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BadInfluence
Mountain climber
Dak side
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too much money for me to spend. i was at B&H recently and some dude dropped $70,000 on the 39mp blad and lenses. i could commute to El Chalten for a month with that loot
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bvb
Social climber
flagstaff arizona
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i shoot digi. but every photo i take that i really like, i print with archival quality paper and ink and put in these big photo albums i keep. i think the debate is a non-issue. i've got a couple of beautiful prints of dave edward's photography hanging framed on the wall. shot digi. same with a bunch of signed hatcher prints. they look great -- every bit as good as any film print i ever paid for. ephemera? ...'m looking at this gorgeous photo on my wall as i type...i think not. quite tangible, thank you.
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Nefarius
Big Wall climber
Fresno, CA
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The film vs. digi argument is pointless. It's like the ethics arguments here; you're going to stand on one side of the fence and never move. Regardless, digi is the way of the future and inevitable.
Unfortunately, film is slowly dying off. Regardless of them adding a new Velvia film to the line... We must also look at the fact that companies like Kodak, Illford, etc. stopping production B&W film, paper, etc. in the last year. As well, both Canon and Nikon have dropped film cameras from their line-up. Sad. We are slowly losing the roots of the art.
Back on topic... I finally went and had a look at the magazine that started this thread... I was largely unimpressed. A lot of the shots were pretty mediocre. The cover shot had been on my desktop, off and on, for about the last 4 months though. Nice shot.
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Todd Gordon
Trad climber
Joshua Tree, Cal
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Jul 22, 2007 - 03:11am PT
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Greg Epperson; One of the best.
Epperson on ice. (Not to be confused with Bourbon on ice)
Clark Canyon
Fisher Towers, Sun Devil Chimney, Titan, Moab, Utah
Secret Climbing Area
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MikeL
climber
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Jul 22, 2007 - 11:29am PT
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I don't presume to know much about these technical issues you guys are talking about, but I thought that the technical issues were only important to the extent that they serve the artistic ones. You've put Ansel Adams on a pedestal, but of all people, he believed he was doing much more than recording nature, and didn't he manipulate his images a tremendous amount to achieve the image that He Wanted? I mean we're talking about a fine art, aren't we?
I'm just having a little bit of trouble with the whole idea of showing nature or reality "as it really is."
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Doug Robinson
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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Jul 22, 2007 - 11:32am PT
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Didn't see this thread first time around. Thanks for refreshing it Todd with your shot of Epi. I'll add my huge respect for his artistry...
Jerry's inside report from Galen's print shop really enlightened me. Thanks! I finally understand why I drifted away so disappointed from my old friend and climbing partner. Still liked aspects of the man, still admired many of his ideas. But nowadays I go back to Galen's old writing, not his later prints.
I am drawn as if to the dark side, to walk into the gallery in Bishop. But it is a weird fascination with what I've come to think of as the "glitter effect." Weird how turning up the saturation ends up sailing those images right out of the realm of believability. Now they're eye candy. To represent the Sierra that I recognize, I have no Galen on my walls but rather Vern Clevenger, and even moreso Claude Fiddler. Claude doesn't own a filter.
When Galen maintained there was "nothing in the prints that wasn't in the original slide," I would look at the sample slides displayed on a light box right there in the Gallery, look back at the prints glittering at me off the walls, and call Bulls#$it.
Jerry said, on the issue of color saturation I always thought he was pushing beyond believability. Finally I see from your explanation that Galen was referring to not manipulating objects in the photo. Obviously he thought that contrast and saturation were fair game for digital manipulation. He went too far IMHO, and the results grated on me. And from what you say, they raised questions among patrons too which made "doin' the shuffle" a job qualification for gallery manager. And which sent me briskly out the door to see the real Sierra light, then down the block in search of Vern's and Calude's prints instead.
So thanks, Jerry. You gave me language for a very uncomfortable dis-ease. I'm quite enlightened by what you and the other pros here have to say about capturing images. I am still fond of some of Galen's content, especially animals. And my friend Bob Tyson, a fine art photog and professor, helped balance the fiercenenss of my view by bringing me back around to appreciating what he called that sense in Galen's landscapes that you have just topped a rise to be hit in the face by the full force of a gorgeous Sierra vista.
I think Bob's sense of being there actually explains some of Galen's argument that his tweak of saturation and contrast brought him closer to what it felt like behind the lens. My studies of brain chemistry strengthen the view that the more effort you exert in the mountains, the more perceptual brightening -- as I call it -- you experience. The degree of that effect differs a lot from one person to the next. Some people, for instance, claim they never experience runners high. They're right, even though most of us do. And some, including me -- them's the lucky ones -- can get swept right into a transcendental experience. I'd put Galen "just an excitable boy" Rowell in the same group. When he pressed too hard on the Glitter Button, a part of him was just being over-enthusiastic. Another part, though -- the part that you see advertised on billboards driving toward Bishop -- seemed to be supporting the 17,000 very-square feet of a temple to the Pop-culture Galen legend.
