Originally Posted by
Ulophot
Not the format. Extraordinary work is done in all formats, just as it has been done since the advent of photography by various means. Although it strays just a bit from topic, I'll add the following, allowing "format" to include film or digital.
My choice of film and darkroom prints, in three formats (35 to 4x5), is reinforced by what has grown to be my distrust of digital results as representing the challenges the photographer faced when releasing the shutter. By that I am referring, essentially, to the lure of the ease with which the digital domain allows extensive retouching, recombination, and a host of other alterations. In saying so, I recognize that some will immediately jump to challenge me, with all the alterations possible in film photography, as shown by Jerry Uelsman, skilled olden-days advertising retouchers, propagandists, Pictorialists, and so forth.
To attempt to save all the jumpers some effort, let me just say this:
Now that you know I am not unaware of the changes possible in the film medium -- some of which I use regularly in my B&W-only photography, including cropping, dodging, burning, bleaching, and toning -- I am simply conveying that my approach to the medium constrains me from such actions as removing telephone poles or people, adding or subtracting (except by cropping) objects, combining images, and so forth. I accept as a challenge the constraints of what I am able to have the lens present directly to film. My choice, not everyone's, including many digital or "hybrid"photographers'.
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