The Online Photographer

As I've looked through samples here and there, it seems clear that there are treatments of tone and effects in B&W that are so prevalent now that they amount to new styles or fashions. They've become a sort of new normal. For example, consider the sample from the Q2M I linked to in the previous post (see it best on flickr):

Guy Ross-Clift, Rendezvous, King Street, Newtown, 2022

There's no right or wrong way for B&W to look. I respect photographers, so I assume that photographers are presenting their work the way they want it to look. So this isn't a criticism, and I'm not saying there's anything wrong with this. It's not my picture so it's not for me to say what it should look like.

Still, I don't believe that if I were standing there I wouldn't be able to see any detail in the fellow's shoe. It looks like the light is off. I like more of a sense of airiness and a sense of light in a picture, that's all. If it were up to me, I'd print it something more like this:

I'm just modifying the small JPEG I screenshotted from flickr, and I don't have the whole file to work with, so naturally this is only approximate, meant to give you the idea. (I'm fiddling with this with Guy's permission, by the way.)

It's not helpful to think of either one of these as "more filmlike," which is a comment I often see—after all, this is filmlike, and this is filmlike, and this is filmlike. B&W film had a very wide range of expressive potential just like digital B&W does. These are just two different interpretations of this scene. I'm not even entirely sure I like mine better; either one can look "wrong" after you look at the other one for a long time! If it were my picture and I had the original file I'd probably experiment some more. I might try darkening the interior of the car somewhat and see how that works, and I might try reducing the contrast in the folds of the man's dark clothing, because that seems to be calling too much attention to itself in my version. I don't think the woman's face needs undue emphasis, however—spotlighting—because it's clearly the center of interest of the picture and the eye is going to get there soon enough without being led.

In any event, one of the things I'm going to be looking at with these monochrome sensor cameras is whether there's enough information for me to get the files to look the way I want them to look. I'm not interested in whatever the current fashion might be. I'll be wanting my pictures to be my style. Just like I did with film, and just like any monochrome photographer should.

UPDATE Friday:

Richard Parkin mentioned that I actually can upload a bigger file, so I found that. Starting there, I took another run at this. I actually made a GIF of it, but I didn't care for seeing it that way; when we look at one version of something, it has the effect of "normalizing" that rendition, and it can skew your judgement. So you have to be careful what you look at when you're applying modifications. For instance, in darkroom printing, you always start with low contrast and move up on the right contrast; if you start out with two much contrast and progressively apply less, it's much more difficult to know when you've reached the optimum amount.

Here's my second, more serious take:

The biggest problem with the picture is that the woman is actually pretty far out of the depth of field, and there's not a lot of detail available in her face. That surprises me a bit; I would have thought ƒ/8 with a 28mm lens would be holding d-o-f better. And it would have, with grainy, less resolving film (the amount of "bokeh" depends on the resolution of the film/sensor; the greater the resolution, the more obvious it becomes what's in focus and what's not). The focus in the image is placed on the side mirror. It would have been preferable to place the focus right on the woman. But of course the scene was probably way too dynamic for that level of nicety—it was likely a fast, reactive shot. And that reactivity, don't forget, makes the picture—if Guy hadn't caught those clasped hands and that smile, he wouldn't have had this picture at all.

My Photoshop is a little maladroit, as well. I've been using Photoshop since 1994 but I still don't know much about it. What I was trying would probably be better accomplished with a layer mask, but I don't know how.

If this were my picture, this is the point at which I would make a guide print. A guide print is the first good attempt at a print; at that point you begin studying the print and letting that guide any future modifying of the file. There are times when, depending on your printing setup, you might have to make the file look a little worse in order to get what you want in the print; but the print takes over because that's the final, finished form of the work, and it's what matters.

One of my disadvantages in working on this image is that I don't actually know what the light was like, because I'm not the photographer. When I'm working on B&W, I'm often guided by the "feel" of the way the light actually was in the scene. I'm picturing sort of afternoon light on a city street where not a lot of sunlight is getting through. It's a defensible guess anyway. I think my lightening of the woman is fully believable because it's easy to assume there is light from the sky coming in through the raked windshield of the car.

Open this version and the original and place them side by side. There's actually way less contrast in my version, but it looks like the contrast is more vivid because the balance is better. The light on the man is much more realistic but his body is being de-emphasized like he is in the original (unlike my first try). And there's much more "directing," tonally, to the woman.

Mike
(Thanks to Guy)

P.S. Arnold was very proud of that picture of Bill Brandt, by the way, in the first "this is filmlike" example. He deliberately mimicked Brandt's own style, and successfully, too.

Book o' the Week

Chromes is an edit of more than 5,000 Kodachromes and Ektachromes taken from 10 chronologically ordered binders found in a safe in the Eggleston Artistic Trust. This archive was once used by John Szarkowski, who selected the 48 images printed in Eggleston’s seminal book William Eggleston’s Guide, while the rest of the archive has remained almost entirely unpublished. Three volumes, slipcased.

These book links are your portal to Amazon. Please use our links; they help support the site.

Go to B&H Photo

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

[Thursday comments start here, before the Update —Ed.]

Albert Smith: "I'd bet that any 10 random readers are seeing 10 different things when looking at the images. No two computers are exactly matched, not to mention tablets and phone screens. The true thing would be a print, and then how the print is illuminated comes into play. For what it's worth, and I'm sure it's not worth anything, I prefer the first image. I like contrast. At least on my screen."

Mike replies: It's true. In B&W, more so than in color, exact rendition of values is of heightened importance. The only way to really "fix" the intended look of the final treatment is with a stable print. Not for nothing does the photographer sign the print—it's a stamp of approval, of saying, "this looks the way I want it to look." Anything online is just a hopeful approximation.

Rob Campbell (partial comment): "Perhaps the most pervasive trend in black/white snaps today is encapsulated in those street pix where everything dark is turned into jet black, with only the highlights having any detail. I didn’t like that much at first, then I had a go at it myself. Now, I see it as just another gimmick, an attempt to introduce interest where none really exists. There are scenes where it works, but mostly it just reminds me of poor exposure techniques."

