Flat fences.

Hi, thank you.

Yes i was going to explain but somebody already guessed.

The image is up-side down. The light was in front of me and not on my back. Also the terrain was a litle inclined that helped the angled light. It's the whole negative, the dificulty was not get my feet in the frame wit the 21mm.

The time with Rodinal 1+300 was 13 min. Shaken vigorousily every 30 sec.

... but it just doesn't have enough umffff to really hold my attention for longer than a second or two. It's a bit 2D for me, lacking depth and dimension. And the light is also a bit flat and very greyish overall. Lower, off camber (offering diagonal) comp or closer might have offered more for me to get involved in this image. Of course these are purely personal observations about this one image. Your galleries are astounding as is your obvious talent. I really appreciate the elves picking your image for discussion this week. It gave me the opportunity to meet a seriously gifted human being...

Beautiful photo. I don't remember the last time I commented on a POW. What is even more wonderful to me is that the rest of your B&W work is as interesting and stunning as this shot.

 

Have a look at this man's folder! Very inspiring. (almost inspiring enough to have a crack a TechPan.)

 

Thanks!

Art is being lost, I'm sorry, B/W film is becoming an art

Because one uses B/W film doesn't make one an artist, and that [kind of statement] has contributed more to the demise of film photography than helped it. If you want to raise the standards of fine art B/W photography, then I would suggest ending the hypocrisy towards digital capture (see Elena Rosenberg's site as an example) and raise the standards of those still using B/W film. Zone system consists of 10 zones, not 4, as it seems 80% of the conventional B/W work I see uploaded only consists of.

While not taking away from Miguels work, I find his work to be striking mostly because he actually has some contrast and energy to his images, which is not present in the majority of conventional B/W work I see today because that medium has little or no standards of artistic accountability.

Just because Ansel Adams wrote A bible about A ten zone system doesn't mean there aren't other bibles with lesser zones than ten.

He's just A (too high rated) voice among many different voices. There's millions of brilliant b/w pictures with lesser zones than ten.

Nice picture, Miguel, as all your other fences pictures. Are these near Lissabon as well? Cheers, Rienki

I like the full frame image, but if you needed to crop it, I would rather see the bottom cropped. The "upside-down" works for me, and I could even argue that in some situations there is no up or down (suppose the photographer was standing in a different position... it doesn't change the camera view) The image has nice asthetics, not very 3-D, but it flows, and the concept is "flat fences" anyway, so the 2-D works for this. There is a sort of subtle mixing of the slowly changing fence (over the years) and the everchanging sand (and water... at first I thought it was wind) I suspect it would be more enjoyable viewed as a large print, or maybe a set of two: this version, and the "right side up" version. Just for fun, if you include this in a digital "slide show", try using "dissolve" going fom one version to the flipped version.

There's millions of brilliant b/w pictures with lesser zones than ten.

In any other medium what would be called "brilliant" would be correctly called 'flat and muddy', yet because it's from conventional B/W film, the double standard applies. Or should I say no standard.

Yes, indeed!

 

After looking at scanner restricted images through the

computer screen, any image, unless taken through a Canon D20

will look flat and muddy.

 

When one can see 15 zones with a quarter inch image capture

on a CMOS with a one mouse click BW or whatever conversions,

why bother with Techpan or any BW film.

 

After all, we are only talking about a 100 Kb images. Why split hairs here?

 

I fully agree that the use of technically complex medium with complex/careful processing and all that does not improve the artistic

nature of an image unless the photographer is talented.

 

But, I would also suppose that good photographers also will not be satisfied with printing only pixel enhanced images.

I'm not the world's biggest fan of abstracts and it is an aspect of photography that doesn't particularly light my fire but I actually quite like this photograph, not from a subject / aesthetics viewpoint but because it made me look closely at it.

 

Until I looked really closely, it wasn't easy to figure out what was going on; a cursory inspection doesn't seem to reveal much, but only when I actually *LOOKED* at the shot, could I see the subject, the depth of the photo, the shapes, detailing and the tones. In that sense it is very cleverly done.

 

While this is a shot that I would not want to put on my wall (not my taste by any means), it has met one of my criteria for a good photograph i.e. that it draws the viewer in for a more in-depth examination of the image. There's not many images that have that "come and have a closer look" feel to them.

Dave indicated that he didn't find this to have a lot of umpf, and to be a bit flat, but I have to say I think it is a subtle image with a lot of texture, and find the framing stable but not static. I think an off-camber shot would not have had the same subtlety. The use of tech-pan is excellent; I love the definition of the grains of sand.

 

I've always greatly admired Miguel's work; some of these are best viewed as part of a series. The photograph is excellent, but the entire study of fences and beaches is extraordinary. We should all know some photographic subject so intimately.

Miguel, this abstract is really nice! I'm usualy reluctant to abstract art, but this one stands out - with such composition (and good that you turned it upside down as you say) it ressembles a hand holding torsh with fire lit on. Nice photo!

It seems we easily get hung up on the camera, the method, the process, once those factors have been stated. Yet if one looks over most high quality photographic art books, and museum exhibits these things are seldom included, and rightly so, I believe. Let the image speak for itself. If it looks good it is good, and vice versa. This is a good photograph, not a proof or manifesto for a methodology.

