The promo describes the show as an "interactive & immersive music exhibition." That's not the impression it made on me. This show has very little to say about the music and music-making of the Rolling Stones: their songwriting, vocal and instrumental techniques, differences between live and studio performance, the evolution of their music over time. In a brief video near the outset, the present-day Stones pay tribute to the black music they appropriated for their early success, and honor some of the musicians who made it. There's a gallery full of guitars and amps, and a recreation of one of their early recording studios, both of which I think will interest no one save musicians. The simulation of a scruffy, nondescript "green room" has a certain poignancy, until one remembers that the Stones have enjoyed much more lavish backstage digs for most of the past half-century. There are handwritten set lists by Keith Richards and Ron Wood, fanzines and fan mail, the sleeves of 45s, a miniature drum kit in a suitcase that Charlie Watts used for hotel-room rehearsals, and more. But none of it illuminates in any way the creative process from which the music emerges.
On the other hand, the show excels at tracing the band's move from club rock to stadium rock, and the corollary transition from pure music-making to image-making to spectacle. Indeed, there's a case to be made -- implicit in the evidence this show provides -- that the Stones' genius for the spectacular, and not their ability to produce new and urgent music, has kept alive and thriving a group that otherwise relies for its drawing power on its repertoire of golden oldies.
Granted, it's a spectacle (and an image) that has music at its center, as one wall label insists. But the show quickly dispenses with its musical component in order to concentrate on the trappings that have come to surround it: the creation of the Stones' instantly iconic logo (those fleshy lips and broad tongue), the images of the Stones themselves as constructed through photographs for album covers and tour posters (overseen mostly by Jagger and Watts), the garb they wore in live performance and videos (dozens of costumes on mannikins), the various films about them (excerpted in a separate screening room, with narration by Martin Scorsese, who made one of those films himself), and the ever more elaborate structures and accoutrements they subsidized for their indoor and outdoor stage sets.
And this is where the show becomes of particular interest to those of us concerned in one way or another with photography. By 1960, photographers had been making pictures of musicians of all stripes for well over a century, first portraits and staged moments where they pretended to play, then in actual performance. And the music industry had used those images in various ways to promote the musicians and the music. Yet, with the notable exception of some images of jazz musicians in clubs and recording studios, these images themselves did not become grafted onto their audiences' perceptions of these artists.
That changed, starting in the early 1960s, and the musicians most responsible for that shift -- the ones who assertively involved themselves in the construction of their visual identities -- were the young Turks of rock & roll. And none of those performers could have done it without the willing cooperation (and often the prodding) of a cohort of photographers, many of them also young, eager to push the envelope with unusual images -- not to mention a generation or two of consumers prepared to accept such imagery as consistent with, and a visual extension of, the music they loved.
The Stones weren't alone in this, of course, but they were in the vanguard. The care that the Stones have taken from their beginning till now in crafting their individual and collective images becomes immediately evident in the costume galleries -- where we see them quickly abandon the matching hound's-tooth jackets in which manager Andrew Loog Oldham outfitted them in favor of silk scarves, gold lamé jackets, edwardian tunics, and other colorful, flamboyant, idiosyncratic options. We see this also in the section devoted to album covers. Perhaps more than any other musicians of that era, the Stones not only constructed their own unique fashion "looks" (with Mick's gender-fluid wardrobe and persona surely the edgiest and most influential) but collaborated actively from the outset with photographers, cinematographers, and eventually videographers to embed their bad-boy personae in the public consciousness. Toward that end, they worked with picture-makers as diverse as Cecil Beaton, David Bailey, Annie Leibovitz, Andy Warhol (who designed the notorious zipper cover for Sticky Fingers) and photographer-filmmaker Robert Frank, whose gritty feature-length film Cocksucker Blues they would end up censoring.
More than any band before them, and arguably better than any band since, the Stones understood and profited from carefully calculated strategies of branding. Surely it's no accident that Jagger studied business as an undergraduate at the London School of Economics, and, though he never got his degree, became one of its most successful alumni, having managed the Stones himself since 1971. In that regard, the show has much to teach contemporary artists in any medium, along with professionals and aspirants in arts management, product design, marketing, rights licensing, and related fields. I see those as making up the show's true constituency; were I overseeing this project, I'd concentrate some of my outreach there.
There are countless collections of rock photographs, of course, anthologies and monographs by individual photographers. But this project serves as an object lesson in how one enormously successful group of performing artists structured their visual self-presentation to the public over the course of half a century. Surely there's something here for photographers to learn from.
The show will run Nov. 12 - Mar. 12 at Industria, 775 Washington St. You can reserve tickets online at the "Exhibitionism" website, www.stonesexhibitionism.com. If you can't get to the show, there's a comprehensive catalog.
All text and photos © Copyright 2016 by A. D. Coleman. All rights reserved. By permission of the author and Image/World Syndication Services, imageworld@nearbycafe.com.
]]>
The promo describes the show as an "interactive & immersive music exhibition." That's not the impression it made on me. This show has very little to say about the music and music-making of the Rolling Stones: their songwriting, vocal and instrumental techniques, differences between live and studio performance, the evolution of their music over time. In a brief video near the outset, the present-day Stones pay tribute to the black music they appropriated for their early success, and honor some of the musicians who made it. There's a gallery full of guitars and amps, and a recreation of one of their early recording studios, both of which I think will interest no one save musicians. The simulation of a scruffy, nondescript "green room" has a certain poignancy, until one remembers that the Stones have enjoyed much more lavish backstage digs for most of the past half-century. There are handwritten set lists by Keith Richards and Ron Wood, fanzines and fan mail, the sleeves of 45s, a miniature drum kit in a suitcase that Charlie Watts used for hotel-room rehearsals, and more. But none of it illuminates in any way the creative process from which the music emerges.
On the other hand, the show excels at tracing the band's move from club rock to stadium rock, and the corollary transition from pure music-making to image-making to spectacle. Indeed, there's a case to be made -- implicit in the evidence this show provides -- that the Stones' genius for the spectacular, and not their ability to produce new and urgent music, has kept alive and thriving a group that otherwise relies for its drawing power on its repertoire of golden oldies.
Granted, it's a spectacle (and an image) that has music at its center, as one wall label insists. But the show quickly dispenses with its musical component in order to concentrate on the trappings that have come to surround it: the creation of the Stones' instantly iconic logo (those fleshy lips and broad tongue), the images of the Stones themselves as constructed through photographs for album covers and tour posters (overseen mostly by Jagger and Watts), the garb they wore in live performance and videos (dozens of costumes on mannikins), the various films about them (excerpted in a separate screening room, with narration by Martin Scorsese, who made one of those films himself), and the ever more elaborate structures and accoutrements they subsidized for their indoor and outdoor stage sets.
And this is where the show becomes of particular interest to those of us concerned in one way or another with photography. By 1960, photographers had been making pictures of musicians of all stripes for well over a century, first portraits and staged moments where they pretended to play, then in actual performance. And the music industry had used those images in various ways to promote the musicians and the music. Yet, with the notable exception of some images of jazz musicians in clubs and recording studios, these images themselves did not become grafted onto their audiences' perceptions of these artists.
That changed, starting in the early 1960s, and the musicians most responsible for that shift -- the ones who assertively involved themselves in the construction of their visual identities -- were the young Turks of rock & roll. And none of those performers could have done it without the willing cooperation (and often the prodding) of a cohort of photographers, many of them also young, eager to push the envelope with unusual images -- not to mention a generation or two of consumers prepared to accept such imagery as consistent with, and a visual extension of, the music they loved.
The Stones weren't alone in this, of course, but they were in the vanguard. The care that the Stones have taken from their beginning till now in crafting their individual and collective images becomes immediately evident in the costume galleries -- where we see them quickly abandon the matching hound's-tooth jackets in which manager Andrew Loog Oldham outfitted them in favor of silk scarves, gold lamé jackets, edwardian tunics, and other colorful, flamboyant, idiosyncratic options. We see this also in the section devoted to album covers. Perhaps more than any other musicians of that era, the Stones not only constructed their own unique fashion "looks" (with Mick's gender-fluid wardrobe and persona surely the edgiest and most influential) but collaborated actively from the outset with photographers, cinematographers, and eventually videographers to embed their bad-boy personae in the public consciousness. Toward that end, they worked with picture-makers as diverse as Cecil Beaton, David Bailey, Annie Leibovitz, Andy Warhol (who designed the notorious zipper cover for Sticky Fingers) and photographer-filmmaker Robert Frank, whose gritty feature-length film Cocksucker Blues they would end up censoring.
More than any band before them, and arguably better than any band since, the Stones understood and profited from carefully calculated strategies of branding. Surely it's no accident that Jagger studied business as an undergraduate at the London School of Economics, and, though he never got his degree, became one of its most successful alumni, having managed the Stones himself since 1971. In that regard, the show has much to teach contemporary artists in any medium, along with professionals and aspirants in arts management, product design, marketing, rights licensing, and related fields. I see those as making up the show's true constituency; were I overseeing this project, I'd concentrate some of my outreach there.
There are countless collections of rock photographs, of course, anthologies and monographs by individual photographers. But this project serves as an object lesson in how one enormously successful group of performing artists structured their visual self-presentation to the public over the course of half a century. Surely there's something here for photographers to learn from.
The show will run Nov. 12 - Mar. 12 at Industria, 775 Washington St. You can reserve tickets online at the "Exhibitionism" website, www.stonesexhibitionism.com. If you can't get to the show, there's a comprehensive catalog.
All text and photos © Copyright 2016 by A. D. Coleman. All rights reserved. By permission of the author and Image/World Syndication Services, imageworld@nearbycafe.com.
]]>
The next step was deciding which lens to choose. Shooting with wide angle lenses was enjoyable over the past few weeks (21mm & 18mm). It opened my eyes to some new compositions and gave me a different perspective. The widest lens in my personal collection is the Zeiss 25mm f/2.
The Voigtlander SUPER WIDE-HELIAR 15mm F4.5 III has been on my radar since its release. It was originally made in VM-Mount for M-Mount cameras. With the popularity of the Sony A7 series Voigtlander decided to make an E-Mount version. We all know you can adapt almost any lens on the Sony mirrorless cameras but I truly believe you get the best results with native lenses. You can avoid the additional cost and size you get when adding an adapter.
I was impressed by the build quality when picking up the lens for the first time while mounting it to the A7rii. Initial impression was the 15mm is a solid well made compact lens. It features a built-in hood and being an E-Mount lens you won't lose your exif data.
Sony A7Rii + Voigtlander SUPER WIDE-HELIAR 15mm F4.5 III - ISO 3200 1/500 - Inside the New York Public Library.
I was excited to get out and start shooting immediately. This lens is no speed demon at f/4.5 but that's not such a concern during daylight hours. Natural light and fast lenses are a big part of what defines my style, so this was a big change of pace for me. More recently a lot of my street shots have been made during the late night hours using low light.
Sony A7Rii + Voigtlander SUPER WIDE-HELIAR 15mm F4.5 III - ISO 8000 1/20 - Here is a perfect example of what you can do with 1/20 of a second and ISO 8000. Sure there is some motion and grain, but I love it!
A couple of years ago this lens wouldn't have been an option to be considered for any type of low light photography. It's still not the ideal lens for this type of work but with the amazing low light ability of the A7rii, shooting at higher ISO's doesn't look so bad. Combine that with the IBIS and you can shoot a night scene without much problem.
Sony A7Rii + Voigtlander SUPER WIDE-HELIAR 15mm F4.5 III ISO 6400 - 1/50 - Shooting at night in NYC hunting out light sources!
Being the 3rd version of this lens, Voigtlander really perfected the design of the SUPER WIDE-HELIAR. The first two versions were known to suffer from color shifts and heavy vignetting. When adapted to the Sony mirrorless cameras, significant corner smearing was also evident. This third version of the lens is now available in the traditional VM-Mount and E-mount. Using the E-mount version on my Sony improves on these issues in a big way.
Sony A7Rii + Voigtlander SUPER WIDE-HELIAR 15mm F4.5 III - ISO 3200 1/125 - The new terminal for the 7 line, Hudson Yards 34th Street.
Another welcomed feature that you get when using the E-mount version of this lens is the added value of focus peaking. Like the Loxia line of lenses, once you rotate the focus ring it kicks in. I also notice a focusing scale that I don't remember seeing previously.
Sony A7Rii + Voigtlander SUPER WIDE-HELIAR 15mm F4.5 III - ISO 3200 1/160 - One of the many interesting room inside the New York Public Library.
Shooting at 15mm is a whole new world to me, so much wider then the 21mm I Was using a couple weeks prior. I would call it somewhat of a specialty lens, but definitely nice to have in your bag of tricks. The distortion wasn't nearly as bad as I would have expected. The images posted in this review all had some degree of distortion correction in lightroom or photoshop. I'm running the latest versions and it's as simple as a click of a button.
Sony A7Rii + Voigtlander SUPER WIDE-HELIAR 15mm F4.5 III - ISO 3200 1/500 - A rare find, a completely empty NYC subway car!
I've heard people say this lens isn't sharp in the corners. It's possible that they received bad copies because I would say this lens was sharp across the board. In fact the details where quite impressive when viewing the images at home. My first day out shooting with this little 15mm was underwhelming after checking my results. It was a bit of a learning curve on how to approach shooting at this focal length. As the week went on the keepers started racking up.
Sony A7Rii + Voigtlander SUPER WIDE-HELIAR 15mm F4.5 III - ISO 3200 1/100 - Chinatown streets at night are always interesting to me. You can feel the whole scene with the 15mm!
You're not looking to do up-close portraits at 15mm. You're not going to be buying this lens for the bokeh. It's almost impossible to create any background blur at f/4.5 at this focal length. What you are looking for is detail and low distortion and manageable CA, and the Voigtlander comes through with these characteristics. I did notice the focus ring seemed to be slightly loose, possibly because the lens I was using was a demo.
Sony A7Rii + Voigtlander SUPER WIDE-HELIAR 15mm F4.5 III - ISO 3200 1/80 - A late night train ride. Love the lines in this one.
Looking back at the pictures I made with this lens over the course of 3 weeks, it doesn't look like my ISO was ever set lower then 1600. Even during the day you have to really boost the ISO to get a suitable shutter speed. I do wish the lens was faster but of course this would change the design of the lens.
Sony A7Rii + Voigtlander SUPER WIDE-HELIAR 15mm F4.5 III - ISO 6400 1/125 - Carnegie Hall in the background. Using the 15mm to create one of my classic street scenes.
If you're looking for a compact super-wide angle lens for your Sony, look no further! Just be sure that the slow speed of this lens won't interfere with your style of photography. If you're doing landscape or architectural work I wouldn't see it being a problem. If you find yourself in more lowlight situations or doing astrophotography this may not be the best option. In that case you may want to check out the Zeiss 15mm f/2.8. It is also three times as expensive and twice the size and weight. You would also need an adapter to use it on your Sony. It is safe to say the optics are better but you have to weigh your options.
Sony A7Rii + Voigtlander SUPER WIDE-HELIAR 15mm F4.5 III - ISO 3200 1/80 - At 15mm it's amazing how much of this iconic scene at Grand Central you can fit in to the frame.
In conclusion, after spending several weeks with the Voigtlander it began to grow on me. My results seemed to be getting better each day, I didn't want to give it back! It took some time adjusting to life at 15mm but it produced some beautiful shots in my opinion. I'll leave you with a couple more pictures. Hopefully they speak for themselves, enjoy...
Sony A7Rii + Voigtlander SUPER WIDE-HELIAR 15mm F4.5 III - ISO 1600 1/160 - You really need to push in close to get a shot like this!
Sony A7Rii + Voigtlander SUPER WIDE-HELIAR 15mm F4.5 III - ISO 3200 1/50 - I have been wanting to take a shot of this 24 hour car wash in the Bronx for a while.
Sony A7Rii + Voigtlander SUPER WIDE-HELIAR 15mm F4.5 III - ISO 6400 1/13 - This corner was way darker then it appears in this image. I used the slow shutter to my advantage and captured some motion and love the results. Yellow taxi's have given me endless inspiration over the years...
Special thanks to William Juseck and the good people over at Photo Village in NYC for lending me the lens. It was my first time visiting their showroom. If you're a Leica fan you should check them out. It's a beautiful place with a great selection of new and used gear, and they are an official distributor of Voigtlander lenses for North America.
See more from Andrew Mohrer at www.andrewmohrer.com
]]>The next step was deciding which lens to choose. Shooting with wide angle lenses was enjoyable over the past few weeks (21mm & 18mm). It opened my eyes to some new compositions and gave me a different perspective. The widest lens in my personal collection is the Zeiss 25mm f/2.
The Voigtlander SUPER WIDE-HELIAR 15mm F4.5 III has been on my radar since its release. It was originally made in VM-Mount for M-Mount cameras. With the popularity of the Sony A7 series Voigtlander decided to make an E-Mount version. We all know you can adapt almost any lens on the Sony mirrorless cameras but I truly believe you get the best results with native lenses. You can avoid the additional cost and size you get when adding an adapter.
I was impressed by the build quality when picking up the lens for the first time while mounting it to the A7rii. Initial impression was the 15mm is a solid well made compact lens. It features a built-in hood and being an E-Mount lens you won't lose your exif data.
Sony A7Rii + Voigtlander SUPER WIDE-HELIAR 15mm F4.5 III - ISO 3200 1/500 - Inside the New York Public Library.
I was excited to get out and start shooting immediately. This lens is no speed demon at f/4.5 but that's not such a concern during daylight hours. Natural light and fast lenses are a big part of what defines my style, so this was a big change of pace for me. More recently a lot of my street shots have been made during the late night hours using low light.
Sony A7Rii + Voigtlander SUPER WIDE-HELIAR 15mm F4.5 III - ISO 8000 1/20 - Here is a perfect example of what you can do with 1/20 of a second and ISO 8000. Sure there is some motion and grain, but I love it!
A couple of years ago this lens wouldn't have been an option to be considered for any type of low light photography. It's still not the ideal lens for this type of work but with the amazing low light ability of the A7rii, shooting at higher ISO's doesn't look so bad. Combine that with the IBIS and you can shoot a night scene without much problem.
Sony A7Rii + Voigtlander SUPER WIDE-HELIAR 15mm F4.5 III ISO 6400 - 1/50 - Shooting at night in NYC hunting out light sources!
Being the 3rd version of this lens, Voigtlander really perfected the design of the SUPER WIDE-HELIAR. The first two versions were known to suffer from color shifts and heavy vignetting. When adapted to the Sony mirrorless cameras, significant corner smearing was also evident. This third version of the lens is now available in the traditional VM-Mount and E-mount. Using the E-mount version on my Sony improves on these issues in a big way.
Sony A7Rii + Voigtlander SUPER WIDE-HELIAR 15mm F4.5 III - ISO 3200 1/125 - The new terminal for the 7 line, Hudson Yards 34th Street.
Another welcomed feature that you get when using the E-mount version of this lens is the added value of focus peaking. Like the Loxia line of lenses, once you rotate the focus ring it kicks in. I also notice a focusing scale that I don't remember seeing previously.
Sony A7Rii + Voigtlander SUPER WIDE-HELIAR 15mm F4.5 III - ISO 3200 1/160 - One of the many interesting room inside the New York Public Library.
Shooting at 15mm is a whole new world to me, so much wider then the 21mm I Was using a couple weeks prior. I would call it somewhat of a specialty lens, but definitely nice to have in your bag of tricks. The distortion wasn't nearly as bad as I would have expected. The images posted in this review all had some degree of distortion correction in lightroom or photoshop. I'm running the latest versions and it's as simple as a click of a button.
Sony A7Rii + Voigtlander SUPER WIDE-HELIAR 15mm F4.5 III - ISO 3200 1/500 - A rare find, a completely empty NYC subway car!
I've heard people say this lens isn't sharp in the corners. It's possible that they received bad copies because I would say this lens was sharp across the board. In fact the details where quite impressive when viewing the images at home. My first day out shooting with this little 15mm was underwhelming after checking my results. It was a bit of a learning curve on how to approach shooting at this focal length. As the week went on the keepers started racking up.
Sony A7Rii + Voigtlander SUPER WIDE-HELIAR 15mm F4.5 III - ISO 3200 1/100 - Chinatown streets at night are always interesting to me. You can feel the whole scene with the 15mm!
You're not looking to do up-close portraits at 15mm. You're not going to be buying this lens for the bokeh. It's almost impossible to create any background blur at f/4.5 at this focal length. What you are looking for is detail and low distortion and manageable CA, and the Voigtlander comes through with these characteristics. I did notice the focus ring seemed to be slightly loose, possibly because the lens I was using was a demo.
Sony A7Rii + Voigtlander SUPER WIDE-HELIAR 15mm F4.5 III - ISO 3200 1/80 - A late night train ride. Love the lines in this one.
Looking back at the pictures I made with this lens over the course of 3 weeks, it doesn't look like my ISO was ever set lower then 1600. Even during the day you have to really boost the ISO to get a suitable shutter speed. I do wish the lens was faster but of course this would change the design of the lens.
Sony A7Rii + Voigtlander SUPER WIDE-HELIAR 15mm F4.5 III - ISO 6400 1/125 - Carnegie Hall in the background. Using the 15mm to create one of my classic street scenes.
If you're looking for a compact super-wide angle lens for your Sony, look no further! Just be sure that the slow speed of this lens won't interfere with your style of photography. If you're doing landscape or architectural work I wouldn't see it being a problem. If you find yourself in more lowlight situations or doing astrophotography this may not be the best option. In that case you may want to check out the Zeiss 15mm f/2.8. It is also three times as expensive and twice the size and weight. You would also need an adapter to use it on your Sony. It is safe to say the optics are better but you have to weigh your options.
Sony A7Rii + Voigtlander SUPER WIDE-HELIAR 15mm F4.5 III - ISO 3200 1/80 - At 15mm it's amazing how much of this iconic scene at Grand Central you can fit in to the frame.
In conclusion, after spending several weeks with the Voigtlander it began to grow on me. My results seemed to be getting better each day, I didn't want to give it back! It took some time adjusting to life at 15mm but it produced some beautiful shots in my opinion. I'll leave you with a couple more pictures. Hopefully they speak for themselves, enjoy...
Sony A7Rii + Voigtlander SUPER WIDE-HELIAR 15mm F4.5 III - ISO 1600 1/160 - You really need to push in close to get a shot like this!
Sony A7Rii + Voigtlander SUPER WIDE-HELIAR 15mm F4.5 III - ISO 3200 1/50 - I have been wanting to take a shot of this 24 hour car wash in the Bronx for a while.
Sony A7Rii + Voigtlander SUPER WIDE-HELIAR 15mm F4.5 III - ISO 6400 1/13 - This corner was way darker then it appears in this image. I used the slow shutter to my advantage and captured some motion and love the results. Yellow taxi's have given me endless inspiration over the years...
Special thanks to William Juseck and the good people over at Photo Village in NYC for lending me the lens. It was my first time visiting their showroom. If you're a Leica fan you should check them out. It's a beautiful place with a great selection of new and used gear, and they are an official distributor of Voigtlander lenses for North America.
See more from Andrew Mohrer at www.andrewmohrer.com
]]>Jackson, co-founder of the Bronx Documentary Center, published this analysis of the current state of professional photography at Creativz on May 6, 2016. As I wrote to Ms. Jackson in an email on May 9, "Pleased to see your confirmation of my ideas and rewrite of my 1978 and 1989 lectures ... Coincidentally, I'd begun posting those comments online at my blog, Photocritic International, on May 1 (May Day -- seemed fitting). ... Perhaps if people had listened to me back when you were just a wee tot we'd find ourselves in a different situation today. And while I'm charmed by your belated call for photographers to organize, I'm afraid -- for reasons spelled out in those lectures -- that's a pipe dream."
The serendipity mentioned above manifested itself in the fortuitous presence, as part of a prominent display arranged by my library's young staffers, of a cluster of photo books about life in New York today. These included Brandon Stanton's 2013 Humans of New York (St. Martin's Press, 2013); New York Non-Stop: A Photographic Album, "packaged" by Gabriela Kogan (Universe Publishing, 2015); and Project Lives: New York Public Housing Residents Photograph Their World, edited by George Carrano, Chelsea Davis, and Jonathan Fisher (powerHouse Books, 2015). Seeing in them a way of demonstrating, by example, the anachronistic naïveté of Jackson's proposals, I promptly checked them all out, took them home, and spent the next several weeks browsing them while considering their implications.
•
Among the buzzwords currently in circulation, you've certainly heard increasing use of disruption. Uber disrupts the traditional taxicab model. Airbnb disrupts the traditional hotel model. Amazon disrupts the traditional publishing and bookstore model. And so on. In place of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" we get "If it can be disrupted, it should be." All very exciting if you're one of the disrupters, with no investment in what you're transforming, but less enjoyable if you find yourself among the disrupted. The attitude of the former, who invariably use the term with approval, asserts forthrightly that disruption is inherently a good thing in every area, and that those who object automatically identify themselves as old and in the way -- Luddites, standing in the path of progress, which aims to roll right over them.
