You're absolutely right. The charm and innocence of photos seems to have been lost in today's demands for perfection in everything. If an image is not pin sharp, it gets criticised. Nothing about the composition or subject matters if it is not pin sharp, perfectly exposed, plenty of bokeh, totally smooth and no grain etc.
I had a friend in the 90s, who’s sole purpose in shooting was how sharp the focus was!! I was going through a deliberately out-of-focus, abstract period. He didn’t like my photos, and I thought his were boring, but VERY MUCH in focus! I was shooting out of emotion, he was a disciple of the technical process. He’s a lawyer now, no longer shoots , and I’ve gone on to shoot with Jimmy Fallon, various Dallas Cowboys, and many group shows, (and solo shows). I’m cool with the technical process, but I go by “feel”. And super sharp isn’t the first thing I look for…
So true. We have far too many influencers who are only interested in hardware. They are taking away the joy of shooting photos. Some of the best photos of my grandkids are not absolutely razor sharp but contain blur from movement. They are special. We need to experiment, break the rules, goof around and see what we come up with. Those odd photos are the ones people will look at most. Keep shooting and have fun. BTW. I think my days as a photographer using film was more fun. We didn't have social media controlling us.
"The charm and innocence of photos seems to have been lost in today's demands for perfection in everything. " Great googamooha! No truer statement has ever uttered!
@@Tenskwatawa4U Technology gave us not only the ability to produce insanely high quality of everything but also creates insanely high expectations for tech nerds and internet influencers.
You have yet AGAIN proven that THIS channel is the one to keep an eye on for photography. Who cares about technical geekery, 12 fps + ISO 204800 + EyeTracking Focus and all sorts technical gimmics. I am equally tired of all gear-reviews that photographers flood RU-vid with. Now, THIS channel has always been different, and continues to be, discussing the more important aspects of the art. Thanks a bunch.....
After shooting my first concert, I learned to embrace imperfections. Sure, a few images were slightly out of focus, or the exposure wasn't quite right, or the compositions didn't follow all the rules, but I didn't care. I looked to capture action and emotion and feel I succeeded. Also, the bands I shot were happy with their photos, and that is all that mattered to me. Cheers, Alex!
I also have noted that when I have printed some of the gig photos, imperfections not matter at all and sometimes imperfections are desired outcome. For example, I have multiple photos on my walls taken on gigs of metal bands and if there is no noise etc. on those black and white photos they lack the "mysticism". If metal band photos are "too clean", they have no feeling of mystery (at least on my own photos) and they are just "ok", but with correct amount of noise etc. imperfections they have much more personality and emotion.
I photograph local metal bands. I do it for fun, I don't get paid. The people with cell phone cameras capture the 'record' shots but my photos get strange, with extreme angles, faces melting, movement and lurid lights, out of focus images, and shots that look like stills from horror films. There is a place for the 'record' shots but I also have an audience for my 'imperfect' photos where the important aspects are the narrative and the energy. Photographing what something looks like is relatively easy, showing what it feels like is a bit harder. By the way, Jim Marshall is one of my favorite photographers.
Thank you Alex. You've eloquently spoken the thoughts that guide my own photographic journey. Digital equipment and tools have simplified technical perfection to the point where this "perfection" (whatever that is) has become perceived as quality. That's why your words resonate. Success is about how an image makes us feel. There are use cases where technical perfection is necessary to serve a purpose, and other cases where it is not needed, or even detracts from an image.
I love shooting soft out of focus (icm, abstract, shallow depth of field photos) I shoot fun/me and if someone else likes or enjoys my photos I feel very honored. Don't get me wrong I enjoy looking at and sometimes taking sharp images. Just learned to embrace the philosophy of Wabi Sabi.
@@dangilmore9724 The way I see it, technical perfection means everyone would be taking the exact same photo, but we don't. Humans are unique. We all see the world in a different way.
Nice to see pictorialism mentioned. The Belgian pictorialist Leonard Misonne is my favourite photographer. A majority of his images look as if he has taken a photograph of a painting. He captures light beautifully. An excellent book about Pictorialism is "The Impressionist Camera". Highly recommended. My favourite current photographer is the Croation photographer Olga Karlovac. All her photos are black and white and blurred; yet are enigmatic and thought-provoking. Alex, please do a review of Olga Karlovac.
