A release from sharpness

[bmattock]

I have to disagree on the Capa photos being only a historical record. Long before I ever shot a picture, I was a kid in school who also looked at pictures in books. Before I knew who Robert Capa was, I remember seeing those pictures and thinking how frightening it must have been to have been there at that time. They were particularly interesting to me since one of my older cousins had been wounded during that invasion. Capa's accidentally damaged photos evoked an emotional response for me. Would the photos have evoked the same response if they had been technically perfect? I don't know--never will know. But I find that Robert Frank's photos communicate on an emotional level as well without the need for technical perfection.

The people we have to blame for this silly insistance on uber-sharp photographs is Ansel Adams (spit) and his partners in crime, the Newhalls. Ansel was a photographer of the older school, known as 'Pictorialism', which held that photography ought to attempt to imitate painting - that is, to be 'art' and atmosphere and emotion, not strictly about things as they are.

Ansel was later to become one of the members of the 'Photo-Secessionist Movement' that believed in 'straight photography' and no darkroom manipulation to achieve special effects. He took it even further, founding f/64 and demanding that all photographs be ultra-sharp from foreground to infinity.

The problem was not in the movement - all photographic schools are equally valid and useful. The problem was that Ansel Adams took a very personal dislike to the remaining out-of-fashion pictorialists and with his friends the Newhalls, proceeded not just to ruin the reputation of the remaining pictorialist photographers, but to destroy their work, deny them the right to hang their work in galleries or museums, and to do everything he could to ensure that history forgot about them completely.

He nearly succeeded. Few have heard of William Mortensen, his Wikipedia entry is pathetic:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Mortensen

Yet, Mortenson was more famous than Ansel Adams at Mortensen's peak, he worked for every major Hollywood studio as a stills photographer, and his style of photography, while a tad over-dramatic by today's standards, was definitely the work of a master photographer. The fact that Ansel Adams and the Newhalls could so utterly rubbish his reputation was nothing short of disgusting.

So, it is a bit personal to me. Yes, I love a nice sharp lens, and I prefer my photographs to be sharp when sharpness is called for. But I blame Ansel Adams, that miserable old man, for the current 'sharpness is my God' crap.

Photography is perception. If you like it - it's fine. Leave be it's sharp or not sharp.

 

[bmattock]

I can't blame Ansel. I just like the look of sharp photos. Always have.

Personal preference is perfectly acceptable - who can blame a person for liking what they like? But I do blame Ansel for his planting the 'if it isn't sharp it isn't good' mantra in the photographic consciousness of the USA. Look at the photographs of the Czech photographers who grew their craft behind the Iron Curtain in the years from 1920's to 1970's, without the tyranny of Adams and his cronies, and see what a different school of photography can create - without the need or desire for ultra-realism.

Besides, I get sick to death of photographs of mountain peaks taken at f/64 with a Wrattan #25 filter to make the clouds threatening and ominous. Straight photography my arse.

 

[Doug]

Mortensen is interesting, a strong representative of a photographic genre that went forcefully out of favor and fell into obscurity. I did some research on his work a couple decades ago and wrote a contrasting paper on Mortensen vs Adams for an Art History class. The paper did ok with the Art History prof, but when I ran it past the Photography prof, not a fan of Pictorialism, he thought my theme was way off.

 

[d_ross]

Sitemistic, are you saying that a slightly blurry or fuzzy picture has never been shot by a PJ and published, ever?

 

[d_ross]

because, aesthetics aside, I would have thought that it would be photojournalism where fuzzy images would most likely be accepted, given that often newsworthy things happen in bad light, or in a rush etc etc.

 

[andreas]

"Do you mean this by increasing the contrast? I found that impression of sharpness is much related to contrast."

@tomasis,

the subjective term of sharpness is related to many things, the objective term of contrast is just one of them.
But please, let`s not open pandora`s box again

 

[Roger Hicks]

Roger, the aesthetic was not Capa's goal.

