Monday, November 14, 2011

4.3 MILLION DOLLARS




From the Guardian is this story of the most expensive photograph ever sold - Andreas Gursky's Rhine II. I find its harrowing minimalism hypnotic.

As someone steeped in naive purism, not to mention ignorance, I was (though shouldn't have been) a little shocked to discover just how much digital alteration had been used in getting the required look.

"... the artist carefully digitally removed any intrusive features ... until it was bleak enough to satisfy..."

I've at last overcome the block that held me captive to the folly that creativity began at the tripod and ended in the darkroom. These days, digital tools are just that - tools. For people who say, oh the computer did that, well it didn't. The artist behind the computer did that.

So, I start off on my third course tonight at the Australian Centre for Photography - Adobe Lightroom. That it is five weeks of one three-hour class a week was enough to convince me that there's a lot more here than can be found in the early entry digital tools of (say) i-photo.

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