FOUR BY FIVE SKIES

The project I shot in Jersey was pretty much the first time I’ve used 4×5 film.

Now, I don’t want to get into a digital vs film debate here, I don’t care what
you use. To me cameras are just tools. I’m not (too much) of a geek about
them…..mine are dirty, chipped, used. (I’ve noticed that people who really
like to take pictures usually have pretty used looking gear, those who are
into the geek/fetish bits of photography keep their shit clean. But that’s
another post.) I love and use digital for it’s ease and speed and a bunch
of other reasons.

But…..

I’ve been working on the Jersey pix (285 meg files from scanned 4×5 color negs.)
and I’ve been working on digital files I’ve shot for editorial and commercial gigs.
Let me tell you…..there’s a BIG difference.

The amount of information in the 4×5’s is kinda mind-blowing. You can work
those scans, bring up details and tones, forever. In comparison, the files from
my digital camera (35 megs) look positively thin. Not that you can’t make swell
final files from them, it’s just that there’s not a ton of information there to work
with.

Now I know that there are some out there who just go craaaazy when this subject
is brought up. They’ll say that you can use HDR (high dynamic range) imaging
with your digital. But, if you ask me that HDR stuff almost always looks fake.
I like my photographs to look like photographs and not like some electronically
produced Frankensteins.

By way of example here’s 2 images from the same scan….. The Pulaski Skyway
(a 3.5 mile long bridge over the Passaic and Hackensack Rivers). The top image
is pretty much straight out of the scanner (with some color, contrast and density
corrections). In the bottom one I brought down the sky. Typically, if this was shot
using a digital camera and I’d darkened the sky in post production, it (the sky)
would become darker and gain a bit of detail. Yes. But the whites would have
been blown, which means you’d get tone but no detail. As well, a digital file just
wouldn’t have the subtlety and buttery feel that film yields.

In the end you can use/do/shoot whatever you want. I’ll continue to shoot
digital for projects where it’s called for. But I’m sold on the working methods,
the look and the feel of film for my personal work. I also continue to use it
for some commercial/editorial gigs. (I just wish more art directors would ask
for film.)

By the way…..in the bottom image I didn’t do any local dodging, burning or any other
fiddly stuff in Photoshop. All I did was lasso the sky and darken it. Those tones and
all that detail were right there in the film/scan.

SOME EUROPEAN BUILDINGS

Now, typically I like photos of people. Specifically portraits. But I must admit
to becoming more and more interested in views of the landscape with buildings
these days. Not “scenics” per se, but formal yet tough views of where and how
we (humans, developers, architects) plunk down structures in nature.

There seems to be a lot of this kind of documentation going on in Europe. I
recently bumped into the work of European photographers Peter Wildanger
and Benoit Vollmer (via: Conscientious).

Peter Wildanger

Benoit Vollmer

Both of these photographers shoot buildings in landscape, but that’s not
all that they do. If you visit their sites you’ll see that they are interested
in details, quirks and slightly offbeat takes on structures and the landscape
as well. If you ask me there’s some intelligence (not to mention diligence
and work ethic) involved with these guys work. All too often, in my opinion,
photographers just key in on one specific approach to their subject matter or
theme and shoot it to death. Both Vollmer and Wildanger shoot around their
points of view enough to allow them to sequence their work into strings of bits
and pieces that, in the end, add up to more than just a bunch of photos.