Hey, Tracy, thanks. This is simply one of my favorite images and I chose it as my last post to WeeklyShot, irrespective of Relevance, etc.

This is an almost straight reproduction of a scan of the original 35mm, over-exposed Tri-X negative. The corners and edges are burned down a bit, and that's all. A small amount of Noise Ninja applied followed by 50% Smart Sharpen in PhotoShop.

135mm hand held in low light--no image stabilization.

Cheers!

ah ok.. that explains it... it really is a great photo King :)

I thought of Tracy right away upon seeing this. I've never met Tracy. I only know her work here and the kind and sometimes not so kind words that have flown back and forth about it. Ain't it weird how I feel like I do know her though. Thanks for that Brandon.

Thanks for your comments.

I'm done.

Good bye and thanks for all the fish!

@klimin_a_s...thanks very much. This was shot around 1970 and is one of my favorite photos. This was scanned on my little HP Photosmark S20 dedicated film scanner. I've wanted a higher-quality scan, but I've misplaced the damned negative.

I've been giving folks especially high scores on this theme, hoping that some might get their first image on the Home Page. However, that view is not shared by many, and some folks are still downright hostile to grain or images that are less than super-sharp. Images like CushmoK's deliberately soft-focus shot of his little girl with a tear in her eye will get the cold should from those critics:

http://www.weeklyshot.org/theme/farewell/response/35/

Thanks to you, my ratings are bit higher on this image:

* Relevance: 3.07
* Impact: 3.64
* Composition: 4.07
* Technique: 3.36
* Quality: 3.14
* Overall: 3.456

I won't argue with anyone's opinion, but I think it is a shame that the digital age has brought with it a certain narrowness of seeing. Grain, which is a beautiful, magical, ephemeral and emergent quality of film photography is pereived by digital purists as simply noise.

Images that have a little camera or subject movement because of the difficulty of the circumstances and considered technically inferior by some digital purists who depend on image stabilization.

This is, of course, old news on these W.S. pages. My being 63 years old and with more years of photography experience than most puts me in a certain cohort of folks, among them Vernon Trent and some of those who have commented on this image, who are not trapped in the digital amber.

Now this is not sour grapes. I'm a great fan of digital photography and am learning as much as I can about it. I'm a huge fan of pursang and others who specialize in digital. But, as we all know, it is not the digital sensor that makes their images great.

It can liken it to a reverse of the great change in sound technology when stereo was introduced--anyone remember monophonic hi-fidelity sound? I hope I can dig this analogy out. It seems that some long-time film photographers who have embraced digital have more of a stereo perception (for that matter, anyone remember stereo cameras?), while those who limited themselves to digital imagery are stuck in monophonic.

Oh, well, not such a good analogy. I just feel kind of sorry for people whose perception is so constrained and whose photographic knowledge and skills are limited and so defined by pixels, automatic focus, image stabilization, etc.

Hey, Mooch, here's a last chance to call me names..."Pretentious Prat" comes to mind. I forgive you, dude.

If you ever need some help with your view camera, the zone system, finding the hyperfocal distance, the Scheimphlug effect, lighting the Great Pyramids, special effects without resorting to Photoshop or with using light and chemicals in order to get an image to magically emerge in a developing tray, give me a shout.

All my best to all.

King: I'm sure it's bnot keeping you awake, but my scores were certainly higher than your averages, despite my comments about the grain. As I said, normally I don't particularly like grain, normally, the hi-key background would bother me. Heck, I don't even particularly like horses! :)
But in this instance, all of those elements come together beautifully. It really is a fine image.

So, King, thankyou and farewell.

@Montage,

I figured that everyone who bothered to comment gave me higher scores than those who just rated and departed. I don't care about the scores, but I'm pretty interested in the stuff I talked about above, ways of seeing, appreciating, that sort of thing.

Thank you my friend, and farewell!

Damn, I hadn't even thought that this could be not featured... What a shame, it's one of the finest images of the whole topic!

Despite being just a bit more than a third of your age, King, I really agree about your statement. I encountered this technical nitpicking back when I was submitting images to the wikimedia project (to be used freely on wikipedia) and people would look at 100% magnification and complain about not having a perfect sharpness on shots that had been taken more than 6000m high, after carrying the damn camera all the way to the top!

Technical perfection is just one part of a photo, and it rarely has to do with whether viewers will be moved by it or not, which is why I (and many others here, including of course you, King) do take photos in the first place.

As for grain, I unfortunately never used digital cameras (and digital noise just doesn't look anything like the real thing), and that is one of my regrets, because I really love it. It gives texture and life to a photo. This is the same to me than having a house built of wood, which is warm and friendly, while maybe less perfect than a glass and steel skyscraper.

Anyway, King, I just wanted to say that this shot really is a great one, and that it's a real shame it didn't get featured!

@nattfodd...thanks for the generous and thoughtful remarks.

Beamer...inside joke? Please be more specific. I'm interested in your question.

@nattfodd...more about grain vs. pixels. Sometimes when working in Photoshop, when I magnify the image to 1600%, the pixels become abstractly beautiful, kinda like looking at film grain through a Scoponet on the enlarging easel or the strange and unexpected textures of almost anything imaged by an electron microscope.

The pixels seem to be a random arrangement of colors and forms that can be explored endlessly, until the image is reduced to around 200-400%, when the virtual image starts to emerge.

I have it in mind to post on my website a few of these discoveries.

Thanks to everyone who commented. This type of discussion is a part of WeeklyShot that I most enjoy and, when it is absent, I miss the most.