Because the manufacturers and influencers are making photography to complicated as you have said in previous videos. They take the fun out of photography and cameras, I’m not interested in menus, or white balance or histograms, I just read the light, frame my shot and zap its done and enjoy my camera and the occasion , how it should be.
My interest in photography which started in 1968 in high school was photojournalism inspired by the photos I saw as a kid in LIFE and National Geographic magazines. I never thought of myself as an artist, my goal was to be good storyteller and editor. I dd PJ work and learned the Zone System on my own at Knox College in 1970-72, then dropped out and move to Washington DC where top wedding photographer Monte Zucker hired me as his apprentice and then promoted me to shooting assistant when his other assistant Gary Bernstein quit to strike out on his own. In 1974 when an opportunity to apprentice in the National Geographic photo lab crossed my path I took it. I operated huge copy camera use to make halftones and color separations for the publications. The color photos were color separated by an outside vendor but the lab I worked in did any B&W photos including reproducing a portfolio of Edwin Curtis prints of Native Americans with CYM sepia tritones and doing color separations for map relief. From 1975 - 1980 I taught a class on halftone reproduction in the evenings at a college with a Printing Technology which lead becoming customer service production manage at DC magazine printer Judd and Detweiler which printed high quality magazines like Architectural Record, AIA Journal, Antiques and others exposing me to a lot of editorial and advertising photography. At NGS I had been a beta tester of Duponts CYMK pre-press proofing system and went to the DuPont R&D Center and learned about CIE*xyz colorspace and color management from the PhD who invented it. One of the things I did when working that as production manager at Judd was teach a seminar for the magazine production managers and art directors on color management. Judd’s was involved with creating the SWOP CYMK color proofing standard which became the SWOP CYMK profile in Photoshop. In 1982 I was recruited into the US Foreign Service as a printing specialist and from 1983 to 1987 was Deputy DIrector and Production manager of the publication production center the US Information Agency operated in Manila, Philippines which used a Hell DC300 laser drum scanner for color separating color transparencies for the magazines and books we printed and computerized typesetting but page layout and assembly was all analog. In 1987 I started buying and operating Macs for page layout and in 1990 returned to Manila as Admin Officer and installed our first full page film imagesetters. I started using Illustrator and Photoshop and every other new graphic arts software with version one and also created administrative applications with Excel spreadsheets and then automated the entire operation with Filemaker Databases. I installed and ran a web server in 1994 and created some of the first USIA web pages served from our Center in Manila. By the time I returned for a third time in 1999-2001 photos for our publications had started to be submitted as digital files instead of transparencies we had to scan and I had switched to digital with a 2.1 Kodak DC290 and in 2001 before leaving Manila taught others how to make the transition in a classes sponsored by Kodak Philippines and a Graphic Arts Expo. My career as a photographer, photo technician and printing manager were all focused on technical perfection. The closest thing I got to art was printing catalogs of art work loaned to Ambassadors serving embassies which were extremely difficult and often impossible to reproduce accurately because pigments artists use are often outside of the gamut film, a digital cameras and CYMK offset printing can reproduce accurately. The bigger picture is that photography is a form of communication and connecting with other people. Some will like photo realism, others abstraction. Something new and different will gain a following simply for that reason even if it is a reprise of something done generations earlier like shooting on film - been there, done that, not going back. I’m still shooting and sharing photos on social media, lately of birds and boats with a pair of R6mkII and lenses purchased with my Social Security payments. I try to keep them in focus and sharp but when I can’t I just pass it off as my artistic interpretation 😂
Love your story. What a life. I was in the U.S. Air Force from 1970 to 1991. During that time I worked on a few base newspapers and one of the things I did was shoot photos. I started shooting in 1972 when stationed at Clark AB, Philippines. That was for fun, got a lot of great photos of me and my family. Being a clerk at the time was boring and I soon retrained into Public Affairs. It was there I learned the art of being a photo journalist, the techniques of getting photos for print. Today I adhere to the same techniques as it really sharpened my photo style. I shot a lot of Kodachrome 64 and a ton more Tri-X, my favorite film. Eventually I stopped photography, mostly taking photos of family from time to time on cheap digital cameras. I got the bug again, but realized there was no film at my local big box store. ??? What am I going to do with my two Nikons I bought while in Japan. I got a 1979 F2A and a 1980s FE2. Both still with me in perfect condition. With my experience with film today, the expense and crappy processing by the lab, I quit using film. Only way I will go back to film is to process and scan black and white film. Labs are hit and miss and expensive. Now I have a great camera, one I love a bunch, the Sony A7R3. It feels a lot like my old Nikons, looks retro like the FE2, feels excellent in my hand with the grip, produces wonderful images. I'm happy. I mostly photography my family at home, events and when we go out. I think I got so ingrained in photography at the base, taking pictures of people doing their job that I find shooting objects quite boring. Things are OK, but people are what makes photos worth looking at. Give me a landscape of the beach or mountains and I will give it a glance. Give me a photo of a person or people and I will stare at it. I will examine and I will try to imagine what the people are thinking. I find great joy in capturing images of family, especially young grandkids. They are amazing. My grandson will probably hate me when he sees photos of himself as an adult. I, too, am done with film. It's just too expensive. An SD card works so much better. No waste.
