In search of perfection

[hendriphile]

At Leica.camera.com is an exhibit called 36 iconic Photos, featuring what they feel are representative examples of leica's best, by a number of different photographers. Many if not most of them we know. They are not all technically perfect but they communicate. I understand what you are saying in the OP.

 

[x-ray]

"Have you had such thoughts?"

x-ray is now creating for himself. He is the client. The only thing that matters is that he satisfies himself. Abandoning digital imaging is exactly what he should do. How we work affects our results. We all have our own paths.

Exactly, you got it. We all have our own vision and our own path.

 

[williams473]

I feel one of the real strengths of this medium is not even visible in the final image, perfectly executed or not. The knowledge we all have (unless we have been living in a cave until just now) that the photographer was there in the making of the image is a big part of it. How she or he interacted with the subject (or didn't interact) all plays into how I see the image, sometimes overtly but often not. It's what makes photography "human" for me, although it's an art accomplished with machines. For me, having this sense of the photographer's presence is akin to getting very close to a favorite painting in a gallery so that I can see the brush strokes. I can then imagine being in the place of of the artist and try to feel something that they did in painting (or photographing) it. This is why I suspect we are obsessed with famous photographer's lives as well - because we want to unlock the secrets we think they posses in making the images that move us. For me, this experience of knowing and viewing simultaneously is part of the "perfection" of an image. For me perfection is not limited to technical execution in the least bit, but is something much, much larger. I applaud you in going forward to get closer to your "self!"

 

[x-ray]

Thanks William. I think you've hit on something I've said in talking to people at my show openings. Through my documentary images I take the viewer to places, events and people they would never have access to and if they did they would probably not do so.

One of the things I enjoy most is talking with and learning about my subjects. I tell people I've never met a person that wasn't interesting. If you dig deep enough people and their lives are fascinating. Even at a cock fight or kkk cross burning I talk to people to find out what's beneath the surface. Youre right that a photo is more than just capturing light.

I agree with you that perfection isn't sharpness and contrast, it's emotion that comes from viewing the image.

 

[shadowfox]

Enough talk, let's see some pictures...


... 😀

 

[x-ray]

As soon as my home sells were off to AZ.

 

[lukitas]

It is all very well to have the tricks of the trade under your belt, and lots of practice creates lots of opportunities, but the thing to remember is that opportunity resides in the unforeseen. Craft is the acquisition of routine answers to routine problems, and regularity engenders boredom, but things happen when you miss the train. When **** happens opportunity is right there, wether it be Eisenstaedts' sailor kissing a random girl in new york or Capa's falling soldier or so many more. Things get interesting when you are not where you're supposed to be, which is why travel is such a rich source of images.

This grounding in chaos is also what makes film more interesting than digital : digital is always a square array, film is a scatter of grains of varying size and transparency. The chaotic nature of the medium is what ties film to the old arts of drawing and painting.
Digital is a grid. Salgado and others print through 4x5 internegatives, reintroducing grain, but at a higher resolution.

This is not to mean that it is impossible to produce art using digital media. But they don't really help. Regularity is boring, and in digital, any irregularity can only be in the content.
Something similar holds for exposure automation. An underexposed shot can become a superb low-key print, and vice versa.

So this is a plea for embracing the chaotic nature of the universe.

 

[jsrockit]

Things get interesting when you are not where you're supposed to be, which is why travel is such a rich source of images.

Conversely, being in the same location forces you to see things in different ways. To find different solutions to the same problem.

This grounding in chaos is also what makes film more interesting than digital : digital is always a square array, film is a scatter of grains of varying size and transparency. The chaotic nature of the medium is what ties film to the old arts of drawing and painting. Digital is a grid. Salgado and others print through 4x5 internegatives, reintroducing grain, but at a higher resolution.

Huh?

This is not to mean that it is impossible to produce art using digital media. But they don't really help. Regularity is boring, and in digital, any irregularity can only be in the content.

Framing and content are two of the most important aspects of photography. Grain is not.

 

[__--]

Enough talk, let's see some pictures...

...Regularity is boring, and in digital, any irregularity can only be in the content...

That is not true in my experience — and I am not sure that the concept of "irregularity" is what is really at the base of what you seem to be saying. Anyway, is this not "irregular" enough for you?



Paris



MITCH ALLAND/Potomac, MD
Do You Know What is Really Real?
Download link for PDF file of 15-shot portfolio

 

[Turtle]

Dear X-ray,

After mentioning the science/art conflict, I wonder if your Myer Briggs type indicator is INFJ? Mine is, which seems to involve a life of constant internal tension between the structured/analytical and the emotionally expansive/creative elements that make me up.