Cheers, everyone!

King,

Beautiful image. I'm also one of those who misses the grainy images that we used to shoot with film.

You said, "It can liken it to a reverse of the great change in sound technology when stereo was introduced--anyone remember monophonic hi-fidelity sound?"

I think Brian Wilson (Beach Boys), back when he was his most creative (e.g., Pet Sounds), preferred to record and mix on a monophonic platform...

Thanks for your constructive comments, and great images, while WeeklyShot was active!

i think he was talking about how WS has been devoid of alot of people for a while.. and you are all back at the end!

well done on the feature :) like i said earlier, i do like this :D

@King, it was in reference to last week's Theme "Extreme Contrast". The horses seems like they were a week late... :-)

To continue the grain discussion:
I work in the television and film industry, doing mostly graphic design and titles. But, with the advent of High Definition camera, a lot of directors and producers are starting to shoot commercials and even feature films using the "video" cameras. They do this mostly for cost savings. The biggest drawback for most is the lack of grain and the technical limitation on frame rate. They bring the "video" to folks like me and say "make it look like film". I just spent a whole shift at work the other night building a set of filters and re-grain tools to process every shot in a music video that was shot in video so it would look more like film...

Ah, so glad this one got Featured. Viva la grain!

Oh My! This is my all-time favorite photograph ever posted on Weeklyshot. How ironic that this is the final contest.

King-

When I was browsing though last night (before this was featured) this was one out of all the images I picked through that really stood out... perhaps for all those differences you mentioned. It had a real subtle, physical quality to it... something that is very real, can be touched and felt. It really grabbed me on first sight- likely because it stuck out (quality wise) from all the others.

I would echo many of your words about the digital age- making people feel that only a certain type of image is acceptable... It's nice to step away from the internet for times and see what is happening in the 'real world' as there doesn't seem to be the same demeanor. Walk into a gallery, and you will still find many beautiful hand printed photographs with grain and imperfections... only veiled behind the screens (monitors) do we seem to all want the crisp, flawless, and sometimes lifeless images that are so prevalent on the web (mine not excluded!).

-Jason

@Beamer...I'm aware of where you work and of your sensitivity to cinematic things such as the effects of grain on the viewing experience. That's a good story about making digital look like film...and it's so true.

Thanks very much.

@ImagoArticulus...great comment re Brian Wilson.

Thanks!

@Tom...you are one of the masters, so your comment means a lot to me. Perhaps you'd enjoy, offline, some remarks about my favorites of your contributions to W.S. You know I'm a big fan of yours.

Thanks again!

@pursang...thank you, my friend.

To all in regard to SeekingFocus' remarks above. Jason is not only an accomplished photographer, but he has long been an experimenter in the art of photography...has even built a camera...and is proficient in old-timey methods and techniques...even stuff that was being done when I was young, LOL!

Go look at his website.

Thanks, Jason, my friend.

Est ce qu'une photo est belle si elle est nette ? bien cadrée , décalée, bien exposée ? le numérique m'a permis de reproduire la réalité, d'essayer... mais cela m'a vite ennuyé. Je ne suis techniquement pas très bon, mais je n'ai pas envie de m'améliorer. Je cherche l'atmosphère, la rature, l'écueil..
Je ne veux pas être un expressionniste, un réaliste... j'aimerais juste que l'on me dise un jour que je réalise des photos impressionnistes, subjectives...

Voici avec des mots français (je m'excuse auprès des anglophones) ma modeste pensée sur ce sujet.

Bien à vous,

Voulez-vous dire que vous aimez cette photo, mon ami?

Oui, et aussi que parfois le charme et l'intérêt d'une image réside dans ce qu'elle a d'imparfait..
Juste mes deux centimes d'euro :)

Ah great shot, now I remember... The shot seemed familiar, and I did actually rate this shot (straight 5's, I did it with every shot I rated on this theme ;) You can still feel special though!

All the best...

oh, pardon, oui... oui, j'aime le blanc et le noir qui s'opposent, le gris sombre et le gris clair, l'immobile assuré et le mobile possible, l'arbre et le cheval.. tout est contraste. juste beau, le tout nimbé d'un irréel brouillard.

@CushmoK...
Bon, alors. Merci!

@ChriZ...thanks. I, too, am being especially generous in my ratings for this theme. I think everyone who posts in this theme deserves to be featured on the Home Page.

Cheers.

@JIMJIM...
Roi accepte et vous remercie beaucoup pour votre commentaire.
Cheers!

Here's a tentative translation of what CushmoK said (I'm sorry if this was supposed to stay in French, by the way...):

Is a photo beautiful if it's sharp? Well composed, framed, exposed? Digital allowed me to reproduce reality, or to try... but it got rapidly boring. I am not technically very good, but I don't feel like trying to get better. I am looking for the mood, the strike, the obstacle... I don't want to be an expressionist, a realist... I just wish to be told someday that I am doing impressionist, subjective photos...

To which I completely agree :)

Hey, nattfodd...thanks very much. I put CushmoK's message into Google translate, which didn't do a very good job. I also used my limited French and Spanish skills to try to pull out some more meaning. My final interpretation was very close to what you provided, but I decided to tease CusmoK a little anyway.

Goodbye and goodnight!!

Cheers King, I am glad this featured, it is my favorite shot of yours - I wish I had taken it myself actually. Say hello to Paula and take care of yourself. :)

Thanks, Tracy. Your wishing it was your shot is the highest compliment. I'll pass on your hello to Paula. We hope to see you this year.

Cheers and not farewell,

King