• Please use real names.

    Greetings to all who have registered to OPF and those guests taking a look around. Please use real names. Registrations with fictitious names will not be processed. REAL NAMES ONLY will be processed

    Firstname Lastname

    Register

    We are a courteous and supportive community. No need to hide behind an alia. If you have a genuine need for privacy/secrecy then let me know!
  • Welcome to the new site. Here's a thread about the update where you can post your feedback, ask questions or spot those nasty bugs!

Film: Beached Boat, Lake Weyba, Afternoon.

7990308633_142aee9025_b.jpg
Beached Boat, Lake Weyba, Afternoon​

Gelatin-silver photograph on Agfa Classic MCC 111 VC FB photographic paper, image size 16.5cm X 21.3cm, from a Tmax 100 negative exposed in a Mamiya RB67 rollfilm single lens reflex camera fitted with a 50mm f4.5 lens and #25 red filter.
Titled and signed recto, stamped verso.

There are times in a warm summer afternoon when absolute stillness prevails, and absolute silence too. The click of a camera echoes obtrusively; but only for a moment.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
7990308633_142aee9025_b.jpg
Beached Boat, Lake Weyba, Afternoon​

Gelatin-silver photograph on Agfa Classic MCC 111 VC FB photographic paper, image size 16.5cm X 21.3cm, from a Tmax 100 negative exposed in a Mamiya RB67 rollfilm single lens reflex camera fitted with a 50mm f4.5 lens and #25 red filter.
Titled and signed recto, stamped verso.

There are times in a warm summer afternoon when absolute stillness prevails, and absolute silence too. The click of a camera echoes obtrusively; but only for a moment.

Maris,

Very tranquil scene. The water seems so still. The diagonals of the boat complement the line of rocks in the left. There's a lot of detail at the water's edge in the bullrushes. Altogether a satisfying experience. It works very well for me.

This print is a modest size. This will go even larger, I'm sure and still hold our attention or do you like to make smaller prints? What does the red filter due to any detail in the water? Would a more contrasty paper bring out more details of the clouds reflected in the water?

Asher
 
Maris,

Very tranquil scene. The water seems so still. The diagonals of the boat complement the line of rocks in the left. There's a lot of detail at the water's edge in the bullrushes. Altogether a satisfying experience. It works very well for me.

This print is a modest size. This will go even larger, I'm sure and still hold our attention or do you like to make smaller prints?

Final image size is a practical and aesthetic decision.

For years I made display size photographs but it's something I now regret. The sheer bulk, weight, and storage logistics of several hundred 16x20 mounted and matted photographs is rather daunting. Now I make only "lookers" rather than "displayers" and 8x10 photographic paper serves nicely and is easy to file and store. The history of photography is replete with names who made small pictures and Eugene Atget, Andre Kertesz, and Ed Weston come first to mind. I'd rather keep company with them than follow the contemporary trend for giant enlargements that strive to impress but end up shouting about coarseness and vulgarity.

A nice consequence of smaller photographs is that a typical computer monitor can display the derived electronic file about the same size as the original article. I think that's an approximation of authenticity worth keeping.

What does the red filter due to any detail in the water? Would a more contrasty paper bring out more details of the clouds reflected in the water?

The red filter effect is subdued because the oblique afternoon light has already shifted to yellowish and extra camera exposure was given to pursue luminosity over drama. The blatant compositional ploy of nicking in that bunch of leaves in the top right hand corner both strengthens the picture and draws the eye to the subtle clouds that are too weak of themselves to hold attention.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
The history of photography is replete with names who made small pictures and Eugene Atget, Andre Kertesz, and Ed Weston come first to mind. I'd rather keep company with them than follow the contemporary trend for giant enlargements that strive to impress but end up shouting about coarseness and vulgarity.

Great point!


The blatant compositional ploy of nicking in that bunch of leaves in the top right hand corner both strengthens the picture and draws the eye to the subtle clouds that are too weak of themselves to hold attention.

Maris,

I must admit I spent some thought on this extra foliage and like its inclusion, making the image "ploy", but good esthetic sense!

Asher
 
The history of photography is replete with names who made small pictures and Eugene Atget, Andre Kertesz, and Ed Weston come first to mind.

Hi Maris,

Isn't that a bit of a red herring? Did they make small pictures because they were deemed better than larger ones, or was it more cumbersome to enlarge these images (and in the process reveal a lot of shortcomings due to the magnification)? Are there any sources to support the former notion?

I'd rather keep company with them than follow the contemporary trend for giant enlargements that strive to impress but end up shouting about coarseness and vulgarity.

