Art or Technology?

 Rob, Louise, and baby Donny, 1968

Is it art? Probably not, but it's my all-time favorite

photograph. Taken with an old Polaroid roll-film camera.

 

Bob F. commented recently that "We have plenty of technical image quality but most of us don't achieve much artistic quality." 

I don't think the march of photographic technology has done much to advance the art of photography. In fact, I think most photographers are looking in the wrong place. Artistic quality does not come out of a camera, it goes into a camera. Buying a better camera will not make me an artist. Or even a better photographer.

"Photography is not art; it is photography." So said Edward Steichen, one of the seminal photographers in the history of the medium. (At least I think it was Steichen. I remember the quote, but can't find it.)

I agree with his statement, yet it cannot be denied that some photographs are art and some photographers are artists.

What about me? Are my photographs art? Are yours?

Well, a few of them may be, just possibly. So does that make me an artist? Or you? No, that just makes us lucky. To be considered an artist we would need to produce a reasonable quantity of photographs that rise to the status of art, and do so over a reasonable period of time. Preferably a lifetime. That's the standard by which we accord people like Andre Kertesz and Walker Evans the title of artists. 

It also helps if you're dead. Because the final test of whether one's work is truly art is whether it endures. The composer Salieri was considered an artist in his day, yet history buried him, and although I have a good education in classical music I had never heard of him until he was exhumed for the movie Amadeus. Mozart, the hero of that movie, lives on in his music; still considered some of the greatest ever composed.

For some of us this probably doesn't matter. We're happy just making snapshots of our families and the things that interest us. And the funny thing is that history may consider some of those snaps art, while much of the work of the so-called "art photographers" will likely be buried. Just like Salieri's music. 

So what can we do, assuming this matters to us?

My own approach is to always seek to work in an artistic manner, with artistic intent. Will it ultimately matter? Probably not, but this is what gives me the most satisfaction. 

And history will be the judge. Not that I'll be around to reap the kudos. (And history will not ask what camera I used.) 

Blog Note: I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings at alifeinphotography.blogspot.com. I'm trying to build up my readership, so if you're reading this on Facebook and like what I write, would you please consider sharing my posts? 

(Photograph copyright David B. Jenkins 2020) 

Soli Gloria Deo

To the glory of God alone

Image Quality or Quality Image?

                                                                The White Dress

From time immemorial photographic equipment manufacturers have propagated the myth that owning a better camera will make one a better photographer. Consequently, many photographers spend time and money seeking what I call abstract technical quality: full-frame sensors with high pixel counts or even digital medium format, paired with lenses of the highest definition to create photographs of extreme sharpness and clarity.

Sharpness and clarity are certainly desirable qualities, although few people will notice a difference in any size enlargement most of us are likely to make. But those demanding photographers have a right to like what they like, and they help keep the camera manufacturers in business, which helps us all. So blessings on them!

There is, however, more than one way to think about photographic quality. For myself, I believe the most important quality in a photograph is the quality of its content. (Although I once did have someone, a lab owner, no less, inform me that image quality is more important than content.) 

The two are by no means mutually exclusive, of course, and there are many photographers who produce photographs with high-quality content using equipment capable of the highest image quality. 

The whole discussion is a carryover from film days, when some of us used 35mm extensively while others swore by their medium format Hasselblads, RB67s, Rolleis, and the like. This is not to disparage medium and large format cameras, because many great photographs have been made with them. Yet people like Andre Kertesz, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Josef Koudelka, Elliott Erwitt, B.A King, W. Eugene Smith -- the list is almost endless -- turned out volumes of poignant, story-telling photographs with their 35mm cameras.

A case in point is a print which Tony King gave me, which is at once one of the simplest and yet one of the most satisfying photographs I have ever seen. It's just a young girl's white party dress hanging on the bare wooden interior wall of a New England beach cottage. That's all. Just a 35mm available light shot, probably on Tri-X. How can it be so good? You have to see it. And yet, it's only about 6x9 inches, printed on 8x10 paper.  

Would it be better if it were larger? I don't think so. The quality of this photograph is the quality of its content. I doubt that it would enlarge well beyond 12x18, but this picture does not need to be large to be  eloquent. The technical quality is sufficient to carry the message of the content. No more is needed. 

It's nice if you can afford the latest and the best. But for those of us who can't afford or don't choose to spend the money, don't want to carry a load, or simply want to keep things simple, remember that reasonably good equipment, reasonably good technique, a reasonably good eye, and a reasonably good idea of what you want to say can add up to very good photographs.

It's what's in your photographs that counts; not what you use to make them. 

Blog Note: I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings at alifeinphotography.blogspot.com. I'm trying to build up my readership, so if you're reading this on Facebook and like what I write, would you please consider sharing my posts? 

(Photograph copyright Judy and Tony King Foundation, 2020) 

Soli Gloria Deo

To the glory of God alone

 

How Much Is Enough?

Pencil of Light.

40x60-inch print. Pentax 6x7, Takumar 105 f2.5 lens.

Fujichrome 100 film, size 120.