Geoff Wittig: "Black and white photography self-evidently is all about tone, specifically the relative distribution of tones across the available range from paper white to D-max. Other concerns like grain/sharpness and subtle color casts (intentional or otherwise) are secondary.

"That's precisely why I find black and white so much fun! there are endless possible permutations in how you decide to pitch the tonality, from dark and moody to light and airy, high contrast to low, and so forth. You get to decide how to spend your tonal range 'budget.' And this is why I'm a contrarian on the subject of dedicated monochrome sensors. I could be wrong, but it looks like you're stuck with the relatively arbitrary decision the manufacturer (or conversion shop) makes regarding the sensitivity of the sensor to red, blue or green light striking it. With a standard Bayer sensor (or Fuji's X-trans sensor for that matter) you can change this to your heart's content after capture using software, such as Photoshop's black and white conversion layer.

"Back in digital's pre-history, I made black and white prints on an inkjet printer after scanning in Kodak Ektar film negatives. I had been very dissatisfied with prints from B&W negative film, though admittedly this was developed by a commercial lab, as I never tried my hand at traditional darkroom work. Starting with a color negative I could play all I wanted with the tonal balance using color filtration.

"I could be wrong, but starting with a color sensor seems analogous."

aaron c greenman: "For years now, making Leica Monochrom prints with the Piezography Pro (and previous offerings) ink system has given me immense amounts of photographic joy and satisfaction—a true end-to-end digital B&W workflow. Printed on Canson Baryta Photographique has never disappointed. Mike, I would encourage you to engage with Jon Cone for a discussion/interview, I’m sure you would find it fascinating, as would he. Jon is a real innovator in the field. What a fantastic printing system. My dream TOP post 😉."

MikeR: "Rather than a monochrome sensor, top of my photography wish list is a monochrome printer. I've seen work done with a printer converted to a carbon inkset that just blew me away. You know a print is special if in a gallery show with lots of contenders, you keep coming back to one again and again."

[Friday comments start here, after the Update —Ed.]

robert e (partial comment): "These examples and discussion so far illustrate how different BW photography is from color photography, and how malleable a monochrome image is, paradoxically as a result of a substantial limitation. And I contend that this plasticity extends even beyond post-processing and presentation, to the act of looking at the final product. It may have to do with the tension of seeing the familiar in an 'unnatural' way, and how that encourages us to question or play with the act of seeing. That tension, which sometimes shades into wonder, is inherent to all photography, but take away color and it's amplified by an order of magnitude."

Jeff in Colorado: "Highlight recovery is tricky with monochrome sensors, because all channels clip simultaneously."

Mike replies: It's the biggest weakness of digital, in color or B&W. There's a very narrow range between those glaring electronic-looking empty featureless whites and too much undifferentiated dull tone that rob the results of sparkle. (The human eye is very sensitive to tonal variation in highlights and very poor at tonal variation in shadows (dark areas). This parallels the way B&W responds, but digital is naturally the opposite. I'm not sure about this, but I suspect that one of the biggest advantages of very high-MP sensors (say 45+) is that this problem—the visual effects anyway—are easier to overcome. Some of the best high-MP-sensor pictures have very good highlights, or seem to.

Sal Santamaura: "Re 'The focus in the image is placed on the side mirror. It would have been preferable to place the focus right on the woman. But of course the scene was probably way too dynamic for that level of nicety—it was likely a fast, reactive shot.' If I were shooting this with my D810, it would have been (as always) using Live View. Face Detect AF would have had no problem finding and focusing on the woman."

Mike replies: Great point; this scene would have been perfect for face- or eye-detect AF, wouldn't it? A textbook example. However, then he wouldn't have been shooting with a Q2M then, right? Aren't "bare" sensors limited to contrast-detect AF, and therefore can't do face- and eye-detect focus? I don't know for sure, because I don't know enough about how AF works.

Stephen S.: "Face- and eye-detect work perfectly well with contrast-detect autofocus, which is why it is a feature on so many fixed-lens compact 'point and shoot' digital cameras, and in fact first appeared on them."

David Bostedo: "Re '...either one can look "wrong" after you look at the other one for a long time!' That's something I run into often in software. I'll move this or that slider one way or the other, sometimes going to extremes, trying to decide where to place some tone or brightness. And they can often look right in different ways...so I usually wind up somewhere in the middle. Which always makes me wonder if I'm just finding some average, rather than the way I'll want it to look long-term."

Mike replies: It's a problem. As a friend used to say, "careful with those sliders, Eugene"—the reference, for those of you who are not old fogeys, is to Pink Floyd's song "Careful with that Axe, Eugene."

Carl Siracusa: "While I agree with you in general that the look of most B&W photos you see these days is too contrasty, I'd argue that a more important consideration is how well the tonal balance that's been created reinforces the message the photographer is trying to convey. And how convincing that balance is as a reflection of how light behaves. In your sample photo, for instance, I would place the most emphasis on the guy leaning over the car precariously, one foot one the sidewalk and another in the street, almost straining. You should be able to see the strain in the folds of his clothes. And unless there is some particular reason to make the woman's face clearly visible, I would make it only as visible as it needs to be to convey her happiness at seeing him. Otherwise it detracts too much from him and looks unnatural. She is inside a car, after all, and the light falling on her shouldn't be brighter than the light falling on him. I personally would combine the woman in version #1 with the guy in version #3. But obviously, the photographer may have had something else in mind entirely....

Mike replies: That's interesting, and surprises me, because I think the guy is definitely a supporting actor, a secondary character, and the woman is the point of the picture. But this makes it clear how important authorship is for photographs. If you had taken Guy's photograph it would have had a different meaning, and, accordingly, you would have presented it differently.

