ingres vs. manet - any thoughts?

[Guest sirvine]

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Your last comment is funny to me, JC, since I am constantly amazed at the photographic skill of good cinematographers (whose best work often doesn't correspond to the quality of the movies). Plus, those guys have to pull off choreographed focus and aperture changes!

 

In my opinion, Christopher Doyle's work on Wong Kar-Wai's In the Mood for Love (and most of his other films) is light years beyond most mass circulation fashion photography, including Annie Leibovitz (whom I also believe to be a gimmicky photographer). I would love to see Mr. Doyle's personal still collection--I imagine it would be beyond exceptional.

[smokysun]

last night i ran across this at the used bookstore:

 

Amazon.com: Modern Contemporary: Art at MoMA Since 1980: Books: Kirk Varnedoe,Paola Antonelli,Joshua Siegel

 

fascinating because it includes regular photography, film stills, sculpture, ads, drawings, paintings, you name it. 500 pages of mixed work. and they don't separate it according to genre, which makes it even more interesting. it must have been a monumental show. and i'd recommend 'memoirs of a geisha' for its cinematography. i agree, those guys really have to know what they're doing. millions of dollars and many careers depend on the outcome.

 

as for not being able to appreciate nan goldin or annie leibowitz, i think that it proves 'subject matter matters'. perhaps it's the theater person in me and the eternal child who enjoys their work. goldin for the tragedy of aging, addiction, dying, even while trying to remain eternally young in a world of fantasy. leibovitz cause she makes her figures larger than life (it would affect me much more if she'd do it with ordinary people instead of celebrities). i do think you have to feel a certain yearning for childhood and playing dress-up to enjoy their work, to be touched or amused by it.

 

and also we have to be able to set aside our everyday moral judgments. jung said our own energy tied up with our shadow side (this could be good impulses we deny as well as the dark). if you see morally, i suspect you're not really seeing at all. and i believe this is the way most of us do see. joyce cary said, 'a writer has to portray the opposite of what he/she believes as strongly as what he/she does believe' and used dostoyevsky's devil as an example. we're a strongly educated in moralizing (comes from the british and the puritans). this is probably the principle reason artists marginalized in our culture. (talking from the american point of view.) remember: the puritans closed the theaters. and forbade dancing.

 

wayne

[sean_reid]

Sean,

 

This is a fascinating topic. A few years ago one of the favourite questions asked by tutors interviewing applicants for places at Cambridge University’s Engineering Faculty was – Which is the most difficult; Colour or Black & White photography?

 

The answer they wanted was Black & White on the grounds that it was more abstract and required mental agility to “see and analyse” a scene in B&W whereas Colour was there in front of you and required no such mental effort. (Discuss – as they say!)

 

I’m inclined to think however that, in the real world, there has been fewer great colour photographers than B&W photographers. The topic is to my mind bedevilled by documentary, reporting and nature photography where there are some great photographs which, because of commercial and media pressures, are invariably in colour.

 

I agree with you and I think the examiners were mistaken. Now, as I think we both know, this is not a question of one medium (color) being better or worse than another but rather of one involving additional complexities.

 

A painter typically has a solid background in color theory, etc. and can choose any color he or she wants for any part of a canvas. A photographer very often has not studied color and often (leaving aside Photoshop) includes colors by choosing from what exists. But, of course, those choices must be made while many other changes (that are essential to the picture) are in flux. A color photographer (who works from life, especially in man-made environments) is a kind of juggler who must keep many pins in the air. The B&W photographer is already a juggler but without that last pin. That's why I say that much of the color photography I see uses color incidentally rather than intentionally. The decisions that lead to the creation of the picture are made for many reasons, but often color is not one of them. As such, color simply ends up being a random property of the various elements within the frame.

 

Photographers often take large steps in order to make color intentional. Studio photographers often choose sets, backgrounds, clothing colors, skin tones, etc. etc. in an effort to make color "work" in a picture. They are able to create many of the colors used in their pictures in advance of the shutter being released. Other photographers, such as Bergman, often simplify the elements in the frame and choose colors (and their relationships) with great intentionality.

 

The computer world often treats B&W as some kind of "special effect" when, in fact, it's the bedrock of photography. Color is an additional element and serious photographers who choose to use it have specific additional challenges.

