Monthly Archives: June 2006

Twenty photographs

Photographs, Photography

Think of twenty.

I do this often, and it’s a great vision improving exercise.

It’s not just a party game like naming the states or their capital cities. The winners at that game, in my experience, are usually professional sportsmen as they have travelled to each. No, what’s at stake here is building a mental library of pictures that drive me to excel and set a standard to be beaten.

Not equaled. I think I can do better. But you need a target. And I like to set my sights high.

Want to know my current twenty in no particular order? Here goes:

The bowler hatted gent jumping the puddle – Henri Cartier-Bresson
The couple in the convertible watching the drive-in screen – O. Winston Link
The Spanish revolutionary soldier at the moment of death, faked or not – Robert Capa
Chez Mondrian – Andre Kertesz
Churchill – Yousuf Karsh
Margaret Thatcher – Anthony Armstrong-Jones
Glyndebourne with cows – Tony Ray Jones
Eleanor with her son – Harry Callahan
Damaged – Walker Evans
Lisa Fonssagrives with elephant – Richard Avedon
Pepper – Edward Weston
Hell’s Angels – Irving Penn
Distorted Nude on the Beach – Bill Brandt
Nudist camp – Elliot Erwitt
The Krays – David Bailey
Prostitutes at Night – Brassai
Racing Car – Jacques-Henri Lartigue
Building the Golden Gate – Peter Stackpole
A Face in the Car – Robert Frank
Dog with Tweeds – Thomas Pindelski

Here’s mine:

Dog with Tweeds. Leica M3, 90mm Elmar, Trix/D76 at 800 ASA.

The other aspect of this little test is to look at changes when I redo the list in a few months from now. It always shows me the direction in which my work and interests are going and point to useful avenues of study and discovery.

To make this a useful exercise, write down your five, ten, twenty or whatever, favorite photographs. Now look at the list produced the next time around. What changed? What is attracting your focus? What did each of your choices do for you and why did they drop off your list?

Can’t name five? Ten? Twenty? Hmmm….

One year later

Photography

After twelve months of these columns, what have been the highlights and disappointments?

I have been having a whale of a time writing these columns for twelve months now and have been true to the name of this journal, Photographs, Photographers and Photography.

Content has been fairly equally balanced between discussion of great (and not so great) photographers, photographs and photography, whether addressing philosophy or technique. Ever cognisant that equipment is but a means to an end, I have frequently illustrated these columns with pictures, mine and those of fellow photographers whose work I admire.

To simplify retrieval of older columns, I have added a reverse chronlogy captioned ‘Archives by Day’ on the right hand side of the screen.

The Columns:

On the columns themselves, there was never any lack of ideas for content but a few stand out as having been an absolute blast to write. So much so they pretty much wrote themselves.

Here are my ten personal favorites.

Film is Dead. July 6, 2005. This has not only proved to be one of the most popular pieces, the fact that it caused much controversy when written, being deleted by the twit who passes for a moderator at Photo.net where it was first published, only goes to confirm how true it was. It’s hard to believe that it was written just some eleven months ago, during which time film camera production has virtually ceased in the US and even mighty Canon will throw in the towel soon.

About Cartier-Bresson. June 15, 2005. A tribute written from the heart to the greatest photographer of his time.

Degas – Photographer. July 1, 2005. A man with great vision from the early days of photography – and the last days of painting.

Quality time with Ansel. July 8th, 2005. Recounting my visit to the pretentious Weston Gallery in Pebble Beach. I still smile about the experience today.

Pandora’s Box. February 2, 2006. Because anticipation is so much more fun than getting there and this day marked my final move away from a photographic life pretty much dominated by Ernst Leitz, Wetzlar and their magical products. Something better had finally come along.

Eliot Porter – The Color of Wildness. February 8, 2006. A favorite photographer. A favorite book.

A Break in the Storm. March 4, 2006. Told as it happened. A wonderful moment with gorgeous lighting.

