Category Archives: Photographers

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

Pros strut their stuff

Photographers

From Lexar.

Lexar, the leading maker of storage cards for digital cameras, has a section of its site dedicated to showcasing the work of professionals who use its products. Click on the picture to go there. Howard Schatz‘s work is especially original.

It’s nice to see a manufacturer displaying the purpose of its products rather than just the products themselves.

The best Kodak can seem to do is this limp Blog though they have no qualms in telling us about their corporate citizenship and diversity programs in great detail. Please.

Vince Laforet again

Photographers

Some very original new work.

I first wrote of Vince Laforet when complimenting his superb photograph of the welder atop one of the Chrysler Building’s gargoyles.


From the April 2008 issue of Condé Nast’s Portfolio. Picture by Vince Laforet.

Click on this link to be directed to his photographs for a piece in Condé Nast Portfolio addressing changes in commuting. A tedious sounding topic made gripping by Laforet’s photography.

He’s using some sort of smart selective focus technique which appears to render only a narrow band of a picture sharp. A strange side effect is that his subjects end up looking like toys and you wonder whether this is not work by William Eggleston.

Worth the visit to enjoy once more the work of one of the most original photographers working today.

René Maltète

Photographers

A fine French photographer.

A reader writes:

Thomas,

You often make reference to great or at least famous photographers. I am French and when I was a child (I am 56 now) I used to flip over my uncle’s photography books. There was one French photographer I loved and I would like to share it with you, here is the link.

You may have to brush up a bit your French to understand certains images, they were taken some 40 to 50 years ago.

Cheers,

Michel

Thanks, Michel. I was not familiar with René Maltète’s work and I’m grateful for the reference.

Most enjoyable!

Arnold Newman: Evil

Photographers, Photographs

Arnold Newman got it right.

Some three years ago I wrote about Karsh’s wonderful portrait of Churchill, a portrait which is very much a confirmation of the man’s qualities. The unyielding, courageous bulldog. To say that it had an impact on me is an understatement. Our son is named Winston.

But there’s another portrait of a powerful man which needs to be mentioned, though the subject in this case is at the opposite end of the moral scale. It’s by Arnold Newman.

While Newman excelled at powerful pictures of powerful men, never did he surpass the portrayal of evil than when he took the picture of the exemplar of that trait, Alfried Krupp.

Now quite what the Krupp Steel PR machine was thinking of when they had a famous Jew photograph a famous Nazi is hard to understand, but Newman did not let them down. Krupp, for those not up on him, used slave labor to produce the Nazi machines of war in his steel works and, worse, got away with it.


The personification of evil

A magnificent picture which need no words from me.