 

Ironically, the only time I shoot in color with the M8 is when I do so for commercial clients or article illustrations. My personal work, with this camera, is really all in B&W. So, for professional reviewing reasons, I've done all this research about filters and codings and emulations, etc. for the articles when my personal work with the camera doesn't really require any of that. Were it not for commercial clients, I wouldn't own a single IR-filter save for those needed to test lenses, etc. for reviews.

 

Ben will hopefully drop in on this topic today.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

[robertwright]

who was it that said "color photographs are what you get when you put color film in your camera"?

 

I think that compared to painting, color photography is interesting precisely because photographers in general don't have control over the color in their photographs, as sean said, that extra pin in the air. The fact of having to deal with that is a challenge. Also why I tend to not like someone like Alex Webb-to me an overstatement of color, whereas I do like William Allard, although here I am contradicting myself, he uses color very much like a painter, judiciously.

 

I'm not sure I want color photography to ape Painting, I want it to have it's own way. So someone like Eggleston or Shore whose color is not incidental but intrinsic, that interests me.

[Guest sirvine]

If the examiners' question was really: "which is more difficult", then I would also say they're wrong. Even if color is incidental at the time of capture, maintaining accurate color through the output process is about the most mind-bendingly complex problem a modern photographer faces. At some point, the questions presented by maintaining accurate color rendition verge on the philosphical: how do I know whether your 'gamut' is even approximately similar to mine?

 

Putting that aside, the great thing about rules and conventions is that they give the contrarians something to work with. Bruce Gilden's 'fashion magazine' is one of the most compelling and perfect commercial presentations, and it's mostly black and white photos of "regular" people. If you ever have a chance to peruse the whole collection in their full 11x16 format, you'll never be able to flip the pages of modern Vogue (or VF) again without a profound sense of disappointment for what could/should have been.

 

LOL...look what I found! Fashion Magazine by Bruce Gilden: 7 Sins of Fashion: Power, Fame, Addictions, Body, Fatasms, Exclusive, Illicit - Wal-Mart

[sean_reid]

who was it that said "color photographs are what you get when you put color film in your camera"?

 

I think that compared to painting, color photography is interesting precisely because photographers in general don't have control over the color in their photographs, as sean said, that extra pin in the air. The fact of having to deal with that is a challenge. Also why I tend to not like someone like Alex Webb-to me an overstatement of color, whereas I do like William Allard, although here I am contradicting myself, he uses color very much like a painter, judiciously.

 

I'm not sure I want color photography to ape Painting, I want it to have it's own way. So someone like Eggleston or Shore whose color is not incidental but intrinsic, that interests me.

 

Hi Robert,

 

Photographers do have control over color but getting everything to work at once is difficult and, frankly, rare. The challenge is not so much that they can't control it but rather that they must and that such control is not easy in a medium which responds optically, in part, to existing things. When the color within the frame does not work they have at least three choices.

 

1. Wait for it to change (the man in the blue jacket leaves and the woman in the red dress comes along, etc.)

2. Change the colors in Photoshop (a hybrid method of painting and photography)

3. Don't press the shutter release. Start again.

 

On of the reasons that color photography is difficult is that number 3 is often the best option. When one looks at Bergman's pictures, its very clear (at least from the edit that made the book) that he didn't press the shutter unless the color in the frame was going to be strong. His choices of subjects, backgrounds (from the streets mostly) light, etc. - it was all influenced by color.

 

Also, Bergman had no interest in "accurate" color per se (although we all know how important accurate color can be for lots of commercial work). His philosophy was to "print the negative". He knew his film and he gave it free rein. This often lead to colors that were not naturalistic, to say the least. When the printing for the book was being prepared, he had to explain (more than once I understand) to the pre-press people that the color was not to be "corrected". The colors in his negatives were the colors in his prints were the colors in the book reproduction (to the degree possible).

 

As far as aping goes, painting doesn't even ape painting. <G> I agree that color is quite intrinsic for Stephen and Eggleston.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

[smokysun]

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i would just like to add a couple to sean's list:

 

4. readymades (in honor of duchamp).

 

this includes store windows (displays), bullfights, festivals, fairs, circuses, concerts, theater and dance, and countries with a lot of ethnic color such as guatemala, nepal, and kenya. the art work has been done. all you have to do is put a frame around it. (lighting can be tricky however and often takes some post-processing.)

