Category Archives: Photographers

Learning monochrome

Movies, Photography

Everything I ever needed was in the movies.

I ceased taking monochrome pictures in 1977, though every now and then you still can catch me hitting the monochrome button in Lightroom.

But that’s not monochrome photography.

While the simplicity of seeing imposed by a monochrome palette makes anyone a better color photographer, I no longer take pictures thinking in black and white. My black may be red, my white blue, but I simply do not take black and white pictures.

Color is more challenging and, done right, more satisfying. Black and white, in a way, is cheating. Take out enough variables and anyone can do it. Not that all modern color is good. Anyone can paint a late Rothko or Motherwell. Fine work, true, but the genius of seeing and the skill to convert the vision to canvas are hardly abundantly on display here.

But when it was all I did, I loved black and white. No serious work in color was being shown by anyone in 1960 and that changed little through 1977. The pioneers, as ever, were the great fashion magazines, but the establishment critics saw to it that their art was disregarded. Shame. You could miss an awful lot of Parkinson, Clarke or Penn that way.

While my love of black and white was doubtless furthered by all those great books in the Kensington Public Library on Hornton Street, what really flipped the switch for me happened a good deal earlier when I first saw Carol Reed’s ‘The Third Man’ (1949) on our home TV which, of course, was black and white, like the movie. I was already familiar with those expressionist masterpieces ‘Metropolis’ and ‘M’ by Fritz Lang, but this was on a far more approachable plane. It did not need much imagination to grasp Graham Greene’s plot or to be awed by the acting of Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten. But what really gripped you was Robert Krasker’s photography, and rather than go on about it, I’m attaching nine favorite images from the movie. Krasker’s use of tilted perspective to convey an unwordly, wide angle look, is tremendous.

It’s not really clear on the small screen, but the next image shows the dying Harry Lime (Welles) poking his fingers up though the sewer grating as he tries to escape the good guys:

The camera cuts to his face. Sheer genius.

See what I mean? Krasker got the Oscar that year. There was no competition.

On a trip to Vienna in June, 2024, my son WInston searched out the original location and his photograph even replicates Krasker’s crazy tilt. Mercifully the ugly gratings have gone, but little else has changed 75 years later:

Tools

Book reviews

Another fine lesson in macro.

A few years back I developed tendonitis, meaning that if I stress my wrists too much everything from elbow to wrist hurts like hell. One likely cause is that many years of woodworking as a hobby did a number on my tendons and, as I understand it, these are not things that readily mend.

In the event, it was probably a timely warning. I still had all ten fingers attached where they should be and, let’s face it, I wasn’t giving Chippendale any competition, so the woodworking tools were sold and the proceeds applied to converting the workshop to a home theater. Suffice it to say that all those newly white walls made for a fine photography exhibition space in addition to a great place to watch movies, play pool, throw the occasional dart and …. well, you get the idea. American leisure at home.

From those woodworking days, I recall that easily the best magazine addressing amateur woodworking is ‘Fine Woodworking’ published by Taunton Press, a specialty publisher with a very high end focus on content, presentation and photography. One of their editors, a superb woodworker, published this labor of love a few years ago:


Click the picture for Amazom. I do not get paid if you do that.

Not only are the tools depicted beautiful art works, the photography is stunning. Great care has been taken with settings, backgrounds and lighting and the whole thing is a masterpiece of table-top photography. Best as I can tell, Nagyszalanczy is both writer and photographer.

Flies

Book reviews

An unlikely source of inspiration.

You know your home library is a good one when you come across books you never knew you had.

Which is exactly what happened to me the other day when in search of inspiration and education about good macro photography. I have no earthly idea how I came to own this book, but I am most certainly glad to have discovered it.

While the subject may be unusual the photography contained in the pages of this book is some of the best macro work I have seen.

Atlantic salmon flies are tied as much for their looks and display as they are for real fishing. This book covers the gamut from fly tyers interested solely in emulating pre-WWI techniques (!) to those interested in the very latest designs using synthetic materials. The interviews with these artisans are almost as good as the photography.

As the book was published in 1991, before large frame digital existed, all the work here is on film and, while it’s hard to make out from the picture of photographer John Clayton on the jacket cover, was probably done on large format. The lighting, posing and choices of backgrounds all speak to a work of love and exceptional effort.

No longer on Amazon, look for this book in the remaindered catalogs. The excellent Alibris has it. Highly recommended for the beauty of the subjects and the photographic execution.

Patrick Demarchelier

Photographers

And the diva.

Take a look at the engrossing movie The Devil Wears Prada and you will hear the Meryl Streep character (an amalgam, one imagines, of the two great Vogue editors of recent times, Anna Wintour and Diana Vreeland) ask on several occasions “Can we get Patrick?”.

I cannot remember a time when Patrick Demarchelier – yes, that Patrick – was not famous. With just cause. Click here and you will see what I’m writing about. Pair this superstar photographer with a true, like-they-used-to-make-them, superstar actress whose looks match her acting skill, and you have Hurrell’s Hollywood recreated. Angelina Jolie is a Star in the old sense of the word. Sure, there are the bizarre tattoos (self expression, if you ask me) and all those adoptions (how many starving kids have you saved recently?), but, heck, that’s just modern times. There’s no denying the woman’s acting skills, her commitments to charity ($8mm donated in 2006 alone), and for lady readers, the hunk that passes for her soul mate. Did I mention that she’s gorgeous?

Thanks, Mr. Demarchelier, for making life that much happier for this fan.

Photography books and wine

Book reviews

Sampling books is much like drinking wine.

I make it a habit, as summer approaches, to pick a photography book from the bookcase for relaxation on the patio in the afternoon. What struck me as rather funny the other day is that I found myself perusing the shelves much as a wine drinker might select a wine for dinner. Now it’s true that I grow Zinfandel grapes, but I rarely drink wine. Just not my thing, even if the grapes make for prize winning wines. So I really cannot pontificate how a wine drinker makes his choices as I have little idea, but I found that I was consciously thinking what genre and emotional pallette I wanted when it came to book selection.

With the perfume of jasmine in the home, thanks to the lovely plants on the patio, I migrated to a book of flower pictures. Plus I’m getting into the whole macro thing.

And a fine choice it was, with no hangover.

If you would like to see my complete library of photo books, click here.

By the way, I never buy new photo books, only remaindered ones. No idea where they got the pricing data but I seem to recall paying well under $20 for this one.


Star jasmine on the patio. 5D, 100mm Canon macro, ring flash, 1/45, f/19, ISO 200