Underexposed pictures

[arie2]

Good afternoon to all,

 

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Something bothers me a little bit about a lot of pictures that I see on this site, with the last exemple coming from Salgado'spictures (before him, I can think about David Allan Harley(?) ): it seems that there is a tendancy to underexpose. I am expecting pictures with a lot of details (look at HCB and many many others).

So my questions are: what do you think? why do we get such results?...I do not critize the work presented on this site, it is just something that I would like to discuss with you.

 

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Many Thanks - Arie

[grant_l]

why are details so important? sometimes they are necessary,

sometimes they are not....this isnt the school of ansel adams, right?

[arie2]

When I write that they lack detail, I really mean that they look

somber (If I can say that),dark is a better word. I could see how it

can be used to communiquate a feeling, but when I see

systematic "darkness", I wonder...- Thanks

 

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Arie

[johann_fuller]

I personaly wouldn't make any judgments from looking at web pictures -

the change in gamma from a Mac to a PC is just one variable that can

make a picture very different in apearance from the original. However

film and paper emulsions have changed over the years and older

emulsions gave more midtone seperation and an altogether smoother

richer feel to the photographs. I always believed this was to do with

the greater silver content. Modern materials are faster and finer

grained and as an environmental concideration silver content is

reduced but this is at the expense of the midtone quality.

BTW as I now scan my colour and B&w negs I'm now under exposing them.

I always used to give the exposure on neg 1/3 or 1/2 extra for

printing but for scanning it's the opposite.

[steve_wiley]

Arie, you can't judge print quality from a computer screen. Go to

some galleries that specialize in photography and ask them to show you

some examples of excellent prints. Incidentally, I've never

considered HCB prints to be the paramount of black and white printing.

[bobtodrick]

Ditto on the computer screen. As someone who has seen a Salgado

exhibition his prints are among the best there are. I recently

switched from an 'old' (2 years) conventional computer screen to a

fairly high priced flat screen. Though color images aren't bad the

brightness and contrast on B&W is terrible.

[douglas k.]

Previous posters are correct: you can't judge much from your monitor.

I saw Salgado's latest show ("Migrations" last summer in Edinburgh and

the prints were just beautiful, obviously well-exposed and nicely

printed.

 

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But some people may intentionally go dark. In his autobiography,

"Unreasonable Behavior," the great British photojournalist Don

McCullin recounts how many people have criticized his photos as being

too dark, and his reply is that with the horrors depicted in his work,

how could be make it any lighter?

[arie2]

Douglas, very interesting answer. I will travel to Paris next

August, and I will take the time to visit photo exhibitions to see

the difference.

 

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Arie

[olliesteiner]

FWIW, I got a similar impression to Arie's from looking through DA

Harvey's book on Cuba. The print reproductions in the book looked

generally OVERLY dark and somber to me, as if DAH were wanting to

convey that Cuba is a bleak, depressing, miserable place. I don't

know if that was his intention, but that's how it came across to me.

[noah]

First of all, I agree with all above who said that you can't judge a

picture's tonality from online photographs. Every monitor is different.

The salgado images looked quite good on my Radius monitor.

 

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Whether or not a photograph is to dark is very subjective. I'm the

pround owner of a few original Salgado prints, and they are wonderfully

printed. They are very rich, but not overly dark. This should be

obvious in his books as well, which are very well-reproduced. Some of

the Polio work was in Vanity fair last month, and there too, it was

fairly well printed.

 

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David Allen Harvey, and many other chrome shooters, have a style that

involves slightly underexposing slide film, often in contrasty

situations where there are a lot of dark areas in the frame. IMHO, the

images in his Cuba book are printed a bit dark. I saw him speak once,

however, and the slides he showed were luminous and didn't have the

murky quality of the images in his book.

 

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Images such as Salgado's and Harvey's are probably intended to be a

little dark and moody. The problem is, when it comes time to reproduce

them on the web or in print, if the scans and/or printing isn't

perfect, the results can be even darker than intended.

[godfrey]

<i>monitor variability</i><br>

To help get around inevitable monitor variation, I provide a

simple grayscale and color calibration page on my website at <a

href="http://www.bayarea.net/~ramarren/calibration/cal.html"><

b>http://www.bayarea.net/~ramarren/calibration/cal.html</b></a>

. Of course, not all monitors can be adjusted to even display the

entire grayscale gamut, but if you get yours reasonably close,

you can actually judge photos on a monitor, at least insofar as

they are presented as a web gallery. <br><br>

<i>darkness</i><br>

I don't find it really a matter of "underexposure" or "darkness" as

a technical flaw. It's a matter of aesthetics. Many photographers

like the look of photos with rich tones cycling into the dark end of

the spectrum. For me, a good B&W photo should display the

entire gamut ... Key is a matter of what predominates: Low Key is

dark tones, High Key is light tones ... but they should all have a

maximum black and a maximum white in the image somewhere

or I feel the photo is washed out or underexposed, unsatisfying.

<br><br>

Crisp detailing is important when the subject matter calls for it,

but more of the stuff that I prefer pulls the essence of motion into

a still frame photograph... Ultimate razor sharp detail is not the

point in those cases.

<br><br>

Godfrey

<img src="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SeePhoto/files/

Godfrey/Misc/DSC01515a.jpg">

[steve_wiley]

Reproductions seldom match the originals. I print professionally for

some photographers you've probably heard of, and I see this happen all

the time.

[ray_moth]

Arie,

 

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Do you mean "dark negatives" or "dark prints"?

[arie1]

I meant dark prints.

 

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I received today the book "Faceless" by David Douglas Dancan. It is

funny how the contact sheet shows very light images, and the actual

prints are much more darker.