2010 Work

Here are some recent photographs created in 2010 with the P45 and Hasselblad:

Alain Briot said:

Here are some recent photographs created in 2010 with the P45 and Hasselblad:

Click to expand...

Alain,

You setup is remarkable and you don't need to buy another camera in your lifetime for landscape work! All the pictures have wonderful colors and delicate transitions. Your choice of location can hardly be improved upon.

My favorite here surprises me as this is not what I've had expected. For sure an open landscape with clouds would seduce me! However, in each of the two pictures I'd have gone for, the cloud is cut by the framing and that breaks the magic spell for me. It might be a personal quirk, and for sure it's no artistic law, but I like to be able to see the rise and fall of such a beautiful shape and form with it's delicate colors and shadings, as I enjoy the picture from one end of the landscape to the other. It's likely to be a limitation in perceiving I have, but that's what I live with.

Then we have this picture which I'd have thought, "Seen this before!" But no, this is different and in itself demands attention and revisiting.


This image gives me the sense of being complete. I have some satisfaction looking at it and appreciate a unity. I can start anywhere, explore it's curves and restart somewhere else and get another new experience. When one can do this with an image, it can last!

One tiny niggle is that the base of the picture, everything from the top level of the signature is not really needed and without that, the image appears to me, even more demanding of my repeated attention. With the crop, that sharp curved shelf becomes the strongest feature and balances the image in a new and forceful way. Theres now no ambiguity of brightness at the top or darkness at base.

(That possible crop is separate from the inevitable debate about where to put and how big to make one's so-needed signature.)

Thanks sharing some of the scenes of your work and world. It's impressive and a stimulus for my own.

Asher

This picture, Alain, would be my favorite!

I adore the lilac colors and the soft pastels in the clouds.


I'm wondering whether my hesitation is due, not in its origin to the absence of expanse extending the landscape to the left, but rather the bold block of signature text acting like a plate of steel we have to start and depart from. Without that, the curves would bring us inwards and to the center. With the text block in horizontal formation so strongly made, and then, only then one looks for other such elements, the foremost being the sky. But the sky stops us moving horizontally to the left. We might not be led to even consider that without the signature being where it is!

This is one of the problems of seeing magnificent pictures on the web. Also there's the aspect of size and intimacy. If one is 2 feet from this picture printed 4ft 5 ft on the wall in front of us, we might never leave the center of the image most of the time and be happy!

Asher

This picture, Alain is so different from the others.

In the foreground there's the skeleton of a tree with wind worn sun bleached branches and to each side jagged rocks pointing like arrows inwards. There's an abundance of detail, even more than one can digest, but beyond that the dust storm blankets everything. He we're not looking at any wide landscape or following gentle curves in the lake bed or the rock formations. This is us backed up to a small outpost.

I wonder if you also shot the tree far closer.

Thanks for sharing this unusual desert picture.

Asher

Asher Kelman said:

Alain,

You setup is remarkable and you don't need to buy another camera in your lifetime for landscape work! All the pictures have wonderful colors and delicate transitions. Your choice of location can hardly be improved upon.

Asher

Click to expand...

Hi Asher,

It's certainly the camera, but only in part of course, and no more important than the proverbial pot to the chef. The other, and most important factor being the light. The last factor, and also extremely important, being the processing of the raw file. I do very little in the raw conversion, most of my work being done using layers in Photoshop. I am a layer master! I could not do this work without layers. After working with layers for a long time I have devised a process that allows me subtle control of tonality and contrast. It takes a while but it results in very satisfying images.

ALain

Alain Briot said:

I do very little in the raw conversion, most of my work being done using layers in Photoshop. I am a layer master! I could not do this work without layers. After working with layers for a long time I have devised a process that allows me subtle control of tonality and contrast. It takes a while but it results in very satisfying images.

Click to expand...

So Alain,

Are you able to see on your monitor all the colors you can print, or you get surprises where the printer has a larger gamut? BTW, what monitor is now your favorite and which printer?

Asher

Asher Kelman said:

So Alain,

Are you able to see on your monitor all the colors you can print, or you get surprises where the printer has a larger gamut? BTW, what monitor is now your favorite and which printer?

Asher

Click to expand...

Yes. Mac 30". 9880

This photograph is a collage of 3 separate P45 captures. The full image could not be created with a single lens because of the extremely wide field of view. The image was optimized through the use of adjustment layers in Photoshop.

The most important aspect of my layers-optimization approach is a very carefully designed workflow that I have been refining since I started working with Photoshop in 1994. This process is now central to my work and I could not achieve the results I am looking for without it and without using layers. Layers give me the level of control and precision that I need. This file features over 30 layers organized in 5 different categories.

I like the image and that you have not made everything equally sharp and having the same contrast.

Alain Briot said:

This photograph is a collage of 3 separate P45 captures. The full image could not be created with a single lens because of the extremely wide field of view. The image was optimized through the use of adjustment layers in Photoshop.

Click to expand...

That is one of the masterful capabilities of photoshop. I use many layers myself and dispense changes parsimoniously but specifically.

Alain Briot said:

The most important aspect of my layers-optimization approach is a very carefully designed workflow that I have been refining since I started working with Photoshop in 1994.

Click to expand...

Alain Briot said:

This process is now central to my work and I could not achieve the results I am looking for without it and without using layers. Layers give me the level of control and precision that I need. This file features over 30 layers organized in 5 different categories.

Click to expand...

Organized into 5 layers? Now that really sparks my interest! So what are the names of the 5 groups. I wonder f I already use all of these?

Asher

Alain,

I have come back to this image a few times and then lost it, but thought of it... for me the space works, it moves from the vista and becomes more personal...

I don't often get your work... but this is blunt and has stayed with me for a while..

cheers

Thank you Mark.

I don't have words.

I like Antelope Swirls the best.

I use Photoshop most days for work, but more for graphic arts than photography. Layers are pretty amazing, and whoever invented adjustment layers deserves a raise. I use both of them all the time. My mind boggles at the concept of using 30 of them for a photograph. I think my record is probably about 5. I start to have problems remembering what they're all for.