i searched Burn submissions and found nothing from you…a letter yes, pictures no..?????

I pretty much trusted the advice I was getting here, but wanted to understand why. Sorry if I’ve been boorish on the subject.

Thank you so much for taking the time to give me a detailed response, much appreciated!

And I love the fact that you still do so much actual darkroom work, there’s just a special quality about those images. Explains why I spent so much time on your site :)

cheers

Ooops forgot to say I think people now expect to be able to push and pull images around a huge amount in photoshop and not have to worry too much destroying the image.

I too went through a phase of being really delicate with digi images as I was of the belief that I was some how committing to something I couldnt go back on and it is therefore changed forever, eg the old mindset of committing to a print in the darkroom and incurring the cost and time implication. This can now be done instantly if you have a calibrated monitor.

cheers

Ian

but now the tech has moved so far forward I get so confused with all the options I get so exasperated I sometimes hand digi files over to a post processing guru and explain what I want and then bounce back and forth ideas untill a final result is achieved, just like the good old days when you built up a relationship with a lab and they knew how you wanted your prints to look.

The lith printing process I was talking of is pretty difficult to replicate on a digi workstation, even when you just copy the prints getting the exact tones/colours correct is pretty tricky.

As far as scanning goes I think you are right, that in the past it was easier to get the scan as you want it, but now the wider the latitude in the scan the better (pull as much detail as possible from the film, then bin it if you don’t want it) I am just going through some drum scans (bodger operator) I had done a while back, they are bad compared to some of the imacons (expert operator) I have had done recently, This is due to operator issues not equipment issues.

cheers

ian

That line struck me because I’ve been thinking a lot about scanning after an exchange in the other thread and came to a similar conclusion/realization. In brief, there was a question of whether one should make adjustments with the scanning software. I thought yes, but haven’t done a lot of scanning for many years, and the consensus among the currently working professionals seemed to be no, to scan simply to get all the information then use a non-destructive editing workflow in Photoshop. I see the sense of that in a production environment, but am not so sure it’s the best idea for an individual producing his/her own work or for a professional scanner doing that kind of work for high end clients.

When I came of age in digital production, there were no adjustment layers or history palettes in Photoshop. We were limited to one undo, and color management was significantly worse than worthless (and I had to trudge many miles on foot to school, uphill in a snowstorm both ways, with no gortex lining in my boots). The skilled operators barely looked at the picture on screen. They saw the final product by looking at the histogram and the info palette. It’s a different way of seeing, but can be learned.

My memory is not the greatest, it’s pretty bad actually, but I’m sure the accepted wisdom back then was to get the best image possible out of the scan and I know we always made adjustments in the scanning software. The theory being that you lose a little quality with each duplication so it’s better to get the best results possible at each step. The current thinking, I’m told, is to scan in such a way as to give oneself the most options in Photoshop. That makes sense, but I still find it hard to believe that things have changed that much. That scanning is no longer a skilled profession. That technology has rendered it a mere production job that you could train anyone off the street to do in five minutes.

This gives away how much spare time I have to devote to idle thought and speculation. I downloaded documentation for some current scanning software to see what it had to say. It didn’t go into great detail, but did recommend making pre-scan adjustments, particularly in the curves. I don’t know if that’s just holdover functionality, a remnant from the pre-gortex days, or if some high end professionals still use it?

I’m pretty sure I would still use it, which brings me back to aitken’s point about producing something really tricky to duplicate. Granted, we have the RAW file or the negative, but that scan or tiff or print is the result of individual vision and skill at realizing it. I fear it takes something away when we rely to much on non-destructive editing techniques such as adjustment layers. At some point, controlling every little area of the image can result in the excremental, like HDR. And I’ve heard anecdotal evidence that that kind of thing undermines the value of prints.

Personally, I like the aesthetics of destructive editing. I think there’s something undefinable, yet palpable to work produced by an artist making choices he or she has to live with. Painters may obsessively paint over their unfinished work, but there’s no way they can go back to previous versions.

But maybe I’m crazy? I’m certainly no role model. I ride a motorcycle without a helmet and regularly dive into the shallow end of the pool. Probably best to take advice from saner people.

Anyway, sorry for running on. If nothing else, maybe a digital guy whining about lost arts will provide some amusement for all you film obsessed chemical reeking print guys.

I have been thinking of scanning all the B/W negs but there really is something in the wet process that is really tricky to duplicate.

Cheers

Ian

john

Cheers

ian

All the best

Ian

That is the long winded way combining old with new to get the effect you want. No doubt you can buy a plugin for ps now if you want. Infact this guys has some photoshop psd’S you can download. http://andrearusky.deviantart.com/

Glad you like the pics.

cheers

ian

“They are both close up head shots, they are both ‘likenesses’,they were both shot totally spontaneously in minutes, but there the similarity ends. I guess its fair to say that its fairly easy to make a likeness of anyone, much less so (in my experience) to capture an enduring ‘portrait’. It often requires a crossing of boundaries, and the breaking of trust. ”

Would you be willing to go into a bit more depth about what makes the image of Rupert more of a portrait than the one of DAH? I think I feel something in the former that’s not in the latter, but I’m not sure if it’s not just the feel of color vs. B&W….

best regards and good light,
a.

likewise from me Ian…i only wanted to answer your questions….and not such unusual questions at that…my whole career i have been aware of blatant nepotism that exists almost everywhere…so while i do occasionally publish the work of people i know or even friends, i really try to make a straight call…and the other very subjective thing here, and i think you said this in your first comment, is that because of my travels, seminars, Burn rendezvous etc., i end up “knowing” a whole bunch of folks out there..or at least i have met them…the publishing of John G of course coincided with his arrival all the way from London to come to the Burn meeting…his picture was logged into drafts a couple of months ago, but this simply seemed like a fun time to run it…i do like to “play” of course from time to time, so Jim Powers could have the cover tomorrow!! by the way, do you realize we have exchanged over 40 private emails?? damned dude, if i run one of your pictures somebody is going to think you have the inside track!!

cheers, david

a lot of great photographs on your site. I am curious: under “black and white”, third image from the left. This is the typical “filmstrip” effect I’ve seen so many times, and I love it, but I still don’t know how people do it. Is that something that’s done in Photoshop? Or is it just scanned that way? In other words, if I have some images that I want to show as a filmstrip, how do I go about it?

Sorry for asking a technical question here, but I’m hoping someone can help this neophyte.

thanks for your comprehensive response.

I think the problem is when viewing this site I sometimes flip into “looking at photo competetion sites mode” or something like that and being the cynical thing I am I end up questioning the relationships. When actually this is a magazine curated by you, published by you and it is for you to decide what goes up when and where so what is the problem if you choose to only publish work from your workshops (I know you would not do this). This at the end of the day is your vision and it is that that makes it strong and brings a vast range of photographic styles and photographers to the fore. Better this way than a sterile corporate vision.

I hope I haven’t come across as having sour grapes it certainly wasn’t meant that way and it certainly wasn’t meant to try a leverage my way into Burn.

It is interesting though saying you haven’t seen any submissions from me as I have posted a few singles for perusal, obviously not up to the grade, which of course is fair enough.

Hopefully we will catch up sometime though, and I was extremly sorry to miss you when you were over in London. I was opening an exhibition 100 miles away.

Cheers again

Ian

I had the same experience on the day Obama won the general election. I was staying in an old convent in Jerusalem (NZ, not Israel!!) for a story. No internet, no tv. So was sitting in the kitchen listening to the winning and losing speeches on the radio. At the time it made me think that it was probably the same as my mum and dad did during WW2… Except for them it would have been the BBC on the “wireless”!

Patricia