Photographs, Photographers and Photography

No, not Elvis.

Sensuous curves on the car driven by the greatest ever. 2002 F1 Ferrari. 5D, 100mm Macro, Ring Flash.

No sport enjoys such a rapid pace of technological change as motor racing so comparisons of drivers between generations is a pleasant diversion if not one based in objective measurements.

But few, I think, would disagree that Michael Schumacher was the greatest ever – sportsman, gamesman, competitor, professional.

One color works here – what else for a Ferrari?

It doesn’t get more macho than this.

Suspension detail on a pre-war Alfa Romeo racer. 5D, 100mm macro, ring flash, 1/200, f/11, ISO250.

My normal habit of underexposing by half a stop does wonders in preserving the dynamic range in the printed version. This has an almost Fritz Lang-like mechanistic intensity which greatly appeals to some part of my nature. The curves of the bodywork are easy on the eyes, too.

I find that f/11 gives you workable depth of field and the best definition. Smaller apertures do not show the Canon 100mm macro at its best. I simply change the ISO until f/11 is indicated.

The thinking man’s Monochrome.

1920s Bugatti racer, with safety wire. 5D, 100mm Macro, Ring Flash.

No need to hide behind the forced abstractions of monochrome when color does it better. Just imagine how unspeakably dull this would be in black and white.

This small version cannot begin to do justice to the large print hanging on my garage wall. Only minimal processing (regular sharpening to offset the effect of the 5D’s anti-aliasing filter) was required, using Lightroom.

Cleaning up the clutter.

After my first serious venture into the world of macro pictures of vintage car details one persistent irritant was the clutter many snaps exhibited in the background.

So before venturing forth a second time, the occasion being the Monterey Historic Races, I dropped by that acme of capitalism and low prices, WalMart, and asked the nice lady in the haberdashery department for a couple of pieces of non-reflective cloth in black and red. These would serve as backdrops to clean up the clutter. I thought about getting some green for British cars but concluded that my love was closer to the Mediterranean than the English Channel, so plain black and Ferrari red seemed more in order.

Now a back drop is useless without a drop cloth manager, so I prevailed on friend and vintage racer Franklin Rudolph to accompany me on the two hour drive to Laguna Seca. This had several advantages. First, as I find driving the ultimate time sink and Franklin likes little else, he got to drive the car and I read the Wall Street Journal. Second, few know more of vintage racers than my colleague, so I had the best possible tour guide to the paddock area, replete with dozens of $5mm toys. If the arcana of 1954 Maseratis are your thing, Franklin is the man. Finally, Franklin not only helped with spotting interesting shapes and forms, he volunteered to be the back drop man, holding up the cloth or placing it under the cars as we saw best.

A win-win. He gets two 18″ x 24″ prints of his choice for his superb workshop and I get the best possible professional help on the planet.

Leaf springs on a vintage racer, red back drop in place

On the way home, going south on the 101 Freeway, we cut a two hour trip to what was seemingly a few minutes as we gazed with appreciation on the dozens of exotics making their way north from Los Angeles for the Historics while simultaneously keeping a careful eye out for cops writing speeding tickets, to finance their early retirement at the local doughnut store. Franklin’s choice was a gorgeous Dino with a V6, mine a late 50s tourer with a real Ferrari V12 in the front, where they belong.

Thank you, Franklin, for your friendship and easy expertise. Not to mention your back drop skills!

Lotus was not the first.

Ask any graduate of UC London’s School of Mechanical Engineering which alumnus they are most proud of and the answer is likely to be Colin Chapman of Lotus Cars fame. Chapman’s pioneering designs resulted in many victories in all forms of motor racing but most notably in the most demanding of all, Formula One.

When asked about his key design tenets, Chapman would answer “Just add lightness”.

1930s Alfa racer at the Laguna Seca Historics, 2008

As this pre-war Alfa Romeo grand prix racer’s suspension shows, he was not the first to have that idea.

What makes our former adulation of great engineers and designers so poignant today is that the US, desperately in need of engineering talent, makes it increasingly difficult to enter the profession. Domestic production of engineering graduates is stymied by the childlike attention spans and instant gratification generated by TV, populism and computer games. We prefer to encourage our kids to become pop stars, actors or sportsmen – all fields of endeavor with miniscule prospects for success. Or worse – we make fine brains into the mush that passes for lawyers, a business (it’s no more a profession than prostitution) that has done more to hurt US productivity and destroy wealth than even the government could. At the same time we place foolish cartels on immigration because we (rightly) fear that we cannot compete with Ivan, Lee or Yamamoto. Capitalism is truly hanging itself with its own rope.

From the 2008 Monterey Historic Races.

Back from the days when drivers were fat and tires were thin.

Late 1930s Talbot-Lago filler cap

The annual Historic races held at the Laguna Seca track in Monterey County, California, provide an orgy of viewing of some of the finest cars made. Insiders know that the race track is lousy for viewing and that all the real action is in the paddock. Further, go on the Thursday before the race weekend and you will not only get in free, you will also avoid the polyester set with its foul clothing and even worse taste. (N.B. For the best parking spot tell the fellow at the entrance that your are “pit crew”. Works every time.)