Uber, Airbnb, and Amazon deprofessionalized taxi driving, hotel management, and bookselling, respectively. The web, computers and word-processing programs, and digicams have deprofessionalized what nowadays gets called "content production," including the acts of writing, of photographing, and of publishing the results thereof. Consequently, those involved in these activities -- newcomers no less than older professionals -- cohabit a condition that has a new name: precarity. This identifies a precarious existence, lacking in predictability, job security, material or psychological welfare. The social class defined by this condition has been termed the precariat.
Welcome, then, to the precariat. And the books I mentioned above strike me as excellent examples of what photography made from within the precariat looks like.
Stanton's 2013 Humans of New York is, arguably, the single most successful current example of deprofessionalized photography. Stanton, a 32-year-old former bond trader in Chicago, had no professional experience in photography before he set out on his goal to photograph 10,000 New Yorkers and post the results online -- a simple cataloguing project. With his digital SLR he makes the same picture over and over again: a close-up portrait done wherever he comes across his subject in the street or else in their own living space, with the subject most commonly front and center, the face always in sharp focus.
There's no style involved, no personal way of seeing, just this ever-growing, taxonomic accumulation of faces, which breaks down into small, easily digestible bites, one person and a few paragraphs of prose in their own words. Inexplicably, the project has gone mega-viral -- celebrated worldwide, used to raise millions of dollars for worthy causes, 45 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list, some of that in the No. 1 slot.
New York Non-Stop: A Photographic Album contains 362 color images by 60 photographers, effectively crowd-sourced by graphic designer Gabriela Kogan. For it she drew on images -- many of them made with cellphones -- by friends and colleagues in the design field (plus a few of her own). Crowd-sourcing here thus means, more narrowly, images made by Kogan's own personal crowd; presumably, given the demographics of the graphic-design field, that's a white middle-class yuppie-bobo cohort of "creative professionals." She has augmented those with pictures obtained through Creative Commons. Safe to say that little money went into picture rights for this project. However, the images strike me as no worse than what I see in similar gatherings of work by professional photographers.
Project Lives: New York Public Housing Residents Photograph Their World gathers images made by residents of housing projects run by the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA). Almost by definition, these people know more about "precarity" than most Americans, certainly including Stanton and Kogan and her circle. Trained in a free 12-week program that eventually spanned 15 housing projects around the city, using disposable point-and-shoot cameras donated by Kodak, these volunteers show us what matters in their own lives that they want the world to see.
The cumulative result functions as an insider's document of project life, yet feels more like a family album, in part because the comparatively primitive cameras these picture-makers used limited the technical quality of their work. With that said, many of these pictures could slip into both Stanton's project and Kogan's. Which is to say that even a group of absolute beginners can generate images capable of standing alongside the work of other amateurs with better equipment and more grounding in visual communication, and that all of those can compete with trained, experienced professional photographers. These three handsomely designed and produced coffee-table books attest to that.
Add to this the facts that people are now asking their friends and families to create their wedding and confirmation and bat mitzvah photos, that companies use photos by their employees to illustrate their annual reports and images by their customers in their ads, that art directors and picture editors now crowdsource illustrations, that picture agencies either get gobbled up by Getty and Corbis or else fall by the wayside, and you have a working environment in which fewer and fewer photographers can make a living.
This will only get worse. My answer to Danielle Jackson's question -- can photographers restore their devastated business? -- is a regretful "No." As a writer who shares their fate, I bear sad tidings: Unless they, each and every one of them, can come up with a genius clickbait idea like Stanton's, they can consider themselves permanently disrupted.
]]>Jackson, co-founder of the Bronx Documentary Center, published this analysis of the current state of professional photography at Creativz on May 6, 2016. As I wrote to Ms. Jackson in an email on May 9, "Pleased to see your confirmation of my ideas and rewrite of my 1978 and 1989 lectures ... Coincidentally, I'd begun posting those comments online at my blog, Photocritic International, on May 1 (May Day -- seemed fitting). ... Perhaps if people had listened to me back when you were just a wee tot we'd find ourselves in a different situation today. And while I'm charmed by your belated call for photographers to organize, I'm afraid -- for reasons spelled out in those lectures -- that's a pipe dream."
The serendipity mentioned above manifested itself in the fortuitous presence, as part of a prominent display arranged by my library's young staffers, of a cluster of photo books about life in New York today. These included Brandon Stanton's 2013 Humans of New York (St. Martin's Press, 2013); New York Non-Stop: A Photographic Album, "packaged" by Gabriela Kogan (Universe Publishing, 2015); and Project Lives: New York Public Housing Residents Photograph Their World, edited by George Carrano, Chelsea Davis, and Jonathan Fisher (powerHouse Books, 2015). Seeing in them a way of demonstrating, by example, the anachronistic naïveté of Jackson's proposals, I promptly checked them all out, took them home, and spent the next several weeks browsing them while considering their implications.
•
Among the buzzwords currently in circulation, you've certainly heard increasing use of disruption. Uber disrupts the traditional taxicab model. Airbnb disrupts the traditional hotel model. Amazon disrupts the traditional publishing and bookstore model. And so on. In place of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" we get "If it can be disrupted, it should be." All very exciting if you're one of the disrupters, with no investment in what you're transforming, but less enjoyable if you find yourself among the disrupted. The attitude of the former, who invariably use the term with approval, asserts forthrightly that disruption is inherently a good thing in every area, and that those who object automatically identify themselves as old and in the way -- Luddites, standing in the path of progress, which aims to roll right over them.
Uber, Airbnb, and Amazon deprofessionalized taxi driving, hotel management, and bookselling, respectively. The web, computers and word-processing programs, and digicams have deprofessionalized what nowadays gets called "content production," including the acts of writing, of photographing, and of publishing the results thereof. Consequently, those involved in these activities -- newcomers no less than older professionals -- cohabit a condition that has a new name: precarity. This identifies a precarious existence, lacking in predictability, job security, material or psychological welfare. The social class defined by this condition has been termed the precariat.
Welcome, then, to the precariat. And the books I mentioned above strike me as excellent examples of what photography made from within the precariat looks like.
Stanton's 2013 Humans of New York is, arguably, the single most successful current example of deprofessionalized photography. Stanton, a 32-year-old former bond trader in Chicago, had no professional experience in photography before he set out on his goal to photograph 10,000 New Yorkers and post the results online -- a simple cataloguing project. With his digital SLR he makes the same picture over and over again: a close-up portrait done wherever he comes across his subject in the street or else in their own living space, with the subject most commonly front and center, the face always in sharp focus.
There's no style involved, no personal way of seeing, just this ever-growing, taxonomic accumulation of faces, which breaks down into small, easily digestible bites, one person and a few paragraphs of prose in their own words. Inexplicably, the project has gone mega-viral -- celebrated worldwide, used to raise millions of dollars for worthy causes, 45 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list, some of that in the No. 1 slot.
New York Non-Stop: A Photographic Album contains 362 color images by 60 photographers, effectively crowd-sourced by graphic designer Gabriela Kogan. For it she drew on images -- many of them made with cellphones -- by friends and colleagues in the design field (plus a few of her own). Crowd-sourcing here thus means, more narrowly, images made by Kogan's own personal crowd; presumably, given the demographics of the graphic-design field, that's a white middle-class yuppie-bobo cohort of "creative professionals." She has augmented those with pictures obtained through Creative Commons. Safe to say that little money went into picture rights for this project. However, the images strike me as no worse than what I see in similar gatherings of work by professional photographers.
Project Lives: New York Public Housing Residents Photograph Their World gathers images made by residents of housing projects run by the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA). Almost by definition, these people know more about "precarity" than most Americans, certainly including Stanton and Kogan and her circle. Trained in a free 12-week program that eventually spanned 15 housing projects around the city, using disposable point-and-shoot cameras donated by Kodak, these volunteers show us what matters in their own lives that they want the world to see.
The cumulative result functions as an insider's document of project life, yet feels more like a family album, in part because the comparatively primitive cameras these picture-makers used limited the technical quality of their work. With that said, many of these pictures could slip into both Stanton's project and Kogan's. Which is to say that even a group of absolute beginners can generate images capable of standing alongside the work of other amateurs with better equipment and more grounding in visual communication, and that all of those can compete with trained, experienced professional photographers. These three handsomely designed and produced coffee-table books attest to that.
Add to this the facts that people are now asking their friends and families to create their wedding and confirmation and bat mitzvah photos, that companies use photos by their employees to illustrate their annual reports and images by their customers in their ads, that art directors and picture editors now crowdsource illustrations, that picture agencies either get gobbled up by Getty and Corbis or else fall by the wayside, and you have a working environment in which fewer and fewer photographers can make a living.
This will only get worse. My answer to Danielle Jackson's question -- can photographers restore their devastated business? -- is a regretful "No." As a writer who shares their fate, I bear sad tidings: Unless they, each and every one of them, can come up with a genius clickbait idea like Stanton's, they can consider themselves permanently disrupted.
]]>And what better way to do so than to read what Nathan Lyons calls "the enabling documents" of the 1962 conference from which sprang the Society for Photographic Education (SPE), initially and for some years a professional society and now the largest organization of college-level photo students in the world? Or to watch Jessica S. McDonald -- then recently appointed the Nancy Inman and Marlene Nathan Meyerson Curator of Photography at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas -- deliver a keynote talk on that 1962 conference at the SPE Northeast Regional Conference 2012, followed by a panel with McDonald joined by Nathan Lyons and photographer-teacher Kenneth Josephson? Or both?
In addition to Lyons, who called that first conference at George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, and Josephson, the conferees in 1962 included Clarence White, Jr., Aaron Siskind, John Wood, Jerry Uelsmann, Henry Holmes Smith, Walter Rosenblum, and a bunch of others, most of whose names anyone familiar with mid-20th century photography will find familiar. Lyons has gathered those documents together, and the Visual Studies Workshop has made them available in SPE: The Formative Years (Rochester: VSW/SPE, 2012; $20, ISBN: 978-0898221428), a slender softcover volume that should prove of interest to anyone seriously involved in or otherwise concerned with photo education. (To order a copy go to the VSW website.)
Because this book comprises formal documents -- papers submitted in advance to the conference, reports summarizing the group's responses thereto, steering committee proposals for future action, and such -- the book has a somewhat formal tone. (Photos of the event, shown in McDonald's accompanying slides, show the participants dressed in jackets and ties, befitting what they saw as the occasion -- or maybe they had a dress code back then.) But not by any means pedantic. Though they had all grounded themselves in the history of photography (as it was then understood), and such related disciplines as visual communication, media theory, and perceptual psychology, these pioneers -- most of them teaching artists -- wore that learning lightly, writing (and, presumably, speaking) colloquially, with a minimum of anything resembling jargon or shoptalk.
McDonald's presentation (45 minutes), and the dialogue that she engaged in with Lyons and Josephson immediately thereafter (1 hour), prove equally accessible, adding details and filling in a number of gaps. If you prefer your input in oral/aural form, these provide a basic introduction to the subject. (She also reveals that audiotapes of all the 1962 conference sessions survive in the GEH archive.)
In their pedagogical relation to the medium the conferees all had interdisciplinary yearnings, though perhaps insufficient experience with the territorial imperatives of academe to recognize the futility of attempting long-term multi-departmental collaboration. (In 1969 Lyons would leave GEH to found VSW, in part for that reason.) Yet their vision of teaching photography as not only a craft, and one with a capacity for the poetic, but as a complex communication system with immeasurable power in culture and connections to just about every field of thought, did eventually materialize in some form within the photo-ed system as we know it today -- perhaps this cohort's most enduring legacy, above and beyond the specific academic programs they founded or expanded.
Reading through this collection of individual and group statements, it becomes clear that SPE's founders saw SPE as a professional organization. Membership beyond the initial invitees required recommendation by other members. No students participated in the first conference; this gathering emerged from a felt need on the parts of post-secondary photo teachers -- at that time a small cluster of stalwarts, most of them marginalized within their institutions -- for intimate, intense dialogue with their colleagues.
None of them expressed concern over the absence of students from their sessions. Certainly they could not have imagined that, half a century later, photo faculty at colleges, universities, and art institutes throughout North America would have contractual obligations to chaperone gaggles of students through the national conferences of an organization the majority of whose membership would consist of students. I suspect they find it disheartening to know that, for all their efforts to create one, no organization today enables teachers of photography to meet and talk with each other without crowds of students around.
In the half-century of its existence SPE transformed itself from its original form as an unofficial, photo-specific splinter division of the College Art Association into something akin to photography's equivalent of the Audubon Society: $20 plus an interest in birds gets you in -- and they'll waive the interest in birds. Speaking as one who maintained SPE membership for many years, functioned as a goad within it, served on the organization's board of directors, chaired one of its committees, received a lifetime achievement award from it, and wrote about it frequently, I consider its current state a devolution. (The vast majority of its current members disagree -- or, even if they agree, either don't care or actually approve.)
It will require another, much longer book to track just how SPE got from where it started to where it is today. The book at hand, by design, annotates only its origins. Yet it asks, implicitly, what would have happened if the founders had not opened the doors to student membership circa 1968 but instead had hewed closely to their original vision of SPE as a support system for photo teachers and others with an educational relationship to the medium: curators, conservators, historians, critics, theorists. If someone started such an organization today, would it find a constituency to serve?
Lyons has thoughtfully included useful appendices, such as an early membership survey and a 1966 membership list. My only complaint about the book concerns the inept proofreading it received. The frequent typographic errors scattered throughout make it hard to know whether its editor replicated mistakes present in the original materials (for the sake of historical accuracy) or simply couldn't bother to clean up the texts once digitized.
The book does solve an enduring mystery that has long puzzled me: Where did the ungrammaticism embedded in the term "photographic education" come from?
The standard definitions explain the use of the adjective photographic thus:
1. Of, relating to, or consisting of photography or a photograph.
2. Used in photography: a photographic lens.
3. Resembling a photograph, especially representing or simulating something with great accuracy and fidelity of detail.
4. Capable of retaining accurate or vivid impressions: a photographic memory.
No matter how hard and long you study photography and how well you do in your courses, even graduating cum laude will not make your education light-sensitive. When you get a degree as a teacher of art or music, your degree is in "art education" or "music education," not "artistic education" or "musical education." In these situations we specify the discipline by using a second noun (art, music, photography) to modify and particularize the more general noun (education).
The fact that our ears have become habituated to this awkward locution simply shows us how careless usage, when allowed to go unchecked, seeps in and degrades the language. To be resisted as much as possible, by my lights, even when that means pissing in the wind by going against the familiar but mistaken usage. Because he started all this, and variants of that usage (including "photographic educators" and "photographic instruction") appear in his introduction to this volume as well as on its back cover, I feel confident in attributing this to none other than Lyons himself. Now we're stuck with it, just as we're stuck with SPE in its current incarnation.
]]>And what better way to do so than to read what Nathan Lyons calls "the enabling documents" of the 1962 conference from which sprang the Society for Photographic Education (SPE), initially and for some years a professional society and now the largest organization of college-level photo students in the world? Or to watch Jessica S. McDonald -- then recently appointed the Nancy Inman and Marlene Nathan Meyerson Curator of Photography at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas -- deliver a keynote talk on that 1962 conference at the SPE Northeast Regional Conference 2012, followed by a panel with McDonald joined by Nathan Lyons and photographer-teacher Kenneth Josephson? Or both?
In addition to Lyons, who called that first conference at George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, and Josephson, the conferees in 1962 included Clarence White, Jr., Aaron Siskind, John Wood, Jerry Uelsmann, Henry Holmes Smith, Walter Rosenblum, and a bunch of others, most of whose names anyone familiar with mid-20th century photography will find familiar. Lyons has gathered those documents together, and the Visual Studies Workshop has made them available in SPE: The Formative Years (Rochester: VSW/SPE, 2012; $20, ISBN: 978-0898221428), a slender softcover volume that should prove of interest to anyone seriously involved in or otherwise concerned with photo education. (To order a copy go to the VSW website.)
Because this book comprises formal documents -- papers submitted in advance to the conference, reports summarizing the group's responses thereto, steering committee proposals for future action, and such -- the book has a somewhat formal tone. (Photos of the event, shown in McDonald's accompanying slides, show the participants dressed in jackets and ties, befitting what they saw as the occasion -- or maybe they had a dress code back then.) But not by any means pedantic. Though they had all grounded themselves in the history of photography (as it was then understood), and such related disciplines as visual communication, media theory, and perceptual psychology, these pioneers -- most of them teaching artists -- wore that learning lightly, writing (and, presumably, speaking) colloquially, with a minimum of anything resembling jargon or shoptalk.
McDonald's presentation (45 minutes), and the dialogue that she engaged in with Lyons and Josephson immediately thereafter (1 hour), prove equally accessible, adding details and filling in a number of gaps. If you prefer your input in oral/aural form, these provide a basic introduction to the subject. (She also reveals that audiotapes of all the 1962 conference sessions survive in the GEH archive.)
In their pedagogical relation to the medium the conferees all had interdisciplinary yearnings, though perhaps insufficient experience with the territorial imperatives of academe to recognize the futility of attempting long-term multi-departmental collaboration. (In 1969 Lyons would leave GEH to found VSW, in part for that reason.) Yet their vision of teaching photography as not only a craft, and one with a capacity for the poetic, but as a complex communication system with immeasurable power in culture and connections to just about every field of thought, did eventually materialize in some form within the photo-ed system as we know it today -- perhaps this cohort's most enduring legacy, above and beyond the specific academic programs they founded or expanded.
Reading through this collection of individual and group statements, it becomes clear that SPE's founders saw SPE as a professional organization. Membership beyond the initial invitees required recommendation by other members. No students participated in the first conference; this gathering emerged from a felt need on the parts of post-secondary photo teachers -- at that time a small cluster of stalwarts, most of them marginalized within their institutions -- for intimate, intense dialogue with their colleagues.
None of them expressed concern over the absence of students from their sessions. Certainly they could not have imagined that, half a century later, photo faculty at colleges, universities, and art institutes throughout North America would have contractual obligations to chaperone gaggles of students through the national conferences of an organization the majority of whose membership would consist of students. I suspect they find it disheartening to know that, for all their efforts to create one, no organization today enables teachers of photography to meet and talk with each other without crowds of students around.
In the half-century of its existence SPE transformed itself from its original form as an unofficial, photo-specific splinter division of the College Art Association into something akin to photography's equivalent of the Audubon Society: $20 plus an interest in birds gets you in -- and they'll waive the interest in birds. Speaking as one who maintained SPE membership for many years, functioned as a goad within it, served on the organization's board of directors, chaired one of its committees, received a lifetime achievement award from it, and wrote about it frequently, I consider its current state a devolution. (The vast majority of its current members disagree -- or, even if they agree, either don't care or actually approve.)
It will require another, much longer book to track just how SPE got from where it started to where it is today. The book at hand, by design, annotates only its origins. Yet it asks, implicitly, what would have happened if the founders had not opened the doors to student membership circa 1968 but instead had hewed closely to their original vision of SPE as a support system for photo teachers and others with an educational relationship to the medium: curators, conservators, historians, critics, theorists. If someone started such an organization today, would it find a constituency to serve?
Lyons has thoughtfully included useful appendices, such as an early membership survey and a 1966 membership list. My only complaint about the book concerns the inept proofreading it received. The frequent typographic errors scattered throughout make it hard to know whether its editor replicated mistakes present in the original materials (for the sake of historical accuracy) or simply couldn't bother to clean up the texts once digitized.
The book does solve an enduring mystery that has long puzzled me: Where did the ungrammaticism embedded in the term "photographic education" come from?
The standard definitions explain the use of the adjective photographic thus:
1. Of, relating to, or consisting of photography or a photograph.
2. Used in photography: a photographic lens.
3. Resembling a photograph, especially representing or simulating something with great accuracy and fidelity of detail.
4. Capable of retaining accurate or vivid impressions: a photographic memory.
No matter how hard and long you study photography and how well you do in your courses, even graduating cum laude will not make your education light-sensitive. When you get a degree as a teacher of art or music, your degree is in "art education" or "music education," not "artistic education" or "musical education." In these situations we specify the discipline by using a second noun (art, music, photography) to modify and particularize the more general noun (education).
The fact that our ears have become habituated to this awkward locution simply shows us how careless usage, when allowed to go unchecked, seeps in and degrades the language. To be resisted as much as possible, by my lights, even when that means pissing in the wind by going against the familiar but mistaken usage. Because he started all this, and variants of that usage (including "photographic educators" and "photographic instruction") appear in his introduction to this volume as well as on its back cover, I feel confident in attributing this to none other than Lyons himself. Now we're stuck with it, just as we're stuck with SPE in its current incarnation.
]]>
My family roots back to Europe, but I was born in Israel. I was born two year after my family migrated to Israel due to anti-Semitic attacks on my brother’s Hebrew school. I was a child on a fence; a daughter to a migrating family. The house within culturally stayed European but outside was the Israeli controversial culture. I always felt a misfit with my partial incomplete identity; torn apart between parents who have never blended in to the Israeli culture I felt only half belonged too.
Over the years I have heard of my parent’s memories and stories. I remember hearing of snow, youth and happiness. Stories of happier days. The stories held on to the memories of times that I wasn’t a part of, and portraits of family members that always remained anonymous to me and their faces where no more distinct than any other person in generic photo album. These stories were supposed to be my heritage.
Family albums had become a standard in a process of portraying a family and the creation of a collective memory. Things as a birthday cake, children taking a bath or a family trip have become a portrait of the normal memory. Sometimes we don’t even remember the occasion but we can relive it by looking at the picture and assuming we remember the memory it represents. Both my family albums and the generic family albums are fascinating to me. As I grew up I’ve started to question photography’s function as my memory, as my family heritage. I cannot find much of a different between the histories found in my own family album to any other family album.
I started to look for my identity not only in the old photos but reflect my feeling from these photos on to the world around me. I look for Moments and objects were there is a tension that is created by their incomplete aesthetic. Photography allows me to look at the little and unimportant objects around me and make them a part of my history just by giving them attention. By looking at them I capture them to remember, not letting them go away, yet not trying to save them. Watching their last seconds before I leave and the moment becomes irrelevant, capturing their last breath. With my camera I grant them with eternity and in that I grant myself a memory.
For more works and information, visit danastirling1.wix.com
]]>
My family roots back to Europe, but I was born in Israel. I was born two year after my family migrated to Israel due to anti-Semitic attacks on my brother’s Hebrew school. I was a child on a fence; a daughter to a migrating family. The house within culturally stayed European but outside was the Israeli controversial culture. I always felt a misfit with my partial incomplete identity; torn apart between parents who have never blended in to the Israeli culture I felt only half belonged too.
Over the years I have heard of my parent’s memories and stories. I remember hearing of snow, youth and happiness. Stories of happier days. The stories held on to the memories of times that I wasn’t a part of, and portraits of family members that always remained anonymous to me and their faces where no more distinct than any other person in generic photo album. These stories were supposed to be my heritage.
Family albums had become a standard in a process of portraying a family and the creation of a collective memory. Things as a birthday cake, children taking a bath or a family trip have become a portrait of the normal memory. Sometimes we don’t even remember the occasion but we can relive it by looking at the picture and assuming we remember the memory it represents. Both my family albums and the generic family albums are fascinating to me. As I grew up I’ve started to question photography’s function as my memory, as my family heritage. I cannot find much of a different between the histories found in my own family album to any other family album.
I started to look for my identity not only in the old photos but reflect my feeling from these photos on to the world around me. I look for Moments and objects were there is a tension that is created by their incomplete aesthetic. Photography allows me to look at the little and unimportant objects around me and make them a part of my history just by giving them attention. By looking at them I capture them to remember, not letting them go away, yet not trying to save them. Watching their last seconds before I leave and the moment becomes irrelevant, capturing their last breath. With my camera I grant them with eternity and in that I grant myself a memory.
For more works and information, visit danastirling1.wix.com
]]>In juxtaposition to my artistic practice, I have a medical background as an ophthalmic photographer. This involves performing diagnostic tests that document the blood flow through the retinal vessels in the eye. In my series Florafaunal Angiography I transmute these sterile medical images into a context outside of diagnosing disease. Through compositing the internal sensory anatomy of the eye into the external visual perception of the world, pathologies become a part of the living imagery of flora and fauna. The two forms interweave and unify the anatomical and aesthetic experiences of sight as well as the contrasting photographic processes, creating a new spatial relationship.
Dayna Desireé Bartoli (1987) is an artist from Arizona who works in various mediums including photography, bookmaking, and mixed media objects. She graduated from Arizona State University in 2010 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in photography, and received a Master of Fine Arts in 2015 from the Trondheim Academy of Fine Art in Norway. Many of Bartoli’s projects are driven by a fascination with natural phenomena and the language of medical and scientific representation. Bartoli has participated in exhibitions in Europe and the United States. Her photographs have been published in Harper’s magazine (July 2013) and she was named one of Lens Culture’s “21 New and Emerging Photographers” of 2013.
For more works and information, visit daynabartoli.com
Submit a Photo ProjectIn juxtaposition to my artistic practice, I have a medical background as an ophthalmic photographer. This involves performing diagnostic tests that document the blood flow through the retinal vessels in the eye. In my series Florafaunal Angiography I transmute these sterile medical images into a context outside of diagnosing disease. Through compositing the internal sensory anatomy of the eye into the external visual perception of the world, pathologies become a part of the living imagery of flora and fauna. The two forms interweave and unify the anatomical and aesthetic experiences of sight as well as the contrasting photographic processes, creating a new spatial relationship.
Dayna Desireé Bartoli (1987) is an artist from Arizona who works in various mediums including photography, bookmaking, and mixed media objects. She graduated from Arizona State University in 2010 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in photography, and received a Master of Fine Arts in 2015 from the Trondheim Academy of Fine Art in Norway. Many of Bartoli’s projects are driven by a fascination with natural phenomena and the language of medical and scientific representation. Bartoli has participated in exhibitions in Europe and the United States. Her photographs have been published in Harper’s magazine (July 2013) and she was named one of Lens Culture’s “21 New and Emerging Photographers” of 2013.
For more works and information, visit daynabartoli.com
Submit a Photo ProjectCourtesy of Caitlin Boroden
In our digital world, social media is increasingly becoming one of the top ways to get eyes on your artwork. Likes, follows, and comments have become the new economy as our screen time continues to increase (and our addiction to it). We’ve come to a point where social media can not be ignored.
As a Digital Marketing Strategist, most of my week days (and let’s admit it - weekends) are spent on the good old world wide web. It’s my go to - not just for work or research - but also entertainment. It’s my news source and it’s my way of staying connected with the latest trends. It’s where I do my reading. It’s where I gain inspiration. It’s kind of taken over but it has its advantages.
Whether it’s passively browsing through Instagram or seeking camera advice from a trusted blog I’m becoming exposed to a whole world of photographers that I never would have seen without the web. What tends to be my top sources? Social media.
Let’s face it, we’ve all come to rely on social media to connect us to the greater world. Because of this, social media has become one of the top ways to get eyes on your artwork. In 2015, 76% of all internet users use at least one social networking site. That’s a lot of potential! For this reason, I wanted to share my top 5 social media tips.
First off, choose a platform you actually enjoy. Is it Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr? One of them? Two? The fact is - if you enjoy the platform you are bound to be more active on it. Keeping up to date will not seem like a chore but an exciting opportunity each day to check into a community that shares your passion.
Personally, I enjoy Reddit. Reddit doesn’t have your typical likes and follows. However, what they do have is a plentitude of subreddits (think of these as categories of interest) each with a diehard community surrounding them. Tap into these communities for critique, advice, questions, concerns, inspiration, and more.
Here’s a sneak peek at just a few of them:
Overall, when choosing your platform(s) remember that you do not have to be everywhere. You are better off having a strong focus on one or two platforms instead of spreading yourself thin on every new and old social media network out there.
Courtesy of Caitlin Boroden
Like, follow, and engage with other photographers. If something catches your eye - leave a nice comment. This ‘social love,’ as we call it, is bound to help you build relationships and gain you followers.
There are plenty of options here. Why not:
This social love will pay off as photographers begin to return the favor. Soon enough you’ll have a wealth of photographers to turn to. You never know what future opportunities these connections could present.
Courtesy of Caitlin Boroden
Each platform has a community just waiting for you to get involved in. Facebook has Facebook Groups, Twitter has dedicated communities surrounding TwitterChats (shout out to #photochat), Instagram has active hashtags that might be of interest, Flickr has photo share and discussion groups, and Reddit, as I mentioned above, has subreddits. The options are endless.
In the beginning, test the waters by trying out a few different communities. Slowly, it will become clear, what community is right for you. From there, stick to it and make a name for yourself within that community.
The objective here is to avoid simply broadcasting. Don’t get me wrong, broadcasting is important. Share your exciting news to your community.
However, as much as viewers want to see your work, they want to get to know the photographer behind them. Share your tips and tricks. Get a conversation going with a question. Perhaps show your photographic process instead of just the final outcome. Behind the scenes shot are always intriguing to see!
Maintain a balanced mix and you will be sure to get engagement.
Lastly, the trickiest part in our very busy lives, is to be consistent. Things come up. It’s bound to happen. But, try your best to consistently update and be involved in your community. You’ll stay top of mind to your fans and build relationships even easier.
The best part is, if you follow the advice above, you’ll actually want to be consistent. You’ll be fully invested in the process. You’ll want to talk to your community. You’ll want to check in with others. As cliche as it might sound, the opportunities are endless. Have fun with the process and get on your way. A community is calling to you - go out and find it!
Courtesy of Caitlin Boroden
Caitlin Boroden is a Digital Marketing Strategist at DragonSearch in the beautiful Hudson Valley. She is fascinated by SEO, photography, and has a slight addiction to Reddit. With a background in photography, she leaps at any chance to talk about the subject. You can find her chatting away on Reddit and Twitter. Feel free to reach out!
]]>Courtesy of Caitlin Boroden
In our digital world, social media is increasingly becoming one of the top ways to get eyes on your artwork. Likes, follows, and comments have become the new economy as our screen time continues to increase (and our addiction to it). We’ve come to a point where social media can not be ignored.
As a Digital Marketing Strategist, most of my week days (and let’s admit it - weekends) are spent on the good old world wide web. It’s my go to - not just for work or research - but also entertainment. It’s my news source and it’s my way of staying connected with the latest trends. It’s where I do my reading. It’s where I gain inspiration. It’s kind of taken over but it has its advantages.
Whether it’s passively browsing through Instagram or seeking camera advice from a trusted blog I’m becoming exposed to a whole world of photographers that I never would have seen without the web. What tends to be my top sources? Social media.
Let’s face it, we’ve all come to rely on social media to connect us to the greater world. Because of this, social media has become one of the top ways to get eyes on your artwork. In 2015, 76% of all internet users use at least one social networking site. That’s a lot of potential! For this reason, I wanted to share my top 5 social media tips.
First off, choose a platform you actually enjoy. Is it Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr? One of them? Two? The fact is - if you enjoy the platform you are bound to be more active on it. Keeping up to date will not seem like a chore but an exciting opportunity each day to check into a community that shares your passion.
Personally, I enjoy Reddit. Reddit doesn’t have your typical likes and follows. However, what they do have is a plentitude of subreddits (think of these as categories of interest) each with a diehard community surrounding them. Tap into these communities for critique, advice, questions, concerns, inspiration, and more.
Here’s a sneak peek at just a few of them:
Overall, when choosing your platform(s) remember that you do not have to be everywhere. You are better off having a strong focus on one or two platforms instead of spreading yourself thin on every new and old social media network out there.
Courtesy of Caitlin Boroden
Like, follow, and engage with other photographers. If something catches your eye - leave a nice comment. This ‘social love,’ as we call it, is bound to help you build relationships and gain you followers.
There are plenty of options here. Why not:
This social love will pay off as photographers begin to return the favor. Soon enough you’ll have a wealth of photographers to turn to. You never know what future opportunities these connections could present.
Courtesy of Caitlin Boroden
Each platform has a community just waiting for you to get involved in. Facebook has Facebook Groups, Twitter has dedicated communities surrounding TwitterChats (shout out to #photochat), Instagram has active hashtags that might be of interest, Flickr has photo share and discussion groups, and Reddit, as I mentioned above, has subreddits. The options are endless.
In the beginning, test the waters by trying out a few different communities. Slowly, it will become clear, what community is right for you. From there, stick to it and make a name for yourself within that community.
The objective here is to avoid simply broadcasting. Don’t get me wrong, broadcasting is important. Share your exciting news to your community.
However, as much as viewers want to see your work, they want to get to know the photographer behind them. Share your tips and tricks. Get a conversation going with a question. Perhaps show your photographic process instead of just the final outcome. Behind the scenes shot are always intriguing to see!
Maintain a balanced mix and you will be sure to get engagement.
Lastly, the trickiest part in our very busy lives, is to be consistent. Things come up. It’s bound to happen. But, try your best to consistently update and be involved in your community. You’ll stay top of mind to your fans and build relationships even easier.
The best part is, if you follow the advice above, you’ll actually want to be consistent. You’ll be fully invested in the process. You’ll want to talk to your community. You’ll want to check in with others. As cliche as it might sound, the opportunities are endless. Have fun with the process and get on your way. A community is calling to you - go out and find it!
Courtesy of Caitlin Boroden
Caitlin Boroden is a Digital Marketing Strategist at DragonSearch in the beautiful Hudson Valley. She is fascinated by SEO, photography, and has a slight addiction to Reddit. With a background in photography, she leaps at any chance to talk about the subject. You can find her chatting away on Reddit and Twitter. Feel free to reach out!
]]>The Procession of Spectres engages with vast landscapes to examine the fragmentary nature of the human condition and the emergence of self.
“This body of work represents a step from behind the veil of ideas and techniques to find earnest revelations of my struggle to be whole with my fragmented sense of self.”, explains the artist, Ville Kansanen. It is a reach for connectivity with humanity and a reconciliation with the kind of isolation, which is necessary for creating work where one is exposing, what Kansanen refers to as ‘inscape’* and physical form to as little interference as possible. Psychologically the images represent the human experience of individuality in-flux and consciousness ever-changing in procession.
*Inscape is a concept derived by Gerard Manley Hopkins from the ideas of the medieval philosopher Duns Scotus. Hopkins felt that everything in the universe was characterized by what he called inscape, the distinctive design that constitutes individual identity. This identity is not static but dynamic. For surrealist painter Roberto Matta, it was a psychological space: "thepsychoanalytic view of the mind as a three-dimensional space: the 'inscape'."
Submit a Photo Project]]>The Procession of Spectres engages with vast landscapes to examine the fragmentary nature of the human condition and the emergence of self.
“This body of work represents a step from behind the veil of ideas and techniques to find earnest revelations of my struggle to be whole with my fragmented sense of self.”, explains the artist, Ville Kansanen. It is a reach for connectivity with humanity and a reconciliation with the kind of isolation, which is necessary for creating work where one is exposing, what Kansanen refers to as ‘inscape’* and physical form to as little interference as possible. Psychologically the images represent the human experience of individuality in-flux and consciousness ever-changing in procession.
*Inscape is a concept derived by Gerard Manley Hopkins from the ideas of the medieval philosopher Duns Scotus. Hopkins felt that everything in the universe was characterized by what he called inscape, the distinctive design that constitutes individual identity. This identity is not static but dynamic. For surrealist painter Roberto Matta, it was a psychological space: "thepsychoanalytic view of the mind as a three-dimensional space: the 'inscape'."
Submit a Photo Project]]>Not long ago I had an awakening. The way I see the world was forever changed, colored by mysticism and wonder. I stand in awe of the profound beauty of the universe. There are moments now when I escape away into my own cosmos, where I am ruled by the same stars and signs which also fascinated the ancient Greeks and Romans. A Season in Private Mythology are glimpses into my realms of experience, illusions of emotion and sensuality constructed by the temporal world as I pass through it.
Katherine Phipps is an artist and photographer currently residing in Brooklyn, New York. Katherine graduated from Pratt Institute with a BFA in Photography in 2015. In addition to working on expanding her commercial portfolio, she continues to work on her current project, Private Mythology. Also an aspiring yoga teacher, she is interested in all kinds of spiritual practice, literature, philosophy, nature, found objects, and social change.
Katherine is available for commission shoots of all kinds, assistantships, collaborations, retouching services, and design projects. See more at www.katherinephipps.com.
]]>Not long ago I had an awakening. The way I see the world was forever changed, colored by mysticism and wonder. I stand in awe of the profound beauty of the universe. There are moments now when I escape away into my own cosmos, where I am ruled by the same stars and signs which also fascinated the ancient Greeks and Romans. A Season in Private Mythology are glimpses into my realms of experience, illusions of emotion and sensuality constructed by the temporal world as I pass through it.
Katherine Phipps is an artist and photographer currently residing in Brooklyn, New York. Katherine graduated from Pratt Institute with a BFA in Photography in 2015. In addition to working on expanding her commercial portfolio, she continues to work on her current project, Private Mythology. Also an aspiring yoga teacher, she is interested in all kinds of spiritual practice, literature, philosophy, nature, found objects, and social change.
Katherine is available for commission shoots of all kinds, assistantships, collaborations, retouching services, and design projects. See more at www.katherinephipps.com.
]]>After 14 years and 78,000 miles my car—a green Volkswagen Beetle—is still cute despite worn seats and pitted exterior. I don’t blame her for breaking down once in a while. Really, I don’t. You see, I’m a sentimental person. We have bonded and mostly I like to think of her as vintage rather than old. It makes me feel better about our relationship.
Over the years, many mechanics have serviced the car. Kal, our current mechanic, has a way of giving me bad news without making me feel bad. His manner and his expertise inspired me to create the pictures
featured in Wizard. Kal is a lot like the Wizard from the Wizard of Oz story and I am perhaps a bit like Dorothy in the story. I bring my broken down car for repair and he fixes the car and sends us on our way. Dorothy, of course, sends herself home with the Ruby Slippers and eventually I will find my way to a new car. But for now I am thankful the Wizard is here keeping my car and me together.
Kal allowed me to photograph his shop during working hours, giving me access to premises, people, and auto parts. This book is a portrait of Kal’s car repair shop loosely based on the Wizard of Oz story enhanced with my own creative inspirations.
Christine Anderson is born 1964 New Jersey - United States.
Received her BFA in Fine Arts from Long Island – Southampton in 1986. Professionally she is a Designer/Art Director. She is now concentrating on her work as a Fine Arts Photographer. Currently she is working and living in New Jersey. Her work has been shown in Europe and the United States. Her work has been featured in Vogue Italia and othe publications. She has recently published a book of her current project WIZARD.
Follow Christine at
http://www.christineandersonphoto.com
]]>
After 14 years and 78,000 miles my car—a green Volkswagen Beetle—is still cute despite worn seats and pitted exterior. I don’t blame her for breaking down once in a while. Really, I don’t. You see, I’m a sentimental person. We have bonded and mostly I like to think of her as vintage rather than old. It makes me feel better about our relationship.
Over the years, many mechanics have serviced the car. Kal, our current mechanic, has a way of giving me bad news without making me feel bad. His manner and his expertise inspired me to create the pictures
featured in Wizard. Kal is a lot like the Wizard from the Wizard of Oz story and I am perhaps a bit like Dorothy in the story. I bring my broken down car for repair and he fixes the car and sends us on our way. Dorothy, of course, sends herself home with the Ruby Slippers and eventually I will find my way to a new car. But for now I am thankful the Wizard is here keeping my car and me together.
Kal allowed me to photograph his shop during working hours, giving me access to premises, people, and auto parts. This book is a portrait of Kal’s car repair shop loosely based on the Wizard of Oz story enhanced with my own creative inspirations.
Christine Anderson is born 1964 New Jersey - United States.
Received her BFA in Fine Arts from Long Island – Southampton in 1986. Professionally she is a Designer/Art Director. She is now concentrating on her work as a Fine Arts Photographer. Currently she is working and living in New Jersey. Her work has been shown in Europe and the United States. Her work has been featured in Vogue Italia and othe publications. She has recently published a book of her current project WIZARD.
Follow Christine at
http://www.christineandersonphoto.com
]]>
When I first started playing around with vintage cameras, I wasn’t sure what kind of film to order, and just for fun, ordered a roll of Rollei Crossbird, without really knowing what it was. It turns out this is slide film – i.e. “positive” or “color reversal” film you would use for old-fashioned slides, rather than “negative” film commonly used in film photography. It’s called “crossbird” because of the popularity of using slide film in “cross processing”. Slide film is commonly processed using the E-6 process, in all its variants; while negative film is processed using the C-41 process. “Cross processing” is taking one type of film and applying the other film process to develop it. This can either involve processing slide film using the C-41 process, or negative film using the E-6 process – with the former being more popular.
Why cross process? Doesn’t this ruin the photos? Well, it seems that cross processing results in unpredictable color shifts that people find pleasing and/or interesting. Nowadays, it seems that the people who continue to insist on using film photography tend to be an experimental bunch – there’s a lot of, “I wonder what would happen if…”
So I put this one roll of 127 film into an old camera – a 1940-ish Agfa A8 Cadet, pictured below:
It’s a tiny little thing, about 2/3 the size (in all dimensions) of the usual box cameras of this era, with an f/11 aperture and a shutter speed of about 1/40 of a second, with a small tab you can pull to keep the shutter open for timed exposures. I walked around Windhoek for an hour or so and only sent the film in eons later.
Out of the eight shots, only one was really any good, in my opinion. I have since tried developing a few rolls of “found” slide film in C-41 chemicals (now that I have figured out how to do this myself) and have come up with zilch.
It turns out that this particular roll may have been one of the last Rollei Crossbird rolls produced – everywhere I look appears to be out of stock, and Rollei itself does not appear to sell the film. But ultimately it’s just slide film – but larger, of course. I have a couple of rolls of 35mm slide film I may try this with in the future as well. But for now, I honestly fail to see what the fuss is all about!
See more reviews from Tom HERE
]]>When I first started playing around with vintage cameras, I wasn’t sure what kind of film to order, and just for fun, ordered a roll of Rollei Crossbird, without really knowing what it was. It turns out this is slide film – i.e. “positive” or “color reversal” film you would use for old-fashioned slides, rather than “negative” film commonly used in film photography. It’s called “crossbird” because of the popularity of using slide film in “cross processing”. Slide film is commonly processed using the E-6 process, in all its variants; while negative film is processed using the C-41 process. “Cross processing” is taking one type of film and applying the other film process to develop it. This can either involve processing slide film using the C-41 process, or negative film using the E-6 process – with the former being more popular.
Why cross process? Doesn’t this ruin the photos? Well, it seems that cross processing results in unpredictable color shifts that people find pleasing and/or interesting. Nowadays, it seems that the people who continue to insist on using film photography tend to be an experimental bunch – there’s a lot of, “I wonder what would happen if…”
So I put this one roll of 127 film into an old camera – a 1940-ish Agfa A8 Cadet, pictured below:
It’s a tiny little thing, about 2/3 the size (in all dimensions) of the usual box cameras of this era, with an f/11 aperture and a shutter speed of about 1/40 of a second, with a small tab you can pull to keep the shutter open for timed exposures. I walked around Windhoek for an hour or so and only sent the film in eons later.
Out of the eight shots, only one was really any good, in my opinion. I have since tried developing a few rolls of “found” slide film in C-41 chemicals (now that I have figured out how to do this myself) and have come up with zilch.
It turns out that this particular roll may have been one of the last Rollei Crossbird rolls produced – everywhere I look appears to be out of stock, and Rollei itself does not appear to sell the film. But ultimately it’s just slide film – but larger, of course. I have a couple of rolls of 35mm slide film I may try this with in the future as well. But for now, I honestly fail to see what the fuss is all about!
See more reviews from Tom HERE
]]>I photographed in an attempt to glimpse the mystery in life hiding in plain sight. In the blink of an eye, two separate events, with no apparent or planned connection, randomly fused together by the colors and open up an abstract space. Like synesthesia, a neurological term for the mix of senses, the extra embedded sense broadens the experience of my humdrum daily life. The quest of searching the unseen has become a meditative monologue beyond a decisive moment.
Using coincidence as a tool, I build up blindly overlapping images by rewinding
the negative after the entire film is exposed, instead of using a traditional double-exposure setting. Without a plan or script, I simply observe life around me, recording images of the seemingly mundane. Through an entangled web of intended actions and unintended occurrences, two different, unrelated images randomly merge into one.
This methodology creates a theatrical encounter, playing in the present and using the moment. The end result cannot be foreseen, as life has mysteries, thereby a limit to calculation, to plan or to control. When the seen and unseen meet – and strangeness and beauty intertwine – I am presented with the infinite possibilities of coincidence and witness the familiar events transform into enigmatic.
You can see more of Wen at www.wensview.com
I photographed in an attempt to glimpse the mystery in life hiding in plain sight. In the blink of an eye, two separate events, with no apparent or planned connection, randomly fused together by the colors and open up an abstract space. Like synesthesia, a neurological term for the mix of senses, the extra embedded sense broadens the experience of my humdrum daily life. The quest of searching the unseen has become a meditative monologue beyond a decisive moment.
Using coincidence as a tool, I build up blindly overlapping images by rewinding
the negative after the entire film is exposed, instead of using a traditional double-exposure setting. Without a plan or script, I simply observe life around me, recording images of the seemingly mundane. Through an entangled web of intended actions and unintended occurrences, two different, unrelated images randomly merge into one.
This methodology creates a theatrical encounter, playing in the present and using the moment. The end result cannot be foreseen, as life has mysteries, thereby a limit to calculation, to plan or to control. When the seen and unseen meet – and strangeness and beauty intertwine – I am presented with the infinite possibilities of coincidence and witness the familiar events transform into enigmatic.
You can see more of Wen at www.wensview.com
This diptych exemplifies many of the fine photographs in Justin Lane’s nude and portrait portfolio on his well-known tumblr, A Subtle Likeness. Shot a few inches above the action, the tight framing accentuates both actual and allegorical movement: the photograph on the left captures Wren in motion as she welcomes her erotic encounter; the photograph on the right shows us Wren in the stillness of her sweet repose. As we view these pictures from left to right, their graphic force hastens us in the opposite direction. From right to left the upward thrust of Wren’s body returns us to the unseen space between her legs. Is the composition an allegory for intercourse occurring between the two images?
As we linger over these photographs, we may be tempted to believe that the untitled diptych depicts a raw sexual performance that we are invited to experience vicariously, like voyeurs peeking with impunity through an anonymous window. Be that as it may, to see only eroticism at play is to strip these pictures of their suggestive significance. Whatever the pleasure Wren is feeling and however strongly we may feel a seductive pulse, the warm, almost sepia tone of the monochrome, like the gentle contrast of her smooth skin against her wrinkled bedclothes, transforms an erotic tale into an intimate narrative. Wren’s desire may be aroused in one image and consummated in the other, but together these photographs integrate cinematic motion and ardent emotion to portray eroticism as a catalyst. Rather than imply an imaginary seduction, Justin’s diptych transcends representation and conjures the veritable subject of these photographs: sensual euphoria.
“Most of my personal work,” Justin writes on his tumblr, “is done an a collaborative trade basis … You should be comfortable with nudity, it’s a primary element of my photography. It’s not always polite, pretty, or demure.” As we have seen, Wren does not appear meek, unassuming, or shy; her ecstatic sensuality inflames her passion as she performs for the camera. Although this performance is key to Justin’s aesthetic, his photographs do not appear to be staged. Seeking spontaneity, the photographer provides little or no direction other than to encourage rapid, even chaotic motion. I asked him about the apparent lack of staging in many of his photographs. “I have taken some aspects of performance art, such as exaggerated gestures and movement, and started using them as a device to break away from the standard poses that happen with figure photography,” Justin replied. “It’s a way to depict people in ways that feel more natural, dynamic, and spontaneous because they are, in a sense.” His portrait of Meg illustrates beautifully this theatrical approach, contrasting the shades of her electric blue dress with the light oranges of her skin against a deep black background while Meg, a free spirit in impetuous motion, playfully lifts her skirt to offer a glimpse of her naked body.
As he composes his photographs, Justin’s integration of mercurial movement into the composition frees both the photographer and his model from limitations they may impose upon themselves. What are these constraints? Many models wish to control how they appear in photographs in order to establish their brand with a limited number of expressions that they show to the consumers of their image. Justin acknowledges this commercial reality (and his competitive nature) in one of his posts about Erica Jay, with whom he has created a body of work spanning several years and who is now “one of the more prolific art models out there, which has pushed the drive to depict her in ways that diverge not only from what’s behind us, but also from all the other artists she collaborates with.” Bodies in motion do not have time to gaze at their likeness in the mirror of their imagination, thus they cannot project their default look into the photograph. Justin’s accelerated exposure sequences capture a much greater range of emotions than his models reveal in static portraits. This approach has its drawbacks, Justin explained, “hundreds of unusable, potentially embarrassing images, and for every handful of successes more rigorous editing is necessary.” Perhaps, but unpredictability inspires improvisation leading to unique and powerful photographs. In the diptych below, entitled “erica, precipice 052913,” Justin employs selective focus and blur, as well as the tonal transition from lighter greyscale to darker selenium, in order to narrate Erica’s metaphorical dive off the edge into the void.
