The Online Photographer

Dennis Stock and Visual Haiku

The model is Dennis Stock and the photographer was
Andreas Feininger, at LIFE Magazine

By Jim Hughes

I was saddened to learn last week of the passing of my old friend Dennis Stock. I was surprised to read in obits and tributes references to him as unknown or under-appreciated, since in my circles back in the day he was a legend of sorts—although not, like some, of his own making. Dennis was never by nature a glad-hander, nor would he willingly suffer fools. By some accounts, he was "difficult," but I never found him to be.

If memory serves, I first met him in 1969, when the magazine I was briefly editing, Travel & Camera (formerly U.S. Camera and soon to be reinvented, without me, as Travel & Leisure), used his wonderful color photographs for a National Parks issue. "I'm glad to see you're not a member of the 'old boys' club' around here," I remember him announcing with a wry grin some time later at Pop Photo, where I had landed to do the Annual. Thereafter, we had many a long conversation, over lunch or in my office. He had strong, well thought out opinions, and they might spill out at the drop of a hat, so to speak. I found him to be as much philosopher as photographer. For some reason, he brought to mind a Talmudic scholar, although we never talked religion. In any event, there was nothing shallow about Dennis Stock.

In 1974, he did a book for Kodansha, A Haiku Journey, for which he undertook to follow the path of "The Narrow Road to the Far North" traveled by the 17th century Japanese poet Bashó, whose haikus Dennis illustrates with photographic poetry of his own. As Dennis wrote in a text for the book:

While reading haiku, I have often sensed a visual perception that must be at work while the poet writes. The haiku form, in its conciseness and with its candid expression of detail, reminds us of what is also necessary in photography. We reach into nature, frame poised and focus selective. Then with shutter-speed response, we freeze the fleeting moment—leaving just enough unsaid for the viewer to add or extract at will. There is a subtle collaboration between artist and audience—and so it is with appreciating a haiku.

...We were separated only by three centuries and the breadth of a blade of grass, and I sensed Bashó at my side.

Jim
(Thanks to Tyler Monson)

Send this post to a friend

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...

Featured Comment by Rod S.: "I recall reading a fascinating interview with Dennis Stock that appeared in Popular Photography around 1977–78. What stood out to me then as a 21-year-old was the clarity of his insights into his actions and responsibility as a photographer. His comments impressed me to the extent that I put the interview into the hands of a best friend and insisted he read it (he, too, was impressed). Indeed, I can still visualise one of the pages, a left-hand page that had a central photo of Mr. Stock leaning on one knee."

Jim Hughes replies: Rod's memory is correct. A black-and-white and color portfolio by Dennis Stock was published in the March 1978 edition of Popular Photography. I know because I have the yellowing, dog-eared copy right here in front of me, which I saved, of course, because I wrote the text, helped select and sequence the photographs, and conducted the interview you mention, which appeared separately at the back of the magazine.

Here's a little of what I wrote back then, in the intro: "[Stock's] color photographs of nature are as sensually lyrical as his black-and-white pictures of people are intellectually cutting, and his opinions on the current state of photography make a lot of people uncomfortable, myself included. "I look for humor and beauty in life, and that's an unfashionable position these days," he says. The fact is, Stock has mellowed a lot. When I first encountered him in the late 1960s, I had the audacity to ask what lens he used for one of his National Parks photographs. 'Tell your readers that I shoot through the bottom of a Coke bottle,' he barked as he hung up. Now, he can note, 'Equipped with 35mm SLRs and a collection of lenses, I trip, stumble, trek, and climb into a playground of promise....'

"He has a lot more to say, and he says it with the zeal of a man whose religion is photography."

By the way, the photograph Rod recalls so vividly, of Dennis on one knee, a camera in one hand and a daisy in the other, was made by Dan Budnick, another old friend.

When Dennis was 18 and just out of the Navy, he took a course with Berenice Abbott under the GI Bill. "It wasn't quite right," he told me during the interview. "I asked her where I could get a job as an assistant." She sent him to "a man by the name of Smith. So I went up to see this man by the name of Smith—it was W. Eugene, of course—and he said he needed an assistant and hired me. Well, Gene can be very naive. I was this brassy kid off the street, who [still] knew nothing about photography. Gene needed somebody with real qualifications. So I worked for him about two weeks. But in the parting moments, he said in his sweet way—you know, I adore the man—'You ought to work for a guy by the name of Gjon Mili; he'll really kick your ass around.'"