Instead, in a friendly and unrushed setting, you can chat with the drivers and mechanics and exult in the beauty of what once was.

Leather belt drive for the tachometer on a late 1920s Bugatti. Note the simple tensioner.

The charming owner of this Bugatti explained that the leather belt is actually a sandwich of leather with a Teflon ‘filler’. It looks fine and, unlike the original, lasts. Note the beautifully executed, diamond machined, firewall.

Door handle on a pre-war Delage. Pure, unabashed sensuality.

And forget all that rot about beauty being in the eye of the beholder. It’s absolute. You either get it or not.

I use the 5D with the 100mm macro for these, with a shadowless ring flash, which preserves the original shadows cast by the sun while dampening down the otherwise excessive dynamic range. If there is a better hand-held macro outfit with the certainty of sharp, large prints, I do not know of one.

A fabulous photograph.

I blew by this one on my first glance through this month’s pile of fashion magazines and am awfully glad to have revisited it.

Lord & Taylor is a clothing and knick knack store for the wealthy. If you want to see the best Christmas windows in New York you need go no farther than Cartier, Saks or Lord & Taylor, all conveniently close by on Fifth Avenue. By the way, when it comes to Christmas windows, we west coast recluses marvel at Saks’s in Union Square in San Francisco, a city with much of New York’s charm and diversity but little of its nastiness.

First and foremost, this complex composition, worthy of Rembrandt’s Night Watch, speaks of success. A large, well dressed family, preparing for a barbeque. Obviously this is the weekend place.

The silver haired paterfamilias, fit and tanned, is very much in charge, strengthening his position of control by taking on the menial cooking chores. He’s old world, of course, so no stainless steel multi-knobbed built in barbie for this man. So gauche. No. It’s charcoal and an old Weber grill, and who could argue? It’s the ultimate condescension of the wealthy – use what the working man does. It’s real – look at the smoke trails in front of the preppie boys.

The massive cantilevered arms must support a very large awning. The affluent have large patios which need large awnings.

He seems to have three sons, the two who finished prep school and are now at Yale and Princeton, the eldest very aware of his film star looks, and then the third, in the hoodie. He went to UC Santa Cruz, did too much surfing and too many drugs, started a rock band and is the real success of his generation. He’s making music on the bass with his niece on the trumpet. Rich people play instruments.

The mother (Lauren Hutton?) is messing about with the pony (doesn’t everyone have a pony?) and the animal is the focus of attention for her daughter and grandchild on the right. Rich people have animals. Big animals.

The number of kids is hard to fathom. I’m reckoning the girl at top left was a surprise fourth child for the old couple. Rich people can afford it. That still leaves seven kids to account for, so either the last generation was Catholic, or someone else’s kids got into the party. It just adds to the fascination of the picture.

Finally, the almost too precious arrangement of vegetables by the Weber makes another subtle reference to wealth. Clearly these are for show, not consumption. The rich love show pieces, be they veggies or china.

Note also the Degas-like cut off of the child at the lower left and that insanely mischievous look of the little boy front center. What a piece of choreography! All told there are fourteen people in the picture …. and one pony. Mercifully, the art director and photographer left out the obligatory dumb-as-a-brick golden retriever. A Border Terrier would have been nice, but I suppose that’s too much to ask. The rich own Border Terriers.

The inspired choreography, the subtle and oft repeated message (if you have to ask you cannot afford it), the warm colors reminiscent of the great party scenes of Renoir, the rustic setting, the simple classy clothes worn with grace.

Advertising does not get more subliminal than this. Not only does the viewer get gently invited to the world of wealth, he gets an object lesson in deportment and behavior just by gazing at the guests. Would I change anything? Well, I would likely give the old boy a stiff G&T in a nice L&T crystal tumbler. Easy on the ice. When it dawns on the old boy how much of his inherited capital he has just blown on nice clothing, he will need a restorer.

What a photograph! Bravo!

Boy, do I wish I could speak to the photographer who took this.

P.S. The edge tears are in the original; the center ones are mine as I had to rip out the two page spread to scan and join the images.

How about Berlin, 1936?

The Master Race gets a taste of the future

From the despots in China.

God help all those marathon runners. Let’s hope their undetectable performance enhancing drugs carry the day for sports and Big Pharma.

What a cruel joke to hold an event meant to send a message of freedom in a brutal dictatorship with drug-fuelled ‘athletes’ breathing foul air.

This picture truly is worth a thousand words.

Rounding out the Manhattan thing.

Here are some snaps of New York architecture, taken over the years.

Guggenheim Museum, Fifth Avenue

Old and new

MoMA

SoHo

Park Avenue

The Look building reflected in the Helmsley Palace

Sixth Avenue

A fine primer on architectural style is How to Read Buildings – if you want to regale friend with the differences between an architrave and a muntin, this one is for you.

Here’s another worth checking out if Art Deco is your thing: