Monthly Archives: June 2005

Books by the foot

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?

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

Take fewer pictures

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.

Does equipment matter?

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.

The Greatest Photographic Portrait

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.

Rot

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.

Update 11/20/2015:

It took over a decade but this piece of utter garbage has finally been discontinued. You can read the joyous news here. Good riddance.