Following on from yesterday, here are two pictures of mine that I desperately wish hadn't been taken with a phone:

Keuka in the Rain

Butters at the Window

Longtime readers will have seen these before, but they're good examples of why it's best to photograph with the right camera as much as possible. The way photography works—for me, anyway, and yes, your mileage may vary—is that if you keep looking and keep photographing, every now and then you get a good one. Every now and then you get lucky, you might say. Every now and then things come together in that mysterious way and the magic happens.

But I failed here, in an important sense. All I had at hand was my phone. Neither picture prints decently—and in the top picture especially, the phone just plain failed to record the marvelous glowing turquoise color of the lake, which was the reason I stopped the car in the first place. You can see a hint of it, but the reality is missing in action.

Now, you can say that I got "a" picture in both cases, and if I hadn't had my phone in my hand I wouldn't have gotten a picture at all. True. But you're seeing them in about the only way they work—as little JPEGs online. They also look good on my phone screen, of course. So, imagine if I were a photographer who normally works with an APS-C Fuji and prints to 15 inches in the long dimension on a 13x19" sheet. And imagine that both of these shots would have fit right into the rest of my work visually—quiet, lyrical pictures that relate to my real life; the lake where I live, my dog by the window in my house. I've failed because I was gifted with two successes that can't be made into prints that fit in with the rest of my work. These should have been in the portfolio...but I had the wrong camera in my hands when I took them.

I think it's in the book Photography Until Now (1989) that John Szarkowski makes the case that it is about the camera...it's just not all about the camera. He makes the case that if you look back at history carefully enough, you can see how developments in cameras changed what people photographed and how they photographed.

It's been one of the features (I'm deliberately using a neutral word) of my life that I often have the "wrong" camera with me, for the simple reason that I've been a camera reviewer. If you accept the fact that the "magic" happens rarely, the converse is that the magic doesn't stop happening just because you're out and about with a camera that won't give you the results you like or need.

Here's an example:

I was testing the Ricoh GXR, a quirky little camera with lens/sensor modules that clicked into the same body shell. Here I had a module in the camera that provided a zoom lens with a thumbnail-sized, 2011-era point-and-shoot sensor. But it was just a neighborhood block party...my house is in the background here. How was I to know the universe was going to smile on me with a real picture? It was a very unpromising situation, the kind of event where normally I'd just get a bunch of crappy meaningless snapshots of people standing around eating hot dogs. But the Fire Department showed up, a fireman turned the hose on for the kids, and this miraculous little scene unfolded. You might not like this picture, but for me and my work it's right there, a hit. But again, I just had the wrong camera with me. It barely even recorded the rainbows! Much weaker in the picture than to the eye. I've always regretted that I got this picture and yet didn't get it. My life is dotted with such success/failures. They go with the territory for me.

You can choose to use any camera that suits your conception for a body of work. Nancy Rexroth made an influential body of work with a plastic toy Diana camera; Ernst Haas used super-slow early Kodachrome and learned to exploit what seemed to most people to be limitations; Elsa Dorfman made her life's work with a 20x24-inch Polaroid. Each one made their choice of tools fit the work they wanted to do, and in that sense "any camera will work" and "the camera doesn't matter." But how can anyone imagine that you could make Ernst Haas shoot with a 20x24" Polaroid without having it change his work entirely? Would Haas's Leica and Kodachrome make pictures that would fit in Rexroth's book Iowa? Would Elsa Dorfman be able to shoot with a toy Diana and exhibit the results seamlessly alongside her 20x24" Polaroids? Of course not, in all three cases.

Digital flattens the differences and distinctions somewhat, and more of the characteristics of the final image can be moved to post-processing—they're not as inherent in the tools and materials as they used to be. But surely you can see how a smartphone camera can be the right tool for some bodies of work and the wrong tool for others. It depends what you're trying to do, and it depends on what the rest of your work looks like.

Again, feel free to disagree. We're all different. Just because something is true for me doesn't mean it has to be true for you.

Mike

P.S. It really might be time for me to do a OC/OL/OY. My muse needs nourishment!

[How to Put a Picture in a Comment]

Product o' the Week:

Fingertip Pulse Oximeter. The link is from TOP to Amazon. This relates to health, not photography—it replaces one of the advanced functions on the latest Apple Watch. Takes your pulse and measures your blood oxygen. For heart monitoring, checking for COVID (low blood oxygen is an early warning sign) and slow heartbeat. I'm learning to correlate the way I feel with the readings. Works with iOS and Android. Nifty little device, super easy to use, and cheap.

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Michael J. Perini: "I don't know anyone who cares about making expressive pictures who doesn't have a bunch of 'nice picture, wrong camera' pictures.

"Smartphone cameras are a double-edged sword. More people take more pictures than ever before because of them: they have ushered in a whole new kind of super-convenient note-taking photography. Video and stills are always at our fingertips—with a level of quality that by any historical standard of 'power to weight ratio' is astonishing.

"That's all good. Like every camera it has limitations, things it is good at and things it isn't so good at. It has also given us the single most potent reason to not carry a different 'better' camera.

"It is often said the the difference between professionals and amateurs is that pros don't show their misses. A really good photograph is a confluence of circumstances: the event, a photographer to see it, and a camera capable of capturing their full vision. If any one of those things is missing, at best all it can be is 'close, but no cigar.' Every photographer including Elsa Dorfman and Ernst Haas has lots of photographs that in their own opinion are 'close but no cigar.' They don't show them. That takes a great deal of discipline.

"I know I have been guilty many times of showing my 'nice picture, wrong camera' pictures—and sometimes I think it's OK because I'm showing them casually to friends and family. I'm grateful I had the iPhone with me. But I don't put them in my 'portfolio' so to speak.

"We also all live lives that aren't always about photography , so not always having the 'best' camera for the job at hand is perfectly understandable.

"Even the most conscious photographer will come across situations where a different camera or lens would have been better. It is part of the deal. You can't really worry about what you didn't get; it is much more fun to be happy about what you did get."