A complex person. I can no more write him off than I can wholeheartedly support him.
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prunes
climber
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Jul 22, 2007 - 11:55am PT
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The quality of the print in the magazine is also subject to human error in the pressroom. does the pressman have a hangover, having a
crappy day or has he bothered th pick up the densitometer to check for dot gain or loss.
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bob d'antonio
Trad climber
Taos, NM
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Jul 22, 2007 - 11:59am PT
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I use both (digital and film)and each has it place. I also carry a medium format for landscapes.
Most of my shots never seem to be what my mind eye caputured.
As to the climbing mag...two hundred bucks isn't worth my time and effort to send my photos.
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nick d
Trad climber
nm
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Jul 22, 2007 - 12:00pm PT
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Photography IS manipulation of reality, it's as simple as that. Think of it this way, no photography system, digital or chemical can come close to the range of contrast and sensitivity to light that the human eye possesses. In other words, no machine of any sort can actually capture what your eye really sees. It is left to the photographer to interpret his vision through his or her equipment. I think it is a very common thing to crank up the saturation through film choice (velvia/kodachrome) or equipment (graduated nuetral density filters) in order to try to match the emotions felt as the photographer witnessed the scene. It is not a lie, it is an interpretation of the real.
Michael Smith
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SamRoberts
climber
Bay Area
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Jul 22, 2007 - 01:38pm PT
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Doug, I think you nailed the reason that Galen liked to pump up the volumne on his prints. The last time I saw Galen in Bishop he was right in the middle of making some list for his upcoming trip to Tibet. When I asked him what he'd been up to, he put his pen down, jumped up, said follow me and proceeded to show me some images he made of a mountain lion that were spread out on his light box. He was so excited about those shots that he went on to give a dissertation on mountain lions in the eastern Sierra. He could hardly contain his passion and enthusiasm, so I suppose it follows that the intensity of his prints would match the intensity he had inside him.
Hard to believe that in a couple of weeks it'll be 5 years he's been gone.
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Jerry Dodrill
climber
Bodega, CA
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Jul 22, 2007 - 01:46pm PT
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Great posts!
"You cannot capture reality, only interpret it"
True. So perhaps we ask; when you interpret reality, in what language are you speaking? Its likely that some may fail to understand.
Hi Sam!
5 years. Wow. Aug. 22nd I think. What are you doing then? Seems we should be raising a Heinekin toward the sky.
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SamRoberts
climber
Bay Area
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Jul 22, 2007 - 01:57pm PT
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Hey Jerry!
We'll be in Lhasa then- probably gaze off towards the Potala Palace and raise that beer. It'll be hard to look at it without thinking of that amazing rainbow rising out of it!
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Jerry Dodrill
climber
Bodega, CA
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Jul 22, 2007 - 02:11pm PT
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I know what you mean. Have fun over there.
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MikeL
climber
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Jul 22, 2007 - 03:40pm PT
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I'm jealous that you guys go to Tibet.
Beneath the interpretations of artists is a vision of new or better ways of looking at the world. Whereas science discovers what is, art creates ex nihilo. That's why I made my comment about the technical versus the creative. Many budding artists don't seem to get the distinction and think that art is application, technique, or approach. What they most lack is a vision. Don't get me wrong: visions are really hard to create. It took Picasso an entire lifetime of drawing to come to his final renderings, which look to be drawn with the hand and eye of a child (but with the genius of . . . well, a Picasso). Look at photographers like Penn, Cartier-Bresson, and Winograd. All three give us views into unseen human but commonplace worlds all around us.
For me, and with all due respect to this audience, that's one of the problems I have with mountain and landscape photography and painting. It never seems to give me something new or unseen that was not greater than or what I could not make out in person. In person, the mountains and the earth are always more than what a camera or canvas can show. But with people, . . . I don't know, I guess don't see them nearly as fully as I can when I am drawn to a startling image of a person or social situation (ala, Penn, Cartier-Bresson).
I would recommend Lisa Kristine's images, as I think she is coming to her vision these days. Right now they are still very affordable.
http://www.migrationphotography.com/home.html
Here is one of her images that I wanted to buy, but my wife said NO, it was too depressing to hang.
I would also suggest this hilarious set of comments on some world-class photos at this site, just for fun.
http://theonlinephotographer.blogspot.com/2006/06/great-photographers-on-internet.html
EDIT: I forgot to tell a joke about what's creative and what's scientific.
A bunch of scientists call up God and tell him that they can now create life out of dirt just like He can. God is intrigued, and he says, "I'll be right down." After he gets there, he asks the scientists to show him. They begin to by taking him to their laboratory and picking up some dirt and putting it into a test tube. At that point, God interrupts: "No, no, no, . . . you have to get your own dirt."
