Photographs, Photographers and Photography

June 30, 2005

Books by the foot

Filed under: Book reviews, Photographers — Thomas Pindelski @ 9:35 am

You think of yourself as a decent photographer. Your work gets better and you expose it regularly to peer groups for constructive criticism.

Now and then fortune smiles upon you and you find yourself with some spare cash. Money to blow. Like photographers through the ages, your thoughts turn to that new body, lens, gadget, whatever.

Stop.

None of those will make your pictures better.

Instead, buy some books showing others’ work. They will teach you more in a pleasurable hour or two than that new camera/lens/gadget ever will. Plus, as X. Trapnel famously remarks, somewhat the worse for a couple of glasses of wine, in Anthony Powell’s ‘A Dance to the Music of Time’, “Books do furnish a room”. So if you are a real philistine, at least you end up with nice decorations even if you don’t read the book. Do remember to take the plastic cover off, though.

Ridiculous, you say. Have you seen the price of picture books recently?

Well, if you are a Wall Street investment banker then, yes, by all means go to Rizzoli’s on Fifth Avenue in New York and pay retail. I, however, will be buying the same book remaindered some 6-12 months later at 25 cents on the dollar. Suddenly, that $100 tome is the price of four visits to Starbucks.

Here’s where I get mine:

1 – Strand Books in NYC. Its eight miles of books qualifies it as the eight wonder of the world. Next time you are in New York, forget the obligatory visit to the excess that is B&H and go here instead. Sales tax to the poor residents of NY only, and any walk-in. For philistines, Strand will even sell you ‘Books by the Foot’ (no kidding) so you can impress your friends while watching sports on your large screen television.

2 – Powell’s Books in Oregon. No sales tax to anywhere. And you thought the Left Coast was full of Fruits and Nuts, eh?

3 – Edward R Hamilton. OK, so they are still in the nineteenth century and accept mail orders only, but at 20 cents on the dollar you can wait a couple of weeks no?

Now go, buy some books and become a better photographer.

Here are this week’s deliveries – these averaged under $25 each:

Take fewer pictures

Filed under: Photography, Technique — Thomas Pindelski @ 6:55 am

How many times have I read exhortations by ‘teachers’ of photography that the aspiring photographer should take more pictures, use more film, carry more digital storage?

I always flash back to my mother telling how she once met George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950). In 1938 she had been passing a few idle weeks at the Dorchester opposite London’s magnificent Hyde Park (the park remains magnificent but, alas, the hotel is now owned by Arabs whose kin are the only ones affluent enough to stay there) and on one occasion had the good fortune to meet the humorist and playwright. She described him as tall, gaunt and very distinguished looking. In addition to being a great writer he was also an enthusiastic photographer. Their meeting always reminds me of his light hearted remark to the early British photographer Alvin Langdon Coburn that “Technically good negatives are more often the result of the survival of the fittest than of special creation: the photographer is like the cod, which lays a million eggs in order that one may reach maturity.” That was in 1906. The year my father was born.

Since that time, the typical number of pictures available to a photographer has grown from one (plate cameras), to twelve (the Rolleiflex), to thirty-six (the Leica) to, who knows, several hundred or thousand with a high capacity digital card. So in a hundred years, the camera’s capacity has grown by three orders of magnitude. Sadly, the quality of the average picture has not.

Why is this? Take a look at your old family albums. They probably contain pictures taken 50, 70 or maybe even one hundred years ago. Note that the earlier the picture the better the composition and execution. Chances are those were taken in a studio setting. Your great great grandparents had donned their finest clothing and the whole sense of occasion, of having your picture taken, of making an effort to get it right, enhanced the results immeasurably.


My parents in 1937. Studio photograph.

The view was the same from the other side of the lens. The professional taking the picture knew he only had one chance. He studied his technique, made it a constant (not mindlessly changing between this lens and that, film A, B or C, developer X or Y) and delivered every time. He put considered effort into every picture.

I believe we would all do far better, wasting less time and materials in the process, were we to follow suit. Less equipment and less film correlate inversely with the quality of the results.

So I challenge you. Get to an area you know and have photographed a few times, armed solely with one roll of film or one low capacity digital card. That might mean as many as 50 pictures for those used to a thousand or twelve or fewer to those used to carrying sufficient supplies for a couple of hundred. My version of this is a Rolleiflex with a fixed lens and just one roll of film – 120 in my case, meaning twelve pictures, as the camera will not even take 220. Thank goodness.

A more extreme variation, in my case dictated by the fact that so far I have only 2 film holders, is to take your field or view camera armed for just a handful of shots. Heck, the sheer bulk of the thing pretty much dictates this sort of economy. My two film holders allow me a scant four shots.

Now take your pictures. Think hard again when setting up the picture. Think harder before pressing the button. Take some time over each photograph.

Take a look at the results.

See how not only are most of them good, note also that the absolute number of successes far outweighs your machine-gun days?

Take fewer pictures and they will be better pictures.

June 28, 2005

Does equipment matter?

Filed under: Cameras — Thomas Pindelski @ 7:41 pm

This is a tough question.

When I was a kid my pictures were lousy.

The composition was poor.

The exposure was wrong.

The processing was worse.

And the subjects were uninspired.