DZ: "Nothing makes you happy. Those are two fine photographs—well-seen, nicely composed. They show you really connecting with the world. So what if they can’t be printed 15 inches wide? You’ve got plenty of photographs that can be. A failure 'in an important sense'? Don’t define yourself down." 

Michael: "If I were a photographer who normally works with an APS-C Fuji and prints to 15 inches in the long dimension on a 13x19" sheet, I‘d always have the Fuji at hand.  😉😎  "

Mike replies: I was just thinking something similar myself. Maybe my disaffection is with myself, for not being more dedicated. Successful photographers are very dedicated. They work hard and long, and keep at it, and surmount all sorts of difficulties. They're dogged and determined. Meanwhile, I want to have had my good camera with me, but somehow not enough to...have my good camera with me. At some level it's my lack of dedication and commitment that's to blame.

This is an awkward subject, and I'm sure my attempts to verbalize it will be awkward and perhaps inept. So please forgive me if my words are insufficient. I'm hoping I'll manage to communicate anyway—that you'll "know what I mean."

All photographs translate the visual world we see with our eyes into some form or other. All of these forms have characteristics. With experience, we learn what characteristics belong to which equipment, techniques, and tastes.

So my question is, do you have a favorite kind of way that you prefer photographs to look?

I'm not talking about a litmus test...I'm not suggesting if you like one look it means you can't appreciate many others. I assume that the more photographs you look at knowledgeably, the more catholic (small c) your taste is. I'm not accusing anyone of being narrow-minded.

Years ago I had an exchange with Howard Bond, an underappreciated large format photographer. He, of course, has a broad ability to appreciate many types of photographs. I, too, have a broad ability to appreciate many types of photographs. But where our discussion of formats seemed to be leading, in the end, was that I had a certain kind of photograph I liked to see best—a 35mm B&W negative from fast film (i.e., Tri-X, HP-5+) printed full-frame on something close to 11x14 paper—and he had a certain kind of photograph he liked to see best—an 8x10 negative, also B&W, printed larger but still mid-sized I'd call it, with Zone System technique. (See Howard and get an idea of the print sizes he likes at this link).

I don't think it's a bad idea to have a sort of prototype of the way you like best to see the visual world translated by the camera. We have an appetite for these things, because when we see what we like best it actually creates a sort of visceral satisfaction for that goes beyond the merely intellectual—we can get a sort of "charge" out of it, a sense or even a sensation of gratification. The reason it's not a bad idea is that it's really unavoidable for many artists. It's an inherent part of expressing what we call a "style." You'd never mistake an Edward Weston print for a Eugene Richards print, or an Uta Barth for a Gregory Crewdson.

Some people have more than one style they work in. Carl Weese is a dedicated platinum/palladium printer but he makes other kinds of work as well. And I suppose some people don't have any preference at all...although I would have to confess to being slightly biased against such claims. Sort of like when someone says "I like all kinds of music!" (That post was one of the most fun to write of all the posts and articles I've ever written.)

And some people change, of course. Ctein used to "translate" his visual world into 16x20" dye transfer prints. Now he makes somewhat smaller color inkjet prints from Micro 4/3 files. (Do you subscribe to "Ctein's Occasional Newsletter"? You should; it's very non-intrusive and often entertaining and informative.)

However, I'm having a bit of a mini-crisis here...because I have to admit, my old allegiance to my "Photo 101" style as I called it—B&W Tri-X, printed with a filed-out negative carrier on an 11x14 sheet—is just that now, "old." I don't practice it any more and haven't for years. So what's my preferred type of photograph now? Hmm, I might have to do some soul-searching myself!

Mike

Book o' this Week:
Black in White America 1963–1965 by Leonard Freed, a new reprint of this classic from the Civil Rights era. I got to meet Leonard Freed once. <—This is a portal to Amazon; also available at the Book Depository for global delivery with free shipping.

Original contents copyright 2021 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Grant (partial comment): "Like most people, I like all photos and all music except for the stuff I don't like."

Mike replies: Great line. I love it.

Geoff Wittig: "Another thought-provoking post, Mike. I rarely think much about what kind of photograph and what print size and presentation I like. Which already betrays a range of assumptions on my part; it’s the photographic print I love. Book reproductions are substitutes of varying degrees of sufficiency, but never as good. And on-screen representation is a completely tangential experience to me.

"I was reared on Ansel Adams, and I still see a good black-and-white photograph as a relatively large print with a tonal distribution very deliberately chosen for artistic effect. One that guides the eye and takes me on a satisfying journey while still demonstrating reverence for the natural world. So I’ve been drawn to beautiful prints by Clyde Butcher, John Sexton, Howard Bond and Roman Loranc. Michael Kenna’s in there too. I respect the work of documentary photographers like Eugene Richards and Larry Towell, but they’re not quite my thing. When I look at Koudelka’s work in Gypsies [link —Ed.] I find his stark tonalities like nails on a chalkboard. They look all wrong to me.

"I also realize I have a very narrow view of what a color photograph should look like. I love large, carefully crafted prints with color that can be subtle or rich, but never gaudy. Robert Glenn Ketchum’s early work, (his newer stuff is a bit too garish) Edward Burtynsky’s prints, Charles Cramer’s thoughtful inkjet prints and Christopher Burkett’s exquisite Cibachromes are my touchstones. I also love the unsentimental yet affectionate photographs of the built environment by Jeff Brouws; hard to describe their unpretentious beauty. Next to his work, Stephen Shore’s strikes me as smug and sarcastic.

"So I guess that identifies my organizing principle for how a photograph should look. I need to see and feel the photographer’s interest in, and perhaps love for, the subject. A carefully made print crafted with intention gives me that."

Dillan K: "Speaking of 'the way photographs should look,' thanks for bringing Howard Bond to my attention. I like the way his photographs look! I'm sorry that I didn't know about him earlier. I've lived a sheltered life. I appreciate it when you broaden my knowledge of accomplished photographers."

