WOW-Smith and Chamlee Tuscany Photos

I just saw the photographs Michael and Paula have posted from

their upcoming books, and they look great. Those 12x20's must

really be something in person!

 

www.michaelandpaula.com

 

dgh

Oops. I mean 8x20's. But still...

 

dgh

You can own one for the low price of $12.50 per square inch...a bargain at twice the price.

David - I didn't see these on the website. However, the ones from Italy (two galleries) didn't do much for me in terms of composition and subject matter. I'm sure the prints are top quality, but if the subject or composition isn't there, for me, it won't go on the wall.

But I guess it's all subjective; nobody would hang mine on their walls either. Ah, the reciprocity of art!

 

RJ

No big deal, just some holiday photographs on large format. So what?

 

Sorry, G.

Please don't judge their work by these scans.

Having seen a fair number of their prints in person, I can vouch for the quality - absolutely outstanding prints.

I was fortunate enough to see these images as prints and they are simply amazing. See them on the web does not do them justice.<br>

--Aaron

Having seen a fair number of their prints in person, I can vouch for the quality - absolutely outstanding prints.

 

-- David R. Munson

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

I was fortunate enough to see these images as prints and they are simply amazing. See them on the web does not do them justice.

--Aaron

 

 

 

 

 

Are you talking about the quality of the prints or the content of them?

 

If the content is strong, that would come across, even in the web images. They may, technically, be wonderful prints, but overall be rather mundane images (the ones I see in B&W magazine appear to be so). These also appear to be so. Excellent craftsmanship can't make up for mundane content.

 

What is so exciting (WOW) about these images, but that isn't to do with the expectation of experiencing a technically perfect contact print? Could someone expound on the creative or artistic aspect of these images? Or is it all about flawless technique? What is the vision?

 

Someone said LF holdiay snaps? Is that incorrect?

i have to agree...

 

never thought either of them had much eye fer comp.

 

IHOP,

 

me

I value all their experience and information about contact printing, and from what I can tell, they are undoubetedly masters.

 

I believe that one could well be quite stunned by the excellence and richness of their prints, but ultimately bored by the content.

For me these are beautiful emotional depictions of the worked human landscape. Without a single figure, our human work is everywhere. This is a civilized landscape. I have not seen Tuscany so flattened in terms of dimensions as well as tones before. The stereotypical sun seems to have been stripped away. The famous Tuscan light has been replaced by muted flat grays of all shades. I really like the flat deep blacks of some of the trees. Stark monoliths of human industry. These flat tones allow the land's forms and curves speak. The rhythm of the curves, hills, trees are gentle on the eyes. These rhythms are seized from the chaos of the countryside. And stripped of any sign of modernity. As from Dante, as countless peasants with sun squinted eyes, have seen and built this. As for centuries and still it revels in a timeless lyrical curveture. Just as this ground has produced fabulous fruits for a fabulous cuisine, the landscape has produced this creative impulse to capture and reveal its own secrets. Tuscanny doesn't look like this anymore than does the West of Adams or O'Keefe by Stiegltiz. Tuscany as composed as revealed by their vision and technique. But their selection of tones and lines and curves help us understand the visual world and high civilization of this region. Tuscany is the muse for many artists and these photographs reveal her anew. From these internet images there is no way to judge the quality of the prints. We don't need to, the images speak for centuries. And yet they are just platinum prints magically communicating the profundity of a beautiful line and tone. Thank you for sharing these poetic revelations. When civilized people speak about a civilized place we have much to learn.

I agree with D. Kevin Gibson. Given the experience of Mr. Smith and his wife have, there is no doubt in my mind that these prints exhibit an incredible tonal range and superb printing quality, but as I perused the images I got the sense that they had an obligation to take as many pictures as possible and that they stopped every 15 minutes to take a pic off the side of the road. Given than Mr. Smith and his wife offer a "Visions" and something or other workshop which I understand deals more with the compositional aspect of photography I was disappointed to see these rather derivative prints. I was expecting much, much more. Technical excellence aside, I think many people will find themselves thinking, "well heck I can do that".

Given the quantity of prints in the site, I beleive that a more rigorous job of editing would have given more strenght to the presented images, there is just so many images of a "field" that one can look at before you start getting bored. I specially liked from Mrs. Chamlee plates, 35, 36 and 42. If they had put 10 photographs which best exhibited the experience, I think the presentation would have been more successful. As it stands I agree with the above post, is almost as if you are seeing uncle Ted's vacation pictures in LF.

wow - mundane to purple in one fell swoop ;-)

At least a few of the viewers seemed to "get it." Thanks to those

with kind comments. As for the others, I'm puzzled.

 

Clearly the Internet is no way for any photographs to be seen.

Yes, Paula's and my technique and print quality are excellent, but

to our eyes, the images on the web site do not begin to show

that. Had I come to these without having seen the prints, I would

not assume very fine print quality at all. But print quality is not

what it is about. It is about vision.

 

Someone asked for an explanation of the creative vision in these

prints. I'm tempted to quote Louis Armstrong, who, when asked

"What is Jazz?" replied, "Man, if you have to ask, you'll never

know." And leave it at that, but I will try to explain, at least a little.

 

Our prints, for the most part, not all of them certainly, tend to be

subtle. Extremely subtle. Not only tonally, but compositionally as

well. It can take a long time to really "get" them. We are not

interested in the quick, "Wow." Occasionally, we make prints that

do make most all viewers respond immediately and positively.

We usually don't show them. For us, they are too easy. Not

challenging. Most of the photographs on the site are ones that

take some time to really see. My guess is that most viewers

spent at most 5 seconds looking at each picture, not minutes.

Between the poor quality of the Internet , which precludes half the

things in each picture even being visible, and the subtlety of the

placements, perhaps our work is just not suitable for the Internet

medium.

 

Paula and I welcome the opportunity to show anyone our original

prints, not for "print quality," but for the vision. We are more than

well aware that our photographs are not to everyone's taste (and

we are grateful for that), but we assure those who say, "poor

composition," that there are things they are missing.

 

The teacher in me suggests that those who don't get it might say

to themselves, "I think Smith's and Chamlee's photographs are

boring and uninteresting, but their work is highly regarded by so

many serious collectors and curators, that I wonder what I am

missing." And then try to figure it out. You might learn something.

 

Michael A. Smith

uh huh...

 

listen mike, no disrespect but i understand the subtlety of 'straight comp' as well as the next photog. and, there's a few winners in yon-tuscany port to be sure... but as yer peer above stated, they need to be edited down. think 'less is more' in comp as well as editing and you'll be better off. pick only the 'strongest' and let the chaff flutter away. and don't shoot yerself or anyone else over it though. we, of all peeps, understand how ya labor over those things endlessly and travel to the hedges of hell and the attachment that comes with such love and suffering, yup, we know mike. but, have someone else edit them. no, not paula. she's too involved... ya need as much objectivity as you can introduce.

 

and i DO mean 'strongest' in the most subtle way of course...

 

me

 

p.s. to jim: that's about the flakiest thing i've read in a long time. since that journal i posted as a matter of fact.

 

p.p.s. prima donnas... feh. patronize me again chump.

I think these images are stunning executions capturing the soul

of the Tuscany countryside. The juxpositions of textures and

tones is enhanced by flawless placement of objects within the

elongated frame. Well done! Despite the poor quality web

images, Michael and Paula's vision still comes through

brilliantly.

hmmmm...I will be the first to admit I dont know everything, and perhaps you would be kind enough to enlighten me. Given that we all agree that scanned images take away the technical beauty and tonal qualities of the print then all that is left is compositional strenght.

 

I took more than 5 seconds to view each print, all 58 of them. I would say I averaged about 8 minutes, some I dismissed right away, some I spent more time examining. I specially liked plates # 1, 36 and 44 (although I would not have placed the tree in plate 1 right smack the middle, but then that is a matter of taste). I can imagine they are beautifull indeed in "real life". For many other plates though I found a disturbing amount of chopped trees (chopped in the framing sense) that really distracted my view. The most difficult example is plate #6 where the tree is chopped at the top and right smack in the middle of the print. I found this tree very distracting and it prevented my eyes from flowing to the rest of the print. Since you mention the "teacher in you" I hoped that perhaps you would be generous enough to show us what people can expect to learn in your workshop and tell us how this print is compositionally good.

