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B&W RGB Digital: a realized Adams dream or a fix-all.

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
As I said, Nicolas, you are B&W deprived! Or else you too would see that even for your own work, B&W is another path worth exploring as a means of expression.

However, you need to go through a 10 step B&W awareness program. Be prepared when you come to L.A.

Asher
 

Ben Lifson

New member
Color versus Color Photographs

Color film did a lot of damage to photography. Now the fact that color is the default mode of digital cameras is doing a lot more damage and is probably spoiling a lot of talented photographers' chances of ever being good.

I say this not because I think black and white pictures superior to color pictures or because I prefer drawings to paintings (which I don't).

The reason that color as digital cameras' default mode is probably a catastrophe to talented photographers is that matters of crucial importance to artists working in color -- matters such as color theory, color composition, color as it affects and is affected by line, color, the inter-action of color and color in the painterly and linear methods -- are basic to making good color pictures.

These topics are disciplines in themselves. In art schools, some, like color theory, are taught as specific courses; others are imparted to painting students by their teachers in studio classes.

Painters spend years to master color. Matisse's great work with color came after he had been painting for thirty years.

Picasso once said, "If you change a color passage by only a little bit in a Matisse painting you ruin the painting but if you change the color a whole passage in one my paintings the painting still holds." Which is to say he didn't think he ever mastered color.

How do photographers hope to make worth while or lasting color pictures without studying color theory etc. as seriously and for as long (at least six years) as has the average graduate student in painting when he gets his MFA?

Yet we buy these digital cameras and because their default mode is color we believe we can make color pictures with no knowledge of color theory -- and with how much knowledge of how color has been used since, say, Giotto?

Go to the website www.artcyclopedia.com

In the artist search field type Eouard Manet

On the page listing museums holding works by Manet, scroll to and click on the Courtault Institute (London)

On the next page, click on "A Bar at the Folies-Bergere"

Toward the bottom of the picture, in front of the barmaid, is a small vase with two flowers, one violet, one a pale yellow. Look intensely and only at those two colors next to each other against the dark blue of the barmaid's dress.

In that violet shape next to the yellow shape against that dark blue, the color is so strong and alive that it gives the impression that one is looking at the whole world of color and its behavior and nature. And you begin to understand how color works in pictures.

Add the oranges and the colors of the bottles, the light blue of the barmaid's under-dress, the yellows in the background, etc. you begin to see what a color composition is, what the interactions of color are, how color affects and is affected by line...

Working with digital cameras in the default color mode during the spring and sumnmer months we photograph a lot of green--one of the least used colors in all of painting and the least used color in abstract painting.

Matisse and his circle of painters of the early 20thC were called the "Fauves" -- wild beasts -- in part because they used green.

When Matisse first exhibited his portrait of his wife in a large green hat the public tried to scrape the green paint off the canvas with their fingernails.

When the late-18th/early-19thC English landscape painter John Constable first started painting landscapes with green grass, green meadows, green trees -- until then these natural objects had been painted mostly with browns and earth-tones -- he was told by the Royal Academy of Arts, London, to "Get those ugly green things out of here."

The bias against green is due in part to the fact the green is so difficult to work with. The yellow in it makes it acid and painful to the eyes. It's difficult to vary its values. Most greens in paintings are mixed with gray, black, purple or other colors that mute green's acid quality so that it can be harmonized with the other colors.

With Matisse, Picasso and other 20thC painters it's been used in its full strength difficulty for dramatic effects and for shock.

Yet we go out with our color-default digital cameras and photograph in parks, on tree-lined streets, in the countryside, etc. as though green were just another color.

How do we hope to make good works in color unless we know something about color.

To my knowledge, in the history of 20thC photography only two photographers have known how to make color pictures: Helen Levitt and Robert Bergman. Studying their pictures is a good first step for any photographer who wants to work in color and who lives far from a good museum.

Ben Lifson
www.benlifson.com
 

Ray West

New member
The processes involved in producing a painting are entirely different than in producing a photograph. If photography had been invented first, very few paintings would be valuable, or even considered worthy of mention. There were numerous so-so painters, the same as in any trade.

When you have a brush, and a tube of paint, you are in absolute control of what you do with it, you start from a bare canvas, and try and produce a pleasing image. With a photo, you start with a representation of the truth, and try and get it back down into a pleasing composition. For example, if you are painting a landscape, you would probably not paint the telegraph pole, if you take a photo, you would try and clone it out in post.

I think any discussion re photography/art needs to define the type of photography concerned. I see very little 'art' in most photography, it is generally not required beyond a slightly altered realism.

I' guess that Picasso's comment was in reference that his type of painting just did not depend on colour, more on shape and form.

I think the art world is full of so much bullshit, it always has been, probably always will be. In the meantime, folk go on, making the pictures that please themselves, and please others.

Best wishes,

Ray
 

Dierk Haasis

pro member
Ben, if colour photography had been invented before b/w ...

One of the first things early photographer's did was trying to find a way to show the colour of the world in photography. It's purely coincidental that it was easier to produce photographs in b/w [for the sake of argument I subsume gold, silver and other tints from the material under b/w].

