Ralph Gibson article in WIRED about 'going digital'

The gallery should have done a better job editing which images they were going to hang. Some are quite good, some aren't.

I learned a long time ago to ignore what artists/photographers said and concentrate solely on the images. What they have to say isn't really important, but galleries like to have those little quotes for their shows, advertising and brochures. Still, the remark about not wanting his images to look like analog is a curious statement.

How exactly is that done? Everyone knows that film has a longer useable tonal range than digital, and grain sure don't look like noise. I'm not knocking digital because I can't always tell one from the other, but I just don't think I could take any of my digital images and make them look like a film shot. In the end, does it even matter? The image either works or it don't.

Maybe this wasn't representative of the overall quality that is on the walls? Always a little risky critiquing web images. Well, as long as he likes them.

I do agree that at a certain stage in people's career they may start to phone the stuff in because they know that the galleries will sell it anyway, but of course not everyone does or did that. Can you imagine Walker Evans, Ansel Adams or Matisse showing something that wasn't their absolute very best?
 
Steve M. said:
The gallery should have done a better job editing which images they were going to hang. Some are quite good, some aren't.

I learned a long time ago to ignore what artists/photographers said and concentrate solely on the images. What they have to say isn't really important, but galleries like to have those little quotes for their shows, advertising and brochures. Still, the remark about not wanting his images to look like analog is a curious statement.

How exactly is that done? Everyone knows that film has a longer useable tonal range than digital, and grain sure don't look like noise. I'm not knocking digital because I can't always tell one from the other, but I just don't think I could take any of my digital images and make them look like a film shot. In the end, does it even matter? The image either works or it don't.

Maybe this wasn't representative of the overall quality that is on the walls? Always a little risky critiquing web images. Well, as long as he likes them.

I do agree that at a certain stage in people's career they may start to phone the stuff in because they know that the galleries will sell it anyway, but of course not everyone does or did that. Can you imagine Walker Evans, Ansel Adams or Matisse showing something that wasn't their absolute very best?
Click to expand...

Most of the work that Matisse produced in the later stages of his life was mostly ridiculed and often referred to as trivial experiments by an old man.
 
Good to see he is still at it. Ralph’s at the point in his life it really doesn’t matter what he shoots. It’s his name that sells.

I still want a Ralph Gibson signature MP. 🙁
 
Bike Tourist said:
The old guys and gals (and I'm as old as they are) were the best of their age, during a time when photography was still relatively fresh and new paths presented themselves. Many made contacts by assisting earlier famous photographers. They still rose to the top of their era.
...
Click to expand...

Then there’s the nostalgia aspect also. World looked different back in -30s, -50s or even -70s. That can’t be brought back with any technology, besides time machine 😀
 
The photography world is full of nice safe bubbles from which you can look at what other people are doing and wonder.

My advice is to look at stuff that you don`t like ….. you might learn something.
 
Keith said:
Bold statement ... and not very convincing sorry.
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Keith, we both use the cameras we already want to no? I`m very comfortable with the camera I use and am in a good zone right now with my photography. Why would I mess that up just for a free camera? I guess I like photography more than cameras.
 
Michael Markey said:
The photography world is full of nice safe bubbles from which you can look at what other people are doing and wonder.

My advice is to look at stuff that you don`t like ….. you might learn something.
Click to expand...

jsrockit said:
I agree and also your own bad photography can teach you a lot if you let it.
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I fully agree, 100 %
robert
 
Steve M. said:
...Still, the remark about not wanting his images to look like analog is a curious statement.

How exactly is that done?
Click to expand...

It's straightforward.
  • Use a relatively recent digital camera with at least a 255 square mm (signal-to-noise ratio counts).
  • Avoid using post-production or in camera-rendering methods designed to simulate film grain, film formulation response curves and, or film color hue rendering.
  • Don't use very high camera ISO settings that result in severe sensor underexposure

[/QUOTE]
Steve M. said:
Everyone knows that film has a longer useable tonal range than digital, and grain sure don't look like noise.
Click to expand...

In some tonal range comparisons this would be the case. In some it would not. Quantitative comparisons are difficult because film formulations have a non-linear response while raw file data is linear.

The dynamic range recent affordable digital cameras equals or exceeds the dynamic range of film. The bit depth of a digital rendering is also relevant to perceived tonal differences. People who digitize their film images have the same bit-depth limitations as people with digital cameras. A pure analog workflow does not automatically maximize tonal range.

Analog film grain is noise. It is signal-dependent, spatial noise. A grain increases the spatial uncertainty for the image increases. Film grain is well-modeled as photon (shot) noise. Photon noise in digital images and film grain are described by Gaussian distributions.

Steve M. said:
I'm not knocking digital because I can't always tell one from the other, but I just don't think I could take any of my digital images and make them look like a film shot. In the end, does it even matter? The image either works or it don't.
Click to expand...

I agree.

I recently attended an exhibit "Voices from the Photo League". The images were mostly large digital prints scanned from the large-format negatives made from 1945 - 1950 by Sonia Handelman Meyer and George Gilbert. These prints were excellent. The detail and lack of grain were In many ways they resembled images I have seen from well-exposed digital images.
 
Giving up film for a free M10; I wouldn’t. I’ll gladly stick with my M2 and Tri-X.

As for the latest Gibson photos, some of them are very good. Could I find similar stuff on Instagram (if I bothered to look)? Well, 500 trillion photos taken each microsecond across the globe, so yeah, most likely. So?
 
Richard G said:
https://www.wired.com/story/ralph-g... NL 011519 (1)&utm_medium=email&utm_source=nl
Click to expand...

Why is this even an issue worthy of being noted in an article?
Who freekin' cares whether someone is using digital capture or film? and why?

The only question is whether the photographer is making compelling photographs, telling interesting good stories, et cetera. For camera enthusiasts, sure: What tools were used is of interest in a geeky kind of way. But beyond that debating it, disparaging it, making absurd pronouncements that value the recording medium over the photographs ... it's a total waste of time.

I don't know Ralph Gibson's work enough to conclude whether I like what he's doing now more or less than what he did before. But it's very rare I like all of any artist's or photographer's work.

G
 
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