Dennis worked for Mili for four years, and presumably the ass-kicking worked—"four years of real apprenticeship, European style. $25 a week, unlimited time for developing, printing until three in the morning, learning, learning, learning. Smith was right. Mili was a very good master, very demanding but very generous. I had a classic upbringing in photography."

In 1951, Stock won first prize in LIFE magazine's young photographers' contest, soon joined Magnum at the invitation of Robert Capa, and the rest, as they say, is history.

When I asked Dennis to comment on the then-current (1978, remember) state of photographic education, he replied in typically direct and irascible fashion:

"Bear in mind that a large portion of our critics, educators or historians cannot take a good picture or recognize one. So it's very easy for them to lionize the [William] Egglestons and the types who indulge in craftless banality. Push them up. It's perfect for them. Damn it, when I came into photography, a Smith, a Mili, a Haas, a Cartier-Bresson...boy, they were hard to reach for. You never believed you would reach that level, but you tried like hell. But they were immense distances ahead of you. Well, look who's coming down the pike now. How many people are doing Les Krims photographs? Ralph Gibson? I'm sorry, who's doing Diane Arbus? Everybody and his brother! They're easy to imitate. It's most distressing."

Okay, enough of my trip down memory lane. But a little history does go a long way, don't you think? 

Sublime from the (Virtual) Five and Dime

By Calvin Amari

Reading the last three TOP discussions and a perusing some of the referenced sites raise the following question in my mind. From the perspective of a photography collector, rather than relying on the traditional mechanism of the gallery system, would one be any worse off investing serious critical time to identify prints to acquire directly through artist websites?

I have seen on these sites some terrific work at shockingly low prices, which I confess is a very compelling combination. Setting aside the work they show from very well established artists, the gallerists charge hefty sums even for the work of newcomers to the gallery scene. This premium, I suppose, is justified on several grounds. Since the artist was anointed by the gallery, his or her work is more valuable by that fact alone. A gallery show certainly provides a higher level of exposure, which impacts immediate and prospective demand for the artist's work. Also, in choosing any new artist, the gallery invariable has eliminated hundreds or thousands of alternatives deemed less deserving of gallery representation.

That may be a fair deal for collectors who don't trust their own ability to separate the wheat from the chaff. Historically, however, the collector's principal reliance on the gallery system has been based on a different type of necessity: individual collectors simply have not been in a position to directly survey the work of artists. There was no mechanism for countless artists to submit slides of their work directly to collectors for review, as artists did with galleries.

I don't know why I haven't thought this through before, but isn't it the case that all these photographer websites create the basis for a paradigm shift?

I have, or have had, several areas of collecting focus over the years. Very early pioneering photography; 19th century photography of Spain; what I call "accidentally modernist" 19th century photography; Czech photography; some classic modernists; a good number of well-known contemporary photographers; etc. I am now weighing the possibility of a little collection garnered directly from photographer websites. Perhaps 30 or so images carefully selected from these sources alone—sublime from the virtual five and dime. I'm wondering how good such body of work can be but, given sufficient spade work, I think there might be reason for optimism. 

Cal

"Calvin Amari" is the pseudonym of a photography collector who prefers to remain anonymous.

Send this post to a friend

Featured Comment by Dalton: "I have been treading these waters for a couple of years now, so I might be able to provide some insight. A significant portion of my photography collection (somewhere around 40–50 prints now) comes from photographers I've discovered through their websites. I've either purchased prints from them directly or traded with them for one of my own prints. Many of these are unrepresented artists, but occasionally they are gallery artists who are selling work that is not part of their gallery portfolio. The quality of the work can vary, but overall I have been extremely happy with my growing collection.

"I think there is more great art out there than the gallery system can currently handle. Projects like Jen Bekman's 20x200 make art affordable and does a lot of the 'spade work' you mention, but there are still many, many artists who are under-represented and looking to make some money and get exposure from their work.

"I can also speak from personal experience as a photographer who sells my work directly through my website: it works! I have sold a surprising number of prints in the last year, and developed a significant network of collectors and friends who support my work. Whether or not I am able to parlay that into a career as a fine-art photographer (it's a tall, steep hill, and I'm still at the very bottom looking up), the experience of making those connections and feeling rewarded for my work has been worth it.

