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ND filter slow down = Art?

I've been experimenting a bit with a 10X ND to slow down exposure with limited success. Got this one at Cape Kiwanda on the OR coast a couple months ago. Not reality due to the filter smoothing out the waves - not sure I prefer it.




Cape Kiwanda Sunrise ND







Cape Kiwanda Sunrise​
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
I've been experimenting a bit with a 10X ND to slow down exposure with limited success. Got this one at Cape Kiwanda on the OR coast a couple months ago. Not reality due to the filter smoothing out the waves - not sure I prefer it.




Cape Kiwanda Sunrise ND







Cape Kiwanda Sunrise​

Jim,

You raise a significant question and criticism of the custom and fashion of making waters "milky". The effect is very much desired by so many great photographers. In their work, it's admirable, especially in B&W. However, just like photographing waterfalls, I find this to be a challenge I have not reached any natural skill, or insight, as yet. It's always a conflict for me to reveal how water might be seen. After all, if our brains could record light, accumulated over a span 10 seconds, we'd also perceive that water as "milky".

I'd think that one might experiment with combining slow capture with one displaying glistening droplets, each one a lens for imaging the scene behind it, reflecting that in front, or just sparking in the sunlight. But I have not yet mastered this and appreciate your experiments.

Thanks for sharing these studies. I like them both and hope you will bring us more as this is a wonderful scene to shoot. I hope it's nearby to allow for more!

Asher

BTW, if you can, try to also post an image no wider than 600 pixels so that folk with smaller screens can see the image without scrolling.
 

Doug Kerr

Well-known member
Hi, Jim,

I've been experimenting a bit with a 10X ND to slow down exposure with limited success. Got this one at Cape Kiwanda on the OR coast a couple months ago. Not reality due to the filter smoothing out the waves - not sure I prefer it.

I don't really like watery milk. Or vice-versa.

But it's a great shot in any case. I just prefer the version at the lesser exposure time.

Thanks.

Best regards,

Doug
 

Jerome Marot

Well-known member
If you are just asking "ND filter slow down = Art?", then the answer is no.

The pictures are fine, BTW. I find the portrait composition more interesting than the landscape one. I wonder how it would look at different time of days, so that we would have a different light. Possibly also on an overcast day, and in black and white.
 
Thanks for the responses

Thanks for all the responses. Jerome, I know that a filter doesn't = "fine art", but I still wonder about the term. Most of my photography is outdoors - landscape and sports (climbing and skiing). Most of the time I'm just trying to capture and document the moment or place the best I can. A hiker web site I frequent has a long running thread on milky water in waterfalls - art vs reality. Many of the avid photographers go for the milky look - which is often inevitable in the low light of dark NW forests. I like both in the right context, but with these two shots I prefer the one closer to reality.

For myself black & white is the area I'm trending now for my artsy fartsy expression that is such an obvious departure from reality that it hopefully approaches fine art. I'm thrilled to be able to cherry pick from my color captures and apply digital processing to get the effect I want, something I never mastered BITD of film.

Here is another ND shot - this time a multi shot pano for high res. converted to B&W:







Asher,

I wish I could explore this area on a daily basis, but it is many hours from my house north of Seattle. If you are ever on the Oregon coast though I highly recommend Cape Kiwanda if you are willing to do a short hike up sand dunes. While the view from the parking area is nice the real treasures are found out on the cape.




View from the very good Pelican Brew Pub at the Cape Kiwanda parking area.


All of the first shots were taken from the north looking south, here's one looking north at the rock formation at sunset.






Cape Kiwanda Sunset​
 

Jerome Marot

Well-known member
Thanks for all the responses. Jerome, I know that a filter doesn't = "fine art", but I still wonder about the term.

That one is quite simple. There is no "art" in "fine art". "Fine art" simply means photographs marketed as (expensive) decor. The marketing requires certain characteristics, mainly that the subject is intemporal (hence the popularity of landscape), that the colours will match the room furniture (hence the popularity of black and white) and that the image follows current trends and fashions. The milky look is still a current trend especially amongst buyers who, shall I say?, do not follow the latest design fashions very actively.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
That one is quite simple. There is no "art" in "fine art". "Fine art" simply means photographs marketed as (expensive) decor. The marketing requires certain characteristics, mainly that the subject is intemporal (hence the popularity of landscape), that the colours will match the room furniture (hence the popularity of black and white) and that the image follows current trends and fashions. The milky look is still a current trend especially amongst buyers who, shall I say?, do not follow the latest design fashions very actively.


Jerome,

I would say that the above is one reasonable, (perhaps, overly cynical) definition that might very well apply to much of photography marketed as , "Fine Art". Still, I'd argue, that this does not represent most of the works museums collect as "Fine Art". Their hope is to sample some of the most important photographic works destined to be acclaimed and affirmed over future generations, as exceptionally worthy "Fine Art" treasures. But what's to choose from and who chooses?

There's a wide spectrum of photography reaching far beyond the more vulgar needs of mere contemporary, (and therefore "transiently fashionable"), decoration. "Fine Art Photographs" are those images that seem, to the "experts", to have lasting exceptional value worth being collected by museums. The selections are made not by decorators or fashionistas, but rather by scholars, curators and collectors , "Art for Art's Sake", for the enjoyment of future generations. The concept of “Art for art’s sake.” (“L’art pour l’art”) appears to have been first articulated in public by the French philosopher, Victor Cousin (1792-1867):

“We must have religion for religion’s sake, morality for morality’s sake, as with art for art’s sake...the beautiful cannot be the way to what is useful, or to what is good, or to what is holy; it leads only to itself.”**


So there's mainly commercially promoted "decorative" work labelled as "Fine Art" and then a second group considered much rarer. These face hard and even unfair competition to even enter the selection process to be also considered "fine Art", (supposedly in the nature of "Art for Art's Sake"). The latter should include some truly exceptional works.

Notwithstanding these best intentions, selection processes are not guided by some scientific objectivity but rather by intelligent and highly informed experience and even "guessing"as well as first class "contacts" and access to the process itself. This means that many really great images are passed over while, while some rather undistinguished, seemingly meritless photographs, can get selected by curators in their hunt for the best "Fine Art" for their permanent collections and exhibits!

Still, in time, enough of the distinguished original works will have been saved for posterity. Anyway, that's both my contention and hope. Meanwhile, if you'd ask me what kind of photographs am I trying to make, "Fine Art", I'd reply. After all, that is the direction of all my aspirations!


Asher


** Source
 

Doug Kerr

Well-known member
Not to be confused with the Fine Arts department of a university, which means "not including welding or cooking".

Best regards,

Doug
 

Jerome Marot

Well-known member
I would say that the above is one reasonable, (perhaps, overly cynical) definition that might very well apply to much of photography marketed as , "Fine Art". Still, I'd argue, that this does not represent most of the works museums collect as "Fine Art". Their hope is to sample some of the most important photographic works destined to be acclaimed and affirmed over future generations, as exceptionally worthy "Fine Art" treasures.

I am guilty, because I should have explained a bit more. All this is a language problem, not an art problem. "Fine arts" (plural), when used by a photographer on the Internet usually does not mean what is traditionally defined as "Fine Art" (singular in English, in French: "Beaux-arts"), but is used in place of "Decorative arts" (plural in English, in French "Arts décoratifs").

And, per definition, anything that is designed with the purpose to be sold to be hung over the mantlepiece is "Decorative arts".
 
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