Yearly Archives: 2009

The Jackling Mansion

Great pictures of this controversial building

Click here for a wonderful selection of pictures of the Jackling Mansion, Steve Jobs’s home that he very much wants to pull down to build something useable.

Can’t say I blame him looking at these. It’s what I think of as a Wrecking Ball Special. Jobs probably needs to step up the bribes, er …. computer donations, if he’s serious about tearing down this eyesore which looks more like the No Tell Motel than any mansion I have seen. Once, a long time ago in America, a man’s home was his castle to do with as he saw fit. No more, it seems.

You can see more of Haeber’s work here.

So waddya care if it’s posed?

It’s the result that matters, not the means

Apropos nothing, I was reminded of a comment a fellow photoblogger made, addressing one of my snaps. I was heavily into photoblogging three years ago but got tired of all the sycophancy and lightweight comments passing for constructive criticism. Hardly a conduit for learning and improving.

His words were to the effect of “I would rate it a 10 if it was not posed”. Charming and comical at the same time. Viewed logically, he was awarding points for a mixture of luck and skill in taking the picture clandestinely. I’m not sure I understand that. I’m all for rewarding spontaneity when it comes to the performing arts, say, or scientific research. That’s how breakthroughs happen. But for a medium whose sole appeal is to the sense of vision, what does it really matter whether the picture was spontaneous or not?

Allow me to illustrate with four examples – Posed, I’m Not Telling, Sacrilege …. and a Real Corker:

1 – Posed:

Surely on the short list of all times great ‘decisive moment’ snaps, is Robert Doisneau’s ‘Le Baiser’:

Doisneau, whose work I adore, was your typical French leftie-with-commie-sympathies but, God bless him, was happy to admit that his most famous picture was posed.

2 – I’m Not Telling

This is my picture which occasioned that funny remark at the introduction to this piece:

All I will say is that it’s always awful fun snapping pictures of my beautiful son.

3 – Sacrilege

The thought that the single greatest photograph of the Twentieth Century was posed is pure sacrilege.

Yet it is that very thought that gave life to this entry …. have you ever wondered that the balletic figure on the wall and the fatso about to splash are just too much of a coincidence?

4 – A Real Corker:

You think I was going to ask a guy who does not even speak English to pose for this? Get real:

Still, whether it’s posed or not is irrelevant. All that matters is the result.

Earth

A salutary lesson

I took our seven year old son to see the Disney movie Earth today. I confess the prevailing emotion going into the theater was dread. Dread that this would be yet another saccharine ‘animals behaving like people’ horror so beloved of the Disney studio, replete with overt cuteness and with a mile thick sugar coating to protect all and sundry from the brutal survival that is the natural world of wild animals.


A still from ‘Earth’

Mercifully, the movie is made by the BBC, which still shows vestiges of taste now and then, and we both enjoyed it. Winston, my son, loved it because of the photography, the great pictures of animals and the short length. I enjoyed it because of the photography, orchestral music well played by the Berlin Philharmonic (though doubtless Herbert von Karajan is spinning in his grave at the prospect of his orchestra playing movie music) and punches-only-lightly-pulled when something eats something else. The gore is edited out but you get the message. Mother Nature is anything but nice, polar bears are dumb as two bricks and survival goes to the fittest. (Like Wall Street – just substitute ‘bankers’ for ‘polar bears’).

However, the broader lessons learned from something like this are that working with animals may be as frustrating as working with actors, but they don’t sue and their appearance fees are low. Further, the reality dawns that the amateur photographer – be he movie or still – really is wasting his time trying to improve on the polished professional work on display here. Clearly the work involved was enormous, requiring hundreds of people and a huge ratio of scrap to gold, and dictating the use of ultralight aircraft, balloons, diving equipment, and so on. And lots and lots of takes, considerable risk to life and limb and a cornucopia of top class gear.

Judging by the clearly visible dirt in many frames the whole thing was made on film, rather than digital; we were viewing it on a large (I would guess 250″ plus) screen and the detail definition was startlingly good. Which brings us to two final lessons. There is no way on earth that you are going to be able to reproduce the impact of such a movie at home. And that narrator James Earl Jones has the best voice franchise in the US, if not the best voice. That belonged to James Mason, but he left us a while back.

Cleaning house

Getting rid of junk

If you haven’t used it in a year, get rid of it.

Now that rule may not work for certain special tools. That wrench that fits that special nut or the super telephoto you use rarely but for which there is really no substitute when you need it.

