Luminous Landscape Forum

The Art of Photography => The Coffee Corner => Topic started by: Dave (Isle of Skye) on September 01, 2012, 07:50:32 pm

Title: Someone and something you have probably never heard of but should have!
Post by: Dave (Isle of Skye) on September 01, 2012, 07:50:32 pm
Many years ago a fellow club photographer gave me a DVD copied from a low grade tape, copied from who knows where, this low production value DVD was a revelation to me and I have since watched it many times over. It is a very British portrayal of a very British Photographer, who's work I think ranks in the highest echelons of monochromatic landscape photography, yet you have probably never heard of him. He also uses a process you have probably never heard of and a workflow of such rough and ready methods that you will simply not believe what you are seeing. But the results are astounding and the equal of any landscape photographer past or present, yes I really do mean past or present.

They say Photoshop has removed any remaining truth within photography and how back in the old days, it was oh so different then, because we couldn't do the tricks that modern photographers can do with their computers - wrong!

So if I have sparked your interest with my overly grand introduction and you want to know who the heck I could be talking about, then I suggest you pour yourself a nice glass of wine, hook up your computer to your wide screen TV and sit back and watch a very pleasant one and a half hours of pure photographic magic.

I present to you Norman Gryspeerdt and the Bromoil Process (http://www.youtube.com/user/Bromoil/videos?sort=da&flow=list&page=1&view=0)

Enjoy  :)

Dave
Title: Re: Someone and something you have probably never heard of but should have!
Post by: David Sutton on September 01, 2012, 10:30:56 pm
Thank you for the link Dave. A wonderful series of videos.
Title: Re: Someone and something you have probably never heard of but should have!
Post by: Tim Gray on September 02, 2012, 12:28:55 pm
Thanks for the link.  I have a soft spot for alternative processes and been printing platinum/palladium for several years.  This summer's project is the carbon transfer process, which is somewhat similar to the bromoil method.  It's amazing the manipulations he can execute entirely in analog.
Title: Re: Someone and something you have probably never heard of but should have!
Post by: Rob C on September 02, 2012, 03:43:43 pm
I've looked, tried to understand the 'why' and have given up trying to do so. Yes, clever, but just so removed from straight photographic printing techniques that it goes to a place that doesn't attract me at all.

There may be something to a finished print in the flesh, as it were, but for me, it doesn't come off as looking exciting on video.

This isn't to knock the idea at all - just that it leaves me, personally, out in the cold.

In a way, it's pretty much what I find I don't like about some contemporary model shots, but in the opposite direction: some over-worked model shots turn people into plastic, and these things in the videos go the other way and produce mud. I suppose that straight photography exists because it is so much more attractive...?

Hey ho!

Rob C
Title: Re: Someone and something you have probably never heard of but should have!
Post by: WalterEG on September 02, 2012, 06:28:58 pm
I couldn't get past a minute or two of the soporific man.  

Title: Re: Someone and something you have probably never heard of but should have!
Post by: Ed B on September 03, 2012, 12:56:19 am
I have yet to see a process past or present that beats a contact print on platinum.
Title: Re: Someone and something you have probably never heard of but should have!
Post by: WalterEG on September 03, 2012, 01:15:55 am
I have yet to see a process past or present that beats a contact print on platinum.

Any contact print will do if the format is big enough but, yeah, a platinum is tough to beat.

Title: Re: Someone and something you have probably never heard of but should have!
Post by: Walt Roycraft on September 03, 2012, 11:28:15 am
I found it fascinating, but I do think the final prints would have to be seen in person to fully appreciate it.
Thanks for posting them.
Title: Re: Someone and something you have probably never heard of but should have!
Post by: Dave (Isle of Skye) on September 03, 2012, 06:43:55 pm
I couldn't get past a minute or two of the soporific man.  

This video was made just before the poor man died for goodness sake.