"Two websites to visit: printsociety.com, which is a directory of work sold directly by artists, and kickstarter.com, which has created a new model of fundraising for artists. On Kickstarter, artists are able to post project ideas and then solicit funds to complete the project. I recently funded a photographer this way and it feels really good!"

Featured Comment by Mark Hobson: "Kudos to Cal for 'thinking it through' and coming to the conclusion that he can just do it.

"I assume that he has managed this feat because, as a collector, he actually likes pictures as opposed to liking their return-on-investment potential.

"While I agree with his paradigm shift premise, the fly in that ointment is still similar to that of the good ole days—even though the web does put individual collectors 'in a position to directly survey the work of artists,' the amount of time it takes to find the wheat amongst the chaff can be staggering, eye-blurring, and mind-numbing.

"What I would like to see is a paradigm shift that includes web portal sites that are devoted to presenting 'pre-screened' photo website listings of those sites that merit at least a look. Those portals would by necessity have to be subscription-based services, mostly likely with a fairly substantial fee that would cover the costs of operation and ongoing research.

"However, I wouldn't think that a subscription cost would be a deal-killer for serious collectors. Especially since the portal would take no cut on sales and there would still be plenty of sublime-from-the-five-and-dime deals at shockingly low prices out there."

Mike comments: I don't disagree with you, but one thing you're presuming is that there would be agreement as to which sites would "merit at least a look." I've found over the years that photography collectors are like music collectors: you can have two people who are equally passionate and who both have huge collections, but with no, or very little, overlap. The big advantage of the web is the same as the big disadvantage: there is no equivalent to the gallerist imposing his or her taste on the selections, so you can (or have to, depending on how you look at it) go make your own.

Featured Comment by Rodger Kingston: "For ten years or more I have been buying vintage photographs on eBay to add to my collection. Some of my finest images have come from this source, and I might add that I have been burned only a very few times, usually by sellers who misrepresented what they were selling out of ignorance, not dishonesty. Only a couple of times have items just never come. Mind you, this is out of many hundreds of purchases.

"As to buying from living photographers off their web sites, I don't see why not; as long as you can establish a good dialog with the photographer, and there is full understanding about exactly what is being bought (what kind of print it is, size, condition, edition size if any, and especially the return policy), then I'd say it's a wide open field with great possibilities.

"The only problem is one common to all mail order purchases: you have to forgo handling or seeing the actual print before buying. Top mail order sites such as L.L. Bean get around that problem by providing great customer service, fast, inexpensive shipping, and a fabulous return policy.

"I have sold prints and limited edition artist books off my web site numerous times. I always exchange multiple emails with potential buyers, and even talk with them by phone when possible. I let them know that their satisfaction is guaranteed. I've never had a problem, and have even made a few new friends."

Featured Comment by Jeffrey Goggin: "The only cautionary note about the 'buying directly from photographers' approach I would add is that, based upon my very limited experience of swapping prints with other photographers, the image that caught your eye on a monitor and the one you eventually hold in your hand may not look nearly as alike as you may expect.

"Sometimes the prints have looked better, but most of the time they have looked worse, presumably because the web doesn't demand nearly as much from an image file as a printer does.

"In short, unless you're paying essentially throw away money for a print, I would insist upon a review period during which you can return it for any reason."

Fun with Soft Focus

Yesterday's post about lenses that aren't terribly sharp might have made you think of premium soft-focus portrait lenses like the Cooke PS945 or the Rodenstock Imagon. Or, if you're not a large-format kinda person, maybe the Lensbaby or the Holga. As you probably know, there's a whole toy-camera aesthetic out there known by the general name of Lomography, after the website of that name and the Lomo camera. I've never liked diffusion filters—it's just a very false look, to my eye, especially the kind that selectively makes whites all glowy—but maybe you will.

Nothing wrong with playing with any of those options, of course. With many such options, people get into a "now I'm doing soft focus" mindset, and turn it up to 11 (moar cowbell)...they just go way over the top, and make pictures that are grossly smeary or fuzzy. We humans have a great fondness for excess.

