photography: serial or singular

A non linear camera profile that includes looks is not comparable to a raw developers out of the box look. The former is locked in, the latter are just tools set to defaults that can be easily changed.

Consistency is one of the most important things in photography as photography is almost always serial. Serial because almost nothing can be said in a single photo, it gains meaning from the other photographs in the series. The series can be a small project or most of the persons output.

Now, out of the box behaviour and consistency are not related either but the idea of it being beneficial to start from scratch inventing the colours and contrast for each image afresh, doesn’t fly. Few if any work like that. Not at any serious level of photography.

Except a thousand words…

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This is the hottest of hot takes. Ouch. Where does one even start to disagree? So many places to start.

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Just name a few prominent photographers from the history of photography that you consider produce “singles”.

Should be easy considering the certainty of your response. Surely you have someone in mind.

To widen the net you could mention someone currently unknown that you think will make history.

Ansel Adams? The top photo journalists? Most portrait photographers? They present(ed) their work one image at a time, so I suppose that means they consider that one image enough to tell the story.

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Rivietor, you posted just as I was writing this.

How about Ansel Adams. From Wikipedia:
Ansel Adams “and Fred Archer developed an exacting system of image-making called the Zone System, a method of achieving a desired final print through a deeply technical understanding of how tonal range is recorded and developed during exposure, negative development, and printing. The resulting clarity and depth of such images characterized his photography.”

Concerning “Moonrise:” “Over nearly 40 years, Adams re-interpreted the image, his most popular by far, using the latest darkroom equipment at his disposal, making over 1,369 unique prints, mostly in 16” by 20" format."

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I think celebrity style portraits get close because each person might require a very different look.

I can’t think of any examples where it doesn’t result in a short series of photos though. For a poster or something one might be used but variants usually show up in other circumstances.

Corporate headshots need to look similar across people.

I don’t know enough about Ansel Adams and how his work was/is presented but it does bring up postcards and stock photography as possible “singles” genres. For very good reasons they aren’t usually considered great photography.

Note that many photographers are known to spend time processing and printing. W. Eugene Smith for instance was notorious. His work was still highly serial.

Actually I beleive the opposite to be true. Some of the most iconic photos resonate so well because they embody a concept or era without any additional aid.

I could think of many examples, but the “Kissing Sailor” in Times Square perfectly captures the jubilation of the end of the Second World War. We don’t need a series showing the sailor approaching the young lady or how they parted ways, in fact that would have detracted from the impact of that single shot.

You still have one single image at a time presented to tell the story. Using a group of images to tell a story only works when that group is presented together.

While that may or may not be true, it is not relevant for your claim. There are indeed cases where a serie of images is used (or even needed) to tell the intended story. That wasn’t disputed.

It doesn’t prove that it’s impossible to tell a story with one image (which was your claim).

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I’ve not seen the full copy of the magazine where the Kissing sailor was the cover. A magazine cover is typically chosen from the images that make up the illustrations inside the magazine. The most iconic one ends up on the cover.

We’re talking about slightly different things here though. An image can undoubtedly get detached from it’s context and live on as a “single”. People often buy single prints even when they are part of a series in the artist output. And single images from a reportage etc may live on as the representative for that work.

My claim was in the context of editing images and from the point of view of a photographer producing work and from the view of someone assessing said work. I’d be very surprised to hear that “Kissing Sailor” was sold and presented as a single photo. My guess is that Life either used more of the photographers work or carefully put together (curated) an article from a broad range of snaps. The latter sounds pretty advanced for the time but could be possible.

So again, I’m questioning the suggestion that it’s a good idea to build each image up from “scratch”. You’ll end up with a right mess. I’m also suggesting that one of the most important features of a raw developer is to be able to apply looks across images and get predictable results.

About Adams a quick web search suggests that he did publish books. I expect they were a set of images edited and photographed to work together. I haven’t found photos of the spreads just yet.

If you have a vision of what you want your work to look like and the editing skill to achieve that vision, then starting from “scratch” or copying and pasting a group of module settings is more a question of time than anything else.

For my own personal work, which you describe as “from scratch,” most of my time is spent on local editing, so applying a uniform look would really get me that far. Starting from scratch let’s me work with each images as it exists in my mind.

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I would take that to mean that a picture can gain meaning without other photos from the series, no?

Which is a different question that I would relate with my own meager and non-professional experience. Just last week I came to a location where a heron happened to be posing in a spot that I knew would transition from full shade to direct sun in about half an hour. The bird patiently stood still during that entire time and I ended up with a full range of photos that ranged from deep mist to bright illumination. Each of the photos in that series had an entirely different character even though the heron maintained the same pose the entire time.

Had I processed them all for consistency then they would have ended up lifeless and boring. But by editing each one from scratch, I was able to bring out the unique character for each shot. There was no reason to assume that the appearance of one photo depended on the others.

My bold - Time is rarely a minor question.

I’m sorry but I’ve not described your work or anyone else’s. I’m reacting to several posters that are suggesting that building each image up from from scratch is a good workflow and something to suggest to new users as superior and more advanced.

Without a starting point that looks very close to finished and the others in the series you’ll struggle to get coherent results. This starting point can be auto applied presets, software defaults or pasted module settings.

If you were to display, sell or share your photographs in a more “serious” setting (perhaps you already are). Would you put those different images next to each other? Depending on your definition of “entirely different character” it might be a great or a terrible idea. But such a series of a heron over different light sounds like an interesting series. Particularly if it remained in place. If done right such a series would be much stronger than the best in the series on it’s own. Unless of course you present a different selection of photos where you only fit one heron in.

If you’ve ever done an exhibition, book or even a considered slideshow you’ll know that the sequence and character of the images is almost more important than any individual image.

edit: I don’t want to make it seem like I’m a proponent of the “find your style and stick to it” idea that you find as photo self help on the web. Nor am I suggesting a series have to have the same look. You can of course to a series of very different images. But exactly what the differences are is important. Something should happen because of the differences.

I made a new thread so as not to detract from the video discussion.

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I made one last comment just as you split the thread. Could you move it to the new location?

Seems like you deleted it?

Yes, I’m a dunderhead. It’s no big deal

A photo can be a “single”, or part of a series. Or used as both, in different contexts. This should be obvious.

Serial because almost nothing can be said in a single photo, …

I profoundly disagree. Other photos or text or anything might enhance the meaning of the photo, of course, but a single photo in isolation can say a lot.

… but the idea of it being beneficial to start from scratch inventing the colours and contrast for each image afresh, doesn’t fly.

Inventing colours and contrast sound more like painting than photography.

I’m reacting to several posters that are suggesting that building each image up from from scratch is a good workflow and something to suggest to new users as superior and more advanced.

Photographers (as opposed to painters) don’t start from scratch. They start from what comes out of the camera. Either the raw image, or the JPEG. As a general rule, starting from the raw can be said to be “superior and more advanced”.

Without a starting point that looks very close to finished and the others in the series you’ll struggle to get coherent results. This starting point can be auto applied presets, software defaults or pasted module settings.

But what determines “looks very close to finished”? And how does a new user know how to change the image from very close to actually finished? How are those skills learned?

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What’s the baud rate on that?

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Henri Cartier-Bresson is revered as a great photographer, but he had no interest in darkroom work. So for all we know, all his work stopped at the camera and someone else worked on the negs. What do you make of that?