Re: wondering

Jean, here are three quick thoughts...

1) When your email arrived, I was working in Photoshop, which is
nearly a foreign language to me. I have difficulty getting a scanned
print to look as good the original. The problem is compounded when
trying to get a scanned negative to look good. Maybe a little
sharpening would help. Actually, the difficulty I encounter most
often is color correction. Maybe a little something extra is needed
to make an image look good on a computer screen or to make up for what
gets lost in the scan.

2) Some of the image characteristics of pinhole can't be easily
matched by lens photography. The one that would stand out in a
pinhole-sharp image is the so-called inifinite depth of field. The
juxtaposition of near and far is remarkable and is easily and
inexpensively obtained.

3) On the occasions when I give talks on pinhole, I mention that it
is sufficient. It is sufficient in that it is as capable of
expressing the full range of human experience as any great artistic
medium. It is a big universe. Pinhole is also sufficient in that a
person could spend a lifetime exploring its innumerable variations,
subtleties and blatancies without exhausting either its or his or her
creative potential. We ARE onto magic here. And the large universe
provides plenty of room for scientific and empirical approaches, for
sharp and fuzzy imagery and lots of fun along the way.

Tom

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jean Hanson" <jhanson@pon.net>
To: "pinhole-discussion-request@pinhole.com"
<pinhole-discussion@pinhole.com>
Sent: Monday, December 09, 2002 6:53 PM
Subject: [pinhole-discussion] wondering

> About the message two days ago; a member took a pinhole image,
> "sharpened" it in Adobe or a digital method, and printed it out. I
> wonder why we don't just take traditional lens photographs and
smear
> them a little and print them out to look like pinhole work. What is
it
> that we are doing? I love pinhole photography and am retired from
> traditional photo studio work. So my sister asked me recently, "why
are
> you and your friends intent on taking bad pictures?" I have always
felt
> we had a kind of philosophy...we were trying to see the world, or
time,
> or light another way. And I am not down on digital....but it is
hard to
> explain to non- participants that we really are doing something, and
> something important. If we sharpen the images to look like better
> conventional photos, is something being lost? The mystery? The
> understanding of an almost occult medium? An atempt to see what
light is
> really doing as it hits and wraps around an object? What can I tell
my
> sister? Jean
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Post to the list as PLAIN TEXT only - no HTML
> Pinhole-Discussion mailing list
> Pinhole-Discussion@pinhole.com
> unsubscribe or change your account at
> http://www.pinholevisions.org/discussion/
>
Received on Tue Dec 10 00:53:49 2002