Isn't that a bit too much of a generalization, and perhaps even offending to those who make giant enlargements of utterly beautiful images? Size isn't only to impress, it's also about a physiological process of having to turn one's head to take it all in, instead of just scanning with one's eyes. Larger size also allows to see the fine detail better, detail that is often missing in large format images (unless contact printed and not enlarged).

Other than that, I like your 'Beached boat' image.

Cheers,
Bart
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Hi Maris,

Isn't that a bit of a red herring? Did they make small pictures because they were deemed better than larger ones, or was it more cumbersome to enlarge these images (and in the process reveal a lot of shortcomings due to the magnification)? Are there any sources to support the former notion?



Isn't that a bit too much of a generalization, and perhaps even offending to those who make giant enlargements of utterly beautiful images? Size isn't only to impress, it's also about a physiological process of having to turn one's head to take it all in, instead of just scanning with one's eyes. Larger size also allows to see the fine detail better, detail that is often missing in large format images (unless contact printed and not enlarged).

These are good points that I missed, as I just believe Maris's dedication to his craft, done with his own mind and hands. Hmm! I have been lax! I must admit that I too should have recognized the limited view that I accepted. For example, a picture of a person taken from about 6-10 ft from a camera to cover a projected image of 7 foot high has to be in the range of 600-750mm. Even at f16, this has a vey narrow depth of field. So the nature of the giant 7 foot high direct print is different than a picture taken with an 8x10 camera with shorter lens or from a 35 mm camera taken with a 50mm lens. Not only is there much, much, more life like detail, but the depth of focus makes the image ephemeral. So size of ordinal sensor and enlargement make a huge difference in both detail and presence.

Asher
 
Hi Maris,

Isn't that a bit of a red herring? Did they make small pictures because they were deemed better than larger ones, or was it more cumbersome to enlarge these images (and in the process reveal a lot of shortcomings due to the magnification)? Are there any sources to support the former notion?

I believe Atget, Kertesz, and Weston made small photographs as a deliberate choice.

Eugene Atget is mostly silent; we have only the photographs. His promoter Berenice Abbott did all the talking and ensured he was unchallengably famous from the moment she brought his work to the attention of influential (and impressionable?) Americans. We know Atget intended his photographs as "Documents for Artists" and that he deliberately used obsolete technology, one camera, one lens, glass plates not film, all photographs the same 18x24cm size.

Edward Weston wrote in his Daybooks an entry dated July 14, 1924 "...when the result is to be enlarged to 8x10, slight defects are also enlarged. Then, too, the chemical quality is never so smooth - be the care ever so great, and the loss ever so little - in an enlarged negative, as in one made direct." The choice of the 8x10 photograph for everything, and Weston never even owned an enlarger, did not obstruct him from perhaps the most exemplary photographic career of all time.

Andre Kertesz's photographs I have seen direct. His show "Form and Feeling: an exhibition from the Hallmark Photographic Collection" came to Brisbane in 1992. Kertesz's personal pictures, the ones he made himself were small, elegant, intimate jewels. Some of his famous images were enlarged to "blockbuster" size by K&L labs, a bastion of technical perfection. The big pictures, I reckon, were so alien to the original intent that they looked ugly and a little bit sad.

Isn't that a bit too much of a generalization, and perhaps even offending to those who make giant enlargements of utterly beautiful images? Size isn't only to impress, it's also about a physiological process of having to turn one's head to take it all in, instead of just scanning with one's eyes. Larger size also allows to see the fine detail better, detail that is often missing in large format images (unless contact printed and not enlarged).

Sometimes bigger really is better. I remember holding Ansel Adams' "Tenaya Creek, Dogwood, Rain" in the vaults of the National Gallery of Australia. The photograph was out of its frame and I got lost in the rivers of brilliant detail that this 20x24 inch enlargement presented. It helped that original negative was an 8x10 on Kodak S 41. Lately I've come to own a "Tenaya Creek..." (expensive enough) but it is only an 8x10 and while it has fine detail and a beautiful run of tones it offers nowhere near the presence of the enlargement.

I do have a continuing beef about the giant pictures put up as photographic art in contemporary galleries. The eternal problem always seems to be a lack of actual content. An imaginary conversation could go:
Question: "Is this photograph a major work of great artistic significance?"
Answer: " I don't know but it probably is. Look at the size of it! It must be important otherwise no one would spend a bucket load of money having it made so big!"

I propose a useful although not entirely serious metric for Gursky's "Rhine II" and similar works. The metric is meaninglessness per square metre
or for US audiences meaninglessness per square yard.

Other than that, I like your 'Beached boat' image.

Thank you for for kind words and evocative comments.
 
Top