Posted by Jim Zablotny on March 18, 2016 at 12:36 PM
Harley,
An excellent article for sure. His statement regarding one essential difference between film and digital photography is that a film photographer studies the scene before he or she snaps the shutter while most digital photographers by convention take the picture and study the results. If the results are not great, they take more images of the scene or try to remedy the problems with LR or PS. The take home message is that better photographers in either film or digital study the scene and compose the composition before snapping the shutter. And that is a very powerful metric for defining quality in photography. Thank you for posting...........................Jim
Posted by Bill Chambers on March 18, 2016 at 2:39 PM
Good article Harley. Thanks for posting. I just assumed everybody studied the scene at least somewhat before shooting, except for rank amateurs perhaps. Certainly, judging from the images on NPN, our fellow shooters here do.
Harley, it was very informative and well written. The person applied serious thought to the article and no doubt applies the same detail to his photographic endeavors.
His avoiding the film vs digital plot was apparent. Heck, he's worked it all like many have, and who have lived long enough to span the two eras.
I will say he leaned toward the subjective thought that if your grassroots were film and especially LF that there was a true craftsmanship or better understanding of how to perform the field duties for best results. I think there is good thinking there, but not that it surely cannot be obtained over time with any media.
I think the majority of the very early digital proliferation has died off from my perspective. My point being I rarely see roadway turnout after roadway turnout posted these days. In the beginning some digital folks went stickily for quantity in hopes that it would net pleasing results. That aspect of machine gunning for outcome seems to have diminished from at least the "artful" posters.
For the most part the "artful" side of the serious photogs remains. No matter how it is photographed and post processed it does take logical approaches to net decent results. A good friend of mine was into early video stuff. He swore that the next era of photogs would merely video a scene from sunup to sundown and watch the video and press a button each time they liked a frame to make a print........groan.....really?...
Mr. Barnbuam has written a very pertinent article. Thank you for sharing!
My only nit is that the light-toned font is very hard to read for old eyes.
I think it is important to understand from the article that any creative endeavor must be born in the heart and mind of the individual. The camera, Photo Shop, the darkroom, the pen, or brush are simply tools whereby we materially express our emotional connection with our subject, the light, the forms, etc. for all to see.
I have experience with large format in the darkroom, large format color work that is digitized, and more recently digital capture. At this point in time, with my digital camera, I try to apply the same considered approach and process while out in the field as I do with LF. It certainly does not take as much time as it did with my 4x5, but I work to 'see', rather than just look, and when I get home and view the images on my computer, I am mostly pleased with the result of my efforts.
The article also makes a good point about retaining our digital image files so that we can always access them. As he says in the article, this is becoming increasingly more difficult due to newer technologies replacing legacy applications and media, forcing all of us into a nearly continuous upgrade cycle, not to mention hardware failures. This costs time, and money.
One item he did not mention is data security. Apart from hacking and stealing our files, and malware hits, there is the very real threat of criminal encryption of our entire computer system. Progress is being made in this area, but we must constantly be on our guard.
Thanks again for sharing the article, Harley. It is great reading and has many points that we can learn from.
--P
Posted by Igor Doncov on March 20, 2016 at 1:07 AM
Thank you for referencing this article, Harley. It actually covers a lot of ground, some of which I find more important than others.
The section dealing with what occurs before an image is taken is the most valuable, I believe, to photographers. He calls it seeing, but it's much more than that. It's relating at a personal level, somewhere within. An experienced eye can look at any image here on NPN and tell when the shooter has something to say or is displaying a pretty picture, an image that took less thought but a lot more time in photoshop.
And this issue is not only true in the digital world. I had the good fortune to take a series of workshops in the 80's from an instructor who was an assistant to Ansel Adams. We were all pretty much beginners back then. Her approach was to pay as little attention to the camera as possible and just shoot. Shoot what moves you. These field trips were followed by critiques of your best 3 shots. Invariably the individuals who were concerned about f stops, DOF, ASA setting came back with the most uninteresting images. Technically sound images that lacked a 'soul'. Uninspired work. I would see people with cheap Pentax's come back with far superior work than those with the most expensive Nikons. Subsequently I enrolled in classes that taught the zone system and large format photography, classes that were supposedly more advanced than the workshops. But I never learned as much as I did from those earlier workshops.