A model’s desired brand and a photographer’s need to compete in the marketplace are not the only impediments that may prevent artists from achieving their unadulterated vision when photographing the nude. Art history also plays a significant, perhaps unconscious role. “For the most part,” writes Max Kozloff, “nudes in photography are depicted as a kind of living sculpture, solid in its graceful gestures, and molded to show the topography of physique. The statuesque is a metaphor, useful as an allusion to the purported artistic intent of the image, which was associated with the idealized statues of antiquity.” (i) Given his formal studio arts education, there is no doubt that Justin has absorbed these lessons. Several sculptural nudes will be found in his nude and portrait portfolio. For example, “Castaway,” the black and white photograph below, presents two nudes, a man and a woman, stylistically posed in a T formation on jagged rocks above the sand. The man is lying on his stomach, his arms outstretched, with one hand touching the woman, as if to make an emotional connection. The woman rejects this show of affection, sitting with her back to him, leaning forward away from him. Although the play of light and shadow defines his muscular body as much it softens her skin, this tonal representation of gender roles is muted by the contrast of both bodies against the deep blacks and grays of the rocks. The tenderness displayed by his futile gesture is forgotten as we admire the expressive elegance of these figures. Underscoring the inability of this traditional composition to reveal more than what can be seen on the surface, a note underneath the image tells us, “it’s about form, and there isn’t much more to it….”
Immediately following his treatment of conventional beauty, Justin posts a black and white diptych of remarkably unconventional beauty entitled only by a date and a name, “081814 yucca.” Above a mons Venus we see dark shadows cast by the pointed leaves of a yucca tree over her torso. Exploding from a deep black spot between the woman’s body and the frame, this leafy ejaculation is defined symbolically by the swirling cloudscape in the adjacent photograph. Although each of these pictures exposes tremendous graphical strength as shades of gray interplay between extremes of fathomless black and blinding white, the diptych is greater than the sum of its two images. If the woman’s genitalia symbolize the site of sexual pleasure, if the surging clouds epitomize eternity, the juxtaposition of these two photographs provokes a quiet climax, between the images a symbolic orgasm.
Although erotic symbolism seems apparent as we study these images, it is unlikely that the photographer was thinking of this narrative when he made the photographs. As Justin explained, “The initial draw in ‘Yucca’ had to do with the way the patterns fell across her torso, the wrapping contours and sharp edges. The opposing sunlit cloud is my way of referencing the act of photographing, a very literal cause and effect of the harsh light source casting the shadows while giving it a sense of place and building a curious tension, moving beyond what otherwise felt (at the time) as an indulgent exercise in graphic design.” What Justin is describing, perhaps fortuitously, is a judicious deconstruction of art school dogma. To reference the photographic act in a photograph – to make photography self-referential – is to synthesize the production of art with the exigencies of academic critique. This concept has become the lingua franca of contemporary fine art photography and criticism. Like Narcissus and his reflection, both are drowning in each other’s pulchritude. As A.D. Coleman explains, “Conceptually … the vast majority of photography projects … seem to represent some welling-up of archetypes from the collective unconscious of the academically indoctrinated.” (ii) Rather than suffocate in this aesthetic quicksand, however, Justin uses the conceptualist self-referential photograph, first to highlight qualities specific to both images, then to surpass the conventional requirements for successful composition in favor of something hidden, unknown. “Allegorically,” he admitted, “I don’t know what I’d attach to this diptych, and in that regard, it’s open to interpretation.”
In another compelling diptych entitled “elena, luminous 070213,” Justin acknowledges the self-referentiality of his artistic endeavor. Elena’s face almost fills the left frame as a shaft of light shines across her right arm and spotlights her right eye, leaving her left eye in shadow. The triangular shape of the shining light is repeated in the right frame, gently losing its luminance as it shimmers across the wood floor, over Elena’s nude body, and up onto the wall behind her. No doubt Justin designed this astute arrangement of compositional elements in order to emphasize the essential role of vision in these portraits. And yet… do we perceive what Justin may be challenging us to see? We first behold Elena staring at us blankly, if not coldly, in a dynamic close-up; then the camera moves back and she looks away, aloof, as if to dramatize her emotional distance. Are these photographs about perception? Or is blindness their ultimate significance? Are photographic portraits merely a reflection of the photographer, revealing nothing about the subject and unable to give an accurate impression of the subject’s character? Or does Justin’s portrait discern an individual personality, demonstrating intuitively what Susan Kismaric calls “the uneasy relationship between artificial surface appearance and inner psychology in many portrait photographs and self-portraits”? (iii)
Most photographers present nudes and portraits in separate portfolios; while nudes are often portraits, portraits are seldom nude. Although the integration of portraiture with figure studies may be seen as an attempt to refine the definition of the traditional portrait, this refinement is a merely a felicitous consequence of Justin’s photography. Indeed, his nude and portrait portfolio is both experiment and exploration. As Justin experiments with compositional structure using movement, spontaneity, tone, focus, and color in single and multi-image formats, he is exploring photography’s potential as a medium for the discovery of intimate human relationships.
Nowhere is this emotional expedition more evident than in his portraits of Meg, who appears frequently in A Subtle Likeness, dressed and undressed, serious and playful, in a photo studio, in her apartment, and at various locations around New York. In the diptych above, Meg stands in her underwear, first at the entrance to her scantily furnished living room, then in the hallway across from her kitchen. Her gentle curves and soft colors of white, gray, and gold resonate with her sensitive presence as she looks at the camera. Although Justin’s design directs us from Meg down the hall and through an open door to her bedroom, the scenario is not one of erotic fervor. As Meg gazes at us with quiet intensity, is she revealing her vulnerability, or her empathy? Lest we lose ourselves in what we imagine to be a shared emotional space created by these images, a collection of instant photographs tacked to the door frame on the far left returns us to the bittersweet reality of the photographic act, a “vulnerable openness conjoined with aesthetic distance.” (iv)
Photography is a high-risk art form, triumph or tragedy in a split second. Whether using motion to trace a precarious trajectory from eroticism to intimacy, or synthesizing structural elements with an intuitive sense of their graphic power, Justin creates photographs that are elegant and ambiguous. The elegance of his compositions draws us in while their ambiguity encourages us to share in his creative act, to write the narratives he outlines in his cinematic scenarios.
“It’s always difficult for me to see through the actual circumstances of the shoot,” Justin mused as he questioned my interpretation of one of his works. His muses acknowledge no such difficulty, confirming the positive results of his photographic theory and practice. “I had a fantastic shoot with Justin,” Wren told me after her first experience posing for the photographer. “His method of photography I haven’t encountered with other photographers. It was very fast-paced and I think he got some gestures and expressions I’ve never done before on camera.” After more than 50 photo shoots with Justin, Erica described the psychological impact of performing for his camera. “His photographs made me see the human form in a different way. Being naked isn’t vulnerable; the women in his photographs are empowered and look strong, and that's how I came to view myself after he took my photograph.”
As Justin’s most consistent collaborator and muse for the past several years, Meg understands the raison d’être of his aesthetic search to portray friendship, one that is both genuine and uniquely fragile. “Posing with Justin is always more of an organic experience than just posing for a camera,” Meg said. “I never feel like I have to pose formally when we're making pictures. Being friends for so many years, our photos have evolved with our friendship. I feel pretty lucky to have that body of work to look back on and to continue making.”
Justin Lane was born in 1975 and raised in upstate New York. He began making photographs in his early teens. He was educated at the Alfred University School of Art and Design, graduating in 1997 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in photography with significant work in video and electronic arts. A master of digital imaging processes, Justin has worked for the past fifteen years at Chelsea Photographic Services, one of the finest custom photography laboratories in the country. As Chelsea Photo’s senior retouching artist, Justin has been instrumental in adding a wide range of state-of-the-art scanning and printing services to the lab’s superb chemical darkroom production.
Justin is also a member of Barbara Livingston’s elite team of horse racing photographers who create many of the beautiful images of the Triple Crown, Breeder’s Cup, and other important national races for the Daily Racing Form and other publications. In addition to his fine-art work, Justin works freelance, assisting actors and models with their portfolio development, as well as accepting commissions for portraiture and editorial photography.
Justin’s tumblr can be accessed at http://subtlelikeness.com/.
Notes
* I would like to thank Justin Lane for articulating his thoughts about his work as I wrote this essay. In response to my many questions, Justin’s commentary was always perceptive and timely.
i. Max Kozloff, Saul Leiter Early Black and White I. Interior, Steidl / Howard Greenberg Library, 2014.
ii. A. D. Coleman, Photocritic International, July 5, 2012, found online at http://www.nearbycafe.com/artandphoto/photocritic/2012/07/05/trope-the-well-made-photograph-1/.
iii. Susan Kismaric, Florence Henri, Jeu de Paume/Aperture, 2015, p. 184.
iv. Klaus Kertess, Peter Hujar animals and nudes, Twin Palms Publishers, 2002.
George McClintock is a photographer, musician, and writer based in Greenwich, CT. Formerly a literary correspondent for the Franco-German journal Lendemains, McClintock maintains two obscure tumblrs, Dordo Speaks! and Submerging Photographers, as well his website www.GeorgeMcClintockPhotography.com. He can be reached at gdmcclintock@yahoo.com.
Text © copyright 2015 by George McClintock. All rights reserved. Photographs © copyright 2010-2015 by Justin N. Lane and reproduced by permission. All rights reserved.
]]>This diptych exemplifies many of the fine photographs in Justin Lane’s nude and portrait portfolio on his well-known tumblr, A Subtle Likeness. Shot a few inches above the action, the tight framing accentuates both actual and allegorical movement: the photograph on the left captures Wren in motion as she welcomes her erotic encounter; the photograph on the right shows us Wren in the stillness of her sweet repose. As we view these pictures from left to right, their graphic force hastens us in the opposite direction. From right to left the upward thrust of Wren’s body returns us to the unseen space between her legs. Is the composition an allegory for intercourse occurring between the two images?
As we linger over these photographs, we may be tempted to believe that the untitled diptych depicts a raw sexual performance that we are invited to experience vicariously, like voyeurs peeking with impunity through an anonymous window. Be that as it may, to see only eroticism at play is to strip these pictures of their suggestive significance. Whatever the pleasure Wren is feeling and however strongly we may feel a seductive pulse, the warm, almost sepia tone of the monochrome, like the gentle contrast of her smooth skin against her wrinkled bedclothes, transforms an erotic tale into an intimate narrative. Wren’s desire may be aroused in one image and consummated in the other, but together these photographs integrate cinematic motion and ardent emotion to portray eroticism as a catalyst. Rather than imply an imaginary seduction, Justin’s diptych transcends representation and conjures the veritable subject of these photographs: sensual euphoria.
“Most of my personal work,” Justin writes on his tumblr, “is done an a collaborative trade basis … You should be comfortable with nudity, it’s a primary element of my photography. It’s not always polite, pretty, or demure.” As we have seen, Wren does not appear meek, unassuming, or shy; her ecstatic sensuality inflames her passion as she performs for the camera. Although this performance is key to Justin’s aesthetic, his photographs do not appear to be staged. Seeking spontaneity, the photographer provides little or no direction other than to encourage rapid, even chaotic motion. I asked him about the apparent lack of staging in many of his photographs. “I have taken some aspects of performance art, such as exaggerated gestures and movement, and started using them as a device to break away from the standard poses that happen with figure photography,” Justin replied. “It’s a way to depict people in ways that feel more natural, dynamic, and spontaneous because they are, in a sense.” His portrait of Meg illustrates beautifully this theatrical approach, contrasting the shades of her electric blue dress with the light oranges of her skin against a deep black background while Meg, a free spirit in impetuous motion, playfully lifts her skirt to offer a glimpse of her naked body.
As he composes his photographs, Justin’s integration of mercurial movement into the composition frees both the photographer and his model from limitations they may impose upon themselves. What are these constraints? Many models wish to control how they appear in photographs in order to establish their brand with a limited number of expressions that they show to the consumers of their image. Justin acknowledges this commercial reality (and his competitive nature) in one of his posts about Erica Jay, with whom he has created a body of work spanning several years and who is now “one of the more prolific art models out there, which has pushed the drive to depict her in ways that diverge not only from what’s behind us, but also from all the other artists she collaborates with.” Bodies in motion do not have time to gaze at their likeness in the mirror of their imagination, thus they cannot project their default look into the photograph. Justin’s accelerated exposure sequences capture a much greater range of emotions than his models reveal in static portraits. This approach has its drawbacks, Justin explained, “hundreds of unusable, potentially embarrassing images, and for every handful of successes more rigorous editing is necessary.” Perhaps, but unpredictability inspires improvisation leading to unique and powerful photographs. In the diptych below, entitled “erica, precipice 052913,” Justin employs selective focus and blur, as well as the tonal transition from lighter greyscale to darker selenium, in order to narrate Erica’s metaphorical dive off the edge into the void.
A model’s desired brand and a photographer’s need to compete in the marketplace are not the only impediments that may prevent artists from achieving their unadulterated vision when photographing the nude. Art history also plays a significant, perhaps unconscious role. “For the most part,” writes Max Kozloff, “nudes in photography are depicted as a kind of living sculpture, solid in its graceful gestures, and molded to show the topography of physique. The statuesque is a metaphor, useful as an allusion to the purported artistic intent of the image, which was associated with the idealized statues of antiquity.” (i) Given his formal studio arts education, there is no doubt that Justin has absorbed these lessons. Several sculptural nudes will be found in his nude and portrait portfolio. For example, “Castaway,” the black and white photograph below, presents two nudes, a man and a woman, stylistically posed in a T formation on jagged rocks above the sand. The man is lying on his stomach, his arms outstretched, with one hand touching the woman, as if to make an emotional connection. The woman rejects this show of affection, sitting with her back to him, leaning forward away from him. Although the play of light and shadow defines his muscular body as much it softens her skin, this tonal representation of gender roles is muted by the contrast of both bodies against the deep blacks and grays of the rocks. The tenderness displayed by his futile gesture is forgotten as we admire the expressive elegance of these figures. Underscoring the inability of this traditional composition to reveal more than what can be seen on the surface, a note underneath the image tells us, “it’s about form, and there isn’t much more to it….”
Immediately following his treatment of conventional beauty, Justin posts a black and white diptych of remarkably unconventional beauty entitled only by a date and a name, “081814 yucca.” Above a mons Venus we see dark shadows cast by the pointed leaves of a yucca tree over her torso. Exploding from a deep black spot between the woman’s body and the frame, this leafy ejaculation is defined symbolically by the swirling cloudscape in the adjacent photograph. Although each of these pictures exposes tremendous graphical strength as shades of gray interplay between extremes of fathomless black and blinding white, the diptych is greater than the sum of its two images. If the woman’s genitalia symbolize the site of sexual pleasure, if the surging clouds epitomize eternity, the juxtaposition of these two photographs provokes a quiet climax, between the images a symbolic orgasm.
Although erotic symbolism seems apparent as we study these images, it is unlikely that the photographer was thinking of this narrative when he made the photographs. As Justin explained, “The initial draw in ‘Yucca’ had to do with the way the patterns fell across her torso, the wrapping contours and sharp edges. The opposing sunlit cloud is my way of referencing the act of photographing, a very literal cause and effect of the harsh light source casting the shadows while giving it a sense of place and building a curious tension, moving beyond what otherwise felt (at the time) as an indulgent exercise in graphic design.” What Justin is describing, perhaps fortuitously, is a judicious deconstruction of art school dogma. To reference the photographic act in a photograph – to make photography self-referential – is to synthesize the production of art with the exigencies of academic critique. This concept has become the lingua franca of contemporary fine art photography and criticism. Like Narcissus and his reflection, both are drowning in each other’s pulchritude. As A.D. Coleman explains, “Conceptually … the vast majority of photography projects … seem to represent some welling-up of archetypes from the collective unconscious of the academically indoctrinated.” (ii) Rather than suffocate in this aesthetic quicksand, however, Justin uses the conceptualist self-referential photograph, first to highlight qualities specific to both images, then to surpass the conventional requirements for successful composition in favor of something hidden, unknown. “Allegorically,” he admitted, “I don’t know what I’d attach to this diptych, and in that regard, it’s open to interpretation.”
In another compelling diptych entitled “elena, luminous 070213,” Justin acknowledges the self-referentiality of his artistic endeavor. Elena’s face almost fills the left frame as a shaft of light shines across her right arm and spotlights her right eye, leaving her left eye in shadow. The triangular shape of the shining light is repeated in the right frame, gently losing its luminance as it shimmers across the wood floor, over Elena’s nude body, and up onto the wall behind her. No doubt Justin designed this astute arrangement of compositional elements in order to emphasize the essential role of vision in these portraits. And yet… do we perceive what Justin may be challenging us to see? We first behold Elena staring at us blankly, if not coldly, in a dynamic close-up; then the camera moves back and she looks away, aloof, as if to dramatize her emotional distance. Are these photographs about perception? Or is blindness their ultimate significance? Are photographic portraits merely a reflection of the photographer, revealing nothing about the subject and unable to give an accurate impression of the subject’s character? Or does Justin’s portrait discern an individual personality, demonstrating intuitively what Susan Kismaric calls “the uneasy relationship between artificial surface appearance and inner psychology in many portrait photographs and self-portraits”? (iii)
Most photographers present nudes and portraits in separate portfolios; while nudes are often portraits, portraits are seldom nude. Although the integration of portraiture with figure studies may be seen as an attempt to refine the definition of the traditional portrait, this refinement is a merely a felicitous consequence of Justin’s photography. Indeed, his nude and portrait portfolio is both experiment and exploration. As Justin experiments with compositional structure using movement, spontaneity, tone, focus, and color in single and multi-image formats, he is exploring photography’s potential as a medium for the discovery of intimate human relationships.
Nowhere is this emotional expedition more evident than in his portraits of Meg, who appears frequently in A Subtle Likeness, dressed and undressed, serious and playful, in a photo studio, in her apartment, and at various locations around New York. In the diptych above, Meg stands in her underwear, first at the entrance to her scantily furnished living room, then in the hallway across from her kitchen. Her gentle curves and soft colors of white, gray, and gold resonate with her sensitive presence as she looks at the camera. Although Justin’s design directs us from Meg down the hall and through an open door to her bedroom, the scenario is not one of erotic fervor. As Meg gazes at us with quiet intensity, is she revealing her vulnerability, or her empathy? Lest we lose ourselves in what we imagine to be a shared emotional space created by these images, a collection of instant photographs tacked to the door frame on the far left returns us to the bittersweet reality of the photographic act, a “vulnerable openness conjoined with aesthetic distance.” (iv)
Photography is a high-risk art form, triumph or tragedy in a split second. Whether using motion to trace a precarious trajectory from eroticism to intimacy, or synthesizing structural elements with an intuitive sense of their graphic power, Justin creates photographs that are elegant and ambiguous. The elegance of his compositions draws us in while their ambiguity encourages us to share in his creative act, to write the narratives he outlines in his cinematic scenarios.
“It’s always difficult for me to see through the actual circumstances of the shoot,” Justin mused as he questioned my interpretation of one of his works. His muses acknowledge no such difficulty, confirming the positive results of his photographic theory and practice. “I had a fantastic shoot with Justin,” Wren told me after her first experience posing for the photographer. “His method of photography I haven’t encountered with other photographers. It was very fast-paced and I think he got some gestures and expressions I’ve never done before on camera.” After more than 50 photo shoots with Justin, Erica described the psychological impact of performing for his camera. “His photographs made me see the human form in a different way. Being naked isn’t vulnerable; the women in his photographs are empowered and look strong, and that's how I came to view myself after he took my photograph.”
As Justin’s most consistent collaborator and muse for the past several years, Meg understands the raison d’être of his aesthetic search to portray friendship, one that is both genuine and uniquely fragile. “Posing with Justin is always more of an organic experience than just posing for a camera,” Meg said. “I never feel like I have to pose formally when we're making pictures. Being friends for so many years, our photos have evolved with our friendship. I feel pretty lucky to have that body of work to look back on and to continue making.”
Justin Lane was born in 1975 and raised in upstate New York. He began making photographs in his early teens. He was educated at the Alfred University School of Art and Design, graduating in 1997 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in photography with significant work in video and electronic arts. A master of digital imaging processes, Justin has worked for the past fifteen years at Chelsea Photographic Services, one of the finest custom photography laboratories in the country. As Chelsea Photo’s senior retouching artist, Justin has been instrumental in adding a wide range of state-of-the-art scanning and printing services to the lab’s superb chemical darkroom production.
Justin is also a member of Barbara Livingston’s elite team of horse racing photographers who create many of the beautiful images of the Triple Crown, Breeder’s Cup, and other important national races for the Daily Racing Form and other publications. In addition to his fine-art work, Justin works freelance, assisting actors and models with their portfolio development, as well as accepting commissions for portraiture and editorial photography.
Justin’s tumblr can be accessed at http://subtlelikeness.com/.
Notes
* I would like to thank Justin Lane for articulating his thoughts about his work as I wrote this essay. In response to my many questions, Justin’s commentary was always perceptive and timely.
i. Max Kozloff, Saul Leiter Early Black and White I. Interior, Steidl / Howard Greenberg Library, 2014.
ii. A. D. Coleman, Photocritic International, July 5, 2012, found online at http://www.nearbycafe.com/artandphoto/photocritic/2012/07/05/trope-the-well-made-photograph-1/.
iii. Susan Kismaric, Florence Henri, Jeu de Paume/Aperture, 2015, p. 184.
iv. Klaus Kertess, Peter Hujar animals and nudes, Twin Palms Publishers, 2002.
George McClintock is a photographer, musician, and writer based in Greenwich, CT. Formerly a literary correspondent for the Franco-German journal Lendemains, McClintock maintains two obscure tumblrs, Dordo Speaks! and Submerging Photographers, as well his website www.GeorgeMcClintockPhotography.com. He can be reached at gdmcclintock@yahoo.com.
Text © copyright 2015 by George McClintock. All rights reserved. Photographs © copyright 2010-2015 by Justin N. Lane and reproduced by permission. All rights reserved.
]]>The first recording of a sperm whale in the wild were in 1984. Now a great white shark flipping out of the water or creatures from 1000 feet that look more like aliens than anything from earth is common place. Less than fifty years ago the undersea world was virtually unknown to anyone who did not experience it first hand. But that all changed in the 1960s when underwater photography became an everyday possibility.
In many ways underwater photography is still in its infancy. It is not even one hundred years old. At the core of its trajectory was Jacques Cousteau and a funny little camera called the Calypso. Cousteau lived on the edge. When he started diving most of undersea world was completely unknown. Trial and error took on a whole new meaning. How deep could they dive, how long could they stay down, or what terrible monsters might they find? No one knew.
Fortunately for us Cousteau was not just a diver, but a forward thinking image maker. Many of his exploits were caught on film. He worked to develop a number of inventions from scuba regulators, to cameras, housings, and watches. His images opened up a world that many people had never seen before. It is not so often that a picture is actually new. Surely the first images taken underwater or from space are in a special category. They are historic, ground breaking, and in some cases beautiful too. But most importantly they changed our perspective on the planet.
Unless you are a die hard Cousteau fan, the antics captured in his book “A Silent World” might be unknown. But they are legendary stories that anyone from photographers, divers, or just curious travelers would enjoy.
Did you know that:
The Calypso camera is an interesting little tool to handle. It is small, unassuming, and almost awkward in hand. But it worked and impressed the folks at Nikon who eventually bought the patent and turned it into the Nikonos line of underwater cameras.
Originally the Calypso was designed to sustain pressures at 200 feet which are well past the limit for recreational divers today. To change the film, the bayonet lens must be removed and the small hooks on the strap are used to pry the body apart. It is a quirky design, but it did the job. When you handle the original Calypso and its faux-seal skin covering, it is hard to image that this device would revolutionize the way we saw our oceans. But it made a silent impact on the world of underwater photography and how we see the deep blue ocean. Almost every piece of underwater camera gear today owes something to the Calypso.
To read more about Jacques Cousteau’s adventures, have a look at “A Silent World,” his autobiographical account of their early adventures in oceanographic exploration.
Adam Marelli is an artist and cultural photographer based in New York City. He is an active member of The Explorer’s Club and runs projects and workshops internationally.
]]>
The first recording of a sperm whale in the wild were in 1984. Now a great white shark flipping out of the water or creatures from 1000 feet that look more like aliens than anything from earth is common place. Less than fifty years ago the undersea world was virtually unknown to anyone who did not experience it first hand. But that all changed in the 1960s when underwater photography became an everyday possibility.
