Trevor Cunningham wrote:
I would have thought that film's inability to process light, and
color, like the human brain would have nipped that thought in the
bud...but I guess people like to tinker regardless. Somebody else on
this list, a while back, barked about the necessity of photographs
being true to the original. I just don't get it...sounds like
half-assed alchemy to me.
"The original is never faithful to the translation." -Jorge Luis Borges
Ruey wrote:
Trevor Cunningham wrote:
Or, you could just produce color separations for digital negatives
and make tricolor gum bichromate prints.
I guess I could but my interest is in making images that exercise the
potential of human vision and create as lifelike an image as
possible. Color processes like gum bichromate seem to color as
pictorialism was to the potential of photography to render subjects
accurately - I have heard these called "a way for folks who have
trouble holding a brush steady to imagine they are painters."
Paintings that attempt to be photographs seem to disappoint as much
as photographs that attempt to emulate painting. There is probably a
value in both, but there is also a value in creating images that very
accurately record color as was once done with dye transfers.
Ed Scott
Trevor, I'd bet that you would be able to tell the difference between a
good dye transfer and a gum bichromate if you tried, and even tell that
one more closely resembled what you see with your eyes. Just as it is
possible for the human vision system to detect the difference between an
out of focus image and one that is sharp, it is generally possible for
most people to tell the difference between images whose color accurately
reproduces a subject and one that abstracts color (excepting perhaps
people whose red sensor overlaps their green one or the less frequent
occurrence of blue overlaps green, or where reality just becomes
incomprehensible). Rather than abuse my interest in obtaining accurate
reproduction of color why not just keep silent if the posting does not
interest you?
Ed Scott