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Peter Haan
Trad climber
San Francisco, CA
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Jul 22, 2007 - 04:23pm PT
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I have gone on to expanding a post I made last year.
I think there is a subtext here, that is interesting. It is: what was Galen’s place in photography and specifically, mountain photography. And there seems to be plenty of respect for him and some doubt. He became somewhat of a sacred cow to us, unfortunately, as many do, and he was, yes, one of our own and had become quite renowned.
Galen worked constantly and was really bright. And once his “second” life became kind of organized in the early-mid 70’s, he was compulsively very productive. It was wonderful to watch him transition from climbing to general outdoorsmanship and really serious photography. So passionately and frankly competively. He was awfully driven.
In my opinion he was more just productive than a successful artist, just as Werner has intimated in the Mountain Light thread of 9/06. To those of us who grew up with him and knew a great deal about him personally, his recollection is not only sad of course, but also a little critical. I think some of us want to make the note here that there was honest analysis of him as well as of his oeuvre throughout his life. There were some hard feelings too. What you expect when someone achieves this stature. Jerry D. thought I should go on with this but I can’t really, out of respect and some sadness too.
Doug Robinson asked me what I thought of Galen a year or two before Galen died. I paused, then said: I knew too much about him to answer that question. Doug then remarked, “that’s a good answer”. But then we went on to the details anyway! You see I knew him from 1963 onwards in Berkeley. Dougie knew him awfully well too.
I suppose this question we are kind of flirting with here, is better answered by John Cleary and other pros who in fact have bothered to review Rowell in the past.
But for myself, I would have to say that in Galen’s work, there is a lot of amazing viewing, a tremendous volume of work and traveling, a lot of charming anecdotal, usually vigorous imaging that serves a general purpose. I even own one of his originals btw from 1972-4 (an arctic lynx about to pounce on a rabbit out of view). And I saw his show at the Cal. Academy of Sciences a while back too.
I think that the most powerful and successful aspect of his work lies in the vibrant “where” of it, rather than new cogent interpretation in it. And that is pretty much how he lived as well.
As far as the battle over digital versus film-based photography and as far as the arguments over photo-manipulation are concerned, in the end, that which really matters is what the resulting meaning of the photograph becomes, rather than near-ecumenical furor over rules of process or the faithful application of some formula.
Uelsmann who manipulated his silver negatives and prints to the deepest degree, really, is a very cogent, thrilling and nearly magical artist of the best sort---he is successful in his pursuit thoroughly. Meanwhile a very important part of the final meaning of Ansel’s work is “His Recordation”, that he was there then and did see and experience this moment, in heightened seeing, what he called “the strongest way of seeing”. All this does in fact emerge in viewing his best prints---it is very much why his work can often be so astounding. Many of his best pieces are momentous, in his sense. And as MikeL notes here, Cartier-Bresson revealed no so much with the best photographic techniques but with an insanely uncanny sense, nearly surreal everyday human events, another world, right under our feet---astounding!
But the approaches of these artists do not preclude other approaches, honestly. And yeah, Galen had his self-imposed rules and approach as well, and though way more naively and with naive techniques such as color saturation and gamma, he was kind of getting around to putting on some weight, frankly, in his work....in his own right.
And furor over digital versus chemical imagemaking gets even more arcane and purposeless in my view with such high resolutions headed our way and if we keep in mind once again that the point of all work is not to go through a “whatever” process but to produce vital visual ideas, or rather artwork regardless of process, and if including the moment of seeing is not part of the meaning of this work, fine; there are way too many many fish to fry so to speak, in the visual arts, in photography to justify the establishment of a single School of thought.
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Jerry Dodrill
climber
Bodega, CA
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Jul 22, 2007 - 05:12pm PT
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Thanks for the thoughts Peter, and Mike. Many thoughts and points come to mind. I'll have to pull them together so I don't end up writing a book here. But in brief, I agree with what you're saying.
I remember him telling a group of photographers that the more educated about photography you are, the less successful you are likely to be as a photographer. Your Masters degree will get you a great job in the photo industry, but won't make you a better photographer unless you have a vision to plug the education into. Futhermore, he said the best photographers for NGS are biologists, divers, climbers, scientists, humanitarians, archaeologists, etc. who are passionate about their work and learn photography as a means to express their point of view, illustrate their research, or document their projects. So basically, photography is a necessary by-product of meaningful experiences.
Technique is secondary to vision, and certainly, Galen was passionate about his work, more dedicated than anyone I can think of. Astoundingly prolific. He was indeed fiercely competitive, pissed folks off, and burned many bridges.
Read Barbara's "Flying South." Its extremely revealing.
Mike, You're the second person in two days that has mentioned Lisa Kristine.
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