Continuing with my explorations in photography.... Yesterday I explored the size prints you could get out of each format with what i would consider to be acceptable IQ. And I pretty much came up with D800 120 inches wide, K-5d 60 inches wide, and I'm comfortable enough with those guesses that I'm actually going to print one of my K-5 at 60 inches to see how it does.
So the next question was, how important is high definition work to photography. In terms of how important is high definition to graphic artists, I'd say , not very , the top money maker as a painting is
The Card Players by Cezanne at 240 million..
The reason I was looking in painting, just to see how the "realist" or in painting terms "high defintiion" guys did iin the painting world. Clearly not nearly as good as the more abstract guys. And as far as I can tell paintings bring in far more money than any other art form.
Photography is sort of Paintings' red haired orphaned step sister in the art world, in terms of maxed out prices.
But the question still remains , what is the most expensive photograph.
That honour goes to Andreas Gursky.... if you're like me your first question is "Who?" But look at the list, of the highest priced Phtographs of all time (for which someone actually paid the price) Gursky sits at #1 Rhien II at $4,338,500. That's a lot of coin for a photograph. He's also 4th on the list with 99 Cent II at $3,346,456. AAnd as far as I can tell, unlike many paintings that sell on the painters reputaion for a lot more than the artist ever got for them, as far as I can tell he's the guy pocketing the coin.
Gursky sells high resolution photographs of huge dimensions often taken from very high angles. He uses a 5x7 film camera, which he scans and then alters digitally.The resolution he gets with this process defies logic. People can walk up to his prints and examine objects in the photograph as if they are standing in front of the real object in some cases.
10 most expensive photographs.
This is a Gursky image, not the one that sold for 3 million but one to illustrate his style. The one that sold for 3 million doesn't translate well to the small screen.
Andreas Gursky Interviewed What camera does Andreas Gursky use?
For those of us shooting at lower resolutions , the best pseudo painting was
Pond Moonlight by Edward Steichen ALmost 3 million... not too shabby, but it is valued I'm guessing as much as a historical artifact as for it's artistic value.
Thought of the day... very high resolution images have to be printed very large to stand out from the crowd. Despite the huge impact of digital images on photography, digital has yet to make much of an impact on highly valued image market in terms of works taken with digital cameras. Looking down th list of expensive images, they are almost all 5x7 film or higher. Even Gursky, wo would seem to be the king of high resolution and large prints, still shoots film.
So the question becomes, is this just a matter of time, or do the sensor sizes of digital cameras seriously limit the IQ of modern photographers. And has the loss of large format films and 8x10 cameras been a detriment to ability to produce top quality prints.
Of the guys still shooting, I find it interesting that the two guys still shooting are still shooting film.
“I’ll probably always shoot some film,” concluded Peter. “It’s a big part of my career, so why stop now?”
This is Peter Liks million dollar image... and I have to say, I have lot of images like it, but I'm not Peter Lik.
Digital has come a long way... but apparently in terms of producing images people are willing to pay the big bucks for, it's not there yet. At least that's appears to be the case from a bit of light reading on a tuesday morning.
Last edited by normhead; 12-18-2013 at 08:34 AM.