Cycles are everywhere in life and it sounds like you are at the end of one, with the new direction welling up inside before you can really put shape to it. Scary time with concern about the health of one's 'creative well', but from the exchanges we have had and the wonderful work you've produced, I'm sure this juncture will be something to look back on, no matter how large it looms right now. I wonder if Winogrand was in the same mind set as you are now when he abandoned 35mm for 10x8, the rest of the story being incomplete due to his passing? He was of course going in the opposite direction!

FWIW, I feel the same way about digital, which is why much of my recent work has been relatively abstract, as a way to reduce the immediacy of a technically spot on digital shot and create an experience that I can more readily control. Removing the 'technical hooks' from the work seems to be the essential starting point for me, as this governs viewer expectations from the outset.

I also own a Leica MM, which combined with the right old lenses, takes enough of an edge off perfection as to give us a very different starting point. It is not about film vs digital, but the inherent qualities of where they leave us with the image 'Out Of Camera'. I find that most of the time, colour digital images leave me far from where I want to be and it can make the process of processing the images particularly hard work. After all, reducing resolution in an organic way can be remarkably difficult.

Lots of head scratching after the move to digital has resulted in a lot of bonding with my very portable lower resolution cameras and a particularly satisfying little series shot on my mobile phone. I do know, however, that I have no need to move beyond digital FF, as it already gives me all that I could ask for from a technical perspective and, often, a bit too much.

If you are easily able to go back to working with film for your personal work, its sounds like a simple decision to me....

 

[hepcat]

So this is a plea for embracing the chaotic nature of the universe.

How has our view of our world become so binary? It seems that everone sees everything as either/or. It seems to be that everyone wants it "my way" or "the highway." MY way is right, and there's no room in MY WAY of thinking for any other way. "If you're not with me, you're against me." (BTW, I'm not picking on you here specifically, lukitas, I'm just commenting on the ways of our world today.)

Politics, religion, fiscal policy, camera brand, music, digital or film... there's become a certain militancy and absolute polarization in our society, seemingly on all issues, and that is truly frightening. What is even more frightening is when we choose sides on a single issue, and anyone who doesn't agree with us is the enemy, regardless of what other issues we may agree on. It's most frightening though, when the issues are politics and religion. Those two topics are what start wars.

How have we gotten here? None of us is the "enemy." We're all photographers, and there's a place for it all, and it all fits. Pick and choose the right medium for the job, and be proficient in both.

 

[jsrockit]

Well said hepcat.

 

[Turtle]

FWIW, I did not read Lukitas' post as anything 'them or us' and I am a bit surprised that others have. I also see an opinion being put forth regarding the process of making images and how that process affects your creative output. I also think there is something there in the suggestion that random variance and errors have an important role to play in the creative process. In being so astonishingly flexible, digital has resulted in a change in how many people go about photography and the sort of images we see today. I don't think a person taking the view that this is not desirable (for them) is any kind of a problem for others. I do something wonder if there has been an effort by some to force the view that digital and film are 'the same', due to condescending views that some held in years gone by with respect to digital. I think that era is well and truly behind us, so there is no harm in admitting that there are some real differences and that personal preferences, including some strongly held ones, are inevitable.

 

[Rikard]

When I come home after a day of shooting digital, I plug in the CF card in the computer and start rate/cull the images. At this point, my vision of what I wanted to accomplish is still fresh and clear in my mind. I tend to rate images, which best correspond to that vision higher than the ones where I think I failed. These higher rated images are the ones which end up getting printed or uploaded. The other ones rest more or less forgotten in a folder on my computer.

With film It can take as long as 2 weeks before I actually see the images. The vision of what I wanted to accomplish is not as clear. I can see and judge the images for what they are, and many times I pick photos which look very different than what I had in mind when I made the shots. This decoupling from the moment of capture and the viewing of the result, help me develop and change my vision a lot faster than when I'm shooting digital.

I could of course do the same when I shoot digital, it's just that most of the time I don't.

 

[Paul Jenkin]

I spent a brief and not very enjoyable spell shooting weddings and portraits in the early 1980s as a supplement to my meagre salary from my main job. I had the opportunity to go full-time professional but, as I didn't enjoy it and the work / money was sporadic, I decided to stick with what I'd been doing full-time.

In the years since picking up a camera at the age of 12/13 in the early 1970s, it's been intriguing to watch the evolution (and, lately, revolution) that's taken place in photography. Whilst technical advances in film emulsions, shutter speed enhancement, camera reliability, advent of auto-focus, light metering, flash metering, spot metering, vibration control / image stabilisation, digital image capture, scanning, digital printing, colour calibration, wi-fi of images direct to editors' desks and social media sites, cameras with built-in video and audio have opened up a lot of creative alternatives and speeded up the process of photography, I remain unconvinced that any of it has produced better photography.

For sure it's made for sharper, more contrasty and colour-corrected photos. We can even view in an instant what we've just shot and share it almost instantaneously with the rest of the globe. We can print to enormous sizes, add and/or remove items that did or didn't exist in the scene we photographed and carry out all manner of other technical jiggery-pokery but, although it's different, is it better?

