BlogUpdates Archives - Page 2 of 5 - Luigi Barbano Photography

Jan 31

by Luigi Barbano in BlogUpdates, CaptureOne, Film photography, Fujifilm, Uncategorized 8 comments tags: film photography, film vs digital, Fuji Acros, fuji XPro-2, Ilford FP4, Pentax 67, photography

Digital Fuji Acros vs Ilford FP4 Film

Is Black and white better with digital or film? I compared the Fuji Acros film simulation on my XPro-2 with an Ilford FP4 film on my Pentax 67. Lately I had the time to scan old negatives and I was pretty impressed by the quality and quantity of information available on film, so I decided to use film again, particularly for the PhoenixPhotoProject. The quality of the images created was pretty impressive so I decided to try some film in medium format. I used to work with Hasselblad but I decided to get a used Pentax 67 and have some fun with it. Next time a Pentax vs Hasselblad comaparision! I took some pictures on the snow in a sunny day. The dynamic range a the quality of the tones were great and I started to have the feeling that film can be better than digital sometime. I decided to do a simple non scientific comparison and take the same pictures with the XPro-2, in RAW and jpg with the Acros simulation, and with the Pentax 67 with a roll of Ilford FP4. The choice of a medium format film, compared to an APS-C digital is very simple, 24 MegaPixel […]

PhoenixPhotoProject #1: Free to choose

What is the value you give to a photograph? With the PhoenixPhotoProject #1 you are free to choose! Since its invention photography had been defined and valued in many different ways. With the PhoenixPhotoProject #1, “Free to Choose”, you can decide by yourself what value you give to photography. For Niepce, Talbot and Daguerre, the men we consider the inventors of the photographic process, photography was a chemical and mechanical way to reproduce reality. Nothing more than that and we know how, for long time, thanks to them and their definitions, it was so difficult to make photography accepted as art by the most. If this is the value you give to photography you will find in the box a great mechanical tool to reproduce the reality. The camera is a Pentax Spotmatic SP, one of the greatest mechanical cameras produced in the 1960s, very simple and without any automatism, only an internal exposure meter. The camera is completed by a SMC Takumar 55mm 1.8 – a great camera/lens combo! I found the camera on E-Bay and I bought it attracted by the engraving on the pentaprism: SPAIN 51862335. This camera has a story and for […]

Dec 31

by Luigi Barbano in BlogUpdates, Film photography, IR Photography, meditations, Uncategorized 0 comments tags: New Year, new year resolutions, photography, year balance

End of the year, time for balance and resolutions

The end of the year is always a time to do a balance of the time passed and make new resolutions for the new year. At least it is for me. The 2017 was a peculiar year. I took a sabbatical from my work, I had the option to put myself in a situation where I had to work 16 hours a day to make a sufficient gross to have, after the italian 85% taxes (35% income, 22% V.A.T. and 27.7% mandatory state managed retirement plan) enough to pay for someone taking care of my 91 years old father, or I could just do it personally and avoid to work 85% of my time for the government. The choice was a no-brainer: I took time for myself and gave back the care I received all my life. Professionally I consider this a great year. With the few time I had for myself I managed to write some books with very good reviews and realize some personal projects. To be far from the pressure of the profession I reignited my love for photography and had the time to think and develop new ideas. January started with a beautiful review […]

Dec 24

by Luigi Barbano in BlogUpdates, Film photography, News, Uncategorized 0 comments tags: Christmas 2017, Ilford FP4, Merry Christmas, Pentax 67

Merry Simple Christmas

Every year for Christmas I dedicated time and efforts to create a Christmas image. Usually a still life with plenty of symbolic contents and often references to the year main events. If you are curious to check them, last year I posted on my blog all the images I made in the last 20 years. This year I kept it very simple, with a winter picture I took few days ago with a Pentax 67 with a 45mm and an Ilford FP4 film. A landscape, less then a mile far from my Italian home. I’m in a kind of sabbatical period, staying at my 91 years old father home taking care of him, and I dedicate myself to photographic personal research and books writing when I have the time. Obviously he is my priority and in December I simply had not the option to subtract time from him to create a Christmas still life. Mentally, staying far from the professional duties, I also started to look for simplicity and film photography is part of this research for a simple way to photograph, far from hours of retouch and the computer. A slow method, perfect for the rhythm of life I […]

Nov 03

by Luigi Barbano in BlogUpdates, meditations, News, Uncategorized 3 comments tags: ginseng, ginseng festival, Midwest, photogrpahy, rural USA, travel photography, Wausau, Wisconsin

Wausau, International Wisconsin Ginseng Festival

Wausau, it’s a small town in Wisconsin, in the middle of a beautiful country where the hills are spotted with colorful barns immersed in cultivated fields. Few people in the western world know that in the Wausau area, one of the best species of ginseng is produced. This ginseng is appreciated all over the world and especially in Asia, the largest export market for Wisconsin Ginseng. In 2010 I had the privilege to photograph the cultivation process of the ginseng and portray most of the farmers associated to the Ginseng Board of Wisconsin. For the first International Wisconsin Ginseng Festival I was invited to do an exhibit of the images taken in 2010, part of the book “Wisconsin Ginseng”, and I had the opportunity to take the pictures of the Festival and the correlated events. The festival was great and perfectly organized, the people at the Ginseng Board of Wisconsin and Lori McGehee from Millennium Marketing did a perfect job. A lot of people attended to enjoy the ginseng products offered at the booths and the live performers on the stage. There were meany correlated events, a 5k run, visits to the farms […]