In many ways underwater photography is still in its infancy. It is not even one hundred years old. At the core of its trajectory was Jacques Cousteau and a funny little camera called the Calypso. Cousteau lived on the edge. When he started diving most of undersea world was completely unknown. Trial and error took on a whole new meaning. How deep could they dive, how long could they stay down, or what terrible monsters might they find? No one knew.
Fortunately for us Cousteau was not just a diver, but a forward thinking image maker. Many of his exploits were caught on film. He worked to develop a number of inventions from scuba regulators, to cameras, housings, and watches. His images opened up a world that many people had never seen before. It is not so often that a picture is actually new. Surely the first images taken underwater or from space are in a special category. They are historic, ground breaking, and in some cases beautiful too. But most importantly they changed our perspective on the planet.
Unless you are a die hard Cousteau fan, the antics captured in his book “A Silent World” might be unknown. But they are legendary stories that anyone from photographers, divers, or just curious travelers would enjoy.
Did you know that:
The Calypso camera is an interesting little tool to handle. It is small, unassuming, and almost awkward in hand. But it worked and impressed the folks at Nikon who eventually bought the patent and turned it into the Nikonos line of underwater cameras.
Originally the Calypso was designed to sustain pressures at 200 feet which are well past the limit for recreational divers today. To change the film, the bayonet lens must be removed and the small hooks on the strap are used to pry the body apart. It is a quirky design, but it did the job. When you handle the original Calypso and its faux-seal skin covering, it is hard to image that this device would revolutionize the way we saw our oceans. But it made a silent impact on the world of underwater photography and how we see the deep blue ocean. Almost every piece of underwater camera gear today owes something to the Calypso.
To read more about Jacques Cousteau’s adventures, have a look at “A Silent World,” his autobiographical account of their early adventures in oceanographic exploration.
Adam Marelli is an artist and cultural photographer based in New York City. He is an active member of The Explorer’s Club and runs projects and workshops internationally.
]]>
Daido Moriyama (b. 1938), From Asahi Camera, 1969. Gelatin silver print, 7 3/8 x 10 1/2 in. Tokyo Polytechnic University, Shadai Gallery. © Daidō Moriyama / Courtesy of Tokyo Polytechnic University, Shadai Gallery and Taka Ishii Gallery
The decades following World War II -- 1945-1975 -- remain the least examined and least understood phase in the history of photography. So we have to cherish projects that help to fill in the blanks, like the exhibition "For a New World to Come: Experiments in Japanese Art and Photography, 1968-1979" and its accompanying monograph, currently at the Japan Society and New York University's Grey Art Gallery.
In 1974 the Museum of Modern Art's Department of Photographs mounted the group show "New Japanese Photography," the only such survey undertaken during the 29-year tenure of John Szarkowski, and indeed (if you exclude Eugène Atget) the only time he turned his curatorial attention to photographers from outside the U.S. So, especially given the influence of MoMA, this show mattered. But it had drastic limitations. As I wrote in my April 7, 1974 review for the New York Times, summing up the overview proposed by the show,
New Japanese photography is exclusively black-and-white, entirely unconcerned with the investigation of straight color, manipulated color, applied color, and the technology of modern color press printing. New Japanese photography is only glancingly involved with the nude and with the explicitly erotic; it is rarely concerned with any exploration of the staged event. Multiple imagery, mixed-media imagery, collage and other photographic techniques are not a part of new Japanese photography. Though it sometimes refers, quite painfully, to World War II and the atomic holocaust, new Japanese photography is never anti-Western and certainly never directly political in intent. New Japanese photography is restricted almost exclusively to the boundaries of that territory we loosely label "documentary." Moreover, by remarkable coincidence, New Japanese photography looks almost exactly like the photography which has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art for the past 10 years.
All these, I believe, are undeniably logical inferences drawn from the exhibit and its accompanying catalogue. All these are also inaccurate at best and in most cases utterly false. This would be immediately apparent to anyone even superficially familiar with the Japanese magazines and photography annuals, the books which come from Japan, and the portfolios by Japanese photographers which have been published in European and American magazines. But this material has not been disseminated widely even among American photographers, much less among the general public. Thus it may not be easily visible at first glance that this show has been cut along the specific bias of a severely tailored curatorial esthetic.
Jirō Takamatsu, Photograph of Photograph (No. D–2401), 1972, gelatin silver print, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Museum purchase funded by Bettie Cartwright and Michael A. Chesser in honor of Yasufumi Nakamori. © The Estate of Jirō Takamatsu, Courtesy of Yumiko Chiba Associates
Two figures, Daido Moriyama and Sh mei Tomatsu, appear in both the MoMA survey and this one; otherwise, there's no overlap. So, four decades later, "For a New World to Come" proves my point. Not that it's the first project to do so. Over the intervening 41 years, photography from around the globe has circulated much more widely that it did at that time, via traveling exhibitions, books, periodicals, photo festivals, and (since 1995) via the internet. Specialists in photography and the medium's general audience know much more about Japanese photography than they did in 1974. No curator today could get away with presenting such a narrowcast slice of the activity within a given territory, at least not without a convincing rationale for its many exclusions and single-minded focus.
"For a New World to Come" demonstrates that Japanese photographers and artists of that era mirrored in their work many of the concerns of their western counterparts. The severe limitations of the medium's flimsy communication system at the time suggests that they weren't parroting their U.S. and European peers, most of whose experiments received precious little critical attention even in their own countries and would thus have remained largely unknown to the Japanese. Think of these as parallel universes connected by a few wormholes through which bits and pieces leaked.
The most significant influence of western work on the Japanese photo scene came from the books of Robert Frank (The Americans, 1959) and William Klein (New York, 1956; Rome, 1958; Moscow,1964; and, of course, Tokyo, also 1964). From these examples the Japanese took strategies of framing, small-camera handling, selective focus, surreptitious grab-shooting (Frank) and aggressive, confrontational engagement with the subjects (Klein), as applied to what Lee Friedlander dubbed the "social landscape." They absorbed Klein's use of high-contrast development and printing, along with his flair for dramatic layout on the page, and turned some of the consequences of the ways in which these two photographers worked into an esthetic they dubbed are-bure-boke ('grainy, blurry, out-of-focus"). They also embraced Frank's and Klein's use of the printed page as a primary vehicle for series, cycles, and suites of images -- important in a country with few traditional museum and gallery spaces available for the display of photographs. (Some very significant Japanese exhibitions of art and photography were held in department stores during that period and after.)
Shōmei Tomatsu (1930-2012), Protest 1 from the series Oh! Shinjuku, 1969, printed 1980. Gelatin silver print, 9 7/8 x 13 7/8in. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Museum purchase funded by the S.I. Morris Photography Endowment and Morris Weiner, 2011.765. © Shōmei Tōmatsu – INTERFACE
Japan had its own equivalent of what we here called "the counterculture," and much of this work qualifies as specifically political, coming out of and addressing the protest movements of that time. Other projects deal more broadly with the profound reconfiguration of Japanese society in the post-WWII era. Still others engage with questions about the related mediums of still photography and film themselves: the implications of lens-based imagery, the relationship between the subject matter and the photograph thereof, the effects of photography on individual and cultural memory. The photographers and artists represented here (no one back then used the term "photo-based art") created not just bookworks and extended spreads in photo and art magazines but photocopier pieces, projections, assemblages of vernacular imagery, pinhole photos, negative prints, installations, and performances -- as wide a range of ideas and forms as those involved with the medium elsewhere.
For someone like myself, at that time observing activity within the medium and the expansion of its field of ideas mostly in their U.S. and western European manifestations, this is familiar ground. To find it traversed in Japan as well indicates that a certain irreverent, challenging attitude toward photography and the conventions that had governed it through 1945 bubbled up spontaneously in different parts of the world thereafter, a commonality of thought and consequent action meriting much more attention than it has received.
Because the show only samples the oeuvres of those it includes, rather than single out individuals I commend it to you as a whole. I think that's how its curator intends it -- not so much an awarding of prizes for individual accomplishment as recognition of a multivocal, uncoordinated, yet collective push at the boundaries of the mediums under consideration, indigenously Japanese yet unquestionably related to what others were doing elsewhere at that moment.
It makes me yearn for something even larger, impossible except perhaps as a web-based version of André Malraux's imaginary "museum without walls": someplace I could go to see this show and then move on to a comparable selection from North America, then South America, then western Europe, eastern Europe ... so as to observe, decade by decade, how the medium evolved, how those working with it understood its history and premises and field of ideas, absorbed and utilized the technological options available to them, grew on their own and interacted with their peers.
Yasufumi Nakamori, Associate Curator of Photography at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, curated "For a New World to Come," which tours under the auspices of MFAH. The show's two partnering New York venues have divided its contents roughly in half lengthwise, so to speak, so if you visit either one you will get a complementary version of the shared infrastructure. The half at the Grey Art Gallery (100 Washington Square East) will close first, on December 5, so if this interests you get there soon. (Admission is free.) The Japan Society's section will run through January 10 at 333 E. 47th St.; admission is $12.
An excellent, extensive monograph accompanies the exhibition as its catalog but goes far beyond that function, including as it does 13 essays and additional images (274 total) contextualizing the materials on view, with a list price of $75.00. It will become a central reference on its subject. Alas, though published in February 2015 it has already gone out of print; I'm told MFAH has no plans to reissue it. You can find copies for sale online, of course. Perhaps MFAH will consider releasing it as an ebook, to make it more widely available.
Catalogue cover, For a New World to Come (Museum of Fine Arts Houston, 2015).
Kazuyo Kinoshita, 79-38-A, 1979. Acrylic on photograph, 20 1/5 x 28 3/8 in. National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. © Kazuyo Kinoshita
Toshio Matsumoto, For the Damaged Right Eye, 1968, film still from triple 16mm (transferred to DVD), collection of the artist. © Toshio Matsumoto / Photo: PJMIA
Installation shot, For a New World to Come, Japan Society, New York, 2015.
Kiyoji Ōtsuji (1923-2001), Past of One Tin Can, from Otsuji Experimental Laboratory, 1977. Gelatin silver print, 8 x 9 15/16 in. Musashino Art University Museum and Library. © Seiko Ōtsuji
Uematsu Keiji (b. 1947), Horizontal Position, Vertical Position, Right Angle Position, 1973/2003. Gelatin silver print, 57 1/8 x 35 7/16 in. Artist's collection at Yumiko Chiba Associates, Tokyo. © Keiji Uematsu, courtesy of Yumiko Chiba Associates
A. D. Coleman is an internationally known independent critic, historian, and curator of photography and photo-based art. His work has been translated into 21 languages and published in 31 countries. Coleman's widely read blog, Photocritic International, appears at photocritic.com.
© Copyright 2015 by A. D. Coleman. All rights reserved. By permission of the author and Image/World Syndication Services, imageworld@nearbycafe.com.
Daido Moriyama (b. 1938), From Asahi Camera, 1969. Gelatin silver print, 7 3/8 x 10 1/2 in. Tokyo Polytechnic University, Shadai Gallery. © Daidō Moriyama / Courtesy of Tokyo Polytechnic University, Shadai Gallery and Taka Ishii Gallery
The decades following World War II -- 1945-1975 -- remain the least examined and least understood phase in the history of photography. So we have to cherish projects that help to fill in the blanks, like the exhibition "For a New World to Come: Experiments in Japanese Art and Photography, 1968-1979" and its accompanying monograph, currently at the Japan Society and New York University's Grey Art Gallery.
In 1974 the Museum of Modern Art's Department of Photographs mounted the group show "New Japanese Photography," the only such survey undertaken during the 29-year tenure of John Szarkowski, and indeed (if you exclude Eugène Atget) the only time he turned his curatorial attention to photographers from outside the U.S. So, especially given the influence of MoMA, this show mattered. But it had drastic limitations. As I wrote in my April 7, 1974 review for the New York Times, summing up the overview proposed by the show,
New Japanese photography is exclusively black-and-white, entirely unconcerned with the investigation of straight color, manipulated color, applied color, and the technology of modern color press printing. New Japanese photography is only glancingly involved with the nude and with the explicitly erotic; it is rarely concerned with any exploration of the staged event. Multiple imagery, mixed-media imagery, collage and other photographic techniques are not a part of new Japanese photography. Though it sometimes refers, quite painfully, to World War II and the atomic holocaust, new Japanese photography is never anti-Western and certainly never directly political in intent. New Japanese photography is restricted almost exclusively to the boundaries of that territory we loosely label "documentary." Moreover, by remarkable coincidence, New Japanese photography looks almost exactly like the photography which has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art for the past 10 years.
All these, I believe, are undeniably logical inferences drawn from the exhibit and its accompanying catalogue. All these are also inaccurate at best and in most cases utterly false. This would be immediately apparent to anyone even superficially familiar with the Japanese magazines and photography annuals, the books which come from Japan, and the portfolios by Japanese photographers which have been published in European and American magazines. But this material has not been disseminated widely even among American photographers, much less among the general public. Thus it may not be easily visible at first glance that this show has been cut along the specific bias of a severely tailored curatorial esthetic.
Jirō Takamatsu, Photograph of Photograph (No. D–2401), 1972, gelatin silver print, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Museum purchase funded by Bettie Cartwright and Michael A. Chesser in honor of Yasufumi Nakamori. © The Estate of Jirō Takamatsu, Courtesy of Yumiko Chiba Associates
Two figures, Daido Moriyama and Sh mei Tomatsu, appear in both the MoMA survey and this one; otherwise, there's no overlap. So, four decades later, "For a New World to Come" proves my point. Not that it's the first project to do so. Over the intervening 41 years, photography from around the globe has circulated much more widely that it did at that time, via traveling exhibitions, books, periodicals, photo festivals, and (since 1995) via the internet. Specialists in photography and the medium's general audience know much more about Japanese photography than they did in 1974. No curator today could get away with presenting such a narrowcast slice of the activity within a given territory, at least not without a convincing rationale for its many exclusions and single-minded focus.
"For a New World to Come" demonstrates that Japanese photographers and artists of that era mirrored in their work many of the concerns of their western counterparts. The severe limitations of the medium's flimsy communication system at the time suggests that they weren't parroting their U.S. and European peers, most of whose experiments received precious little critical attention even in their own countries and would thus have remained largely unknown to the Japanese. Think of these as parallel universes connected by a few wormholes through which bits and pieces leaked.
The most significant influence of western work on the Japanese photo scene came from the books of Robert Frank (The Americans, 1959) and William Klein (New York, 1956; Rome, 1958; Moscow,1964; and, of course, Tokyo, also 1964). From these examples the Japanese took strategies of framing, small-camera handling, selective focus, surreptitious grab-shooting (Frank) and aggressive, confrontational engagement with the subjects (Klein), as applied to what Lee Friedlander dubbed the "social landscape." They absorbed Klein's use of high-contrast development and printing, along with his flair for dramatic layout on the page, and turned some of the consequences of the ways in which these two photographers worked into an esthetic they dubbed are-bure-boke ('grainy, blurry, out-of-focus"). They also embraced Frank's and Klein's use of the printed page as a primary vehicle for series, cycles, and suites of images -- important in a country with few traditional museum and gallery spaces available for the display of photographs. (Some very significant Japanese exhibitions of art and photography were held in department stores during that period and after.)
Shōmei Tomatsu (1930-2012), Protest 1 from the series Oh! Shinjuku, 1969, printed 1980. Gelatin silver print, 9 7/8 x 13 7/8in. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Museum purchase funded by the S.I. Morris Photography Endowment and Morris Weiner, 2011.765. © Shōmei Tōmatsu – INTERFACE
Japan had its own equivalent of what we here called "the counterculture," and much of this work qualifies as specifically political, coming out of and addressing the protest movements of that time. Other projects deal more broadly with the profound reconfiguration of Japanese society in the post-WWII era. Still others engage with questions about the related mediums of still photography and film themselves: the implications of lens-based imagery, the relationship between the subject matter and the photograph thereof, the effects of photography on individual and cultural memory. The photographers and artists represented here (no one back then used the term "photo-based art") created not just bookworks and extended spreads in photo and art magazines but photocopier pieces, projections, assemblages of vernacular imagery, pinhole photos, negative prints, installations, and performances -- as wide a range of ideas and forms as those involved with the medium elsewhere.
For someone like myself, at that time observing activity within the medium and the expansion of its field of ideas mostly in their U.S. and western European manifestations, this is familiar ground. To find it traversed in Japan as well indicates that a certain irreverent, challenging attitude toward photography and the conventions that had governed it through 1945 bubbled up spontaneously in different parts of the world thereafter, a commonality of thought and consequent action meriting much more attention than it has received.
Because the show only samples the oeuvres of those it includes, rather than single out individuals I commend it to you as a whole. I think that's how its curator intends it -- not so much an awarding of prizes for individual accomplishment as recognition of a multivocal, uncoordinated, yet collective push at the boundaries of the mediums under consideration, indigenously Japanese yet unquestionably related to what others were doing elsewhere at that moment.
It makes me yearn for something even larger, impossible except perhaps as a web-based version of André Malraux's imaginary "museum without walls": someplace I could go to see this show and then move on to a comparable selection from North America, then South America, then western Europe, eastern Europe ... so as to observe, decade by decade, how the medium evolved, how those working with it understood its history and premises and field of ideas, absorbed and utilized the technological options available to them, grew on their own and interacted with their peers.
Yasufumi Nakamori, Associate Curator of Photography at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, curated "For a New World to Come," which tours under the auspices of MFAH. The show's two partnering New York venues have divided its contents roughly in half lengthwise, so to speak, so if you visit either one you will get a complementary version of the shared infrastructure. The half at the Grey Art Gallery (100 Washington Square East) will close first, on December 5, so if this interests you get there soon. (Admission is free.) The Japan Society's section will run through January 10 at 333 E. 47th St.; admission is $12.
An excellent, extensive monograph accompanies the exhibition as its catalog but goes far beyond that function, including as it does 13 essays and additional images (274 total) contextualizing the materials on view, with a list price of $75.00. It will become a central reference on its subject. Alas, though published in February 2015 it has already gone out of print; I'm told MFAH has no plans to reissue it. You can find copies for sale online, of course. Perhaps MFAH will consider releasing it as an ebook, to make it more widely available.
Catalogue cover, For a New World to Come (Museum of Fine Arts Houston, 2015).
Kazuyo Kinoshita, 79-38-A, 1979. Acrylic on photograph, 20 1/5 x 28 3/8 in. National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. © Kazuyo Kinoshita
Toshio Matsumoto, For the Damaged Right Eye, 1968, film still from triple 16mm (transferred to DVD), collection of the artist. © Toshio Matsumoto / Photo: PJMIA
Installation shot, For a New World to Come, Japan Society, New York, 2015.
Kiyoji Ōtsuji (1923-2001), Past of One Tin Can, from Otsuji Experimental Laboratory, 1977. Gelatin silver print, 8 x 9 15/16 in. Musashino Art University Museum and Library. © Seiko Ōtsuji
Uematsu Keiji (b. 1947), Horizontal Position, Vertical Position, Right Angle Position, 1973/2003. Gelatin silver print, 57 1/8 x 35 7/16 in. Artist's collection at Yumiko Chiba Associates, Tokyo. © Keiji Uematsu, courtesy of Yumiko Chiba Associates
A. D. Coleman is an internationally known independent critic, historian, and curator of photography and photo-based art. His work has been translated into 21 languages and published in 31 countries. Coleman's widely read blog, Photocritic International, appears at photocritic.com.
© Copyright 2015 by A. D. Coleman. All rights reserved. By permission of the author and Image/World Syndication Services, imageworld@nearbycafe.com.
The Angel Gabriel
Why do I focus on Vision so much? It’s because I believe that Vision is what makes an image great. It’s what makes the difference between a technically perfect image and one with feeling. It’s what makes your images unique.
Great images do not come about because of equipment and processes, but rather from Vision that drives these tools to do wonderful things. What good are great technical skills if you don’t have an idea worthy of them?
If I had to choose between the best equipment in the world and no Vision or having a Kodak Brownie and my Vision…
I’d take the Brownie.
A lot of people ask: “How do I go about finding my Vision?” I’m not sure I can answer that for everyone, but here is how I discovered mine:
Several years ago I was attending Review Santa Fe where over the course of a day my work was evaluated by a number of gallery owners, curators, publishers and “experts” in the field.
During the last review of a very long day, the reviewer quickly looked at my work, brusquely pushed it back to me and said “It looks like you’re trying to copy Ansel Adams.” I replied that I was, because I loved his work! He then said something that would change my life:
“Ansel’s already done Ansel and you’re not going to do him any better. What can you create that shows your unique vision?”
Those words really stung, but over the next two years the message did sink in: Was it my life’s ambition to be known as the world’s best Ansel Adams imitator? Had I no higher aspirations than that?
I desperately wanted to know if I had a Vision, but there was a huge problem: what exactly was Vision and how did I develop it?
I researched Vision but I couldn’t relate to the definitions and explanations that I found. Was it a look, a style or a technique? Was it something you were born with or something you developed?
And then there was the nagging doubt: what if I didn’t have a Vision? I feared that it was something you either “had” or you “didn’t have” and perhaps I did not?
And how was I to go about finding my Vision?
With so many unanswered questions and with no idea on how to proceed, I simply forged ahead with what made sense to me. Here is what I did:
I took 100 of my best images, printed them out and then divided them into two groups: the ones I REALLY loved…and all the rest. I decided that the ones that went in the “loved” pile had to be images that “I” loved, and not just ones that I was attached to because they had received a lot praise, won awards or sold the best. And if I loved an image and nobody else did, I still picked it.
I committed that from that point on, I would only pursue those kinds of images, the ones that I really loved. Too often I had been sidetracked when I chose to pursue images simply because others liked them.
I started practicing Photographic Celibacy and stopped looking at other photographer’s work. I reasoned that to find my Vision, I had to stop immersing myself in the Vision and images of others.
I used to spend hours and hours looking at other photographer’s work and would find myself copying their style or even their specific images. I knew that I couldn’t wipe the blackboard of my mind clean of those images, but I could certainly stop focusing on their Vision and instead focus on mine.
When I looked at a scene I didn’t want to see it through another photographer’s eyes, I wanted to see it through mine!
I embarked on a mission to simplify my photography. In the past I had focused on the technical and now I was going to focus on the creative. I disposed of everything that was not necessary: extra equipment, gadgets, plug-ins, programs, processes and all of those toys we technophiles love. I went back to the basics which simplified my photography, gave me more time and it reminded me that I wanted to put more focus on my creative abilities.
I ignored the advice that well intentioned friends and experts gave me. So much of this advice had never felt right for me and I was torn between following their recommendations or my own intuition. In the end I decided that only by pleasing myself could I create my best work, and that no matter how expert someone was, they were not an expert about my Vision or what I wanted.
I worked to change my mindset from photographer to artist. I had always thought of myself as a photographer who documented, but I could see that this role was limiting and the truth was that I wanted to be an artist that created.
To help me make this mental shift I started calling myself an artist (I felt like such a fraud at first) figuring that I must play the part to become the part. I also stopped using certain words and phrases, for example instead of saying “take a picture” I would say “create an image.”
That may seem like small and inconsequential thing, but it helped to continually remind me that I wanted to be an artist who created, and not a photographer who documented.
I questioned my motives and honestly answered some hard question such as: why am I creating? Who am I trying to please? What do I want from my photography? How do I define success?
It seemed to me that Vision was something honest and that if I were going to find my Vision, I had to be honest about the reasons I was pursuing it.
I stopped comparing my work to other photographers. I noticed that when I compared, it led to doubts about my abilities and it left me deflated. All I could see were their strengths and my weaknesses, which was an unfair comparison.
I decided that if my goal was to produce the best work that I could, then it did not matter what others were doing. I had to remind myself that this was not a race or a contest, I was not competing against others…I was competing with myself.
I made a conscious decision to stop caring what others thought of my work. I recognized that in trying to please others, I was left feeling insecure and empty.
At the end of the day, it was just me, my work and what I thought of it. As long as I cared what others thought, I was a slave and could never be free.
I re-read Ayn Rand’s novel “The Fountainhead” which I had first read at age 17. It has been one of the most influential books of my life because it gave me hope that I could become truly independent, that I could think for myself and define my own future. I know this book can cause strong reactions in people, both for good and ill, but it was a tremendous help in finding my Vision.
I really was proceeding blindly, but I believed that if I listened to my own desires, pursued what I loved and eliminated all other voices, I would learn something about my Vision.
I did this for two years and there were many times that I became discouraged and didn’t feel like I was making any progress. I didn’t really know what I expected to happen, perhaps I thought I’d have a revelatory experience where my Vision would suddenly appear in a moment of inspiration!
But that didn’t happen.
And then one day it just occurred to me: I understood…I understood what my Vision was.
It came in an anticlimatical and quiet moment of understanding, and after all of that worrying and angst…it now seemed so incredibly simple. Vision was not something I needed to acquire or develop, it had been there all along and all that I needed to do was to “discover” it.
