"Photography is not essentially a sensitive medium ...”

I'm trying to characterise things as what they are, which is merely factual.

We can be moved or we can be entertained - there can be crossover but they are not the same thing. There's a place for both - but let's be plain about the nature of everything.
 
droj said:
I'm trying to characterise things as what they are, which is merely factual.

We can be moved or we can be entertained - there can be crossover but they are not the same thing. There's a place for both - but let's be plain about the nature of everything.
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We can not be plain about the transcendent , it is different for everybody.
 
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Tempted to post a popcorn emoji but being less antagonistic I think this thread has run its course and probably should end here before it degenerates further
 
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"I just worry that this story has become a little self-indulgent. "

Yes, Alec, it has. And remember how lucky you are to be able to spend a year flouncing around in your barn.

On a slightly different tangent Jim Richardson made a comment on The Online Photographer the other day:

"Usually when people talk about the value of 'contemplative' photography what they mean in practice is taking pictures in pretty good light of stuff that doesn't move. Basically it means limiting the subject matter of photography to what a large camera on a tripod can do well. What digital photography has done is open of the world of really dark places and things that move quickly—and a lot. This has expanded photography and improved its ability to reflect the world (in my opinion)."

That's how I feel. If film isn't dead it needs putting out of its misery.

All the best from up north... ;)
 
I agree with the point about digital opening up new areas (and also lowering the bar to new entrants) but ...

Ed Sutton said:
If film isn't dead it needs putting out of its misery
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Flim is fun and challenging and makes me think more about what I am doing, long live film!



From even further north :)
 
sirch said:
Flim is fun and challenging and makes me think more about what I am doing, long live film!
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Looking back at my negatives from 40 years ago recently it doesn't appear that I have ever thought much about what I'm doing! :LOL:
 
Ed Sutton said:
On a slightly different tangent Jim Richardson made a comment on The Online Photographer the other day:

"Usually when people talk about the value of 'contemplative' photography what they mean in practice is taking pictures in pretty good light of stuff that doesn't move. Basically it means limiting the subject matter of photography to what a large camera on a tripod can do well. What digital photography has done is open of the world of really dark places and things that move quickly—and a lot. This has expanded photography and improved its ability to reflect the world (in my opinion).".
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https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.157024/page/n17

'Many who had picked up the Leica as a possible handy accessory to their great battery of equipment found in a year or two that they had definitely abandoned the large expensive sizes and were working exclusively with the miniature Leica. And not only did they find that the Leica was capable of doing much that the old view plate box was capable of doing but that it could do many things that the large camera could never do. It was possible to get pictures quickly in court rooms, in the dark of the theatre, at night on the street, a bird in its flight and a thousand and one more frozen and revealing records of our rapidly passing American scene. Speed and frankness are a characteristic of our time. The Leica with its freedom of expression became, almost overnight, the pocket note book of passing events.'

- Manuel Komroff 'The Leica comes of age' (1937)
 
Retune said:
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.157024/page/n17

'Many who had picked up the Leica as a possible handy accessory to their great battery of equipment found in a year or two that they had definitely abandoned the large expensive sizes and were working exclusively with the miniature Leica. And not only did they find that the Leica was capable of doing much that the old view plate box was capable of doing but that it could do many things that the large camera could never do. It was possible to get pictures quickly in court rooms, in the dark of the theatre, at night on the street, a bird in its flight and a thousand and one more frozen and revealing records of our rapidly passing American scene. Speed and frankness are a characteristic of our time. The Leica with its freedom of expression became, almost overnight, the pocket note book of passing events.'

- Manuel Komroff 'The Leica comes of age' (1937)
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I deleted the bit from my post I wrote about the greats of the past using the latest equipment and not outmoded gear. I was going to cite HCB et al and the Leica as an example. As I thought I had stirred it enough. Digital still beats a 35mm film camera. Who wants to use ISO 400, even pushed to 1600, when they can shoot at ISO 10,000 and upwards and get cleaner picture, in colour too?

Film is so last century. :D
 
Ed Sutton said:
I deleted the bit from my post I wrote about the greats of the past using the latest equipment and not outmoded gear. I was going to cite HCB et al and the Leica as an example. As I thought I had stirred it enough. Digital still beats a 35mm film camera. Who wants to use ISO 400, even pushed to 1600, when they can shoot at ISO 10,000 and upwards and get cleaner picture, in colour too?

Film is so last century. :D
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I didn't mean that as a film vs digital post, but it struck me that the shift away from tripod-bound 'contemplative' photography that Jim seems to ascribe to digital happened over 80 years ago, when the latest technology was written about in similarly excited terms. Of course, digital has made this even easier, and now everyone has a camera in their pocket. Anyone using film today either wants its particular texture, or just enjoys the process.
 
Baloo said:
Mantovani was certainly not as cynical as Sibelius who changed his name to sound more fashionably French. Sibelius rested on his laurels and did not compose after he had made enough money whilst Mantovani still helps composers through a trust years after his death. Of course in "art" circles elitism would possibly make anybody think twice about listening to Mantovani whilst having Sibelius on your hifi would give you kudos! So who is the contriver, hollow and superficial and who is the genuine one who simply loved music?
My point is that photography is no different to any other art, it is subject to fashion and snobbery/elitism. If I was looking for genuine talent and originality nowadays I would be looking at instagram and facebook where there is probably real raw talent, vision and sensitivity because it has not been "learnt" out of people. Just my opinion of course.
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Changed his name to sound more French? The horror! Of course by that standard we'd have to judge Frédéric François Chopin (born Fryderyk Franciszek) or even Ludwig van Beethoven (who sometimes styled himself 'Louis'), harshly. Not to mention a certain Endre Friedmann, who became André outside Hungary, but later settled on the more marketable 'Robert Capa'.

