a (fashion) shooter

Living in lower Manhattan, I visit photo galleries every weekend. (And openings on thursday nighs where the crowd is colorful the wine is free:-) Aside from loving to look at photographs, I like to keep abreast of the state of the art in print quality is.

Saw a wall full of fashion prints large and small yesterday from Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin, recently seen prints from Annie Leibowitz (4 feet high and digital), Richard Avedon, Ellen von Unwerth, Irving Penn, Bill Owens, Mike Disfarmer, James Nachtwey, Sally Mann, room-sized digital prints from Gregory Crewdson’s 8×10 scans selling for $60,000, 5 foot high nudes of Pamela Anderson shot by Sante D’Orazio, etc., etc.

In my opinion the prints from the 1Ds Classic (which I have seen and produced many of) easily exceed the traditonal prints from 6×7 film on the gallery walls in terms of sharpness and detail. Especially in sharpness, the darkroom prints simply do not look very sharp next to a well executed digital print, or even a digital C print from a digital camera.

Of course, aside from photo nerds like us, no one who is in the gallery cares which is sharper from 5″ away. They are either intrigued by the content of the image or they are not, and they move along to the next image.

Not sure where I am going with this except to note that we who are shooting digital already have plenty of sharpness and detail compared to the traditional processes up to and past 6×7 film I.M.O.

And if you do not live where there are good gallery shows to see, you should come to NYC in the fall and feast your eyes!