Since b/w and colour use very different aesthetic tools - colour actually using the same set as b/w plus those only possible in colour - it's not very productive to play one against the other. And I did not do it. As long as you go out and know from the start your goal is b/w there's nothing wrong with that. But using colour drainage to get an image from a dull photo does not work - if it is dull in colour it will be dull in b/w. The simple reason is that the rules you need to get a good b/w image apply to colour, too.

Years ago I saw a very good photo of a tomatoe. It was b/w but would have worked as well in colour; obviously both versions would have different a emphasis). OTOH, I have never seen a convincing snow photo in greyscale, I guess the sujet does not work at all in b/w.

Moor.jpg

The Moor

Park.jpg

... at 30 mph
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Dierk Haasis said:
As long as you go out and know from the start your goal is b/w there's nothing wrong with that. But using colour drainage to get an image from a dull photo does not work - if it is dull in colour it will be dull in b/w. The simple reason is that the rules you need to get a good b/w image apply to colour, too.

I am not sure you are correct. I think it would be more reasonable to propose that if a picture is dull in color draining the color might not rescue it.

However, just because the scene was not perceived in B&W does not mean one cannot look at the image on one's fine screen and now see the landscape once again but as if "for the very first time", free of color and have the choice to recompose.

Today, one can alter the granularity, contrast representation of different colors as different hue sets and so forth after the fact in B&W and in color.

There is, hopefully a vision one has before the shutter is pressed. This provides the intent which starts the arc through the work of many complex processing decisions to end up in realization of the original intent with all the impact that one imagined before the shutter was released.

Still, when one now looks at the fine large monitors in our dim lit editing studios, the thrill of the original scene is now there once more. However, time has gone by and so one is a different person.

One can remember one's original intent and carry it through to completion or one can allow one's creativity to release new intents which might include altered composition or processing, of which, B&W conversion becomes a valid artistic option.

The words "draining the color" is a metaphor, in itself, bringing us a vision of a person in shock, grief or already exsanguinated.

One can observe a man caressing a woman's arm. She might look pleased or could say, "Why are you rubbing my arm?”

The derogatory nature of your presumed processing from color to B&W by "draining the color", already presumes at least naiveté in image processing but most likely incompetence.

I see no reason not to rethink any part of an artistic creation. Otherwise, all one needs to do is to snap a picture and leave the rest to the corner drug store!

My hypothesis is that a photograph is merely a vehicle for transmitting a vision and thought with some measures of emotional content, meaning, significance, seduction and power.

We all recognize that one has to work to create a successful engine and design in one's vehicle. Otherwise the intended emotional, physical and intellectual package of the author's intent cannot be delivered with the requisite impact.

So why restrict an artist to merely altering distribution of tonality or the specs size, for example. One wouldn't dream of giving like restrictions to any other artist!

So whether or not the photographer conceived the image at the time of original intent in B&W is unimportant. All that matters is the completed photograph. It works or it doesn't? That question applies to the photographer and all who view it from then on.

So, if we allow the artist to work on his image as he wishes, he can also change his intent too. After all, it's a new day and therefore the world has changed.

So, Dierk, please try not use the words "drain the color" for this process, unless you would use the term "butchery" to the procedure of a life-saving "Caesarian" section!

Asher
 

Kevin Bjorke

New member
Ben Lifson said:
Color film did a lot of damage to photography. Now the fact that color is the default mode of digital cameras is doing a lot more damage and is probably spoiling a lot of talented photographers' chances of ever being good.
Ah, the feeling of a good astringent scrub from strong ideas..... made my day :)

I too admire the beauty of Bergman's portraits but find Levitt's color somewhat flickrish. YMMV (obviously).

Speaking of flickr, my old buddy Jim, author of the Flickr Hacks book, decided to average-out the dominant color from tens of thousands of flickr snapshots. The result: beige. The color of dirt, the color of carbon-hydrogen-oxygen, the color of boredom.
 

Dierk Haasis

pro member
Asher Kelman said:
So, Dierk, please try not use the words "drain the color" for this process, unless you would use the term "butchery" to the procedure of a life-saving "Caesarian" section!

1. I am a great fan of C-section.
2. While you took great pains to argue why "colour drainage" is derogatory I used the phrase simply to forgo a technically limited (and probably false for many) term: greyscale.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

For the rest of your message: Let's just remember that I have never argued against b/w in principle, only about using it as an effect to impress with. I am a great fan of Star Wars, I like Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings, the Harry Potter movies and many others which use special effects in large numbers. In all of these cases the SFX are subordinate to plot, story, character and action [= the way plot and story are carried]; many producers use SFX to make a bad movie interesting (Fantastic Four a prime example). The same, BTW, holds for those movies called "Action", where the term means over-the-top, full blown car races, explosions and ridiculous jumps.

It is a fine line, and the adept artist knows how to negotiate it.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Creative Choice at any time in the processing of an image file!

Dierk,

Your answer did seem like efficient way of addressing my arguments for the ad hoc use of B&W as a means of getting a succesful image! However it is, as you will see, flawed.