" I never thought of myself as an artist, my goal was to be good storyteller and editor. " One can, in fact, aspire to all three successfully. Uh... let's try that again: "One can, in fact, successfully to all three." Much better.
I love the way you talk about the aesthetic and emotional side of photography. Sure there is the technical side. And people like Haas, Eggleston and Eugene W. Smith had it in bags full. Haas said I'm a painter in a hurry. They loved their craft like they loved life. More than anyone else on the Tube I come away from your videos completely inspired. It doesn't necessarily make me a better photographer, but makes me determined to go on get better and above all to keep loving it. So a big thanks. I'm an old man and a young photographer. Best thing I ever did.
Nothing can fully capture the clarity of the inner representation we see before taking an image, drawing, or composing music. What we create is a copy of a copy, and the measure of getting closer to that vision isn’t found in technical specs. The real difficulty lies in balancing curiosity, desire, and truthfulness with the pressures of perfection. While actively practicing the art, technical proficiency will naturally improve, but that is just a side effect. The real essence of creation is the significance of the moment-whether it’s beauty, meaning, or something else entirely-that drives us to express it. The tools we use-whether cameras, brushes, or instruments-are secondary. They evolve with practice, but they are never the core. It’s the passion for capturing what moves us, the inner representation, that truly matters.
Photography is what you make it. It is what makes you happy. Been making photos , movie film and video since I was 10 in 1954. used to develop[my own B&W photos in a small blacked out toilet. Some good, some bad, enjoyed it all Alex.
Great video. I still have the feeling of magic, when I develop and scan my 6x6 Hasselblad negatives. Only rarely do I feel it with digital photography.
Over one hundred years ago, photographers, using large format cameras and Goerz Double Anastigmat lenses, were capable of producing very sharp and detailed images. (The Goerz Double Anastigmat is a symmetric lens with six elements in two groups, made of two cemented triplets.) Instead, photographers of that era chose to make photographs of a more interpretative and impressionistic nature compared to what is considered to be esthetically acceptable today (i.e., super-sharp images).
Anybody who thinks analog photography and the optical quality of lenses were limiting factors 100 years ago haven't got a clue of what they are talking about.
Also the amount of features in today’s cameras means a lot of people rely too much on the technology doing the work for them and never fully understanding the process. I remember starting out on a manual film slr and if I didn’t know how to properly expose and use techniques like zone focusing, I didn’t get to take any photos. There were no automated shortcuts.
@beholder2012 If blur evokes a sense of movement or creates an emotional response, then I'd argue that it's a valid effect. The same as pinpoint focus has its place. We've gotten to a place on the digital age where we can take a thousand snapshots of one subject and then delete 998 of them, keeping only those few perfect images. We don't need to think about our subject, or the lighting, or much of anything else. The camera looks after all that if we want it to. We're losing the art of pure photography to the world of post production.
@@BradGryphonn you said: „if you make sharp photo, that alone doesn't make it good photo”. I answered: „if you make your photo out-of-focus, that alone doesn't make it any work-of-art neither”. Operating „zone of focusing”, motion blur etc. is different thing.
Alex I think your channel is about the real thing….ART. Photography as art. Most of us here understand it and get it. I go see some great photography in a show or museum and like the Rodin,,, it’s instantly riveting.
An absolute pleasure to watch - again. I think the "problem" is that many photographers mistake technical perfection as a tool to hide a lack of quality of a photo. In the sense of: a glitzy snapshot is still a glitzy snapshot (why does Instagram come to my mind now ;-) ?). One can observe similar with Hifi-"freaks": there are the real music lovers, who enjoy the talent of the performers/composers in brilliant quality. And those who enjoy the brilliant quality as such.
