congrats

My experience sort of mirrors yours. My personal work prior to going digital was mostly black and white, although curiously I usually printed my black and whites on colour paper just because it was easier to just pop it through our paper processor than set up developing trays.
Shooting 100% digital now, and liking colour, but I have been trying with limited success to come up with good black and white conversion options. Today I downloaded a trial of Silver Efex Pro 11 and played with it awhile. Very impressive.

Still, sometimes I pull up scans from my old negs and kind of long for that.

I was in awe when I first saw this and I also did wonder a few of the same things that John Gladdy did. At first, I was a little disappointed when Powers posted the link to the images before the grain was added to them, but then I asked myself why? Especially since that was essentially my original goal.

If that is the look one wants and intends to end up with, does it really matter if it is shot smooth and the grain added later? The end result has the intended look and punch that the photographer was trying to achieve.

Still… somehow… something feels lost… yet it would not feel lost had I not followed the link Jim Powers posted… this must be indicative of some kind of artifact within the human mind.

wait ’til we drink in nyc :)))))

Yup. Well said, Bob. Who says you can’t do concise?

as a film guy who also boils his films (which y’all will see soon enough) to a beach of total and annihilating grain, i just want to remind folks (gently, not preacherly ;)) that whether it’s film from trix or film from photoshop, it does NOT MATTER…it’s all manipulation…i use trix because i want that grain, and grain doesn’t mean ‘authenticity’ it means (for me) texture, physicality, imperfection, oblivion, ache, memory, chronic, waves, dust, ash, etc….same with the vignetting (i get that with lomo, holga and diana) but it’s ok if you add that…all pictures are manipulated (in camera, in situ (with light/shadow/settings), in darkroom, in photoshop), who cares…the question is a simple one:

what is the aim….

i like mad-broken images and i like crisp images, film or digital, whatever…

it’s the picture/story that matters…technique serves that…and whatever a photographer can do to get that technique, i don’t care….

photography is not truth, photography is story telling….sometimes about events sometimes about emotion sometimes about dreams, sometimes about nothing….

it’s all cool…

I don’t loose one drop of admiration or respect or enjoyment for this work because the grain was created or the pics were ‘shopped….that’s what darkrooms did…that’s what camera’s do….

i like soiled things, thank goodness :))))

keep on rockin’, everyone!

running
bob

I’m a digital guy, and I’m not against digital processing. I was just surprised that the grain, etc., was not achieved naturally in the shot, but instead added at the back end. I think it looks pretty good (maybe a little over sharpened in a couple), but I think that this look would have been better if it were achieved in film.

There is also a bit of misleading in these. Photojournalism-style story edited to look like it was shot on film. Not the end of the world, just deflates my opinion of this set a little. Still like it though.

Regarding the fakery in processing, as most of you know, I have no problem with that whatsoever. My only fear is that if one does it to well then some programmer will write an app to mimic that style. No, what I don’t get is why so many use these oh so modern tools to mimic oh so historic looks. Other possibilities exist. Of that I am sure.

Regarding this essay, I too am impressed with the beauty of the photos. My criticism is that I don’t see them as particularly original and that I don’t think they stand on their own as visual storytelling. Seems to me they need a written story to illustrate, otherwise most of them could be from a high end ad shoot. And I’ve seen other, similar, boxing photographs, several of which were taken in Cuba. So I’m not getting anything particular about boxing in Cuba or transcendent about boxing in general. Beautiful photos, yes. But what do they tell us about anything? Anything beyond the widely held perception that athletes’ bodies are beautiful? And Leni nailed that one in ’38.

Like Jim I am not usually a fan of grainy black and white, as too often it is mis-used. In this case, it seems appropriate.
I was also wondering about the technique. Wether film or digital based, there is much evidence of digital post-processing.
The vignettes seem clearly digital, and there are odd banded double image things going on in some of the images. The rear out of focus figure in picture 1 for example, the profile in 5, and also present in 11 and 16. Several of the images also contain significant sharpening halos, 6 being the most obvious. The beautiful final image, while appearing simple, has had the highlights pulled way down, or a grey fill layer overlayed, then the white of the woman’s dress, and skin highlights masked out out. This is very effective and would be extremely difficult or impossible to achieve in a darkroom.

I have no problem at all with any technique a photographer chooses as long as it works, which it does wonderfully here.

I absolutely agree with you – thanks for posting the link to less “treated” versions of the photos. With those as a point of reference, I feel that the added grain and vignette detract from the transparency of the images. An artifact is one thing, and I happen to love artifacts whether film or digital, but I can’t say I feel the same about /artifice/.

L.