Personally, I've always felt that if a viewer notices an effect, then it's been ladled on too heavily. That goes for the oversharpened eyes that Amin was complaining about (sharpening in general, actually); any of the standard tricks for making faces or bodies more appealing in Photoshop, like making the eyes bigger or the legs longer; soft focus; saturation...anything. The viewer should sense the aesthetic impression but not recognize immediately how it was achieved. That's just my opinion.

And to experiment with soft focus, you don't really need to buy anything. As long as you have a UV or clear protective filter for your lens, you can experiment.

Try putting "dots" on the filter with a black Sharpie. You can try even dots all over the filter, or leave the center clear and make the dots more dense toward the edges; then try shooting at different apertures. Don't like what you did? Just rub the dots off (or scrape them off with a single-sided razor blade) and start over again. More dots or fewer, larger or smaller, all creates different effects. You can use a hole punch and black construction paper cut in a ring shape to construct an Imagon-style "spherical" soft focus effect filter, mimicking the one in the picture at right. Too much? Too little? Try again. (Note that whenever you have any soft of center opening or gradation of effects on the filter, different apertures will yield different effects. If you're shooting digital, it's easy enough to try them all.)

Can't you just do it all in Photoshop? Maybe. Sometimes you can, sometimes you can't.

Using old or bad lenses is a useful trick, although you're dependent on the particular lens you find. Christopher Bailey used to use a Nikkormat with a cracked lens and stuck shutter (it only worked on "B") to make his night shots, and was out of luck when his car got broken into and the "special" broken lens got stolen! The irony is that it wasn't worth anything to the thief, even though it was worth a lot to Chris.

Everybody knows the trick of smearing vaseline on the filter (maybe just at the edges) or stretching a nylon stocking over the end of the lens. Again, too heavy-handed for my taste—what you usually create is not a subtle image modification but an EFFECT that shouts at people NOW I'M USING AN EFFECT!!! My advice—worth what you paid for it—is "think subtle." Just shade it one way or another. Tap your viewer on the shoulder rather than bashing them over the head with a brick. 

If nylon stocking material is too much, the fabric store is your friend. Find some loose netting to put over your filter. Note that white and black fishnet have different effects on the image. (Colors, too.) See what you can find. Try cutting a small hole in the center of the netting and just using it on the edge, then trying shots at different apertures. 

Once you get an effect you like, you can add it to your bag of tricks, and use it when you need it. For the most part, though, it costs very little to experiment. Even if you never use any of the effects again, you'll come out with a better understanding of visual effects and how images work.

Mike

Send this post to a friend

ADDENDUM: Oh, I almost forgot: you used to be able to make homemade diffusion filters by spraying hairspray on a plain glass or UV filter. Put the filter on the ground and spray the hairspray into the air and let the tiny droplets drift down on to the filter. Allow to dry, and use. More diffusion, more hairspray. When you're done, just wash off the filter.

This was a tip dating back to the era of beehive hairdos—it was hoary when I was a pup—and I'm not sure hairsprays are still the same kind of thing. Experiment.

Fashion Photography is Just Plain Weird

Oh, good idea. Sexy is as sexy does?

Exhibit A: A Richard Avedon New Yorker feature from 1995, apropos the season. Happy Halloween. Don't let your children go near any fashion shoots.

Exhibit B: Lara Stone in (full body) blackface. This is just weird.

Exhibit C:  The latest fashion in post-production body manipulation seems to be to enlarge a woman's upper body in relation to her torso to make her hips look "thin." (Probably just a common but formerly undetected trick now getting its "envelope pushed.") Witness the flap over the Filippa Hamilton Ralph Lauren ad (right), which I think is over now, but which I admit I can't keep up with. People who used to say that fashion had a tendency to make women's bodies look unnatural are now seeing the reductio ad absurdum, courtesy of post-production image manipulation.

More pelvic indiscretion from Photoshop Disasters. (Is this hideous, or what? Put her on your lawn for Halloween....)

Have a nice weekend. I take Saturdays off (and we have trick-or-treaters tomorrow), so I'll be back on Sunday.

Mike

Send this post to a friend

ADDENDUM: As a reader named Nick points out in the comments (along with some tongue-in-cheek insults), it turns out Filippa Hamilton was recently let go by Ralph Lauren, mid-contract, because "she could no longer fit into the clothes." That is, because she is too heavy(!). According to the linked video she is 5' 10" tall and weighs 120 lbs., and wears sizes 2 to 4.