Why not leave the Camera, film, technical details and the like from the photo posting then?

"As an aside, it could be interesting to read comments regarding the photo's originality (or lack thereof)."

An important part of originality (and aesthetics) is presentation... so has anyone considered this image as a horizontal?

Fine with me. It can be interesting and instructive information, it's not that but if the discussion turns to absolute value judgements about equipment and methods that take on a life of their own, I think we have to be careful not to let that interfere with viewing the work and it's intrinsic visual merits, or lack of same. Any good photographer is going to exploit the characteristics of their equipment to best effect, it's not necessary to know what it is, and it seems like knowing those technical details often biases discussion of the image in the interest of promoting one's own pet rock.

Dean,

 

Sure, I agree your point.

 

However, if one can not get "technical"while talking about technical panchromatic film- Techpan...

 

Should people cropping,rotating or doing other manipulations on the photographer's original image be commended?

 

If photo.net were to be like an art book page or a museum hanging,

sure, I agree that no one should get hung on "technical"aspects.

I like the flowing lines of the fence and the sand, a continuous line that fades subtley. It also makes me much more aware that there are some things that just can't be contained.

I'll bet Miguel had some spiritual dimension in mind when he composed this wonderful shot. I feel a pull inward.

I've seen better! Now if were a sand castle, then maybe....... :)

to Scott Eaton and other people that think that shooting B/W film is not an art.

 

Miguel did a great job not because he got lucky, but because he knew what he was looking for and he knew how to get it. Using film requires quite a bit of thought process, planning and composing image versus conrast and tonality that comes with developing and printing that image.

 

It is not choice of "Grayscale" in Photoshop and then adjusting contrast, hue and saturation untill you get it right. Yeah, it looks good on screen and your peers are properly impressed, but does it hang on the wall in the gallery? Answer is no,.. .

 

Images like Miguel's do hang in the galleries, they have permanent value and are admired by the people that recognize value in them. Not just artistic value, but recognizing an effort that went into creating those images. From mixing that developer, processing the film to hand printing image in the darkroom. Time consuming and carefull process that has a value to it and people should respect it.

 

As Ansel Adams name was mentioned few times in this forum, that is a man that went into mountains with six plates and came back with three master pieces.

 

On 2 Gb card fits 136 RAW images, each 11Mb pixels, but even after carefull editing, none of them are masterpieces,... Not that some of them are not superb shots, but still,..

 

Miguel's work has great value, artistic, technical and in any other aspect that photograph can be complemented on. His composition is his expression and his experience of the subject and try to change it, I don't see the point. He did great job with this shot and deservingly he got POW,.

Just one more thought behind mentioning Ansel.... When you have very few plates, or a roll of film, in my opinion, you have no luxury of shooting away untill you get it "right". You have to think, carefully compose and then decide to take the shot or not. Not just composition, but how that image will render on film, regardless if it is B/W or color. Also, there is financial aspect of doing the shot, especially when shooting large format.

 

Quite often, with digital photography, it comes down to shooting series of shoots, checking it out, editing, ereasing, shooting more and so on,.. untill you get that "lucky shot" or fixing all mistakes in Photoshop later

I shoot B/W film. Then I scan it to see what comes out before printing. It helps a lot in selecting shots and giving an idea on how to print it. Screen has not the same resolution of paper. If I want to see details then I have to enlarge the picture until I cannot see the picture as a whole. If I want to see it all then I have no details.

Then I print it in the darkroom. This brings resolution and "wholeness" back together. I think we cannot judge the full beauty of a TP looking at it on a monitor, and not only because of jpeg compression.

Not to mention that on paper (and not only fiber based) I can still see a richer grayscale than on a monitor.

Of course, on photo.net, digital photographers are advantaged since we are looking at pictures on a digital medium.

I don't think that Miguel's work has to be judged for the effort, but as it is. And as it is I think it's terrific.

I am really curious about seeing the prints.

 

superb image ! I really like your work especially the B&W pictures, and most of all I like your working "philosophy" (the choice of Leica and of film ) in this dawning era of pixelmaniacs.

I take the opportunity to ask you a trinvial question. How do you develop Techpan , do you use Technidol or else?

in this thread i see the film vs. digital folks coming close to blows again, which is always an exciting read, and ironic because they agree on more than they realize.

 

Scott Eaton never said BW photography isn't art - look at his work! He simply complimented this photograph for artistically using BW film's natural merits, instead of just assuming that the use of BW film alone made it art. BW film is not art unless used artistically, and I assume Scott Eaton would agree that the digital medium is not art either unless used artistically.

 

However, you don't need 10 zones to be an artist, if you're using the fewer zones artistically. Michael Kenna and Paul Kozal are two excellent film photographers that play with narrowing the contrast to produce brilliant compositions in foggy conditions.

 

I can tell from Scott's comments that he clearly understands zones and contrast. But I can also tell from other posts that many digital photographers don't understand. Anyone who thinks you can just scan a color image, convert to grayscale, and stretch the contrast... and get the equivalent of a BW film capture... does not understand the role this plays on the softening of details. The design merits of Miguel Mealha's photograph are wonderful, but only possible because the photographer clearly understands the technicalities of his medium.

 

(you don't see my photos on photo.net because i don't have a scanner!)

This is very good, as all of your work! 1+300? Always learning something new!!!