Continuing the discussion from last Monday's post, in which I quoted Henri Cartier-Bresson on the obsessive pursuit of sharpness in photographs, I'm going to show a few photos and talk about the subject of image quality.

First, a caveat: If it's important to you to own cameras and lenses with the highest possible sharpness and image quality, that's great. I want everyone involved with photography to use the tools that give them the most satisfaction.

But those of us who are constrained by budgets and/or weight considerations need not feel that our equipment, or particularly, our photographs need be in any way inferior. Remember that most of the photographs we have seen and admired were made with cameras that are not the current latest and greatest.

So moving on to the photos -- leading off this post is one that hangs in my son's and daughter-in-law's great room. I call it "Pencil of Light," and it is 40x60 inches. That's five feet wide. The original photograph is a transparency (slide) in 2-1/4 x 2-3/4 size, which was considered a format that gave maximum quality in a hand-holdable film camera.

The second photo is our own great room. We have canvas panels that go above the fireplace for the various seasons. Most are four feet wide, although the ""Winter" panel shown is only about three and a half feet wide. It was made from a 35mm slide scanned on my Minolta-Dimage 5400 scanner.

Photos three and four are our "Spring" and "Fall" panels, both of them made with a 16-megapixel Olympus OM-D E-M5, first model, with the Panasonic 14-140mm f3.5-5-5.6 lens. Obviously, you can't see differences in blog-sized photos, and you can't see the actual panels, but the two shot with the Oly OM-D are much superior to the other two. And that's printing four feet wide from 16 megapixels on an m4/3s sensor.

So if results like this are obtainable from a 16 megapixel, micro 4/3s sensor, what could you do with 24 megapixels on an APS-C sensor? It seems to me that the cameras we already have offer plenty of image quality for almost anything most of us might wish to do.

Personally, I've dropped out of the megapixel race. But if that's the game you like to play, play it with my blessing. Someone has to keep the manufacturers in business.

 

Blog Note: I apologize for the missing posts last week. My sister was gravely ill in Indiana and we had to drive up last Monday, pulling our travel trailer through hard rain from Nashville on north. We have been staying at a campground near her home, where we do not have wi-fi. (You can't expect everything for $24 per night.)

After lingering all week, Elizabeth passed away Saturday morning from lung cancer. She was 70 and had never smoked.

 Photographs copyright David B. Jenkins 2020)

 Soli Gloria Deo

To the glory of God alone

More about Less

Young girl sponsored by Compassion

International. Madras, India, 1992.

Olympus OM, probably 85mm f2 Zuiko

When I went to India and South Korea in 1992 on assignment for the Christian humanitarian organization Compassion International, I carried in one bag three Olympus OM bodies and four Zuiko lenses -- the 24mm f2.8, the 35mm f2, the 85mm f2, and the 180mm f2.8. In a separate bag I carried a Pentax 6x7 with the 105mm f2.5 lens. Plus plenty of film in both 35mm and 120 sizes. There was a certain amount of inconvenience in juggling the two formats and deciding which to use for which, but even so I was able to make some good photographs with both formats.

But would I do it again? No, but I was young then -- just a 55-year-old kid, and the weight didn't bother me all that much. But I should have left the Pentax at home because I think I would have done better work without the distraction of trying to use two different tools. I think I might have done even better work if I had carried just two light-weight bodies and a pair of zoom lenses plus one small prime -- which strangely enough, describes the kit I use now.

My minimalist approach is backed up by some substantial authorities, by the way. Picasso said:

“Forcing yourself to use restricted means is the sort of restraint that liberates invention. It obliges you to make a kind of progress that you can’t even imagine in advance.”

And Orson Welles said:

“The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.”

The lenses I use -- the 27mm f2.8, 16-50 f3.5-5.6, and 50-230 f4.8-6.3-- are light and sharp. I seldom need a fast lens and am not big on shallow depth-of-field effects. In fact, I usually want more depth of field rather than less. All three of these lenses are sharp enough that you are not likely to be able to detect a difference between them and the priciest lenses in any size prints you are likely to make.

However, Henri Cartier-Bresson had something pertinent to say about absolute technical quality in his seminal book The Decisive Moment:

"I am constantly amused by the notion some people have about

photographic technique--a notion which reveals itself in an insatiable

craving for sharpness of images. Is this the passion of an obsession?

Or do these people hope, by this "trompe l'oiel" technique to get to

closer grips with reality? In either case, they are just as far away

from the real problem as those of that other generation which used to

endow all its photographic anecdotes with an intentional unsharpness such as 

was deemed to be "artistic."

Since I prefer lightweight equipment, the X-H1, which is a little heavier than other Fuji models, might seem an odd choice for my main camera. However, its superior handling and build quality outweighs, if you’ll excuse the expression, the other considerations. Like a Leica M, the X-H1 is a nice size for good handling, and like a Leica M, it just feels solid.

Blog Note: I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings at alifeinphotography.blogspot.com. I'm trying to build up my readership, so if you're reading this on Facebook and like what I write, would you please consider sharing my posts?

(Photographs copyright David B. Jenkins 2020)

Soli Gloria Deo

To the glory of God alone