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Gallery turned down my digital image

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kiet

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I’ve been doing landscape photography for about 20 years mostly with medium and large format. I’ve had off and on representation from various galleries. In recent years I slowly migrated to digital; at first using digital as a compositional and exposure tool. But it got more use as resolution and other attributes improved… I haven’t shot film for 6 months.

Recently I got a nice shot from my 5D so I printed a 16x24 (Lightjet) and brought it to the gallery for sale. The curator graciously turned me down citing it was “… too digital”. I never expected an image from a 5D to be on par with 4x5 but I thought the print was decently even though it did exhibit ‘digitalness’ (mostly in clouds and tree tips).

For the pros out there…

Do you find a lot of resistance for digital capture? Can most curators distinguish a 12MP capture from film assuming a drum scan?
 
Withouy seeing image or having details of resolution its difficult to comment except to say I suspect you are doing something wrong.
 
kiet said:
Do you find a lot of resistance for digital capture?
Click to expand...
No. None at all. I mainly shoot fashion, events and I am doing photojournalistic work, but I've done my share of other things as well, including a recent exhibition.

I have recieved the usual comments on "how good my camera must be", but no one have ever objected about me using digital equipment.
kiet said:
Can most curators distinguish a 12MP capture from film assuming a > drum scan?
Click to expand...
No.

If printed well, both a drum scanned 5x4 and a 12mp digital image will have dynamic range and gamut that by far exceeds those of the best papers. Resolution will be better on the drumscan but unless the image is a super quality image, there won't be more details to resolve.

But being "too digital" is the same as "film like", it is very subjective and is usually a measure of certain aspects of the viewing experience more than it is a quantifiable quantity. Had you entered the same gallery with an old Hassy hanging from your neck (figurably speaking), the curators would've assumed the images would've been captured with it and they would probably have loved it.

--
Anders

Some of my pictures can be seen at;
http://teamexcalibur.se/US/usindex.html

event photography and photo journalism
 
We did not get into too much detail since “… too digital” was enough for me. I’ve worked with this person long enough to trust his judgment and if he thought something would not sell then we just moved on the next image. Personally I could clearly tell it was from digital capture but I had bias history. I didn't think I needed to make the print look like film capture since it looked fine as it was. Historically I’ve only presented film stuff whenever I had 2 copies. Simply because I know I can make 40x50 prints from I scans but I hesitate to do with a 12MP capture.
 
kiet said:
Recently I got a nice shot from my 5D so I printed a 16x24
(Lightjet) and brought it to the gallery for sale. The curator
graciously turned me down citing it was “… too digital”. I never
expected an image from a 5D to be on par with 4x5 but I thought the
print was decently even though it did exhibit ‘digitalness’ (mostly
in clouds and tree tips).
Click to expand...
I think he was right........ there has to be some discrimination in the
old way the term was used..... meaning gallery prints should maintain
a certain standard of quality of the print and traditional methods of printing.

That was their gallery and their standards. Comply or go eleswhere.

Also the buyers should know they are getting 'fine art' in the legal tradition
from someone who produces prints in traditional dark rooms from negatives.

This will ruffle feathers in the digital world, but there is something to be said
about the higher quality wet prints from the wet dark room.

My 2cents.....
 
kiet said:
... I printed a 16x24
... turned me down citing it was “… too digital”.
... it did exhibit ‘digitalness’ (mostly
in clouds and tree tips).
Click to expand...
I agree with the other posters that there must be a problem with your print [rather than just being a "digital photo"].

If you yourself can see "digitalness" in the clouds and tree tips, then there are problems with the print.

Again, I can't accurately evaluate the problem(s) without seeing the actual print, but it sounds like it could be some of the typical "digital processing" problems that I've seen many times.

Some of the typical causes are (1) tendency to "oversaturate" the colors, (2) overly manipulate brightness and contrast, and (3) indiscriminate use of the USM for sharpening.

Oversaturating and increasing contrast tends to introduce a "posterizing" or banding effect that's particularly noticeable in cloud and sky areas.