So maybe I should amend that header...the fashion industry is just plain weird....

Errol Morris, Ruminator Extraordinaire

Today Errol Morris has finished his latest epic rumination on photography in the pages the of the World's Best Photography magazine. It is called "The Case of the Inappropriate Alarm Clock."

I confess that I don't deal well with any pace faster than that of a river whose surface never roils, and I've been feeling overextended recently, even though by the standards of most people who are actually busy I am not, and I haven't gotten around to reading these. Nevertheless they deserve mention if only for their august venue and Mr. Morris's track record, which is impeccable so far.

Here's the link to all seven parts, in reverse order. I don't know how long all seven part are altogether, but I would like to know. I suspect I would probably be happier having them as a small, neat, printed book. But that would cost money, and online it's free, all but for the time it takes to read.

Mike

Send this post to a friend

High ISO High Noon

Entirely by chance, both Ctein and I, unbeknownst to each other, were writing short essays on the same topic at the same time. So I thought I'd put them up together. This wasn't planned, it just happened. I took the short term, existing-technology view of high ISOs, and Ctein (at least at the end of his piece) took the infinite-possibility, far future view; not even really contradictory, despite my indulgent "high noon" header....

-

Mike: Not Needy and Nothing If Not Conservative

I was rather surprised that the result to Wednesday's poll turned out to be a classic bell curve; I thought it might well be an infinitely-rising curve, with the most people choosing the highest number, or, in effect, "all the speed I can get."

So what was my own answer to the question "When you're shopping for a digital camera, what's your minimum standard for high ISO of good quality?" I chose ISO 1600. [I waffled between 400 and 800.  —Ctein.] I'm not greedy. Not needy. My requirements are modest. And Lord knows I'm nothing if not conservative. (Big smile.)

The reason has its basis in pure empiricism, as usual. I've simply observed over the years that with every digital camera I've owned or used extensively, from the meanest digicam to the Nikon D700 and D3, no matter how good the high ISOs look, lower ISOs look better.

Don't get me wrong—I'm very grateful for the high-quality high ISO speeds we all now enjoy. I spent the first half-decade of my photographic life shooting a black-and-white film (Kodak Plus-X) that I rated at E.I. 80...and usually shot with a yellow filter! Speed was a constant...issue. And I distinctly remember a brief window in the early years of this millennium when digital image quality had caught up to film at low ISOs but not at high ones, and I'd encounter forum postings from pros saying that before switching to digital, they would have to hold out for high-ISO performance from digital that at least matched that of film.

That period sure didn't last for very long. Canon led the way, but very soon all digital cameras matched film’s best speed. And then exceeded it.

What I do today is simply shoot at the camera’s best ISOs, unless I can’t, in which case I shift to something higher. Doesn’t everybody?

For any given camera, as ISOs increase, image quality deteriorates. It’s not just a question of noise. Sharpness and resolution subtly degrade, as does the richness and purity of colors, dynamic range, and so on. Noise intrudes too, as everyone knows, but I suspect that people who say things like “quality is identical from 100 to 800” are looking only at noise, and nothing else. I’m not saying I can tell the difference between 640 and 500, but there are more differences than just noise over a three-stop ISO range with the cameras I’ve tried.

One exception is that shooting specifically for B&W conversion allows a real increase in usable ISOs. Partly because chroma noise isn’t an issue—and partly, I suspect, because I’m used to grain with B&W and it doesn’t bother me! Well, it doesn’t really bother me in color, either. Not nearly as much as it bothers some. If noise is pretty, I don't mind it.

Still, with image stabilization and reasonably fast lenses, I’ve found I almost never need more than 1600—and seldom that, although it’s luxurious to have that speed in reserve. With the Nikon D3, 1600 was fully usable and 3200 was a reasonable “in a pinch” speed. With the Panasonic GF1 (although I’ve just started using it and reserve the right to change my mind as I work more with raw files), I suspect that 800 is the top “fully usable” speed and 1600 is the “in a pinch” speed. Which is okay for a digicam—it’s a lot better than my now-ancient Sony F-707. ISO 400 was really well beyond that camera's comfort level.