Who is Bunny and what killed him or her?
A long time ago, some literary friends were arguing about what allows readers to get "pulled into" a book of fiction. They were arguing nuts and bolts—one was claiming that Hemingway's simple, declarative style allowed more readers "a way in" to the stories he was telling, because more of them could understand him easily. Here's an example of his prose, in case you've heard of him but never read him:

Manuel drank his brandy. He felt sleepy himself. It was too hot to go out into the town. Besides there was nothing to do. He wanted to see Zurito. He would go to sleep while he waited. He kicked his suitcase under the table to be sure it was there. Perhaps it would be better to put it back under the seat, against the wall. He leaned down and shoved it under. Then he leaned forward on the table and went to sleep.

That's from the short story "The Undefeated."

This was leading to some heated words about "writing down" to the audience and so forth, probably from people who were tired of defending their own more ornate or involved writing styles.

I thought about it, and I decided that what draws me into reading has nothing to do with nuts and bolts at all. It's in wanting to know what happens. What's called "the hook." As soon as I get the hook, that's when the word-by-word, line-by-line reading vanishes for me and I start speeding through it, propelled forward. Here's the beginning of Donna Tartt's The Secret History:

The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.

Who is Bunny and what killed him or her? Who's the us of "our"? Are they in the mountains? Is Bunny dead and buried or dead and unburied? The first thing that springs to mind is a plane crash leading to a survivalist situation, but at the same time I know that might be wrong. I want to find out all these things. Prose style be damned, I would read on.

(It's a famous one-line opener.)

Intrusions
My wonderful former psychoanalyst, Karen Maroda, who has written many books in her field, feels that everyone has a basic value system. (I got the idea she also feels that many people aren't aware of what their own basic value systems are. But I mustn't put words in her mouth.) My basic value system is essentially psychological—I always return to psychological explanations by way of first principles, as my way of explaining the world to myself.

Photographically speaking—to hop to safe ground—I do have a pretty distinct value system. I like pictures that get me to engage with the subject. For all my apparent preoccupation with it, technique is a means to an end for me. It's secondary, not primary. Like prose style. So I like technique that doesn't call attention to itself—more specifically, I dislike technique that pulls my attention away from engagement with the picture.

I'd like to discuss two very different photographs, both of black females, one a young woman, one a girl. Here's Scottish photographer Leanne Boulton's "Silver Lining." It's pretty simple, straightforward picture, a portrait in the genre of "people on the street," and could be effective in context. Here the young woman is girded against accidental contact in many ways: sunglasses hide her eyes, earbuds allow her to either not hear or pretend not to hear, her hair is hidden by a cap, her hands turn inward and seem to literally hold her own torso, her expression is blank in the mask we adopt in public that says don't mess with me, nothing to see here, pass on by. Even in the angle of her head we get the idea she's not looking at us—that is, at the camera—from behind those sunglasses.

Of course, all this could be exactly what the photographer is examining and wants us to look at. I'm not criticizing.

Airless
Understand, I'm not the authority over anyone but me, but I have a right to encounter photographs as myself and to honor my own reaction—one of my basic principles is embodied in a phrase I wrote decades ago, "I have a right to respond to art as if my encounter with it matters to me." So what I say only applies to me and my own reaction.

However, everything about the technique here, to my eye, intrudes. The tonal scale has that distinctly depressed midrange so common in digital. I call it (as shorthand) "airlessness"—that is, it fights against showing us a sense of atmosphere. It does this by making all the middle values darker. The light ends up not looking real—the light that might have been there got sucked out of the scene by the oppressive tonality. I can't tell what time of day it is except from clues. The background, though readable as context, is unpleasant because the bokeh is jangly and jumpy. It gives the picture an unsettled feeling. Detail is way too hyped-up—back in the days when I hung around with a lot of wannabe Ansels, a friend privately called the style "zippy-zappy zoner sh*t," and the phrase has always stuck in my mind as something to avoid. Of course we're long past the popularity of the Zone System, but Photoshop makes similar looks easier and faster to achieve. In this case the zippy-zappy look draws my eye to meaningless details, such as the fake-fur lining of the coat, the fabric lanyard around her neck that holds her her ID and the words on it. (Have you ever been sitting somewhere bored and find yourself reading gratuitous words that happen to be visible nearby, just because they're there? It always gives me the feeling that I've allowed a particle of junk to enter my brain against my will.) The zipper, the half-seen necklace, all the "cranial accessories" as Mitch Hedberg once called all the stuff we wear on our head. Even the photographer, with her title, seems to be drawing our attention to...the coat lining, which is emphasized by the excessive local contrast.

Or maybe the title's just a handy label. I'm not interested in the coat lining, in any event.

Just for fun I processed the JPEG as if it were my picture, and I tried to de-emphasize the coat lining. (I tried to contact the photographer for permission to show you my version, but she—perhaps wisely!—didn't reply. She's a good photographer, by the way—see for instance her 16 Questions, about a color photograph that's quite successful. She can't help it if one grumpy old former custom printer over in America happens to be allergic to the B&W technique she's chosen. Can't please all the people, etc.)

All of this might be intentional on the part of the photographer, but it all colludes in making the photograph unappealing for me. YMMV.

Natural
Now compare that with an even simpler shot—formally just a headshot—"Michelle [Happiness]" by Stefan Elf, who might be from Sweden given what little I can find about him. (His website doesn't load for me.) His Photostream shows a much less accomplished and less directed photographer. Leanne Boulton is much more intentional and directed. But as a single image this picture is coherent, integrated, and has much more life. It seems to show a real moment. It engages me in that it seems like a particular moment, and it makes me want to know more about what surrounds this moment—who is this, why is she happy, who is she responding to, what's outside the frame?

I'd be willing to believe that if there were eight frames shot, this one was the one, and none of the others would do.

