys are the ones doing ink jet printing, how come within your same "camp" you have one guy telling us how much more demanding digital is, and another telling us, nah, dont worry be happy, just learn PS?
Why would you expect people to agree with each other just because they happen to use similar tools? When I've offered my ideas they were just that ... my ideas. Not official manifestos of a great conspiracy. Personally, I have found the learning curve of photoshop to have a lot in common with the learning curve of the darkroom. In both there are an almost infinite number of ways to make an image look like crap. The real skill in either (as if this needs to be said) is in making an image look good. And the real artistry is identical: deciding just what the values should be, regardless of what hoops you have to jump through to get it there.
All these crappy looking inkjet prints you see sound to me like evidence that it's not exactly easy making beautiful ones.
How much does technique matter? I think that's a personal question (which might explain all the constant fistfights on the isssue). Some people choose a medium specifically because they like the process that it involves. A lot of potters wouldn't be potters if they didn't get to get their hands dirty. For these people technique is primary. For others the vision is primary, and technique is just whatever you have to do to make it happen. And for a lot of people it's somwhere in between. It gets silly to place value judgements on this ... for every great photographer who cared deeply about the process, you can find one who couldn't care less. Personally, I care, but I don't expect my audience to care. Usually they're only interested in the image. The process is my problem, and my pleasure.
Sheesh, Jorge, I just gotta disagree with you about those sunflowers! While those prints are made with inkjet, I didn't see any information about the camera Kent Barker used. Meter Gallery says he processes and prints his own work, but the capture format may be analog, not digital. Maybe he even used a large format camera! Just maybe he did....
As for branches visible a mile away, I've emperically demonstrated beyond my satisfaction that my Graflex Super Graphic with its original Optar 135mm lens and Techpan can pull up minute twigs over three blocks away. What's that? A quarter mile? Dunno, but its just too impressive for me to dismiss that better cameras could do the same feat, and then that film could be scanned in with a drum scanner.
I think that the frozen sunflowers just weren't moving that fast. Or maybe the wind lulled for a moment. Or maybe that was one of thirty other negatives Mr. Barker made at that time.
But as for editing each flower into perfection, and leaving some blurred from movement? I don't think so.
The sunflowers picture is not necessarily an oncoming storm. Meterologically it's a nimbostratus cum virgo - the dark lines is precipitation that evaporates in the air before reaching the earth. It doesn't mean any strong winds at all - that's why the sunflowers don't need to move. As for the rest of the discussion - I don't care about it at all.
"and then just below him we have a guy telling us technique, mastering the craft, etc are worthless. I guess for him all that was necessary was to learn how to be really good with Photoshop"
Not what I said at all. Mastering craft, technique, equipment and process is the easy bit that anyone can learn regardless of whether they are in the darkroom or at a computer.
"That flee bite is the only pathway to consistently producing compelling images"
Compelling images are not created by cameras or processes, they are created by people.
"Spoken like a true fauxtographer"
Please expand.
I apologize in advance for continuing this.
Keith, above you have stated ""images are not created by cameras or processes, they are created by people"". Yet on your own website you refer to the film that was used to make the prints that you sell not as yours but as ""Hasselblad transparencies"". Is this just a marketing ploy or did Hasselblad really make those images?
Also above you have stated "" Is it any wonder that the debate on 'photography as art' persists when craft and process are held in such high esteem by photographers?"" yet again on your own website you seperate yourself as a photographer from artists ""My background as an artist has inevitably influenced my photographic work This has not always been a conscious process
but in recent years I have started to explore the boundaries between the two disciplines"" .
As I have tried to state in my previous posts, one of the primary points of becoming a craftsman in any media, whether its any of the various photograhic arts, woodworking, oil painting, organ building, etc. is to become an artist--as labelled by society, not by oneself.
Also, ""Compelling images are not created by cameras or processes, they are created by people."" People and Hasseleblads cannot create images with air, they must use some process, usually and preferrably, with some amount of craftsmanship. For you, it is clearly Photoshop and Hasselblads.
I meant to ad that, from what I can tell of them on my screen,I do like your watercolors, Keith.