Recently whilst wandering around the Night Bazaar in Chiang Mai, I espied from a distance what appeared to be large and very detailed photographic portraits hanging on a wall. I was surprised that anyone would be selling, here in Chiang Mai and in a market for beads and bangles, such huge enlargements which surely must have come from an MFDB and wide format printer. However, as I approached closer, I could see people painting and realised with some disbelief that what appeared to be extraordinary B&W photographs were in fact charcoal drawings. I saw people peering through a loupe at postcard size photos trying to faithfully reproduce every hair and wrinkle with fine tipped brushes.
After staring with some amazement at many different protraits for a long while, I turned to one of the painters and jokingly asked, "Wouldn't it be easier just to make a big photograph?' Surprisingly, the artist spoke enough English to give me a long spiel about the extra 3-dimensionality that his drawings had compared to photos which were much more 2-dimensional. He wasn't just copying the photo. He was improving it.
I had to agree and was reminded of the long discussion on this forum recently about claims that MFDBs can impart a greater 3-D effect to any image than 35mm can. But this 3-D effect I was witnessing wasn't subtle. It jumped out and smacked you in the face.
Here are a couple of shots I took with flash of the general scene. As you can see, it can be very exhausting work.
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And here are a couple of photos of drawings of photos which I shot in the hotel room after buying the drawings of the photos.
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I'm not sure if some of that 3-dimensionality has been lost due to the fact I'm using a miniature Canon 5D to copy these. What do you think?
(You big sensor guys ain't got nothing on those Chiang Mai painters .)