Technically nothing distracts. There's nothing rote or static in the pose. I like the slight awkwardness—here the slightly off-kilter composition just adds to the sense of immediacy, of the picture's individuality if you will. I don't get the sense that this is just one more exposure among a bunch of similar but slightly different exposures. In "Silver Lining" all I sense is the transaction—"May I take your photo?" "What would you like me to do?" "Just stand there"—followed by six or eight frames from which none truly stands out. Can we help but note that all the young woman's efforts to go unnoticed have gotten her noticed? The best-laid schemes. (I'm being too hard on "Silver Lining," you perceive, just to make my points.) In "Michelle [Happiness]" nothing about the technique intrudes. The depth of field is fine, the tonality is natural, the light is plain, detail is neither unpleasantly etched nor ostentatiously suppressed. To me there's an effortless sense of wholeness about it.

That sense of naturalness, coherence, and integrity is what I like in photographic technique. It should be like ballet dancing—all the effort put into it is only meaningful if the result looks effortless.

I'm me and you aren't
Anyway, this whole thing is just to say—I'm only going by my own value system. Yours might vary considerably. You might hang out with different friends who value different things. You might think every picture is all about how exaggerated and vivid the detail can be, and you might not even think about representing natural light at all—the idea might not even be on your radar. You might be a B&W-hater (they're out there in digiworld.) I don't know. My values aren't the only values, they're just mine.

We are who we are, as viewers as in every other sense.

Mike

P.S. I believe I have the right, according to Fair Use, to publish both of these pictures here—Fair Use specifically allows for works to be quoted for the purpose of commenting on or criticizing them, and that's surely what I've just done. But on the other hand, we're a photography website, and we support photographers, so I like to get permission. I often do receive permission when I try to contact people through Flickr or other sharing sites—just not this month. And sometimes not even next month. Once, a guy took eight months to respond. By then I had long forgotten why I wanted to show his picture in the first place. It's awkward, in other words.

Book o' this Week:
Black in White America 1963–1965 by Leonard Freed, a new reprint of this classic from the Civil Rights era. I got to meet Leonard Freed once. <—This is a portal to Amazon; also available at the Book Depository for global delivery with free shipping.

Original contents copyright 2021 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

John Camp: "As you said, YMMV, and mine does. I think the first shot is terrific, and I'm more interested in this kind of work than any other kind of photography, except perhaps some portraiture. That first shot says everything about the world we now inhabit, and it's like a latter-day riff on Edward Hopper—this young woman is as isolated and alone as Hopper's characters, while at the same time she's passing through a busy world. The earbud and sunglasses and hand gestures are classic; she's in her own world, tight, defensive, possibly hostile. The second shot, I would treasure if it were a shot of my daughter. But it's not, so to me, it's a nice snapshot. In cases like this I think YMMV should be changed to EMMV—everybody's mileage may vary."

Chris Hunt: "Question I asked myself while reading this post—so how would you feel about the two photos if the styles were swapped?"

Mike replies: Well, the tl;dr version of this post is that the technique of "Silver Lining" impedes or obstructs my ability to contemplate and appreciate what it shows, while in the second picture the technique seems (to me) to get out of the way. So if the styles were reversed I'd like the first better and the second worse.

In fact, after reading your question, I imagined the second photo with the look of the first imposed on it, and even though I was just seeing it in my mind's eye it actually kind of upset me a little.  :-)

Dave (partial comment): "Re: Who is Bunny and what killed him or her? I prefer the 'Bunny' prose to Hemingway's. Hemingway's example is too full of sentences with nearly the same length. It's just harder to get into a flow when I'm always encountering a period to stop my progress. Additionally, Hemingway has harsher words (hot, Zurito, kicked) which makes it seem more staccato sounding than the 'Bunny' excerpt.

"Re: Intrusions, the photo example with the harsh look surprised me. I had read the entire post before clicking on the photo links. Most digital photos on the web must have that look because I had to think about the points you made before realizing that indeed parts of the photo really were too sharp. The second photo is simply terrific. Great work by Stefan Elf!"

I've always been very interested in size and proportion.

With "my critic's hat on" of course, I try to remain as open-minded as possible. I try to extend as much credit and sympathy to creators as I can. What's important in that case is what they're trying to do, not what I prefer to see.

But for myself, I like small prints best. 

What is "small"? I'd say any size you might see printed in a book. Not counting double-page spreads running across gutters, which generally are their own sort of travesty, in a minor way.

Many decades ago, large got popular in paintings, and, naturally, "little brother" photography had to try to follow suit, and large photographic prints got popular too. I spent a lot of time in my youth dutifully trying to make bigger prints, because real photographers made big prints. 

Now I wish I hadn't. I've come almost to a contrarian position on this, similar to Robert Frank's "black and white are the colors of photography": photographs are small. 

Of course that's ridiculous as a position, but, for myself, I actually prefer small photos. Again and again I'd come away from museum shows thinking, those prints didn't need to be so big.

There's obviously such a thing as too small, however. Most pictures are uncomfortable to look at as thumbnails, and many are uncomfortable to look at on Instagram. How big do they need to be? Big enough to see; as long as the details can "breath," it's big enough. As to how I define that...well, I can't define that; it's a feeling.

It definitely depends on the picture, too. I had a discussion with Michael A. Smith about this once, agreeing with his decision to reproduce Edward Weston's pictures at their original 8x10 size in his books of Weston's work. I believe Weston visualized his pictures taking into account their 8x10 print size, because almost all his picture work well—one might even say "best"—at the size he contact-printed.

Some of my favorite prints of my own are small. Only a few are big, or "biggish"—one is 16x20" and one is a large panorama. One hangs above my dining room table and I have several others in a large portfolio case that's slumbering in the attic of the barn. But I can think of only a handful, or a few handfuls.

With the benefit of hindsight, I think now I would have been better off over my career as a photographer if I had embraced printing small, and not had my head turned by the dictates of fashion. Most of us are slaves to fashion, though, because we think it represents the desires of others, and we wish to please.

