Photographer Markus Hofstaetter is back with another unique photography project: he created a high dynamic range (HDR) tintype using a super-fast 120mm f/1.0 lens.

PetaPixel has featured Hofstaetter’s work many times before, including most recently a project in which he used another f/1 lens on an ultra-large-format camera, extreme macro photography of human eyes, and a neat restoration of a century-old large format camera.

“When shooting wet plates, you deal with a very light-insensitive process — about ISO 0.5 — so most wet plate artists want to get their hands on a fast lens,” explains Hofstaetter.

A former participant in one of Hofstaetter’s workshops, Wolfgang, got his hands on a “very fast lens” and sent it to Hofstaetter. The lens is a Delta HD-6C ML, and it was used in vintage projectors “many years ago.” The 140mm f/1 lens that Hofstaetter used on an ultra-large-format camera was a projector lens.

The Delta HD-6C ML is a “monster” of a lens, and Hofstaetter had to do what he often does — create a custom lens mount to attach the lens to his large-format camera. Since the lens is so heavy, Hofstaetter needed to build support for the lens as well as his camera. “It looks a little bit like a Frankenstein monster build,” Hofstaetter says, while admitting that the setup grew on him.

The f/1 aperture delivers incredible, dreamy bokeh. When Hofstaetter photographed a flower with his “Frankenstein monster” kit, he realized that part of the flower absorbs more ultraviolet light, so it looked too dark when Hofstaetter exposed the plate normally. To combat this, he took multiple exposures, each with different processes, and then digitally combined them to create a “digital HDR image.”

While the super-fast aperture is excellent for wet plate photography and achieving soft bokeh, it also means that the depth of field is “razor thin,” so it can be a tricky lens to use. However, Hofstaetter says, “If you get it under your control, you can achieve unique and very dreamy results. I look forward to using it again.”

For the first time, Hofstaetter is putting some of his wet plates up for auction on eBay, with prices starting at just one euro, or just over $1.

Markus Hofstaetter’s work is available on his website and Instagram.

Image credits: All images © Markus Hofstaetter

Photo London has always showcased new developments in the medium, and this year’s visitors can expect to see something that can only be a sign of the times. Several photographs partially created using A.I. have been included in the eighth edition, which opened to the public at Somerset House on May 11.

Exhibiting with Michael Hoppen Gallery, the London-based Israeli photographer Ori Gersht has experimented the technology by taking photos of still life scenes inspired by 17th-century Dutch painting but in low resolution, later upscaling the works by using A.I. to fill in the missing details.

“To illustrate this fusion between the real and the artificial, I often use the analogy of a stretched stocking: whereby the fabric is the photograph of the real event and the holes are the missing information,” said Gersht. “The more the fabric is stretched, the larger the gaps become, prompting the software to analyze the photographs and utilize its acquired knowledge to envisage the absent data and bridge the holes.”

Ori Gersht, Fusing Time 04 (2022). Photo courtesy Michael Hoppen Gallery, London.

The Lisbon gallery Artemis is presenting works by the Berlin pair kennedy+swan who, in their own words, “(ab)use” A.I. alongside a range of digital tools in animated works like in vivo• in vitro • in silico (2023), which examines the implications of Xenobots, programmable nanoparticles that may one day be used to cure diseases. The work prompts critical questions: Are cutting-edge technological solutions like these hackable? Or how will the data they collect be used? In doing so, it makes the case that emerging technologies are naturally the best medium through which to explore… emerging technologies.

The existence of A.I.-generated photographic-style pictures have been controversial since the very moment they were first conceived, raising concern about how they might impact the livelihoods of artists. Earlier this month, the artist Molly Crabapple addressed publishers with an open letter encouraging them to limit their use of these types of images.

Memorable headlines of recent include the eerie, black-and-white image The Electrician (2022), generated in the style of Robert Ballen, which was submitted to the 2023 Sony World Photography Awards and won a $5,000 cash prize. An uproar of online dissent was also sparked by Amnesty International’s decision to illustrate a new report about police brutality in Colombia with an A.I.-generated image of a protestor.

kennedy+swan, in vivo in vitro in silico. Photo courtesy Artemis gallery.

The organizers of Photo London have stressed, however, that the photographers have generally used A.I. to enhance their work rather than create a new image from scratch.

