Is anything photographic 'real' anymore?

(First of all, I haven't disappeared or died in the last month, just been busy on various new things - the header on this blog mentions that I'll show up and post something 'when I have something worth your time to read'.. and sometimes that takes a while.)

I've heard a lot of creative types say pretty much the same thing about digital(& photoshop):

'The best thing about photoshop is that you can do anything.
And the worst thing about photoshop is?...that you can do anything!'
(and get totally lost in what can seem like infinite possibilities).

(Didn't Charles Dickens write 'it was the best of time, it was the worst of times'? - not much has changed, has it!?)

Anyone interested in the changes the new technologies have brought us in photography should definitely read this article published in the May 12 edition of The New Yorker magazine, about the work of Pascal Dangin - retoucher to the stars of fashion photography, it's titled 'Pixel Perfect'.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/12/080512fa_fact_collins

I am not even going to attempt to comment on this, someone else has said a lot of what I have been thinking much better - check Mark Morford's column in the SF Chronicle:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/05/23/notes052308.DTL

I highly recommend both the above.

'I'll be back' (to quote the Terminator), real soon.......with some 'darkroom'...
and wouldn't ya just know it ;-) some pixels, too.

On the importance of skies - Part 2

"The sky is very important....it can make or break a montage image...."
Yes!, definitely.
One recent example is from a blog entry a month or so ago:

www.bobbennettphoto.net/Beachblog_DkRmXmas3_PowersThatBe.html

Another one that has stuck in my mind has been the image above:
'Stairway(to..?)'

The sky is at the top, the abandoned motel facade, in the middle..
and the final montage at the bottom.

From a darkroom printing point of view, this initially looks simple -
just two elements: the sky & landscape that fills most of the top half...
And the foreground(shadows & staircase).. that slowly disappear into the distance/sky.
But often times what looks simple isn't so simple.
I still find it a lot easier to blend images in the darkroom.
Besides the fact that I can do it so much faster than I can do anything on a computer, it's just waaaay smoother, and a whole lot more fun than 'point & click'.

I started by exposing the 'decrepit/crumbling motel facade' from the bottom, up,...
until i got a bit above the curb......
then i burned in the rest(above the curb) thru the 'oh-so-simple' hole
in a black piece of paper.
For the sky, I put a black strip into my 'below the lense filter holder'...

(see my 'darkroom methods' pages:
www.bobbennettphoto.net/DarkRm2/index.html)

...that blended the sky/landscape out to '0' a little before the curb.
Additionally, I held back the center of the sky, so that the motel(burned into the center) would show thru.
Indeed, it did, and blended w/ the sky in ways i could not have forseen.

I like being surprised, I don't have any great desire to control everything in the print.
It's a bit like life in general, these days - don't think you have a handle on too much -
in no time flat, you will find out that is an illusion.

Larger views of the above images, and a few more thoughts/comments at:

www.bobbennettphoto.net/BeachBlog_Skies_Montage