Scale

[pecunium]

I do a lot of close up work. If one is going to talk about the "essence" of photography, a lot of it has to do with distillation, reducing the image to the very kernel of what the photographer sees.

One of the things the shooter does is exclude everything extraneous; the term of art is, "gardening". It can be something as gross as moving fifteen feet to get a tree out of the landscape, or as small as pressing down a single blade of grass.

Back when I shot nothing but film, I used the camera to do a lot of my gardening. Enlarging the image loses detail, so by composing to the edge of the frame I didn't have to worry about losing detail in the crop (this is part of why I really love my F3).

There some things which get more dominant as one closes in; the two which are most evident (at least as I see things) are color, and texture.

Compare this picture:



Which has shape, and context and contrast between the tree, the fungus (a tree ear) and the leaves/sky.

Zoom in and it's all about the color yellow.



The gleam of the water droplets is nice, but the picutre is really about the color, and the fuzzy surface.

Comments

[niamh-sage.livejournal.com]

I love this photo, both for the colours and because you make the fungus look good enough to eat (which I now discover from your comments trail is actually possible. I'm drooling.).

One of the effects of close-ups which I always find rather compelling is the desire to climb inside the photo and explore. It seems there ought to be something interesting in the shadows, just over the crest of those corrugations...

On photography in general, I received a link to a technique called HDR (http://www.nicolasgenette.com/Labo/Articles/HDR/index_us.php/) yesterday, and I'm curious what your opinion is of this. I don't know enough about the subject to say whether or not this technique would be possible with film photography; if not, I guess for me it raises questions about the borderline between photography that is purely mediated by the skill of the practitioner and his/her camera, and that which is mediated by what is possible with software now. So my second question is, in your opinion, does the possibility for photo-manipulation muddy the artistic waters?

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

HDR is a tool, like anything else. The short answer is, much HDR (esp. as practiced) is limited, and the really dramatic stuff is limited to backlit displays like LCD and CRT.

The short story on that is papers have a limited dynamic range, as does film.

That said, there are HDR sorts of things one can do with film. They are harder than "regular" film work, require more attention to detail, are expensive (and these days require things which aren't readily available because Kodak stopped making them).

A good print using the technique is more expensive than either a "traditional" gelatin print, or a digital one. Then again it can take days to manufacture.

I've not acquired any of the software needed to do HDR, but a tripod and a digital camera (with the ability to bracket) make it pretty easy for most people to play with the technique.

And that's all it is, another technique. Like Star-filters, zoom-effect, etc., some people use it well, and some just use it