Vision was simply the sum total of my life experiences that caused me to see the world in a unique way. When I looked at a scene and imagined it a certain way…that was my vision.
My Vision had always been there but over the years it had been buried by layers of “junk.” Each layer obscured my vision until it was lost and I doubted my creative abilities. Some of those layers were valuing other’s opinions over my own, fear of failing, imitating others and creating for recognition.
Each time I created for external rewards, each time I put accolades before personal satisfaction, each time I cared what others would think…I buried my natural creativity under another layer until it was buried and forgotten.
Interestingly I came to conclude that Vision had little to do with photography or art and had more to do with being a well-adjusted, confident and independent human being. Once I had the confidence to pursue my art on my terms, and define success for myself, I was free to pursue my Vision without fear of rejection or need for acceptance.
Something else I learned about Vision: it is not a look or a style. It is not focusing on one subject or genre and following your Vision will not make your work look all the same. Vision gives you the freedom to pursue any subject, create in any style and do anything that you want.
But finding my Vision was not the end of the journey, because now I had to follow it which was equally as hard. I am still tempted to create for recognition, to care what others think and to want to be acknowledged. It takes constant discipline to stay centered, to remember why I’m creating and to follow my definition of success.
If you could have known me before I found my Vision, you would have found a technician that doubted his creative abilities, a photographer who felt that it was wrong to “manipulate” the image, a person who sought the generally accepted definition of success: money, fame and accolades, and you would have found an insecure person who needed others to like his images in order to feel good about his work.
Thankfully, that person is gone.
While my initial search was for my Vision, what I really found was myself which allowed my natural Vision to flourish once again.
The Angel Gabriel
Why do I focus on Vision so much? It’s because I believe that Vision is what makes an image great. It’s what makes the difference between a technically perfect image and one with feeling. It’s what makes your images unique.
Great images do not come about because of equipment and processes, but rather from Vision that drives these tools to do wonderful things. What good are great technical skills if you don’t have an idea worthy of them?
If I had to choose between the best equipment in the world and no Vision or having a Kodak Brownie and my Vision…
I’d take the Brownie.
A lot of people ask: “How do I go about finding my Vision?” I’m not sure I can answer that for everyone, but here is how I discovered mine:
Several years ago I was attending Review Santa Fe where over the course of a day my work was evaluated by a number of gallery owners, curators, publishers and “experts” in the field.
During the last review of a very long day, the reviewer quickly looked at my work, brusquely pushed it back to me and said “It looks like you’re trying to copy Ansel Adams.” I replied that I was, because I loved his work! He then said something that would change my life:
“Ansel’s already done Ansel and you’re not going to do him any better. What can you create that shows your unique vision?”
Those words really stung, but over the next two years the message did sink in: Was it my life’s ambition to be known as the world’s best Ansel Adams imitator? Had I no higher aspirations than that?
I desperately wanted to know if I had a Vision, but there was a huge problem: what exactly was Vision and how did I develop it?
I researched Vision but I couldn’t relate to the definitions and explanations that I found. Was it a look, a style or a technique? Was it something you were born with or something you developed?
And then there was the nagging doubt: what if I didn’t have a Vision? I feared that it was something you either “had” or you “didn’t have” and perhaps I did not?
And how was I to go about finding my Vision?
With so many unanswered questions and with no idea on how to proceed, I simply forged ahead with what made sense to me. Here is what I did:
I took 100 of my best images, printed them out and then divided them into two groups: the ones I REALLY loved…and all the rest. I decided that the ones that went in the “loved” pile had to be images that “I” loved, and not just ones that I was attached to because they had received a lot praise, won awards or sold the best. And if I loved an image and nobody else did, I still picked it.
I committed that from that point on, I would only pursue those kinds of images, the ones that I really loved. Too often I had been sidetracked when I chose to pursue images simply because others liked them.
I started practicing Photographic Celibacy and stopped looking at other photographer’s work. I reasoned that to find my Vision, I had to stop immersing myself in the Vision and images of others.
I used to spend hours and hours looking at other photographer’s work and would find myself copying their style or even their specific images. I knew that I couldn’t wipe the blackboard of my mind clean of those images, but I could certainly stop focusing on their Vision and instead focus on mine.
When I looked at a scene I didn’t want to see it through another photographer’s eyes, I wanted to see it through mine!
I embarked on a mission to simplify my photography. In the past I had focused on the technical and now I was going to focus on the creative. I disposed of everything that was not necessary: extra equipment, gadgets, plug-ins, programs, processes and all of those toys we technophiles love. I went back to the basics which simplified my photography, gave me more time and it reminded me that I wanted to put more focus on my creative abilities.
I ignored the advice that well intentioned friends and experts gave me. So much of this advice had never felt right for me and I was torn between following their recommendations or my own intuition. In the end I decided that only by pleasing myself could I create my best work, and that no matter how expert someone was, they were not an expert about my Vision or what I wanted.
I worked to change my mindset from photographer to artist. I had always thought of myself as a photographer who documented, but I could see that this role was limiting and the truth was that I wanted to be an artist that created.
To help me make this mental shift I started calling myself an artist (I felt like such a fraud at first) figuring that I must play the part to become the part. I also stopped using certain words and phrases, for example instead of saying “take a picture” I would say “create an image.”
That may seem like small and inconsequential thing, but it helped to continually remind me that I wanted to be an artist who created, and not a photographer who documented.
I questioned my motives and honestly answered some hard question such as: why am I creating? Who am I trying to please? What do I want from my photography? How do I define success?
It seemed to me that Vision was something honest and that if I were going to find my Vision, I had to be honest about the reasons I was pursuing it.
I stopped comparing my work to other photographers. I noticed that when I compared, it led to doubts about my abilities and it left me deflated. All I could see were their strengths and my weaknesses, which was an unfair comparison.
I decided that if my goal was to produce the best work that I could, then it did not matter what others were doing. I had to remind myself that this was not a race or a contest, I was not competing against others…I was competing with myself.
I made a conscious decision to stop caring what others thought of my work. I recognized that in trying to please others, I was left feeling insecure and empty.
At the end of the day, it was just me, my work and what I thought of it. As long as I cared what others thought, I was a slave and could never be free.
I re-read Ayn Rand’s novel “The Fountainhead” which I had first read at age 17. It has been one of the most influential books of my life because it gave me hope that I could become truly independent, that I could think for myself and define my own future. I know this book can cause strong reactions in people, both for good and ill, but it was a tremendous help in finding my Vision.
I really was proceeding blindly, but I believed that if I listened to my own desires, pursued what I loved and eliminated all other voices, I would learn something about my Vision.
I did this for two years and there were many times that I became discouraged and didn’t feel like I was making any progress. I didn’t really know what I expected to happen, perhaps I thought I’d have a revelatory experience where my Vision would suddenly appear in a moment of inspiration!
But that didn’t happen.
And then one day it just occurred to me: I understood…I understood what my Vision was.
It came in an anticlimatical and quiet moment of understanding, and after all of that worrying and angst…it now seemed so incredibly simple. Vision was not something I needed to acquire or develop, it had been there all along and all that I needed to do was to “discover” it.
Vision was simply the sum total of my life experiences that caused me to see the world in a unique way. When I looked at a scene and imagined it a certain way…that was my vision.
My Vision had always been there but over the years it had been buried by layers of “junk.” Each layer obscured my vision until it was lost and I doubted my creative abilities. Some of those layers were valuing other’s opinions over my own, fear of failing, imitating others and creating for recognition.
Each time I created for external rewards, each time I put accolades before personal satisfaction, each time I cared what others would think…I buried my natural creativity under another layer until it was buried and forgotten.
Interestingly I came to conclude that Vision had little to do with photography or art and had more to do with being a well-adjusted, confident and independent human being. Once I had the confidence to pursue my art on my terms, and define success for myself, I was free to pursue my Vision without fear of rejection or need for acceptance.
Something else I learned about Vision: it is not a look or a style. It is not focusing on one subject or genre and following your Vision will not make your work look all the same. Vision gives you the freedom to pursue any subject, create in any style and do anything that you want.
But finding my Vision was not the end of the journey, because now I had to follow it which was equally as hard. I am still tempted to create for recognition, to care what others think and to want to be acknowledged. It takes constant discipline to stay centered, to remember why I’m creating and to follow my definition of success.
If you could have known me before I found my Vision, you would have found a technician that doubted his creative abilities, a photographer who felt that it was wrong to “manipulate” the image, a person who sought the generally accepted definition of success: money, fame and accolades, and you would have found an insecure person who needed others to like his images in order to feel good about his work.
Thankfully, that person is gone.
While my initial search was for my Vision, what I really found was myself which allowed my natural Vision to flourish once again.
I’m a 50mm guy. For whatever reason, be it scientific or psychological, I just prefer shooting a 50mm over any other focal length. In my six or seven years of shooting Leica M bodies, I’ve owned pretty much all the modern Leica 50mm’s, a few of the classics and a few non-Leica brands.
APO Summicron-M 50mm, f/16, ISO 320
Until recently I thought that the Leica Summilux-M 50mm was without a doubt the best 50mm lens on the market. I’ve shot with it for four years and loved every minute of it. I’ve got to know the lens inside out and would have been happy shooting with it for the rest of my life.
However, when Leica announced the APO Summicron back in 2012 to much fanfare and exaltation, I decided to look into it. There were crazy claims flying about – some called it the best Leica lens ever made, some said it was even the best lens of all time, but it turned out I was going to have to wait a long time to find out how true these claims were.
APO Summicron-M 50mm, f/2, ISO 400
I put an order in for one with my local dealer and after waiting around six months, I started noticing articles on the internet pop up mentioning flare issues and that Leica were binning 9 out of 10 that they produced due to production complications. I really didn’t fancy forking out a fortune just to be a guinea pig, so I cancelled my order with my dealer and went back to being happy (more than happy) with my Summilux.
A few years went by and I just happened to be in the Leica Mayfair boutique in February and there were two APO’s in stock. I asked the shop manager if the flare and production issues had been sorted and he confirmed they had. The lens had actually dropped slightly in price as well and I decided to buy it there and then.
So now I’ve had the lens for a little over six months, shoot almost exclusively with it and thought it was about time I wrote up my findings.
APO Summicron-M 50mm, f/2, ISO 25,000
I know the claims out there. I’ve heard it called “technically perfect” and “the best render of any lens ever”, but rather than be sensational about it, I’m just going to simply state that it is the best lens I’ve ever used. Not just the best 50mm lens. Not even just the best full frame lens (I shoot S lenses too), but the best lens I’ve used period.
Ok, so that is a big claim, especially when it doesn’t render nearly as good as a APO-Summicron-S 120mm, but for a blend of reasons, it is the best lens I have ever used.
Here’s why…
So for the reasons above, I’ve fallen in love with this lens and it’s never off my mount.c
APO Summicron-M 50mm, f/4, ISO 320
The last thing to talk about is price. This is an expensive lens. At the time of writing it is £5200 / $8000 / €7150. A lot of money.
However, if you’re in the market for this lens, you’ve probably looked at or owned a 50mm Noctilux, which is dearer and trust me, nowhere near as useable, as sharp or as portable as the APO. You may also have looked at the 50mm Summilux which at the time of writing is about half the price of the APO. Is the APO twice as good as the Summilux? No, it’s not, but consider the compactness of the lens, it’s awesome sharpness and it’s ability to separate subjects like no other lens in existence and the spend becomes more convincing.
APO Summicron-M 50mm, f/4, ISO 320
Image quality is subjective and open to differing opinions, but to reinforce my experience with the APO I’ve included a few unprocessed comparison shots between the APOand the Summilux below…
APO Summicron-M 50mm, f/2, ISO 2500
Summilux-M 50mm, f/1.4, ISO 2500
APO Summicron-M 50mm, f/8, ISO 25,000
Summilux-M 50mm, f/8, ISO 25,000
If you decide the APO Summicron-M is your next 50mm lens, let me know if you’re as delighted with it as I am.
See more from Stephen Cosh at
www.stephencosh.co.uk and theleicameet.wordpress.com
]]>
I’m a 50mm guy. For whatever reason, be it scientific or psychological, I just prefer shooting a 50mm over any other focal length. In my six or seven years of shooting Leica M bodies, I’ve owned pretty much all the modern Leica 50mm’s, a few of the classics and a few non-Leica brands.
APO Summicron-M 50mm, f/16, ISO 320
Until recently I thought that the Leica Summilux-M 50mm was without a doubt the best 50mm lens on the market. I’ve shot with it for four years and loved every minute of it. I’ve got to know the lens inside out and would have been happy shooting with it for the rest of my life.
However, when Leica announced the APO Summicron back in 2012 to much fanfare and exaltation, I decided to look into it. There were crazy claims flying about – some called it the best Leica lens ever made, some said it was even the best lens of all time, but it turned out I was going to have to wait a long time to find out how true these claims were.
APO Summicron-M 50mm, f/2, ISO 400
I put an order in for one with my local dealer and after waiting around six months, I started noticing articles on the internet pop up mentioning flare issues and that Leica were binning 9 out of 10 that they produced due to production complications. I really didn’t fancy forking out a fortune just to be a guinea pig, so I cancelled my order with my dealer and went back to being happy (more than happy) with my Summilux.
A few years went by and I just happened to be in the Leica Mayfair boutique in February and there were two APO’s in stock. I asked the shop manager if the flare and production issues had been sorted and he confirmed they had. The lens had actually dropped slightly in price as well and I decided to buy it there and then.
So now I’ve had the lens for a little over six months, shoot almost exclusively with it and thought it was about time I wrote up my findings.
APO Summicron-M 50mm, f/2, ISO 25,000
I know the claims out there. I’ve heard it called “technically perfect” and “the best render of any lens ever”, but rather than be sensational about it, I’m just going to simply state that it is the best lens I’ve ever used. Not just the best 50mm lens. Not even just the best full frame lens (I shoot S lenses too), but the best lens I’ve used period.
Ok, so that is a big claim, especially when it doesn’t render nearly as good as a APO-Summicron-S 120mm, but for a blend of reasons, it is the best lens I have ever used.
Here’s why…
So for the reasons above, I’ve fallen in love with this lens and it’s never off my mount.c
APO Summicron-M 50mm, f/4, ISO 320
The last thing to talk about is price. This is an expensive lens. At the time of writing it is £5200 / $8000 / €7150. A lot of money.
However, if you’re in the market for this lens, you’ve probably looked at or owned a 50mm Noctilux, which is dearer and trust me, nowhere near as useable, as sharp or as portable as the APO. You may also have looked at the 50mm Summilux which at the time of writing is about half the price of the APO. Is the APO twice as good as the Summilux? No, it’s not, but consider the compactness of the lens, it’s awesome sharpness and it’s ability to separate subjects like no other lens in existence and the spend becomes more convincing.
APO Summicron-M 50mm, f/4, ISO 320
Image quality is subjective and open to differing opinions, but to reinforce my experience with the APO I’ve included a few unprocessed comparison shots between the APOand the Summilux below…
APO Summicron-M 50mm, f/2, ISO 2500
Summilux-M 50mm, f/1.4, ISO 2500
APO Summicron-M 50mm, f/8, ISO 25,000
Summilux-M 50mm, f/8, ISO 25,000
If you decide the APO Summicron-M is your next 50mm lens, let me know if you’re as delighted with it as I am.
See more from Stephen Cosh at
www.stephencosh.co.uk and theleicameet.wordpress.com
]]>
A photograph should be indirectly brutal, harrowing and comic. In a truly satisfying image, far more information is withheld than delivered. To tell is human; to suggest, the province of seers and mystics.
My images are open-ended: scenes often resembling everyday places and occurrences with a dose of the uncanny. There is little distinction between images created spontaneously in situ and those that are staged or altered digitally. Questions take precedence over answers, and what the viewer might see or experience in an image is far more important than any meaning I might assign. A photograph is only a beginning, albeit a seductive, beguiling point of embarkation.
I think of my photographs as aesthetic occurrences which speak to an unidentifiable yearning. Scenes riddled with longing, suffused with unrequited desire, speak to the familiar world disintegrating into the surreal. It’s a craving that is recognizable but always just beyond description. A half-remembered face perhaps, the distant memory of a hazily-recalled conversation, or the simple but sobering realization of time unspooling behind us. The emotion is distinct, pungent and yet frustratingly ineffable. When photographs work well, when light and angle and frame coincide in sumptuous choreography - I can almost say what it is.
Maury Gortemiller is a photographer based out of Decatur, GA. He is also a competitive apneist, and plans to make an attempt on the breath-holding world record by fiscal year 2016.
Instagram: @elmaurygee
Submit]]>A photograph should be indirectly brutal, harrowing and comic. In a truly satisfying image, far more information is withheld than delivered. To tell is human; to suggest, the province of seers and mystics.
My images are open-ended: scenes often resembling everyday places and occurrences with a dose of the uncanny. There is little distinction between images created spontaneously in situ and those that are staged or altered digitally. Questions take precedence over answers, and what the viewer might see or experience in an image is far more important than any meaning I might assign. A photograph is only a beginning, albeit a seductive, beguiling point of embarkation.
I think of my photographs as aesthetic occurrences which speak to an unidentifiable yearning. Scenes riddled with longing, suffused with unrequited desire, speak to the familiar world disintegrating into the surreal. It’s a craving that is recognizable but always just beyond description. A half-remembered face perhaps, the distant memory of a hazily-recalled conversation, or the simple but sobering realization of time unspooling behind us. The emotion is distinct, pungent and yet frustratingly ineffable. When photographs work well, when light and angle and frame coincide in sumptuous choreography - I can almost say what it is.
Maury Gortemiller is a photographer based out of Decatur, GA. He is also a competitive apneist, and plans to make an attempt on the breath-holding world record by fiscal year 2016.
Instagram: @elmaurygee
Submit]]>Courtesy of Tom from TAZM PICTURES
In 1945, London’s Ensign Ltd. designed a rugged, all-purpose camera for the British military that never saw much action because the war ended shortly thereafter. It was subsequently “civilianized” but never got much traction due to supply shortages and the reputation German cameras still enjoyed.
It’s a shame the Ensign Commando never really caught on as well as it could have. It’s an attractive, and well-made camera that is easy to use, feels solid in the hands, and has a number of innovative and interesting features. For example, most cameras of that time frame and earlier are either focused by sliding the entire lens/shutter assembly back and forth (for the earlier ones) or by turning the lens – basically screwing it and unscrewing it – to change the distance between the lens and the film. On the Commando, the lens stays in place but the film is moved back and forth, using the knob on the top right (in photo), so that you don’t have to let go of the camera and grope around in front of the optics. Plus, a distance gauge on the focus knob in addition to a rangefinder, to make extra sure your shots are crisp and focused correctly.
The camera uses 120 film, but instead of taking eight 6 x 9 cm exposures, the default is 6 x 6 cm, which allows for 12 square shots. It can also take 16 6 x 4.5 cm exposures, however. Other cameras that allow two sizes of photos to be taken typically use a mask that gets lost over the years – but the Commando has two flaps that can be folded in to turn the square to a narrower rectangle. Depending on the size, a slider in the center can be moved to assist with the proper framing. It has two separate windows in the back which can be opened depending on the size you’re shooting, but the winder will also stop automatically if the slider on the winding knob (top left in photo) is in the correct position. For 16 exposures, the slider is moved the other way, the winder turns freely, and the red window has to be used to wind the film the correct distance.
The camera came in three “civilian” versions after the 1945 military version, and this is the final (1949-1950) version, which has a faster (1/300s) shutter than previous versions. It’s a fun camera to use once you figure out all of its features. The first roll I shot was a new roll of color Ektar film, which turned out OK but had some odd color aberrations.
So next I decided to try some black and white film – but because film can be expensive and I was just testing out the camera, I grabbed an expired roll of Orwo (former East German, manufactured well before the Wall came down) black and white film. Orwo was considered “cheap” film even when the film was freshly manufactured – so 30-40 years after expiration, I wasn’t really sure what to expect.
What I find interesting about all of these photos is that they are all so well-focused. The rangefinder can be a little tricky. For those who don’t know how a rangefinder works, you look through the viewfinder and move the focusing knob until the image and a “ghost” of the image are exactly superimposed. In bright sunlight on the beach, with a quickly changing scene, it can be tricky to catch an image before it’s gone. So I took most of the pictures by estimating the distance using the marks on the focusing knob. And for virtually all the photos, contrast and brightness came out pretty well also, which suggests the shutter is still operating at the correct speed (I estimate shutter speed and aperture without a light meter).
It’s a fun camera to use. For a vintage camera from 1949, it seems heavy and bulky, but it’s not really any worse than today’s DSLRs. But it somehow feels a lot more solid and rugged.
For more photos taken with this particular camera, you can view this Flickr album. To learn more about the camera, see
See more reviews from Tom HERE
]]>Courtesy of Tom from TAZM PICTURES
In 1945, London’s Ensign Ltd. designed a rugged, all-purpose camera for the British military that never saw much action because the war ended shortly thereafter. It was subsequently “civilianized” but never got much traction due to supply shortages and the reputation German cameras still enjoyed.
It’s a shame the Ensign Commando never really caught on as well as it could have. It’s an attractive, and well-made camera that is easy to use, feels solid in the hands, and has a number of innovative and interesting features. For example, most cameras of that time frame and earlier are either focused by sliding the entire lens/shutter assembly back and forth (for the earlier ones) or by turning the lens – basically screwing it and unscrewing it – to change the distance between the lens and the film. On the Commando, the lens stays in place but the film is moved back and forth, using the knob on the top right (in photo), so that you don’t have to let go of the camera and grope around in front of the optics. Plus, a distance gauge on the focus knob in addition to a rangefinder, to make extra sure your shots are crisp and focused correctly.
The camera uses 120 film, but instead of taking eight 6 x 9 cm exposures, the default is 6 x 6 cm, which allows for 12 square shots. It can also take 16 6 x 4.5 cm exposures, however. Other cameras that allow two sizes of photos to be taken typically use a mask that gets lost over the years – but the Commando has two flaps that can be folded in to turn the square to a narrower rectangle. Depending on the size, a slider in the center can be moved to assist with the proper framing. It has two separate windows in the back which can be opened depending on the size you’re shooting, but the winder will also stop automatically if the slider on the winding knob (top left in photo) is in the correct position. For 16 exposures, the slider is moved the other way, the winder turns freely, and the red window has to be used to wind the film the correct distance.
The camera came in three “civilian” versions after the 1945 military version, and this is the final (1949-1950) version, which has a faster (1/300s) shutter than previous versions. It’s a fun camera to use once you figure out all of its features. The first roll I shot was a new roll of color Ektar film, which turned out OK but had some odd color aberrations.
So next I decided to try some black and white film – but because film can be expensive and I was just testing out the camera, I grabbed an expired roll of Orwo (former East German, manufactured well before the Wall came down) black and white film. Orwo was considered “cheap” film even when the film was freshly manufactured – so 30-40 years after expiration, I wasn’t really sure what to expect.
What I find interesting about all of these photos is that they are all so well-focused. The rangefinder can be a little tricky. For those who don’t know how a rangefinder works, you look through the viewfinder and move the focusing knob until the image and a “ghost” of the image are exactly superimposed. In bright sunlight on the beach, with a quickly changing scene, it can be tricky to catch an image before it’s gone. So I took most of the pictures by estimating the distance using the marks on the focusing knob. And for virtually all the photos, contrast and brightness came out pretty well also, which suggests the shutter is still operating at the correct speed (I estimate shutter speed and aperture without a light meter).
It’s a fun camera to use. For a vintage camera from 1949, it seems heavy and bulky, but it’s not really any worse than today’s DSLRs. But it somehow feels a lot more solid and rugged.
For more photos taken with this particular camera, you can view this Flickr album. To learn more about the camera, see
See more reviews from Tom HERE
]]>Courtesy of Tom at Tamz Pictures
The Ansco Readyflash – so named because it’s “ready for flash” (but I don’t have one) via two connectors on the camera – is about as simple a box camera as you could probably come up with. It’s made of sheet metal and plastic, and takes 8 exposures on a roll of 620 film, 6 x 9 cm each. It feels like an empty tuna can in your hands and makes roughly the same sound when dropped. Yet is surprisingly durable, and takes much better pictures than I expected. Mine is difficult to open and close, and if you look closely you’ll see that there’s a chip out of the plastic part of the case. But it seems to work just fine.
The shots above and below were taken from the top of the lighthouse at Chennai’s Marina beach – above is the fish market, along with a long line of boats and the 2004 typhoon-damaged housing many of the fishing people live in. I’m not sure what the complex below is – it may be the police headquarters – but it’s just west of the lighthouse.
This is a shot of the beach, and all of the debris produced, behind the fish market.
Unfortunately, there is no mechanism to prevent double exposures, so you have to pay attention to what you’re doing and develop a routine for advancing the film.