 

5. macro

 

flowers, textiles, electron microscope and rocks, insects, paper money, coins, art works, etc.

[Guest malland]

Starting at the simple level of a snapshot, it seems to me it's easier to produce a snapshot, or a picture postcard, by shooting color rather than b&w because you point your camera at say, a landscape and you have a picture postcard, while a b&w picture of the same scene will most of the time be something that most people will throw away, unless the graphic element is very strong. Now, when it comes to trying to make great pictures, my feeling that the situation is reversed: perhaps we can get at this by considering that you want to imitatate a great photographer that you like. I like Moriyama Daido, but say you like Ansel Adams: it seems to me that the B&W work of either is easier to imitate than, say, a color photographer like Eggleston. Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating imitation, but the idea of imitation highlights the issue for me: taking the idea beyond imitaiton, it's more difficult to make a great color photograph than a great b&w photograph, although both are difficult — at this level it's easier to end up with something trite with color than it is with B&W.

 

I can't resist saying something about Annie Liebowitz: some years there were two exibitions of portrait photographs at the Corcoran in Washingtoin, Annie Liebowitz and Arnold Newman. What a misfortune for Annie Liebowitz: her photographs were really shallow compared to Anrnold Newman's. All show and very little substance.

 

—Mitch/Paris

http://www.flickr.com/photos/10268776@N00/

[Guest stnami]

I use the camera with one eye on the visual information before me and one eye on photoshop

Time to abandon about using colour in the traditional sense and techniques of photography. and use the technology at our disposal, the the camera and applications such as Photoshop, painter etc become a single unit.

* The landscape/urban image maker goes out in the field with a computer, camera etc, take the image and mixes colours on the spot after downloading. .............. example all major colour work was done on location last week, tweeked at home....etrouko Imants Krumins

[sean_reid]

I use the camera with one eye on the visual information before me and one eye on photoshop

Time to abandon about using colour in the traditional sense and techniques of photography. and use the technology at our disposal, the the camera and applications such as Photoshop, painter etc become a single unit.

* The landscape/urban image maker goes out in the field with a computer, camera etc, take the image and mixes colours on the spot after downloading. .............. example all major colour work was done on location last week, tweeked at home....etrouko Imants Krumins

 

It's true, for sure, that once one chooses to change color in Photoshop (and learns to do it well), it's a whole different ballgame...a hybrid medium of photography and electronic painting. In that case the original exposure is more a source than a picture unto itself. Color can be chosen as freely as it is when one is painting (given sufficient technique)..

 

I'm very interested in this hybrid medium. I haven't used it yet but probably will with many of the Daytona pictures.

[charlesphoto99]

Your last comment is funny to me, JC, since I am constantly amazed at the photographic skill of good cinematographers (whose best work often doesn't correspond to the quality of the movies). Plus, those guys have to pull off choreographed focus and aperture changes!

 

In my opinion, Christopher Doyle's work on Wong Kar-Wai's In the Mood for Love (and most of his other films) is light years beyond most mass circulation fashion photography, including Annie Leibovitz (whom I also believe to be a gimmicky photographer). I would love to see Mr. Doyle's personal still collection--I imagine it would be beyond exceptional.

 

I had the pleasure of sharing a beer with Christopher Doyle a few years back. IMO the man is a genius with a camera, though like anyone he has his good days and then there's just making a buck. I can't remember which film it was but I recall seeing one awhile back and commenting on how bad it was, particuarly the directing but also the cinematography. Turned out it was shot by Doyle. I can relate though - I turn in my best work when someone hires me for my creativity and personal style vs they just needed somebody behind a camera.

 

His still photos are very good as well - dark and off-kilter with very bright saturated colors. He primarily works with high end p&s - I shot a film once and know that I didn't have much tme for anything beyond shooting the film so many cinematographers on the job rely on the facile quality of p&s. Doyle made a small book of his photos I was lucky enough to pick up - no idea how easy it is to find but worth it if you do.

