mediumcool
Active member
Re: Fun with the Sony A7 Series Cameras( all of them)
Colour is harder to quantify, as the colour data utterly swamps tonality—try taking a tonally-unimpressive mono shot back to colour, and the additional visual information will often make it more interesting. I do love monochrome for its necessary concentration on tonality and texture. And there’s an almost compulsory nostalgia component with black and white too. One trend I am glad to see the back of (almost) is the coloured object against a greyscale background. It still pops up though.
My thousandth post! Do I get a Hasselblad?
Probably used to be true and remains fairly valid, but the nature of communication nowadays means that trends whirl around the world in the blink of an eye. My view of how [monochrome] pictures should look was formed by looking at [reproduced] work by photographers such as Paul Strand, Edward Weston, Ansel Adams and Fred Picker. They tended to a full tonal range with great separation in the mid-tones, a result of the H&D S-curve so characteristic of silver-based materials. The epitome of this was the Zone System, which I have taught in workshops.What is interesting is that American photographers tend to favor high saturation and contrast whereas those in Europe and elsewhere like it toned down—at least this is what I’ve heard from many ‘pros’ and amateur photographers on various trips around the world.
Colour is harder to quantify, as the colour data utterly swamps tonality—try taking a tonally-unimpressive mono shot back to colour, and the additional visual information will often make it more interesting. I do love monochrome for its necessary concentration on tonality and texture. And there’s an almost compulsory nostalgia component with black and white too. One trend I am glad to see the back of (almost) is the coloured object against a greyscale background. It still pops up though.
I ran a commercial photography business for 30 years, and would do pretty much anything to make a photograph work for a client; of course, for many years all a photographer could do was select camera and lens, film, paper, and processing that would help achieve a desired result. Digital manipulation makes all sorts of things possible and appealing because of speed, ease, and low cost (once equipment and software is paid for, that is). Someone once said; what Photoshop (I started with v1.0.7 which ran off a floppy!) needed was a Taste filter—Adobe still haven’t incorporated one. On that theme, I see a lot of experimental techniques posted on here lately that do a disservice to the image IMO; I have never felt the need for external filters and sharpening modules etc. Capture One, Pixelmator, and the occasional launch of the un-Mac-like Photoshop are sufficient to my needs. This experimentation recalls the camera club manipulations of yesteryear—bas relief, high contrast, solarization etc.; they all seemed to be a substitute for careful seeing and capture.If 500px is anything to go by, the trend now is for very high saturation/contrast with an almost HDR (though not quite) look to landscapes. Yes, one might hate that but if that’s what the world wants, that’s what the world gets. I am not a pro, don’t intend to sell anything so I can do what I like with my images. For those who make a living from photography and to whom high contrast and saturation is anathema will find it hard to protest the work of one very well known Australian who shall remain nameless
I don’t know Eastway, but he’s been around the Australian photo magazine scene for a long time, and is now a sort-of spokesman for Phase One. His work is probably a little too dramatic for my taste (and his web portfolio pix I have just looked at are over-sharpened for the screen) but he has a good eye—sort of a Steve McCurry of landscape, if that’s not too controversial! I don’t know how long he’s been using Capture One, but I bet it’s more than my six years.One Australian whose work I definitely admire is Peter Eastway (I am sure Ian knows him). He does not make any bones about most of his images being worked on extensively before the final product.
My thousandth post! Do I get a Hasselblad?
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