doris_chan

"I have done professional work for the past years and I would not be represented by a

prestigous stock agency as Mega Press if my work is lousy"

Raid, you're really pushing it in describing Mega Press as "prestigious". The mere fact of

having some images in a stock agency does not make someone a professional

photographer - it's because of this that most photographers organizations around the

world demand that the bulk (say 80 per cent) of your income comes from photography. As

to being "insulting", I find it insulting that you take so lightly the skills required to be a

credible photographer and feel no hesitation in setting yourself up as a mentor to

students. They deserve better.

"His work isn't crap....."

Don't go all fluffy on us Brad.

Raid, you'd be better off attending a photography course than attempting to run one.

Bizarre.

Also, play around with resolution. I suspect the default res will be really low and give you a

muzzy contact.

"I was teaching a course.....on photography."

Interesting. Nobuyoshi Araki is running a course on spatial temporal modelling at Stanford

parallel to his current photographic work in the States. All of his students agree they learn

far more from him than they ever would from a conventional statistician.

"A stance that you readily admit was open to ridicule."

Stuart, thanks for the timely reminder to never use irony when addressing the profoundly

dim.

"A photograph may only be deemed beautiful if the image is published by either phaidon,

magnum or harry butt press. Any other forum (i.e poncy cafe's, local art galleries, web or

blog sites) are not suitable and never will be"

Stuart, that's really hilarious and effortlessly puts me in my place.

If Alex had said that the black and white versions were brilliant I'd have asked what terms

we'd use to describe the better images posted by Edmo, Takaaki, or Ray. As there isn't

much

strong color posted here I used examples of people who I consider to be "brilliant" with

color. This isn't about only respecting images in a Phaidon monograph or those produced

by Magnum photographers, it's about retaining a sense of perspective and reality.

"have you taken it up the jacksy recently?'

Have you? For the benefit of those who haven't spent much time in the UK, Stuart's asking

me if I've been f@#$ed up the ass recently. What's that about? Homophobia? Misogyny? I've

no idea, but you're clearly a strange, strange guy. A cursory glance through your posts

makes that clear. Rant on big boy.

"The color shots are brilliant"

Alex, are they really "brilliant"? I just see two mundane pictures of a(n admittedly) cute kid

looking directly into the camera. If these are brilliant then what superlatives do we use to

describe the color work of, say, Miguel Rio Branco, Richard Billingham, and Lise Sarfati?

Because I don't post images here myself I normally refrain from commenting on the work

of those who do, but to gush over utterly unremarkable photographs is a pointless

exercise that helps nobody.

Why do you imagine I'm not called Doris? Is the name Doris Chan any stranger than Eliot

Rosen?

These pictures don't really do it for me. But this thread does make me ponder one

important question: Why, oh why, does Eliot Rosen not have one of those lovely hero icons

next to his name? I'm sure I'm not alone in wondering this. He brings calm, insightful

rationality to every thread he contributes to. Eliot, you're a prince amongst men, I salute

you.

"The paparazzi are the lowest humanity can offer with a camera....the scum of the earth

with cameras. They're parasites....akin to a mob lynching.....ghetto/trailer trash....They

should be the ones being chased to their death! They're the ones that give the rest of us in

photography a bad name"

With crass comments like these you're not doing so badly yourself at giving "photography

a

bad name".

Scott: "No, amatuers - learn to read"

Let's do a deal big guy. You learn to spell and we'll learn to read.

"The number of full time professional Nikon and Canon users I see regularly using zooms

is actually less than the number of professional Olympus users I see, which is darn near an

oxymoron in any case"

Scott, you need to get out more if you don't see working photographers using zooms.

From the muppets stringing for AP to people like Chris Morris and Jim Nachtwey at VII

there's no shortage of people making compelling images with zooms. As for your

Olympus/professional oxymoron I guess you don't realize that a number of Newsweek

contract photographers are happily making those covers and spreads with Olympus

E1s........

ps love the cheesecore self-portraits

"The Apple 23" models have been plagued with magenta casts and other anomolies. Not

so the 20""

Nobody who cares about accurate color should even consider the 23" Cinema Display until

Apple acknowledge and deal with the magenta problem. The form

factor is great but the magenta shift is shockingly bad. It's not a case of a few bad

monitors, they all seem to be like this. The 20s I've looked at are much cleaner when it

comes to color but just a bit too small.

"newly acquired overpriced digi all singing and dancing camera.Their printed images (of

course at the lower consumer equipment end) regularly have

poor colour balance; weak image definition; low sharpness and details that disappear into

fluffy blur"

You can see all of those shortcomings (and more) on many of the images posted here

and produced with the most expensive of Leica lenses - so I think it would be fair to

conclude that it's the user rather than the medium that makes the biggest difference.

"it's a retrospective, usually these things are arranged only as one-time shows"

The retrospective was first shown in London, and there's a nice Phaidon book to go

with it giving a really good overview of the changes in his work.

"it looks cool to be carrying such vast amounts of film in full view. You can tell women

you're a war photographer - nothing like it for getting laid"

Women are smarter than you think, they know that real war photographers use digital......

"Kodachrome 25"

That's a very amusing answer EB. Other than the fact that Kodachrome of any flavor is far

from "accurate" colorwise, where are you buying your Kodachrome 25 and when was it

reintroduced?

"Try as I might, I cannot duplicate the feel, in the actual imagery, of the Leica photos. But

the digital photos serve their (foundation website) purpose. The Leica photos go well

beyond this"

This might be the case for you, but there's plenty of evidence to suggest that

photographers working at the highest level don't feel this gulf when switching from Leicas

to other cameras, whether film or digital. If you look at a photographer like Gilles Peress

he made all of the images in his book Telex Persan on Leicas, all of the images in The

Silence with Canon EOS. They're equally fine books, and it would be foolish to suggest that

his choice of camera any real significance to the quality of either.

"If I am concerned about accurate colors (usually), I shoot film."

Care to share with us the secret of which film gives "accurate colors"?

"Great. Another Subscription. Forget it."

You could have subscribed (at no cost) in less time than it took to disparage the original

post.

In the 90s there was a big push by Brit tabloid photographers into the US because it was

seen as easy pickings. The US had the stars who fetched the big money (particularly after

the death of Princess Di) and the local photographers were seen as being really soft edged

and therefore easy to outshoot. Photographers exchanging blows in London or Paris is

utterly commonplace.

And when, or if, those numbers drop to a commercially insignificant level then Adobe and

other companies will lose interest in Apple. But that time isn't now.