We can forgive the manufacturers for seeking new ways of selling us kit and, in their own way, striving for excellence but I'd argue all that they've done is democratised photography insofar as even the most advanced and expensive DSLRs can be set up as high-tech point and shoot kit and produce passable results out of the box for even the most inexperienced photographers. They've created a legion of technology-led snapshooters.

However, those who have an "eye"; those whose photographs say something about the subject matter (instead of simply being a photograph of it) can produce great work the most rudimentary kit.

Good luck with your reversion to film. I love the stuff (and enjoy digital as well) and can only agree that it gives you "something" that digital can't.

 

[hendriphile]

Well said.

 

[daveleo]

How has our view of our world become so binary? It seems that everone sees everything as either/or. It seems to be that everyone wants it "my way" or "the highway." MY way is right, and there's no room in MY WAY of thinking for any other way. "If you're not with me, you're against me." (BTW, I'm not picking on you here specifically, lukitas, I'm just commenting on the ways of our world today.)

Politics, religion, fiscal policy, camera brand, music, digital or film... there's become a certain militancy and absolute polarization in our society, seemingly on all issues, and that is truly frightening. What is even more frightening is when we choose sides on a single issue, and anyone who doesn't agree with us is the enemy, regardless of what other issues we may agree on. It's most frightening though, when the issues are politics and religion. Those two topics are what start wars.

How have we gotten here? None of us is the "enemy." We're all photographers, and there's a place for it all, and it all fits. Pick and choose the right medium for the job, and be proficient in both.

At the heart of it (photography issues aside) this is why I've become so utterly disillusioned about people today. The Binary Times - zero or one. To most people I know, the world today is not a sphere of infinite sides - it's a flat coin with only two sides.

Off topic a bit, maybe, maybe not.

 

[David Hughes]

...but I'd argue all that they've done is democratised photography insofar as even the most advanced and expensive DSLRs can be set up as high-tech point and shoot kit and produce passable results out of the box for even the most inexperienced photographers...

Hi,
Well, yes and no. I can think of several film cameras that could do just that about 20 years ago; some of them were P&S's even APS. Film loaded automatically and everything else was automatic. But they were a lot dearer* (even the P&S's and APS's) and I reckon the comparatively lower prices are what's made everyone a digital photographer.

Just my 2d worth.

Regards, David

* I've an APS in the collection that cost UKP 270 in '95 and that was a lot of money but it ticked all the boxes...

 

[x-ray]

Wonderful discussion and excellent points with a lot of thought.

I certainly don't dislike digital and it's fine for a lot of subjects but not my B&W documdntary. I did it on film for 99% of my career and when trying digital for those subjects it simply left me cold. For color. Subject te it's fine but I'm not a color guy other than my commercial work.

A few weeks ago I had to scan some transparencies. I scanned 35-4x5 Fuji and Kodak E6. I felt like crying at the end of the session. Chromes are so beautiful. I had a guest in a few weeks ago and pulled some 8x10 E6 that I had do on food back in the day. I had forgotten the beauty of large transparencies.

Digital makes great cor images especially medium format 16 bit captures but transparency film just has more depth. The sad part is you can't retain that depth in printing. The gamut and fact that it's a reflective medium just loses too much.

 

[lukitas]

How has our view of our world become so binary? It seems that everone sees everything as either/or. It seems to be that everyone wants it "my way" or "the highway." MY way is right, and there's no room in MY WAY of thinking for any other way. "If you're not with me, you're against me." (BTW, I'm not picking on you here specifically, lukitas, I'm just commenting on the ways of our world today.)
(snip)

Oh dear. I didn't want to go binary. Trying to make a point forcefully does call for clear oppositions, but real life is always a little fuzzy.

My thinking on irregularity is embedded in an extremely regular life : I'm the guy who whistles to make the trains go - it's all about being on time; to the second. Every day, people arrive late. Some break out in furious rage, some panic, some despair. Often, they come running, see the train and smile because they think they've still got it, and then sink into the deepest despair at seeing the train go, heart thumping and sweaty all over.
People want to be certain about the future. They ask three different persons wether this is the train they need. They want to know when we arrive, and when I tell them nobody can know the future they are discomfited.

We like plans, we like certainties, we like knowing where we are going to be and what we are going to do, and we like clockwork to run as if it were swiss.

But life is not predictable. It trips you up, makes you go on tangents. And when it does, we usually feel out of sorts. This is the true reason I advocate looking out for the unforeseen, to accept things that go 'wrong' as zones of opportunity and adventure.

About digital vs film : yes, the 'advantage' that I find in the chaotic grain of film is very slight, and of course the image is more important than the medium.

Malland, that picture of yours has been haunting me for a while. Great shot.