I didn't say it was. But the fact that it was an accident does not detract from its power. I stand by what I said: that anyone who threw that picture away would be making an appalling aesthetic misjudgement.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Roger Hicks]

Readers, in general, don't like fuzzy, grainy photos. That's why you don't see a lot of available light stuff in print anymore. To get the best color reproduction in a newspaper you need flash, even fill flash in daylight. Readers, again for the most part, expect sharp, bright, colorful photos - even if it's of a gang shooting. We know this because it has been studied to death by the industry.

Is popularity the only criterion for excellence? Or indeed, ANY criterion?

If it is, McDo makes the best food in the world...

Cheers,

R.

 

[Steve Williams]

This has been a fine exchange of thoughts and ideas for me. I didn't realize when I posted the thread that this issue would generate so much discussion. I suppose it has some universal concern.

Someone posted that the important thing is to press the shutter and get a picture rather than miss it because you couldn't get it right. Right being exposed properly, composed properly, focuses properly, etc. For most of my life I wouldn't pull the trigger on those shots. Not professionally, not personally. It wasn't until I bought the Leica M6 that I began to learn to let go. The rangefinder always being in focus helped as opposed to a groundglass that was a constant reminder of shortcomings.

In my personal work of my wife I learned to preset focus and exposure and then use the M6 as a point and shoot fixed focus camera. From that came the best work of my life. It's not that I never focused but I was able to entertain a whole area of fleeting images that I just never would have gotten otherwise. They weren't news or photojournalism but they were made in the spirit of a sudden moment flying by.

Looking at this year's World Press Photo winners there are soft fuzzy images in some of the winners that are a result of capturing fleeting moments before they were gone. And as one wise person here expressed I bet the photographers and editors wished the pictures were sharper. I always do. Everytime. But I am glad that I can accept a picture that is less than perfect. We all may come to the perfect image belief somewhere. For me it came from my near worship of Ansel Adams and Edward Weston as a young photographer. But that worship began to crack on morning at the George Eastman House when I had the opportunity to go through original Weston prints. Even he had images that were fuzzy, less than perfect.

Hell, after another 10 years even I could accept one.

Thanks to everyone for sharing about this. It helps.

 

[jamiewakeham]

As I've said before, I find it amazing that photographers buy $5,000 cameras and $5,000 lenses, and then celebrate fuzzy, soft photos.

My most expensive camera and lens frequently give me my softest results.

But that's because, when confronted with low light, I'll reach straight for my M3 and 35mm Nokton. I'll try for shots with that combination that I wouldn't bother pressing the shutter release for with (say) my Spotmatic and slow-ish 50mm. And I'll celebrate getting a reasonable image from a difficult situation more than I'll celebrate a pin-sharp exposure in broad daylight from the Pentax.

The point I'm trying to make is that the RF with fast glass is the tool of choice for very difficult situations, and I bought this comparatively expensive kit for that exact purpose. In my mind, the M3 is just the available dark tool, and if there's enough light I'll more often than not take the SLR.

Cheers
Jamie

ps an aside - what would Capa and HCB shoot today? I rather suspect the answer is the sharpest lens they could get their hands on, which is exactly waht they did way back then.

 

[Steve Williams]

Re: Weston

Someone once said that the difference between a professional photographer and an amateur is that the pro's bad photos ended up in the trash. There is a lot of truth to that.

I thought the difference was that professionals divorced more often.

 

[Roger Hicks]

Roger, it is if you want to sell newspapers. All the industry numbers show that people under 30 don't read newspapers. That means our readership is older and dying off. While in a way we are pimping ourselves to our readership, it's better to try and give them a reason to pick up the newspaper than to simply shut it down. Younger people just don't seem to give a flip about anything that isn't "lifestyle."

I'd still argue that this is nothing to do with aesthetics. Nor am I entirely convinced that 'focus groups' or 'surveys' or 'studies' are the way to anything save blandness and trivia -- which is a pretty good description of most newspapers, even more in the USA than in the UK, and they're not that brilliant in the UK.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Paul Jenkin]

Just to set the record straight, I definitely haven't given up on sharpness since buying an M6. One of the reasons for buying the M6 and Leica / Voigtlander lenses was the legendary sharpness that they offer. However, like many people who've come late to RF shooting, I've been 'spoiled' by autofocus systems on SLR's that on 99.9% of all occasions, get the object perfectly in focus. DOF is another consideration.

