An obviously inspirational video, and a very cool idea.
owever, it bothers me a bit that he said he doesn't use a light meter or time the shots, etc. He just guesses on the timing and "hand filtering" intuitively.
As you can see briefly in that video, some of his shots were overexposed to the point of being less than they might have been, and they are probably only showing the best that he's taken.
Lazy art is still art, but it doesn't impress me quite as much as art that's made to the best of the artist's abilities.
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BTW- Where the heck do you get photographic paper that large? Is he actually making it himself?
He is breaking tons of "rules" which is good/OK because he explained why he is doing it and my guess is that he is good photograher in the typical sense...and he actually made some sense in explaining it. So I'm good with what he is doing...thinking outside the box (sort of...maybe inside the box a bit too).
While the use of lightmeters and computerized image processing can lead to more technically "correct" images, fine art is often as much about the process as about the result.
If one were to only look at the finished pictures, one could easily say that the composition was flawed, the exposure was off, etc.; but if one knew that the image was made in a mobile camera obscura by an artist who used only his intuition and experience for exposure control, one couldn't help, in my opinion, but to be moved by the experience.
His work gives testimony to the lengths some artists will go to for their craft,
and he is a testament to the fact that in the best of cases,
an artist is his art.
Cableaddict wrote:
Lazy art is still art, but it doesn't impress me quite as much as art that's made to the best of the artist's abilities.
Lazy? That guy is putting more work into making a single image than most digital users would put into a hundred images.
In a way, light meters, automatic cameras and so on are the lazy way. We don't really have to think about exposure. Oh, that image is blown? Dial in some comp and re-take it. It costs us a few seconds. It costs him a day, a lot of work, and probably a good bit of money. The fact that this guy is basically guessing at exposure and manually blocking parts of the image to avoid blowout (with his hands!) and still getting images of that quality is pretty impressive to me. It's not conventional... it breaks the rules... but who cares? He's doing the work and he's the only one that has to enjoy it unless he's trying to sell them.
I can tell you - I far prefer the lazy way myself: DSLR's, autofocus, light metering, Lightroom for development. No way in hell I'm dragging that thing around and rolling stuff around in a giant pipe for development
I enjoyed watching this most interesting video. It brought to mind past memories.
A few years ago I had the opportunity of visiting Clyde Butcher (The Ansel Adams of the Everglades) in his gallery, some 25 miles west of Miami.
He gave me a tour of his darkroom and he showed me his old cameras, mostly 8x10 from the beginning of the last century. "Cameras are boxes to which the photographer attaches a lens" He was using Schneider lenses in those old cameras. His work has always been confined to b&w photography and his prints sell very well, some of them for over $5000.
Do we really have anything simpler than an ancient, cumbersome film camera and a hand held exposure meter? Still, such primitive gear finds new life in the hands and eyes of this great photographer who has dedicated his life to photograph the wilderness of the scenery in the Everglades National Park.
No matrix metering, no instant view in a LCD, no means to delete anything in camera and only one shot at a time. His gallery, out of Hway 41 West, has many of his beautiful work which can also be seen throughout Florida.
Yes, modern cameras are simply awesome work of art and technology but it is still the photographer the main ingredient for taking the pictures.
William Rodriguez
Miami, Florida.
And "testament" was technically the correct word, though it is usually used in that context to refer to an attribute or direct object rather than a person. e.g., "His results are a testament to the amount of time he spends on his craft."
Instead of buying new camera, from now on, I will save it in order to buy an old M1 tank, which I will convert the artillery barrel to a zoom lens and the turret to shoot (with or without pun intention) pano. Damn! it would be awesome!!!!