You wrote:

Dierk Haasis said:
1. I am a great fan of C-section.
2. While you took great pains to argue why "colour drainage" is derogatory I used the phrase simply to forgo a technically limited (and probably false for many) term: greyscale.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
That reference to the meaning of "cigar", BTW, is mostly untrue!*

I don't think you can drain a Molotov cocktail so fast. Words are chosen, especially by you! "Drain" is not an accidental term, it is a rich and complex word with compelling, mostly negative, meaning.** So, "draining the color" is hardly neutral. Admit it, you intended to devalue ad hoc conversion to B&W of apparently dull images!

Use of grayscale is not just what people do in rendering a color file as B&W, since usually it involves some assignments of certain hues to different ranges of tones. So even "grayscale" would be slightly dismissive, but it's, at least, a fine technical word.

So let's put history behind us and return to the matter at hand: creative choice! I argue that this is what we must refer to and is the real underlying matter in rendering an opinion on a picture being processed as B&W.

I would further propose that some pictures taken with the intention of being in color, might, from the onset have been planned as B&W by a more experienced photographer more intuitive in this possibility.

I feel strongly that the creative process can restart de novo at the computer when such a picture presents itself to the photographer. At that time, s/he can experiment with assignment of all components of the digital file, reassigning tones as we do and reassigning color information as we can.

A picture that is dull in color can be made vibrant and interesting by processing the color, tone, saturation and more then vignetting, cropping and selectively sharpening to bring the impact and potential meaning in to focus.

So, IMHO, there is no sufficient reason to assert that all dull color pictures are somehow inherently dull and not merely, as yet incompletely processed![/I]

So saying that

Dierk Haasis said:
As long as you go out and know from the start your goal is b/w there's nothing wrong with that. But using color drainage to get an image from a dull photo does not work - if it is dull in color it will be dull in b/w. The simple reason is that the rules you need to get a good b/w image apply to color, too.

is likely incorrect in many circumstances.

Now for the rest of your message,

Dierk Haasis said:
For the rest of your message: Let's just remember that I have never argued against b/w in principle, only about using it as an effect to impress with. I am a great fan of Star Wars, I like Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings, the Harry Potter movies and many others which use special effects in large numbers. In all of these cases the SFX are subordinate to plot, story, character and action [= the way plot and story are carried]; many producers use SFX to make a bad movie interesting (Fantastic Four a prime example). The same, BTW, holds for those movies called "Action", where the term means over-the-top, full-blown car races, explosions and ridiculous jumps.

It is a fine line, and the adept artist knows how to negotiate it.

Again, you have used a denigrating idea, "special effect" that is external to plot as being of lesser value. That, even in movies is a conceit. ("Conceit" used drained of malevolence!).***

So again, I'd remove the term "special effect" from rendering a "failed" or "dull" color image in B&W since a new creative attempt is being made at expression. Sure it may be a "flaying in the wind" of no consequence to the artistic value of the image. But so are most attempts to make "artistic" images, color or otherwise!

However, I, who only shot B&W for my first 10-15 years of photography, feel that color is anyway far more challenging. So why not go to a B&W world and start from scratch before the monitor?

It won't end up as an Ansel Adams image, of course, but it might have artistic value.

Asher

*Cigar, not only carries the meaning of a rolled up set of smoked choice leaves of the finest plants for smoking. But also the fact that the best one's come from Cuba, they are banned in the USA, one has to smuggle them and a whole chain political ramifications. Further just following the ideas of representational shapes by Freud and the practice of a certain young lady who went to Washington, "cigar" also has more provocative social meanings. So "cigar", is not merely the object, it never can be.

** "Draining the swamp", removes bad things. A business goes "down the drain" and it fails. Further, you of all people cannot obfuscate your previous message by quoting Magritte!

***Classically, stories consisted of theme, character and plot. However, since stories are also entertainment, special effects, such that "technomatics" and even "ridiculous jumps" are important and valued parts of the show. Everyone knows that such jumps are impossible to achieve, let alone survive. However, just like a magic show, it's just that, entertainment and an escape from a world with more stringent limitations to what we do and can do to right wrongs.
 

Ben Lifson

New member
Special Effects, Dull Color and Cigars

In recent movies, for special effects used as such to tell a story -- well, on second thought, it's more like "create a poem" -- and have great impact on the viewer's eye, feelings and understanding: 15 minutes of only special effects with no narrative, no plot and almost no words, only music and even then not always...For special effects as pure poetry, consider Part I -- "Realm 1, Hell" -- of Jean-Luc Godard's recent film "Notre Musique" (the most recently released in the U.S. and now available on DVD at most good independent video rental stores and, of course, Net Flix. It's a masterpiece and the framing and compositions of Part 2 -- "Realm 2: Purgatory" -- are great and can be greatly instructive to photographers. Part 3 -- "Realm 3: Heaven" is brief and ends with an extended portrait, a close up of the heroine's face: it puts the close-up- face passages i.e. the portrait passages, of Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings movies to shame, along with similar passages in most recent Hollywood movies, as do all the portrait passages in "Notre Musique." Consider only the passage at about mid-point of Part 2, portraits of 15 or so people listening to a lecture...One beautiful portrait after another, the passage lasts about 3-4 minutes and contains some of the best portraits in any medium of the last 25 years.)

Now that we have Photoshop dull color files can indeed by transformed into good color compositions. But sometimes this involves not enhancing colors but changing them. Is that sky a too-pale blue? Enhancing it to a robin's egg blue might not help. Make it a deep purple and it might work a lot better with some of the grays in the houses beneath it. Or make it mostly orange, as in the 1950s song, "Flash, Bam. Alla-Kazam / Out of an orange-colored sky." Or make the gray houses pink and they'll go better with that pale blue sky. Photoshop is one of the most marvelous tools ever invented for photography. It frees the photographer from the obligation of rendering. Making those three gray houses a beautiful pink, or making one pink and the adjacent ones turquoise and deep blue, and you'd have this marvelous world of Mediterranean and Mexican colors on 19thC salt box houses in what is obviously a Gaspe Peninsula seaside fishing town. They'd look rendered -- photography does that almost automatically, make things look rendered; but what would be rendered would be a fiction, which is what all good art is anyway.

"And I saw the midnight sun" and "Stars fell on Alabama that night" are just as true as "Sometimes I feel like a motherless child / A long way from home" and "Death don't have no mercy in this land..."

Oh the buzzin' of the bees in the cigarette trees
The soda water fountains
The lemonade springs where the blue bird sings
In the Big Rock Candy Mountain

In the Big Rock Cancy Mountain
All the cops have wooden legs
The bull dogs all have rubber teeth
And the hens lay hard boiled eggs
The farmers' trees are full of fruit,
Their barns are full of hay...

Groucho Marx was fired from "You Bet Your Life" when, interviewing a guest -- a man -- before the quiz show part of the show started, there was this exchange.

Groucho: Do you have any children.
Guest: Yes, twelve.
Groucho: Twelve?
Guest: Yes, twelve.
Groucho puffs on his cigar, holds it up to his face, puffs on it again, then says
Groucho: I love my cigar but sometimes I take it out of my mouth.

yrs

ben

www.benlifson@yahoo.com
 

Ray West

New member
Whether or not a cigar is just a cigar, depends on the time of the observation, the history/future of both the object and the observer. Sometimes it is just a cigar. If you wish to associate other things to it, such as Winston Churchill, or the USA political relationship with Cuba, that has no bearing on the actual cigar itself, although I suspect it appears to taste better if it has been smuggled in. As in art, much of it is 'talking up'. There is another thread on this forum, connected with some sort of colour processing. In truth, I can see little differance between the images as they are shown as compressed jpeg images, and I fail to see what the excitement is about, the images as shown are not impressive. In fact, if the labeling was mixed up, I doubt if many would notice it, based on those images alone. However, I suspect the actual full sized images are improved, else folk are wearing 'the emperor's new clothes'.

wrt Jim, Kevin's chum, the average of anything is usually something average. What exactly was expected? Sure it was not a digital camera green? Does he need icc profiling ;-) (btw, its all numbers)

Now, if you care to send me cigars, I will take some photos of 'sometimes its a cigar', and 'sometimes its not'. To someone 'not into' cigars, a cigar is _always_ just a cigar. If you're really not into them, its 'you're going to do what with that brown stick' (polite version ;-)

Much of this B&W thing is related to where the viewer is coming from. If you are brought up in the age of b&w printing of images, film, etc, then that has a certain nostalgic associations with it - 'old film look' is big in the digital video world. If you are of more recent origin, you are more attuned to colour, and the 'old film look' need not be so precise to produce 'old film'. Colour is just another level of communication. If you can use it in a creative mode, as in painting, then you can get good colour matches, avoid clashing, etc. If you are starting with a captured photo image, then you have to adjust what is already presented to you. But half of photography is realisim, no pp, etc. If you are in that camp, then you will be pretty well stuck in producing anything appealing in an artistic way, equally as well the viewer has to understand the pp processing too, to appreciate the art. There is not enough 'portrayal of the artist's suffering' in photography, that is perhaps the problem. And if there is, then it is difficult to extract that from an existing image, as compared to adding it in, in a painting process.

On the whole, photography/photographers, in particular digital, are too consumed with the technology to be able to produce anything to be called art as I would define it, I've seen little here to convince me otherwise. But then, I am not the photo buying public, or own an art gallery, or anything like that, so what do I know about anything?

I'm sorry if I'm comparing photography to art, the art of painting/drawing, etc. but I have to compare, since I can not include it as art, since I just do not see it as art. - clever, skilful, but not art, its too quick for that..... and the motivation seems skewed.

Best wishes,

Ray
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Ray,

Debating with Dierk, is in itself, no trivial task!

Following Ben Lifson, an aknowledged expert on the history of art, is humbling.

But your post is perhaps the hardest to respond to, since, in the end, your fundamental beliefs are exposed to be fundamentally different from mine.

So, in answering your apparent premise (that there's not sufficient evidence of sweat equity in photography presented as art), is like finding my way after a bulldozer demolishes all the signposts!

However, I'll try to make a path by dealing with your arguments step by step.

Ray West said:
...............
Much of this B&W thing is related to where the viewer is coming from. If you are brought up in the age of b&w printing of images, film, etc, then that has a certain nostalgic associations with it - 'old film look' is big in the digital video world. If you are of more recent origin, you are more attuned to colour, and the 'old film look' need not be so precise to produce 'old film'.

This appears to me as merely representing ignorance as mere choice!

Ray West said:
Colour is just another level of communication.

I don't think that is true! It is a very complex language. There are volumes on the psychological effect and emotional values in colors and color combinations.

I was very much overwhelmed for many years with color in photography and limited myself to Kodachrome II with vibrant slides to wow people.

Color prints became a much more formidable challenge with a very low success to effort ratio.
Ray West said:
If you can use it in a creative mode, as in painting, then you can get good colour matches, avoid clashing, etc.

That is simplistic, But, Ray, you did qualify the statement with "if", so I'll let it pass. Like wise use in photographs is no less challenging. In fact, since many changes are radical and global with just a minor move of the mouse, color in photography can be much more difficult to master.

Ray West said:
If you are starting with a captured photo image, then you have to adjust what is already presented to you.

Not necessarily! It may merely require cropping and correct choice of printing medium, paper and framing, illumination and placement.

Ray West said:
But half of photography is realisim, no pp, etc. If you are in that camp, then you will be pretty well stuck in producing anything appealing in an artistic way,

Why do you think that is true? Merely taking a picture of a chosen subject from a specific angle at a selected time with exquisite light might require little further work more than expert printing!


Ray West said:
equally as well the viewer has to understand the pp processing too, to appreciate the art.

Why does the viewer have to understand the process? I saw a picture today of a mandolin. I have no knowledge of how this image was processed, or even if it was processed. Yet my response matches the photographers intent and I consider the work as art.

http://www.openphotographyforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1390

Ray West said:
There is not enough 'portrayal of the artist's suffering' in photography, that is perhaps the problem. And if there is, then it is difficult to extract that from an existing image, as compared to adding it in, in a painting process.

If I'm understanding you correctly, you require evidence that the artist put in "sweat equity" into a photograph in order to render it worthy of being called "art".

People used to think that suffering of poets and artists working in poorly heated attics gave rise to great poetry and art. However, it just so happens that the arts have generally poor reward for would be artists!

Ray West said:
On the whole, photography/photographers, in particular digital, are too consumed with the technology to be able to produce anything to be called art as I would define it, I've seen little here to convince me otherwise.

I agree with the premise, but the important photgraphers are those who do not fit into this easy description.

Ray West said:
I'm sorry if I'm comparing photography to art, the art of painting/drawing, etc. but I have to compare, since I can not include it as art, since I just do not see it as art. - clever, skilful, but not art, its too quick for that..... and the motivation seems skewed.



All the arguments you made until this disclosure are of little value if fundamentally you require labor and sweat to elevate photography to art. Since, at this time, you "do not include it as art" I would ask you to visit galleries and get some books on some of the classical photgraphers who's work is admired as art.

Then at least we'll have a common set of reference "standards" against which one might at least attempt to measure the artistic value of photography today.

Asher
 

Dierk Haasis

pro member
Wow.

Asher, I am quite sure you know exactly where my cigar adage comes from, for the uninitiated, it is usually attributed to Sigmund Freud. No idea if he ever said or wrote that but he should have. The point was to clear up a misunderstanding in my word use, not to define a cigar.

Let's have a small detour for perspective: I hold a university degree in literature and linguistics [sociology, philosophy and biology are also involved]. When I came from the German equivalent of high school, the Gymnasium, like everybody going through our system, I believed in 'reading between the lines'. Most of my fellow students at university did so even after years of studying literature - which I deem a sign of never having understood the subject.

Between the lines is nothing but white space.

That's a fact and a metaphor. And the metaphorical meaning translates into: Don't read anything into a text, try to read off it. While there will surely be 'hidden' things within any text for the most simple reason that what comes naturally to us [like our deepest conviction] we will rarely be aware of. At least sometimes an author should be surprised by what critics find in their works.

Coming back to my own drivel.

When I write about a specific use of a word, term or phrase, I do not mean it denigrating [or for that matter, exalting] but just in its base meaning - I actually mean that. Any word can be turned upon the user by simply declaring that there is a second or third or fourth meaning, which does not apply. It's the worst kind of pseudo-philosophy, often called - derogatory! - 'sophistry'.

In the case of 'special effeect' you even went one further, claiming something I did not write. SFX are without any inherent moral value, they are a tool for filmmakers and photographers [even writers] to convey whatever they want. Any tool can be used for good or bad, effciently or inefficiently, effectively or ineffectively. And only this distinction was explained by me.

Surely most of us have a good idea about which films work for them and which do not. Some may only like non-SFX movies, but that does not tell them that SFX-movies are necessarily bad. As can be seen from the DVD list I published [look into the Introduce board] I do not find any genre or sujet or technique of filmmaking alone worthy. Films using SFX extensively do make up quite a proportion of my collection. The closest to SFX-for-SFX-sake motion picture I own and love is Armageddon. It does not use to many SFX, and all of them are in their for a reason beyond showing off a big budget for the computer department.

Look at Attack of the Clones in which Georg Lucas takes many visual sources - mostly classical Dutch and French paintings - to create CG backdrops. GL could have gone for much more real looking real locations, he did for Naboo's Lake District, but he went for an SFX to convey a specific vision he had. The counter-examples are numerous, i.e. in the Horror genre with endless boring, hollow splatter movies.* A good one from the SF-genre is Terminator, the first one using its modest SFX to tell a story, the second using much better and more SFX to tell the same story much less efficiently.

Point being: SFX in itself are not worthy or worthless, it depends on how they are used.

Which brings us back to the topic at hand. I am not quite sure but I guess Ben and I aren't too far apart. Taking out the colour of a photo needs to have a purpose. As I explained earlier, colour photography uses the same aesthetic rules as b/w and adds some. If I now want to concentrate the viewer on something it may be a good idea to take out the colour if it distracts from my message:

Police.jpg

In Force

Drums.jpg

Uisge Betha

Both photos are shot on b/w film, and in both cases colour would distract. In contrats to the other two examples I used, in which colour is essential to convey the whiteness of the snow.

Let's remember, again, what prompted my rant. I was appalled by the number of mediocre b/w renditions of perfectly good images in need of their colour.




*No, there are brilliant Horror movies using gore to great effect to convey something more than just 'eek' [Sam Raimi, George Romero, definitely not Peter Jackson].
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
An excellent post, Dierk!

The one picture with the police is clearly B&W. The whole discussion coming down to this!

The guy's weight is on his left leg he's casual and relaxes, yet ready to don his gas mask, and wade into a crowd at a moment's notice!

Color would add nothing!

Asher
 

Ray West

New member
I'm in agrreement

Hi Dierk,

Let's remember, again, what prompted my rant. I was appalled by the number of mediocre b/w renditions of perfectly good images in need of their colour.

But then they could be mediocre coloured images. Lets talk about your recent two images, the policeman and the drums.

First the policeman, I am not sure what you are trying to show. I see many similar images in newspapers, etc. I do not think colour would either add or distract from it, depending on the colours, of course. I think it is similar for the second one, although I think that some green grass may add to it.

For selecting the point of interest, possibly the first thing is cropping, then maybe selective sharpening/blurring. In these cases, I think some of the decision was due to you having black and white film, unless you had colour film as well. It may be different if you started from a colour image.

With black and white, in some respects you can get away with more - contrast enhancement, blurring, get more out of the shadows, or crush them, etc. - whereas in colour, it would indeed be distracting, if carried out to the same extent.

Best wishes,

Ray
 

Dierk Haasis

pro member
Ray, you got it upside down. The policeman's sideview - actually the point is the weaponry and the total lack of any personal characteristic of the uniformed people - would suffer from adding colour. It comes, like the Scotch one [come to that in a moment], from my b/w period, that is I went out to expressly shoot b/w.

The same for the drums, one of a reportage on a Scottish festival in Hamburg [when it was still in our central park, which is not anywhere central to Hamburg]. I have similar photos in colour, none of which works like this one. In this case colour would distract; if you've never seen Scotsman in full regalia you may not be aware of how colourful such a festival is. I had with me two cameras, one with Tri-X, one with Ektachrome.

Both photos have been posted to show that I am not completely adverse to b/w. Just like the other two I posted [the winter imagery] have been poosted to show what colour adds to a presumed b/w scene.
 

Ray West

New member
Hi Dierk,

If I got it upside down, whose fault?
If the point, the actual point of the first is to show the weapons that police on riot control have with them, then a list does the job, a catalogue, even. If the point is to show how they are attached to the policeman, then a diagram/sketch will suffice. If it is something more you try to show, 'added realism', then a number of photos, maybe. That is if we are talking about the technical side of things, I'm thinking, instructing the police, or informing the public of what they carry in a riot situation.

If you are using a photo, a single photo, then it needs to be obvious what it is about, if it is meant for this sort of 'instructional' purpose. If its the policeman's tools, then they need to be clearly seen. It was only Asher, mentioning about the gas mask, that made me realise it was a gas mask, the image is indistinct to me. In fact, maybe what I'm looking at is not a gas mask. Perhaps some colour would have helped. The other guy's, well is it the quantity of the police that is important, or the individual tooling? The lack of individual characteristic, well I got that wrong, too. I mean, they are standing differantly, to start with. They are all dressed similar, but that is the idea of a uniform. I do not think colour, properly applied for this subject, would have damaged your intent, or at least, I would not have noticed it, of course. If they were wearing different coloured uniforms, or odd reflections in the shields, then I can see that there could be distractions. I actually think that judicious use of colour could have emphasised what you were trying to show in this particular instance. If colour had been used, then maybe the emphasis also needs to be brought out in other ways towards the subject matter - cropping or blurring, for example. I do not think the 'impact' would suffer from adding colour, but it is your choice. (Think of putting them into pink tutus, for example ;-)

I can, in a similar way, justify my views on the second image too.

I think I understand what you are saying, but I believe it needs to be demonstrated by means of a colour image beside its B&W version, also with the opportunity of selectively reducing the colour content, or otherwise altering it.

Best wishes,

Ray
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Wow!

I never thought we'd have such a hard defense of color! Maybe this is why Ansel Adams was not a street photographer

Asher
 

Dierk Haasis

pro member
Ray West said:
If I got it upside down, whose fault?

Nobody's. Or are we talking blame the donkey [elephant would probably be more appropriate after Tuesday]?

If you are using a photo, a single photo, then it needs to be obvious what it is about, if it is meant for this sort of 'instructional' purpose.

In the context of the discussion at hand the actual contents of the images does not matter.

[...] I believe it needs to be demonstrated by means of a colour image beside its B&W version [...]

Impossible. Any example I come up with would - rightly so! - be criticised as fabricated [yes, Asher, this time I am going for the derogatory connotation]. Likewise any counter-example to it would be criticised by me on the same grounds.

I could cite examples I found but that goes totally against my essentially benign nature. Like most humans I do not like to deprecate others when it could be construed as putting me into a better light.* Eventually my opinion doesn't really count, but that's a theme for quite another thread closely connected to the Art discussions we already have.

The point I illustrated with my real b/w photos was: I am not against b/w per se. It is not about the policemen or the Scottish [BTW, for those without ties to Sotland, 'drum' has more meanings than what you see in the picture; there's also the 'dram', the German pronunciation of which sounds like the English one for the hill or instrument - hence the title of the image], it s about technique.




*OK, that reads more than just a bit convoluted. Point is, any photo I point you to has a name beside it. And I don't see a reason to slander somebody.
 

Ray West

New member
Hi Dierk,

Nobody's. Or are we talking blame the donkey [elephant would probably be more appropriate after Tuesday]?

No, certainly not - It may be more like the Monty Python 'confuse a cat sketch' since I have no idea about donkeys, elephants or Tuesday, or the price of fish.

wrt slander, If you think you may be on a slippery slope, ask first. If you post for criticism/comment/ most things, you have to accept what comes. Much progress is made by dismantling the old. Sometimes, maybe we don't want progress. Like you, I think most folk do not want to offend. However, by my nature, I like finding out how things really, really work, and I am quite prepared to post a raw image, and then we can discuss how it may be improved, either in black and white, or colour. In fact I have a number which I would like to be 'processed' since I am pretty sh!te at it, but I'll have go too.

You up for it, then Dierk, have a go in black and white, or colour, and we can say why or wherefore, others can come and play, but the first one who refers to Magritte, or John Constable or some long dead poet can't play no more. I'm gonna make Asher join in, since he got me to do his girl on the pavement.... :-O

You can make up some rules, too, of course.

Best wishes,

Ray
 

Ben Lifson

New member
Color v Black and White and Is Photography Art?

Nothing inherent in the nature of photography makes it imperative that the photographer photograph in either black and white or color.

Color photography is as pure a form of photography as is black and white.

A great color photograph is as great as a great black and white photograph because in each one the photographer has used his/her materials and instrument, has handled his/her subject and has expressed his/her vision greatly.

It is always the picture that justifies the process. It is never the other way around.

Black and White photography, which is a graphic medium, is related to drawing, which is also a graphic medium.

Color photographs are related to watercolors, pastels, and paintings, which are color mediums.

Black and white pictures are made up of tonal values, color pictures of tonal values plus hues.

The photographer with a graphic sensibility and who sees in terms of lines and values will work in black and white. The photographer who joins a color sensibility to a graphic one and who sees in hues and well as in tonal values will work in color.

One can only hope that any given photographer knows what his/her sensibility is and chooses the appropriate medium.

As for photography and art:

Photography is no more an art than is language or sound or the body's physical movement.

It's what the individual photographer does with photography that creates a work of art, just as what the writer does with language creates the poem, what the composer and musician do with sound creates the musical composition and what the choreographer and the dancer do with the body's physical movement creates the dance.

"You taught me language," says Caliban, the monster, to Prospero, the magician, in Shakespeare's The Tempest

You taught me language; and my profit on't
Is, I know how to curse. The red plague rid you
For learning me your language!

But it was Shakespeaare who turned his cursing into poetry and made Prospero's reply the greater, more eloquent cursing.

"I don't do very much, really," said the great Hungarian photographer Andre Kertesz to me one day. "Nature begins the thing and I complete it, that's all."

"What thing?" I asked.

"The picture," Kertesz said.

But to make pictures as great as his (and he made great pictures in both black and white and color) one has to know what a picture is, has to see nature (the world) begin a picture and has to know how to complete it.

For this, Kertesz began practicing photography, without a camera, at the age of 8, by making a rectangle with his thumbs and forefingers, bringing it quickly to his eye, framing something with it and making a noise or gesture to indicate the moment of exposure. Over and over again, several times a day, every day.

He began playing hookey at the age of twelve to go downtown Budapest to the Hungarian National Museum and, in the study rooms (yes, at the age of 12) study prints, drawings, fabric, paintings, folk art of various kinds, etc. (The curators, he said, thought it was charming to see a young boy so passionate about art and helped him all they could.)

By the time he was fifteen, with his painter and sculptor friends he was poring over all the monthly avant-garde art magazines from Moscow, Berlin and Paris; going to first-night performances by the avant-garde Hungarian composers Bartok and Kodaly; and, at night, haunting the Budapest literary cafes where Andre Ady and other avant-garde Hungarian poets gathered and where Ady wrote most of his verse.