Alex, one aspect you didn't touch on is colour. Of course a major technical change has been the opportunity to capture the image in colour. One of my big worries is how so many images, mainly landscapes, seem to be too highly saturated to be pleasing to the eye/good photos. Thanks for a thoughtful consideration.
Very interesting. The more photographic technology advances, the less I am interested in it. I find myself enjoying 'Pictorialism' to photograph mood and atmosphere, rather than clinical sharpness, even though I am using digital tools to achieve it. Good video this and why I watch this channel.
You raise some great points. We are obsessed (and I believe hiding behind) technology, because it's easy. You can just buy your way to get an image. High speed autofocus: pointless for 99% of people. 61mp sensor? To show on what? An 8mp monitor? In the meantime, ergonomics has been thrown out the window and the pursuit of size. (although Olympus et al seemed to have got it right 45 years ago). I was recently flipping through a national geographic Magazine the other day, and I couldn't believe how weird the photography looked. So many photos look like they were cut outs: it's like we have overstepped the mark with pixel count and resolution.
Thank you very much for this discussion. I too have been embracing the concepts of pictorialism in my photographs. For me this means using film in antique cameras and pinhole cameras with paper negatives. While not abandoning digital technologies, these hands on processes (including alt-printing) is far more enjoyable for me at this point in time. It is also allowing me to go back and revisit places I have shot in the past and looking at it in a whole new light. My mantra lately is ‘sharpness is over-rated’!
We are just a painter who can create an art, faster. At the beggining, the temptation to "capture" the "fact" is so high, because we know that memory will be faded across the time. But in the end some of us longing for that drama, beauty, story that comprehensive with our ideal. In a nutshell it'd look like a big cycle rather than an advancement, like a trend.
Someone, in the comments below, mentioned Paul Strand. He once said, "Did I express my personality? I think that’s quite unimportant, because it’s not people’s selves but what they have to say about life that’s important." An aspect of this is echoed in Ansel Adams's dictum that there is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept. There are always fads and trends; those who wish to be part of them and those who reject them, for reasons good or less good. Across the arts, recent years have witnessed something qualitatively different, however, though it remains nascent. There is a growing awareness that something terribly wrong, something more fundamental, has gone wrong in our society. Aspects of our lives that the majority have taken for granted or become resigned to accepting are being questioned. The concerns in the arts, among a relatively small number still, tend to revolve around whether they have lost their potential to contribute something enduring and inspirational, something that speaks to the universality of human existence; as Strand said, "what they have to say about life." Not every photographer or artist in any field has this as his or her goal, of course, and that's perfectly legitimate. But the implicit question posed when we speak about "great art," and among those of us who aspire to it even if we don't expect to create something truly great, is whether it holds that enduring, universal quality that reaches deeper than the spectacular or impressive (or shocking), even after centuries.
In my late 50's I have got back to simplicity in photography. Iused to try so hard to do this, that and the next thing. No I know a simple camera B&W film and a sunny day are enough. I have just come in from the dog walk this morning, I took an Olympus Compact loaded with Ilford film and snapped away at whatever I took pleasure on potographing it was bliss.
Thank you! You have confirmed that my direction is totally the right one (for me!). I have gone 'Back to the Future' with B+W film photography. Sold my digital camera so no digital safety shot - it was too distracting. I scan my negatives with Silverfast using Less Auto Sharpness(-) -the least sharp setting and while I use iPhotos to collate my images I am careful to not use any Apple adjustments which use AI to sharpen the images. Grain should be soft not sharp like sand. I do use PhotoShop Elements to remove dust but that's it. No Lightroom. As you pointed out the process matters. I'm having a lot of fun and the imperfect results IMO are quite good. Cheers and best regards.
Influencer #1. Only Canon can take best pictures Influencer #2. Only Nikon can take best pictures. Influencer #3. Only Fujifilm can take best pictures. Not one knows how to take good pictures if their life depended on it. The Photography Eye is spot on. What is a good picture. The answer is the picture you took and are happy with. Me: Only Sony/Nikon can take best pictures. I, of course, am kidding.
