Monthly Archives: November 2006

Giving Thanks

Art Illustration, Photography

The greatest American feast and the great man who made it possible.

For an index of articles on art illustrators, click here.

Today’s journal entry is only peripherally about photography, as I am busy cooking. It is, however, intended as a reminder why any ambitious person should consider coming to America to improve himself and his lot in life. It still matters little in the United States who your father was, how you speak and what size, religion or color you are. Hunger enough and you will be rewarded. You don’t even need ability. Just the desire to work hard.

When I emigrated from Britain to the United States on November 16, 1977, I had no idea of the existence of the great feast of Thanksgiving. Why should I? Poor old England, having won the war and lost the peace, was mired in repressive socialist politics where everyone, starting with schoolchildren, was being reduced to the level of the laziest. Thus the citizens of the British Empire had little to give thanks for. Not having benefitted economically from my fine British education, I did not arrive with just the money in my pocket. Rather, I arrived $4,000 in debt – half from my employer, the other half from my sister in Seattle, who had the vision to come here some years before me. The only hard assets I had in this world were my Leica M3 with 35mm, 50mm and 90mm lenses and two shabby polyester business suits bought at C&A in London. The Leica would last me another thirty years. The suits quickly moved on.

Five days later I found myself a guest of an American family which, with traditional hospitality, had invited this funny sounding immigrant to their Thanksgiving meal. I can never forget this act of warmth and welcome, nor the truly wonderful selection of food loaded on a table whose legs must have been groaning under the weight. This was America as I had always pictured it – the family home, warmth, conviviality, joie de vivre, everyone healthy and rosy cheeked and food a plenty. No wonder that Thanksgiving remains one of my favorite American holidays, for it was my introduction to the best in American values. To this day, few occasions give me greater pleasure than cooking a bird of choice for the feast that follows.

Years later I got to know the art of Norman Rockwell and he captures the sense of this great occasion better than anyone. No photograph can improve on this. Four generations gather to enjoy the feast to come. The sun is shining. Everyone is smiling. All is right with the world.

Let me preface what follows with the statement that I am an apolitical animal, believing solely in an economic system which allows individuals to be rewarded for their efforts and which keeps entitlements and government to a minimum. At the same time, such system has to be imbued with a strong dose of humanitarianism to protect the poor and unfortunate. That’s simple decency. The picayune distinctions in America between Democrats and Republicans, and their rabid hordes of followers looking for a benefit for no cost, are simply of zero interest to me.

Sad, then, to contemplate a Thanksgiving where I can no longer say with joy that I am sharing my lot on this earth with the giant who was Milton Friedman, who passed away a week ago. People speak of him as a great economist, but he was much more than that. He was a great humanist, having by the sheer power of his intellect created more wealth in twentieth century America than all her industrialists combined. Consider just some of his achievements.

  • The ending of the draft.
  • The abolition of the gold standard.
  • Proof positive that Government monetary policy caused inflation.
  • The commitment to free immigration.
  • The support of school vouchers to remedy the crime that is American public education.

This was a man for the ages.

I had the great pleasure of meeting him at the invitation of my friend Art Laffer, in 2002 on his 90th birthday, at a presentation he gave at the Ritz in San Francisco. It was, interestingly, the first time I saw a journalist use a digital camera – I recall with some fascination noting how he inspected the little screen on the back of his camera to check the picture from time to time. Friedman was, his 5 foot 2 inch stature notwithstanding, a giant, with an electric personality. A sharp wit and great charm. His teaching inspired two great students – Reagan and Thatcher – to fix the messes they had both inherited. Milton Friedman’s school drew no geographical boundaries in its admission of pupils. And tuition was free. Indeed, the president of the newly free republic of Estonia, when asked why he had imposed a low rate flat tax on his nation shortly after it gained freedom from its Russian opressor, replied that the only book on economics he had ever read was Milton Friedman’s “Free to Choose”. It hardly need be added that Estonia is booming.

So while I rue this Thanksgiving, the first where Milton Friedman is not among us, I rejoice in the knowledge that even now he is teaching our maker why freedom is the only policy for those in charge to pursue. Friedman once famously remarked:

“A society that puts equality – in the sense of equality of outcome – ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality or freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom. On the other hand, a society that puts freedom first will, as a happy by-product, end up with both greater freedom and greater equality. Freedom means diversity but also mobility. It preserves the opportunity for today’s less well off to become tomorrow’s rich, and in the process, enables almost everyone, from top to bottom, to enjoy a richer and fuller life.”

Amen to that, and Happy Thanksgiving.

Kitsch

Cameras

Runaway winner of the 2006 Bad Taste award.

Kitsch is a German word used to describe taste so bad that you have to laugh that someone actually paid money for the item involved.

A friend (?) sent me a picture of this execrable excrescence, knowing full well it would incur my wrath. It looks too real to be a piece of Photoshop work. I was in two minds whether to share it in this journal but felt I had a duty to disclose. If you are thinking of doing this to your Leica, or maybe have already done so, please cease reading this journal. You are emphatically not a welcome reader of a journal noted for its good taste.

Before scrolling down to see the picture, please make sure you do so on an empty stomach.

The nominee shown here has to be the runaway winner of the 2006 Kitsch Award. And the year isn’t even over yet. There is no accounting what more money than taste will do.

Now you will have to scroll down – if you have the courage.

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No, that’s not your imagination. That really is a yellow Leica

Framing Really Big Prints

Technique

It’s not fun, but it has to be done.

2023 Update: For an update with new vendors, much cheaper and every bit as good, click here.

Henry Ford, genius that he was, determined that it’s better to get a semi-skilled worker to do one task many times than to try and train him to do many tasks once. And, I’m afraid, when it comes to framing lots of prints, that a production line mentality is consonant with productivity and low error rates. Let’s face it. Only an assembly line worker, could find this work interesting.

I have previously illustrated how I Mount and Mat Really Big Prints. In this pictorial I will walk through the framing process.

The time had come when I finally had to frame the last 15 prints for my one man show – some 18″ x 24″, the rest 13″ x 19″ – all mounted on 22″ x 28″ stock. Marty Paris, the UPS man, sadist that he is, had dropped off the framing supplies from the fine folks at Redimat, so there was little excuse but to get down to it and get through the drudge of framing. Earlier, glass had been procured from the nice people at Paso Robles Glass down the road, so no excuses remained.

I use classic black frames.

You need a clean, well lit, flat workspace, some Titebond II wood glue and a moist rag to clean up glue squeeze out. While wet, this glue is water soluble. Once dry – don’t even think about it.

No sledgehammer needed. A drop of glue on the two mitred surfaces, pop in a corner piece, and tap it in gently with a soft blow mallet.

Wipe off any glue squeeze out and move the frame to a safe place. The matt surface is fragile and easily scratched. I delegated custodial and security duties to my regular assistant, Bertram the Border Terrier. If you use one of these, do make sure the chap is comfortable, as in the picture above. Guard duty is stressful, diligence essential.

Thirty-three minutes of indescribable tedium later, fifteen frames are assembled. Note the unceasing diligence of the faithful hound.

When you buy glass this large – these sheets are 21 15/16″ x 27 15/16″ – do ask the glazier to pack them in groups of five, or you will be risking a hernia. Glass is heavy! While the frames accommodate 22″ x 28″ mats, I have the glass undercut by 1/16″ as the glazier cannot guarantee tight dimensional tolerances.

Now for the toughest and most dangerous bit. Tough because cut sheet glass is coated with fine polymer granules to prevent abrasion between adjoining surfaces. These must be cleaned off. Dangerous because you can easily cut yourself on the unpolished edges (ever seen a glazier’s hands?) – polishing these is God’s way of telling you that you have too much money. You need to get the glass crystal clear and lint free. Any dirt will show like you wouldn’t believe if you use black mats, which I prefer.

Rather than using an ammonia-based glass cleaner like Windex, which is prone to leaving streaks, I prefer Sprayaway, which is ammonia-free and simply does a better job. The lint-free cloths are from Griot’s Garage, a superb business which really cares for its customers. You can wash and reuse these until they fall apart. Forget the paper towel rolls from the local Home Depot – these have so much grease and oil in them as to be useless.

You will find it far easier – and safer – to clean the glass by placing it in the frame. That way you are protected from the sharp edges and it doesn’t slide around dangerously because of those polymer granules. I do this on a black marble table top for the simple reason that the black background discloses every piece of dirt and lint.

Once clean, drop the mat/print/mounting board sandwich in.

Now, do yourself a favor. There is only one effective way of installing framing points in a frame, and that is using the right tool for the job. This superb tool, available from Blick Art Materials in the fine state of Texas, goes by the name of the Fletcher FlexiMaster Framing Tool. Expensive, you say, at some $80? Nonsense. How about perfect point installation, all sixteen of them, in thirty seconds?

Thirty seconds later. What is your time worth?

I leave drilling of holes for the wire eyes until the end for the simple reason I can never remember how many prints are portrait and how many landscape in my ‘production run’ and, of course, the placement is either on the long, or short, frame sides, respectively. Use a drill size that allows you to torque the screw down easily but not so large that it’s sloppy. If you are struggling and your Phillips screwdriver is jumping out of the screw, your drill is too small. This has to be right. The completed frame + glass + print is heavy and you do not want the screw coming out in the next California earthquake or whatever natural disaster your location is prone to.

I drill the holes six inches down for both portrait and landscape prints. Why the pedantry? Because if you make everything uniform, hanging a bunch of prints dead level becomes easy if everything is identically placed. Old H. Ford taught me well.

The wire eyes can now be attached.

Once again, if you are fighting that screwdriver, use a bigger drill for the hole. And please repeat after me: “I will not use an electric drill to insert the screw”. Unless you want to split the wood frame, that is.

Attach the hanging wire – I use 20 lb wire which is more than strong enough. Don’t even think of using synthetics like nylon. They will rot with age and …. well, I leave the rest for you to figure out. Tension the wire identically for each picture and the degree of sag you will get when you hang them will be …. identical. Hanging pictures is right up there with framing – I suspect more practitioners have been driven to chemical dependency by this process than through doing their annual tax returns. And the eye is incredibly sensitive to improperly aligned prints – or horizons. It’s something God seems to have built in to our genetic make-up.

Finally, place one of the provided bumpers at each corner to protect the wall.

What does all this cost?

A sheet of paper sized 18″ x 24″ for the Hewlett Packard DesignJet 90 printer costs $4. Inks probably add another $4. The mat is $14, the mounting board some $7, the glass $18 and the frame $26. Add $2 for the wire, hook and mounting tissue, and you are in for $75 for each framed print. So my show, with thirty of these, plus a couple of dozen unframed prints in the saw horses on the side, adds up to some serious money.

But is it worth it, or what?

Aaah!

One hundred yards – Part II

Photographs

Some of the best pictures are one hundred yards from your doorstep. Or less..

Given how much time we spend in our homes, it’s surprising that many photographers feel they have to journey to remote, exotic locations in search of picture opportunities. They arrive tired, are in a strange location which they have no time to ‘learn’, and leave frustrated. You must make the return flight and have to make do with whatever weather is around at the time.

By contrast, the circle centered on your home, with a 100 yard radius, provides some of the best photographic opportunities. You know the area, are rested and have no deadlines. There is no return flight. And you can wait for the weather to come to you.

Here are a couple more snaps, taken over the years, all within 100 yards or less of where my bed was the previous night. More to come over the next few weekends.


90 yards. Burlingame, California. Lumix LX-1


1 yard. Templeton, California. 5D, 24-105mm.

For more on this theme, please click here.

Vibration Reduction

Lenses

The greatest photographic invention since digital imaging.

The current B&H paper catalog contains no fewer than ten pages listing some 132 digital cameras, from inexpensive point-and-shoots to full frame Canon DSLRs. So there’s no shortage of choice at any price point. What is intriguing is that some 25% of these now include words like “Image Stabilizer” or “Vibration Reduction” in their specification. Go back a couple of years and the only place you could find these technologies was in a select few exotic lenses for their DSLRs from Canon and Nikon. True, some makers cheat by simply upping the ISO where slow shutter speeds would otherwise be required, but you can see the general technological direction nonetheless.

My guess is that, a couple of years hence, every digital camera save the very cheapest will have this technology built-in. Makers have come to realize that it offers a competitive advantage and, until proper optical viewfinders make a comeback, holding a camera at arm’s length to squint at the little LCD screen on the back while composing the picture denies everything we were taught as children about holding a camera steady.

And steady means sharp.


The stabilizer switch on the superb Canon 24-105mm L lens

I have become so attuned to the grain-free sensor in the Canon 5D that an 18″ x 24″ print is, if not something that is made with impunity, at least pretty commonplace, and the definition in the details is nothing short of startling. There is simply no way that I would be turning out so many large, sharp prints, with 35mm film technology. The enlargement ratio would be the same, true, but the vibration reduction in that splendid 24-105mm Canon lens would be noticeable by its absence. So while Leica can justifiably lay claim to making the best 35mm interchangeable lenses on the planet, not a one of them boasts vibration reduction. Bottom line? The less refined Canon optic with VR beats the superb Leica one unless a very sturdy tripod is used.

And it’s not just at the slower speeds that this is noticeable. Like most photographers, the majority of my pictures is taken using shutter speeds in the 1/60th – 1/500th range. Now the old rule used to be that you had to use a shutter speed no longer than the reciprocal of the focal length for a sharp picture. So, 1/50th for a 50mm, 1/100th for a 100mm and so on. This rule, of course, is so much rot. Go to any photo show and viewers will not step back twice as far to view an 18″ x 24″ print as they would for an 8″ x 10″ one. So the effects of camera shake in big prints are effectively magnified from the viewer’s perspective. So that 1/50th at 8″ x 10″ suddenly becomes 1/100th at 18″ x 24″ for the same perceived absence of camera shake. Offset this with the three shutter speeds of added sharpness gained from VR and you can see why most of my 5D originals easily scale to 18″ x 24″ prints. I am, in effect, using far faster shutter speeds than ever before, thanks to VR. Take away the detail-robbing effects of film grain, courtesy of the 5D’s noiseless sensor, and you have another quantum leap in definition.

So VR will become as commonplace in digital cameras as anti-lock brakes have in cars.

No way I need VR in my Canon fisheye, which has an effective focal length of 12mm after applying ‘defishing’ software, but I would kill for it in the 200mm f/2.8 where it is sorely missed. So until Canon does that, I continue to drag my monopod around with me when using this otherwise excellent optic.