But, overall, the biggest obstacle to this principle is emotion. It’s hard to get rid of things you are attached to, even if they are inanimate objects.

But I gritted my teeth the other day and sat down to compile a list of the things I really do not need. And it was surprisingly long.

That Thorens turntable? I listen to a handful of LPs annually and invariably get frustrated with all the clicks, pops and the sheer fragility of the medium. So the 480 LPs went to Goodwill (libraries no longer want them) and the Thorens went on ePrey. The related ancient but great British Quad amplifiers? eCheat. Those enormous transmission line loudspeakers I built 35 years ago? Goodwill. Great sound but not much use stored in the cellar and no way was my better half going to allow them in the home. And I can get sound almost as good from modern miniature satellite speakers with a subwoofer, all in a fraction of the space. DVDs? Horrible space consumers. Off to the library, all 535 of them. If I want a DVD I rent it or go to the Apple Store.

Add to these the 200 classical CDs I gave them a while back and there’s a remote chance that the citizens of Paso Robles, CA will learn to spell ‘culture’, though I wouldn’t hold my breath. After all, this is an area where it’s the done thing to marry your first cousin while inhaling too many agricultural chemicals. Call me cynical, but somehow I don’t see Antonioni, Visconti and Scriabin conquering local tastes which stretch to revolting country music and regard Thomas Kinkade as an artist of esteem.

OK, so what about photo gear? I suppose it really makes more sense to send out files for the making of large prints as my wide carriage printer gets relatively little use. But I cannot get myself to part with it. But some others are easy. The 20mm Canon EF for my 5D? A real dog. Canon refuses to make quality ultra wides and I refuse to use the ones they make. Plus my 24-105mm at 24mm is much better and if I want really wide I use the 15mm Canon fisheye (which is great) and ImageAlign if I want rectilinear rendition – at 12mm wide! Anyway, the 20mm is out of here.


Canon 20mm – the lens that drinks from a bowl – my second and almost as bad as the first

Having grown up with any number of 50mm Summicrons on my Leica M cameras, I am attached to lenses of that length. But the Canon 50mm f/1.4 I own is right in the middle of the 24-105mm range and while the zoom is bulkier and slower, there’s nothing to choose between the two in sharpness and I do not need f/1.4, so it’s out of here. Take it to f/2.8 or larger (the zoom is an f/4) and the quality deteriorates rapidly. At f/1.4 it’s the proverbial Coke bottle bottom. I cannot remember when I last enjoyed using it.


The 50mm cousin – another stinker

The 5D, 24-105, 15mm, 85mm, 200mm, 400mm Canons and the fabulous 100mm macro – all by Canon – are all keepers.

That massive wooden Gandolfi tripod? Redundant as I use an alloy Linhof. But it doubles as a display piece and may yet survive the purge though there’s absolutely no chance I will ever use it to take pictures again. Maybe I should dump it?

But after that there’s little left that does not get used frequently and my life is the better for a lack of clutter. Plus many Goodwill shoppers can exult in my great classical LPs, so it’s not all bad. And, just maybe, someone sufficiently undiscriminating will like those awful lenses.

Are art books dead?

Perish the thought

One of the simple, yet sublime, pleasures in life is to stroll past a bookcase and be rewarded with some gem long forgotten. A moment later and you are on a trip to a place unknown, basking in California’s late sun.

The thick art paper invariably used in photography books permits high quality reproduction and the tactile and olfactory pleasures, coupled with the user’s choice of sequential or random access …. well, there’s a lot to love about Gutenberg’s invention.

As machines go, the printing press has had a decently long life of 570 years and counting, though it’s a piker compared to, say, the catapult (an elegant, simple tool) or the wheel. Compare those to the lives of sound reproducing media – wax cylinders, shellac 78s, LPs, stereo LPs, Cassettes, 8 Track, CD, iPod – none has lived more than a couple of decades.

Yet while I am committed to getting clutter out of my life (my ideal being Woody Allen’s place in Sleeper), I still cannot get worked up about looking at photography books on a screen. I recognize that some media – black and white comes to mind – benefit greatly from transillumination – but the magic of a book compares favorably to the netbook warming my lap as I type this. I would have said ‘frying’ but I got rid of my MacBook in the interest of my testicles.

The transition to reading news, analysis and fiction from paper to screen is accelerating, so you can bet that we will have full color Kindles, or whatever, before long. Maybe the screen will become a flexible pellicle with pictures sent wirelessly for it to display; that might work, I suppose, but I think this is still a bit sci-fi.

Meanwhile, I am going to stroll past my bookcases.