New York, New YorkWalking with a friend from MoMA, where we'd seen the fascinating "Printed Picture" show, to a restaurant farther downtown, we were discussing the comparative abilities of film and digital sensors to deal with the sort of lighting conditions around us. For much of the walk at dusk in the deep artificial canyons the contrast ranges would have strained the best films and overpowered digital sensors, but a couple of places the combination of building heights, avenue width, and surrounding sources of artificial light brought things into range. Luckily, some interesting things happened at just those times and a couple pictures appeared.
New York, New York
4 comments:
At MOMA, did you check out the "Into the Sunset" show? I'd be interested in your response to the large wet plate contact prints by O'Sullivan and Watkins that were included. Actually there should have been quite a collection of vintage 19th century printing on view.
scott
Scott,
I was very pressed for time and got literally just a run-through of that show. There were several wonderful Watkins prints, but I'm a big fan of Watkins--first time I saw some of his Yosemite stuff my reaction was, Wow, he got there first, and saw it best.
Carl, I understand the width of the avenue in the "subway/bus" photo allowed for the balanced light. I am amazed at the 2rd, however. Looking at the photo I would have thought the lights on the overhang, being closest to the camera, would have blown out and also fooled the camera.....lyle
Lyle,
Angle of incidence plays a role: the lights of the marquee are covered with milky plastic and we're looking at them from an oblique angle which makes them much less intense than if we were directly under and looking up. Then there's a ton of light flooding out through the glass doors from the lobby, out of sight on the right. Reflections of the lights open up the black vehicle. At that I needed to use strong recovery and other controls in ACR to get as much as I could from the raw file, but there was indeed enough data there to make a convincing picture.
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