I agree that a picture should be a result of your creativity and the journey you are on. Some want perfection, others apply filters that mimic what others perceive to be faults (faux lens abberations, light leaks etc). Personally, I’m on the side of f64 rather than pictorliasm. I don’t obsess about it but I prefer a focused image that embraces the characteristics of photography as its own art form rather than drawing inspiration from paintings. Maybe that’s just because I started photography in the 1980s and could never get the subject in focus!
I might add those who care ; I have moved to a system for its large bright viewfinder for my older eyes Leica SL3 ....and 60 mp too , still I adore my rangefinder M's , and the Rollei's the fresnel being almost spiritual when your looking through, especially under a dark cloth on LF ... May everyone find their muse .
Thanks for the history lesson! I have long been a fan of the arts and crafts movement, but had no knowledge of its influence on photography. AI leaves me cold, and too often 'creeped out'. Street photography may be the closest to today's esthetic - if it's good, content trumps perfection.
I agree you can be too technical. It’s more on esthetics and composition and the art of it. What you are trying to do. I played around a lot with filters to do different effects. As an army photographer I did a studio shot of our first female Battalion Commander for our Division. She looked at me and asked if I could not make her look so old. I told not to worry, I already had a soft focus filter on my lens. The picture was for an article in the Division Magazine, but she loved the picture so much, she used it for her Command and Staff Photo. It was the fact that it wasn’t perfectly sharp.
A great photograph excites interest and touches the emotions. Technical excellence, however defined, has not all that much to do with it in most genres. Even in the scientific arena, a great photograph not only captures the subject accurately, it excites interest and touches the emotions through the story it tells. NASA colorized all those space photos for a reason! (I confess. I intentionally introduce noise into a lot of my images in post. Imperfection is its own aesthetic. It has its own emotional story to tell.)
When I was a young photographer 50+ years ago (self taught), to me, grain and out of focus areas were the enemy. Fast forward to today and I embraced the imperfections of the process. I have used many types of cameras but two of my photographs have hung or are currently hanging to two different museums. What camera did I use? A Kodak Brownie 2A model "B" patented in 1909.
Fantastic, algorithm only today presented me with your channel... fuck AI, embrace and hone creativity and the imperfections that come with it. Best regard.
Alex : have not been here in awhile , health issues. Seeing the metamorphosis , of the imaging through technology , from natural light to the modern highly controlled photo's indeed you can see a change. I am terrible though Sir , while I adore the sharpness of digital , I use older vintage lenses , brass and alloys , and in the film cameras I try my best to use the finest ... No there is no brag here , not me ... still to others I have to say , from 45mp back to 4x5 and then enjoying the square 120 film ; right now I hunger for this sharp but a touchable grace , something you can sink your teeth or eyes into ... human dare , can I say. There are different needs for different works . I think one should pursue their Joy in the arts .
Pursuing technical perfection is false siren. What should be pursued is does the image meet the photographer's artistic vision and intent not does it meet some arbitrary standard of "perfection". One of the problems with defining "technical perfection" is that it's actually a subjective definition that varies from person to person. Is the subject in focus only? Does the image have no softness at the edges (better not use a Lensbaby set up)?
This subject is something I have been thinking about for a while. I remember seeing a portfolio of a professional photographer and all the images were technically perfect, but boring. I still have my filters from when I used film, the soft focus, the centre spot, etc. Now all this can be done in PS.
I wonder if the level of emphasis on technical correctness is a correlation with the increasing technical capability of equipment over the years? When photography first started, it was all about the subject matter. Nowadays, it is as much about the technical skills involved. I have gone full circle on this - so much more concerned with the subject and the story.
I think you nailed it at the end there, along with Ai, digital is now a mass produced product, cookie cutter images, starved of feeling and authenticity, and let's be honest digital photography is easy these days, everything can be fixed and polished in post to within an inch of it's life. After a lifetime of professionally shooting digital I'm now back in the darkroom, learning a 'hands on' craft. I'll tell you something it's not easy, those guys 100 years ago were good .. very very good at what they did. In my honest opinion history won't be kind to our era of photography.