Dave
Title: Re: Someone and something you have probably never heard of but should have!
Post by: WalterEG on September 03, 2012, 06:50:39 pm
What does that have to do with anything?  We'll all join him sooner or later.

Title: Re: Someone and something you have probably never heard of but should have!
Post by: Rob C on September 04, 2012, 05:05:38 am
What does that have to do with anything?  We'll all join him sooner or later.


And one of the reasons that I think Inheritance Tax is so iniquitous: we're not going to take it with us, so why should governments feel entitled to steal it instead? If you did that without being in government, you'd get arrested. Anything you leave behind is still going to end up in the shops and circulating to the good of the economy and raising eventual tax revenue - taxing it directly just because someone died is a form, a particularly nasty form of bloody theft and nothing more.

Rob C
Title: Re: Someone and something you have probably never heard of but should have!
Post by: Patricia Sheley on September 04, 2012, 06:20:28 pm
...this was a nice glimpse, peek through the surface and between the spaces hidden there with a perfectly wonderful gentleman who radiated a personal calm and contentment as he walked us through his process/way of vision...I find it illuminating to feel the vision of others as they express and recall that vision...

he understood layers and feathering radius well ahead of me, but what really resonated was his easy means of dwelling in his vision without needing to give that space a name...the tools we try to apply if we live long enough disappear and what they allow to fly free become easy extensions of our expression....

So thank you Dave for this visit which I am personally glad to have shared...
Title: Re: Someone and something you have probably never heard of but should have!
Post by: David Sutton on September 05, 2012, 08:16:44 pm
....and thank you Patricia. I could have wrestled with the words for a year and not have expressed it better...
Title: Re: Someone and something you have probably never heard of but should have!
Post by: Rob C on September 06, 2012, 03:59:21 am
Rereading this thread, I conclude that people confuse the message with the messenger. I still think the product was dull.

Rob C
Title: Re: Someone and something you have probably never heard of but should have!
Post by: petermfiore on September 06, 2012, 05:55:07 am
In this case, the fault is with the viewer not the viewed. This is not  a glib response.


Peter
Title: Re: Someone and something you have probably never heard of but should have!
Post by: WalterEG on September 06, 2012, 08:26:43 am
As part of my day off I watched all the vids.

The guy was highly skilled at his craft, but I question the craft.  Maybe it is more acceptable these days given the amount of fakery that goes on with digital files.  For better or for worse I am a Modernist at post and a Post-Modernist in my dreams but using one medium as a means of replicating - or attempting to replicate - another medium falls a long way short for me.

Title: Re: Someone and something you have probably never heard of but should have!
Post by: Dave (Isle of Skye) on September 06, 2012, 05:31:15 pm
...this was a nice glimpse, peek through the surface and between the spaces hidden there with a perfectly wonderful gentleman who radiated a personal calm and contentment as he walked us through his process/way of vision...I find it illuminating to feel the vision of others as they express and recall that vision...

he understood layers and feathering radius well ahead of me, but what really resonated was his easy means of dwelling in his vision without needing to give that space a name...the tools we try to apply if we live long enough disappear and what they allow to fly free become easy extensions of our expression....

So thank you Dave for this visit which I am personally glad to have shared...

Patricia, those are wise words indeed.  :)
Title: Re: Someone and something you have probably never heard of but should have!
Post by: Rob C on September 07, 2012, 03:24:10 am
In this case, the fault is with the viewer not the viewed. This is not  a glib response.


Peter


Absolutely right: it's an opinion, like all others expressed here. No more, no less.

Rob C
Title: Re: Someone and something you have probably never heard of but should have!
Post by: ripgriffith on September 07, 2012, 10:09:28 am
I couldn't get past a minute or two of the soporific man.  


I guess, for your mentality, they should have tightly scripted the piece and added a techno-music sound track.
Title: Re: Someone and something you have probably never heard of but should have!
Post by: WalterEG on September 07, 2012, 06:32:19 pm
I guess, for your mentality, they should have tightly scripted the piece and added a techno-music sound track.

Wrong!