I particularly like the next two shots – this is one of the many vendor carts that “litter” Marina Beach, left stranded in a section of beach that is still flooded from last week’s rains. Below that is a row of granite “balls” placed at different locations along the beach to prevent vehicles from entering certain areas. They can be used for creative shots in the right light. I especially like how you can see where the focus falls off from the center of the (non-adjustable) lens, and the vignetting in the corners – effects some people will add to digital photos using software. Cheap lenses of this type (think “Diana” camera) are all the rage in the lomography crowd. You can easily spend a hundred bucks on a plastic Diana. Or pick up one of these for under ten.
Finally, check out this old carousel, which provides man and animal alike respite from the sun!
For another review/photo examples of this camera, check out this guy’s blog post. For the record, I used the same film (coincidence – Ilford FP4 125) but developed it for 10 minutes at 70F in HC-110, dilution B.
]]>Courtesy of Tom at Tamz Pictures
The Ansco Readyflash – so named because it’s “ready for flash” (but I don’t have one) via two connectors on the camera – is about as simple a box camera as you could probably come up with. It’s made of sheet metal and plastic, and takes 8 exposures on a roll of 620 film, 6 x 9 cm each. It feels like an empty tuna can in your hands and makes roughly the same sound when dropped. Yet is surprisingly durable, and takes much better pictures than I expected. Mine is difficult to open and close, and if you look closely you’ll see that there’s a chip out of the plastic part of the case. But it seems to work just fine.
The shots above and below were taken from the top of the lighthouse at Chennai’s Marina beach – above is the fish market, along with a long line of boats and the 2004 typhoon-damaged housing many of the fishing people live in. I’m not sure what the complex below is – it may be the police headquarters – but it’s just west of the lighthouse.
This is a shot of the beach, and all of the debris produced, behind the fish market.
Unfortunately, there is no mechanism to prevent double exposures, so you have to pay attention to what you’re doing and develop a routine for advancing the film.
I particularly like the next two shots – this is one of the many vendor carts that “litter” Marina Beach, left stranded in a section of beach that is still flooded from last week’s rains. Below that is a row of granite “balls” placed at different locations along the beach to prevent vehicles from entering certain areas. They can be used for creative shots in the right light. I especially like how you can see where the focus falls off from the center of the (non-adjustable) lens, and the vignetting in the corners – effects some people will add to digital photos using software. Cheap lenses of this type (think “Diana” camera) are all the rage in the lomography crowd. You can easily spend a hundred bucks on a plastic Diana. Or pick up one of these for under ten.
Finally, check out this old carousel, which provides man and animal alike respite from the sun!
For another review/photo examples of this camera, check out this guy’s blog post. For the record, I used the same film (coincidence – Ilford FP4 125) but developed it for 10 minutes at 70F in HC-110, dilution B.
]]>Many people ask me, “But why black and white? You were born into a color world!”
I reply, “No, I was born into a black and white world!” When I was growing up the world was in black and white.
TV was in black and white, movies were in black and white, the news was delivered in black and white, my childhood heroes were in black and white…
…and even our nation was segregated into black and white.
So I photographed in Black and White and perhaps my images are an extension of the world that I grew up in.
As I think about that innocent young boy I once was, I’m reminded of what motivated me to take pictures those 50 years ago; it was for the pure joy of creating.
But along the way I became a little lost and started creating for the wrong reasons: for fame, fortune, accolades and affirmation until one day I realized that photography was not as fun as it once had been. Today I’ve come full circle and have arrived where I started off; I’ve once again discovered how to create for the pure joy of creating.
Here are some things that I’ve learned that has brought me back to loving photography again and creating the best work of my life.
Here are 10 things that I’ve learned in 50 years:
1. Don’t Aspire to Become the World’s Greatest Imitator.
When I was younger, the ultimate compliment someone could give me would be to say, “Your work reminds me of Ansel Adams’ work.” Because he was my childhood hero, I would dream of creating images just like him. I’d imitate his style and sometimes I’d even go to Yosemite and try to recreate specific images!
Then several years ago I was attending Review Santa Fe where, over the course of a day, my work was evaluated by a number of gallery owners, curators, publishers and experts in the field. During the last review of a very long day, the reviewer quickly looked at my work, brusquely pushed it back to me and said, “It looks like you’re trying to copy Ansel Adams.” I replied that I was, because I loved his work!
He then said something that would change my photography and my life: “Ansel’s already done Ansel and you’re not going to do him any better. What can you create that shows your unique vision?”
Those words really stung, but over the next two years the significance of his message sank in. Was it my life’s ambition to be known as the world’s best Ansel Adams imitator? Had I no higher aspirations than that?
I came to realize that I needed to create work that was uniquely mine and not imitative of another. But how was I to do that I wondered? There isn’t a subject that hasn’t been photographed before, so how could I create unique work?
While it’s true that almost everything has been photographed, it has not been photographed through my eyes. We each have a unique Vision and that’s how I can create unique work. The choice was clear: Did I want to imitate or create?
In the end I decided that I’d prefer to create a mediocre original, rather than make a brilliant copy.
2. Vision is Everything
I believe that Vision is what gives your image a soul and it’s what makes your images unique. Great images do not come about because of equipment and processes, but rather from Vision that drives those tools to do wonderful things. What good are great technical skills if you don’t have a Vision worthy of them?
A lot of people have asked me how to go about finding their vision. I’m not sure I can answer that for everyone, but I can tell you how I found mine.
What is Vision?
I desperately wanted to know if I had a Vision, but I had a huge problem. What exactly was Vision and how did I develop it? I researched Vision but I couldn’t relate to the definitions and explanations that I found. Was it a look, a style or a technique? Was it something you were born with or something you developed?
And then there was the nagging doubt: What if I didn’t have a Vision? I feared that it was something you either “had” or you “didn’t have” and perhaps I did not?
And how was I to go about finding my Vision?
With so many unanswered questions and with no idea on how to proceed, I simply forged ahead and did what made sense to me. Here are the steps that I took:
I Sorted My Images into Two Groups. I took my best images, printed them out and then divided them into two groups: the ones I REALLY loved…and all the rest. I decided that the ones that went in the “loved” pile had to be images that “I” loved, and not just ones that I was attached to because they had received praise, won awards or sold the best. And even if I loved an image that no one else did, I still picked it.
I Made the Commitment. I committed that from that point on, I would only pursue those kinds of images, the ones that I really loved. Too often I had been sidetracked when I chose to pursue images simply because they were popular with others.
I Practiced Photographic Celibacy. I started practicing Photographic Celibacy and stopped looking at other photographer’s work. I reasoned that to find my Vision, I had to stop immersing myself in the Vision and images of others. I used to spend hours and hours looking at other photographer’s work and would find myself copying their style and images. When I looked at a scene I didn’t want to see it through another photographer’s eyes, I wanted to see it through mine!
I Questioned My Motives. One of the hardest things I did was to question my motives and honestly answer some hard questions: Why am I creating?, Who am I trying to please?, What do I want from my photography?, How do I define success? It seemed to me that Vision was something honest and that if I were going to find my Vision, I had to be honest about the reasons I was pursuing it.
I Stopped Caring What Others Thought. I made a conscious decision to stop caring what others thought of my work. I recognized that in trying to please others, I was left feeling insecure and empty. I reasoned that at the end of the day it was just me, my work and what I thought of it. As long as I cared what others thought, I was a slave and could never be free.
What I Discovered. I really was proceeding blindly, but I believed that if I listened to my own desires, pursued what I loved and eliminated all other voices…I would learn something about my Vision. I did this for two years and there were many times that I became completely discouraged and felt like I was failing. I’m not sure what I expected to happen, perhaps I thought I’d have a revelatory experience where my Vision would suddenly appear in a moment of inspiration. But that didn’t happen.
And then one day it simply occurred to me that I understood…I understood what my Vision was. It came in an anti-climactic and quiet moment of understanding, and after all of that worrying and angst…it now seemed so incredibly simple. Vision was not something I needed to acquire or develop, it had been there all along and all I had to do was “discover” it.
Vision was simply the sum total of my life experiences that caused me to see the world in a unique way. When I looked at a scene and saw it a certain way…that was my vision.
I also learned that Vision is not a look or a style. It does not require you to focus on one subject or genre and following your Vision will not make your work look all the same. Vision gives you the freedom to pursue any subject, create in any style and do anything that you want.
3. Don’t Compare Your Work to Others, Art is not a Competition
I noticed that when I compared my work to other photographer’s work, it caused me to have doubts about my abilities and left me deflated. All I could see were their strengths and my weaknesses, which was an unfair comparison.
It’s good for me to periodically remind myself of a few things. If my goal is to produce the best work that I can, then it does not matter what other photographers are doing. As my mother used to say, “Cole, you just worry about Cole.”
Art is not a competition; someone does not have to lose for someone else to win. I am not competing against others…I am trying to be better than myself.
4. Simple is Better than Complicated
I have embarked on a mission to simplify my photography by disposing of everything that is not absolutely necessary to create the image. I have simplified my equipment, my post processing, my matting and framing. I now work with a camera, tripod, three lenses and some filters. I use Photoshop and six of its tools. I use a printer with stock inks.
If a piece of equipment or a process is not necessary, I get rid of it. For too long I was a technophile who almost worshipped my equipment and at times it seemed as though my equipment was more important than the image itself!
I’ve adopted this “simple” approach as a way to focus myself on the things that really do matter: my Vision and composition. Some people feel that they cannot produce a good image with just the simple basics, but I disagree. From my experience the basics can produce incredibly beautiful images that most people would envy.
I’m not saying that there aren’t some gadgets and programs that would improve the quality of your work, but by far the largest improvement any of us can make is to improve ourselves before our equipment. I tell people that if there is a place for some of these extras, it comes after our Vision and composition has been mastered. Simple is always better than complicated.
5. If You’re Not Passionate About Your Project, Choose A New One.
Sometimes people ask me what they should do when they find it hard to get motivated on their project. My answer is, “find another project.” For me, a successful project must have two ingredients: Vision and Passion. If I don’t feel these, I know the project is doomed; it will be a chore to work on and that lack of passion will be felt by the viewer.
Many feel that the key to a successful project is to have a unique subject, an exotic location or an interesting technique. And while those qualities may help, only Vision and Passion can ensure success. When you have a Vision and Passion for your project, that energy and conviction will be felt through your images.
After I created my Ghost series at Auschwitz, many people suggested I apply the ghost theme to other locations. The idea sounded logical: the Auschwitz series had been well received and so why not leverage that popularity by using the same approach at other locations? So I started to work on “The Ghosts of Great Britain” where I created ghosts at English castles. But the project fell flat because the images were not compelling and it felt gimmicky to me.
So what went wrong with the project? Simple, it lacked Passion. At Auschwitz I felt inspired to create those images and I had a Vision for the project. I gave no thought as to how the series would be received and in fact I didn’t care!
However “The Ghosts of Great Britain” was completely contrived and calculated to be popular. I did not feel that same Vision or Passion for the project and it failed. I scrapped the series and only kept the one image above. This was a great lesson for me and a mistake that I will never make again.
6. Don’t Follow Any Photographic Rules
What photographic rules should you follow? None, unless you want to create average images that thousands of other people have created before you. Ansel Adams said, “ The so-called rules of photographic composition are, in my opinion, invalid, irrelevant, immaterial.”
I’ll go one step further and say, “In my opinion following the rules of photography is actually harmful because they get in the way of developing independent creativity and Vision.”
Creating compositional rules is an attempt to distill the creative process into a series of guidelines that, if followed, will produce a great image. Do you remember the old “paint by numbers” kits? We were promised that if we’d simply follow the rules by using the proper color, and paint that into each numbered area, and stay within the lines…we would have a masterpiece!
Well, maybe a “competent” painting, but certainly not a masterpiece!
Do you remember IBM’s Deep Blue computer? It was programmed to play chess and it beat the world champion chess player, Garry Kasparov. Do you think that if we were to program the rules of photography into Deep Blue and take it to Yosemite, that it could beat Ansel Adams? Of course not, because composition is about seeing and feeling, not about following rules. And the irony of these rules is that they are supposed to help you learn to be creative, when what they actually do is cause creative dependency.
When I approach a scene, I simply look and see and feel. I compose instinctively until the scene feels right, without a single thought about the “rules.” And if the composition doesn’t feel right, I change it. In the end all I care about is that the image “feels right.”
What a simple and empowering concept; to see and feel for yourself rather than following rules. Creative people already know this secret, that
great art comes from within and is not found in a set of rules.
7. Don’t Listen to Other People’s Advice
Do you know anyone who feels free to offer advice about your images? They often say something like this: “Here’s what I would do…” or “If this were my image I’d…” The problem with other people’s advice is that it doesn’t come from your Vision, but rather theirs.
People will often send me an image and ask what I would do to it and here’s how I respond: If you were to follow my advice, after a while your images would start to look like mine! Is that really what you want? Wouldn’t you rather find your own Vision and create your own masterpieces?
So much of the advice people offered me never felt right and I was torn between respecting the recommendation of experts or following my own intuition. In the end I decided that only by pleasing myself could I create my best work; and that no matter how expert someone was, they were not an expert about my Vision.
Follow my advice and don’t listen to other people’s advice!
8. Use Photoshop However Works Best for You
I use a very simple workflow and for years I would never let anyone see me work because I thought I was doing everything wrong. As I listened to other photographers talk about their sophisticated processes, I was embarrassed to let them see my rudimentary ones. What if they started talking to me about layers or curves…I didn’t use or even understand them!
With time I came to the realization that photography is not about the process, it’s about the image. Nothing else matters. There are many ways to use Photoshop and I doubt that many photographers use more than a small percentage of its many tools. There is no right way or wrong way to use it and not one workflow will be right for everyone.
My procedure works for me and I’d like to share it to illustrate a point: You don’t need to know a lot about Photoshop or have a complicated workflow to produce beautiful images. I use only six tools in the processing of ninety-nine percent of my images.
1. RAW Converter—I use Photoshop’s RAW converter to set my image to a 16 bit, 360 ppi, 10×15 TIFF file.
2. B&W Conversion tool—I like Photoshop’s b&w conversion tool and play with each color channel to see how it affects the different colors of my image.
3. Levels—One of the most basic secrets to a great b&w image is to have a good black and white. I use Levels to set the initial black and white point and I use the histogram to judge this. You cannot trust your eyes and so throughout my processing I keep my eye on that histogram to maintain a true black and white.
4. Dodging and Burning—This is where I do most of my processing and where I have the most fun! I feel most at home with dodging and burning because that’s how I worked in the darkroom. I use a Wacom tablet to dodge and burn, which gives me precise and natural control.
5. Contrast Adjustment—After I have the image looking great on screen, experience has taught me that the print will look flat, and so I add some contrast. A monitor uses transmitted light and a print uses reflective light. That means it will take a lot more work to get your print to look as snappy as it does on the monitor. Contrast helps a great deal.
6. Clone Tool—I use the clone tool to spot my images. Cloning is so much better than the old days when you had to spot every single print and your mouth tasted like Spottone all day!
The point I am trying to make is that a workflow need not be complicated to be effective. I doubt a workflow could be simpler than mine! What’s the best way to use Photoshop? Any way that works for you!
9. How Important are Skills and Equipment When Creating A Great Image?
They are not nearly as important as we think! If I had to choose between the best equipment in the world and no Vision or having a Kodak Brownie and my Vision… I’ll take the Brownie.
I’m often asked, “What’s the best camera, lens or paper? My answer is always the same: There is no “best.” Most cameras are excellent, almost all lenses are better than their masters and choosing a paper is simply about personal preference.
It’s easy to buy into the notion that the right camera, lens, accessories, plug-ins, printers or paper will transform our ordinary work into extraordinary images. However, from my experience great images are rarely great because they are technically perfect or printed on the right paper.
Put more bluntly: I don’t think it really matters which equipment or paper you choose because they are not the critical component in a great image.
I believe a great image is created mostly from your Vision and that equipment and technical skills play a much smaller supporting role than we generally think.
Vision is what makes an image great and what drives our equipment and processes to do great things.
10. Define Success for Yourself.
I was reading about how the movie “The Beaver” failed miserably at the box office. The article talked about how Jodi Foster, who starred in and directed the film, had faith in the film’s message, and when asked about the financial disaster said, “I’ve learned…that if you gauge your self-worth at the box office you will be a very sorry person.“
How do I, as an artist, gauge my self-worth? Do I base it on how many “likes” I get on some social network? Or do I base it on sales, reviews, the galleries I’m in or the awards I receive? For many years I never stopped to ask myself what success meant to me, I just assumed it meant all of those things.
But as I started to achieve success, I noticed that I wasn’t any happier than when I was “unsuccessful” and in some ways I was less happy. Sure it felt good to have my fifteen minutes of fame, but in the morning it was just me, my art and what “I” thought of it.
So I set about to define success for myself and to identify what I wanted to achieve with my photography. It turns out that my definition was quite a bit different than the one I had been chasing for so long! It turns out that I had been trying to achieve something that I really didn’t want.
This lesson learned was second only to the lesson about Vision: Define success for yourself before you go chasing it.
Conclusion:
Most of what I have learned in these 50 years of photography has less to do about photography and more to do about life.
It’s about finding and following your Vision no matter what others think or say. It’s about defining and achieving success for yourself. It’s about being proud of what you do and loving what you create.
It turns out that photography and life have a lot in common.
Cole Thompson at www.photographyblackwhite.com
]]>
Many people ask me, “But why black and white? You were born into a color world!”
I reply, “No, I was born into a black and white world!” When I was growing up the world was in black and white.
TV was in black and white, movies were in black and white, the news was delivered in black and white, my childhood heroes were in black and white…
…and even our nation was segregated into black and white.
So I photographed in Black and White and perhaps my images are an extension of the world that I grew up in.
As I think about that innocent young boy I once was, I’m reminded of what motivated me to take pictures those 50 years ago; it was for the pure joy of creating.
But along the way I became a little lost and started creating for the wrong reasons: for fame, fortune, accolades and affirmation until one day I realized that photography was not as fun as it once had been. Today I’ve come full circle and have arrived where I started off; I’ve once again discovered how to create for the pure joy of creating.
Here are some things that I’ve learned that has brought me back to loving photography again and creating the best work of my life.
Here are 10 things that I’ve learned in 50 years:
1. Don’t Aspire to Become the World’s Greatest Imitator.
When I was younger, the ultimate compliment someone could give me would be to say, “Your work reminds me of Ansel Adams’ work.” Because he was my childhood hero, I would dream of creating images just like him. I’d imitate his style and sometimes I’d even go to Yosemite and try to recreate specific images!
Then several years ago I was attending Review Santa Fe where, over the course of a day, my work was evaluated by a number of gallery owners, curators, publishers and experts in the field. During the last review of a very long day, the reviewer quickly looked at my work, brusquely pushed it back to me and said, “It looks like you’re trying to copy Ansel Adams.” I replied that I was, because I loved his work!
He then said something that would change my photography and my life: “Ansel’s already done Ansel and you’re not going to do him any better. What can you create that shows your unique vision?”
Those words really stung, but over the next two years the significance of his message sank in. Was it my life’s ambition to be known as the world’s best Ansel Adams imitator? Had I no higher aspirations than that?
I came to realize that I needed to create work that was uniquely mine and not imitative of another. But how was I to do that I wondered? There isn’t a subject that hasn’t been photographed before, so how could I create unique work?
While it’s true that almost everything has been photographed, it has not been photographed through my eyes. We each have a unique Vision and that’s how I can create unique work. The choice was clear: Did I want to imitate or create?
In the end I decided that I’d prefer to create a mediocre original, rather than make a brilliant copy.
2. Vision is Everything
I believe that Vision is what gives your image a soul and it’s what makes your images unique. Great images do not come about because of equipment and processes, but rather from Vision that drives those tools to do wonderful things. What good are great technical skills if you don’t have a Vision worthy of them?
A lot of people have asked me how to go about finding their vision. I’m not sure I can answer that for everyone, but I can tell you how I found mine.
What is Vision?
I desperately wanted to know if I had a Vision, but I had a huge problem. What exactly was Vision and how did I develop it? I researched Vision but I couldn’t relate to the definitions and explanations that I found. Was it a look, a style or a technique? Was it something you were born with or something you developed?
And then there was the nagging doubt: What if I didn’t have a Vision? I feared that it was something you either “had” or you “didn’t have” and perhaps I did not?
And how was I to go about finding my Vision?
With so many unanswered questions and with no idea on how to proceed, I simply forged ahead and did what made sense to me. Here are the steps that I took:
I Sorted My Images into Two Groups. I took my best images, printed them out and then divided them into two groups: the ones I REALLY loved…and all the rest. I decided that the ones that went in the “loved” pile had to be images that “I” loved, and not just ones that I was attached to because they had received praise, won awards or sold the best. And even if I loved an image that no one else did, I still picked it.
I Made the Commitment. I committed that from that point on, I would only pursue those kinds of images, the ones that I really loved. Too often I had been sidetracked when I chose to pursue images simply because they were popular with others.
I Practiced Photographic Celibacy. I started practicing Photographic Celibacy and stopped looking at other photographer’s work. I reasoned that to find my Vision, I had to stop immersing myself in the Vision and images of others. I used to spend hours and hours looking at other photographer’s work and would find myself copying their style and images. When I looked at a scene I didn’t want to see it through another photographer’s eyes, I wanted to see it through mine!
I Questioned My Motives. One of the hardest things I did was to question my motives and honestly answer some hard questions: Why am I creating?, Who am I trying to please?, What do I want from my photography?, How do I define success? It seemed to me that Vision was something honest and that if I were going to find my Vision, I had to be honest about the reasons I was pursuing it.
I Stopped Caring What Others Thought. I made a conscious decision to stop caring what others thought of my work. I recognized that in trying to please others, I was left feeling insecure and empty. I reasoned that at the end of the day it was just me, my work and what I thought of it. As long as I cared what others thought, I was a slave and could never be free.
What I Discovered. I really was proceeding blindly, but I believed that if I listened to my own desires, pursued what I loved and eliminated all other voices…I would learn something about my Vision. I did this for two years and there were many times that I became completely discouraged and felt like I was failing. I’m not sure what I expected to happen, perhaps I thought I’d have a revelatory experience where my Vision would suddenly appear in a moment of inspiration. But that didn’t happen.
And then one day it simply occurred to me that I understood…I understood what my Vision was. It came in an anti-climactic and quiet moment of understanding, and after all of that worrying and angst…it now seemed so incredibly simple. Vision was not something I needed to acquire or develop, it had been there all along and all I had to do was “discover” it.
Vision was simply the sum total of my life experiences that caused me to see the world in a unique way. When I looked at a scene and saw it a certain way…that was my vision.
I also learned that Vision is not a look or a style. It does not require you to focus on one subject or genre and following your Vision will not make your work look all the same. Vision gives you the freedom to pursue any subject, create in any style and do anything that you want.
3. Don’t Compare Your Work to Others, Art is not a Competition
I noticed that when I compared my work to other photographer’s work, it caused me to have doubts about my abilities and left me deflated. All I could see were their strengths and my weaknesses, which was an unfair comparison.
It’s good for me to periodically remind myself of a few things. If my goal is to produce the best work that I can, then it does not matter what other photographers are doing. As my mother used to say, “Cole, you just worry about Cole.”
Art is not a competition; someone does not have to lose for someone else to win. I am not competing against others…I am trying to be better than myself.
4. Simple is Better than Complicated
I have embarked on a mission to simplify my photography by disposing of everything that is not absolutely necessary to create the image. I have simplified my equipment, my post processing, my matting and framing. I now work with a camera, tripod, three lenses and some filters. I use Photoshop and six of its tools. I use a printer with stock inks.
If a piece of equipment or a process is not necessary, I get rid of it. For too long I was a technophile who almost worshipped my equipment and at times it seemed as though my equipment was more important than the image itself!
I’ve adopted this “simple” approach as a way to focus myself on the things that really do matter: my Vision and composition. Some people feel that they cannot produce a good image with just the simple basics, but I disagree. From my experience the basics can produce incredibly beautiful images that most people would envy.
I’m not saying that there aren’t some gadgets and programs that would improve the quality of your work, but by far the largest improvement any of us can make is to improve ourselves before our equipment. I tell people that if there is a place for some of these extras, it comes after our Vision and composition has been mastered. Simple is always better than complicated.
5. If You’re Not Passionate About Your Project, Choose A New One.
Sometimes people ask me what they should do when they find it hard to get motivated on their project. My answer is, “find another project.” For me, a successful project must have two ingredients: Vision and Passion. If I don’t feel these, I know the project is doomed; it will be a chore to work on and that lack of passion will be felt by the viewer.
Many feel that the key to a successful project is to have a unique subject, an exotic location or an interesting technique. And while those qualities may help, only Vision and Passion can ensure success. When you have a Vision and Passion for your project, that energy and conviction will be felt through your images.
