Category Archives: Photographers

Train movies

Movies

A wonderful genre.

As a kid I well remember taking the Flying Scotsman from London to Dundee to both visit my sister, then a student at St. Andrew’s, and to pick up her gift of a Scottish Terrier. This was in 1960 and the trip inculcated in me a love of all things Scottish – terriers not the least of them – and of steam trains. Yes, you arrived grimy and smelly (my opening the window in a tunnel did not help matters) but the journey was truly greater than the arrival. The Scotsman was finally retired from long distance service in 1963 after a long and distinguished life.


The Flying Scotsman. Power, majesty and beauty.

So it’s little wonder that my burgeoning movie collection contains no less than 29 films where the train is mostly the star:


Train movies.

There are probably more, which I may have missed, but this is a decent start. The other day my son and I watched the latest ‘Mission Impossible” offering, part VII, and on our 123″ screen with a killer sound system it was a thrilling experience. Forget plot and dialog, the stunts and special effects were the best we have seen, with the last 40 minutes or so showcasing a thrilling train disaster.

Yet …. all the technology apart, this is far from the best train movie made as none compares with Buster Keaton’s ‘The General’ made in …. 1926. You not only disregard the script – there is none in this silent movie which makes it better than the asinine one in MI Part VII – it’s not widescreen this and seven channel that, but the strength of the story line, the timing of Keaton’s acting and the sheer hilarity of some of the set pieces beats anything made since.


Buster Keaton sacrifies a perfectly good real train.

So encomiums to Mr. Cruise for his death defying stunts but if you want to see the real thing, go no further than The General.

Saul Leiter revisited

Book reviews

Now famous.

While I was an early aficionado of Saul Leiter’s (1923-2013) work – see Early Color – he has since become renowned and there are now several books of his work in print.

Christmas saw one of those join the library and it’s named The Unseen Saul Leiter. As ‘Early Color’ is now high priced ‘unobtainium’ this is as good an introduction to Leiter’s work as there is, at a modest price.


Click the image for Amazon US.

Leiter’s vision is as fresh today as when he made these images and the book is highly recommended.

Classic cocktails

Book reviews, Photographers

Of the Prohibition era. Book review.

Churchill, who hated mixed drinks, once remarked that “Americans will always do the right thing, having first tried all the alternatives.” His belief falls down when it comes to mixed drinks for Americans have been mixing cocktails since the Prohibition era (1920-33) and continue merrily doing so to this day. And while Prohibition itself is a shining example of the accuracy of his dictum, mixed drinks survive and prosper.

Indeed, the stupidity of Prohibition was the driver behind many of the mixed drinks profiled in this book (not to mention the foundation of the Mob’s fortune), which I purchased some 25 years ago for Sam Sargent’s outstanding photography. I just rediscovered it in my chaotic, randomly sorted library. That’s the best way to store art books as pleasant surprises crop up daily when a long forgotten favorite surfaces, as in this case.

Why mix drinks? Because when all you have is bathtub gin (made in the Bronx) and yucky sweet rum smuggled in from Cuba, you have to kill the awfulness somehow. Today our ingredients are a tad better and mixed drinks survive and prosper.

Amazingly, a quarter of a century later the book remains available.


Click the image for Amazon.

Here’s another example of Sam Sargent’s work – each libation is displayed in a period glass – and like the book Sam appears to still be ticking along:


The TNT!

Unless you are a purist like WSC, I encourage you to buy this book for the great staging and photography – and maybe for some high end mixology!

For an index of all my book reviews, please click here.

Roger Deakins – Byways

Book reviews, Photographers

A fine street snapper.

In addition to being amongst the most renowned of cinematographers, Roger Deakins is also a fine street snapper, with a style dating back to the 1950s when the moment was everything and composition mattered. These two attributes of a good street snap no longer exist, destroyed since 2007 by the iPhone which means everyone has a camera and thinks he is a good photographer.

So it’s a special pleasure to look at Deakins’s photobook with many examples of his street snaps over the years. The gentle sense of humor, typical of his generation of Englishmen, pervades many of these images and the book is highly recommended. If I have a favorite it’s this one, a sobering reminder not to associate with people who do not imbibe:


Prohibition lives.

Home theater – final touches

Home theater

The Home Theater was pretty much complete 6 months ago but as I had a couple of old tripods sitting around largely unused it seemed appropriate to add a couple of cameras to go with them.

The 120” screen is flanked by a 1960s Nikon F on a period Linhof S168 tripod at left and a Calumet 4”x5” view camera with a Schneider Symmar lens, on a 1930s English Gandolfi wooden tripod at right. The Nikon F, which brought back so many horrific images of conflict and death from the front did more to end the Viet Nam war than any politician or soldier. This was before the Pentagon learned to keep photographers away from the front lines, so as to sanitize and extend our endless wars. The Calumet view camera was a staple of Hollywood’s glamor photographers, the large 4” x 5” negatives making the retouching of warts and achievement of glossy perfection relatively easy.

Here are snaps of those two cameras:


The Nikon F, with a 50mmf/1.4 Nikkor lens.


The Calumet monorail view camera with more twists and turns than a politician.

Further, on the sofaback, there is one of these:


The Zeiss Ikon Contax camera is similar to the one which photographer Robert Capa took with him when he parachuted in to Omaha Beach with the 82nd Airborne on D Day. The few surviving negatives (the lab ruined most of the film) are amongst the greatest war images made. He lost his life when stepping on a landmine in Indochina a few years later.

These additions, as well as some further light sealing for errant sun rays, largely see the Home Theater project completed.