(from an article by Charles Cramer, here.)
2.08.2011
A nice quote I read on Michael's blog.....
'This quote from painter/photographer Charles Sheeler comes to mind: "Isn't it amazing how photography has advanced without improving?"'
(from an article by Charles Cramer, here.)
(from an article by Charles Cramer, here.)
11 comments:
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Made me laugh out loud!
ReplyDeleteYeah, just read this too. Nails it.
ReplyDeleteDovetails nicely with your recent posts about retro Canon gear and your rant about gearheads.
I still think the highpoint of my photographic obcession was shooting 4x5 film. But I don't have the guts to go "back to the future" and do it! Darn diet of junk food digital has me addicted :)
ReplyDeleteThis is a quote from a recent blog " When I consider that the $5,000 Nikon D2x I bought in 2004 is in the same IQ ballpark as this $599 camera (with lens) I have to stop and consider how far we've come." The new camera bodies from from any manufacturer will out perform the last generation at lower price points. Are advancements in technology a bad thing? Are digital images as good as film? Should I buy a 5 year old camera that originally sold for $7000.00 in search of the holy grail. Did I waste $1700.00 on the E-5 I just bought! It's not that amazing after all.
ReplyDeleteFrank, I think the gist of the article is that while the gear keeps advancing it isn't linearly reflected in the quality of the art that is generated. Nothing to do with technical measures.
ReplyDeleteIf you didn't have a camera before and now you have an E-5 I can't see how that would be a waste of money...
Kirk, My comments were a little tongue in cheek. I guess I was a little amped up after reading the DPR review of the E-5. Thank you for calming me down.
ReplyDeleteKirk
ReplyDeletego grab a tilt adaptor for your m4/3 camera, looks muchos better than those PS effects
obakesan, You should know me better than that. That's straight out of a m4/3rds camera. It just happens to have a LensBaby Composer on the front......
ReplyDeleteCharles's essay is reflecting much of the good use of new techs, equipment. Many of us here in HK just like to talk about specs and techniques without actually applying them to good use. Kirk, tks for posting articles like this.
ReplyDeleteIt's a good day when I read a quote from Charles Sheeler, my favorite American artist.
ReplyDeleteOf course, when you read that quote, you have to realize the context in which he delivered it, which was pre-World War II America, during the days when photography was just starting to clime out of it's own primordial ooze, and start to be taken seriously as an art form unto itself, thanks to folks like Sheeler, Steiglitz, Cartier-Bresson, Adam, Weston, etc. Of course it helped that photographers like Sheeler and Cartier-Bresson were trained as artists/painters before even touching a camera.
Sheeler himself used his camera like other artists used sketchbooks, as a means to capture a subject to be later translated to a canvas, but Sheeler was often criticized in how very literally he followed the image of his photos! Some of his paintings do indeed show signs of being photo-realistic.
One of his "photo realistic" paintings of a Bucks County barn hangs in the Chicago Art Institute, right next to the very iconic "American Gothic" --the super famous painting by Grant Wood looks absolutely right at home next to Sheeler's, but, in fact, I personally think Sheeler's is the better of the two.
I get it when photographers, like yourself, and Charles Cramer in his article point out that it's not really the equipment, but the vision that counts. And of course that is what Sheeler is eluding to in his quote as well. So we can appreciate the work of someone like photojouralist David Guttenfelder, who has been documenting the war in Afghanistan with his iPhone as well as his big, expensive DSLR's.
It really doesn't matter what sort of camera you have, nor how advanced it is, if you don't have the eyes and imagination to produce great images with it.
Kirk
ReplyDeletereally ... wow ... with the background so "in focus" around the witches hat I'd assumed it was PShopped ... well there you go.
I always say there is something I like about the shallow dof of the larger formats ... Angle of view looks to be somewhere around normal to mild tele, makes sence that 4/3 would give such DoF is taken at f5.6 or something.
composer you say ... nasty OOF n stuff in there, I'm willing to put $5 it not being taken with a decent 35mm lens mounted on the lensbaby adaptor.
care to share more information on the shot? I'm about to dive in and get the OM mount tilt adaptor from the guy in Italy.