About Michael's plate #6. It's one of my favorites, along with #45 but for an entirely different reason. I was immediately drawn to #6 when I scanned down the page. I'll tell you what I see, and of course, I'm speaking only for myself. This is how I see #6:

 

The tree in the middle is the strongest part of the image. It isn't really a tree, at least not in a pictorial sense. If you're looking at this image as a straight landscape shot you might think it's a tree and find it disturbing (for the wrong reason), but it's really a strong graphic element of treelike character. It immediately identifies the most obvious part of the compositional theme that is comprised of undulating vertical rythyms that present themselves across the entire space. From left to right, the telephone poles, the fence posts, the vineyards in the background, the tree-thing in the middle, then the small background trees just to the right of it, more vine rows, the foreground fence to the right. Notice how it becomes a pivot point around which these more subtle vertical elements are balanced? It's also the centerpiece of a triplet of vaguely similar shapes embodied in the telephone poles to the left and the cross that is centered between the gate posts on the right.

 

At the same time, the tree-thing functions as an abstract bifurcator that splits the image into two roughly equal halves, a predominately rounded and organic left side, and a predominately angular and inorganic right side. Yin and yang.

 

The shape of the upper part of the tree-crown also roughly mirrors the topography of each side of the image. On the left side, the shape of the tree top is more varied, reflecting the shape of the hill and the road. On the right, it is smoothly curved like the smoother lines of the right side mid-horizon. The notch near the top right of the tree crown mirrors the notch of the gate. The white hole through the tree branches on the upper left of the crown is counterpoint to the light colored road and pasture on the left.

 

I think the tree is meant to be disturbing, but not because it is a tree that is cut off. Only if you try to understand the picture as a straight landscape composition would the central element of the picture be perceived as a cut off tree.

 

Most of my perceptions have to do with geometry and gross tonal variation. There are doubtless other things going on in this picture that relate to subtle tonality, but I can't really see the gradations of tone well enough on my monitor to discover or understand them all.

 

Ok, like I said, that's what I get out of this image. I'm not saying that I know what Michael intended, only that plate #6 strikes me as one of my favorites because of the way that I see it. Could be no one else will see it that way, and that's OK.

"I took more than 5 seconds to view each print, all 58 of them. I

would say I averaged about 8 minutes, some I dismissed right

away, some I spent more time examining. I specially liked plates

# 1, 36 and 44 (although I would not have placed the tree in plate

1 right smack the middle, but then that is a matter of taste). I can

imagine they are beautifull indeed in "real life". For many other

plates though I found a disturbing amount of chopped trees

(chopped in the framing sense) that really distracted my view.

The most difficult example is plate #6 where the tree is chopped

at the top and right smack in the middle of the print. I found this

tree very distracting and it prevented my eyes from flowing to the

rest of the print. Since you mention the "teacher in you" I hoped

that perhaps you would be generous enough to show us what

people can expect to learn in your workshop and tell us how this

print is compositionally good."

 

Well, Jorge. it sounds as if your response is in good faith and I

will try to answer. Skip Abadie answered your question about

Plate 6 as well as I could, perhaps better, because I do not get

involved in that kind of detail when discussing my work. I can

talk, however, about some general things. (Later: I do discuss

Plate 6 below.)

 

I have said many times that it is how one sees, not what one

sees that makes any photograph interesting.

 

As a photographer I am responsible for every square millimeter

of the picture space. There should be nothing inessential to the

structure of the picture. Everything needs to count.

 

I do not consider any photograph of mine successful unless the

viewer's eye is compelled to navigate the entire picture space

(every square millimeter). To compel such movement, I use the

edges and corners extensively as active elements in the picture.

