Velvia is bland compared to what is routinely being done these days via digital saturation. Velvia could be sugary. Most recent landscape work is more like buckets of jam and jelly and honey dumped atop a bowl of sugar cubes. Doesn't take long for your taste buds to go numb. No restraint, no balance.
Flickr Home Page: https://www.flickr.com/photos/alanklein2000/albums
Flickr Home Page: https://www.flickr.com/photos/alanklein2000/albums
These are all just tools, Alan. Velvia can be used tastefully just like Photoshop controls can be. As I've explained before, I found Velvia wonderful for certain kinds of hues, especially in low contrast lighting. No, for me personally it was certainly not the most versatile choice of transparency film, but valuable to have available in my overall tool kit. But some people just go hog wild trying to see who has the loudest megaphone when it comes to color. The psychology and physiology of color saturation has a lot more to do with relationships of hues to one another, and how they are modulated by intervening neutrals, than by sheer blockbuster axe-wielding brute force. That's why I almost literally threw up the first time I saw some Peter Lik prints - it was just like gagging on ridiculously over-spiced, over-sweetened, or over-salted food. Not even one drop of color sophistication.
My keenness to embrace reversal film has receded slightly in the last few days as I have worked out a basic recipe and workflow to invert colour negatives as a preset in Lightroom, based on Alex Burke's recommendations. With one click this gets me to a starting point that I can quickly tweak to my own satisfaction. It still leaves me with sliders going the wrong way, but it is quick and doesn't depend on adjustments within the Negative Lab Pro plugin. I shall still try reversal films, but in parallel with negatives, not as an immediate replacement.
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Paul Ashley Photography
Flickr Home Page: https://www.flickr.com/photos/alanklein2000/albums
Flickr Home Page: https://www.flickr.com/photos/alanklein2000/albums
I still like the idea of evaluating a colour film directly - I find it difficult as an orange negative, though I find less problem with B&W.
As for trying reversal, it will be just part of my large format exploration along side trails (which may turn out to be my main road eventually).
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Paul Ashley Photography
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