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Peter Figen wrote:
Then you probably hate Les Paul and what he did back in '49.
While I normally make a lot of comparisons to audio in what I do, and while my favorite side chain and one I use all the time is Universal Audio's Capital Chambers reverb plugin, I don't think this applies to what I was saying. Everywhere we look, images are presented with light that has been manufactured and manipulated and that's been happening since the dawn of photography, first probably through large window light and careful placement and later being able to duplicate that look inside a studio or any room or even outdoors. But really, all this is about your vision and what you're trying to say, and the best examples still come from film, and that's usually because they spare no or little expense to get the shot right, but just go watch the Hungarian film Silence and Cry (it's only 79 minutes) and compare and contrast that to Sweet Smell of Success. Completely opposite ends of the lighting spectrum but both create their own feel and mood about what they're trying to convey.
Last year I was learning Jimmie Rodgers' Blue Yodel #6 and for reference I listened not only to the original version but also Haggard's version from 1969's Same Train Different Time tribute to Rodgers. I kept listening to Merle's really great version and the more I listened the more the slight amount of reverb on his voice seemed to be sounding very much like what I was putting on my own voice in Logic with the UA plugin, so I looked up where Merle recorded that record and sure enough, it was recorded in late '68 right there at Capital. So, just because I could recognize exactly what reverb (and no, I could not tell you which chamber it was) doesn't really take anything away from that recording for me. Hell, most people would not have even been aware of any effects at all but it's there. When they recorded Robert Johnson in that hotel in Texas, they put him facing the corner and the mic at the opposite end of the room. They didn't have effects, per se, back then so they took advantage of whatever was available to create the sound they were after. Mellencamp later did the same thing in the same hotel room chasing that sound T-Bone Burnett. All of that is no different than anything we do as photographers, only some of us are more adept at recognizing and/or creating effective lighting than others. It is funny how some folks get in a twist over this stuff though. Who the hell really cares anyway. Oh, apparently more than a few. ...Show more →
Les Paul is a great way to challenge my point. ;-)
I actually love Les Paul's crazy stuff... and the fact that he did it with some really old school technology. (My mentor was a huge Les Paul fan, so I was exposed to this stuff early on.)
Here's the point I'm trying to make. Most people who aren't savvy about how this stuff is done — and that's the great majority of people who listen to music or look at photographs — don't generally think about the effects in the way that we do. They probably don't hear Les Paul and think, "amazing how he overdubbed all of those tracks of himself and played with recording speed!" They might be sort of subliminally aware of how he "got there," but the bottom line is that they just really like the sound he produced.
It is different for those (of us) who are practitioners and who really are interested in the techniques at work in this stuff.
I'll give you a very recent example. A coupe of days ago I was at the "Ansel Adams in Our Time" exhibit at the De Young in San Francisco. (I recommend the show. If anyone is interested, I wrote about my response to the show, mentioning what I liked about it but also offering a critique or two.)
One of the slight "misses" in the show was its implicit and occasionally explicit reinforcement of the myth that Adams "eschewed manipulation" as an adherent to "straight photography." (These are words taken from the exhibit itself.) As we know, that's actually exactly wrong — he embraced what we now call "manipulation" in-camera and in post. There were several prints in the show that would have been excellent examples of this, including the famous and icon photograph of Mt. Whitney in which a horse in a meadow is caught in a fortuitous patch of sunlight.
As I looked at the print, noticing that this particular one burned down the hills beyond the meadow and in from of the distant mountains to near black, a young fellow next to me said something about the photograph and about Ansel. I couldn't help myself from pointing out the "secret" of this photograph to him, namely that if you look closely (very closely in this print's interpretation) you can make out where Adams burned down the letters "LP" (for Lone Pine) that had been placed on the hill by local high school students. "Eschews manipulation," indeed!
Of course, I'm fascinated by understanding how Adams got from the reality of the scene that was in front of him as he exposed the photograph to the very different print that we all know. But that other guy I was talking to? He wasn't interested. It was just a beautiful photograph to him and, if anything, thinking too much about the mechanics interfered with his response to it.
So, my point about lighting (and audio effects) is that the general rule (to which there are some clear exceptions) is that the best application of technique is usually when it improves the thing without drawing attention to itself, and when it draws too much attention to itself it can distract from the power of the image or the music.
Like many things, it is complicated and not a purely this or that kind of thing.
Anyway, too many words. But it distracted me from getting to work on some prints I need to make today. Back to work...
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