The best and worst of a (mostly) great year

Never mind the fact that the free world is threatened by despots vying for nuclear weapons, what does that exemplar of American trash writing, Time magazine, give the Man of the Year award to? Why, to ‘You’. The related garbage prose goes on to laud people who make videos of their pet iguanas and post them on file sharing sites on the internet. So when that suitcase bomb destroys fifty blocks of a major American city, we can be secure in the knowledge that our videos of domestic pets are safely backed up in a remote location. Circulation beats integrity yet again at Time Warner. Well, at least they had the good taste to put a Mac on the cover.

Anyway, as this is the season of holiday cheer, lets get the Worst of the Year over and done with right away. You know – the ethically challenged who sadly pervade our society. The Love America or Leave it candidates.

So don’t expect this journal entry to award any prizes to journalists or photojournalists. Indeed, this year has been marked by the lack of integrity in photojournalism, as I have written about 1 – here, 2 – here, 3 – here and 4 – here.

Further, there’s no obvious candidate for best photographer of the year as I increasingly come to the conclusion that there are no more Great Photographers.

However, the Book reviews section of this journal has looked at many books profiling Great Photographers over the past year and my award goes to Dan Normark for his splendid and heartfelt Chavez Ravine, 1949. No mention of Great Photographers can exclude Elliott Erwitt and maybe the finest book yet on Henri Cartier-Bresson is the outstanding The Man, The Image and The World. Expensive? Yes. Essential? Absolutely. If nothing else, it shows clearly that Cartier-Bresson’s best work was also his earliest, for the most part. Erwitt, by contrast, remains as fresh today as he was fifty years ago.

On the gear front, in the context of technology as the great enabler, there has been a lot of good news. For this photographer who, for the most part, dislikes grain, likes big prints and hates darkroom work, the highest quality image has become par for the course thanks to the wonderful Canon EOS 5D. Still overpriced, owing to a lack of competition, and yes, the LCD screen is next to useless, yet the large, grain free image sensor in this camera has obsoleted the very best film had to offer in 35mm and medium format, with a considerable saving in bulk and clutter owing to broad focal length lenses like the 24-105mm zoom.

The Pindelski Gear of the Year 2006 award winners

The back end, meaning processing and printing, has been equally well served with two newcomers on the scene, Apple’s Aperture, which finally banished Photoshop to the cupboard under the stairs where it belongs, and the dead reliable and economical Hewlett Packard DesignJet 90 large format dye printer with stable inks and great print quality.

Next year I hope there’s a small, fast digital camera with a wide angle, non-zoom lens and a proper optical finder to give the street snapper the instrument he really needs. Meanwhile, the capable Panasonic LX-1, suitably adapted with an accessory viewfinder, gets the Runner-Up prize.

Meanwhile, thank you Canon, Apple and Hewlett Packard.

RIPs? Well, just two. Film, in general, and Kodak, in particular. Seldom has technological change so overwhelmed a medium or a company so quickly. There’s no saving either.