Wayne Harridge wrote:
>>
>>
> Interesting but...
>
> ...if you think about some of the greatest photographs:
>
> Which ones would be significantly improved by having double the film
> resolution ?
>
With just a few words, you have, at least to me, raised a host of
complex issues, some of which are probably unresolvable.
First, which are these greatest photographs? I'm not trying to be cute,
it's a real question to me. For example, I can imagine that for many
folks, that would include street candids like HC-B's street photography,
but that's a genre that doesn't much speak to me. Relatively few of any
group of greatest images chosen by me would be of that sort.
Or might we be talking about war and disaster photography? Portraits?
Landscapes?
It seems to me that the answer to your question would depend on the type
of photograph and when it was taken.
Second, what is meant by "improved"? Won't the criteria vary with the
observer? Let me propose a practical thought question. If the films of
the time had had less grain, higher resolution and greater sensitivity,
as later films did, would HC-B's street photographs have been different?
Would they have been better or worse?
Assuming they were generally different in having less grain, less motion
blur and sometimes usefully greater DOF, I'm sure there are many people
who think that would make them worse. What would the photographer have
thought? Was he intentionally making grainy, often blurred images? Or
was he making images of what interested him regardless of the technical
limitations of the film and equipment available to him?
Might later viewers and critics be ascribing value to qualities of his
work that he himself would have "corrected" if he had different
technology available to him at the time?
If we then address large format photographers, landscape like Ansel
Adams or still life and portrait like Edward Weston, the question
changes. It becomes entirely possible that lens limitations and
diffraction effects from the very small apertures often used may limit
resolution more than the rather large pieces of film.
Would iconic images like the flag raising on Iwo Jima be improved by
higher resolution? The emotional response would probably be much the
same in small prints. But what might it feel like if the resolution was
such as to show the expressions on the soldier's faces in large prints
or crops?
-------------------
I could go on, but I hope you see my point. Might a more useful question
be "Which of the greatest photographs would be significantly worsened by
film with double the resolution?"?
I tend to think that the answer to this reverse formulation is very few
photographs made worse, whereas the answer to yours may be quite a lot
made better, depending on taste and definitions.
Ken Norton wrote:
> How is this any different than megapixels? Which of those "greatest
> photographs" would have been significantly improved if they had been shot
> with the 5D Mk2.
To me, the answer is the same as above.
> Historically, the majority of those "greatest photographs" were NOT shot on
> 4x5, 8x10 or larger.
Here, you are either being disingenuous, have not thought it through or
are taking a narrow view of what are historically "great photographs".
Fans of Adams, the Westons, Porter and so many others, right up through
contemporary LF work by Avedon, might firmly disagree with you about
"majority".
> Honestly, we are a sad, sad, sad people of we think that technology will
> magically transform the mediocre
> into anything other than technically perfect mediocre.
>
If all images in general are improved in technical quality, the great
ones float up along with the mediocre. Although your and my ideas of
which images are great will differ, both will generally be of better
technical quality than heretofore. I just don't get how that is bad -
even for a glass half empty person, as you seem to me to be in this area.
Is it possible that you are projecting your frustration with your own
ability to transcend what you perceive to be mediocrity in your own work
onto the broader world of photography? Let be by very clear here; I am
not saying I perceive the images I see from your hand are good, bad or
indifferent in this particular thought. Rather, this projection of mine
onto you is based on the sort of personally pained, existential quality
of your above complaint, some past posts expressing distress over the
difficulty of producing truly creative work and my personal perception
that there is not less "great" photography going on now than in times
past. I'm all too familiar with perfectionism and self criticism. I do
know that my internal issues with them do not necessarily translate into
meaningful characterization the world at large.
In fact, I think is likely that there is more first rate photography
happening now. My theory is that more artists who would have been
defeated by the technical complexity in the past are now able to express
themselves in this medium. I know that many photographers believe that
mastery of the technical aspects is an important part of photography.
That has certainly been true for me. But I wonder if it in in any
inherent way true, or simply a now past result of what was required in
order to produce a decent photograph.
-----------------------------------
When I see an image on the web, hanging on a wall, in a publication, and
react to it in an internally significant way, does it matter if it was
produced with a manual camera, film and scanner or wet darkroom or with
a totally automatic, digital camera and perhaps a computer printer?
Going way back to the original question, I believe "great photographs"
are great because they affect us, by causing an internal felt-shift, or
perhaps resonate with something internal; not because of the technical
process that created them, but because of their content, that is, the
subject(s) and how it/they are visualized by the photographer, seen by
the camera/film/sensor and presented by the photographer.
-----------------------------------
One important thing that has changed over the last few years is that it
is possible to see a lot more mediocre and just plain poor images now.
The image sharing sites already contain more images than I could view in
any meaningful way in my lifetime and are growing at a rate I couldn't
keep up with, if I tried. All those snaps that used to go into bags and
boxes in closet, attic or basement, largely mercifully so, are now
dumped instead into the public closets.
Twenty years ago, it was pretty much possible for one with such an
interest, and bit of time and money, to see a very large proportion of
those images judged by buyers, critics, publishers and gallery owners
to be worthwhile to see, while being exposed to only a small portion of
the unending sea of snapshots and wannabe art.
Should we let this change in availability lead to the conclusion that
photography has gone to hell? I choose to let it be an opportunity to be
exposed to images and photographers who may happen to speak to me, but
whose work I would never have seen before the advent of digital
photography and the web. In fact, I see it an an opportunity to view the
world as seen in photographs unfiltered by the judgments of the others
who have shaped the world of photography seen by most of the world until
recently.
Coming around in another circle from above, I find many images that
others enjoy simply uninteresting. That doesn't mean they are wrong and
I am right, in any larger sense. It does mean that to the extent that
such people determine which images I am exposed to, they may actually
lessen my overall enjoyment of photography.
For example, I'm a fairly regular follower of TOP. I find that Mike
Johnston is moved by many images that simply raise no emotional response
in me, other than the occasional feeling of having my "looking
molecules" wasted. This is not to knock Mile's taste; it's obvious from
the responses that many others share them. It is simply to point out
that, to the extent that Mike edits TOP and has edited magazines in the
past, the images I see in those places are not entirely those that will
most please me.
To what extent has that been true of the arbiters of what has been hung
and published, and thus what I've seen, in the past? The new paradigm
presents me with a potentially overwhelming range of images, but has at
least the advantage of being unfiltered, or some night say, uncensored.
> A less than perfect AG-Schnozz
>
A. Ditto Moose
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