Even in the case of Maisie Cousins, whose solo show at T.J. Boulting gallery includes works entirely generated using A.I., the images complement her traditional photographs. The garishly bright images manage to evoke distant memories and lost sensations from childhood in a way that is not so much nostalgic as strangely grotesque. Though the scenes have a universally recognizable quality (for British audiences at least) that is reminiscent of the photographer Martin Parr, they refer specifically to Cousin’s trips with her grandfather to the now defunct amusement park Blobbyland.

“Experimentation with science and technology is an essential part of photography’s DNA. From the earliest days of the medium to present, photographers have pushed the limits of what is possible using the latest tools and techniques to capture or distort images,” said the fair’s new director Kamiar Maleki.

“Photo London is committed to featuring an exciting mix of galleries presenting the best of the past, present, and future of photography. This will inevitably include contemporary artists working with A.I., whether conceptually or as part of a wider toolkit where the technology is used to augment and merge with an artist’s own vision.”

More Trending Stories:  

The Smithsonian National Museum of African Art’s Director Has Resigned After Less Than Two Years, Citing ‘Resistance and Backlash’ 

An Elderly Man Spray-Painted a Miriam Cahn Painting at a Paris Museum After Right-Wing Attempts to Censor It Failed 

Not Patriarchal Art History, But Art ‘Herstory’: Judy Chicago on Why She Devoted Her New Show to 80 Women Artists Who Inspired Her 

An Artist Asked ChatGPT How to Make a Popular Memecoin. The Result Is ‘TurboToad,’ and People Are Betting Millions of Dollars on It 

An Airbnb Host Got More Than They Bargained for with a Guest’s Offbeat Art Swap—and the Mystery Has Gone Viral on TikTok 

The Netflix Series ‘Transatlantic’ Dramatizes the Effort to Evacuate Artists From France During World War II. Here’s What Actually Happened in Real Life 

Egyptian Archaeologists Have Unearthed a Surprising Find: A Roman-Era Buddha Statue Carved Out of Mediterranean Marble 

Follow Artnet News on Facebook:
Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward.

Organizers of the Close-Up Photographer of the Year contest set up a challenge outside their normal competition, and this year’s theme was “Minimal,” aiming to “celebrate images with a minimalist style.” The winners of the challenge were just announced; Ferenc Kocsis’ image of Danube mayflies in flight took the top prize. Organizers have once again been kind enough to share some of the winners and shortlisted images with us below.

A wildlife photographer captured the “longest, most intense grizzly bear fight” he has ever seen in his two-decade-long career guiding brown bear photography.

Expedition leader and naturalist guide Bryan Josephs filmed the pair of huge grizzly bears wildly battling for dominance in a brutal and mesmerizing battle that lasts almost nine minutes.

The two gigantic males were ferociously fighting for dominance on the border of Lake Clark National Park and Preserve in Alaska on May 8.

In the footage, a larger, older bear viciously squares off with a younger and smaller bear for breeding season dominance in a sedge meadow when Josephs discovered them.

“In my 25 years guiding brown bear photography and film crew expeditions, this was by far the longest duration and greatest intensity of any bear fight I have ever seen,” Josephs, who guides photographers on the Alaska peninsula, tells Outside.

“It just kept going and going. I was astounded by the determination and stamina of both bears as they battled for mating season dominance rights.”

‘The Most Amazing Things I’ve Ever Seen in Mother Nature’

According to Outside, grizzly bear fights are often raw, powerful, and short in duration — which makes the sheer length of the savage battle between the pair of males in the video even more astounding.

“This is 10 times longer than the longest fight I’ve ever seen. And more intense. They’re just destroying each other,” Josephs comments a little over halfway through the footage.

“That’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen in Mother Nature.”

At the end of the video, one of the bears admits defeat and backs down. In the footage, Josephs describes how the loser bows his head in submission in a gesture that acknowledges that the battle for dominance is over.

“He’s got his head down, he’s basically saying, ‘I’m sorry, I lost,’” Josephs says in the clip. “And the winner walks away.”

Alaska has the highest population of grizzly bears in any state or province. Of the 60,000 wild grizzly bears located throughout North America, around 30,000 are found in Alaska,

Brad Josephs is a wildlife biologist and wilderness guide with a specialty in bear biology and ecology of the north. Josephs is also an expert photographer and has taught photo and film classes for over two decades — with his work focusing on bears and wolves of Alaska and northwest Canada.

More of Josephs’s work can be found on YouTube, Instagram, and his website.

Image credits: Feature photo via YouTube.