I have no quarrel at all with those who want more and more high ISO speed. I have no doubt they need it. At some point, however, I suspect we’ll reach “market saturation” on high ISO speeds...it’s happened that way with many other marketing/technical parameters in the history of photo techniques, from film size to lens speed. The new D3s indicates that we probably aren’t there yet. I don’t know where the market will decide to stop, but, just personally, I’m good where we are now.

From our Wednesday poll, looks like a fair number of others are reaching that point too.

Mike

-

Ctein: I Was Built for Comfort, But I Could Live With Speed

In the thread on the Nikon D3S, quite a few folks expressed serious doubts about the value of such high speeds, arguing, in various forms, that there isn't much merit in trying to produce fine photographs under conditions where we cannot even clearly see what we're photographing. I take firm exception to that position.

Serious, high-quality, fine-grain low-light photography (in contrast to the push-processed, available-darkness kind) has been part of the canon since at least the 1930s. When I was a noob in college in the late '60s and entirely ignorant of that canon, I clearly remember the night I wondered, "Hey, what would happen if, instead of loading with Tri-X or 2475 Recording film and pushing the bejeezus out of it [as I was accustomed to doing in my reportage photography], I set up the tripod, loaded up with Pan-X and pull-processed a bit for range, and just let the exposures take as long as they needed to?"

WOW! Gorgeous! Completely changed my artistic direction. I very quickly mastered night photography, figuring out which slow films had the best reciprocity characteristics and what the compensations needed to be to get accurate results in both B&W and color with exposure times up to 40-50 minutes. I made this one just a few years after I started on this track.

Ctein, Purple Gantry (original, with more accurate color, here)

In case you're wondering, no, I did not bracket. It sucked up enough of my life just making those 40-minute masterpieces. I made sure I got it right in one exposure. Carried a paperback and a flashlight in my bag; got a lot of reading done those nights. Metering? Meter off a highlight or a white sheet of paper and it's like boosting your meter sensitivity an order of magnitude. If I could see it, I could meter it. It went like this: meter would tell me I needed 2/3 second at ƒ/2 off of white paper. Okay, that's 5 seconds for a proper grey. Now start stopping down for depth of field. There I am at ƒ/13 for a photo like this one and the nominal exposure time's pushing over 200 seconds. The film I'm using's got a 10X reciprocity correction at 200 seconds. And so, it's reading time!

My first noteworthy bodies of work involved substantial amounts of just that kind of low-light photography (I never cared for Arthur Ollman's available-darkness "grain-o-graphs" when he showed up on the scene). That still includes some of my best photos. Two thirds of the photos in this screen required exposures of 30 seconds or more on slow film. I still routinely make multi-minute, low-light/ISO100-speed photographs (check out the Christmas in California series).

Digital sensors have better reciprocity characteristics, so my exposure times have dropped a lot the past few years; rarely do I need to go beyond a minute these days. Nonetheless, my style remains the same and the results are still artistically satisfying. Would I jump at ISO 100K? Not particularly; I'm okay with tripods and a couple of minutes between frames.

BUT...

There are lots of photos I don't make because the subject matter won't sit still for large numbers of seconds. Do I think having 1,000 times the ISO I now use would open up all sorts of artistic opportunities? Hell, yeah! Is it artistically, conceptually, and philosophically valid? Double-hell, yeah! Photography's never been merely about photographing what you could see; it's always been about photographing what you wanted to see. 

Ctein

Send this post to a friend

Irving Penn, Fashion Photographer...

 

 

 

 

...I could go on, but I think you get the point.

Mike
(Thanks to Yuanchung Lee)

Send this post to a friend

Question from Don Bryant: "There has been a suggestion on an internet forum that Penn didn't actually do his platinum printing. Of course anything can be written on the net but the suggestion was made by someone very knowledgeable about the world of platinum printing. I don't know if that is true or not but the rumor is out there. But I have to ask, if the rumor is true, does it matter? I was fortunate to see a couple of large exhibits of his work and was a great admirer of the work I saw firsthand. His dye transfer color prints were great as well. I recall coming back to the exhibits three times to soak it all in."

Answered by Keith Trumbo: "Regarding Mr. Penn and some vague internet accusation questioning whether he made his own platinum prints: I worked for Mr. Penn for many years alongside him as he made his platinum prints. He made the developers, he coated each one personally. I was lucky enough to be an extra pair of hands to help get his work done. Yes I was one of many that helped him in one aspect or another in the production, but I want this to be heard loud and clear—Penn personally made his own platinum prints."

