It's impossible to really discuss how stuff looks anymore. Some people want to reference prints which we'll never see while some of the audience only sees art on a cellphone screen. Amazingly bad way to analyze a visual medium.

 

This image was taken using good technique, high shutter speeds and an optimum aperture. The shadows are open and the highlights are not burned out. It was done with a 47.5 megapixel, state-of-the -art camera. I can enlarge it on the Retina screen in the studio up to 200% and see lots and lots of detail. The granularity of the rock faces. The detail on the plant leaves and more. I can easily print this as big as I'd ever want. 

In a small size, such as the reduction to 3200 pixels and then the additional reduction and compressions courtesy of Blogger, a viewer using a phone or small iPad to view will see none of the technical "features" that might make the image worth looking at. Features that make the image more immersive for me. The distillation for the web will gut much of the impact that something like a well printed and presented 4x6 foot print might have. So...how can we possible have a discussion about the merit of either the image or the technical underpinnings of its creation with any common context? Or a common visual language?

We often ask where the great photographic artists of today are hiding. This comes from our pervasive habit of judging everything on media that represent the lowest common denominators of presentation. Tiny, low bit depth screens, viewed in poor lighting conditions after being squeezed through the internet pipeline with all of its attendant compromises. 

We do have choices though. We can search out the galleries which may be showing work of good artists and see the images as they were intended. If that's not possible we can try to hunt down better channels for the work and take the time to look at what's being produced on monitors that are actually accurate and are positioned in such a way as to minimize random light, the color casts of rooms in which they are situated and the kinetic clutter that comes from looking at images while out in the world and on the move. 

Having tried it I can tell you that a nicely done image on a big, color corrected screen in a room with controlled light is much, much (infinitely?) better than trying to balance a cellphone in one hand, a half unwrapped burrito in the other while rocketing through a tunnel on a hard seat in a bumpy subway car with flickering flourescent lights from the last century overhead while anxiously awaiting your next stop.

Even magazine writers from the print days realized that the actual work and the diminished, commercially printed paper version of the work were wildly different and, when writing reviews about gear, always cautioned readers to chose to believe the writer's description over the vague final print sample offered up by a web-press printed magazine page made with crummy paper. 

I made a mistake of blogging yesterday. I put up some images of an aerial dance troupe. The images as I see them are gorgeous and detailed but apparently when viewed on lesser media under worse viewing conditions the subjects of the images seem too small; too distant. We have now flattened a general audience for photography on the web down and down so that now all that's expected of an image is that the design be rendered big, graphic and simple for easy cellphone screen consumption. 

This is why I make every effort track down the bits of good work I occasionally find on places like Instagram and see if the creator has an actual website that I can visit. To see if the artist provides a better viewing experience for those with the time and energy to drill down a bit.

It's also the reason why I like to hit as many galleries and museum shows as I can in a year. I can see work more or less as it was intended by its creator and it's always a bit transformative; if the work is good. 

Seeing a Chuck Close photo realistic painting splashed out eight feet by ten feet in size and beautifully lit on a museum wall is a totally different experience than coming across the same image as a cropped, 4x4 inch Instagram image even on the best of screens. 

I am often asked by commenters why we don't talk more about the "art" of photography here on the blog instead of going over lots of gear and technical work considerations and it's basically because of the inability to have a common standard for accessing viewing the works. It's hard to agree about the amazing detail in even an Alex Soth print if most of the audience has only seen the work as a weak copy on a small screen and the writer is talking about his experiences seeing the work on a museum wall in its original printed size. On a print that was the photographer's final intention.  So, when we do try to talk about the work we end up with so many different avenues for viewing, each of which is a diminished and poor replica of the original,  that it's impossible to make many meaningful assessments. 

I'm reminded of all the times people have presented work to the masses done by great artists only to have the works judged by people who have never seen art the way it was intended by the artist. "The Mona Lisa should have had more fill light. And the artist should have gotten a better white balance on her face....."  So many hobbyists, when viewing Henri Cartier-Bressson photographs on the web rush to tell the world that his work is bad because it isn't sharp enough. And suggest that he should have used an autofocus camera. Etc. Etc. They might have taken the time to see the work in one of the well printed books of HCB's work...

Group think tends to peel off concept, gesture and mood and replace it with "easy to see" and "easy to look at" work instead. 

That's why we have an endless supply of skinny, big chested, just post adolescent, half-dressed women to look at on Instagram and very few images of substance or interest. Sex, food and cats. That's about it. But I guess we get the audiences we create.

I'll remember that the next time I post anything that falls out of the easy view parameters.