English, please. Neologisms do not flatter the writer in short articles,Originally Posted by Pere Casals
English, please. Neologisms do not flatter the writer in short articles,
Steve, I must disagree with you here. With all respect, I find your second sentence untenable. Adams's mastery as a composer, in my view, hardly failed him when he took details as his subject; and, with regard to his grand landscapes, I find that his ability to render a wondrous sense of scale, of atmosphere, of moment, of the silent music of his subject, surpasses the majority who chose the same sort of subject. I don't think success with the grand landscape is easy at all, at the level (no pun intended) at which he practiced.
I would add here, that some of my other most favorite photographers are Paul Strand, Gene Smith, and Walter Rosenblum, all primarily photographers of people rather than the natural scene. As a former photojournalist, I certainly understand what you mean about less-than-ideal situations. While Strand would wait for days for the clouds to be right for a chosen scene, and was hardly hopping about with 35s like Smith, he struggled no less in the darkroom to achieve his results, from sometimes severe cropping to finding just the right paper. As, I believe, Alan Ross, a close assistant to Adams, remarked somewhere, Adams's description in his books, such as a certain negative printing "fairly easily," or "without too much trouble," do not always match what some of us would call "fairly easily." Imagine the ones for which he admits considerable difficulty!
Art of surpassing quality is never easy. I probably will never achieve such quality, but I continue to work towards it.
Philip Ulanowsky
Sine scientia ars nihil est. (Without science/knowledge, art is nothing.)
www.imagesinsilver.art
https://www.flickr.com/photos/156933346@N07/
The dictionary defines "visualize" as "to form a mental image of (something) not present to the sight." The word "envision" would be a good synonym. So, among many photographers who use "pre-visualize," the intended meaning is the same as the dictionary's "visualize." An English teacher in high school would say "pre-visualize" is bad English. Even so, "pre-visualize" is so entrenched it would be futile to campaign against its use in photography. And since English is flexible and always changing, "pre-visualize" may someday become the form in dictionaries.
Finally, Mark's usage of the two words is a classic that ought to be preserved! Bravo!
Keith Fleming
Last edited by Keith Fleming; 16-Sep-2018 at 18:29. Reason: Not edited well before!
I'm not convinced that visualizing a final scene and changing a photo that was not apparent in the original live view is much more than manipulation. It's using techniques that distort to a viewer of the photo from what actually occurred in real life. Much is being made today about how people "photoshop" their digital image or changing a negative in a wet environment raising the argument that the final image is phoney. I could go along with it if the original view was that great as observed and the photographer is using manipulation to create that greatness in the final print that would be lost using standard processing.
I don't look at a boring scene and then try to jazz it up in post processing to make it exciting in the final image. A scene first has to grab my attention through it's inherent special lighting, or content, or patterns, etc. at the time I witnessed it in real life. Then I go about trying to capture that image as best I can in my camera and adjust the final to express what I saw. Reality is what distinguishes a photograph from a painting. Maybe I'm old fashioned.
Flickr Home Page: https://www.flickr.com/photos/alanklein2000/albums
Jac, sorry, I'm not native English, it's my 3rd language. Planification is not a neologism since 1950s, it exists in English, but it's used in other contexts (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/de.../planification) where I saw the this word. Thanks for the correction, I learned.
Our awareness of space and movement precedes verbal language and written language by a long time. The first nerve to myelinate in an embryo is the vestibular nerve, inner ear, relationship in space. If you waste time on rules you will never make anything other than a 'cheeseburger'. The best photography comes from a pre verbal place. I wrote an article about seeing and space here https://www.onlandscape.co.uk/2018/05/space-not-things/
David Cary
www.milfordguide.nz
This is an interesting insight, because while composition is essentially teached for a flat world a photograph may show depth and volumes (also a paint may show remarkable depth...). It should exist an interaction between the flat composition and depth.
Human vision perceives space in a number of ways, stereo, shadings/glares, perspetive and motion. In a travelling of the camera in a movie we also perceive the space because the background moves slower than the near objects... But in a print we can work with shadings and perspective to build a 3D illusion.
The way depth is worked in an image has a high aesthetic impact, I'm curious about how composition and depth interacts in the aesthetics...
PD: Nice article.
Nicely written article MDM!
Pere; depth is one of the reasons I like LF; the old lenses make smooth backgrounds in low depth of field situations. Starting in the 50's perhaps, the shutters ended up with fewer blades and smooth backgrounds went away probably with people shooting f64 style. LF also lets me design intentional layers into a photo so as to have primary and secondary subjects and make use of the space on the film: https://flic.kr/p/eXAjZp https://flic.kr/p/RE5k6Z
I'm also convinced that working with things like a IR DSLR where you have zero depth/distance illusion from haze is a good challenge in learning other ways of showing 3d in outdoor photos.
Your English is better than mine!
Jac, I'm proud of teaching some English in the americas,Your English is better than mine!
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks