Canon EOS 5D Mark II
ƒ/2.5
100 mm
1/640
1600

I caught one of his plaintive expressions on stage. Here is the video of his talk from TED:

“A gold miner in Serra Pelada, Brazil; a Siberian Nenet tribe that lives in -35°C temperatures; a Namibian gemsbok antelope. These are just a few of the subjects from Sebastião Salgado’s immense collection of work devoted to the world’s most dispossessed and unknown.

Brazilian-born Salgado, who shoots only using Kodak film, is known for his incredibly long-term projects, which require extensive travel and extreme lifestyle changes. Workers took seven years to complete and contained images of manual laborers from 26 countries, while Migrations took six years in 43 different countries on all seven continents. Most recently Salgado completed Genesis, an ambitious eight-year project that spanned 30 trips to the world’s most pristine territories, land untouched by technology and modern life. Among Salgado’s many travels for Genesis was a two-month hike through Ethiopia, spanning 500 miles with 18 pack donkeys and their riders. In the words of Brett Abbott, a Getty Museum curator, Salgado’s approach can only be described as “epic.”

12 responses to “Portrait of the Artist — the photography of Sebastião Salgado”

  1. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    observing one of his works

    IMG_1670

    Reply
  2. LesMeister Avatar
    LesMeister

    An Excellent talk ..!!
    Thanks for sharing Steve 🙂

    Reply
  3. jgury Avatar
    jgury

    Instituto Terra is interesting along with the RPPN stuff. Which can scale up to places that would challenge Marlon Perkins, Jim and Che Guevara to manage. http://www.osensato.com.br/sebastiao-salgado-um-brasileiro-que-t...
    E.g. here is an RPPN I really like, stunning natural beauty and like 2X the size of Yellowstone park for anyone who wants an eco challenge. drive.google.com/file/d/0B86gMl7IvdErYTI2YzZhNGEtMTc2NS00…

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  4. sbove Avatar
    sbove

    For most of Genesis and everything since he is using Canon top end digital SLRs: "I started Genesis with film and changed to digital. The airport X-Ray scanners degrade the quality of film, and so I decided to change to digital and was quite surprised. Quality was better than the one I had with negatives in medium format. I turned off the screen on the back of the camera, and used my camera as I have always done. When I came back to Paris, I printed contact sheets and edited the photos using a magnifying glass, because I don’t know how to do it in the computer." >> "I used a Canon, an EOS1 Mark III, a very powerful machine. The problem was the batteries. In the Siberian temperatures, they quickly lost power. On average, I take 2,500 shots per battery, but this time I could only take 300-400 photos before the battery stopped working. I would put it inside my clothes, my assistant would give me another one, I would take 300 more pictures and, when that battery ran out energy, I would take out the other one and it would work again." Quotes from this interview: http://www.worldcrunch.com/source-partner/culture-society/up-clo...

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  5. sbove Avatar
    sbove

    Another fun quote from interview above: "My son Juliano traveled with me in five of these trips, and also in Brazil and Siberia. He is now editing the documentary, which is called Shade and Light, in Berlin with Wim Wenders."

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  6. sbove Avatar
    sbove

    His Canon Lenses: EF24mm f/1.4L II USM
    EF35mm f/1.4L USM
    EF50mm f/1.2 USM
    EF100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM
    EF300mm f/4L IS USM
    EF24-70mm f/2.8L USM
    EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM
    EF70-200mm f/4L IS USM
    EF1.4x II Extender

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  7. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    Cool. Some great glass there, and I have recently come to love the 100mm f/2.8 IS (switching from the 100mm f/2 that I used for this shot =). I don’t see the reason for the 24-105mm in that lineup (I got rid of mine), and I would have thought he’d go for the f/2.8 version of the 70-200mm.

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  8. sbove Avatar
    sbove

    Speed for daylight shooting (most of what he does) is actually a disadvantage with hyper light sensitive new sensors. I am about to move to the f4 70-200 myself (from the 2.8) b/c the speed is unnecessary and it is richer optically (superior color rendition and sharpness). The 24-105 is nice for similar reasons in the 24-40mm range where it is optically as sweet as Canon’s primes in that range. Beyond 40mm I don’t like it, but below, it is a nice rich wide-angle zoom with correctable barrel dist. I find all the Canon 70-200s really poor 70-100 and pretty nice 160-200. esp in lower light. BTW: the new 24-70 is better than the 24-105 at the short end, but much heavier and far more expensive.

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  9. sbove Avatar
    sbove

    Forgot to mention: when shooting b&w, lens contrast is more impt than color rendition. Super fast glass often sacrifices contrast. The 24-105 at wide end has really nice contrast and makes great b&w images.

    Reply
  10. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    [https://www.flickr.com/photos/stephenbove] – thanks so much for this. I was always perplexed why my 70-200 f/2.8L was so bad compared to my 100-400 f/4.5-5.6L when shooting rocket launches (bright outdoor sunlight). How do you quantify color rendition and contrast when comparing lenses (e.g., does anyone do it like dpreview’s lens-to-lens comparator or can we read it from the MTF charts)?

    Reply
  11. sbove Avatar
    sbove

    Every lens design (and even every copy) is a unique optical device with compromises, strengths, weaknesses. Artists find the great ones for various situations and use them – and know that no lens can ever be the best in every situation (yet). In my experience, it is very hard to reduce great lenses to stats although not impossible. The technicians making measurements are rarely great photographers, and great photographers are rarely techies with lab equipment. So the techies measure things that don’t tell the whole story and the photographers rely on their senses/feel to holistically assemble a judgement about a given lens. I find generally that super fast lenses sacrifice contrast for light gathering. Shot wide open they are at their lowest contrast capturing abilities. They are great for night shooting or low light indoor shooting, and some have amazing aesthetic strengths in those environments, but when you take super speeds (f 1.8 and below) into bright environments they often produce flat washed out images. The human eye is ~22mm and has a variable f-rating of between 2.0 and 8.5 and the sensor (retina) is variable speed from ~ASA 25 (some say as low as "1") to ASA 800+ (can register as little as 2 photos in certain conditions) . Its not a 1:1 comp with a flat sensor lens combo, but it does give an interesting range of values. I find that my favorite lenses are rarely faster than 2.0 (like the eye) and are primes (the eye is kind-of always a prime because it can BEND its lens!) = highly optimized for one focal length = high contrast and resolution. The best canon, nikon, zeiss, leica, panavision primes are like this, with a few offering incredible performance in medium-bright conditions all the way down to f 1.4. If you do a series of MTFs on these great lenses you will see stellar performance at most frequencies. But when you look through them, you also can see the lushness and clarity of the imagery immediately. Zooms are always massive compromises. Your image here of Sebastiao is, to my eye, obviously not from a zoom lens. 😉 It has clear, rich, deep, high contrast characteristic of an expensive medium-fast prime. That said, most zoom lenses have a set of sweet-spot focal lengths where they get very close to prime performance and can be highly useful…so sometimes we put up with them 😉 Here is a decent article on MTFs and contrast: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series...

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  12. sbove Avatar
    sbove

    PS: if you want to see what engineers have to do to make an incredible f 2.8 25-290 zoom lens, check out the Angenieux Optimo. It makes absolutely stunning lush high con imagery across its entire range, but it weighs 25lbs and costs $50,000 😉 http://www.angenieux.com/zoom-lenses/cinema-portfolio/optimo-24-...

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