[Leica] Technology, Ted and Tina

[dstella1 at ameritech.net (Dante Stella)]

I was at MoMA three weeks ago and was marveling at the poor technical  
quality (by today's standards) of some of the world's most famous  
photographs from the turn of the century.  In fact, some of the  
pictures weren't that good either.  This prompts two comments to  
points that Ted and Tina made.

1.      It's one thing to say - at (or near) the retirement end of your  
career - that it would have been nice to have advanced technologies  
fifty years ago.  But where those technologies democratize  
photography, it's another thing to say you would have survived - or  
even started - in the field.  What we see as great photos throughout  
the ages were largely filtered by barriers to entry.  Materials were  
expensive, not everyone owned a good camera, and not everyone knew how  
to print.  Today, with the accessibility of digital photography and  
publishing on the internet, it is clear that many, many people have  
raw talent on what have once been called a high level, and the market  
is tough.  And people who are not full-time photographers are dumping  
literally millions of pictures into the market and are doing so at cut- 
rate prices.  Even though a large proportion is noise, it still exerts  
downward pressure on pricing.

2.      It's a bit of an overgeneralization to suggest that what is true of  
a commercial photographic practice is true of people who pursue  
photography for enjoyment (or sale of physical prints).  If production  
of color stock photos is the goal, then digital photography wins hands  
down.  Once you wander outside of areas that need mass production or  
accelerated completion, the questions change.  Should Adobe  
Illustrator displace all hand drawing for people who aren't commercial  
artists?  After all, it's more efficient and doesn't require exposure  
to India ink.  Shouldn't we replace watercolor painting with  
Photoshopped photographs? Maybe you've decided that darkroom work  
isn't for you - but there are plenty of people who use computers all  
day and don't want to use them for leisure activities.  And for "fine- 
art" sales?  I'll offer this observation based on several years of  
work on the exhibition committee of nonprofit gallery: in some  
markets, it's very difficult to sell photography at all, and  
conventional forms of photography (b/w, C-prints, etc.) sell far  
better than inkjet work.  Rightly or wrongly, potential buyers seem to  
be a bit put off by the identification on a price card of a technology  
that they associate with an office supply store.

And one other comment (directed to a slightly broader group):

3.      Calling "elitism" a motivation for darkroom work in the context of  
the LUG is absurd and hypocritical.  This is a group that uses $7,000  
digital cameras, $3,000 lenses, $2,000 inkjet printers, $100-a- 
cartridge archival ink, and $2-a-sheet rag inkjet paper and talks  
about how great they are... so it would call a group "elitist" that is  
using basically free equipment to manually print pictures the same way  
people have done for about 100 years?  "Troglodytic" may be a more  
appropriate adjective, but it's not one that Leica users on the whole  
have any right to call anyone.

Sorry to be such a grouch, but I've been drinking IKEA coffee at  
home.  It's possibly made from roasted ground particle board.

Dante

NO ARCHIVE

On Nov 5, 2009, at 4:10 PM, Tina Manley wrote:

> At 03:09 PM 11/5/2009, you wrote:
>> I'm glad digital came along when it finally did, although it was 45  
>> years too late for what it could of done during my career.
>>
>> Dr. ted
>
> I agree totally, Ted, and the bottom line is - if darkroom  
> processing yielded a better result, even with the possibility of  
> chemical poisoning, I would still be doing darkroom processing  
> today; however, I get better results from lightroom and digital  
> printing than I could ever get in the darkroom.  There might be some  
> professional darkroom aficionados who would disagree and could eek  
> better results from a file in the darkroom, but I'm sure if Ansel  
> Adams were alive today he would be printing totally digitally in the  
> lightroom.  There is a lot of nostalgia and elitism connected with  
> darkroom work that I'm not sure is fully deserved.
>
> Tina
>
> Tina Manley
> www.tinamanley.com
>
>
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