Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => Street Showcase => Topic started by: Rob C on March 29, 2019, 07:19:49 am
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I have often mentioned my belief that digital and the drive to "perfection" can be self-defeating when it comes to street and the capture of human beings.
This book seems to validate my view:
https://www.damianieditore.com/en-US/product/711
Had these pix been sharper they would have become clinical, thus losing the human touch.
Rob
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Right, Rob. It’s something I’ve been arguing for a long time. When it comes to street, the relationships between people and their environment are what make the picture; not technical perfection. As I’ve said maybe too many times: HCB’s fabulous stuff suffers from the kind of technical imperfections that come from what we now would consider primitive equipment. But it’s what’s IN the picture that matters, not how sharp the image is. Your mind fills in the blanks, just as my mind fills in the tonal blanks when I listen to Puccini’s arias with my 89-year-old ears.
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Sharpness, sometimes a disadvantage
I doubt anyone would argue with this statement.
Conversely I doubt anyone would argue with the statement Lack of sharpness, sometimes a disadvantage.
What next, B&W, better than colour?
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I’d argue that sometimes B&W is better than color, Keith. You can lose some of the strength of the graphics with color, and if the whole point of the picture is the graphical relationships between elements then I think B&W is better than color.
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But it’s what’s IN the picture that matters, not how sharp the image is. Your mind fills in the blanks, just as my mind fills in the tonal blanks when I listen to Puccini’s arias with my 89-year-old ears.
Agree.
IMHO for how you express yourself I think that your mind is much younger than your ears.
My respect
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I’d argue that sometimes B&W is better than color, Keith. You can lose some of the strength of the graphics with color, and if the whole point of the picture is the graphical relationships between elements then I think B&W is better than color.
Sometimes, just as sharpness is sometimes a disadvantage.
You get the key word here?
;-)
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Right. "Sometimes" applies to almost everything you do with a camera.
;D
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... This book...
This book comes from Ken Van Sickle, an octogenarian New York photographer i posted about in the past. There is a short, three-minute video about him, with his pearls of photographic wisdom:
https://www.facebook.com/newshour/videos/10153876052678675/
And for those without a FB account:
https://youtu.be/hA_uVCCD5Is
"I'm not a concerned photographer. I'm not trying to prove anything politically or otherwise. I'm interested in beauty and sort of the subtle moments of everyday life."
Or about always carrying a camera:
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Had these pix been sharper they would have become clinical, thus losing the human touch.
The images are so small I can't tell what, if anything, the images, would lose if they were sharper. The only thing that come to mind is that they might lose is the look of the era in which they were taken - that sort of smooth, low contrast, slightly mushy look.
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This book comes from Ken Van Sickle, an octogenarian New York photographer i posted about in the past. There is a short, three-minute video about him, with his pearls of photographic wisdom:
https://www.facebook.com/newshour/videos/10153876052678675/
And for those without a FB account:
https://youtu.be/hA_uVCCD5Is
Or about always carrying a camera:
There's a guy after my own heart, Slobodan. Very good.
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Many of my own images have areas of sharp focus contrasting areas of soft focus. Would they display more or less humanity if the image was sharper or softer?
(http://www.keithlaban.co.uk/Dignity.jpg)
Seriously, rather than generalisations and personal preferences it is the intention of the image maker and the success or failure of the resulting image that is key,
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On the right was a pilar close to me and apparently the extremely simple focussing intelligence in my little sony decided that the closest object must be the primary interest of the picture. Odd, but ultimately correct. Who needs eye-detection auto focus???
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Many of my own images have areas of sharp focus contrasting areas of soft focus. Would they display more or less humanity if the image was sharper or softer?
I don’t think it makes any difference, Keith. You catch these people in their environment, usually with expressions that tell us something about being that person. I think this lady has to be stoic in order to make it through the day. But stoicism doesn’t mean emotions aren’t there, just that they’re suppressed.
Just for kicks I did a B&W conversion. If anything, it’s even more effective than the color version because her expression is what really matters.
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I don’t think it makes any difference, Keith. You catch these people in their environment, usually with expressions that tell us something about being that person. I think this lady has to be stoic in order to make it through the day. But stoicism doesn’t mean emotions aren’t there, just that they’re suppressed.
Just for kicks I did a B&W conversion. If anything, it’s even more effective than the color version because her expression is what really matters.
IMO, your version is way, way, way, too sharp and or contrasty and the subject has become a caricature of the dignified woman we met.
;-)
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I just did a straight conversion with Silver Efex Pro. Admittedly, it was a high structure conversion.