Though I had a deep appreciation of the arts and many years of studying the masters of photography in my psyche, my pictures reflected little of this acquired knowledge.

I also used poor equipment because that is all a kid can afford.

Then I worked and saved mightily and my first Leica came along. This is the first picture ever taken on that Leica, on the day of purchase, August 2, 1971:

The light is just so, the exposure fine, the moment captured.

So what happened? Did I suddenly become a much better photographer because I used a Leica?

The answer is an unequivocal and resounding Yes.

You see, what happened here was that the very fact that I had inherited a duty of care, of quality and of accomplishment in the ownership of this magnificent instrument made me rise to the occasion. Every driver is a better driver in a Ferrari. Every rider rides better on a Ducati. And every photographer is a better photographer with a Leica.

So the conclusion of this short parable is simply this: Get the best camera you can afford. Stop making excuses about great pictures being taken on lousy equipment. They never were. The reality of that costly purchase will force you to become a better photographer too.

June 27, 2005

The Greatest Photographic Portrait

Filed under: Photographers — Thomas Pindelski @ 7:08 am

Some historical context is appropriate.

The Nazi hordes had swept Western Europe before them. Only Britain alone was holding out, having grimly fought back the air invasion during the Battle of Britain during the fall of 1940.

America remained staunchly isolationist, egged on by Nazi sympathizers Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh, both sporting Iron Crosses awarded by Hitler. Roosevelt, anything but an isolationist saw the threat and had enacted the Lend-Lease legislation which provided a lifeline of essential supplies and materiel to Britain, braving the perilous Atlantic route. His hands, however, were tied by a reluctant Congress.

British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, saw early on that the Nazi terror could only be crushed with America’s involvement, and had set about a long courtship of Roosevelt shortly after the epic air battle over the fields of South East England had been won.

On one of his many visits to the United States in 1941, Churchill made a side trip to address the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa on December 30, 1941, famously intoning: “When I warned them that Britain would fight on alone, whatever they did, their Generals told their Prime Minister and his divided cabinet that in three weeks, England would have her neck wrung like a chicken – Some chicken! Some neck!” The brilliant use of American vernacular (Churchill’s mother was American) produced loud applause and laughter from the assembled House of Commons.

It was appropriate that the speech should be in Ottawa, for that fair city was home to a refugee who would soon make his name as the most famous photographic portraitist of his time, Yousuf Karsh.

Churchill had not been forewarned that his portrait was to be taken after the speech and was suitably irritated on being led into the antechamber where Karsh had set up his camera and lights, puffing mightily on his cigar. Karsh asked him to remove the cigar and, when Churchill refused, snatched it from his mouth to take the Greatest Photographic Portrait ever made.

In this magnificent picture you see a statesman at the peak of his power, defiant, belligerent, determined.

After the first picture was taken – the whole sitting was all of four minutes in duration – Churchill permitted Karsh to take still another, jokingly commenting “You can even make a roaring lion stand still to be photographed.”

The picture made Karsh’s reputation, and deservedly so.

June 26, 2005

Rot

Filed under: Photography — Thomas Pindelski @ 7:30 am

You see them everywhere.

Execrable, blurred, out-of-focus pictures, often with the frame borders printed to make sure you know which film stock was used, generally with a scratch or two added for effect. Always in black and white. No, I don’t mean 99% of digital pictures. Those, at least, are generally in focus and certainly not scratched, with no film border in sight.

Somewhere or other in the description you will find two telling words.

One will be ‘Holga’. The other will be ‘Artist’.

What is going on here is that someone with more sales skill than talent – latter day Picassos – has grasped that pictures which look old, have lousy definition, worse composition and really should never have been taken, can fool the gullible when the Artist discloses he has used a plastic throw away camera with a Coke bottle-bottom lens. In other words, a Holga. Other variants include Lomo (sorry, Lomography) and Diana. Mercifully, no one has yet besmirched any fine memories by using a Kodak Brownie. Pictures from the latter would, at least, be sharp.

The text goes something like this:

“The Artist prefers to use a Holga camera in a return to basics, a reminder of a time when photography was a purer medium. The Artist eschews the pretense of color in pursuit of the essentials of light and shade, working solely in black and white, developed in nineteenth century Pyro chemicals found in his grandfather’s attic and fixed in the Artist’s own urine. The sincerity and clarity of the Artist’s vision is displayed in all its glory in these magnificent prints which bear no embellishment, allowing the Artist’s soul to shine through.”

And, dear reader, I have a Bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

June 25, 2005

Losing my (large format) virginity.

Filed under: Cameras — Thomas Pindelski @ 7:08 am

So I arrive at my Top Secret Highway One location on California’s magnificent coastline with my ‘new’ Crown Graphic and its Schneider Xenar 135mm f/4.5 lens. My Linhof tripod, sturdy but weighty, in a Scottish Tartan bag over my shoulder, the tripod some two inches longer than the bag with the latter’s microscopic strap cutting through my shoulder. Add to this the fact that my prized new Crown is wrapped in an old black terry cloth towel, my initials still proudly stitched in its corner, with two rather tired wooden film holders chucked in a bag emblazoned with an ‘LA Rams’ logo, and you will correctly conclude that this picture taking trip was something less than D Day in its level of preparation.

I had somehow managed to locate my Weston Master V exposure meter. More surprisingly, it checked out well against any number of other scientific devices in the household, despite being on its second selenium cell. I have owned it 35 years, having bought it new. Adding accident to good fortune, I had actually remembered to bring along my pristine, new, $5 12” cable release, a famous General Brand no less from B&H, or I would not have been able to manage a steady shutter release at the long exposures called for. At least it said Made in Germany on the box. A Schneider lens would accept nothing less.

Let’s see, what else? Oh! Yes, the 8x Schneider loupe I use to check negatives finally afforded me the opportunity of attaching the lanyard to its ears, thus ensuring that I would be mistaken for Steven Spielberg or, at the very least, Richard Attenborough (on account of my Harris Tweed cap), on my trek through the redwoods, the loupe dangling in a cavalier manner from my neck and bouncing suggestively on my manly and heaving chest.

And heave it did, for I soon found myself struggling up a trail made by the Chief Sadist at the National Park Service, its angle to the horizontal at least 45 degrees, as I aimed the LA Rams bag this way and that to avoid a nasty crack on any number of rocks that planned unprovoked attack on my precious Crown, the while struggling to keep the wretched tripod bag on my shoulder.

In other words, my packing of the large format kit needs some work.

After more of this than I care to remember, I arrived at the destination I had dutifully scouted out not three days earlier. Living in proximity to Highway One and all its magic allows no excuses for ignorance of the territory. By the time I got to the waterfall of choice, deep in the redwood forests of coastal California, three things were evident:

1 – The cardiac arrest profession would stay in business
2 – A Harris Tweed cap has pretty poor venting for an overheated head
3 – Doing this without a copious supply of martinis in the car cooler is foolish, nay, life threatening.

So on to the business of taking pictures.

First, I checked the immediate vicinity, say 100 miles in all directions, to confirm no one would be around when I dropped the camera/pulled the film holder from the camera with the dark slide in the other hand/slipped in the mud with tripod in close pursuit. There’s only so much embarrassment a fellow can take.

Then, having presciently placed quick release plates on both the Crown’s tripod sockets, it was a matter of moments to change from landscape to portrait orientation, previewing matters in the Crown’s decent optical finder.

I had left the rear hood for the ground glass at home, preferring to check focus with the Schneider loupe (Spielberg Edition), not least because my eyesight is so poor that any hope of focusing without a loupe would be akin to hoping for a date with Sophia Loren. Composition was easy as I have developed the knack of pre-visualizing the field of view of a 35mm lens on my Leica after years of use in the streets. The 135mm on 4×5 is just a little narrower than the Leica’s 35mm.

Using the old cloth towel confirmed that it was too small, and even then things kept getting steamed up in there as copious amounts of moist vapor emanated from my fevered skull. No one told me you had to take a 5 minute break before focusing a field camera. I also learned it is very tricky to try and focus while keeping your Harris Tweed cap in place, so sartorial compromises had to be made in the pursuit of Art. I chucked the cap on the ground.

Once I cooled down, everything was fine. Focus at the f/4.5 maximum aperture was, literally, a snap once I remembered to open the lens (you cock the shutter, move a little button lever on the lens mount towards the film plane, then release the shutter) and easily confirmed with the excellent coupled rangefinder on the Crown which I had taken pains to align before setting out. Indeed, it has to be said that the ground glass added little value to this effort other than forcing me to think upside down. The optical viewfinder is accurate and parallax corrected down to six feet. If all else fails, the erectable sports finder is close enough and gives, goodness knows, a life size image as there is no glass anywhere in sight. It too is parallax corrected – you move the eyepiece up and down on a calibrated scale.

Now I’m trying to recall my mental check list. I have the composition down and the lens focused. Things are reasonably secure on the Linhof which is sporting a Leitz large ball and socket head, which seems perfectly adequate given the light weight of the camera. Close the shutter. Important step that. Insert the film holder, praying once more that I loaded the film correctly, notches to the top right of the dark slide as you face the to-be-exposed surface.

Now for some Zone stuff. I should point out that ever since I read about it as a kid over 40 years ago, that the Zone System struck me as the biggest piece of bunk since Social Security. God alone knows how many great pictures have been missed as Zonies did their arcane computations. It did sell a lot of books, I suppose. With my Weston, about as non-directional a device as you can find, my system, soon to become renowned as the Modified Zone system and the subject of a thousand page monograph, is far simpler. I will disclose it here at no cost to the reader, although signed copies of the first edition of the monograph, with a limited printing on one million copies, will be available shortly at $99.95 each.

Ready? You point the Weston at the darkest bits you want to come out. The needle says 6.5. You point it at the lightest parts you want detail in. The needle says 9.5. You take the average. 8.0. Twiddle the dial and you get 3 seconds at f/32. Use negative rather than slide film and you gain latitude for error. I added a second for luck and for reciprocity failure.

Insert the cable release. Set the aperture to f/32, the shutter to B, tension the shutter.

4 seconds? Wait a moment. I have never used anything slower than 1/15th. Oh! Now I remember. This is from the smelly, foul chemical filled darkroom days. Quite literally the Dark Ages of photography.

Elephant 1. Elephant 2. Elephant 3. Elephant 4.

Reinsert dark slide the other way around to remind you the film is exposed (I hope) and twiddle the little lock thing on top to prevent that side ever being used again. Pull the film holder. Collapse exhausted.

I have just taken my first ever 4×5 photograph at the tender age of 53.

And here it is:

June 24, 2005

Going Big

Filed under: Cameras — Thomas Pindelski @ 7:16 am

Well, I screwed out my courage and plonked down the huge sum of $300 for a 50 year old 4” x 5” camera, a Graflex Crown Graphic. It’s a logical migration in a life which started with 35mm, then saw 6×6 come on the scene some 15 years ago. The latter proved ideal when 16x prints were expected rather than hoped for. Yes, you can get there with a Leica but everything has to be just about dead right for a perfect print that large. On occasion I can make a Big Print where you cannot tell whether 35mm or 6×6 was used, but not always. So when detail in the details matters the Mamiya 6 or Rollei 6003 comes out – the latter somewhat reluctantly, it should be added, owing to its great weight. Anyway, the Mamiya’s lenses are better, if less varied.

I started thinking about Going Big over the past couple of years. Not wanting to spend a fortune on what is probably a dying medium, I nonetheless desired something a little better than a home made pinhole camera for my tentative entry to the world of black headcloths (OK, my old green Scottish wool pullover which is always with me, in my case) and de rigeur tripods. Further, a growing interest in abstract nature photography, spurred by Eliot Porter’s great work, meant that definition in the final image would have to be good. Really good.

I was so completely clueless about the world of large format photography, when I started research I had no idea what a film holder was, and little more than a basic appreciation of the physics of camera movements – tilts, shift and so on. The World Wide Web soon fixed that, especially the splendid site at Large Format photography where many selfless contributors offer a fine education in the basics.

So where to get this contradiction in terms, a top quality, cheap large format camera? Simple. I did what many before me have done when dipping a toe in the waters, and purchased a Graflex Crown Graphic, beloved by many press photographers in the 1940s and 1950s. My $300 got me a pristine camera, a 135mm Schneider Xenar “standard” lens (like a 40mm on 35mm film) and a couple of wooden film holders, each holding two sheets of film. So now I can go on the road and take 4 pictures before ‘reloading’ in a changing bag. Not a big deal. I take few pictures in any case and filmholders can be had for $5-10 each if I need more.

The quality of the camera is a superb meeting of form and function. First, it is unbelievably light, owing to the extensive use of aluminum where it matters. The body is wood covered with leatherette. It is also amazingly compact when folded up. Believe it or not it has a coupled rangefinder with a separate, parallax corrected, viewfinder. And did I mention the night focusing device? So you thought infrared focusing aids started with digital cameras? How about an internal, battery illuminated bulb which, when switched on, projects a light beam on the subject through the rangefinder, alignment of the two beams denoting sharp focus? And, the whole thing being industrial grade, needless to say the bulb in my Crown Graphic worked first time, needing only fresh batteries. It had never been used. The manufacturer’s dummy batteries, in the form of two wooden dowels, resided in the camera on receipt!

It was a matter of two minutes to remove the rangefinder housing, adjust the rangefinder for accuracy and proper image coincidence, and a drop of blue Loctite later I had a focusing aid every bit as good as those to be found on pre-M Leicas. A gentle cleaning of the glasses and mirrors and everything is now crystal clear.

So now I have three Leicas – my M2 German original, my Texas Leica (Mamiya 6) and my Godzilla Leica. Having splashed out a further $5 on a cable release, I’m now wondering where I hid my tripod. I’m trying the whole thing out today at my Top Secret location off gorgeous Highway One. And no, I’m not telling where that is.

June 21, 2005

About One

Filed under: Photography — Thomas Pindelski @ 7:47 pm

I first drove Highway One in California in 1979, my second year in America since immigrating from England. The car was one of the worst I ever owned – a Volvo 244 GL. No matter. The occasion was a rushed vacation to discover this wonder. She. Highway One. The road of roads.

I just drove her again.

Whether at day or night, on two wheels or four, heading north or south – and I have done all of these many times now – the result is the same.

One’s jaw drops in awe.

These columns, by design, avoid religion and politics. I would like readers to remain friends.

But, for once, I have to invoke the Almighty. For He was in wondrous form when he created the central California coast. This was a seventh day event. A day when He said, hang it all, let’s do the very best We can.


One. Moonstone Beach, CA. Canon 5D, 400mm, 1/3000, f/8, ISO 400

And when you drive from Cambria to Carmel, or Carmel to Cambria if you prefer the sea view, you too will invoke Him, whatever guise your Almighty takes. And the atheist amongst us will seriously reconsider.

It’s that good.

I am blessed with the good fortune of living – by design not accident – not 25 miles inland from Cambria, in central California, so little excuse needs be found for a drive or a ride up One.

Today, the alleged reason was to scout out some new opportunities for my soon-to-be-here Crown Graphic. A 4” x 5” sheet film camera no less. Anathema to one who grew up, photographically, on the streets of London with a Leica.

And as I meandered here and there, exploring her many ways and byways, One reminded me again why we live.

It is to see not to look. To sense not to smell. To feel not to touch.

One.

Throw away your lens cap and case

Filed under: Photography, Technique — Thomas Pindelski @ 6:01 am

How many times have I heard “I keep a lens cap on at all times to protect my precious lens” from photographers?

Sadly, for many this is more than literally true, the loyalty to the lens cap being so great that the user finds he frequently takes pictures of the inside, having forgotten to take it off!

Oh! you say, but I only keep my cap on when the camera is in its (never ready) case or camera bag. Even worse. Why on earth would your lens need protection stored in the safety of your (largely inaccessible) bag?

If you must have protection for the lens, place a clear glass filter over it. Then you can clean that with abandon using your shirt tail, handkerchief or tie, given that you will never have those precious lens cleaning tissues available when you need them. Then, after five years of hard use, throw away the filter and buy a new one. It has cost you $10/year and never gets in the way of a picture.

On a related topic, throw away the silly case your camera came with. Its sole purpose is to present one more obstacle to the taking of pictures, while simultaneously destroying the lovely feel of an unclothed camera held in bare hands. Plus, of course, film changing becomes a nightmare as you unscrew the camera from its case, nearly drop it as it is now untethered and promptly forget to properly tighten the screw when done. Another trip to the repair shop.

Liberate your thinking and your approach. Throw away your lens cap and that silly case and attach your strap of choice to the camera, where it belongs.

June 19, 2005

Publish or be damned

Filed under: Photography — Thomas Pindelski @ 6:52 am

What do you do with all those old pictures, stuffed in boxes, lost to posterity?

Get off your duff and publish a book!

Too expensive, you say? Not with print-on-demand technology, available from the likes of Lulu. You submit your book in PDF format and what you see is what you get, whether you opt for black and white or the pricier color. A great way to memorialize family albums, your best pictures, the growth of a child. And friends love to get books as presents, especially as nothing could be more personal than your own book of photographs.

Here is the preface to my book Street Smarts, published in April, 2005:

The Swinging Sixties were over.

David Bailey was passé.

A Nikon was the required passport to photographic respectability. The pound in your pocket, the Prime Minister reminded us, had not been devalued. Princess Di and her coterie of press manipulators were nowhere in sight and the Third Estate still preferred discretion to disclosure.

That ne plus ultra of genteel camera stores, Wallace Heaton on New BondStreet, was still very much in business, replete with Royal warrants and walnut paneling. Later it was to suffer the ignominy of acquisition by amass merchandiser only to be bowdlerized into oblivion.

With my earliest visual recollections being of Degas, Sisley and Manet and their photographic successors, Cartier Bresson, Brassai and Kertesz, I wanted nothing so much in the whole world as to take street pictures. In1971 I was at college, aged 19, with my net worth invested in an already dated Leica camera with but one lens. Obsolete or not, it remains the best street photography machine yet devised.

Realizing that fewer variables made for less risk in the photographic process, I settled on Kodak TriX film processed at home in Kodak’s venerable D76 developer. The meat and potatoes of any self-respecting street photographer’s diet. Printing required that a piece of hardboard be attached to my bedroom window with three trays of smelly chemicals and an old Gamer enlarger. Plus a red bulb so as not to trip on our Scottish Terrier.

Why street photographs? It always seemed to me that the genre offered too much that was either humorless or contrived. Posed pictures trying to pass for spontaneity. Worst of all, much of the work out there was positively invasive when it came to respecting other’s privacy. Cameras cruelly stuck in the faces of the poor or destitute. Not for me. But make it spontaneous and interject a touch of humor and now you have a picture worth taking.

Life at University College, London was blissfully easy. Attendance was not monitored and class content was not especially challenging. Most of the professors preferred to work on their richly subsidized governmental contracts, caring little for their teaching. A degree could be earned by having fun for two years and nine months and then working like stink forthe final three. So fun it was.

London’s great spaces beckoned. The Courtauld Institute was across the road. The British Museum around the corner. UC’s magnificent library a few yards away. Then there were the great Victorian parks. Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens, Holland Park, Regents Park, Green Park, St. James’s Park – all a short, free, Tube ride away.

It took but a couple of rolls of film to learn that stealth and speed were the norm for the Leica, a near silent piece of engineering genius. Subjects were everywhere. Lenses were cheap. The small collapsible 50mm Elmar lens, which came with my M3, was soon supplemented with a long focus 90mm Elmar, costing all of $60 and a 35mm Summaron wide angle for $75. Thank God for scholarships….

It was the wide angle Summaron that was most frequently mounted on my Leica. You had to get close to your subject to fill the frame. “If your pictures are not good enough, you are not close enough”, Robert Capa had said. And when the opportunity finally arose to visit Paris, but one camera and lens came along – the Leica M3 with the 35mm Summaron. And six rolls of TriX film. No one had taught me that you had to take thousands of pictures to get a good one and some two rolls remained unused after a week in the world’s most beautiful city.

In the 1970s the British photographic press was mercifully more interested in pictures than in equipment. It was a fine outlet for publishing one’s photographs, and you even got paid, which is a good thing on a student’s income. Further, the occasional prize went a long way to providing film, paper and chemicals to keep the productive process going. Another great resource was the extensive photographic library at the Royal Photographic Society, which made its home in Mayfair at South Audley Street, offering a student membership for a negligible sum. It was a rare afternoon that would not find me in its warm interior, poring over the works of the Old World masters while also learning that there was a whole New World to be found across the Atlantic, in the guise of the works of Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham and Walker Evans. Pictures and vistas we could simply not imagine in England’s subtler landscape. Then there was the public library on Hornton Street in Kensington with hundreds of books on art and photography. All free.

So there you have it. An easy life, no money, free resources and the beststreet photography opportunities life could offer. By 1977, now trying to earn a living and increasingly coming into contact with the New World, with all its energy and innovation, it was clear that the path to success lay elsewhere. While flying on a one-way ticket to the west coast of the United States in November 1977, it dawned on me that no one could take away all those warm memories which you see illustrated here.

You can buy the book by clicking here.

June 16, 2005

Where should the money go?

Filed under: Cameras — Thomas Pindelski @ 8:56 am

There used to be an old rule of thumb with hi-fi gear back in the days of the long playing record that 50% of your budget for an outfit should be for the loudspeakers, these being the weakest link in the chain. Of course, as with photographers, many disregarded this sound guideline, if you pardon the pun, and spent most of their money on the pick-up arm and turntable.

The assumption underlying what follows is that the goal is for prints which are made at a magnification of 12x or more on a consistent basis.

I think there a version of this ‘rule’ which is equally applicable to expenditure on photographic equipment. If we break the process into two components – the front end (camera, film or digital card, lens) and back end (enlarger or scanner and printer) then I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts that most serious photographers spend 80% of their budget on the front end.

This is completely wrong, especially for film-based photography where processing is much more important than with digital. The best way I can think of solving the equation is to look at the back end first, because there is less to choose from there.

A dedicated film scanner for 35mm or medium format, I mean a good dedicated film scanner, will run some $1,000 (35mm) or $2,000 (medium format). For that you get a top quality lens backed by robust mechanicals and software to remove dust and scratches without significantly affecting image quality. In the wet darkroom, the cost is similar – you need a good lens and enlarger. A good enlarger runs $1,000 to $2,000 with a lens adding $200-300. Sure you can spend less but you get a poor screen, slow speed and modest storage. The digital back-end worker has to add a computer for another $2,000, Photoshop for $800 and a printer for $350 – $600, the latter for a wide-carriage version.

So your back-end for top quality exhibition work with a film front end runs $2,000 to $5,000, with the latter price point easily reached if you work in medium format. The worker using a digital front end saves money on the film scanner, as none is needed.

Yet how often do you read film users saying “….my flat bed scanner does just fine on all film sizes”, this invariably written by someone who has never seen a good scan from a dedicated film scanner? Their mega dollar front end is being processed though mush. Quality in, garbage out.

So, with a back-end running $2,000 to $5,000 that leaves the quality oriented photographer a like sum, adopting the 50/50 Rule, for the front end. That sort of sum buys you just about anything you need.

Moral of the story? A cheap back end makes your camera into a Box Brownie, even if it says Hasselblad on the label.

June 15, 2005

Photography is not a group activity

Filed under: Photography, Technique — Thomas Pindelski @ 2:42 pm

An enterprising Toronto-based photographer whose first name is Matt (he seems too shy to disclose his full name) took on the courageous, maybe quixotic, task of starting a web-based photography magazine named Photoblogs Magazine (May 2010 – now defunct).. While I think the web is a great place to display pictures and try out new work on a broad audience, it lacks the permanence and sheer tactile feel of a good book.

You pass you bookshelf and grab that Harry Callahan book, wondering at just how he made that image which came to mind the other day. You switch on your computer, by contrast and it’s a mixture of work (I stare at one of these things all day trying to make a living) and fear (Will it lock up on me again?) And with the present state of the art, the printed image leaves the electronic one in the dust.

Not least of a web publisher’s problems is how to get his site known in the vast sea of noise that is the world wide web. On the other hand, go to a good newsagent or bookshop and the handful of magazines publishing good photography are there, easily accessed and eagerly thumbed, without any fear of overload.

Still Matt should be respected for his efforts and I wish him well.

A few weeks ago I had the good fortune of being asked to be the first ‘Spotlight’ featured photographer in Matt’s magazine. The approach is that the photographer is asked five questions and his responses are then published with a few of his pictures. Well, strangely, even though my responses to the questions asked were exceptionally terse, sadly only four made the published page (or screen, if you prefer).

The unpublished question and answer were:

Q. With whom do you like to photographs most?
A. When it comes to taking pictures, one person is invisible, two are a crowd.

My response was rooted in the deeply held belief that photography, whether street candids or the great vistas of the American west, is a lonely pastime. You simply cannot go with another photographer, both set up your cameras in similar locations, and not be plagued by the thought that you are standing in the Kodak Picture Spot recording a Kodak Moment. The photographer must be free, whether to mutter aloud to himself and complain about the light, lean this way and that in the search of the perfect perspective, or wait for hours for just the right moment. Another photographer is a powerful distraction in all these activities.

Maybe the worst manifestation of the group approach so beloved amongst those with no individual thoughts or totally lacking in imagination, is the photo workshop. Given that technique can be learned from a book, and the art of seeing is either something you have or do not, what possible purpose can the workshop serve, unless it is to fill the pockets of the sponsors and the film stock of the participant with near identical images?

About Cartier-Bresson

Filed under: Photographers — Thomas Pindelski @ 2:26 pm

The man couldn’t take a good color picture. His portrait pictures are, for the most part, eminently forgettable. His street pictures invariably use maximum depth of field and are without exception, humorless. He claimed to be a revolutionary while spending the last thirty years of his life in a multi-million dollar apartment on the Rue de Rivoli overlooking the Tuileries Gardens. He was a rabid self-publicist with over a dozen picture books to his name. And he did his best work over 70 years ago, mostly before 1934, though living into the 21st century.

But wait a minute….

The man jumping the puddle.
The blind boy feeling his way along the wall.
The kid on crutches.
The Gestapo informer.
The monocled man at the bull fight ring.
The Chinese eating from a rice bowl.
The eunuch.
The near-naked man at the wall in Russia.
The couple on the train.
The gored bull.
The French lunch on the banks of the Marne.
The behatted Orson Welles character in Spain against that wild wall of windows.
The beautiful couple in Los Angeles.
Giacometti on the Rue d’Alema in the pelting rain.

And on and on.

Anyone with even a passing familiarity with the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson will easily call to mind the images conjured up by these brief descriptions and it is just that which makes him such a great photographer. His work is memorable. Name another photographer where you can recall so many images.

Maybe what makes his very early work the best is the still fresh teachings of the cubist Andre Lhote. Maybe it was a clearer vision in a less cluttered world. Yet what is so amazing about these early pictures is that they were all taken on assignments during his years as a photojournalist. Amazing, because he chose to make beautifully composed and timed images where mere photographic records would have sufficed.

Traveling in then exotic lands like China and India, pretty much anything would have satisfied his editors. But he wanted to do better. Years late, famous and revered, he disclaimed his photojournalist roots and posed as an artist. Later still, he disavowed photography (an interesting negative marketing tactic which cleverly served to make his work all the more famous) while making some of the most banal sketches since the crayon was invented. None of that matters. His life’s work was done.

There is so much we can learn from him. In a digital age where photographers think nothing of banging off hundreds of pictures in the hope one comes out (interestingly a criticism George Bernard-Shaw leveled at early 35mm photographers, when likening them to the salmon who lays many eggs trusting one would hatch) it gives you pause when you realize that his picture rate during the 1968 Paris riots, for example, was no more than four per hour. And you can bet his success rate was higher than those of today.

What made it possible for him to make so many well timed and composed pictures? The invisibility of this gangly, raincoated man is well known. His visage beyond bland, it would be difficult to take note of this faceless man in the street. Recalling that he came to his medium with a well trained eye, what remains a wonder is the timing. Lhote may have taught him to see, but the skill of pre-visualization, knowing the precise moment when all those building blocks would fit just so, that was born not bred. Thus was the Decisive Moment created.

So what of the post-war work? Well, he didn’t ‘get’ America any more than Robert Frank ever did. The images from the New World are replete with overfed Texans, gun toting kids and put-upon blacks. Nowhere is the beauty of America and the boundless generosity of its people on view. But what do you expect? Cartier-Bresson was, after all, French and his great inherited wealth had passed from bourgeois to royal status once he became its inheritor. This gave him license, of course, to mock the nouveau riches, whence he came. Further, the more recent work had lost its edge. With occasional exceptions the acidity of vision was gone. The architectural, nay cubist, compositional sense was no more. Maybe he got bored. Maybe he was no longer hungry. Or maybe fame had done its damage.

No matter. He transformed photography as we know it and is the spiritual father to us all.

And just for laughs, depending on whether he got his first Leica in 1932 or 1933 (the text is confused on this) it may just be that that man jumping the puddle wasn’t even taken on a Leica at all. Ha! ha! ha!

On Leica cameras

Filed under: Cameras — Thomas Pindelski @ 2:24 pm

Beware of the Leica camera. It starts as a romance. Soon, it is an affair. Before you know it, flirtation blossoms into passion. Finally, it settles into infatuation. The four stages of a lifetime relationship.

Someone one asked me why I use a Leica when all around use an SLR. Why film when digital is the standard? Fast, instant results, low cost. My glib reaction was not unlike that of the Ferrari driver. “If you have to ask, you do not get it.” But that is no answer.

In truth, it is hard to explain an irrational attraction to this wonderful machine, the Leica camera. After all, it just takes pictures, right? It cannot do close-ups, right? And what is that you say? You have to process then scan the film? Ugh! Worse, like all infatuations, it can get dangerously expensive, no?

Then again, why even bother with this antiquated technology, unless it is some sort of affectation, a preference to live in the past, some perverse desire just to be different?

The SLR is superior in so any ways. A huge range of lenses. You bet. Automatic focus? Naturally. Shake reduction? You got it. Extreme zoom range? But of course. Macro capability? Every one has it. Motor drive? Would that be three or six shots per second, sir? Digital? Hard to get anything else today. Several hundred or thousand pictures a roll? Standard. Instant gratification? Naturally. 5, 10 or 15 megapixels? Take your choice.

