A British pro.
Andy Rouse writes perceptively about the realities of making a living as a professional photographer. I have always thought it would be easier to succeed in the movies or the NBA than by taking pictures:
You can see his fabulous work by clicking the image below.
And John Malkovich.
Sandro Millar, a Chicago portrait photographer, has an extraordinary take on Dorothea Lange’s ‘Migrant Mother‘, posed by famous movie star John Malkovich:
For more of his work, click here.
Growing originality and imagination.
It’s some six years since I exposed Ed Hebert’s special imagery here and that piece makes for a good introduction to his later work which shows a remarkable growth in imagination and originality.
In the interim Ed has been busy graduating from Harvard where he earned his Masters in Information Technology, with a concentration in Digital Media Arts and Web Technologies, as well as tending to a growing family, yet despite these commitments he has made time for his photography which remains focused on the sea and his Massachusetts environment.
‘Seasketch’ has a lovely flowing quality and just look was he does with the wake of the flying bird. The second video – ‘Winter’ – is in equal parts striking and disturbing for its subtle movement effects. Did I see that or did I not? For some reason I flashed back to Coppola’s movie The Conversation, a movie also replete with glimpses and mystery
Ed writes:
I developed a technique to sample individual video frames (i.e., still photos) and restack and visually layer them atop each other programmatically. The end product is a long exposure image that reveals itself over time. Some of these visuals – along with some of my typical subject matter – Â are included in the following video.
For something a bit more photographic, but equally bizarre and experimental, I tried photographing the same object or scene from a variety of locations and angles, and then stacking these images together in the manner somewhat akin to multiple exposure. I was really captivated by the textural and painterly qualities that this technique revealed. To see the same object from all sides at once reminded me a bit of “photographic cubismâ€, although the results aren’t quite on par with Picasso. Again, I thought about how this might look as created over time, so I used the stills as frames for video.
This ‘Winter’ series was built into a weird little conceptual video. Equal parts calming and disturbing:
In his video ‘What I Believe’ the artist does a masterful job of combining art and science. It’s one of my favorites among his recent work. Take a look:
In his usual modest way Ed writes that he has been too busy to really focus on his photography. If this is his idea of a modest effort then we have a great deal to look forward to.
Coming back soon.
The Flagmakers mural between Howard and Natoma Streets in San Francisco has been lost to sight as MOMA has undergone an extensive rebuild. The museum will finally open in May 2016 and let’s hope they make far better use of the internal volume than before where most of the display space was simply wasted, making for too few exhibitions.
When scaffolding went up all around I rather feared that Flagmakers would be lost to the world and my extensive collection of mural images – so many of them ephemeral and now gone – shows I photographed it in 2011 and 2012.
Here’s the 2012 version:
MOMA has an interesting story about photographer Janet Delaney who snapped the same scene in 1982 – seemingly as faded then as now.
Click the image for the story. The good news is that the mural has been saved, if rather crowded out by the building additions.
Comparing the two, not that much has actually changed in the mural building. The fire escape ladder appears to have grown a counterweight to the right, the delicate iron balcony appears unmolested, the top of the fire escape now has handrails added and the sign was as faded then as now – I did add a little saturation here and there to the surpassingly bland original. The garage in the foreground is long gone, unlike Chevron, which should be around another century or so as we reluctantly migrate to renewable resources.
I’m reminded also of how much I miss the Nikon D700 body – no video nonsense, a modest sized sensor with superior low light capabilities and exceptional responsiveness. A photographer’s machine. No one needs more than 12mp in an FF sensor.
Another version of Flagmakers, no longer possible, appears here.
Last legs.
The Adolph Gasser photo hardware store on Second Avenue in San Francisco has been dying for longer than most can remember. The paint is peeling, the help inattentive and the whole thing decrepit. In addition to their great location on the east side of Second Avenue the west side, directly opposite, is home to some priceless real estate owned by Gasser which is used as a free parking lot for their increasingly missing customers. Talk of unrealized value.
Currently it’s home to a shoddy exhibit of photographs, the presentation consonant with that of the store across the road.
Talk of development potential. That there is even a camera store remaining in SF is to be wondered at.
D3x, 35mm f/2 Nikkor with my profile.