urban ku # 132 ~ just like old times
Tuesday, October 30, 2007 at 08:04AM 
Johns Brook with approaching storm • click to embiggenOn our way home this past Sunday, after having quite a few Stieglitz moments, I was taken by the idea of visiting a small museum in Glens Falls - The Chapman Museum. The museum has a collection of several thousand Seneca Ray Stoddard (1843-1917) photographs of the Adirondacks.
Having just stayed at Lake George, I was hoping that some his Lake George photographs might be on display, but no such luck. To be honest, the 10 or so photographs that were on display in the Stoddard Room were interesting but rather weird. They were prints made of photos of nature scenes blended with paintings (his paintings) of fantasy characters that he created to illustrate a story (which was never published). The prints were amazingly sophisticated with flawless technique - I don't think he could have done better blending in Photoshop.
Nevertheless, the first 2 prints in the exhibit were not from his fantasy series. They were 2 nearly identical prints displayed side-by-side that demonstrated a before-and-after darkroom technique that he used to put clouds from one negative into the sky of another scene. Again. just like the fantasy prints, the blending was seamless and very impressive from someone working in an 1880s era darkroom. His results look very 'real'.
I mention this because of all the hullabaloo heard these days about Photoshop manipulation. More to the point, that photography has lost its verisimilitude. My position on the subject has always been one of degree - if the results from either analog or digital post-picturing work are 'realistic' or 'natural' and reflect what was actually in the scene, I have no real problem with it.
As in today's picture, I blend in skies quite frequently. The skies are always a separate exposure of the sky made at the same time as that of the overall scene - I never add clouds to a sscene that weren't actually there. When I do this, it is always because the dynamic range of the scene exceeds that of the camera's sensor by a great degree. And, always, the desired result is based on achieving a natural or realistic appearance, not an exaggerated one done solely for the sake of 'wow'-type drama.
While yesterday's pictures were straight out of the box with no dynamic range tweaking whatsoever, today's picture required quite a bit of blending work. the sky required nearly a 2-stop darker (than the overall scene) separate exposure. In blending that exposure with the overall scene, I needed to considerably lighten the blue sky and grey cloud, relative to the cloud highlights in order to achieve a nature look and feel to the finished print.
So, as I stated, I am not above using some tomfoolery in post-picturing processing - just like old times.
Reader Comments (1)
So you are just using the perfectly matched grey grad! Using the best technology that is available to do the job most efficiently is just common sense. Ansel would have done it.