There is a lot of crap on Flickr, but this isn’t part of it. This guy’s photostream is a little weird, though.
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November 17, 2008 by Brian
There is a lot of crap on Flickr, but this isn’t part of it. This guy’s photostream is a little weird, though.
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This is a great picture, for several reasons. One: it uses the Rule of Thirds (the subject is not centered). Two: It is simple. Three: I don’t know know if this is from film or is digital, but the tonal range is very, very good. You can pinpoint a white/white and a black/black, and all shades of gray in between. If it was film used (with a high dynamic/tonal range), this is an example of using the Zone System, developed by the famous nature photographer Ansel Adams. You can usually get close to this if you meter with an %18 gray card…but that’s another story. At any rate, when I look at a picture like this, it’s what I think about. In any good black and white, you usually find a combination of the three elements mentioned above.
I don’t know if this is digital or analog, there wasn’t any information with the picture. You are right about the tonal range, something that would be hard to accomplish given the scene – white on gray – for the most part. Digital photography is improving, but it looks like film to me.
Some of the new digital cameras are very good, and with Photoshop just about anything is possible. But thats the science, not the art. It’s the vision which matters.