doug_roll

<p>Tom,</p>

<p>Thank you for the welcome. I would say that you summed up most of what I said very well. I think I need to practice being more concise, heh.</p>

<p>What you wrote reminded me of a story surrounding a Beethoven piano sonata - I think it was the Hammerklavier. Near the beginning Beethoven put in a very challenging jump for the left hand. Apparently, there was a "safe" way to play it whereby the note was routinely negotiated and a difficult way whereby the jump had to be taken blindly and at great speed. According to a book I read detailing the life of one of the great interpreters of Beethoven, Beethoven had indicated that he had intentionally written the jump to be performed as the latter so that the performer would challenge him/herself to take that blind leap of faith and find the right key under the right finger at the right time. Regardless of the approach the audience was typically none-the-wiser, but the performer always knew and those who held Beethoven piano music most dear did too. Somehow the process of developing a negative reminds me of that a bit.</p>

<p>Scott,</p>

<p>I never made such an implication. Certainly my example with respect to cooking was thrown out there as a rough sketch, not meant to be a summation of the entire post's content.</p>

<p>What I was getting at when I wrote that portion was that computer processing introduces an abstraction layer which further distances the hands from the medium. Of course, if a computer screen<strong> is </strong>the medium then that may not be so much the case. That abstraction layer provides a number of hard to resist advantages such as multiple undo's, versioning, infinite replication, etc. However, I am keenly aware that we make all of the decisions, apply our various techniques - achieve our unique vision - regardless of the tool. I thought I had clarified that my personal response to a wet print vs. final raw file output was just that, a personal one.</p>

<p>For what it's worth I would not spend $100.00 on a printed tiff if could spend $200.00 on the wet print.</p>

<p>Thank you for the Peter Lik link. It made for interesting reading. I am interested in learning more about him.</p>

<p>doug</p>

<p>Hello,<br>

I just registered this evening. I am aware that I am late to the game, but read this thread with great (great!) interest. If I may offer my humble input...I believe that the final answer to this (the original, non-hijacked) question likely has rested within the OP's mind/heart all along. I have found that in my too many years on this planet that we often ask questions, not because we lack an answer, but because we seek a validation. We should not shy away from our own answers no matter how unpopular or misunderstood. And not that it's either in this case.<br>

If the nature of art were to recreate a most precise reckoning of an image then most modern artists would never have been. Heck, if that was all I sought then I could do it myself, without having to pay the prices y'all would charge me for your prints :) We might agree that art lives "between" the brush strokes/dots/pixels, whether those pixels are rendered sharply or with some sort of non-descript Leica patina. Art is not necessarily defined by a literal rendition, but by the response that is evoked as a result of an interpretation. For me, in the case of photography, that interpretation has more meaning when it emerges as the result of the labors of an individual who has submitted to his art in the abyss of a darkroom rather than a computer which has submitted to the extent that one can understand what Adobe meant on page 349 of its Photoshop PDF. Honestly, given two ostensibly identical prints with the difference being that one was processed "traditionally" and the other the result of a purely digital process, which would you purchase for an unseemly sum given the choice? If the answer is "it doesn't matter" then I'm guessing you're under 50 :)<br>

I find myself in an awkward spot. The problem is that I can accomplish with digital pretty much what I could accomplish with film (perhaps I am showing my limitations, and I don't deny them) yet despite a digital image which is pleasing to my eye and, perhaps, pleasing to the eyes of others, I find myself feeling a bit hollow. Whether or not I <strong>should </strong>feel that way is not something I am asking or commenting on. I feel that I've gained so much having lived to see this digital era, yet that analog part of me that increasingly dims seems to have created a disproportionate void.<br>

I believe that the personal answer lies not in what the resultant image looks like (we all for the most part agree that digital and analog can be made to look more or less equivalent) but in how one feels as an artist having produced it. If one is okay with algorithms doing the heavy lifting instead of chemicals, then the advantages of such might dictate an obvious course. For me, though, it feels as though I've asked my cook to make a dinner which I then take credit for because I was the one who ordered it.<br>

Are there holes in my logic? Of course. I know that most if not all of this may sound highly irrational, but personal decisions often do, and that's my point. Don't get wrapped around the axle in an attempt to "take the fork in the road." Do what feels right at the time, take a path, and don't look back unless your goals (which you hopefully have already defined) are not met. Even then, I wouldn't call it looking back so much as re-evaluating the options.<br>

My apologies if this sounds more like a stream of consciousness than a constructive contribution. On the bright side, I don't think I have much of an audience at this stage :)<br>

doug</p>