tuscany # 88-91 - please, take their kodachrome (velvia) away
Tuesday, November 24, 2009 at 10:52AM 
Near Ponte Vecchio ~ Firenze, Tuscana • click to embiggen
Approaching Ponte Vecchio ~ Firenze, Tuscana • click to embiggenThere are few, myself excluded, who would deny that Saint/Sir Ansel, with an assist from Fred Archer, made a mighty contribution to the craft of BW picturing. His Zone System, a system based upon 10 "zones" / "steps" of tonal density - 0 = absolute black (no detail); 10 = absolute white (no detail / paper white), became a standard by which most BW prints are judged.
Saint/Sir Ansel considered zones 1- 9 to be the zones which contained all of the "useful" detail / information in a print. The whole point of his system was to make an exposure that, coupled with the right development and the right paper grade contrast, would result in a print wherein all the "useful" detail / information in the actual subject would be captured in the print and "spread out" over the zone 1 - zone 9 density range.
Although we, in the digital domain, deal with a density/tonal range of 0-255, the same basic principles apply - the goal of most picture makers is to make a print with densities/tones spread out over zone 1 - zone 9. Or, to put it another way, densities/tones that range from darks that are almost detail-less to highlights that are almost paper white. A range that in the digital world runs from 10 - 250 on the digital scale. And, as in the BW print domain, most color prints are judged by this 10-250 standard.
But, here's the thing about that - in both the bw and color domains - both digital and analog - the zone-system technique most often applied is to compress the real-world density range into the somewhat smaller density range of film and sensors. The techniques for doing so vary considerably from one medium to the other but the desired result is the same - get as much detail information as possible from a real-world scene onto paper.
However, that said, while many picture makers do an admirable job of that technique (read as a "realistic"* job), the one that so many seem to fail at is the opposite technique - that of expanding the density/tonal range of real-world scenes that are, by their very nature, quite compressed. Those scenes were the light is as "flat" as a pancake. The tendency of many is to stretch the density range right out to the max - 10-250 - even though the actual scene densities are contained within a much more compressed range of 50-200 or less.
To my eye and sensibilities, the resulting prints look very artificially "stretched".
Now, if a picture maker's desire is to give us those nice bright colors ... and ... make you think all the world's a sunny day, oh yeah (because everything looks worse in black and white), then they're on the right track.
But ... in case they haven't noticed, all the world's not a sunny day. There are days when all those nice bright colors take on a more muted and laid-back appearance. There is difference between a sunny day and a cloudy one. Why try to turn all the world into a "sunny" one?
*"realistic" by definition does not include most of those landscape pictures made by the uber-GND wunderkinds - those pictures with the visual hallmark of mismatched skies and foregrounds, especially noticeable when there is water in the foreground. In those pictures the reflection of the sky is always lighter than the sky it reflects, Here's a clue for the GND-ers out there - that's not how it appears in the natural world. Itaque, it is not "realistic".
But, of course, being "realistic" will not give them those nice bright colors and make us think all the world's a sunny day.
Reader Comments (6)
An observation I've made over the last couple of years is that flat light seems to be the sole domain of art photographers (f. ex. Justin James Reed, Ali Richards, Jem Southam..)
It is almost as if natural flat light = art photography and contrasty oversaturaded digital light = amateur photography.
Thanks for keeping it real Mark!
I think it works the other way around: the better photographers realise that a large dynamic range does not a good picture make and deliberately (perhaps subconsciously) seek out scenes with "flatter" light.
I've recently bought a couple books my Sam Abell and flat light (to my mind) is a definite part of his "MO".
Very wise words. The idea that in a good photo the histogram should touch both ends of the scale, independently on the original light conditions, is deeply rooted in many amateur photographers' minds. It takes some "aesthetic maturity" to escape that trap. I'm still trying to avoid it myself! I think your text will be a good help for that.
the sensitivity ratio of the eye is much greater than either film, paper or digity materials. Ansel undertook on the behalf of the lesser lights to systematize compression and expansion of the scale in film and print to better approximate eye scale. not surprisingly, it also unleashed a bunch of other subjective interpretations to very interesting degrees. would love to have had you meet Ansel. he's unworthy of slight.
Seems assholes with spray paint cans are everywhere. See the center of the triptych. I'm getting to the point where I'd sanction the cutting off of pushbutton fingers without anesthetic. Where do these mindless shitbags get the hubris to think their scribblings are what the rest of us want to see?
"Flat" light "non-flat" light "non-fat dry" light. Light is light! Where there's light you can usually find an image. Then you can paint with light.