Re: Panorama debate

[cmiller@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (Curt Miller,EMW)]

It was a glorious and cold winter afternoon here in the Berkshires so I went
out with my 4x5 to make a landscape image in the waning afternoon sun down
in Stockbridge...sort of a Christmas present to myself.  While I was doing
this, it dawned on me that a definition for "panoramic" did indeed exist.  

I don't remember where I read it or to whom an attribution should be made
but the definition becomes clear when the reasoning is spelled out.  It goes
something like this:  a panoramic is an image where the aspect ratio is
greater than a certain factor (I think between 1:2 and 1:3).  The reason is
that the brain requires us to "read" or scan the image from one side to the
other (or top to bottom) because, unlike with an image which aspect ratio is
below this threshold, we can't capture all the information in one look.
With a "regular" picture, we can.

This said, any camera which produces an extreme aspect ratio (relative to
the above) is a panoramic camera and the image it produces is a panoramic
image.  This includes cameras and images made with those $8 disposables.
I'm very comfortable with this.  Even though the image I made today with
fine grain film will have 30 times the information as the negative produced
by the disposable, it's not necessarily a more valuable image (or, if you
must make parallels, if I had made the image with a 4x10, I'd have 60x the
information...).  I think this is what irks people: that the quality of the
image must somehow be directly proportional to all of the inputs, economic
or other.  

It really doesn't bother me in the least that some other guy with his EOS
Rebel and $89 zoom lens considers himself my peer as a photographer
(...could be he's even better, huh?).  What counts is the finished product,
the judgement of which will be amazingling subjective (assuming a certain
base level of technique is applied to its creation).  I really enjoy the
work of some contemporary 35mm photographers, David Alan Harvey and Ralph
Gibson to name two.  I've talked with both recently about technique and
feeling for an image and it really comes clear to me that it's really about
capturing on film that which is seen in the mind's eye.  We might like the
results or not but we can't criticize the equipment with which they were made.

I've got to go develop some sheet film.

Regards,
Curt
=========================================================================
                       Curt Miller, M.P.A.
                  Classic Photography by Miller
              B&W Fine Art Photography and Printing
                       Using Minox to 4X5
              Co-founder of "The Berkshire Archive"

                       Elizabeth Mei Wong
   Birding with Women Outdoors at http://www.women-outdoors.org/
           or with Berkshire County's Hoffman Bird Club

          Pittsfield, Massachusetts - In the Berkshires
=========================================================================