[robertwright]

Hi Robert,

 

As far as aping goes, painting doesn't even ape painting. <G> I agree that color is quite intrinsic for Stephen and Eggleston.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

 

unless it is the ape from David Letterman that does the paintings....<guffaww>

[Guest sirvine]

Doyle made a small book of his photos I was lucky enough to pick up - no idea how easy it is to find but worth it if you do.

 

I just picked up a copy of what seems to be Mr. Doyle's snaps from the sets of the Wong Kar-Wai movies. I love buying strange books on eBay, so thanks for the tip!

 

I also forgot to mention above that Stanley Kubrick is an obvious example of a photographer who mastered both black and white and color. For black and white, his still photo work is under-rated and (IMO) Barry Lyndon is the pinnacle of explicitly "painterly" photography.

[smokysun]

believe it or not the cinematographer for barry lyndon once shot some scenes for a movie at my fire lookout. his secret: spray everything with water!

 

do you know the work of franco fontana? this book very interesting

 

Amazon.com: Franco Fontana: Unpublished Notes: Books: Franco Fontana

 

basically snapshots he took around the world as color studies. everything you can imagine: walls, cars, puddles of water, etc. one thing becomes very obvious: the incredible power of red. those without red harder to make emphatic.

 

i like to study fashion photographers a lot. true, they can control conditions, but like cinematographers they have to know their color stuff. and i agree with imants and sean the future probably can't help but be the cross-breeding between photography and photoshop. just received this in the mail and it's a perfect example:

 

Amazon.com: Javier Vallhonrat: Books: Javier Vallhonrat

 

i suppose one could argue that this encourages fantasy, the substitution of a virtual reality for actual experience. however, a novel is an experience. humanity has always depended on stories and epics to form its values. i'd even say, 'truth is only possible as an illusion.'

 

contrarily, photography has always had a certain magic by imitating the common reality (even if it be in b&w and something totally different). there will always be a place for pictures just one step away from the everyday as opposed to those two or three steps.

 

alas, for me working in b&w a lot easier. yet it depresses me to do so. i need color in my life. still, i'm too lazy to study color theory. i'm convinced i can pick it up from looking at pictures. no wonder it all takes so long!

[Guest malland]

..... example all major colour work was done on location last week, tweeked at home....etrouko Imants Krumins

Imants, great color work: I particularly like the picture with of the building.

 

—Mitch/Paris

http://www.flickr.com/photos/10268776@N00/

[Guest stnami]

Thanks , I really do feel that with colour it is about saying what are these colours telling me and which ones should I use. The GRD is capable, different to the pentax and different to the Leica different to film

[smokysun]

this brings up a point which seems to get lost in translation:

the picture is not the journey, but a new reality.

 

how often do you come back from a trip to find yourself disappointed in the photos? they feel so pale and static compared to the experience, especially if you've gone someplace as vivid as india or climbed mt. everest!

 

then gradually the pictures become an aid to memory as the journey begins to fade. eventually they displace the memories almost altogether and we've a new story distilled from the old.

 

can picture-taking make the moment itself more vivid? or are we constantly translating what is before us into something else?

 

watching hordes of tourist pile out of the buses to click away at the parthenon or the golden temple, one wonders: will they wait til they get home to see where they've been?

 

an example: five hundred shots at a dance dress rehearsal last week. it flashed by so quickly one could only get a general impression, and pick up the energy and excitement, taken on many journies. once home, the frozen moments show incredible expressions, gestures, arrangements of figures. which is more 'real'?

 

wayne

[Ben Lifson]

Of a well known picture by Paul Cezanne (attached) the great 20th century art historian, Meyer Schapiro, remarks:

 

“The strongest contrasting chord, the orange rocks and blue sky, also binds the most distant space and the nearest. A scale of lavender, rose, and purple tones extends across the same depth.”

 

“Chord”. “Scale”.

 

In these two simple words at the heart of these two simple observations lies much of crucial importance to any photographer wishing to work in color.

 

According to The New Harvard Dictionary of Music (1986 edition) a chord is “Three or more pitches sounded simultaneously or functioning as if sounded simultaneously; two such pitches are normally referred to as an interval.”

 

A scale, says the same dictionary, is “A collection of pitches arranged in order from lowest to highest or from highest to lowest. The pitches of any music in which pitch is definable can be reduced to a scale.”

 

Substitute "hue" for "pitch" and we understand Schapiro's observation.

