Music maker

[RBSinTo]

Taken last summer in the Kensington Market.
I noticed an interesting looking man sitting and playing a collection of home made instruments, and was intrigued by the wonderful sounding music he was producing.
Not wanting to disturb his reverie, I quickly grabbed this shot and then moved on.
motorized Nikon F2AS
Tamron SP 35~105 2.8 AIS manual focus
Fuji 100 ISO colour slide
5.6 @ 1/125th

[Jakov Minić]

I like the shoes

[RBSinTo]

Jakov,
I agree.
I think the red sneakers along with his pigeon-toed stance adds a certain charm to the image.
Robert

[Frank Fremerey]

Very high concentration in the person as well as in the shot.

This is one shot where the analogue technique does not disturb me.

I love Fuji color slides. Took tens of thousands of these....

[RBSinTo]

Thanks Frank.
I really hope there is some medication or therapy you can take to overcome your "disturbance" with my analogue technique as it isn't likely to change in the forseeable future.
Robert

[Frank Fremerey]

Rbsinto. My current idea  of my own photography is to tell the best possible story in the technically best posdible
way. I aim to have my work printed large in the future. I can always throw away information I have. I can never add
information that is missing.

Another title page is on the way. I shot the pic with 12 Megapixels and 60mm years ago
 I will have to reshoot this with 200mm and 24MP if the editors decide for my pic.

expression is most important. Technical excellence by current standards is impossible with 24x36 slides.

[RBSinTo]

Frank
I quite understand your concerns as you shoot paid commercial assignments, while I have done almost none in the last 10 or 15 years.
However, shooting only 24 x 36 slide I have done two author's photos for book covers in the last two years, and recently had one of my street photos (the Muffin) selected to be shown at a Toronto area wide photo salon where I was competing against a couple of hundred very fine photographers essentially all of whom shoot only Digital.
So even with my clunky old, laughably backward gear and technology from previous centuries, I'm doing just fine.
Robert 

[Tristin]

Nice image Robert, the angle of hsi feet really does add a lot.

While there are certain areas of photography that modern digital cameras are undeniably better than film, and often by an extreme margin, I think either film or digital are equally capable for most photography.  Not a single image I have seen from Robert could have been improved in a meaningful way if it had been digital, which Robert quite obviously knows. 

We photographers can easily get caught up in technical details and forget that non-photographers commonly want the opposite of what we do.  Every regular person I know really dislike shallow dof and bokeh, much preferring phone style everything-in-focus flat images.  Contrary to most photographers being sensitive to the use of depth for isolation, aesthetics, etc.  And the most popular filters on places like Instagram are ones that "degrade" the image with artificial vignetting, washed out contrast, etc.  Just like any artistic/techical field, photographers in learning their craft get hung up on the technicalities they work to master so that they can produce good works.  I do not think it adds to the real value of the images.  Just like the world of music, which is bursting with virtuosos endlessly pouring out phenomenal chops and empty music, the world of photography is awash with technically quality, but, empty images.

I understand that in the world of professional photography that technical quality is of serious concern to those who earn their living by it.  It doesn't make better images though.  It's no different than simple low level jobs demanding employees with degrees, though un-necessary, because there is the money and workers available to make pointless demands.

[Ron Scubadiver]

Nice image Robert, the angle of hsi feet really does add a lot.

While there are certain areas of photography that modern digital cameras are undeniably better than film, and often by an extreme margin, I think either film or digital are equally capable for most photography.  Not a single image I have seen from Robert could have been improved in a meaningful way if it had been digital, which Robert quite obviously knows. 