Walker Evans. March 17, 2006. Another personal favorite with a crystal clear vision.

The most fun I ever had taking pictures May 18, 2006. A sort of fond au revoir to the Leica and the great times we enjoyed together.

In search of Edward Hopper. June 14, 2006. An American painter who greatly influenced how I see.

The Equipment:

A simple story. Starting with a veritable cornucopia of film equipment in 35mm and medium formats, all was sold to make way for but two digital cameras. Canon’s superb EOS 5D replaced all the medium format bulk and Panasonic’s jewel-like Lumix LX1 saw the Leicas off with aplomb. And lots of nice eBay shoppers saw to it that my net investment in the new gear was absolutely zero. Well, to tell the truth, I still have some money left over….

Apple really did ‘Think Different’ when they created Aperture, the photo processing application for regular people without advanced computer degrees. Drop the pictures in, press a few keys and prints or web pages emerge. Cataloging and retrieval are similarly simple. The best software product for photographers ever, not least because you can only use it on an Apple, the best hardware for photographers.

When it comes to Really Large Prints, Hewlett Packard paved the way with its fine DesignJet, at half the price of the competing Epson. It’s great to see HP is back with a good CEO rather than a film star wannabe.

Underlying all the problem-free creation of printed and electronic images is the sold underpinning of Apple’s Macintosh computer technology. It bears repeating that no self-respecting photographer who values his time should be suffering with Microsoft Windows. The name alone – ‘Operating System’ – is a joke. What is your time worth?

If Aperture was the most enabling software of the year, then ImageAlign must be the most ingenious. With this bit of magic you can take the rather silly looking results from Canon’s full frame fisheye and have the equivalent of a 12mm hyper-wide angle lens at one third of the cost of Canon’s exotic 14mm rectilinear offering. Without ImageAlign pictures taken with the fisheye are even more tedious to behold than those of your kids. At least the grandparents like the latter.

The Business:

I have trashed Kodak mercilessly on more than one occasion over the past year. Part of my ire is that of a jilted lover – I used little else but Kodak’s world class materials for nigh on forty years. It is always painful to see a loved one leave, and sometimes pain turns to anger and remorse. Especially when the loved one does lots of stupid things. You lash out. Guilty as charged.

At the same time it became clear that world domination in photographic equipment was far from restricted to Canon and Nikon. Competition improves the breed and the sheer number of new hardware makers is encouraging to see. We need some full frame digital sensor competition for Canon (the 5D is ridiculously overpriced for lack of any competition), but I cannot believe Nikon or Sony or Panasonic or Casio or Samsung won’t get there in the next twelve months. All photographers will win as prices drop and performance rises. Be assured that Canon’s next 35mm full frame sensor, whatever its pixel count, will be the final toll of the bell for medium format equipment.

The most inspiring event:

Like so many earlier photographers making the switch, I found conversion to digital liberating and artistically inspiring. Photography truly is fun again, with the percentage of time spent processing falling to an all time low, and more time available for the searching out of subjects.

The best vendor:

B&H in New York. No contest. Not only are you assured that an order placed on Monday will arrive at your California doorstep on Friday, when they say ‘In Stock’ they mean it.

The worst vendors:

A tie.

Light Impressions, which I think of as Dark Depressions. If you want to mount some prints before Christmas, better get your order for mats and mounting board in now.

A book vendor calling itself Photoeye is tied for last place with the boys at DD. Slick web site, with innumerable emails about their latest book offerings. Specials on this and that. The only snag is that I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts that the book you order is out of stock and likely to remain so for weeks or months. I know. And don’t, whatever you do, get on their email list, as clicking ‘Remove Me’ has no discernible effect. What finally worked for me was an email laced with questions concerning the owners’ parentage. Stick with Amazon.

Here’s to the next twelve months.

In search of Edward Hopper

Architecture, Paintings

An American painter who has inspired generations of photographers.

