DB_Gallery

For me, the story begins in one of the places where Kodachrome did: Pie Town New Mexico.

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/boundforglory/

In 1940, Russell Lee made many indelible images on Kodachrome in Pie Town.

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/boundforgloryimages/bg0023.jpg

The little boy in overalls third from the far right is Kenneth "Pop" Mackee. It would be another 56 years before the life-long mechanic of Pie Town would appear on Kodachrome again....in the photo at the link, spent one whole day with him.

Here is a good article done in Smithsonian last year:

http://www.smithsonianmagazine.com/issues/2005/february/pietown.php

Cheers,

Dan

P.S. It was shot wide open, F 2.0 with the incredible Lieca 35 F 2.0 Summicron Aspheric.

Milo, I understand the need to critique the form, light, and content. But do understand as a

true photojournalist, I am here to bear witness to, not to create. I had about 40 seconds to

make some 6 images and that was it. This particular image and all it's imperfections is the

one I chose.

40 seconds and then he closed the door, and the light was gone in another 20.

In a very famous scene in "Star Wars" Luke Skywalker is speeding down a narrow trench on

the way to destroying the Death Star. Not only is his margin for error in flight against him,

the chance of hitting his target is too.

In a revelation of insight, he takes off the targeting device ( The meter ) and trusts his

"Force". In a single burst of notion, he gives in to gut instinct and nails it.

Shooting certain slide films is like this for me. The very things that cause people

disappointment in a particular film cause me great joy in the narrowness of their exposure

latitude and contrast range. Kodachrome is my all time favorite in this regard, that is why I

have some 800 rolls of it to shoot over the next few years.

Unlike other mediums, there is no margin for error. You learn how to see light in a

constrained fashion, you learn how to see the world in "Chrome". It allows you to become

a part of it's grand limitations. And in a crescendo of all things visual coming together at

once, it screams out how your inner most voice wants to share that aching, stirring

impression that the perceived "Real World" is subjective for all living things.

I have been doing this so long, I am usually right on in guessing an exposure with no

meter in any kind of light 8 out of 10 times. I will sometimes shoot with out any form of

metering all day to feed this part of my soul, it's truly exhilarating.

I love the challenge of shooting slide film. When I nail it, I feel like Luke Skywalker in Star

Wars.

I rant therefore I am.

I am a photojournalist who branches off into features, stock and fine art, nothing more,

nothing less. This is where my thinking is from so that is the way I approach everything I

shoot. Even a landscape gets journalistic treatment. I like a challenge and this method

does it for me. The other thing is that I like to spend more time shooting than in front of

the computer ( today is filled with invoicing, disk burning and all that lovely photographer

stuff ).

A light search of my posting history will reveal that I am planning on shooting less digital

and more......Kodachrome. It's still around, I'm still around so if I apply my self, images will

happen on a single, glorious piece of film.

Enjoy!

I don't mind the use of photoshop, I have to use it daily to get things done. I just get really

disappointed by the rampant use of it and have it being served up as straight

photography. I use to frequent Photo.net a lot back in 2000-2001 and then all of the

sudden, tons of computer art types of images started appearing. Fine for some, but not

for me.

Many would argue that the use of limited contrast films such as the one I have shown here

are just as bad a photoshop as they truncate the actual scene to the limits of the exposure

realm.

Good discussion, lets keep er' rolling!

Constance, I whole heartedly agree. So much so that I have actually trained my self to see

light this way and recognize that kind of opportunity. My big influences in this style are David

Alan Harvey, Jay Maisel, Eric Meola and Peter Turner.

It is the "Art" of underexposure, some like it, some don't. I have to laugh at how many

complain they want more dynamic range in a digital SLR or use HDR merge to make a blah

looking image. The look of that just gets flatter and flatter and flatter.......bleh!

I am such a "light-snob" haha!

I just figured out what people mean by the robe missing. The monk has his hand by the door,

thereby lifting that side of the robe into the light which would otherwise be in darkness as

well.

"Daniel, could you explain for us -- do you remember from the scene -- why the right

side of the monk's body is so dark?"

Yeah, that's easy. The light would be gone in less than a minute, was strongly from the left

and was dappled through trees. To further limit fill was the fact that the forest that

surrounded the temple was sucking any light bouncing right out of the scene. Even if I

wanted to make adjustments such as perhaps a warm gelled fill or anything of that nature,

there was simply no time. Spot meter, bracket exposure and composition for about 6

frames and then it was totally gone.

That's what I live for.

Chris, Mona, there are a couple of other frames that are tad tighter but leave no room for a

magazine cover title or text. I often shoot for publications so I will subconsciously leave a bit

more "Breathing" room for text, something overlooked by some photojournalists.

