I've had a fun photographic week, posting some previously unseen older work and doing some new shooting. The standout was probably "Paint Spill," which was chosen for Flickr's "Explore" feature and is nearing 10,000 views (by Flickr's count) as I write this. Read the write-up, too; it was an interesting situation with an evergreen lesson for all of us.
In response to the "New Work" post this past week, we got a lot of great comments. Many of them were outstanding. As a sampling, here's a selection of responses I didn't post fast enough when they were offered:
Michael W Plant: "Hi Mike, I have just spent some time looking though your Flickr account and I have to say you are slowly getting there a body of work that reflects the place and time you live in. Can I suggest you spend more time out with your camera, so you can progress with your image making more quickly. I know what it means to sit on work for way to long and not make enough of it, then time goes and you still have not made enough images. Time is not your friend in this regard so please get to making more images."
Mike replies: It's tough. I have too much to do already and too frequently feel very weary and lacking in energy. And there are times recently when I've gone out shooting and have come back with...nothing. And it costs a lot, mainly in gasoline (petrol) as well as time. But I do enjoy photographing, and I wish I could do more of it.
Sean: "It’s hard to explain the feelings some of your pictures of your life in the Finger Lakes evoke in me. The closest I can come to is the feeling I get when faced with some indifferent beauty that tells me I came before you, continues out of your gaze, and will long outlast you. ‘Still points’ might be a good description. I don't mean to liken you to Robert Adams, but I recall him having to seek company when faced with certain scenes. Have you ever felt that way?
"Re colour management, I remember researching light booths and 18% grey wall paint for my monitor/print room. Half the time, my nose was stuck in Andrew Rodney’s book Color Management for Photographers and the other half was spent chatting in forums about colour spaces. 'Best viewed on a colour-calibrated monitor' was often said more in hope than expectation. And when somebody criticised the dynamic range of a shot, the standard response was: 'It was edited on a calibrated [x] using an [x] calibrator, you tyro.' Those silly back-and-forths seem quaint by today's internet standards."
Moose: "Re 'Prints are susceptible to looking different under different lighting, as well as different types of lighting. Museum lighting was traditionally strong and bright, and now is often the opposite.' Oh yes! A recent-ish show of St Ansel's prints in San Francisco was so dimly lit that his (archival) prints, printed for the then-usual lighting, were deeply murky. People were going in close and squinting. A woman standing next to me commented to her companion how the person on the side just didn't fit. I pulled out my pocket flashlight and lit the print. "Oh, that looks right now!" Awful. A wildly different set of prints would be needed.
"Re 'So take a look at that one when you get home.' That one looks fine, but some of the others are too dark for me. Then again, we know our tastes differ."
Mike replies: Another neat trick besides the flashlight demo is, when faced with a dark print, look at an area of it through the cardboard tube from a roll of paper toweling. You'll be amazed. It has the same effect as the flashlight, more or less.
Dan Khong: "I like your composition of the herd of cattle resting under the shade of the trees."
Jeff: "A viewing booth really helps when printing, provided it corresponds to display lighting conditions. I also like using ImagePrint software, as it provides custom profiles not just for virtually all papers, but for different lighting conditions. It also operates in full time soft proof mode. Another underrated viewing variable, besides lighting, is the type of glass used to frame a print. Without top quality glass (I bought Museum glass in bulk from a commercial supplier to drastically reduce cost), subtle tones can be lost, much like dry-down effects when wet printing. I, too, love Roy DeCarava: A Retrospective. But nothing compares to seeing the actual prints, which I had the pleasure to view at MoMA in 1996. Shame that so many people don’t experience well executed B&W fine prints, let alone do their own printing. I think I would give up photographing if screen viewing were the sole output."
Jack Luke: "I was a photography department technician at an art school for a very happy nine-month post-graduate placement. Among my other jobs, I managed nesting [do you mean testing? I don't get "nesting" —Ed.] and charging for prints on our big Epson printers. I fondly remember working on a series of prints with a young lad who carried around a portable darkroom in a briefcase (!) and wore sunglasses at all times—he really fancied himself as a bit of a Wes Anderson film character. Anyway, I had to tactfully explain that his prints were perhaps a bit blown out because he wore sunglasses while editing them.... I also had to tell the same lad to wear shoes in the darkroom because he kept frightening everyone who couldn't hear him walking. What fun!"
We'll close the comments to this post to avoid confusing me further. :-)
Mike
Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)
Comments