He bought his first camera at the age of 18 and made a small Constructivist masterpiece with the third exposure.

He was a very good Cubist and Constructivist photographer by the time he was 20 and in some pictures predicted Surrealism some years before the movement was born.

So it's no wonder that he knew what a picture was, could see one forming in the world and knew how to complete it. No wonder, either, that in his late 80s and early 90s he could construct beautiful color still lifes of small objects and make beautiful Polaroid SX-70 color still-life pictures of them

yrs

ben

www.benlifson.com
 

Dierk Haasis

pro member
Ray West said:
I have no idea about donkeys, elephants or Tuesday.

US politics:

Donkey is the party symbol of the Democrats, the GOP uses an elephant, first Tuesday in November is Election Day. If Somerset has no access to international news - something like the 'Valley of the Ignorant' in the former GDR [a region in Saxony which did not receive the airwaves from West German TV and radio] - let me tell you that democracy has at last been restored in the US. The executive now has a proper counterpart in the legislative, one belonging to the GOP, the other to the Democrats.

If you post for criticism/comment/ most things, you have to accept what comes.

If it was the case somebody asks for comment I'd say what I like or not. OTOH, in a contest where I might be a contender I cannot and will not speak bad about another contender. Virtually the same applies to photos posted as renditions from an original, as we have it in the Challenges/Optimise threads..

It might be the Protestant background of the society I was born and raised in ... Or it is the very basic politeness we in Old Europe developed over centuries to get along in relatively crowded environments*.

Shoot b/w or colour as your subject and intention asks for, but do not try to salvage a bad shot [which could be well suited as a backdrop for other material] by taking out the colour. Black-and-White has no inherent value, as hasn't colour.






*Japanoise go a few steps further, while New Yorkers never learned to cope with other people.
 

Cem_Usakligil

Well-known member
OT response to a side issue.....

Dierk Haasis said:
...If it was the case somebody asks for comment I'd say what I like or not. OTOH, in a contest where I might be a contender I cannot and will not speak bad about another contender. Virtually the same applies to photos posted as renditions from an original, as we have it in the Challenges/Optimise threads..

It might be the Protestant background of the society I was born and raised in ... Or it is the very basic politeness we in Old Europe developed over centuries to get along in relatively crowded environments*.
....

Hi Dierk,

Well I can't resist a challange when offered one, so let me comment on this please.
I have been living in the Netherlands for more than 19 years now, a part of the "old Europe" as you refer to it. A country with a large population of Protestants (for simplicity's sake, I wont divide them into sub denominations) as well as Catholics and recently many Muslims and some others.

One of the most renown (and equally hated) character trait of the Dutch people in general is that they tend to be very "direct". "Direct" as in "downright rude" in the eyes of the other "basically polite" people like myself who are rightly shocked when they are confronted with this phenomenon for the very first time. The Dutch speak out their mind when they think that they know the facts pertaining to any situation (which happens to be the case most of the time sadly). This directness is mostly referred to as being "open and honest" about it. They won't hesitate criticising your life's work and crushing it to the ground in a second based on this principle. This social behaviour has it's roots more in the Protestant and Kalvinist background of the inhabitants than it stems from the Catholic side of the country. So now you can see where I am coming from with respect to your comments above. This is one of the most crowded countries in the world. It also has a major Protestant background. It is part of the old Europe. But one can hardly call it as being "basically polite". One can certainly call it as being "very civilised", which in this case does not necessarily translate into politeness.

Regards,

Cem
(who has learned from the best how to be open and honest about things ;-))
 

Dierk Haasis

pro member
Cem Usakligil said:
One of the most renown (and equally hated) character trait of the Dutch people in general is that they tend to be very "direct". "Direct" as in "downright rude" in the eyes of the other "basically polite" people like myself

Look at the history of New York and you will find a connection.

BTW, many people today have lost the ability to go the fine line between 'honest and polite' and 'direct and rude'.
 

Cem_Usakligil

Well-known member
Dierk Haasis said:
Look at the history of New York and you will find a connection.

BTW, many people today have lost the ability to go the fine line between 'honest and polite' and 'direct and rude'.
HI Dierk,

You have stated your case very eloquently and to the point, as usual! :).
Quoting Hetfield and Ulrich: "Sad But True".

Cheers,

Cem
 

Ray West

New member
Hi Dierk/Cem,

Shoot b/w or colour as your subject and intention asks for, but do not try to salvage a bad shot [which could be well suited as a backdrop for other material] by taking out the colour.

Dierk, this is what you are saying. I agree with that, and more, within the area of say 'landscape photography' (I am not saying I think it applies to other areas or not, I'm just trying to nail something down).

It is always the picture that justifies the process. It is never the other way around.

Ben, I am unsure about that. I think it depends on the film you have too (also to some extent, if the photographer is colour blind, I guess). There are a number of other points you raise, which I would like to discuss, but time is probably too short.

However, I appreciate the efforts you are all making in giving your opinions.

I have a feeling, that the process needs to be dismantled, in the digital photogaphy era, differently than, say 50 years ago, and differently than say 200 years ago/whenever, when art could not include photography.

Best wishes,

Ray
 
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