I'm probably getting 60-70% of what I shoot pin sharp. However, I've found that some (definitely not all) of the shots which aren't completely sharp, are acceptable - to me - aesthetically. Would I post them? Maybe.

Personally, (if I have to choose), I prefer sharp photos and I can understand the comments about Ansel Adams from that perspective. Actually, I love his work. Ultimately, though, a tripod-mounted, long-exposure shot using a wide angle lens set at f64 will tend to give a sharp result........

However, there is a certain 'something' in the blur, bokeh, call-it-what-you-will on photos I've seen posted that, for me, negates the absolute requirement for critical sharpness.

Paul.

 

[Dogman]

Sitemistic, I don't disagree with your assessment of what newspapers and newspaper readers want. I worked for a daily during the transition from Tri-X to color. It was a miserable time for many of the photographers. I went from shooting the type of photos I loved doing--candid, unposed, under existing light--to carrying multiple flashes to light the most banal of assignments. A great black and white photo was a dead issue if there was something mediocre available in color. My greatest nightmare would be to have to work under those conditions again. Thank God I don't have to anymore.

I wonder if Stanley Forman's (I think that's the correct name) photo of the black man being assaulted by the white man carrying a US flag would have a chance in today's newspapers since it is heavily blurred?

 

[Dogman]

bmattock, I remember the first exhibition of Ansel Adams photos I ever attended. After years of seeing these pictures in print, I was amazed to discover many of them were not really very sharp when highly enlarged and viewed up close.

 

[bmattock]

bmattock, I remember the first exhibition of Ansel Adams photos I ever attended. After years of seeing these pictures in print, I was amazed to discover many of them were not really very sharp when highly enlarged and viewed up close.

I went to a recent exhibition of some of his prints at the Detroit Institute of Arts. His earliest work was 'pictorial' and quite unsharp, as was the style at the time. I quite liked some of it.

His later work did exhibit a high degree of sharpness to me - and I was able to lean in quite closely to the prints, although most of them were not as large as I would have expected, given that he shot large format film.

More important to me what that his use of sharpness throughout the images - from foreground to infinity, combined with his seeming incessant use of the Wrattan #25 red filter to increase contrast - became both boring and tedious to me.

That is not to say his photographs are not 'classic' or 'great'. They are simply not to my liking.

Getting back to sharpness - I do not have an objection to photos that are sharp or unsharp. I judge each as I see and experience them, but clearly my judgment applies only to me, purely subjective.

Insisting on uber-sharpness for the sake of sharpness seems silly to me. Sharpness is just another aspect of creative control, and the photographer may exercise it as they wish. How (as a viewer) one appreciates it is an entirely different story, of course.

 

[MikeL]

I've always assumed "pj"s were more short-order cook types than chefs. Paid to accomplish a different goal and for a different clientele.

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

I've always assumed "pj"s were more short-order cook types than chefs. Paid to accomplish a different goal and for a different clientele.

But the best short-order cooks are chefs, don't you agree?

 

[tomasis]

Someone posted that the important thing is to press the shutter and get a picture rather than miss it because you couldn't get it right. Right being exposed properly, composed properly, focuses properly, etc. For most of my life I wouldn't pull the trigger on those shots. Not professionally, not personally. It wasn't until I bought the Leica M6 that I began to learn to let go. The rangefinder always being in focus helped as opposed to a groundglass that was a constant reminder of shortcomings.

That is a wisdom. I experienced the same thing and I feel that a "decisive moment" is more important. It doesn't matter if you miss to set right exposure timing or focussing.

Content of the shot is more important than all of other things alltogether (to example technical perfections) Steve's described example from worldpress photo winner suits as fine example to this discussion.