Mike

Gear o' the Week:

If I could shoot with any 50mm focal-length-equivalent lens, it would not be unobtanium: it would be the relatively modest, relatively older HD Pentax 35mm ƒ/2.8 DA Macro Limited on APS-C (it has recently been revised with new coatings). I don't know how it measures and couldn't care less. If you care first and foremost about pictures, especially prints, it is one beautiful lens. Luverly. As a normal too. This link is a portal to Amazon, through which most anything you purchase will be credited to TOP. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

B&H Photo also has the Magic Macro, naturally.

Original contents copyright 2021 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Cecelia: "Print size preference for me is entirely related to viewing distance. Instagram is good for an image a few inches from my face, and I love standing 20 feet from a big enveloping painting.

"Once, I had a chance to purchase original art for a corporate space, and prints that were 3–5 feet on an edge were successful in modest interior spaces. 8x10 or book-sized prints need to be viewed pretty close as when reading a book, or standing a foot or two from the image. In other words, for me the size of the image is so tied to the viewing experience that I don't like or dislike any particular size without the context of how to experience the image. (Back in the day when I was working in a darkroom, I loved 8x10 because that size was the most comfortable to handle in the enlargers, trays, dryers etc. and the viewing distances in the darkroom were similar to looking at a book.)"

Geoff Wittig: "There is a fascinating interaction between size, viewing distance, composition, and the actual techniques used in creating a photographic print. But it's even more important when it comes to painting. I came to recognize that my landscape photographs almost always need to be relatively large to convey what I'm trying to say. My best photos really do work better as carefully presented 24x36" prints than as 8x11" or so, because I'm aiming for an immersive experience. I want a viewer to be able to walk into the image.

"Oddly enough, my oil paintings tend to run much smaller. I'm a fairly 'tight' realist painter, but even my broader landscapes seem to breathe more comfortably at about 12x16" or occasionally 16x20" than larger sizes. And lately I've been doing little 5x7" moody gems that really don't work as large paintings."

Steve Rosenblum: "I generally agree with you about print size, although we have a large framed copy of your beautiful still life of the apple up in our kitchen and it works beautifully."

Chris Kern: "Some years ago, Michael Reichmann argued that the intrinsic characteristics of an image determine how it should be cropped. ('My feeling is that cropping isn’t something that we do to an image. It does it itself—demanding to be constrained in certain ways. Sometimes there’s more than one way, but it eventually becomes obvious what the photograph itself wants.') I would make a similar point about print size. Some images 'want' to be printed large; others work better when they’re printed small. That’s the only formula I’ve found which works consistently for me."

Bruce Bordner: "Usually I print large as I shoot wide-angle shots with lots of detail (and D800 shows it well). However, I had a lot of fun printing a few hundred different 2x3" wallet cards as handouts. I picked out 192 images and had a set of 8x12" prints made (16 cards/sheet) and bought a paper cutter. Tedious but cheap. (Margins are hard) So now I have sets of my best shots that I can put into a jewelry box. Fun to play with but it will ruin your eyes...."

robert e: "Thank you Mike—what you said was kind of liberating. And thank you as well for provoking some very insightful comments, which you helpfully featured. To state the obvious, if one wishes to properly regard a small print, one must take it inside what many people would consider 'personal space,' making the interaction a relatively intimate one. (This is made obvious when two people try to look at a small print together.) Larger prints tend to end up in social spaces, or perhaps personal environments, but they are generally not meant to be taken inside that zone of physical and sensory intimacy. Of course we can and do interact with pictures at various distances, but for intended viewing distance, I believe there is a significant psychological or emotional threshold right around where we'd label a print 'small.'"

Geoff Smith: "I find it interesting that the great Michael Kenna normally prints at only about 8x8" because he prefers the 'intimacy' of them compared with larger prints. I typically print at home at 18x12", but sometimes yearn for a 24x16" or even a 36x24" if it's an interesting aerial image."

Howard: "I couldn't disagree with you more, Mike, at least for landscape images. What got me entirely fascinated with landscape photography 25 years ago was seeing big prints, larger than 16x20", especially color prints (Cibachrome at the time). For portraits, I prefer 8x10" but often also like larger prints."

Regarding the intended-to-be humorous re-post yesterday, obviously I was simulating the various "looks" through the years, and of course I was over-exaggerating most of the "looks" so each would be a little more evident 'n' obvious in little JPEGs. The original digital shot of the crows over the field was taken with a Panasonic GF1 and Panasonic 20mm lens. Here's another shot that shows the raptor more clearly, whatever he was—the crows would appear to get after him and then he would get after them. Seemed like sparring, with neither side clearly the aggressor.

Here's the other photo as an Instagram (thanks to blork).

In the wake of the original post in 2012, I invited readers to make their own interpretation of the file. Here's the post that shows some of their efforts. It's rather embarrassing that it's labeled "Part I"—I had enough submissions for a Part II, but apparently I never got around to putting them up. Mea culpa.

When you look at it, try exercising your delectation—decide which one suits your taste. (I notice a number of people did that with the first post.)

The takeaway here? "Black and white" doesn't mean just one thing. There are many, many different interpretations that you can make of any given file, just like there were many different styles you could (and still can) apply to FDP (film, development, print). B&W is actually very expressive and individual, if you develop your own taste in the way you like your prints to look and learn to apply it consistently.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Thanks to all our Patreon contributors!

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Rory O'Toole: "Lovely to see this post again. Can't believe it was back in 2012!"

Brian Stewart: "You may have meant that 'B&W Styles Through the Years' post as satire, but it's actually quite useful. I'm currently editing a largish set of landscape images in B&W, and many of them as shot start out fairly flat. I have to decide in which direction to take them to make them tonally interesting. What is my artistic intent? And when have I taken it too far in that direction? A catalogue of radically different interpretations of an image, even exaggerated ones, is useful as a reference point and reality check, perhaps because they are exaggerated. More please."

SA*

[Illustrations and captions simulated. Hope that's obvious. —Ed.]

-

1940: Graflex Speed Graphic, 127mm Ektar, Wratten K-2 filter, Kodak Super XX Film, D-23 developer (scratch mixed).