The writer in "Michael A. Smith: A Visual Journey" the book from

my twenty-five year retrospective exhibition at the George

Eastman house included this sentence, " Smith's sensitivity to

the role of edges in making photographs is unsurpassed in the

medium." And this one, "Although some of his photographs

appear diffuse at first glance, formal structure is rigorously

maintained. This structure can readily be seen when the prints

are viewed from a distance of ten or fifteen feet. At this distance

there emerges a broad tonal conception and an underlying

structure."

 

Everything is the "subject." There is no one thing that is the

subject. In Plate 6, the photograph includes that centered tree,

but it is not about that centered tree. If it is about anything, and I

hope that you would give me the benefit of the doubt and

assume that it is about something, it is about the relationship of

things, or to put it another way, it is about space.

 

Abstraction underlies everything in my photographs. Rather than

make close-up "abstract" photographs, which for me are too

easy to be challenging, I usually photograph a recognizable or

inhabitable space. To keep the underlying abstraction while

photographing these recognizable things is a challenge I find

endlessly fascinating.

 

To quote a painter friend of mine: "Illustration is about things; art

is about space. "The "chopped trees": Don't limit yourself by

thinking of them as trees; think of them as graphic elements. (By

the way, in Plate 1 there is no tree. It is a variation in tone on a

marble wall.)

 

Back to Plate 6 for a moment: Although the viewer's eye starts

with the centered very black two-dimensional shape of the tree,

the exact placement of the clouds lead your eye to either top

corner, and dark elements lead your eye to the bottom corners.

The column, bottom right close to the edge also leads your eye

to the bottom right and to the corner, and on the left side the road

leads your eye to the bottom left part of the picture. If your eye got

stuck on the tree, and I do not doubt it did, it is a good example of

the inadequacy of the Internet as a medium to view photographs.

The tones of the clouds are subtle as are the textures in the very

bottom corners.

 

When I expose a negative, I am as conscious of tonal

relationship as well as relationships of line and mass.

 

You ask, "What can people expect to learn in our workshops?" I'll

just discuss the visual side. In the Vision and Technique

workshops that Paula and I teach, people learn how to see

beyond clichés, how to stretch their vision, to see things

photographically that they would not have seen before if ever,

and to therefore make photographs that they were previously

incapable of making. I believe a number of "comments by

workshop participants" (under "Workshops" at

www.michaelandpaula.com) speak to this point. Many come

mostly to learn how to print on Azo. They find that is the least of

what they learn.

 

I state the photographer's problem this way: When most

photographers go out to make photographs they either drive or

walk until they see something that makes them say, "Wow!" and

them they set up the camera and make a photograph of that

thing. Then they go on until the next thing makes them say,

"Wow!" and the process gets repeated. By definition, we can only

respond to what, on some level, we already know. Over time,

most photographers' work becomes only a confirmation of what

they already know and after a while no personal growth takes

place. (In "Looking at Photographs" John Szarkowski wrote, "The

genuinely creative period of most photographers has rarely

exceeded ten or fifteen years.") And personal growth is what it is

all about. (E.E. Cummings: "� an artist, whose every agony is to

grow.") To grow as a photographer, and therefore as a human

being, what you have to do is photograph what you don't know.

But how can you do that when, by definition, you are only capable

of responding to something you already know? In our

workshops, Paula and I answer that question.

 

One thing Paula and I guarantee absolutely: Anyone taking our

workshops will see so much more and see so many more

photographic possibilities than they did before. And will see

them in visually more exciting ways.

 

Think about it (and I mean this kindly, not arrogantly), as it

appears you may have Jorge, though some others clearly have

not. I'm in all these museum collections; I was honored with a

25-year retrospective at the Eastman House; and our workshops

generally fill up almost immediately with no paid advertising--just

a web site posting. Don't you think there just might be something

going on here in my photographs. And that if you don't get it, it

may be you and not the insufficiency of the photographs.

 

Thank you for giving me this opportunity.