 

Cezanne's interval of orange and blue, above and below the scale of lavender, rose and purple, are the top and bottom of this 5-hued, or 5-pitched chord.

 

Schapiro's brief but accurate and sensitive remark also teaches us one aspect of how color works in pictures: to create the composition, to hold the composition steadily and surely as a whole form, and to define the various relationships between and among the various images and their various hues.

 

If we are to photograph successfully in color we must learn how to create chords and scales of hue as surely as a composer must learn to create chords and scales of pitches..

 

In my photograph, attached below, which I made at The Mall of Asia, Manila, the Philippines, in July, 2006, I used a chord of orange (in the left foreground) and of blue (in the center background and the right middle ground) and yellow (on the right, to bind, in Schapiro’s words, the most distant space and the nearest.

 

Between them runs a scale of blacks, greens, reds, pinks and golds....A complex chord unifying the same depth in a similar way and creating the harmonies of hues within the top and bottom hue of the chord and to the left and right of the picture..

 

Because the color composition works, unifying space and imagery, every small element has a precise place within the scale and chord of the compositions -- and has, therefore, a very precise visual nature, constitutes, in a small but sure way, one of the unique surprises upon which all compositions (musical, literary, pictorial) depend.

 

All the small objects and people are clear-, precisely-, and vividly-sounding notes within the picture’s chord and along its scale.

 

They are with respect to the picture what the instruments of an orchestra are to the whole sound.

 

True, my composition is modest and certainly very modest indeed when compared with the Cezanne.

 

But if Cezanne is looking at it now from the artist’s quarter of heaven he’d say, “Yes, that photographer understood what I was doing when I painted that view of Mt. Sainte-Victoire."

 

NB: I said "understood," not "equalled".

 

The picture’s small, simple modest goodness does not come from its characters, who are ordinary to incidental to negligible; or from their gestures, which are hardly there, or from action or anecdote, for there is neither one or the other, or from the colors themselves, which are banal and commercial, mass produced and designed to attract buyers to a store or product.

.

The picture is good because it is a good color composition founded on a basic chord of blue, yellow and orange and with interesting dissonances inbetween..

 

The color wheel, color theory and remarks, such as Schapiro’s, on how the great masters used color, are indispensable to any photographer who claims to be photographing in color.

 

Schapiro’s book on Cezanne and his similar one on Van Gogh, both in the Abrams “Master of Art” series, are a good place to start. Schapiro wrote them in plain language for the general reader. Nonetheless, his insights into the use of color (to say nothing of that of line, or design, or composition) are crucial for all of us working in color.

 

Another good text is Josef Albers’ The Interaction of Color, together with its accompanying limited edition accompanying portfolio of color exercises. The book is in paper back and the portfolio is in most good libraries throughout the world.

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[Guest stnami]

That's a great way of approaching colour if one is to produce successful images, Wayne I am afraid your osmosis technique is more miss than hit. As Ben implies take the time to figure out what is out there, remember it is not B&W street stuff so the sense of urgency shouldn't be there. Start with a couple of notes and then compose,

All the colours of the rainbow rarely works in landscapes but can be an asset in a congested urban images as long as you have given certain colours room to move, i.e. a space of their own.

The basics of the colour wheel are not that hard to comprehend and that knowledge accompanied with the cultural and social significance/ meaning of colours give one greater scope of play

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[jrc]

Maybe this is a well-known idea in photography, or in Photoshop -- I don't know -- but it certainly is in painting. Take a painting (photo) with any arrangement of colors at all, and then cover it with a clear varnish just *slightly* tinted with a hue that you wish to emphasize -- for example, blue. Doing that instantly pulls the composition together. It also dulls the complementary colors; it's really better to have composed with a coordinated set of colors to begin with, but if you have not, coating it with a very light transparent tint will have an amazing unifying effect.

 

In photography, I think you could do the same thing with color temp. If you have "as shot" color that are close to the actual scene, but you find that the colors you were given don't work together as well as you like, you can give the whole thing a slight color cast and the colors will snap together. And you will dull some of the colors; but purely from a color point of view, you may find that you can save some shots that you otherwise may have doubts about. I'm not referring to "correct" white balance here; I'm talking about imposing a deliberate but essentially undetectable cast.

 

JC