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Re: [OM] Good Grief, Irene! & digiphotography

Subject: Re: [OM] Good Grief, Irene! & digiphotography
From: Bob Whitmire <bwhitmire@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 2 Sep 2011 10:28:31 -0400
On Sep 2, 2011, at 1:12 AM, Moose wrote:

> On 8/30/2011 8:32 AM, Bob Whitmire wrote:
>> ...
>> 
>> Ah, well, I've had my share of good breaker pictures. I guess Irene was a 
>> bust in more ways than one. Or I was.
>> 
>> Sigh. Watch for a future post on a future blog about proper surf 
>> photography.<g>
> 
> You indeed have your share, including some great ones. Glad I have a few of 
> your prints, to remind me how much finer 
> they are than the web can show. I was just looking at your site and ran off 
> to look at the intro image, "Lightwave", in 
> person. It's so crude on the web.
> 
> I was in a shop in Ft. Bragg, CA a bit ago where they had cards and prints by 
> a local who does much of what you do, 
> local stuff. His "Green Wave" reminded me of your "Greenwall". Although not 
> nearly as strong a composition, he got great 
> color and lots of energy.
> 
> But this one struck me as rather spectacularly different from most breaking 
> wave images. Very unusual! 
> <http://jonkleinphoto.com/waves/fan-shaped-wave.html>

That is unusual, and quite striking. I've not seen anything like that here, 
though we do have waves thrashing one another from time to time.

> 
> The guy has some good stuff. What you can't tell on his site is that the 
> finished prints, while OK, just don't measure 
> up to your beautifully crafted ones.

You can cruise so far with your printing, but when you want to go that little 
bit extra, you slip off cruise control and downshift into granny. No other way 
to do it, except maybe by a good pro lab.

> On 8/31/2011 10:14 AM, Bob Whitmire wrote:
>> That's true, to a point. I think digital photography is best, or most 
>> happily, undertaken by people with tendencies toward split personalities. 
>> There's a need for an eye, an ability to see the patterns, the compositions, 
>> the possibilities, and to recognize the much maligned decisive moment. But 
>> in order to bring all of that to a satisfactory image, the artist must 
>> surrender some of most of his sensibilities to the technician, the 
>> theoretical and optical physicist. In the wet darkroom, the artist gave way 
>> to the chemist and the optical specialist, but that's changed with photoshop 
>> and digital printing.
>> 
>> You can have a complete mastery of the theory, and the application of 
>> photoshop, but your images can be horrid. Or, conversely, you can have the 
>> eye of a Leonardo and the technical ability of a bag of hammers, and be 
>> forever frustrated by your inability to put your vision onto a print.
> 
> An excellent summary!

Thanks! Though I think Andrew was right when he noted that a good eye can 
always muster some help on the technical side. I recall a famous wedding 
photographer who used to write a lot in magazines such as Shutterbug, and he 
always talked about his "photoshop guy." Also, I recall some old wet darkroom 
types had "assistants" who more than likely were the tech and chemistry wizards 
of the operation.

--Bob
-- 
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