 

Michael A. Smith

I'm not sure this is the proper forum for critique, especially since everyone agrees that the scans are, well, lousy...which begs the question: Why would photographers who so pride themselves in the quality of their prints be satisfied with such sub-par renderings of their images? And if they're not satisfied, why not improve the scanned images to more accurately reflect the quality of the original prints? Now THAT puzzles me.

Mr. Smith, Don�t take the negative comments to heart. After all, do these people�s comments really count? The majority of them are dauntless hacks who merely dream of having the talent and lifestyle you possess. Some of you dare comment on composition? You criticized because this ACCOMPLISHED Artist dares not fit into your, undoubtedly, textbook ideas of comp or subtle comp. I bet you think there is such a thing as a true portrait lens too? You do, don�t you?

 

I don�t argue with anyone�s right to dislike the images, we all know what we personally like or dislike. But, to criticize on the technical, vision, or comp aspects of these images or to put your personal �rules� for image content is baseless unless you are on equal footing with this Artist. Which, I am pretty sure almost all of you are not.

I am pleased that Michael has found this venue worth his time to answer personally to this commentary. This willingness is consistent with he and Paula's constant sharing of their knowledge base to all large format photographers that care to listen and that is a wonderful thing.

 

While at the Large Format conference in Albquerque recently, I had the good fortune to personally view over 50 of Michaels prints from various collections literally in my hands. A truly stimulating experience. Wonderful subtle tonalities from corner to corner that really got me fired up as to what can be done with photography. The last time I got this stimulated was back a few years when the Weston Exhibition came through Denver.

 

In any event, some prints immediately knocked me over while others took a while longer to get to the same place for me. In another seminar the next day he pulled a few selected ones from the previous day for another audience and for whatever reason the response was a bit different. Still very positive, but a bit different. I guess emotion does have a foot hold in this art form.

 

All I would like to say is to be gracious with your commentary as you would like others to be gracious looking at your work in less than optimal conditions. I recognize that everyone is entitled to their own opinion on anything, but clearly Michael and Paula are doing more than a few things right or they would not be full time working professionals. I would also add that if it were not for their "take no prisoners" commitment to Azo, we very well might be left searching for less than an optimal alternative. Cheers!

Michael thanks for taking the time to answer my questions. It is because of your last paragraph that I wanted to get your opinion before I came out and critize you or comment on your composition.

 

 

I had already thought about the tree as a geometric anchoring element as Skip pointed, but I found the tree overpowering, unlike that of plate #1 where it lends the image a strong center point and gives a 3D kind of quality. You did acheive your goal, my eye did wander about the image in plate #6, I did notice the clouds and the fence, etc. Here is where I disagree with you in compositional elements. I always felt an image has to "gather" my eye and bring me to a key point with such strenght that the rest of the image actually "dissappears" from my mind and I am left with the element that originally attracted the photographer. Not make my eye wander and leave me confused as to the element that initially drew the photographers attention. Examining the image within the context of your explanation I could say the image was succesful, but rarely do we get the chance to show an image and attach and explanation as to our compositional intention. The best analogy I can draw is the difference between centrifugal and centripetal forces, the former draws apart, the latter gathers in to the center point.

 

 

You state in your workshop people will learn a better way of seeing, I might agree it is a different way of seeing according to your ideas of composition, but not neccesarily better. I suppose it is a matter of choice and personal style. As such although I will agree to disagree with you in what constitutes an optimal composition, I am still glad you took the time to answer my questions. I wish you continued success.

<i>But, to criticize on the technical, vision, or comp aspects of these images or to put your personal �rules� for image content is baseless unless you are on equal footing with this Artist. Which, I am pretty sure almost all of you are not.</i><p>

 

J, I know many photographers who continually produce only 3 or 4 images a year which are exquisite. Just because they are not in B+W magazine does not mean their questions are dumb. If such attitude of unquestioning faith was adopted by everybody the world would still be thought as flat and the universe revolving around earth. I am sure you dont know anybody in this forum personally nor have you seen their images so I doubt you are anybody to state that "most of us" are not on equal footing artistically with Mr. Smith. So while I respect your right to voice your opinon please spare me the preaching.