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Peter Hogan
14th February 2009, 08:09 PM
I've just come across a new book. Well. not new, exactly, (2005) but new to me. I'm kicking myself that it took me so long to find it. ( Oh, alright, Sparkle found it.)
It'a a wildlife book by Nick Brandt, shot over a period in East Africa. Now, I'm not a wildlife photographer, but if anything was going to inspire me to be one, it would be this book.
All the images are black and white, and the thing is, you very soon realise that colour would be detrimental to the feel of the images. You're just so glad there's no colour distraction here. Some of the photos are polaroids. All of them are pictoral, rather than the usual record shot. All the images are stunning. I'd love to have taken just one of them. I'm going to make my poor dog's life hell for the next two years. (smile, Fido!)

Details; ISBN 978-0-8118-4865-7

Publisher; Chronicle books LLC
680 Second St.,
San Fransisco,
California 94107.
www.chroniclebooks.com

You owe it to yourself to check this out.
Not often I wax lyrical, but this is one of those occasions.

Dave miller
14th February 2009, 08:16 PM
I've just come across a new book. Well. not new, exactly, (2005) but new to me. I'm kicking myself that it took me so long to find it. ( Oh, alright, Sparkle found it.)
It'a a wildlife book by Nick Brandt, shot over a period in East Africa. Now, I'm not a wildlife photographer, but if anything was going to inspire me to be one, it would be this book.
All the images are black and white, and the thing is, you very soon realise that colour would be detrimental to the feel of the images. You're just so glad there's no colour distraction here. Some of the photos are polaroids. All of them are pictoral, rather than the usual record shot. All the images are stunning. I'd love to have taken just one of them. I'm going to make my poor dog's life hell for the next two years. (smile, Fido!)

Details; ISBN 978-0-8118-4865-7

Publisher; Chronicle books LLC
680 Second St.,
San Fransisco,
California 94107.
www.chroniclebooks.com (http://www.chroniclebooks.com)

You owe it to yourself to check this out.
Not often I wax lyrical, but this is one of those occasions.

This was featured in Lenswork a while back (OK quite a while). As you say the pictures are quite something.

Argentum
14th February 2009, 08:27 PM
his web site: http://www.nickbrandt.com/popup.html

and how he does it: http://www.bowhaus.com/services/IJCOPMmain.php4

Mike O'Pray
14th February 2009, 09:10 PM
They are great pictures,Peter. Where did you find the info on using Polaroids?. There appears to be nothing on the site indicating what camera, format etc was used. No telephoto lens so might have been MF or even LF?

In fact the only clue that it was film seems to be the use of the word "developed"

The link to "how", provided by RobC would appear not to be a topic fit for discussion on this site. I think Hybrid is the expression

I'd have thought that old fashioned sepia toning might have produced images just as good but there we are.

Mike

Peter Hogan
15th February 2009, 12:54 PM
They are great pictures,Peter. Where did you find the info on using Polaroids?. There appears to be nothing on the site indicating what camera, format etc was used. No telephoto lens so might have been MF or even LF?

In fact the only clue that it was film seems to be the use of the word "developed"

The link to "how", provided by RobC would appear not to be a topic fit for discussion on this site. I think Hybrid is the expression

I'd have thought that old fashioned sepia toning might have produced images just as good but there we are.

Mike

Just found out that he uses a Pentax 67 11 film camera and 120 film. The rest is Photoshopped.

Dave miller
15th February 2009, 01:11 PM
Just found out that he uses a Pentax 67 11 film camera and 120 film. The rest is Photoshopped.

Disgusting. :shock:

Argentum
15th February 2009, 01:25 PM
His images look stunning. His methods are his own. How you view them is upto to each of us. But he does use a lot of manipulations which is fine. What is not fine is that he apprently claims he doesn't. When looking closely at his images it is plain that he does. That takes the edge off them for me. I do wish that people would be honest about how they create their images. If he openly said he does heavy manipulation to achieve what he achieves then I'd have no problem with it. Clearly he doesn't want to put himself in the digital fine art bracket for some reason. There is nothing wrong with digital fine art. It just pisses me off when people try to pass off something as something it isn't and are clueless to the fact that it is insulting to people to assume they won't notice what is really obvious.

Trevor Crone
15th February 2009, 03:08 PM
His images look stunning. His methods are his own. How you view them is upto to each of us. But he does use a lot of manipulations which is fine. What is not fine is that he apprently claims he doesn't. When looking closely at his images it is plain that he does. That takes the edge off them for me. I do wish that people would be honest about how they create their images. If he openly said he does heavy manipulation to achieve what he achieves then I'd have no problem with it. Clearly he doesn't want to put himself in the digital fine art bracket for some reason. There is nothing wrong with digital fine art. It just pisses me off when people try to pass off something as something it isn't and are clueless to the fact that it is insulting to people to assume they won't notice what is really obvious.

They are indeed superb images but I must agree with Rob. Why try and pretend you don't manipulate when in fact that's exactly what is done. You just end up insulting the viewer.

Why is honesty with some artist such a hard pill to swollow?

Argentum
15th February 2009, 03:43 PM
There is a fuller interview at the following:

http://www.bowhaus.com/news/brandt.php4

The quote is:

"Photoshop is the best darkroom in the world, but I'm careful not to abuse the possibilities of Photoshop. I try to maintain the integrity of the negative. Otherwise, it's a slippery slope to fabrication."

Who gets to define the boundaries?

Peter Hogan
16th February 2009, 05:27 PM
Yep, got to agree. Nothing wrong with manipulation, we all do it. (Sparkle is particularly good at it) Not a lot of point denying it though...