Aesthetics to me always win out on technical excellence. Take your kitchen worktop Alex - technically it's not the best material by a long way, but aesthetically... doesn't it look and feel so much better 🤔
When I began learning photography, my photos were cr*p. As I learned more, I could produce technically proficient cr*p. The problem was subject matter. I shot whatever I could see, and interesting things are rare. That is part of what is making them interesting. For me, the solution was to imagine something, create the scene, and shoot that. How I do that ranges from setting up a scene with live models, to toy photography, to mixing photography and 3D to put live people in imaginary settings. I do a lot of ordinary photography too, but it is the ones where I let my imagination have free reign that I live for. What I have found, when I have tried to teach others, is that we often let our inner child die, or fall into a coma, so it becomes difficult to imagine things. Imagination has to be fed, through books, movies, music, conversations with creative people. If you do not do that, imagination withers. Part of the problem, and the joy, is that a lot of interesting photography requires collaboration. You need people who can stand in the front of the camera and do something interesting. You need suitable locations, the time and resources to build sets, or the skills to build the sets in 3D. The past year, I haven't had ready access to a studio, so my ability to shoot models have been limited. I've done only a single on location shoot, where we kept things really simple, two hotshoe flashes and a Highlander-inspired sword fight. I went back to basic photography, so I would not loose too much photography skills, and lots of 3D work, so I would not loose my skills doing that. Yesterday, I talked with a studio owner. I may be able to get back on track with the kind of photography I love again. We'll see. What I would like to see is more artist communities with a mix of artists, where photographers, painters, writers, and others mix, to inspire each other. Unfortunately, that is rare. Where I live, in Gothenburg, Sweden, there was one such place, a café, but it closed down last year. Online communities are useful, but they tend to be focused on a single topic and a single art form. And of course, online communities cannot replace actually meeting people, talking to them, and trying out ideas together. Well, this was more rambling than I intended it to be, so, to the point: * Feed your imagination with books, movies, music, graphic novels, conversations * Combine other interests with photography. In my case, this was Fantasy, Science-fiction, Horror, Film Noir, detective and adventure stories. You do whatever you are interested in. * Learn the photography skills you need, but go beyond that, and learn whatever else you need to know to create the pictures you want. In my case, storytelling and 3D scene building. * Collaborate with others. Find people locally who share your interests. Be active in online communities. * Use constraints to your advantage. Don't know how to use 3D, or can't afford studio equipment, shoot toys, and use small lights. If you can't afford that, use natural lights, and home made flags and reflectors. * Do it for the fun of it! Don't get hung up on things being too difficult. Do very simple things, and push yourself slowly. Never stop!
As they say, everyone's a critic. And with photography, everyone (for the most part, wrongly) believes they are able to aesthetically assess a photo. Which is kind of weird since many of those same people have been culturally made aware of the fact that they haven't got the faintest clue about paintings and they refrain from judging those because they are (rightfully) scared of making a fool of themselves when judging paintings. That, and photography like possibly no other field of artistic endeavour, is exposed to narcissistic niggling ruination. There are those people who always seek to visit their own perpetual unhappiness on others, and making others feel bad about their photos (or their gear for that matter) is a very easy avenue for those people.
I shoot old film plates from the 1960's and before. I love the imperfections and I'm searching for some great photos. In time, they will come I hope. I love Demachy's work. I also shoot digital and 35mm film etc etc. I try to apply the same thinking to whatever medium I shoot with but don't always succeed. Thanks Alex.
Thank You, Alex. You eloquently put into words my thoughts and feelings about photography in the digital era. I embraced Lensbaby lenses along time ago because if I am not doing macro work I want to capture the "feel" of the time and place and not simply document a moment. Who is the author of your book on the history of photography?
I just thumbed through a book with a Paul Strand portfolio and was shocked at a few images that were horribly out of focus. Not out of focus in a cool, pictorialist way, but a studio close-up of a face that had what was probably movement blurriness. A still life of a pear and bowls where nothing is in focus and there is movement artifact from the long exposure. It did make me wonder if we are just so attuned to sharpness now that it bothers us so much more than it would have back in the 1920's when those images were included in his portfolio? Could it be that those images were not even questioned in that time period? It is hard to imagine, but the slow films and long exposures of the day probably led to unsharpness being more the norm. Did they even have shutter release cables in 1916, or did they take the lens cap off and put it back on again?
Well, at least we know lots of budget spent on camera R & D works: making a focused, sharp edge to edge image with accurate color rendition is kinda easy. You just know some basics and then let the camera works for you. :D That said, in the end, good images are whatever I can stare at for long time. Sometimes it's sharp, rich black and white tonality like Ansel Adams. Sometimes it's something blurry like Ernst Haas
I realy hate this modern obsesion with sharpness. My pictures are taken with holga lenses and expired films. Not sharp, not the right color. Some people comment to my pictures that I must follow a course on how to make "real" photographs (I did 7 years photography art-school), but those out of focus, wrong color, blotchy images are not a registration of the world, but more my feeling of the world around me. I think the obsession of about perfect technical pictures drives some people to the old chemical photography and is responsable for the resurgence of analogue photography.
