The missing light in all the darkness

[571514m3]

Looking at the images on the top of the starting page this week made me look at Salgado’s book titled ‘Children’. The images and the book are very dark.

Then I took out the Hatje Cantz published Drtikol book. Early stuff! They have a decent tonal range. Brassai was a master of tonal range in the dark.
The world I live in generally has a lot of light and when I use my light meter it is rare to see the world the way these Saldago/RFF images show it. Where did the light go?

It seems these images have the extremes with greyscale gaps between the extremes. That’s a strange histogram (digitally speaking).

What is actually happening there? And why?

I’d appreciate your thoughts

 

[helen.HH]

It's all about 'mood' !
Creating, enhancing, capturing the Atmosphere...

Sometimes creating a 'perfect' picture by nailing exposure, gradations of greys to blacks and having perfect light does not work.

I always prefer emotionally charged photos than ones that are picture perfect
There are so many schools to creating photos, sometimes rules are meant to be broken 😉

 

[helen.HH]

'571514m3'
Loved your 'Title' to this Thread

 

[Timmyjoe]

Helen, you're the master of "mood" with your B&W work. Hope to see more of it.

Best,
-Tim

 

[swatch]

this is not a good example of mood or atmosphere that Helen mentioned, moreover barely visible with little light provide room for curiosity and imagination.


20211219-L1002977 by Vincent Lo, 於 Flickr
​​​​​​​

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Current mood of random selection looks like twocked with BW only filter enabled.
Oh, and this random selection likes smoking at this moment. Could be randomness filter have drinking included as well?

 

[ranger9]

Current mood of random selection looks like twocked with BW only filter enabled.

TWOCKED: Of a car: stolen, especially for the purpose of joy-riding. [Lexico.com]

TWOCKED: A young gay man who is either a combonation of or in between a twink and a jock. [Urban Dictionary] (I didn't dare look up "combonation"...)​

So which is this?

 

[mapgraphs]

Looking at the images on the top of the starting page this week made me look at Salgado’s book titled ‘Children’. The images and the book are very dark.

Then I took out the Hatje Cantz published Drtikol book. Early stuff! They have a decent tonal range. Brassai was a master of tonal range in the dark.
The world I live in generally has a lot of light and when I use my light meter it is rare to see the world the way these Saldago/RFF images show it. Where did the light go?

It seems these images have the extremes with greyscale gaps between the extremes. That’s a strange histogram (digitally speaking).

What is actually happening there? And why?

I’d appreciate your thoughts

Had to look up František Drtikol, thanks for the mention.

https://www.tuttartpitturasculturapoesiamusica.com/2016/12/Frantisek-Drtikol.html




I suspect for the aesthetics of Brassai and Drtikol you might take a look at the German Expressionist movement, especially the cinema aspect:

https://www2.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion...ssionist-films

https://www.movementsinfilm.com/blog...ilms-1919-1931

 

[helen.HH]

this is not a good example of mood or atmosphere that Helen mentioned, moreover barely visible with little light provide room for curiosity and imagination.;

Actually I think it works just fine...also does have mood & atmosphere
As you said; "provides room for curiosity and imagination"
which to me makes for a good photo .

 

[helen.HH]

Helen, you're the master of "mood" with your B&W work. Hope to see more of it.
Best,
-Tim

wow, just saw this...
Thank You Tim for your support & Kindness, much Appreciated ~

 

[JohnWolf]

Nice thread title. The home page gallery module struck me too, for the same reason. It actually made me feel out of place.

Personally, my preference is for a wide, lush palette of middle grays. I'd rather the content and composition supply the drama. (Not that I'm able to achieve that much.)

Fortunately, there's room for all approaches -- documenting and expressing and everything in between.

John

 

[Ko.Fe.]

TWOCKED: Of a car: stolen, especially for the purpose of joy-riding. [Lexico.com]

TWOCKED: A young gay man who is either a combonation of or in between a twink and a jock. [Urban Dictionary] (I didn't dare look up "combonation"...)​

So which is this?

This:

twocking. / (ˈtwɒkɪŋ) / noun. British slang the act of breaking into a motor vehicle and driving it away.
Twoccing Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com

https://www.dictionary.com › browse › twoccing

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/twoccing#:~:text=twocking,vehicle and driving it away

This is how it came on my google search. Very first search return on twocked.

In case if you are not aware, search engines are adaptive. It finds what you are looking for based on cookies and browsing history you have made before.
So, I won't be judging your interests and your browsing history. No 🙂

 

[Out to Lunch]

One master of darkness was W. Eugene Smith. Here are some samples of his oeuvre: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrGKyh61yHk

 

[571514m3]

Love your thoughts on this! Thanks Helen, and I love how you do mood. Mapgraphs example of the couple is quite perfect. JW’s preference wide palette is not always possible, even if a wide palette is ‘easy’ on our eyes and makes us want to look further and imagine more, because sometimes the available light imposes limits - 'mood' I suppose is always a tilt away from perfect balance.
It seems though that Salgado does something different, and it happened with the random gallery when I thought about the question. Jetblack is something unusual, and maybe even unnatural. Salgado’s ‘Children’ uses that to emphasize a point he wants to make, with the gallery it may have happened for reasons of using PP to be striking. BTW, when you look at Salgado’s ‘The Gold Mine, Brazil’ from 1986 he is a master of the dark grey scales – amazing and super evocative and engaging.
In the dark there is always some light. Otherwise I could not see anything. Jet black is very rare, most times even a seemingly black night sky is at most a very dark shade of grey. Any face or feature in the dark is on the grey scale. If I print on paper or have digitally on the screen there is rarely any true black.
Here is a photo I took in Manarola, Italia. It was a very dark night, with some light from a street lamp, and from a passing truck. I don’t have flikr so can’t link it here but it is the top one if you wish to see it:
https://www.egonbernhard.com/black--white.html

I guess I could have used a slider and made the almost black jet black. But that would take some of the mystery from the dark? Seems I dug myself into the dark corners of a rabbit hole, it's time to get out into the sun again. Thanks folks! 🙂

 

[Freakscene]

It is all about matching the technique to the tones. Most photography now is digital. Monochrome conversions of digital are usually based on film curves, forgetting that the film curve was supposed to be superimposed on a paper curve before being looked at. The tones are still there.

Marty