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Sharpness is seriously overrated.
(https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20190329/91abf4d2f61af1cff7a95d83ba847304.jpg)
Sometimes.
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The images are so small I can't tell what, if anything, the images, would lose if they were sharper. The only thing that come to mind is that they might lose is the look of the era in which they were taken - that sort of smooth, low contrast, slightly mushy look.
The look of the era is indeed worthy of preservation. That said, the same era offered perfectly sharp and detailed images too.
I think the point is that one style gives a human touch in the sense of emotional connection, whereas a lot of detail turns the exercise into a little bit of human archaeology, if you see what I mean, where rather than get a sense of person we get a sense of skin condition. It is carried across into my feelings about contemporary PR photography of celebs, where there is no contact with person only with "project promotion", as it were, though in the case of the latter, through too much retouching where the person morphs into plastic doll. Those old shots from Avedon and Stern of Marilyn are so powerful and memorable precisely because they showed her as vulnerable; they were pretty grainy and mushy, too, and both those photographers were perfectly capable of doing high gloss where required; who remembers shots of any current plastic fantastic?
I have no pet dog in this fight because I no longer make pix of women, and what I do shoot I also usually wind up trying to defuse from painfully sharp. I can only speak of what appeals to me, which is why I guess I'm such a fan of Moon and Turbeville; just to prove the mind isn't closed, I also enjoy both Feurer and Lindbergh, who can do it both ways too.
:-)
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Sharpness is seriously overrated.
(https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20190329/91abf4d2f61af1cff7a95d83ba847304.jpg)
Sometimes.
Horses for courses and clients are courses too, so most of my commercial work had to be sharp.
This began life as a 6x7 Ektachrome for a travel company poster.
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The look of the era is indeed worthy of preservation. That said, the same era offered perfectly sharp and detailed images too.
The sharpest portraits I have made are collodions on glass with century old Petzval lenses.
Sharpness is just as unsharpness a tool in the toolbox.
The steep learning curve towards decent 8x10” portraits learned me to carefully play with sharpness and unsharpness in regions not larger than the distance between the eyebrow and the whisker. Scheimplfug is large format portrait photographers best friend at that moment.
I made some keynotes for school use on how to portait on large format. The keynote is in Dutch, no use here on Lula.
(https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20190329/7d560c77ff370587c9af866c9b14cd3d.jpg)
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Horses for courses and clients are courses too, so most of my commercial work had to be sharp.
This began life as a 6x7 Ektachrome for a travel company poster.
O that’s a nice shot, Rob.
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I'm sure I've posted this here before. And it only qualifies as "street" if you're a dinosaur descendent. ;)
-Dave-
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O that’s a nice shot, Rob.
She was a nice girl, too. Wife of a guy who spent a lot of time out on the oil rigs... She had an Alsatian that was with her everywhere, at her side, and I don't think he was ever on a leash.
I remember meeting her one day in a shop and doing the air-kiss number, only to realise the pooch might not have understood. She had no interest in modelling at all, sadly, and only did the poster and brochure cover because they were friends of the guy who owned the company. She pretty much spent all day down on the sands every day of summer. They went their separate ways, and the client lost it to big C.
Everything changes.
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This book comes from Ken Van Sickle, an octogenarian New York photographer i posted about in the past. There is a short, three-minute video about him, with his pearls of photographic wisdom:
https://www.facebook.com/newshour/videos/10153876052678675/
And for those without a FB account:
https://youtu.be/hA_uVCCD5Is
Or about always carrying a camera:
Thank you for the link, Slobodan. I enjoyed it and wished it had been longer. The first link has a cool shot of his first wife looking down at the newspaper sits. vacs. and really does get into the spirit of home. It is not in the second link for some reason.
Rob
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Another with a bit of both.
(http://www.keithlaban.co.uk/Grandmother-_Child.jpg)
Grandmother and child, Jodhpur.
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Just right, to me.
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A big part of the reason I still often shoot vintage equipment is to get that classic look. I've just finished up processing x8 sheets of Ilford FP4+; they hanging up to dry as I type. I simply select whatever camera gear will give me the look AND experience I want. Wife & I are headed back to Washington state next month, this time to visit the southeast corner in addition to spending a day or so around downtown Seattle. For the fields of flowers and landscapes I'll use my Nikon DSLR to shoot color. For exploring the streets of the city I'll be using my newly restored 1931 Baby Rolleiflex with ISO 400 b&w film. :)
I did like Van Sickle's photos. I particularly liked the way he caught people's expressions, which are always fleeting.
