curt_sampson1

Uh, digital cameras do use light-sensitive material to record the images. It's a light-sensitive array of electronic sensors. Much like grains of silver, a physical change occurs when light strikes them.

 

Digital cameras record it differently, but in the case of anything you've seen on this web site, all that means is that it was turned into digital a bit sooner than it would have been otherwise.

It's not the tools I object to here: it's the bad use of them. I'd criticise it just the same if it were a single exposure on a Leica M3 with Tech Pan film, if the composition were not right, or some area that would have been better to be in focus was not.

 

There may be some confusion about this because the problems related to poor technique will be different between the Leica and the Photoshop work. Looking at the picture with the girl with her skirt flying, it's jarring to notice that she's lit from a completely different direction than the man further in the background. That's an error that's easy to make in Photoshop, and very hard to make with a Leica. Pointing it out doesn't mean that the critic hates Photoshop, any more than pointing out a poor depth of field choice means that the critic hates the Leica.

What is the link between these two people?

The picture struck me from the begining, perhaps in more of a subconscious way, as being a bit odd, as if all the pieces didn't really fit together. I don't mind manipulation at all, but the whole point of a good photograph is that the pieces do all work together.

 

I like the idea, and this is a good attempt at it (better than some of her other works I've seen), but it doesn't quite click for me. I'd rate it an "ok" photograph at best.

I guess my question is, for anybody who refuses to crop, if are carrying only 35mm cameras with you, and you find a great picture that would be better in a slightly different format than 3:2 (say, 4:3), do you then decide not to take that picture because you can't take the perfect one without cropping it later?

This is all a bit ironic, because I'm not a big cropper. In fact, I shoot almost exclusively 35mm, and I've always been irritated by standard paper sizes being 4:3 or thereabouts instead of 3:2.

 

But as far as this particular instance goes, I certainly don't buy the, "I made my choice when I took the shot" argument. Jean-Baptiste, how many other choices of aspect ratio did you have when you took this shot?

 

And in general, I don't buy the, "I made my choice when I took the shot" argument. There's this thing called printing, you see....

Why is that? After all, while the photographer did do some work to find, capture and manipulate that image, it's not as if he created it from scratch. In fact, in this particular case, someone died to make that image, which seems to me a sacrifice rather greater than what the photographer made. Was that person's family consulted to get a release for this use of this photo, to see if they found it objectionable or not? If not, why must a photographer be consulted? (Well, if anybody wants to argue this out, he should probably start another thread in an appropriate place and leave a pointer here.)

 

In more practical terms, if someone feels that have a reasonable point to make by posting a modified version, I'd rather see it than just hear about it. I find it much easier to evaluate the person's argument that way.

Michael: I _like_ that crop. I don't know that I would necessarially chose it over the original format for an exhibition, but I'd certainly seriously consider it.

 

As for Jean-Baptiste's reaction, I have to admit to being fairly shocked. Whilst cropping an image certainly changes how you view it, I don't think that, if you do so whilst preserving the essential aspect and subject matter, it changes it much more than, for example, putting it up on the web instead of hanging a 10" by 15" print on the wall. (In fact, given the choice of showing you my photos on the web or as reasonably large prints cropped by someone else, I'd be handing scissors to whomever walks by.) So Jean-Baptiste, perhaps you could remember that other people take much more casually what you may think of as desecration, and vice versa, and take things like this in the spirit of criticism and exploration in which they're intended.

 

Bruce: I think the photo would still work well without explanation. It seems obvious from the nature of the cemetery (unmarked crosses, closely packed, bare dirt) that it's related to some sort of disaster, and it does look to me like the sort that would result from a war.

I particularly like the emphasized feeling of depth one gets from the various front-to-back changes in the photograph. The move from dark to light, the move from high to low contrast, the slight change in focus, and the different perspect of the foreground and background crosses all contribute to this. There's also a sense of the contrast of the two subjects: the body itself, whiter than anything else in the picture, and what is presumably the marker (cross) for that body, blacker than anything else. The subject is echoed again and again, in a subtle way, by all of the other mounds and markers.

 

I do wonder, though, if this might not have worked better in more squarish format, widening the surroundings lightly and bringing in more sky, perhaps even at the expense of the base of the nearest cross.