The best thing about photography, which the author is suggesting, is that when you are shooting well you are exploring yourself. That's what's exciting about it. You search within to see how you respond to what's about you. You are discovering yourself. Without that it's just a construction of layers, shapes, patterns, tonal value arrangements that may look beautiful but goes no further. As the man says, nothing can be done in photoshop if the image lacks a soul from it's very conception. That, to me, is the most important part of the article.
Discussion
5 replieshttp://www.barnbaum.com/blog/
An excellent article for sure. His statement regarding one essential difference between film and digital photography is that a film photographer studies the scene before he or she snaps the shutter while most digital photographers by convention take the picture and study the results. If the results are not great, they take more images of the scene or try to remedy the problems with LR or PS. The take home message is that better photographers in either film or digital study the scene and compose the composition before snapping the shutter. And that is a very powerful metric for defining quality in photography. Thank you for posting...........................Jim
His avoiding the film vs digital plot was apparent. Heck, he's worked it all like many have, and who have lived long enough to span the two eras.
I will say he leaned toward the subjective thought that if your grassroots were film and especially LF that there was a true craftsmanship or better understanding of how to perform the field duties for best results. I think there is good thinking there, but not that it surely cannot be obtained over time with any media.
I think the majority of the very early digital proliferation has died off from my perspective. My point being I rarely see roadway turnout after roadway turnout posted these days. In the beginning some digital folks went stickily for quantity in hopes that it would net pleasing results. That aspect of machine gunning for outcome seems to have diminished from at least the "artful" posters.
For the most part the "artful" side of the serious photogs remains. No matter how it is photographed and post processed it does take logical approaches to net decent results. A good friend of mine was into early video stuff. He swore that the next era of photogs would merely video a scene from sunup to sundown and watch the video and press a button each time they liked a frame to make a print........groan.....really?...
My only nit is that the light-toned font is very hard to read for old eyes.
I think it is important to understand from the article that any creative endeavor must be born in the heart and mind of the individual. The camera, Photo Shop, the darkroom, the pen, or brush are simply tools whereby we materially express our emotional connection with our subject, the light, the forms, etc. for all to see.
I have experience with large format in the darkroom, large format color work that is digitized, and more recently digital capture. At this point in time, with my digital camera, I try to apply the same considered approach and process while out in the field as I do with LF. It certainly does not take as much time as it did with my 4x5, but I work to 'see', rather than just look, and when I get home and view the images on my computer, I am mostly pleased with the result of my efforts.
The article also makes a good point about retaining our digital image files so that we can always access them. As he says in the article, this is becoming increasingly more difficult due to newer technologies replacing legacy applications and media, forcing all of us into a nearly continuous upgrade cycle, not to mention hardware failures. This costs time, and money.
One item he did not mention is data security. Apart from hacking and stealing our files, and malware hits, there is the very real threat of criminal encryption of our entire computer system. Progress is being made in this area, but we must constantly be on our guard.
Thanks again for sharing the article, Harley. It is great reading and has many points that we can learn from.
--P
The section dealing with what occurs before an image is taken is the most valuable, I believe, to photographers. He calls it seeing, but it's much more than that. It's relating at a personal level, somewhere within. An experienced eye can look at any image here on NPN and tell when the shooter has something to say or is displaying a pretty picture, an image that took less thought but a lot more time in photoshop.
And this issue is not only true in the digital world. I had the good fortune to take a series of workshops in the 80's from an instructor who was an assistant to Ansel Adams. We were all pretty much beginners back then. Her approach was to pay as little attention to the camera as possible and just shoot. Shoot what moves you. These field trips were followed by critiques of your best 3 shots. Invariably the individuals who were concerned about f stops, DOF, ASA setting came back with the most uninteresting images. Technically sound images that lacked a 'soul'. Uninspired work. I would see people with cheap Pentax's come back with far superior work than those with the most expensive Nikons. Subsequently I enrolled in classes that taught the zone system and large format photography, classes that were supposedly more advanced than the workshops. But I never learned as much as I did from those earlier workshops.
The best thing about photography, which the author is suggesting, is that when you are shooting well you are exploring yourself. That's what's exciting about it. You search within to see how you respond to what's about you. You are discovering yourself. Without that it's just a construction of layers, shapes, patterns, tonal value arrangements that may look beautiful but goes no further. As the man says, nothing can be done in photoshop if the image lacks a soul from it's very conception. That, to me, is the most important part of the article.