We photographers can easily get caught up in technical details and forget that non-photographers commonly want the opposite of what we do.  Every regular person I know really dislike shallow dof and bokeh, much preferring phone style everything-in-focus flat images.  Contrary to most photographers being sensitive to the use of depth for isolation, aesthetics, etc.  And the most popular filters on places like Instagram are ones that "degrade" the image with artificial vignetting, washed out contrast, etc.  Just like any artistic/techical field, photographers in learning their craft get hung up on the technicalities they work to master so that they can produce good works.  I do not think it adds to the real value of the images.  Just like the world of music, which is bursting with virtuosos endlessly pouring out phenomenal chops and empty music, the world of photography is awash with technically quality, but, empty images.

I understand that in the world of professional photography that technical quality is of serious concern to those who earn their living by it.  It doesn't make better images though.  It's no different than simple low level jobs demanding employees with degrees, though un-necessary, because there is the money and workers available to make pointless demands.

Robert did a great job on this shot.  However, my opinion is digital is way ahead of film in color photography.  B&W is a different story.  In a few years the argument may be settled by a lack of availability of color film.  As for DOF and bokeh, each shot is different and one must not take on a set idea about how much subject isolation is necessary or desirable.  An image must have soul, without it technical quality doesn't mean anything.  I don't feel reducing contrast or vignetting degrades an image, if the result is appropriate.

By the way, in the US it is illegal to require a college degree if the job does not need it.  It is also counterproductive as those college kids will resent their situation.
 

[Tristin]

By the way, in the US it is illegal to require a college degree if the job does not need it.  It is also counterproductive as those college kids will resent their situation.
 

Quite off topc, but it being illegal doesn't mean anything as this practice is extremely common.  Very common for jobs to require that you have a degree of any kind, it does not need to have anything to do with the job.  Most people I know around my age with degrees do not work in fields relevant to ther degrees, but needed a degree to get it anyhow.  It's like landlords requiring illegal deposits, which is common too.  No one in need of housing is going to complain of it's illegality and guarantee that they won't get the room.  No one complains of the un-necessary degree requirement, because they know it will bar them from employment anyhow.

Apologies for off-topic, felt that needed response.

[Ron Scubadiver]

Being illegal doesn't mean anything until you get caught.

[Frank Fremerey]

Back to the image. It is quite some piece and quite some personality. It is not better nor worse because of its technical way of production or reproduction.

I loved it when I got the films back from the lab and saw for the first time what I had shot, esp. when they came out just the way I had imagined. ... some times even because they came out completely different. I had several exhibitions in the late 80ies / early 90ies featuring huge prints made from 24x36 Fuji slides taken with my FM2. I know a good light shot with 100 ISO Film or a tripod shot can easily deliver a 75 x 50 qcm print. At the time labs still had fully analogues pipelines. Not so anymore.

With modern cameras one can shoot at 6400 ISO and still print 75 x 50...

[PeterN]

I like the shoes

haha. I do not know you yet, Jakov. But I am beginning to get a sense for what you are looking at in photos. ;-)

[Bjørn Rørslett]

Being one that has run many thousands of film rolls and sheet film through a raft of cameras over the years, I am not adverse to film as such. I fondly remember the unique properties of film and am at the same time just happy that digital photography delivers so much better results. Digital photography is still young and the technology very immature, but the future holds greater promise than film ever could offer. Whether the photography on its own is improved hinges at the photographer as before. Digital is no panacea and no guarantee for better pictures.

We can only challenge an artist never overrule their preferences. Thus if Robert has the opinion that his work is improved by presenting badly scanned images with blocked shadows, brownish-magenta cast, and limited dynamic range, that is up to him. However, having scanned at least 100,000 slides and negatives over the years, I also know by personal experience that film material holds much better quality than what we are shown. A pity that great photography is presented this way, and this is *my* opinion on the matter.

[Frank Fremerey]

I wish I had a decent scanner and the patience to scan some historical shots of mine. There are some very nice shots and the quality was what it was for the time. Today I see I can reach pretty heights of technical quality and I see better. For me there is no turning back the wheel but:  I shot up to 150 rolls of film per year as an amateur between 1983 and April 2004 ... there are some really nice photos in those files and boxes awaiting recovery ... one day.