Topic: A very interesting perspective on digital photography by Bruce Barnbaum

[gary m]

Just stumbled across Bruces work today. Some gorgeous, gorgeous work! Here are his thoughts on digital photography  http://www.barnbaum.com/thoughts.html  Its a bit of a long read, but I know you Filmwasters will enjoy it Check out some of his images when your done http://www.barnbaum.com/

[yola10go]

I nearly woke my husband up with a hearty "preach on brother!"  Especially when I got to the part about digital abuses.  I can just hear a number of my bosses saying "Such and such studio had a problem when they were shooting, so instead of doing a resit can you go through and fix all 150+ students, um and how quickly can you get that done??"  Ok, maybe I'm being a little bit harsh...i think the worst lot probably had 70-80 students. 

But with the introduction of digital cameras in our work flow a new problem has popped up...photographers don't set their white point properly and some kids are so blown out that no amount of photoshop can bring them back.  Nothing makes me angrier at work than having to fix things for lazy photographers. 

erika

[CarlRadford]

I have had the pleasure of reading two of Bruce's books Tone Poems 1 & 2. A very intelligent and gift image maker with a conscience to boot!! Highly recommended!

[aboot]

beautiful... i'm currently in a seminar this summer on alternative photography and i'm going to share this with my instructor and all of my classmates.  wonderful stuff.

i really agree "digital abuse" paragraph.  i few semesters ago i was taking a "photo retouch" class and the instructor was showing a video where this guy was talking about how to use photoshop effectively.  anyways, they showed a beautiful looking pot with this crack in it... now i thought the crack gave the pot a lot of character, age, meaning, comfort etc.  but the guy proceeded to remove the crack with the patch tool in photoshop.  and i was just thinking to myself... why the hell are you taking a picture of a pot with a crack in it if your just going to remove it anyways.  using photoshop like that is really destructive...

[moominsean]

When i first started working for my publishing company, it was all film, mostly large format...we rarely had quality issues. now it is 80% digital... definite decline in quality overall. people seem to think that becuase it's not a film camera, they don't need to worry about things like lighting, focus, composition. like it's a little computer that takes care of everything for you. plus, most photographers seem to be clueless regarding screen versus print quality, dpi, photo sizing, color correcting, etc., yet they've all dropped film for the digital format. spent how many years learning film techniques...jump right into digital with no experience or actual desire to learn the medium.
anywa, done bitching.

sean