I came to the works of Edward Hopper (1882-1967) late in life. I say ‘late’ as I was well familiar with the great European masters while still a teenager. No, it was not until the early 1980s, when I was in my thirties, that I became aware of this American master. England was not the best place to learn about Hopper. Becoming an American fixed that.

I was traipsing up Madison Avenue on a warm summer day, when I came across what has to be the ugliest building in New York City – the Whitney Museum of Art. Whereas the Guggenheim can be thought of as an interesting building in the wrong place, flanked by stately Fifth Avenue mansions, the Whitney is just plain bad. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim should probably be in the mid-West somewhere to liven things up (please, not in downtown Chicago which boasts America’s finest buildings) but Marcel Breuer’s Whitney is nothing so much as a wrecking ball special. Not even Iowa would improve were it to be magically moved there. In any case, the city fathers would probably reject the offer.

Enough about architecture. So I was about to shuffle past, Leica insouciantly slung over one shoulder, when the poster caught my eye. No, not the iconic ‘Nighthawks’ but rather ‘Early Sunday’ which could have been painted in any number of American cities over the past fifty years.

The lighting was just so, that languorous sun ready to turn another American downtown into a cauldron. No one in sight. It is early Sunday after all. I simply had to go inside. The art was a revelation. On the one hand it played to the manic depressive Eastern European gene in my blood. On the other it spoke to the eternal loneliness of the big city. Here was a man after my own heart. Introspection and solitude permeate his painting – emotions somewhat alien to the American soul.

Over the years since, I have gazed much at Hopper’s art and it has unconsciously become a part of me. Yet, when I press the button on those special occasions, it’s the American master dancing in my head.

San Francisco. Leica M3, 90mm Apo Summicron Asph, Kodak Gold 100

Part of my web site, titled The Lonely, deals with the theme of Hopper and the loneliness of the big city. Needless to add, all these snaps were taken in America – Anchorage, New York, Washington DC, Pioche (Nevada), Pismo Beach, San Diego, San Luis Obispo and, the loneliest place on earth, Los Angeles. They cover a time span of some twenty-five years. I hope you enjoy them.

San Diego. Leica M6, 90mm Apo Summicron Asph, Kodak Gold 100

Into the sun

Photographs, Photography

That approach seems to account for a high percentage of my pictures.

It’s second nature, I suppose, but somewhere up to half of my outdoor pictures seem to be taken into the sun. I just love the effects that renders. Modern near flare free lenses make things much easier than in days past of course, and even that Canon fisheye, where it’s pretty easy to end up with the sun in the frame, produces but one small flare spot, easily removed in Photoshop. Overall image contrast seems unaffected. Lenses have never been better, and in the case of many of the Canon range, more affordable.

Case in point, I just sold my Leica 90mm Apo Summicron Asph lens for more than you would pay for any but the most exotic lens from Canon. Is the Leica lens that much better? Well, you cannot tell from prints…. Whatever that great Leica lens gains in optical quality is scarificed on the altar of dated technology known as film. The full frame sensor in the 5D just holds up much better once reproduced size gets seriously large as long as you err on the side of underexposure to avoid blowing out the highlights.

Father and Child. Canon EOS 5D, 24-105mm at 70mm, ISO 200, TLR monochrome action in PS.

Fishy snapshots

Photographs

Candids with a fisheye.

Once nice thing about the Canon Fisheye is that you can take candids very close to your subject without the latter suspecting much. Further, keeping the camera at chest level on a strap makes it far easier to capture the best expression as the viewfinder is your brain, not some constrained image in a pentaprism.

With that broad angle of view, it’s kind of hard to miss your subject and with the huge depth of field, focusing is not an issue.

I was maybe two feet away from this group when I snapped the picture. ImageAlign was used to remove the barrel distortion and what you see is a full frame view with no cropping.

Obese America. Canon EOS 5D, 15mm Fisheye, ImageAlign, ISO 400.