Photographer documentaries tonight on BBC4

For anyone interested there's a series of programs on BBC4 tonight beginning at 9.30.
Docs on Lee Miller, Annie Leibovitz, Linda McCartney, Eve Arnold and Sharon Chazan.

I've not seen these before so this is not a recommendation, just a heads up. I think I'll set my sky+ & can then watch them at leisure.

P.S. disclaimer: don't blame me if you delete "love boat" to make room on your recorder & they subsequently turn out to be rubbish !

Thank you Bob,
I believe we have BBC4 on the telly here so will try to see it.

aahh loveboat them were the days

Why is it all female photographers and Linda McCartney ?

shim

Because it makes a nice change to show women photographers. Lee Miller is a particular favourite of mine.
Don't know Linda McC either - she was a good photographer.
These programmes were shown earlier this week too - I recorded a couple of them, but haven't got round to watching them yet. With Glasto on the other side I shall be putting my double tuner to work tonight to record both.

You can't watch Glastonbury on telly - you are supposed to be there getting covered in mud

Linda McCartney was an OK photographer IMHO but probably no better than many a 'rock' photographer who had the right access to the stars, however Annie Liebowitz's (sp.?) work really shone through last night.

After watching last night I felt this sudden urge to sell my newly acquired digital equipment and jump with both feet back into pure black and white. That moody, contrasty reportage really is painting with light, and I see so many people getting really carried away with the minutiae of digital photography such as noise and wanting everything to be well exposed without any blown highlights etc, when a reminder of truly great B&W nearly always had blown highlights and deep blacks for effect (not counting people like Ansel Adams). Noone complained about noise (read: 'grain') in a candid B&W shot with the film really pushed to get the shot in the available light. That was all part of the mood

And which part of that can you not achieve today with digital and post processing:

Prieni

Sure you can achieve anything with Photoshop but that is exactly my point. It's all much more contrived and I see so many people trying to sanitize their pictures

Not at all. There is no need to have blown out highlights if you expose and process your film correctly and take full advantage of the skills available in the darkroom.

It's pretty much the same in Photoshop, which mimics the darkroom practice.

It's not the method that makes a great photograph, it's what the photographer does with it.

Ok so I generalised and maybe used the wrong way of describing this. The point I was trying to make is that this is sometimes desirable for impact. Even some of Linda McCartney's pictures they showed last night were out of focus or blurred due to camera shake or whatever, but that added to the effect and to sanitize every picture to average all the greys and pixel peep or whatever other methods someone uses to try and PP everything can lose some of the immediacy and the 'flaws' of film.

The analogy I might give would be the interesting tones and scratchiness you might get from an old LP versus the clinical sound of a CD. Many people prefer the flawed analogue LP sound with its hiss and crackles. It's all personal taste at the end of the day but I read so many posts and articles where everything is analysed to the nth degree (or measurbated to coin a phrase) that I think the 'art' of photography is being sacrificed for the technology for many people.

Agreed, there is a tendency for some photographers to put the technology before the art.

The classic example I would use is those friends of mine in the film past who would be forever either shooting a "test film" or running experiments to see how sharp an image they could get. Of test charts usually.

You're right, images do not have to be sharp or follow all the static rules, but the content needs to be brilliant for it to be a brilliant image.

We need to know the rules though so that when we break the boundaries we understand what we are doing and why.

Many fashion photographers in the late 70's didn't know how they would survive when GAF 500 Slide Film was discontinued. Nothing since has been able to produce such large colourful grain. I used to like GAF 200.

GAF 500 was also very good for motorsport.

shim

Yes, so did I, very nice film. I did try the GAF 500 as well, but looking back at it I was stabbing in the dark and shooting pictures that weren't really suitable.

This is a typical GAF 500 fashion shot, probably enlarged from
just part of the 35mm frame link

Some others (the grainy ones) on the main page link

shim