Of course they are art. Only the passage of time has made the subjects "historical", but the pictures are art whether they have any historical significance or none.

The two best photographers who have posted here in the last few years both shot B&W almost exclusively. B&W remains popular with serious photographers to this day.

It's interesting seeing them in colour (and it's been very well done), but I prefer to see them as the photographer intended.

I am sorry to say this, but you really are very ignorant of photography. Try googling Ansel Adams. Better still, buy this book:

Masters of Photography by Beaumont and Nancy Newhall.

Even HCB, primarily a people photographer, did some stunning landscapes.

G

Ebay, a while ago.

It's a fraction under 3 metres long.

Regards

G

You make my point. It is (in your view) outstanding in the context of the photos of white tigers that you have seen in a short trawl of the internet.

You didn't make that important qualification initially.

Incidentally, I like the shot. I just like to retain a sense of values.

G

Who, precisely, "failed to recognise" colour photography? I don't paint, but that doesn't mean I don't recognise painting as a valid, indeed magnificent, art form.

I suspect you are not an expert on photographic exhibitions in the period before the '70s, but they are in any event hardly relevant. National Geographic featured colour photos in the '20s and '30s, and photographers like Ernst Haas were feted in the '50s. To claim that colour photography was unimportant before it allegedly "forged ahead" in the '70s suggests that you need to do a bit of reading. I was at school in the early '60s and remember an intense interest in colour photography in all the photo magazines, though all I could afford at the time was B&W.

What IS true is that newspapers didn't publish in colour until relatively recently, so press and fashion photographers had no option but to use black and white. But I am sure you are not trying to claim that they "didn't recognise" colour.

By all means continue to use the vocabulary of American teenagers if you think it will help you to appear "cool". I'll welcome you back to grown-up English when the novelty wears off.

Best wishes

G

So people who chose to continue to work in the medium they knew best were "stuck up" were they?

Your mind moves in a very mysterious way, Douglas.

BTW, Kodachrome was invented in 1935 and colour photography was "forging ahead" in the 50s, not the 70s.

I do not recall anybody suggesting that colour photography is "pants", which is perhaps the word you use when you can't remember "inferior", but I suppose that inventing things is a creative process in itself, and I would not wish to stifle such urges in anybody.

G

It's no coincidence. People who are happy to steal from others expect to be stolen from themselves.

It's called judging others as you judge yourself.

G

I am sorry to say that these pictures have brought on another case of critical hyperbole, an affliction which blights this forum from time to time.

Yes, the pictures are technically OK (focus and exposure are generally fine, and colour is commendably restrained), but it is the subject matter that makes them interesting, not the compositions or the use of light.

Exactly the same pictures, but of dogs or cats, rather than white tigers, would not have elicited the same effusions.

These pictures are competently-made and attractive, but the words "magical" and "outstanding" are, in my view, somewhat over the top.

I agree with others that No 7 is the best.

G

It's done well, indeed very well, but should it have been done at all?

My objection to this is that she is selling somebody else's art. She is hitching a free ride on another person's wagon, and it matters not a whit that her technique is excellent. The fact is that these pictures owe their power not to her colouring, but to the skill of the original photographer, and I object to her making money out of something that is not hers.

One presumes she has obtained permission where it was necessary to do so, but even so it leaves a slightly sour taste in my mouth.

If I had posted a picture here, and then somebody had come along and altered it, and put it on sale, I should not be pleased.

The copyright case in another thread comes to mind, although I concede that there may not be a copyright issue in the case of these pictures. It's more an ethical issue.

G

I humbly suggest that your approach to lens testing, whilst admirably rigorous, may sometimes lead you draw the wrong conclusions (assuming I have understood you correctly).

The old motto: "Seek, and ye shall find" holds true in lens testing as in so much else. If the purpose of your testing is to find faults, then you will surely find them (for there is no such thing as perfection), but concentrating on the negative means that you are in danger of overlooking the positive. And in my view, it's the positives that make a good lens, not a lack of negatives.

In the case of the 77mm (and the other FA Ltds), you will certainly find purple fringing. You will also find that the AF is not quite as fast as more modern lenses. The MF is better of course.

But if instead of looking for what is bad, you concentrate on what is good, you will find that the 77mm, used in normal conditions, gives the most wonderful soft, creamy, skin tones. As a portrait lens (its raison d'etre) there is absolutely nothing better (though the FA 85mm and the new 55mm are no doubt in much the same league).

I never bother with formal tests. It's what the results look like that interests me. In terms of what is measurable, the FA Ltds are very sharp, reasonably fast, and generally free of distortion. But it's what you can't measure, but CAN see, that makes them so very special.

Yes, the 77mm has a couple of flaws. But good photographers who look at results rather than lens tests tend to agree that it is a very fine lens indeed.

G

Yes, there is. I may have one somewhere.

G