Sharpening [using the USM] will introduce "halos" that are particularly noticeable in fine-detail areas [such as the tree tips]. Don't forget, these "halos" are MAGNIFIED when you print at a large size.
Oh, by the way. I hope you were not doing the print from a JPEG file.

If you print from a JPEG file, you'll also get the "worm" artifacts that are typical with the "lossy" jpeg compression. Again, these artifacts are most noticeable in cloud areas [and are also magnified when printing at a large size]. JPEG also reduces the bit depth of your photo to 8-bit. For large prints you should be using either native Photoshop PSD or uncompressed TIFF files where you can maintain the 16-bit pixel depth.
 
Care to email me a 100% crop of part of the image?

It would help me as sometimes I process shots that people submit for exhibition and they are nearly all digital.

Andrew
 
Would like to see what too digital means
Please post the pic.
Thanks!
 
AperturePro said:
AperturePro said:
Recently I got a nice shot from my 5D so I printed a 16x24
(Lightjet) and brought it to the gallery for sale. The curator
graciously turned me down citing it was “… too digital”. I never
expected an image from a 5D to be on par with 4x5 but I thought the
print was decently even though it did exhibit ‘digitalness’ (mostly
in clouds and tree tips).
Click to expand...
I think he was right........ there has to be some discrimination
in the
old way the term was used..... meaning gallery prints should maintain
a certain standard of quality of the print and traditional methods
of printing.

That was their gallery and their standards. Comply or go eleswhere.

Also the buyers should know they are getting 'fine art' in the
legal tradition
from someone who produces prints in traditional dark rooms from
negatives.

This will ruffle feathers in the digital world, but there is
something to be said
about the higher quality wet prints from the wet dark room.

My 2cents.....
Click to expand...
I've yet to see a color wet print that equalled the quality of Lightjet, Chromira, or inkjet.
 
SydneyHedderich said:
I didn't realize that printers could take 16-bit files. Please
expand on this, perhaps by explaining what type of printers you are
referring to.
Click to expand...
The Canon ipf5000 has a 16-bit printing plugin, I'd be surprised if other pro/wide-format manufacturers don't follow suit with their future releases.

Even if you have a printer with an 8-bit driver interface, there are still benefits to keeping the image 16-bit as long as possible during editing, profile conversion, etc.

--
Jeff Kohn
Houston, TX
http://www.pbase.com/jkohn
 
AperturePro said:
Also the buyers should know they are getting 'fine art'
Click to expand...
And just because a photograph is shot on film, doesn't mean its art.

Do cite the technical quality of the image and the printing if you want, but don't call it art without considering the capture itself. That's beyond ridiculous.
 
I have no idea what a "fine art photograph" is. Some photographers make prints and call them prints, others make prints and call them fine art. As for looking too digital, your example could be over processed or you could add some grain in Photoshop if he wants to think it's film and don't add much sharpening, that's the real digital give away, sharpening.

Kevin.
 
kiet said:
Can most curators distinguish a 12MP capture from film assuming a drum > scan?
Click to expand...
Forget the curators, its the fact that the purchasing public can also see that pixelation.

It looks cheap. Plain and simple.

You'll find LOADS of people on this forum caliming to make wonderful prints with a 6mp model, but if they are really selling them it will only be to the bottom end of the market.

I use a 1ds for fine art landscape prints, but very often I stitch images. Thats the way to get the resolution.
 
There's only a very small percent of the top end photographic galleries that do not accept digital (in fact, there's only one that i can think of). Digital photographs have been accepted as 'fine art' and collectable for a while now
jim
AperturePro said:
I think he was right........ there has to be some discrimination
in the
old way the term was used..... meaning gallery prints should maintain
a certain standard of quality of the print and traditional methods
of printing.

That was their gallery and their standards. Comply or go eleswhere.

Also the buyers should know they are getting 'fine art' in the
legal tradition
from someone who produces prints in traditional dark rooms from
negatives.

This will ruffle feathers in the digital world, but there is
something to be said
about the higher quality wet prints from the wet dark room.

My 2cents.....
Click to expand...
 
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