Torrington, Connecticut
Back behind the McDonald's.
Meanwhile, please go have a look at my other blog, WPII. WPII has been around for a while as an occasional counterpoint to this daily web log. I've shifted its orientation a bit so that it will concentrate on one specific aspect of my recent work, "Pictures in Public." I've long been interested in making pictures of people engaged in public gatherings—parades, demonstrations, carnivals, gallery openings. That's been the subject of many WPII posts in the past, but will now be the consistent theme for frequent, though perhaps not daily, postings. Have a look.
4 comments:
Carl, In yesterday's NYTimes (online-'talk to the newsroom') there was a discussion by some of the photographers of the Times about b&w v. color. This image looked like it could either way because of the strong color but also the strong graphic elements. So,I took the liberty (hope you don't mind) of copying this image into photoshop and reducing it to purely a greyscale. The two images are both emotionally striking, but in different ways that I can't quite put my finger on. It is curious to me how the emotional content can change, with neither one being 'better'. I guess it comes down to the story one wants to tell.
Lyle, that's interesting. I just took a look at the file converted using ACR and I agree with you, the shot "works" graphically as a monochrome picture. But, as with all my digital capture work, since I was "thinking in color" when I shot it, the picture just doesn't look right to me with the color gone.
ACR? (forgive my digital lack of knowledge!). I decided to do set of small (4x5) contacts awhile back of a particular subject. Much later, as an exercise to try and understand digital negatives, I decided to take one of the 4x5 negs and make an 8x10. Both b&w, both the same ratio in terms of size, but the 8x10 while nice, doesn't work. Perhaps this is what you are saying, once a subject is "seen", it is very hard to think of it in a different way - the lighting, angle, point of view, the 'expression' is influenced by the equipment/intended photographic result. Which asks another question, you are publishing these images for this blog, do you think about making really BIG printed images of these, and if so, would they be shot differently? In WPII (especially the St. Pat's photo's where you are in close), have you tried printing one of them big? I ask this because I have trouble looking at work in galleries and reading the tag that says : edition limited to 25 in 8x10, 50 in 16x20, 5 in 32x40. How does one decide what the size should be? Is this trying 'stuff' out or marketing? (sorry for the long post)
Lyle, ACR=Adobe Camera Raw, the module of Photoshop that processes digital capture raw files. Very powerful controls that suffice for just about all color and tone work I need to do on digital captures. I edit and adjust my captures in Bridge and ACR, hardly ever opening PS itself.
I don't find the same "locked in" situation with print size. I've made really large digital prints from two projects that I shot with the original intention of making 8x10 and 7x17 contact prints. The results are very different but I like them both ways. But there seems to be a chasm between my "seeing" for color vs. b&w. And yes, I'd love to try some big prints of these: 16x24 image area is as big as I can go on the Epson 4800 and I think I would like these at that size. Only way to tell is to invest in the paper and ink to print a few and live with them for a while. But I think it's a picture by picture thing: some may work well at different sizes while others may clearly be superior at some specific scaling.
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