1965: Pentax Spotmatic, 55mm Takumar ƒ/1.8 lens, stop-down averaging metering, Ilford HP3 ASA 400 film, Omega D2 enlarger with filed-out negative carrier.

1987: Hasselblad 500 C/M with Acute-Matte, 80mm ƒ/2.8 Zeiss Planar, Tri-X 320, HC-110 dilution B, orange filter. Shadows placed on Zone II. Oriental Seagull, lightly selenium toned.

2001: 3.1 megapixel Minolta DiMAGE 5, converted in Photoshop 5.5. Unsharp masked, uprezzed, and uploaded to PhotoSIG.

2012: Panasonic GF1, OIS zoom, RAW, Lightroom 3, Nik SilverEfex Pro. "Haloing? What haloing?"

Mike
(Originally published February 2012. Thanks to Grant for a correction.)

*Satire Alert.

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Thanks to all our Patreon contributors!

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

JOHN B GILLOOLY: "Ha, ha, would love to have see that Monochrom added! But of that grouping, I'll take the 1987 Hasselblad 'look.' It still seems that the defining quality is not the hardware, but rather taste. To a large degree, you can simulate these 'looks' rather accurately using today's raw files as the starting point."

Mike replies: I've exaggerated them (coarsely) here, of course. I'm not certain how close you can really get if you're being subtle. My sense is it's probably better to let digital look like digital.

Christopher May: "Nice to see this one back from the archives. I hope that 'Great Photographers on the Internet' can make a comeback someday, too.

"I'll still take the Speed Graphic image. If we're going with Super XX, though, the only proper thing to do is match it up with some Azo and make a delightful little contact print. I seem to remember someone (Michael Kadillak, if I recall correctly) discussing Super XX's unique ability to build density 'to the moon' at the largeformatphotography.info forum. That characteristic made it a lovely match for alt processes and contact printing on Azo."

Eolake Stobblehouse: "Either you are making most of this up (impressive), or you have a downright unhealthy amount of knowledge of history and B&W...."

Mike replies: I started another one of these as if it were taken with a Diana toy camera in the style of Nancy Rexroth and then I thought, no, I'd better pretend I have a life....

hugh crawford: "Tri-X Pro should open up distant foliage more than that with its green bump—oh wait—orange filter? I don’t know but it seems like one of the more compensating dilutions and a bit more development might open things up. Hell I’d go to diluted D-19 but that’s just me, and I’d avoid Tri-X Pro like the plague anyway unless the alternative was T-Max. Looks you forgot the compendium, that might as some snap too.

"If I were going full grad school I’d be asking what’s hiding under the trees and why is it so scary, but that’s outside the scope here.

"The best thing that I ever did on my 500C was get a Rollie screen with a microprism in the center installed, never figured out that Acute-Matte popularity. I think the only time I used Tri-X Pro was with a Press 23 in high school, so maybe that association (and the whole male portrait thing) has biased my opinion."

Mike replies: Yes, you used the orange filter to counteract the green bump. And, I agree with you about TXP. I remember my confusion when I first shot a roll of TXP thinking it was TX. And, the crows were chasing a raptor around and vice-versa. And, I never did like the Acute-Matte either! That was the very first time I ever had trouble focusing a camera. Not the last. Sure could see the frame, just couldn't see the focus. Autofocus came around perfectly on schedule for my eyes.

Crabby Umbo: "I forgot all about Super XX, now that was a film! So full of silver, the box weighed twice as much as weaker, puny films!"

Mike replies: And you know this, but others might not: what comes after two X's? Answer: Three, AKA the mighty "Tri-" X, the best-known single B&W film name in photo history.

Wasn't Super XX ASA 200? I only used it once.

Crabby Umbo: "You are correct sir, Super XX was ASA 200, but it changed with 'tungsten' exposure and was much slower (people forget that 'strobe' wasn't the ubiquitous method of exposure for studio, especially product, until well into the '70s). It really was silver rich, very long 'scale,' and, at least when I was a pup, was the film of choice for making the color separation inter-negs from transparences when doing dye transfer prints!

"As others have stated, I never understood why TXP and TX were so different. I usually had to go looking for 120 Tri-X (individually boxed), or order it in from Kodak; while my local pro dealer was always trying to make me buy the Tri-X Pro 5-packs, which, on processing, just did not look 'right.'

"By the way, long forgotten film lore: does anyone remember Ektapan? Since I started in high-school in portrait studios, I knew all about it, it was an ASA 100 film that was specifically formulated by Kodak to function well under strobe. This was back when a lot of films had reciprocity failure both in long exposures, but short 'strobe' exposures as well!

"Available in 4x5 sheets (and a bunch of those weird formats like 46mm long rolls for portrait cameras), it was my personal 'go to' film for shooting product when we all converted to strobe for everything. Everyone used to compliment me on the scale of my black-and-white studio product shots, thinking I was doing some kind of ASA change and processing push/pull on Tri-X, when all I was doing was using Ektapan. A great strobe film long forgotten!"

Richard Man: "They made TXP 320 in 120 format? [Yes —MJ.] TX 400 is the King, the Godzilla of all B&W films. TXP 320 is a...mutant lizard."

Mike replies: I used to joke that Ansel's best virtuoso trick was that he could actually make TXP look good. Har!

Gijs Langelaan: "On the Hasselblad interpretation, I'm missing seeing the black border with the 'V' notches at the edge to show it was really made with a 'blad. Or did that style show up a few years later?"

Mike replies: Ah, I wanted to try, but my Photoshopping skills just aren't good enough.

Anton Wilhelm Stolzing: "This is a great post. Ansel Adams changed his way of printing considerably over the years. When you see early original prints, you are shocked how 'flat' they appear in comparison with the calendar editions. And haloing is a real problem, but less so in digital age than in the analogue years. You possibly know these Jean-Loup Sieff-prints where the dodging of the trees is so painfully evident...."