Aside from that, I just liked having more room better and cropping out the other door frame

on the far left. It's all subjective..:-).

John....I am confused.

The scanner truncated the mid tone to shadow detail a bit, I really did not do much to the

scan as the photo of the original would suggest. You are pretty much seeing the image as

it is on the original as you can plainly see on the two new posts. When you completely

nuke the image as you have done here, you can then see the robe detail, other side of his

face and floor detail better. But that is not what I wanted to show in the image. I saw great

light and exposed for the highlights. I had all but 40 seconds to get this shot before the

monk closed the door and the light departed. Nothing was done to the image, plain and

simple.

I really don't understand where you are coming from.

Again, this is the orginal on the light table. Looks a bit red, but that is a slightly off white

balance on the raw conversion.

Hey, cool! It's been awhile for a POW..:-) I think this scan is just OK. The Nikon 4000ED

does OK-ish on dark and moody shots. I am attaching a photo of the slide with 5 others

on my light-box. It was shot in RAW on a 5D with a 50mm macro, white balanced only.

I like it dark, that is why I shot it that way. I figure why try to be a digital nerd, blow out

the highlights in trying to get more "Dynamic Range"? This is why I love film, I see light

this way and know how to tweak it to look like this....

....Don't really care much for photoshop. This is life and the light it gives us. You either

nail it, or you don't. But fake it? No way.

"It is a shame that the increasingly repetitive discussion over manipulation has come at the

cost of ignoring his other photos of this beautiful part of the world."

How is it a shame? He lost credibility to many of us on here. All it takes is one fake

image....then yer' DONE like Brain Walski:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/essays/fake.shtml

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/images8/iraq.jpg

I know some don't care and just want to be wowed by the end result, but it crosses my

personal ethic to do this. It makes a mockery of the craft of photography. Neither of the

two examples above were just changes done Ansel Adams style, they changed the content

of the original moment, period.

There is SO much more beauty and extraordinary moments left to be recorded in the

world. I have dedicated my life to *Documenting* that as artfully as I can. But I will never

cross the line of altering content. I have zero respect for that. In this world of increasing

lies and half truths, people want something to believe in. It is hard enough as it is with

reality TV and all the garbage on the internet. Why take a brilliant place like the dunes in

Namibia and vault them skyward several hundred feet that they would ever be? What is the

point of that?

This is hilarious!!

Glad you had fun doctoring it up, it shows.

I think the real image would be great in deeper light. I could just imagine taking a flight with

my XPan loaded with Kodachrome and mounting it on a gyro.

..it might not get the attention of all the computer art-wunderkind on here. It is a straight

shot so enjoy it on that merit. A real moment..:-)

...It's been too long my friend. Good to see you on here on the front page again mate.

Whimsical image. Always liked your 70 circa shots. You still shoot film? I sure do..:-).

I love the subtle details brought out by the dynamic range of this camera!!!

Jonny Depp's 153 foot creation often called the Tower of Power Launched the "Good Doctor's" ashes over 300 feet into the air. More than a week after Hunter S. Thompson's ashes were fired into the air via fireworks, the light from the peyote button lights up the valley. The resulting ISO 800 file is simply magical. I have been working on this story for weeks now, the majority of the images I will keep out of public domain, but this one, I just had to share.

Please view it in the slightly larger version as it does not show the strange compression artifacts.

FWIW, I eased off on the agitation with the developer to give it more scanning range as a

flatter neg.

Funny, I would just tug on the raw converter box in Photoshop CS now.

Hello all,

Thanks for the POW placement, its always a good thing.

As for the nuts and bolts of it, I remember it being around 3PM, almost deadline time for

the paper I was at and I needed to come up with my contribution to the day's pages and

had nada.

We had converted to scanning color but still had some greyscale stock left to shoot. I was

borrowing my buddies old 24-50 until my 20-35 came back from the shop, had a manual

20mm on me too. While driving around, I saw a helicopter lifting something into the air

and pulled over to investigate. These guys were up on the embankment on some steep

muddy terrain and were removing some survey drill rigs via the whirly.

By the time I got to them, they had one left. The guy who was looking up never looked

down until the rig was safely across the highway. I had to really jockey around just to get

the 16 frames I did, nearly got stepped on. I used the 24 because I wanted readers to see

that it was a helicopter knowing the photo might just run 5-6 inches high. A 20mm would

have made it dinky. I shot it low because that was the only angle I could think with just a

minute to spare. I chose the frame with the hand just barely touching the hook because

the helo appeared more toy-like to me.

Thanks for all the comments and happy shooting.

Hmm.

Good Point, that bears looking into.