Asides: Photography

 "Asides" will be occasional series; my ramblings on subjects that are dear to me and of importance to the blog but not a destination.  

Modern photography is amazing.  The computational stuff has made it VERY easy to get a stunning exposure.

Whereas on used to have to think about how and how much light to let hit the film, no one needn't.  All.  The move away from chemicals to pixels made that not just possible but inevitable.  The old trade of was to choose between a fast burst through a wide opening (a small aperture (f-stop)  = large opening) or a long exposure (slow shutter speed).

Short exposures with a wide open iris would stop motion - think sports.

Tiny apertures with long exposures would create amazing depth of field (how much of the picture is in fine detail, moving along an axis away from the film) - think Ansel Adams.  (And his colleagues in the f/64 club.)

Assuming that was done right, there was still room to screw up.  In the dark room.  I never played there but I understand the process.  One could change exposure time in the developing and printing process both.  It was complicated.  Most of us amateurs just let labs use standard processing levels and went with it.  The pros could save a mediocre picture and make a good shot into a great print.

One could really tell the difference between a pro and a Joe.

A pro could get 1 out of 8-12 shots right.  (3-4 shots per roll.)  I could get 1 out of 48-72 (1 shot out of every 2-3 rolls of film).  I never thought of myself as anything but an average Joe.

Oh, and your film itself mattered:  Light sensitivity (ISO), B&W v. Color, Slide v. Print.  The right moment required the right film.

Digital changes that.

I still have to think: capture motion or depth of field.  But I don't have to worry much beyond that.  My phone, which probably has more processing power than all of NASA had when we landed on the moon, can make smart decisions for better than I can.  Duh.

I send it a hint by selecting portrait (shallow depth of field, fast exposure) or camera (great depth of field).  And, it can even do stuff that couldn't be done easily with film: combining multiple shots to get color range that is amazing (High Dynamic Range - "HDR" - via Night Mode.)

What has not changes is composition (and cropping in the darkroom.)  I hope that will always be important. I hope that does not change in my lifetime.  Personally, I do not like digital post-processing on many levels.  It is here to stay.  You won't see much of it here.

AI does not leave me optimistic in that regard.  I have never even opened the Dall-e website. Can it create art?

Is this a good picture?

Given the angles and tools I had, I considered it interesting and acceptable.  Yet, I was unsatisfied.  How could I make this better.  With nothing more than old-skool toys?

By cropping it

No, I will not pretend this is original.  I thought of Hopper's Nighthawks before I reached for the camera.  That was the feeling I wanted to create.  I feel like I cheated though.

I did not think about exposure much.  Night Sight would easily get a high dynamic range.  I did not think about the film.  The computer would automagically correct my mistakes. 

All I thought about in the moment was having reasonably steady hands.

All I did afterwards crop and rotate it down to the second image.  (Both of which could be done with an analogue equivalent.  I wish I could have kept my balcony's fence in the frame.  I couldn't and still evoke what I wanted.  (At least from/within myself.)

Is that making art?  Could I have made art?  I was trying to mimic somebody else's work.  Hopper used brushes and paint.  Is it even art if the feelings I hoped to evoke have already been captured so perfectly that I was relying on your awareness of that work to make my effort have an effect?  Art is intended to evoke and provoke.  My intent of what to make you feel was explicitly derivative.  So, could I have ever created art with this shot?

I'm not sure what my full and final intentions were.  Does that matter?

I'm going to settle for "I created a cool image."  For now.

This matters a lot to me.  I love photography.  I want it to be a big part of this blog.  I need to make decisions about photo equipment going forward.

Today I looked back at other exposures.  I think I like this simple crop creation better.

It's still derivative as hell (now the aspect ratio is much more Hopperesque) but that blank wall speaks to me for some reason.  I absolutely left that vent on the left side visible on purpose - it completes the post-industrial feeling that I wanted to add.  It certainly feels a lot less derivative to me.  And, it's certainly built on Hopper's work.  I hope I added a smidgen of Jim to it.  Something that you feel.

How does this work?

It's very flawed, still; but it adds a different bit of Jim and is structurally far less derivative.

By the way, here's a crappy shot (almost deliberately so) of the larger scene, during daylight.

(I wish more people knew the story of Atahualpa.  

He's proof that history is written by the winners.  No matter how they won.)

Jim