Autumn (NEX-3, 1947's Carl Zeiss Jena 2/85 Sonnar Contax RF)

[Orio]

Autumn has arrived so I decided it was time to make a photograph on the theme.
Thanks for watching!

[Rick1779]

It's just a painting

[Aanything]

Like Caravaggio, if he had some notions of dof.

[LucisPictor]

Wow! You mimicked the great artists of former times very well!

[Orio]

[pepes]

[iangreenhalgh1]

I like it, very much like a painting, but it is a little too dark on my screen too, perhaps due to differing gamma values?

[Attila]

I thought first and inform Orio about little darkness, but think again old paints are this dark, so perfect! Congrats!

[Orio]

cheers guys
My monitor is calibrated on this image:



I did my best to make it accurate, but of course mine is a simple consumer monitor, not a
professional monitor, so it may be slightly off (not a lot off, however).

The background is not black, I put a black frame around it for this purpose, to show
that the background colour is a reddish dark brown.
If on your monitor is shows dark as black, then there is a gamma problem.

The general idea was to have the fruits and leaves that are in the back part of the vase, to show
somehow "melted" (low contrast) with the background, as it happens with painting when you only paint objects with
glaze (without thick colour body), in order to make them appear as slightly glimpsed in the dark.

About the DOF: the original image is all sharp. It's been me to apply DOF blurring in postwork. The
reason is that I did not want to make a 100% Caravaggio imitation. As Aanything smartly noted, there
is no DOF in Caravaggio's paintings. They are all f/64 My goal instead was to make something
inspired by the XVII century paintings, but that still maintained the characteristics of a photograph.
This is also why I did not apply any digital effect such as "canvas texture" or "paint brushstrokes".
Thanks much for the interest!

[kds315*]

Beautiful work Orio!! (My monitor must be off, as I see a brownish reddish backgroud around the center image...)

[Orio]

[eddieitman]

Orio, some of your finest work imho.
The little old Nex 3 really shines in your hands, i can see Orio in a few months doing one of these, buying the new Nex fullframe, buying the A99 and some zeiss glass, or buying the A99's replacment and some zeiss glass.

[kds315*]

[pich900]

well, may be a little bit too dark but I still love it, you did a very good job with the PP, that's indeed a real painting

[miran]

Wow! Looks exactly like a classical painting, including the reddish brown background.

[tomasg]

Perfect! It a good exercise to emulate great masters of painting.

Tomas

[hoanpham]

beautiful painting.

my monitor is same as yours, really enjoy.

[cooltouch]

My monitor also agrees exactly with your dynamic range scale, Orio. No brownish coloration though.

I've often thought that one of the really great things about paintings is that everything is in focus, or as you guys say, at f/64. You'd be surprised how much photography has affected even art teachers nowadays, though, when it comes to this -- well, maybe you woudln't. I recall a few years ago, my daughter was working on a painting as an art project, which was to be entered into a competition. The painting had about a bazillion bluebonnet flowers in it -- the bluebonnet is Texas's state flower. Well, my daughter asked if she should just blur them out as they went back toward the horizon and I told her no, because that isn't the way a great artist would do it and that she was thinking photographically instead of actually looking at the scene the way her eyes would see it. The flowers did not extend away far enough so that they would have become a visual blur, which is why I stuck to my position. So she painstakingly painted in about a bazillion bluebonnet flowers into that painting, and to this day she still hates that painting because of all the bluebonnets she had to paint. But what was interesting were the reactions she got -- first from here art teacher, who commented that maybe she should have blurred them, and then from one of the judges on the committee who was judging the artwork. Since her art teacher had a degree in "art appreciation" and was a woman of no talent, I immediately rejected her observation, but I guess it really surprised me that one of the committee's judges would have made the same comment. Surely this judge should have known better and should know to distinguish eyesight from the camera lens. But I guess not.

But anyway, that wasn't the reason for this post. I was just going to say that, first, at a glance I would have just assumed that this was a still life painted by one of the old masters. It really surprised me that this was a photograph. Second, frequently the old masters, especially people like Rembrandt, loved to play with light, and to make it as dramatic as possible, frequently the surrounding scene was dark so that the lighter areas would stand out. So I personally find the dark character of this photo to be on target. I wouldn't have changed a thing. Yes, it could be brightened up safely, but it would completely change the character, or mood, of the piece, and not necessarily for the better.

Oh, and my daughter won a couple of awards for that painting. She donated it to a charity auction several months later, where it sold for $1,500. Not too bad for a highschooler.

[Orio]

Thank you guys!

Michael, interesting story. In fact it is known in the history of the arts that painting started to change
the representation of the objects in the moment that painters had the first camerae obscurae available.
Due to the visual properties of the pinholes, everything in a camera obscura is clear enough but nothing
is really in perfect sharp focus, because there is no point in the image where the circles of confusion drop
below the threshold of human perceving ability.
For this reason, Vermeer (one of the first painters to use a camera obscura) painted his highlights just like a
photographer sees today the highlights in his photos in those areas that are still focused but not in perfect focus: that is,
as a series of roundish bright points alternating with darker ones, instead of the continuous light that "regular" painters used.
That was the first step towards a change in perception that culminated a couple of centuries later with the Impressionism
and the Pointillism, both heavily influenced by photography and by the science of prismatic studies.
Pointillism, in fact, did bring forward the concept so well, that it even anticipated by twenty years the first Autochromes,
where the structure of coloured grains of potato starch were clearly visible when looking closely at the prints!

As for my photo, yes, as you correctly noted, changing the global exposure would have brought out more details, but
would have changed the mood completely. And I think that those who like this photo, like it for the mood, primarily.

[IAZA]

very nice painting. I like under exposure picture
I just noticed that you have NEX now Orio

Thanks Iaza. Yes, I bought it from Carsten

[Nesster]

Not only is that an excellent photograph (did you wax the fruit?) - the discussion is one of the most informative, thought provoking and entertaining in a long while. Kudos to everyone!

[Orio]

[yinyangbt]

Super work !