After I created my Ghost series at Auschwitz, many people suggested I apply the ghost theme to other locations. The idea sounded logical: the Auschwitz series had been well received and so why not leverage that popularity by using the same approach at other locations? So I started to work on “The Ghosts of Great Britain” where I created ghosts at English castles. But the project fell flat because the images were not compelling and it felt gimmicky to me.
So what went wrong with the project? Simple, it lacked Passion. At Auschwitz I felt inspired to create those images and I had a Vision for the project. I gave no thought as to how the series would be received and in fact I didn’t care!
However “The Ghosts of Great Britain” was completely contrived and calculated to be popular. I did not feel that same Vision or Passion for the project and it failed. I scrapped the series and only kept the one image above. This was a great lesson for me and a mistake that I will never make again.
6. Don’t Follow Any Photographic Rules
What photographic rules should you follow? None, unless you want to create average images that thousands of other people have created before you. Ansel Adams said, “ The so-called rules of photographic composition are, in my opinion, invalid, irrelevant, immaterial.”
I’ll go one step further and say, “In my opinion following the rules of photography is actually harmful because they get in the way of developing independent creativity and Vision.”
Creating compositional rules is an attempt to distill the creative process into a series of guidelines that, if followed, will produce a great image. Do you remember the old “paint by numbers” kits? We were promised that if we’d simply follow the rules by using the proper color, and paint that into each numbered area, and stay within the lines…we would have a masterpiece!
Well, maybe a “competent” painting, but certainly not a masterpiece!
Do you remember IBM’s Deep Blue computer? It was programmed to play chess and it beat the world champion chess player, Garry Kasparov. Do you think that if we were to program the rules of photography into Deep Blue and take it to Yosemite, that it could beat Ansel Adams? Of course not, because composition is about seeing and feeling, not about following rules. And the irony of these rules is that they are supposed to help you learn to be creative, when what they actually do is cause creative dependency.
When I approach a scene, I simply look and see and feel. I compose instinctively until the scene feels right, without a single thought about the “rules.” And if the composition doesn’t feel right, I change it. In the end all I care about is that the image “feels right.”
What a simple and empowering concept; to see and feel for yourself rather than following rules. Creative people already know this secret, that
great art comes from within and is not found in a set of rules.
7. Don’t Listen to Other People’s Advice
Do you know anyone who feels free to offer advice about your images? They often say something like this: “Here’s what I would do…” or “If this were my image I’d…” The problem with other people’s advice is that it doesn’t come from your Vision, but rather theirs.
People will often send me an image and ask what I would do to it and here’s how I respond: If you were to follow my advice, after a while your images would start to look like mine! Is that really what you want? Wouldn’t you rather find your own Vision and create your own masterpieces?
So much of the advice people offered me never felt right and I was torn between respecting the recommendation of experts or following my own intuition. In the end I decided that only by pleasing myself could I create my best work; and that no matter how expert someone was, they were not an expert about my Vision.
Follow my advice and don’t listen to other people’s advice!
8. Use Photoshop However Works Best for You
I use a very simple workflow and for years I would never let anyone see me work because I thought I was doing everything wrong. As I listened to other photographers talk about their sophisticated processes, I was embarrassed to let them see my rudimentary ones. What if they started talking to me about layers or curves…I didn’t use or even understand them!
With time I came to the realization that photography is not about the process, it’s about the image. Nothing else matters. There are many ways to use Photoshop and I doubt that many photographers use more than a small percentage of its many tools. There is no right way or wrong way to use it and not one workflow will be right for everyone.
My procedure works for me and I’d like to share it to illustrate a point: You don’t need to know a lot about Photoshop or have a complicated workflow to produce beautiful images. I use only six tools in the processing of ninety-nine percent of my images.
1. RAW Converter—I use Photoshop’s RAW converter to set my image to a 16 bit, 360 ppi, 10×15 TIFF file.
2. B&W Conversion tool—I like Photoshop’s b&w conversion tool and play with each color channel to see how it affects the different colors of my image.
3. Levels—One of the most basic secrets to a great b&w image is to have a good black and white. I use Levels to set the initial black and white point and I use the histogram to judge this. You cannot trust your eyes and so throughout my processing I keep my eye on that histogram to maintain a true black and white.
4. Dodging and Burning—This is where I do most of my processing and where I have the most fun! I feel most at home with dodging and burning because that’s how I worked in the darkroom. I use a Wacom tablet to dodge and burn, which gives me precise and natural control.
5. Contrast Adjustment—After I have the image looking great on screen, experience has taught me that the print will look flat, and so I add some contrast. A monitor uses transmitted light and a print uses reflective light. That means it will take a lot more work to get your print to look as snappy as it does on the monitor. Contrast helps a great deal.
6. Clone Tool—I use the clone tool to spot my images. Cloning is so much better than the old days when you had to spot every single print and your mouth tasted like Spottone all day!
The point I am trying to make is that a workflow need not be complicated to be effective. I doubt a workflow could be simpler than mine! What’s the best way to use Photoshop? Any way that works for you!
9. How Important are Skills and Equipment When Creating A Great Image?
They are not nearly as important as we think! If I had to choose between the best equipment in the world and no Vision or having a Kodak Brownie and my Vision… I’ll take the Brownie.
I’m often asked, “What’s the best camera, lens or paper? My answer is always the same: There is no “best.” Most cameras are excellent, almost all lenses are better than their masters and choosing a paper is simply about personal preference.
It’s easy to buy into the notion that the right camera, lens, accessories, plug-ins, printers or paper will transform our ordinary work into extraordinary images. However, from my experience great images are rarely great because they are technically perfect or printed on the right paper.
Put more bluntly: I don’t think it really matters which equipment or paper you choose because they are not the critical component in a great image.
I believe a great image is created mostly from your Vision and that equipment and technical skills play a much smaller supporting role than we generally think.
Vision is what makes an image great and what drives our equipment and processes to do great things.
10. Define Success for Yourself.
I was reading about how the movie “The Beaver” failed miserably at the box office. The article talked about how Jodi Foster, who starred in and directed the film, had faith in the film’s message, and when asked about the financial disaster said, “I’ve learned…that if you gauge your self-worth at the box office you will be a very sorry person.“
How do I, as an artist, gauge my self-worth? Do I base it on how many “likes” I get on some social network? Or do I base it on sales, reviews, the galleries I’m in or the awards I receive? For many years I never stopped to ask myself what success meant to me, I just assumed it meant all of those things.
But as I started to achieve success, I noticed that I wasn’t any happier than when I was “unsuccessful” and in some ways I was less happy. Sure it felt good to have my fifteen minutes of fame, but in the morning it was just me, my art and what “I” thought of it.
So I set about to define success for myself and to identify what I wanted to achieve with my photography. It turns out that my definition was quite a bit different than the one I had been chasing for so long! It turns out that I had been trying to achieve something that I really didn’t want.
This lesson learned was second only to the lesson about Vision: Define success for yourself before you go chasing it.
Conclusion:
Most of what I have learned in these 50 years of photography has less to do about photography and more to do about life.
It’s about finding and following your Vision no matter what others think or say. It’s about defining and achieving success for yourself. It’s about being proud of what you do and loving what you create.
It turns out that photography and life have a lot in common.
Cole Thompson at www.photographyblackwhite.com
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The attached photographs and this article are based on my more recent use of the M (typ 240) with the Electronic View Finder EVF2 and 90 mm Macro-Elmar 90mm f/4 lens with macro-adapter. My previous Leica and other camera/lens combinations have been a great learning experience over the years, but my current Leica equipment has provided the most rewarding results. They have been best suited for my style of photography because the Leica equipment is significantly smaller and easier to handle and the resolution/contrast/color rendition of Leica lenses is exceptional. The EVF and camera also allow magnification of 5x and 10x along with a focusing aid that indicates the contrast areas in focus–as my eyesight has not kept up with my aspirations in photography this is a most welcomed aid to capturing my best images.
My pursuit of flowers, bees, and butterflies! Macro photography of these subjects began in San Antonio TX in 1994 when we purchased a house with an “English Garden.” The first learning experience is that even though it had an English Garden, butterflies are not necessarily attracted to those blossoms, in spite of their convenience. One needs to research any specific subject that you want to photograph. In this case, what species of plants attract butterflies, which season of the year are they in bloom, and what time of the day is best [in addition to what time is the lighting optimal] come into play. Wind is a significant factor–butterflies move with the plants and if you are seeking to photograph something different, like a Japanese cherry blossom where the very delicate petals of the blossom are constantly moving during the time of the year they blossom. Nature does not always conform to your desired schedule–one needs patience and when the conditions are right, you must be prepared to take advantage. Keep in mind most macro photography at close ranges means your depth of field is very shallow, even at f/4 or 5.6. Stopping down diminishes the shutter speed or if the ISO is adjusted upward the detail will [at some point] start to diminish.
My most recent experience with macro–in August my wife Laura and I noted a striking black/yellow/white banded caterpillar on a milkweed she had planted the previous year. It is supposed to attract butterflies and is a primary feeding plant for Monarchs. We were able to identify it as a Monarch caterpillar having a feast–leaf by leaf as it munched its way across the milkweed. Eventually we had 3 Monarch caterpillars, but nearing the end of their cycle of feasting two disappeared. More research revealed they often crawl 20-30 feet away and find a safe place to attach before they go into the pupa (chrysalis) stage, but we were fortunate to have at least one remain on the plant. Ever seen those nice butterfly photos that are almost perfect? Quite often these may be taken by removing the pupae into a controlled environment for observation and control for photography. It may be something to consider, but I preferred to let Mother Nature take its course and see what I could achieve photographing outside. This proved to be most rewarding, especially the backgrounds in the photos. Within the chrysalis you can see the metamorphosis take place.
These photos are sequential in the cycle of the Monarch, from caterpillar to pupa (chrysalis) to a butterfly. Photos were taken 20 Aug., 23 Aug., 23 Aug., 1 Sept., and the last 3 of the emerged butterfly on 2 Sept. 2015.
I was relatively lucky with the timing. Early on the 2nd I went out to check the pupa and discovered the butterfly had just emerged. The 4th photo taken is the one I selected, followed by quite a few more. In the sequence only a few captured the butterfly with spread wings. After it climbed to the top of the leaf and up the stem, again spreading its wings, I sensed it was about to depart and quickly took the last photo without benefit of accurate focusing. By the time the shutter had operated it had flown off. It left me a bit frustrated with the quick departure, but elated to have captured the event.
Some other butterflies from our garden include the yellow and black Appalachian or Eastern Tiger Swallowtail and the charcoal with blue and orange marked Spicebush Swallowtail.
Some examples of blossom photos and other insects were taken at Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania, just west of Wilmington, Delaware. Such gardens provide greater opportunity for photographing flowers, various other plants and trees, and several of our flying friends if you do not have close access to a location that attracts them.
The following images were taken at Longwood Gardens.
The caterpillar, wasp, and orchid were taken with the Leica T with the 18-56mm Vario-Elmar. The water lily was photographed with the 75mm APO-Summicron-M f/2.
A few last photos within the macro range: First is an image of cherry buds encased in ice. As it is melting two drops of water are captured. The aperture blades shape light reflections–I was shooting almost into the sun. It shows the issue of dealing with light coming almost directly into the lens and a possibility to add a different element.
The second image is a partial blossom from a Yashino Cherry Tree, which is the same species as the majority of the famous Japanese cherry trees along the Tidal Basin in Washington DC. I took this photo in a mist/light rain. It was a good lesson on dealing with wet conditions.
The last photo is a bumblebee on the same milkweed where we discovered the Monarch caterpillar. It bloomed earlier in the summer during mid July. We never observed any butterflies during that time, but I did capture the bee and blossoms.
One last thought–backgrounds in the photos. It is important and often difficult to keep them from being a distraction or not allowing important small details to be seen. Improving the depth of field to improve the macro photo works against the bokeh or having a blurred background to reduce distractions from the main subject, so it is important to pay attention to this aspect. Often the adjacent subjects add the needed context to make the photo better, or make the setting appear natural.
If you have any comments or questions you may contact me at M@AtelierM.com. Please use a subject with Blog Article or Macro Photography in the subject so I will not file your email in a place where they may not be retrieved.
Mikeual Perritt [Michael] September 2015
Personal Background: I am a retired architect now enjoying fine art and photography. Photography was essential during school and in the profession. It is now a significant activity in my life–an enjoyable one. Besides architecture, with interest in [but not limited to] Jugendstil or Art Nouveau and Bauhaus influenced or the Neue Moderne, I also enjoy landscape, mechanical objects [from door knobs to steam locomotives] and certainly people.
]]>The attached photographs and this article are based on my more recent use of the M (typ 240) with the Electronic View Finder EVF2 and 90 mm Macro-Elmar 90mm f/4 lens with macro-adapter. My previous Leica and other camera/lens combinations have been a great learning experience over the years, but my current Leica equipment has provided the most rewarding results. They have been best suited for my style of photography because the Leica equipment is significantly smaller and easier to handle and the resolution/contrast/color rendition of Leica lenses is exceptional. The EVF and camera also allow magnification of 5x and 10x along with a focusing aid that indicates the contrast areas in focus–as my eyesight has not kept up with my aspirations in photography this is a most welcomed aid to capturing my best images.
My pursuit of flowers, bees, and butterflies! Macro photography of these subjects began in San Antonio TX in 1994 when we purchased a house with an “English Garden.” The first learning experience is that even though it had an English Garden, butterflies are not necessarily attracted to those blossoms, in spite of their convenience. One needs to research any specific subject that you want to photograph. In this case, what species of plants attract butterflies, which season of the year are they in bloom, and what time of the day is best [in addition to what time is the lighting optimal] come into play. Wind is a significant factor–butterflies move with the plants and if you are seeking to photograph something different, like a Japanese cherry blossom where the very delicate petals of the blossom are constantly moving during the time of the year they blossom. Nature does not always conform to your desired schedule–one needs patience and when the conditions are right, you must be prepared to take advantage. Keep in mind most macro photography at close ranges means your depth of field is very shallow, even at f/4 or 5.6. Stopping down diminishes the shutter speed or if the ISO is adjusted upward the detail will [at some point] start to diminish.
My most recent experience with macro–in August my wife Laura and I noted a striking black/yellow/white banded caterpillar on a milkweed she had planted the previous year. It is supposed to attract butterflies and is a primary feeding plant for Monarchs. We were able to identify it as a Monarch caterpillar having a feast–leaf by leaf as it munched its way across the milkweed. Eventually we had 3 Monarch caterpillars, but nearing the end of their cycle of feasting two disappeared. More research revealed they often crawl 20-30 feet away and find a safe place to attach before they go into the pupa (chrysalis) stage, but we were fortunate to have at least one remain on the plant. Ever seen those nice butterfly photos that are almost perfect? Quite often these may be taken by removing the pupae into a controlled environment for observation and control for photography. It may be something to consider, but I preferred to let Mother Nature take its course and see what I could achieve photographing outside. This proved to be most rewarding, especially the backgrounds in the photos. Within the chrysalis you can see the metamorphosis take place.
These photos are sequential in the cycle of the Monarch, from caterpillar to pupa (chrysalis) to a butterfly. Photos were taken 20 Aug., 23 Aug., 23 Aug., 1 Sept., and the last 3 of the emerged butterfly on 2 Sept. 2015.
I was relatively lucky with the timing. Early on the 2nd I went out to check the pupa and discovered the butterfly had just emerged. The 4th photo taken is the one I selected, followed by quite a few more. In the sequence only a few captured the butterfly with spread wings. After it climbed to the top of the leaf and up the stem, again spreading its wings, I sensed it was about to depart and quickly took the last photo without benefit of accurate focusing. By the time the shutter had operated it had flown off. It left me a bit frustrated with the quick departure, but elated to have captured the event.
Some other butterflies from our garden include the yellow and black Appalachian or Eastern Tiger Swallowtail and the charcoal with blue and orange marked Spicebush Swallowtail.
Some examples of blossom photos and other insects were taken at Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania, just west of Wilmington, Delaware. Such gardens provide greater opportunity for photographing flowers, various other plants and trees, and several of our flying friends if you do not have close access to a location that attracts them.
The following images were taken at Longwood Gardens.
The caterpillar, wasp, and orchid were taken with the Leica T with the 18-56mm Vario-Elmar. The water lily was photographed with the 75mm APO-Summicron-M f/2.
A few last photos within the macro range: First is an image of cherry buds encased in ice. As it is melting two drops of water are captured. The aperture blades shape light reflections–I was shooting almost into the sun. It shows the issue of dealing with light coming almost directly into the lens and a possibility to add a different element.
The second image is a partial blossom from a Yashino Cherry Tree, which is the same species as the majority of the famous Japanese cherry trees along the Tidal Basin in Washington DC. I took this photo in a mist/light rain. It was a good lesson on dealing with wet conditions.
The last photo is a bumblebee on the same milkweed where we discovered the Monarch caterpillar. It bloomed earlier in the summer during mid July. We never observed any butterflies during that time, but I did capture the bee and blossoms.
One last thought–backgrounds in the photos. It is important and often difficult to keep them from being a distraction or not allowing important small details to be seen. Improving the depth of field to improve the macro photo works against the bokeh or having a blurred background to reduce distractions from the main subject, so it is important to pay attention to this aspect. Often the adjacent subjects add the needed context to make the photo better, or make the setting appear natural.
If you have any comments or questions you may contact me at M@AtelierM.com. Please use a subject with Blog Article or Macro Photography in the subject so I will not file your email in a place where they may not be retrieved.
Mikeual Perritt [Michael] September 2015
Personal Background: I am a retired architect now enjoying fine art and photography. Photography was essential during school and in the profession. It is now a significant activity in my life–an enjoyable one. Besides architecture, with interest in [but not limited to] Jugendstil or Art Nouveau and Bauhaus influenced or the Neue Moderne, I also enjoy landscape, mechanical objects [from door knobs to steam locomotives] and certainly people.
]]>My work is about the loss of feminine agency that occurred in my youth growing up in the infamous Unification Church, a religious group referred to by popular media as a primary example of a cult, and its resulting internal landscape. This experience had a lasting effect on my psyche and sense of identity, and it is through writing and photography that I work through these effects.
Growing up in my insular community of religious fanaticism and charismatic, dangerous self-styled messiahs I was intimately familiar with precise, though backwards, logic. My journey into adulthood saw me plunging headfirst towards confronting those dangerous, faulty forms and proofs, unraveling the colorful spectacles of my childhood until only a tired and tattered man-behind-the-curtain remained.
My photographs are about those transitions and discoveries. They chronicle moments of fear, of awakening and oftentimes utilize characters to confront spectators, daring the viewer to follow them down the rabbit hole.
My most recent body of work, “Burdens of a White Dress,” is a set of surreal self portraits that reflect being born in a fringe religious movement. The project’s title refers to the emphasis placed on a woman’s role in my childhood. A woman’s value was intrinsically tied to her purity and virginity; after marriage that value shifted into the realm of motherhood. By using a square format and a stark palette, violently splashed with red, I explore the concepts of shame, of evil, of wantonness, and of the blood of womanhood, birth and death.
Because this was my own personal experience of leaving a repressive religious environment, I often use myself as a model. My body is then contorted or manipulated to demonstrate the internal effects of the struggle that it is to free one’s mind from a controlling belief system, and to demonstrate the repressed place that femininity had in my world.
My further writings can be found on The Hairpin, The Huffington Post, Hudson Valley Mercantile and Conscious Living TV.
SubmitMy work is about the loss of feminine agency that occurred in my youth growing up in the infamous Unification Church, a religious group referred to by popular media as a primary example of a cult, and its resulting internal landscape. This experience had a lasting effect on my psyche and sense of identity, and it is through writing and photography that I work through these effects.
Growing up in my insular community of religious fanaticism and charismatic, dangerous self-styled messiahs I was intimately familiar with precise, though backwards, logic. My journey into adulthood saw me plunging headfirst towards confronting those dangerous, faulty forms and proofs, unraveling the colorful spectacles of my childhood until only a tired and tattered man-behind-the-curtain remained.
My photographs are about those transitions and discoveries. They chronicle moments of fear, of awakening and oftentimes utilize characters to confront spectators, daring the viewer to follow them down the rabbit hole.
My most recent body of work, “Burdens of a White Dress,” is a set of surreal self portraits that reflect being born in a fringe religious movement. The project’s title refers to the emphasis placed on a woman’s role in my childhood. A woman’s value was intrinsically tied to her purity and virginity; after marriage that value shifted into the realm of motherhood. By using a square format and a stark palette, violently splashed with red, I explore the concepts of shame, of evil, of wantonness, and of the blood of womanhood, birth and death.
Because this was my own personal experience of leaving a repressive religious environment, I often use myself as a model. My body is then contorted or manipulated to demonstrate the internal effects of the struggle that it is to free one’s mind from a controlling belief system, and to demonstrate the repressed place that femininity had in my world.
My further writings can be found on The Hairpin, The Huffington Post, Hudson Valley Mercantile and Conscious Living TV.
SubmitOne of the key aspects of the vintage cameras I collect is that they should function. This was the case with the Kodak Duaflex II, a plastic (bakelite) camera manufactured from 1950 to 1954. It is normally held at waist level, and you look down into the brilliant glass viewfinder, which shows where the camera is pointing. It was modeled after some of the more expensive cameras of the time, but differed in that what YOU see (via the top lens) is not what the camera sees.
You load this camera with 620 film, which is nothing more than 120 film wound onto a thinner spool (which you have to do in complete darkness). The film sits at the bottom front of the camera, passes along the back where it is parallel to the lens, and is taken up on a spool in the top of the camera. I nearly opened it after 8 exposures – which most vintage cameras take – but realized just in time that this camera takes 12 exposures. Here is a picture of the camera:
I just got my photos back from the lab in Oregon – I had called them in July to divert them to India, but instead they took a long detour to Windhoek, back to Washington, and then here. Always nice to see your vacation photos three months after the vacation! Foreign concept in the days of digital photography.
The landscape of northern Namibia is perfectly suited for black and white photography. With its wide open spaces and tortured acacia trees and rocks, black and white suits the mood perfectly. I’ll just start off with my favorite of the bunch:
We went into an abandoned warehouse in town and had a great time with all the different shades of brown and gray:
And nearby found these apparently unused water towers:
Finally, even this shanty is interesting in grayscale:
To see the rest of the photos, check out the set on Flickr.
]]>One of the key aspects of the vintage cameras I collect is that they should function. This was the case with the Kodak Duaflex II, a plastic (bakelite) camera manufactured from 1950 to 1954. It is normally held at waist level, and you look down into the brilliant glass viewfinder, which shows where the camera is pointing. It was modeled after some of the more expensive cameras of the time, but differed in that what YOU see (via the top lens) is not what the camera sees.
You load this camera with 620 film, which is nothing more than 120 film wound onto a thinner spool (which you have to do in complete darkness). The film sits at the bottom front of the camera, passes along the back where it is parallel to the lens, and is taken up on a spool in the top of the camera. I nearly opened it after 8 exposures – which most vintage cameras take – but realized just in time that this camera takes 12 exposures. Here is a picture of the camera:
I just got my photos back from the lab in Oregon – I had called them in July to divert them to India, but instead they took a long detour to Windhoek, back to Washington, and then here. Always nice to see your vacation photos three months after the vacation! Foreign concept in the days of digital photography.
The landscape of northern Namibia is perfectly suited for black and white photography. With its wide open spaces and tortured acacia trees and rocks, black and white suits the mood perfectly. I’ll just start off with my favorite of the bunch:
We went into an abandoned warehouse in town and had a great time with all the different shades of brown and gray:
And nearby found these apparently unused water towers:
Finally, even this shanty is interesting in grayscale:
To see the rest of the photos, check out the set on Flickr.
]]>Now accepting submissions for Photo Projects Features from emerging and mid-career artists. To submit send 5-10 photos to
with the subject PROJECT: YOUR NAME. Submissions will not be accepted without a a written supplement. The writing is up to you, explain your process, talk about inspiration, provide a focused type of analysis. Avoid biographies, literal explanations, and artist statements. Please do not send previously published writing. We also accept photo essays.
Due to the high number of entries, only accepted submissions will be contacted. Please have high res files prepared. See our submission page below.
Submit]]>Now accepting submissions for Photo Projects Features from emerging and mid-career artists. To submit send 5-10 photos to
with the subject PROJECT: YOUR NAME. Submissions will not be accepted without a a written supplement. The writing is up to you, explain your process, talk about inspiration, provide a focused type of analysis. Avoid biographies, literal explanations, and artist statements. Please do not send previously published writing. We also accept photo essays.
Due to the high number of entries, only accepted submissions will be contacted. Please have high res files prepared. See our submission page below.
Submit]]>