I’ve had a look at your portfolio and I’d like to offer some comments. I hope these are objective and specific.
Firstly, as Ian says, they're well composed. Secondly, the original exposures seem to be fine; there’s detail in the highlights and detail in the shadows. They seem (at this scale and on my screen) to be sharp.
Now we come to my first reservation. I find the effect of long exposure on moving water to be disturbing. It has recently been popular as “fine art” where a single silhouetted post (or something similar) emerges, on the thirds, from an area of smooth grey. Here, I find it disturbing, because it draws attention to itself. A featureless grey rectangle in a highly detailed landscape imposes a burden of interpretation on the viewer. On first looking, our brain is obliged to consider if it’s some out-of-focus object in the foreground or a motion-blurred object and if so, which might it be? In this case, it’s a waterfall. Although it’s unlikely, it could have been a wind-blown flag, or an unusual cloud of smoke. All of this happens very transiently, in a fraction of a second. As experienced photographers we “know” that reality has been modified and the ambiguity is resolved instantly.
I must emphasise that this is my own quirk; others may like the effect very much. I have no quarrel at all with them, but I feel obliged to confess my own disabilities.
My second reservation concerns the skies. They are darker than I’d expect from the rest of the scene. This causes my mind to think “Aha, he’s burned it in… ” each time I look and this distracts me from enjoying the image as a whole. I’m compelled to think of technique, rather than aesthetics. I’ve sat through enough discussions on print manipulation to last a lifetime.
As for overall contrast, this seems to me to be a matter of personal choice. These images seem to fall somewhere between John Blakemore and Don McCullin - a very wide field.
As we are viewing online, we should bear in mind that contrast may also be a matter of differing screen adjustment.
As an example, Saint Ansel constructed a device to examine contrast for his students. The print being considered was illuminated by a lamp with variable brightness. He altered the brightness rapidly, up or down and asked observers to decide, in the first seconds, before the eye readjusted itself, if the print looked better or worse. If more light improved it, it needed more contrast, and conversely if less light made it better, then less. Obviously, this is a fairly crude method. It depends on making the highlights lighter or darker, rather than truly modifying contrast.
I’m afraid I don’t understand the Ralph Gibson reference.
My a-ologies for the length of this posting. It seems to have grown.
Hello David,
thank you for taking the time to view and comment, much appreciated. I have no problem whatsoever in discussing my work, when it's done in a civil and informed manner, so no worries about respecting the "No" at the "Critique my images" flag. Apologies for the late reply, but I am currently in Iceland running a Workshop, and daylight is dedicated to my group (and, today, to avoid being blow off by super strong winds!
)
While I am not going to argue your points, since they are yours and I respect them, let me try and offer some words about why I do what I do the way I do it, hoping they might help.
Landscape photography covers a huge spectrum, from mundane cellphone snapshots to the most amazing artistic photographs. The kind of photography that I do, love and am passionate about is the so-called Fine Art photography, or to better put it, the art of interpreting the landscape through photography.
Artistically interpreting the landscape, for me, means creating photographs following a vision, an aesthetic understanding. I am not interested at all in documenting the reality in front of me but rather in using it to express myself, tell my stories and the stories the landscape in front of me inspires me to tell.
This, in turn, for me means investigating the inner nature of my subjects, and through the combination of the photographic medium and my personal, lifelong experience, transmit to my viewers my interpretation of the reality in front of me. In particular, through my B&W work I aim at telling stories about the interactions between time and matter, and more specifically about the effect of time over matter - and, ultimately, the effect of time over us.
A curator of one of my exhibitions once told me "You are the only autobiographic landscape photographer I know", and I fully recognise myself in that definition.
To transcend reality and tell stories that go beyond its mere appearance, for me, abstraction is a fundamental tool. Since the real world is in colour and since almost nobody sees in B&W, I consider B&W to be one of the most powerful abstraction tools that photography offers us, and that is why I love to use it for my work.
Another abstraction tool offered us by photography is the use of long exposures - or, to better put it, of exposure control - which allow us to both alter the representation of the flowing of time in a static photograph, and to transform matter - such as moving water and moving clouds - into lines and shapes.
Through exposure control we can create and transmit emotions, moods and feelings that wouldn’t be possible to express if we kept to faster shutter speed - which, incidentally, are also not any more faithful a representation of reality, despite what most photographers maintain: reality is a 3D affair that we experience through the flowing of time, and a snapshot of a waterfall that freezes the water is as unfaithful to reality as a long exposure photograph of it. It's just unfaithful in a different way.
In the first part of my life, I was a professional classical musician - I toured the world playing solo concerts, recorded CDs, and so on. In the second - current - part, I am a professional photographer. After 20 years of solo concert career and 15 years of work on the landscape, I believe the approach to both these forms of expression to be very similar. For me, a Fine Art landscape photographer interpreting the landscape is no different from a musician interpreting Mozart.
As we all know, Ansel Adams, a pianist himself albeit one who never really worked as one, famously said that the negative is the score, and the print is the performance. While a definition I agree with, I personally find that definition a bit limiting. For me, nature, often helped – or disturbed – by man’s hand, is the composer; the scene in front of us is the score; us photographers are the interpreters; and the final photograph, regardless of whether we print it or display it on a screen, is the performance.
I create photographs the way I do because that's the way I feel - that's all. I don't work in the footsteps of Gibson, This-bson or That-bson, I never had and never will. My interpretations of reality are mine, and I frankly care as much for people who don't like them as I do for those who love them, in that I wouldn't change the way I do things to please either group. Obviously, it goes without saying that the fact that a vast majority of people looking at my work loves it, and either buys it or is interested to learn from me, is extremely gratifying and motivating - and a huge responsibility, too.
Two notes about the skies.
1. Saint Ansel, as you called him, famously kept printing his own negatives differently as he progressed with age, changing his interpretations as he went; some says his eyesight was getting worse and therefore he kept going for more contrast, which is possible, but it's also possible that he just changed his ideas as he progressed with life.
Whatever the reasons behind it, for me the lesson I get from Ansel's printing is that if one man could change the way he printed his negatives so dramatically, it is only natural that different people looking at different negatives would be inspired to print them differently, or like them interpreted differently.
Look at Moonrise. That sky was never as dark as he printed it, and more so in the last interpretations. One of his most famous interpretations of Half Dome has a black sky - courtesy of a red filter. In both photographs the sky are darker than the rest of the image, and the world is fine with it.
2. On another forum, I got a comment completely in the opposite direction, with a gentleman telling me that if he would print those negatives, he would go for more drama in the skies, not less - which I found extremely interesting when combined to this discussion.
A note about appreciating photography. You mentioned that looking at the skies in my Iceland Portfolio you think about the technique, behind the result, and that distracts you from enjoying the image and compels you to think about technique rather than aesthetics. I completely see the point and I absolutely respect it. That said, the vast majority of people looking at photography, including curators, are not photographers and they couldn't care less about technique. We do, of course; but, I believe that it would do us good to try and appreciate photography without thinking as photographers, if that makes any sense.
Last, it is my turn to apologise for the length of this post, which seems to have grown even larger than yours
Best regards,
Vieri