Great old photographs - portraits - often needed exposure times so long that the sitter(s) had to keep their eyes closed. Then later the photographer would retouch his memory of the eyes onto his prints - or on the negative if he was really good. Colourised photographs from the previous "Fin de Siècle" were exactly that: hand colourised while there only was B&W. We can still shoot race cars with motion blur, or plain street photography for that matter. Lartigue's race cars from the Interbellum got shot with an after-market "curtain shutter" (AKA slit shutter) that was mounted in front of the lens (nothing near focal plane yet). But with global shutters it will be more difficult, yet we can still "drag the shutter". No, this is not and cannot bet about the hardware. It has to be about the photographer and their subject. And their skills. And their art. FHW (a TLA from 4-letter words). Oh, and what can we do about deluded people who keep searching for lenses that render the unsharp prettier than what they already have? No paying sitter or bride will ever be interested in such amateurish (dilettantish would be more pejorative in my language) humdrum crap. Nuf said. Let me watch the video now.
If you think that the job of photography is to create perfection then do so but for me there is no perfection in art and it's art that I want to create.
There is no This to This. There was a wide variety of photographic styles in 1910 and there is a wide variety of photographic styles now. The early glass plate photographers composed on the ground glass and contact printed full frame, therefore they composed full frame. The f/64 straight photography revival used 8" x 10" negatives, composed on the ground glass and contact printed 8" x 10", therefore composed full frame. They also chose sharp focus, great depth of field and clear tonal separation because their purpose was to allow the viewer to see clearly what was being photographed, as if they were there. The originators of photography were artists whose purpose was to fix images with optical sharpness.
The Japanese have a word for this. It is wabi-sabi, essentially it is looking and finding the beauty and imperfection The uniqueness that one has by not being perfect.
This now is going on for a couple thousand years. Already in Plato's age, creating art "after life & nature" was the highest goal. Without using the word "photographic realism" they used metaphors to explain what they meant. Rather than "conscious and sub-conscious" Plato used the "Cave" metaphor. Some sculptors got accused of having hidden real people in their statues. Compositing was part of the artists' craft, though. A sculptor who had to depict a specific goddess - patroness of his city - after the search for a model that was pretty enough failed, let Town Hall make all you women parade along him (nude - not normal then). He selected the ones with the most beautiful parts and the result was divine. These histories have been documented and passed on very well. Then some (more than) 2,000 years later photography is invented. This caused a shock in the painters' art world. Everybody could press a button and have a geometrically correct image from the real world. Artists went two ways: (2) figurative abstract and non figurative abstract, and (1) seemingly distorted representations of reality. Picasso's alibi was that he could paint photographically since his earliest youth (his parents being art teachers) and was on a quest to learn to paint like a child. His "Guernica" shows the ugliness and emotions in a way never done before. Far from beautiful but deeply impressive. His much later gouaches of pigeons among flowers seem to get the closest to having found the holy "paint as a child" grail. George Eastman, founding father of the famous Eastman Kodak company (read the wiki about him, please), in 1888 released a $25 camera with encapsulated film of 100 shots. Once you had shot all 100, you'd send it to Rochester (I think) with a $10 bill and the film got developed and printed. Then you received the camera, with a new 100 shot roll in it, the prints, and the processed film, back via mail (at the time all mail was snail-mail). This "everybody can shoot a snapshot" "movement" then caused "artist" photographers to want to distinguish themselves more. They wanted to step into the niche left open by painters that had fled or escaped from it.
Sarcasm alert: If you get too hung up on perfection, you could find yourself down at the Bosque in New Mexico when the cranes migrate, and you'll be one of those hundred middle aged White males behind your $50,000 camera, peering through your 100,000 mm lens, and freezing your butt off in your L.L.Bean apparel. And you'll get the same bird photo as the other 99 photographers.
The passage of time doesn't stop an image from being considered a remarkable photograph. New technology will always raise the bar, but a good vintage photograph will always demand attention. A bit like cars.
