Lost in Translation
Since I started shooting color film, color calibration has always been a fun thing to play with: sh0uld I scan the negative as Fuji NPS or Kodak Portra? Should I keep that nice eerie blue tint or play with the curves to get rid of it? What is more important - saturated color or detail in the shadow? Things get even more complicated while I switch from positive to negative, one brand to an other.One part of me loves the bold and lustrous colors such as in David Alan Harvey's Cuba, the other me worships Stephen Shores' mundane color of American motels and breakfast. Quite often my head spins by merely trying to determine h0w I want a color image to appear. The confusing film type settings of my scanner only adds more fun to the whole process.
Since HBC's "decisive moment" is old school now, indecisiveness might even become the next big thing. So I guess I will just keep jumping back and forth b/w Mr. Harvey and Mr. Shore. :-)
posted by Ken (The Runcible) at 5:50 PM
4 Comments:
emmmm, interesting topic. The color is a tricky thing to me. I found the digitization process of the color film and of cause the photoshop retouching give me too many possibilities to adjust the color. The funny thing is when I try different ways I always have trouble to decide which one is 'better'. Selecting one means giving up another. So most of the cases I have to keep several versions of the same photo. Is that ridiculous? I think that's the problem of a world with too many choices. Sometimes I wish I only have one! Maybe Zeyez already gives us a solution: just get rid of the physical expression of a picture. I guess color tint is a kind of physical expression. But another question is back, what is real?
BTW, I prefer Mr. Shore now. :)
I see the indecisiveness isn't just me.
What do you mean by "getting rid of the physical expression"?
I borrow that term from Z. :) The color tint from the scanner is a ็ฉ็่กจๆ to him. I think he refer to the retouching of a picture.
I see - never could understand what Zeyez says. :-)
However, I doubt we can really get away from retouching - without it, a good picture is always a gem in the rough.
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