Oct 28

by Luigi Barbano in BlogUpdates, meditations, Uncategorized 0 comments tags: Adobe, client privacy, Cloud, Lightroom, nude photography, photography, privacy

Photographers, clients, privacy and clouds

I was reading yesterday about the new move of Adobe to offer Lightroom only with a subscription method, the same move Adobe did with Photoshop and the CS programs years ago. As a little premise, I quit to update my Adobe programs, years ago, after CS6 because I do not like the subscription method and I never used Lightroom since I prefer CaptureOne or Irident. For editing, designing and books’ layout I still use the CS6 and I’m moving toward Affinity. There are many reasons why I want to own and not to rent my software and I will not list the reasons here. Here I want to talk simply about privacy. Reading about the rental options for Lightroom I was impressed by the offer of GigaBytes of cloud storage. All of the Adobe programs seem to be concentrated on the multi platform trend, so you can use them from your computer, tablet or phone. Reading comments to various posts I see the cloud storage is considered essential and a great value by many photographers. I see people complaining for the rental costs, others happy but nobody worrying about the cloud and the privacy of our clients. To understand why […]

Oct 23

by Luigi Barbano in BlogUpdates, CaptureOne, Fujifilm, Uncategorized 0 comments tags: autumn, colors, fall, Fuji 60mm, Fuji XPro2, photography

Autumn walk

One night of lower temperatures painted the hills with beautiful fall colors, the sky was very clear thanks to some wind last night, so I took my camera and went to take a little walk this morning. Sometime is nice to just relax walking around and enjoying the beauty. All the images are taken with a Fuji XPro2 and 60mm f2.4 lens.

Oct 19

by Luigi Barbano in BlogUpdates, Fujifilm, IR Photography, News, Uncategorized 0 comments tags: Achievemnts, B&W, Black and White, contest, infrared, Infrared photography, photography, Spider Award

Luigi Barbano’s five pictures nominated at the 12th B&W Spider Award

12TH ANNUAL BLACK AND WHITE SPIDER AWARDS HONORS PHOTOGRAPHER LUIGI BARBANO LOS ANGELES October 20, 2017 – Professional photographer Luigi Barbano was presented with the 12th Annual Black and White Spider Awards Nominee title in the category of Nature at a prestigious Nomination & Winners PhotoShow streamed Saturday, October 14, 2017. The live online gala was attended by over 11,000 photography fans around the globe who logged on to watch the climax of the industry’s most important event for black and white photography. 12th Annual Jury members included captains of the industry from The Armory Show, New York; Christie’s, London; McCann, Singapore; GQ, New York; Hot Docs Film Festival, Toronto; Y&R, Malaysia; Sharon Calahan, Pixar Animation Studios, Emeryville; Bloomsbury Auctions, London; and Donald Schneider Studios, Berlin who honored Spider Fellows with 672 coveted title awards and 1034 nominees in 31 categories. “Spider Awards 2017 proves once again to be a great challenge for the jury to select the best images of the year. Every year this photographic competition increases its quality of content, reputation and prestige” said juror Andrea de Polo, Cultural Heritage Consultant at Fratelli Alinari Photo Archive in Florence. Curator and Arts Writer Paola Anselmi added “Congratulations […]

Oct 17

by Luigi Barbano in BlogUpdates, meditations, Uncategorized 0 comments tags: airport, flying, Hilton, Hilton Munich, Munich Airport, photography, relativity, travel

Travel time and relativity

What does have to do a photographer travel time with Einstein’s relativity? Absolutely nothing, but blogs need fancy titles and lately seems all photographers are quoting Einstein 🙂 Also if my travel time is much slower than the speed of light and I do not need to disturb Einstein, I was making a trip last month and I noticed how the sense of time changes as soon as I enter an airport. Going across the Ocean with some overlays requires around 24 hour from the moment I go out to get the cab to go to the airport to the moment I get to destination. Every single time I think about it I feel tired and I perceive it as a very long time. When I enter the airport everything changes. I’m in travel mode and the time seems to expand or compress, different moments bring a different perception. Going thru the security and from gate to gate is done in hurry (also when you have plenty of time) and the time runs fast, when you sit aboard on the tarmac it seems an eternity until the plane departs from the gate, than for me is […]

Oct 15

by Luigi Barbano in BlogUpdates, meditations, Uncategorized 0 comments tags: 3leggedthing, ambassador, ambassador program, marketing, petapixel, photography

Ambassadors and CEOs…

Being on FaceBook I often pass by articles from websites like PetaPixel and usually I take a look at some of them. Yesterday was no exception and I read an article written by Danny Lenihan, the founder and CEO of 3 Legged Thing. In the article he wrote complaining about the quantity and attitude of people who reach him asking to become ambassadors of his brand in the hope to get a free tripod. I’m sure he describes a real situation and I understand his point of view, but, as often, I try to see from a more distant point of view that is less attached to one side. So my question for Mr. Lenihan is simple: who do you think is responsible for this situation and diffused attitude? Let’s talk for a moment about how the photographic companies changed in the last years. As a little premise, this is the first time I hear the brand 3 Legged Thing (evidently you know your marketing Mr. Lenihan… but do I have a positive or negative knowledge of your brand name now?), so I have no idea of the quality of the products or how they relate with the customers, and […]

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