Alex ..hi hi ...really really enjoying the new approach ...it must be subliminal ... I get a mug of coffee ...and wonder why you never spill anything..that said I would love to see some of your earlier film negs run through generative AI ..I have been tinkering and was able to get some pleasing results..
Every time I see award winning photography of models or nature, I look at all the subtle post editing done and cringe. Why is magazine cover commercial art the expected norm? :(
When I saw your thumbnail for this video: The image on the left looks "natural and full of emotion, inviting and engaging, with good soft light and focus". The image on the right looks like "fake skin, fake hair, nasty hard nose shadow, indifferent expression - borderline hostile". So, photography feels different now because modern taste is often poor.
Sometimes “perfection” and sharpness is not synonymous of something good. Nowadays you can see sharp images, all a copy of reality but completely devoid of soul. Photography has become more of a copy paste where quality is more important than content.
Photography, at least art photography, feels very stagnant to me. The straight photography movement of the 1930s gave us most of the values that are popular now. And any attempt to innovate beyond it is shouted down by the crowd. I think that attitude of opposition to anything new is why photographers usually have a hard time getting accepted in the art community. The art community values novelty and innovation informed by a knowledge of art. But photographers so often reject novelty, and innovation while simultaneously resenting any suggestion that they should need to know anything about art. It's unfortunate. But at least it creates an opening in the art world for those of us interested in creative and different approaches to photography.
"artsy fartsy" - your words Alex. And they put a smile on my face, understand me correctly. Let's not forget that the majority of artsy fartsy photographers who wanted to be (considered as, treated as, valued as) artists, actually produced technically perfect negatives and produced the artsy fartsy in post. "In camera" was possible, but not common, until after WW2.
Funnily enough everything in the world isn't arranged on a continuum from good to bad. Most things have qualitative differences not quantitative. A great advertising photo is good at selling stuff. An award winning photo is good at winning awards. I don't want to make either. I want to make images that are good at saying something I struggle with even seeing myself. And I want to have some fun because, after all, it doesn't matter that much.
The distortion is caused by the relatively slow running vertical focal plane shutter with the horizontal motion of the car/wheel which produced the 'eliptical' shape of the round wheel. It was a massively influential image, animators and cartoonists recognised it as a way to imply motion.
I feel that many photographers (usually older photographers) romanticize the flaws in older photographs that the original creator would desperately have liked to eliminate if possible. Hard to imagine old large format photographers being disappointed in a modern camera body/lens. They would likely be absolutely ECSTATIC with moder camera abilities and image quality. They shot to the advantages of the gear they have... just as we can now with more advanced tech. Saying that old film cameras are superior due to some esoteric "feel" of the image is kinda nuts anymore... you can make modern cameras take photos with the same settings and edit any way you coukd ever wish... and then go back to the sharp high-res version if you regret making it look like crap later 😂
Nice of you to appoint yourself the official spokesperson for all those other photographers and to tell us what they wanted and what they felt, even that they would be ECSTATIC. And to call their work crap. Switch to AI.
I will not use AI , to each his own... all you have to do, is say the 2 words, then stop, and think about it... A I In june, i had an epiphany, after 35 plus years shooting photos, I came across a beautiful tree, on a hill, I stopped, and just looked at for what seemed like an hour, the lighting , hues ,slight breeze, were just right, nothing special, but its the most satisfying image ive ever captured , after shooting almost everything from 500 mph jets, to a bee on a flower... I knew , as soon as I shot it, i reached the pinnacle, for me... strange, huh? my advice, satisfy YOU...
It’s all superficial now. Photography no longer is telling a story. You can no longer see the forest for the trees because individual trees have been made to look perfect. It is like approaching a beautiful woman who has spent hours on her hair, her makeup, her jewelry, her clothes, working out to make her body look perfect however when she speaks, you realize she has nothing between the ears.
Technology = Ability. If Photoshop was available in 1930, photographers would have used that. Of course they did it their way (ability) with dodging and burning (technology).
Well I know pictures are suppose to be really nice and beautiful also really professional to you are suppose to look nice in pictures to not ugly but there's pictures that are imperfect and flawless like there can be pictures you like and don't like
Perpection as such has no meaning. At the end the emotions and associations that an image arouses are the main factor. If you do not have something to say, to convey, then perfection will only optimize that "nothing"!
I couldn’t care less for what is considered “great” photography today. None of the photos I love are anywhere near technical perfection. That’s pointless to me.