A bit hard on Sibelius, too, to write him off as a slacker resting on his laurels. His attempts to complete an 8th Symphony well into what would for most people be their retirement years seem to have been pretty tortured, and not helped by bouts of depression and alcoholism. But the work he did finish will be listened to for as long as there is music. I doubt Mantovani had any such ambitions for his oversweetened arrangements of popular tunes, 'light music' that was never intended to do more than entertain. Less forgivable, perhaps, is the sort of overhyped work sold for inflated prices by people like Peter Lik, the photographic equivalent of Mantovani, but without the accessible pricing.
 
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Retune said:
I didn't mean that as a film vs digital post, but it struck me that the shift away from tripod-bound 'contemplative' photography that Jim seems to ascribe to digital happened over 80 years ago, when the latest technology was written about in similarly excited terms. Of course, digital has made this even easier, and now everyone has a camera in their pocket. Anyone using film today either wants its particular texture, or just enjoys the process.
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I wondered if Richardson was thinking of the trend in 'art' photography to using large format these days. Which seems to me to be less about enjoyment and wanting a look than about being taken seriously by the art world.

Discovering the photography of André Kertész opened my eyes. He was never a slave to a particular format - he used Polaroid in his later years. Others, such as Parr, have embraced digital. People like that, it strikes me, are interested in the pictures rather than the recording medium inside the 'box with a hole in the front'.

I suppose photography is many things to many people.
 
Ed Sutton said:
I was going to cite HCB et al and the Leica as an example. As I thought I had stirred it enough.
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Not the best comparison in that case. Ok - you might go out with, oh, what - let's say a Fuji x100f - are you going to create better images than HCB? The answer is no! For that sort of image, it's about the gift of eye and sense of moment, place and meaning, and far less about the exact process used.

Ed Sutton said:
Digital still beats a 35mm film camera. Who wants to use ISO 400, even pushed to 1600, when they can shoot at ISO 10,000 and upwards and get cleaner picture, in colour too?
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Yes you're right, but that's just the mechanical dimension.
 
Retune said:
Changed his name to sound more French? The horror! Of course by that standard we'd have to judge Frédéric François Chopin (born Fryderyk Franciszek) or even Ludwig van Beethoven (who sometimes styled himself 'Louis'), harshly. Not to mention a certain Endre Friedmann, who became André outside Hungary, but later settled on the more marketable 'Robert Capa'.

A bit hard on Sibelius, too, to write him off as a slacker resting on his laurels. His attempts to complete an 8th Symphony well into what would for most people be their retirement years seem to have been pretty tortured, and not helped by bouts of depression and alcoholism. But the work he did finish will be listened to for as long as there is music. I doubt Mantovani had any such ambitions for his oversweetened arrangements of popular tunes, 'light music' that was never intended to do more than entertain. Less forgivable, perhaps, is the sort of overhyped work sold for inflated prices by people like Peter Lik, the photographic equivalent of Mantovani, but without the accessible pricing.
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Thanks for proving my point, love the way you state "his oversweetened arrangements of popular tunes, 'light music' that was never intended to do more than entertain." as if to entertain was not enough!
 
droj said:
Not the best comparison in that case. Ok - you might go out with, oh, what - let's say a Fuji x100f - are you going to create better images than HCB? The answer is no! For that sort of image, it's about the gift of eye and sense of moment, place and meaning, and far less about the exact process used.
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You've misunderstood. I was trying to say that people who move photography forward tend to use up to date equipment and explore what it's capable of. An iPhone is probably more suited than a Leica today for that sort of stuff. I doubt HCB would have embraced new technology. He wasn't even keen on colour film. I suspect because it's more difficult to his sort of pictures in colour.

The more I think about it HCB the more I think he was a one trick pony who had too long and large an influence on photography. Many aspects of life have such figures who have an undue influence over the direction that aspect takes, often holding its development back.

When I saw Kertész's pictures after I was aware of HCB, who I thought was the tops, I realised which was the more interesting photographer. He didn't limit himself to one camera either. He seemed more interested in trying new things.
 
Ed Sutton said:
Many aspects of life have such figures who have an undue influence over the direction that aspect takes, often holding its development back.
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Someone once said "The eminence of academics can be measured by how long they have held up progress in their field”

It probably applies outside of academia too.
 
sirch said:
Someone once said "The eminence of academics can be measured by how long they have held up progress in their field”
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A case that I still celebrate is that of the late Cecil Hewett (1926 - 1998), who as a dedicated amateur disrupted the established thinking on dating old English timber buildings.

His redating of medieval tithe barns and other buildings did not go down too well amongst the architectural historians of the day, who had entrenched ideas that were in good part (as is common) made up.

The increasing availability of radiocarbon dating though, proved him largely right.

Two barns at Cressing Temple, for instance, had been deemed by the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments to be16th century. Hewett redated them to c1200 and c1275!
 
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