Kent in SD
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I was wondering what more sharpness would have contributed to these pictures, and whether it would actually have ruined the atmosphere and handwriting they display.
Of course, looking at prints and looking at what happens after somebody other than the photographer takes images and bends them to his/her video isn't all that helpful, I suppose.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4JiUyuKWHL0
Of course, not "street" per se, but as this was raised here, it may be of interest nonetheless.
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Sharpness is seriously overrated.
(https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20190329/91abf4d2f61af1cff7a95d83ba847304.jpg)
Sometimes.
If this is an OOF photo of a Sunny Side Up egg, I would say it's been cooked too long. I like it best when it is fried quicker, then it looks more yellow than orange.
Still there is something very appetizing about this picture.
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Blur is a fact of life.
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Blur is a fact of life.
Yes, that's pretty much the way I see things these days. :'(
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Yes, that's pretty much the way I see things these days. :'(
i still have good vision without impairment so everything is sharp for me.
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Interestly, digital tends to sharpen details much more than film. I think that's a negative especially with street.
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i still have good vision without impairment so everything is sharp for me.
Interesting.
I only see sharp with the fovea centralis. The rest is unsharp
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Interesting.
I only see sharp with the fovea centralis. The rest is unsharp
My understanding* is I'm experiencing quite the opposite. Macular degeneration is robbing me of sharp vision within my fovea centralis. Scary stuff.
*My understanding may well be as flawed as my eyesight.
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My understanding* is I'm experiencing quite the opposite. Macular degeneration is robbing me of sharp vision within my fovea centralis. Scary stuff.
*My understanding may well be as flawed as my eyesight.
Sorry about that.
The quality of your photography would seem to indicate otherwise
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Sorry about that.
The quality of your photography would seem to indicate otherwise
Thanks.
Fortunately the problem is for the moment at least only in one eye - cataract forming in the other - and its progress is slow. What all this does mean is I'm having to seriously consider switching from manual rangefinder cameras to autofocus solutions.
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Autofocus has improved immeasurably, Keith. When Leica first switched to digital I desperately wanted a digital Leica with my good old split-image rangefinder, but the stuff Leica was putting out was full of bugs, so I went to Nikon. Finally, I tried the Olympus Pen-F as a street camera. It feels a lot like the M-4 in my hand, and the autofocus is almost instantaneous. Now I wouldn't go back to a split-image on a bet.
I'm really sorry to hear about your eyesight problems. I've had cataract surgery in both eyes, with complete success, so I know that nowadays that's not too big a problem, but macular degeneration is a different story. You've definitely "got the eye," and I very much hope you'll keep it.
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There must be no end of beautiful examples but I was reminded of White Heat by Bob Carlos Clarke. As a big admirer of his B&W work I'm lucky that my wife bought me the book. I think the lack of clinical sharpness and the movement is essential for some of these.
Some of them here:
www.thelittleblackgallery.com/product-category/bob-carlos-clarke-marco-pierre-white/ (https://www.thelittleblackgallery.com/product-category/bob-carlos-clarke-marco-pierre-white/)
I was lucky enough to be asked to photograph in the kitchen of one of my clients a few years ago and tried to pay homage as best I could. Nowhere near the class or the wildness but they and I were happy at the time. Plus his were film and mine digital. The images are small (and a couple missing) as its a post from my old blog but you get the idea.
www.tonymayimages.com/service/ (http://www.tonymayimages.com/service/)
Tony
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Autofocus has improved immeasurably, Keith. When Leica first switched to digital I desperately wanted a digital Leica with my good old split-image rangefinder, but the stuff Leica was putting out was full of bugs, so I went to Nikon. Finally, I tried the Olympus Pen-F as a street camera. It feels a lot like the M-4 in my hand, and the autofocus is almost instantaneous. Now I wouldn't go back to a split-image on a bet.
I'm really sorry to hear about your eyesight problems. I've had cataract surgery in both eyes, with complete success, so I know that nowadays that's not too big a problem, but macular degeneration is a different story. You've definitely "got the eye," and I very much hope you'll keep it.
Russ, thanks. I'm sad that it's coming to this as I've loved using my Leicas, have admired the pure simplicity and what was the ease of focusing those exceptional lenses. I believe that I've captured much of my best work with them in hand. My problems are accentuated now that I'm more often than not shooting near wide open and I have come to terms with the fact that I need some help.
I'll not burn my bridges until I'm sure any new system matches my ongoing needs.
