Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. Pink
I found this guy on YouTube: https://youtu.be/HRk1BWP5iDI?si=0H82kyV3ADtMcnWA
He embodies an almost extreme example of somebody who really makes life hard for himself by not only shooting film in 2024, but landscape photography with an 8x10. I mean, good Lord. First, the weight of all that in the field. The camera, the tripod (no carbon fiber Gitzo can hold that camera well), the film and film holders, the lenses (big!), and everything else you need for the trek into Zion or wherever. I almost refuse to believe he does it alone. Then there's the setup, and restriction of working a large camera on a tripod. If you read Ansel Adams autobiography, he did all that in Yosemite and the Sierras with horses or mules and a friendly assistant, but, still, made me appreciate what an athlete he must have been in his younger years, but that really wore him down. But even he smiled when somebody put a Hassleblad in his hands with some interchangable roll film backs. Game changer. I'm convinced he would marvel at modern digital and Photoshop.
Anyway, what does this young man do after he goes through all the bother of shooting these images and having them processed? (Where does somebody have large format color transparencies developed today? And reliably? Color would shift noticeably with every batch in machines in the 70s and 80s if an expert didn't stay on top of the thing. Today? I doubt the expertise is left.) Well, he scans them on what seems to be a common consumer flatbed on his desk that I would cringe to use compared to a good drum scanner. But, again, a good drum scanner is super expensive, hard to operate, and fragile. But, the point is, he DIGITALIZES them at a certain point, in order to monetize them on his website and print them. Why not start with digital in the first place? A 100 mp digital camera could easily match the quality of a desktop scanned, even drum scanned 8x10, and would be so much easier to take outside in nature. And, overall, the cost would be much less.
It's all a strange charade, but, maybe he's marketed himself well to a certain element out there who also like to make life hard for themselves for some reason, and his YouTube pays well. He certainly produces his media well. |
I actually think what he is doing is one of the cases where it actually does still make sense. That is still a unique area of film, and digital either costs as much as a nice pickup truck or a starter house in that arena or still has major issues, and the view camera itself is still something most digital systems are not doing well.
But what I can't understand is why he is going to all that huge effort and then not developing the large format film himself like Ansel Adams, etc.. actually did back in the day. Sending it out for processing seems to defeat much of the point if you're going to such a huge effort and cost and then be dependent on someone else to do a critical step correctly.
The way those old masters fiddled with their development outside the manufacturer parameters and then did selective burning/dodging on individual prints completely in the analog realm was a large part of the magic. (Also the low magnification aspect). He is also just selling them all as inkjet prints also making his final work a lot less unique. I love the fine art way of calling fancier inkjets Giclee.. there have been some funny rants about that.
More power to him if he can make a living doing this. The whole thing is weird though, and more about personality and sales than anything. To me at least it feels like almost everything about landscape photography has become trite, we've seen it all a million times and tons of photographers have taken the same images to the point they become meaningless, and so few of them have conservation messages or a point to their photography like they did in the past.
This whole thread is just total Deja Vu of 20 years ago. It's amazing it plays out like this here in 2024.