However, maybe yours is a quieter world, eschewing the crass vernacular that is modern life. You value performance and results, not promises and looks. You appreciate iPods and cell phones as much as the next person. They are just not you.

Then you have one of those flashbacks. And all is clear as memories created with that ever present, sweet, speedy, silent Leica come flooding back.

Spring in Paris was especially welcoming that year, the air with that indefinable smell. Beauty, culture, women, food. The couture attired lady and her cocker glance up at you for the briefest of moments, unaware that their image has already been recorded. The spectator looks curiously at her friend, the latter surveying the nude on the wall of the Louvre with unusual interest, captured in an instant. The morning promenaders in the Jardin de Tuileries caught just so. A fraction of a second later and the scene is gone, its denizens no longer perfectly arranged like some latter day Seurat canvas.

Summer in San Francisco. The old man makes his way along the narrow sun lit street. Echoes of Edward Hopper’s lonely city abound in the lazy afternoon sun. He does not even know you took his picture, yet you were all of a few feet away. The little boy in the back of the pick-up in Union Square, lost in wonder, is another easy catch, before the swirl of traffic whisks him away. Did you take that? No, it took itself.

Autumn in New York. The sky has the pallor of cold cream. You are on walkabout, just for fun. Maybe something interesting will crop up. Then there it is. The huge Yogi Bear balloon overhead. It’s Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade. Click. You are enjoying your warming drink in one of those cozy Madison Avenue coffee shops, when a red flash catches the corner of your eye. No time to think. The soft, instantaneous camera shutter is released even before the viewfinder is at the eye. That blurred umbrella will forever say Autumn in New York. Clouds of steam emanate seemingly from his head, as the rain-coated man makes his way down Park Avenue, shoulders hunched, hands buried deep in his Burberry to stave off the cold. You take the picture without even thinking, focusing a matter of a moment, exposure second nature. You are in direct contact with what you see. No mirror, no motors, no flashing lights. Just a simple viewfinder. I am a camera.

Winter in London. The light is, well, London light. Gloom, rain, depression. Yet click, the girl in the railcar is caught, the iris unthinkingly turned to full aperture, the shutter as slow as you dare, too quiet to arrest her slumber. Hope that one comes out, you think. And of course it does. The little boy marches behind the band down Pall Mall, stretching his legs as far as he can. A young man in the making. Click. He is yours for ever. The dowager outside the Rolls Royce showroom gives you an icy stare. How dare you, she is thinking. Too late. Got her!

That ubiquitous Leica, quiet, unassuming, its amateur looks aiding the whole deception of invisibility, it petite size making sure that it is your constant companion, it is a machine that transcends time and technology. Not very good at lots of things at which its marvelous technological superiors excel. One day it, too, will be digital, with all the advantages that storage medium offers. And it will be fast. But it will never pretend to be a Swiss Army Knife for it knows one thing.

It is there for the moment that it alone can capture. And it is always with you.

Memory, nostalgia and family albums

Filed under: Photography — Thomas Pindelski @ 1:26 pm

I have been involved in creating electronic and book format versions of the many pictures in our various family albums for some two years now. This is proving a non-trivial task.

For one, the source content is, at best, poorly organized. Quality of the original pictures, which go back over one hundred years in some cases (one hundred years!) varies from wonderful to execrable, and some of the old albums need to be carefully unbound before scanning.

I’m not exactly sure how this started. I suspect that my mother’s death in early 2003 at the age of 88 was a driving force, confronting me with the reality of the impermanence of memory and the rapid passage of time. Add my son’s birth a year before mother’s death and the whole project assumed a sense of urgency and haste. It is no small hindrance that on my side of the family the prime link to the past, the Rosetta Stone, if you like, which can put life in those old pictures, is my eldest sister who, at 65, is some 12 years my senior. She knows the pictures better than anyone, being especially well versed in the pre-WWII ones. How all of this survived WWII not to mention any number of subsequent relocations as my parents became refugees from their native Poland, is not so much a mystery as a miracle.

No sooner had I started scanning pictures from my side of the family than a mention of the project to my mother-in-law instantly doubled the work load as she wanted to do something similar. Lesson for those contemplating a similar project: delegate.

So, for the past couple of years I have been unwrapping, disassembling, scanning, reassembling and returning a host of albums, not to mention many loose pictures.

The final tally is some 300 pictures from each side of the family.

As our audiences for the results vary in technological sophistication, it became clear early on that three variants of the output would be called for:

1 – A traditional web site, available to anyone with an Internet connection

2 – A CD or DVD that can be mailed to anyone willing to use a computer but without an Internet connection (don’t laugh, most of the world still lacks one)

3 – A book, not just for the techno-agnostic, but because it’s still the nicest way of relaxing with printed materials of any sort. Ever try to read your computer in the bath?

Now I’m at the point where everything is scanned, retouched and otherwise mended in Photoshop, and neatly stored in Apple’s wonderful iPhoto awaiting final agreement on order and narrative details.

Of course, it occurs to me that one hundred years hence, the DVD or CD will no longer work in anything on the market, the web ISP will likely have gone bankrupt and the book will have long curled up and yellowed. At least some succeeding generation can then rescan the book and start all over again.

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