eric_fredine

Thanks Saul - not so new anymore - but I enjoyed having a look at them again!

Wow! (sometimes its an appropriate comment :))

Yep, this is a stunner Leigh. That little bit of mist rising off the distant rocks puts this completely over the top for me.

An absolute delight Leigh - you put the 58 to excellent use - vast but without any egregious WA effects. Everything converges and balances beautifully. And you've really bonded with colour neg - rich but subtle and 'real' colours. Wonderful.

Leigh - All three of these are utterly and absolutely fantastic. I could pile on the superlatives. You've punched through to something new. You've found a new way to describe the world. I'm excited. I might quibble a little on the edges with some of your editing choices, but that's just noise. These are photographs that make me want to go take photographs - they remind me how powerful a well seen photograph can be. Hold on to whatever you've found for as long as you can!

 

Cheers,

Eric

Oh yeah, this takes the idea from the previous set and really explodes it. Love it.

One of the things I've noticed recently is that when photographing things with 4X5 I'm more inclined to incorporate small elements -- like the bale on the horizon on the left.

I have no doubt this photograph could be edited to be more believable. But here's the thing - a seemingly large number of people really LOVE it the way it is - I think precisely because it is not very believable. I do wonder what it means that so many seem to prefer a pretty fantasy...

I have a long fascination with photographing things in the snow - and this actually has far more texture than I often aim for! I like it. I don't know if I love it - but as part of a collection of similar images I think it would work well enough.

Richard - Certainly colour negative film has more grain than transparencies - but a properly exposed and scanned negative along with a little noise reduction (and there are plenty of good tools for this these days) can yield large, very satisfying prints - at least from large chunks of film. The problem of grain is perhaps less than conventional wisdom in some circles suggests. But at any rate, as with everything in photography, there are trade-offs (I personally find the challenge of getting the color balance right more troublesome than grain) and we each get to decide which trade-off is more important to us.

 

And I'm not at all opposed to the use of saturation and high contrast per se. I just think too often it is used to sensationalize rather than illuminate. And worse yet, I think in many cases it has simply come to be expected or taken as normal.

 

We have more options now than we've ever had. So I hope Dave K and others take the time to explore these options and make their own choices. And perhaps to think long and hard about why they are making the photographs they make.

The 'technology' to record a scene like this has existed for a long time - colour negative film would easily record detail throughout this kind of scene. To be sure this technology brings its own challenges but it is capable of rendering a much more realistic scene once these challenges have been mastered. I think it's only due to some quirk of the publishing world (now mostly moot) that high contrast, high saturation transparency film became the norm for recording this kind of scene.

I think you've raised what is really the crux of the issue - how does one define 'good'? I think this can only be determined relative to what someone is trying to accomplish. Is Dave K trying to be the next Jim Brandenburg? Does he want to sell his prints for $300.00 a piece? Or perhaps he aspires to having an exhibition at the Yossi Milo gallery in New York and would like to sell his work in editions of 10 for $5000.00 a piece? Or maybe he's happy to sell them for $20.00 a piece at art fairs or over the internet? Or perhaps he's just doing it because he enjoys it and doesn't especially care if he ever sells something to anyone - and just likes the way it looks. Or maybe he aspires to totally redefine peoples expectations for photography and seeks to follow in nobodies path?

"This would still be a popular, saleable image in my opinion..."

 

I suspect you're right Vincent. As I said, this approach actually adds to the 'otherworldliness' of the scene which is something people really respond to. And something I think a lot (the majority even?) of people have already responded to positively. I think it's an interesting decision - do you 'milk' it? Depends entirely on what you're trying to accomplish I guess. If your goal is to sell as many prints as possible to tourists this might in fact be a more successful photograph than a 'technically correct' one.

 

Cheers,

Eric

Well, I'm late to the party, but I have been thinking about them.

 

Given your interests in abstraction and formal design I'm not surprised to see you working form time to time with abstracts that don't make any reference to their subject matter. And they are visually interesting and stimulating.

 

The lack of reference to the subject matter - either by studying the content of the photo or through the title or other explanation changes how I view or interpret the images. Of course, painters have exploited this freedom for some time. But I can't help but thinking that painting is also a richer toolset - there is a visceral feeling of the constructed object in a painting. And although a photograph like this is also 'constructed' there is a distance in the construction process.

 

While I can be quite moved by abstract paintings, I guess I just don't find 'abstract photographs' as compelling - though I'm not sure this is fair. Perhaps I'm just fascinated by the special relationship that photography has in referencing 'subject matter'. And for the most part, I'm not that interested in photography that is primarily documentary in nature either - even when very well done. The stuff I like best is the photography that plies the ground in between abstraction and documentation.

 

Or maybe I've just been studying the work of Andreas Gursky too much...

 

Cheers,

Eric

First of all, I like the slightly alien and surreal feeling - something shared in many of your photographs. And the colours are appealing, though perhaps a bit heavy-handed. The image feels very conciously composed (this can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on your point of view) but there are a few too many things that don't contribute to the formal structure for my taste.

 

But of course, what makes this interesting is the way in which the sky and foreground have been handled. It seems to me that this combination of over-dark sky and over-bright foreground is in fact very popular. The dark, saturated skies are more dramatic. The foreground takes on an almost supernatural feeling as it seems to glow in the dark. People really do seem to respond to this.

 

On the other hand, to some people, it just looks like an over-filtered shot - I'd count myself in that camp. But I also recognize the popularity of this approach and your right to pursue it so to speak.

 

I am suspicious of 'justifying' this approach on the basis of 'art'. Primarily, because the reasons for taking this approach (over-dark sky, over-light foreground) seem superficial.

 

Cheers,

Eric

Aaron - Everyone is welcome to the reception - and I'd be delighted if you could attend. Thanks, Eric

Aaron - I'm not much of a judge of B&W photography to be honest. But the shadows do look completely black here - not necessarily a bad thing in some ways.

A refreshing perspective Lanny. I'm an obsessive control freak myself but I think it's both my greatest strength and my greatest weakness.

I like detritus and this is a great combination of elements.

 

And if you're going to go B&W, which seems to suit you well enough, why not try something with a longer tonal range than Velvia?

 

And let's see some of those 4X5 shots :).

I like this one Aaron - I'd agree with both Leigh's and Stephen's comments. The B&W really emphasizes the graphic nature of hte composition - probably more so than in colour. And for some reason I am endlessly fascinated by fence posts in water so I appreciate them here. And the stones and their shadows just seem oh so perfect! The thin line at the top bugs me somewhat - but cropping it up sort of compromises the fence posts.

I like this best of the three you've posted so far but I enjoyed all of them. There is a plesing sense of veracity and exertion yet still elegant.

It's really BLUE Jeff. Have you thought about colour correcting it - there are lots of other colours here: yellow sand, green moss - but they all get overwhelmed by the amount of blue. If I can figure out how to link something in to this thread I'll show you another interpretation for your consideration...

Enjoyably and insightfully humorous.

This amuses me - it could be a pastoral scene anywhere - except possibly for the shepherd's clothing. The towers in the distance are an interesting touch (though my minimal aesthetic might prefer to have the tower on the right cropped - one tower being enough for me). Of course, the overall flow of the clouds and grass and bit of road frame the shepherd and sheep well. Might have wished for a bit more light on the foreground - but being on a train you couldn't really wait for that! A nice contrast (especially with those vibrant greens) to some of your other Morrocco photographs.

A stunning image Leigh - it shimmers and moves and the flow of compositional elements is excellent. I don't know how it fits with the more austere ones, but this seems like a direction worth exploring regardless to see where it goes.