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Russ, thanks. I'm sad that it's coming to this as I've loved using my Leicas, have admired the pure simplicity and what was the ease of focusing those exceptional lenses. I believe that I've captured much of my best work with them in hand. My problems are accentuated now that I'm more often than not shooting near wide open and I have come to terms with the fact that I need some help.
I'll not burn my bridges until I'm sure any new system matches my ongoing needs.
I have cataracts in both eyes, and am awaiting attention from the medical world. I had elevated pressure in both for several years, and drops have apparently reduced that to normal. There are days, no, moments within days, when I believe that without those damn veils that exist, I would no longer need glasses for distances. None of the effects that I experience seem to be constants, each varies a bit from hour to hoiur. I used to need reading specs from the age of 44, but had good distance sight; I now have no need for glasses for reading, and it's the distance view that's bad. Oddly, driving in lower light seems better than in bright, which may mean that glare affects cataracts more (one way of knowing you have 'em!) than does low light or, perhaps, a wide open pupil works better than the stopped down one in sunlight - more diffraction problems?
For a few years I was under the impression that I had glaucome, until I was sent to another eye doc who asked me who had said glaucoma, which I have not. Apparently, the explanation seems to be that some docs refer to high pessure as glaucomea because both seem to co-exist in most cases; I see that as Brexit politics: lies and party cover-ups.
Af certainly helps find focus using dslr screens which are not as helpful as were slr screens. With today's facilities for setting exactly the right diopter in your viewfinder, a split-image screen would be even more useful than it was on film camers where the option was usually another, separate diopter lens to choose, and how did you do that if not able to try 'em out in a shop?
Of course, that all assumes that your eye lets you see that damned split screen clearly, even with the right viewfinder setting.
In the end, however focus, I still feel that psychologically, and that matters, looking into a 6x6 camera's reflex screen was the best viewing experience I ever had: large enough to see more clearly what was actually in shot, yet small enough to allow an impression of overall shape.
Rob
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I have cataracts in both eyes, and am awaiting attention from the medical world. I had elevated pressure in both for several years, and drops have apparently reduced that to normal. There are days, no, moments within days, when I believe that without those damn veils that exist, I would no longer need glasses for distances. None of the effects that I experience seem to be constants, each varies a bit from hour to hoiur. I used to need reading specs from the age of 44, but had good distance sight; I now have no need for glasses for reading, and it's the distance view that's bad. Oddly, driving in lower light seems better than in bright, which may mean that glare affects cataracts more (one way of knowing you have 'em!) than does low light or, perhaps, a wide open pupil works better than the stopped down one in sunlight - more diffraction problems?
Rob, whatever you do, don't let them do both cataracts at once. I had a good friend who was an ophthalmologist. He was very emphatic about not doing two cataracts in the same operation. There's always a chance of failure for various reasons. I was lucky. My next-door neighbor wasn't so lucky. He lost his vision in one eye when the doc failed to catch a subsequent infection.
Af certainly helps find focus using dslr screens which are not as helpful as were slr screens. With today's facilities for setting exactly the right diopter in your viewfinder, a split-image screen would be even more useful than it was on film camers where the option was usually another, separate diopter lens to choose, and how did you do that if not able to try 'em out in a shop?
But the newer mirrorless cameras have tremendously improved EVFs. My Pen-F viewer is as clear as my Leica viewers were -- and, if anything, brighter.
In the end, however focus, I still feel that psychologically, and that matters, looking into a 6x6 camera's reflex screen was the best viewing experience I ever had: large enough to see more clearly what was actually in shot, yet small enough to allow an impression of overall shape.
Rob
It's been a long time since I looked into my Rollei viewer and even longer since I looked into my Ikoflex, but I tend to agree it was good stuff.
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A couple of years ago I had sudden case of CRVO ("Central Retina Vein Occlusion") in my left (non-dominant) eye, which has permanently damaged the retina, but only right in the middle, so I can't see clearly anything in that eye except by looking a little to the side. An injection in that eye every three months improves vision enough so that the left eye at least is able to assist the better right eye with stereo vision.
In addition, I had cataracts removed from both eyes about a year ago, so now I have good distant vision in the right eye, but need reading glasses to read anything in normal size type. Previously I had worn trifocals for many years.
P.S. My cataract operations were about a month apart, and they worked nicely.
And, the good right eye gets a daily eyedrop to keep the pressure normal.
At least I only need one good eye to do photography. :'(
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Rob, Eric, serious eyesight problems for any visual artist are a nightmare scenario. Here's hoping you both manage to keep your eye to the viewfinder for many years to come.
:)
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Thank you, Keith!