Featured Comment by Calvin Amari: "At least with respect to Penn's career, the institutional guardians of fine art photography are well over marginalizing his commercial work as a fashion photographer. Indeed, things more generally have gone so far to the other extreme—witness the most commercial of Annie Leibovitz's photos with all their gooey appeal displayed in art museums—that I suspect that some readers don't fully appreciate the sardonic nature of Mike's post.

"Despite working at Vogue magazine since 1943, Penn did not have an exhibition at MoMA until the mid-Seventies show of the cigarette butt series that, to me at least, must be seen in their monumental original size to be fully appreciated. Much of the ambiguity of the pictures—both optically (their resemblance to ancient ruined marble columns) and intellectually (the questions of whether he was both literally and figuratively inflating something prosaic into something larger than it can become)—does not come through in reduced size. But there was another sort of ambiguity or tension regarding the exhibition as well. John Szarkowski in his wall essay acknowledged in passing Penn's commercial work in the world of 'haute couture or cuisine' and said, with what appeared to be almost an apologetic sense of embarrassed dismissal, that 'one might guess that he [Penn] has only rarely enjoyed more than a cursory interest in the nominal subject of his [fashion] pictures.' 

"At the same time, it is hard to escape the sense that Penn was not being sardonic himself about this issue of his primary home being located in the ghetto of commercial photography. He had to be smiling to himself and at himself that, after three decades at the top of the profession, cigarette butts became his key to the pantheon. It's not that Penn pulled a fast one, per se. The cigarette butt work reflects keen intellect and craft, but it is interesting to contemplate all the subtle elements of the wit and schmaltz that Penn also brought to that particular proceeding."

Zen Slap

By Carl Weese

Some of the comments to my recent post about editing made me realize that I was writing from an underlying assumption about the nature of editing that is not necessarily obvious to the reader. The comments recommending various ways to edit out mistakes remind me of something important in my photographic life from about twenty-five years ago.

I had the opportunity to show David Vestal in-progress work on a personal project. At that point I had been intensely involved with photography for two-thirds of my life; I had been a working professional for a dozen years. David spent time with the pictures, and then, instead of talking about them directly, asked about my editing. "Do you look for mistakes, and get rid of them? Or do you look for good stuff to hold on to?"

I was dumbfounded, like after the Zen master's slap upside the head. There was no middle ground, no gray area, no way around it: I had never in my life thought of the editing process as anything but taking a berserker's broad-axe to the shoot, eliminating anything that showed the slightest weakness, the least flaw or error. David recommended I start over from scratch with this material, and look for all the good things instead of editing by fault-finding. Once the pictures with good stuff in them were found, I could start to decide whether each one had, on balance, enough good stuff to outweigh any bad stuff I would previously have rejected it for. This was a radical change of thought. Instantly, I knew he was right.

What I've come to understand in the years since, is that editing by fault-finding traps you into what you already know, so is an impediment to discovery and advancement. From the beginning I'd been suspicious of "rules," but editing by negation sneaked a bunch of stupid rules right past me and into my practice. To edit by fault-finding is to encase yourself in foregone conclusions—you might as well be insisting on The Rule of Thirds, or Single Center of Interest—but to edit as an exploration of the take for what actually worked, for what you found that you didn't already know, is a voyage of discovery. It's a crucial difference.

Carl

Send this post to a friend

'Try To Avoid From Too Purple Images'

Okay, we can all go home now. Latvian photographer Ivars Gravlejs has covered them all. All the rules. There are 78 of them. But wait! How can I remember 78 rules? I can't remember 78 of anything. I can't remember 78 former classmates' names, or 78 of the meals that I've eaten, or 78 of the women I've slept with*. How can I remember 78 Photography Rules for Complete Idiots?

(One slight problem though...the "wrong" photograph in #47 is a great shot.)

Mike
(Thanks to Rachel)

*Don't disturb me. I live in a dreamworld of my own imagining, and I'm happy in here.

Send this post to a friend

'Back on Vesterbro, Klavs Bo Christensen Sits and Feels Sorry for Himself'

Jens Tønnesen of Pressefotografforbundet (that's the Union of Press Photographers, in Denmark) writes to tell us that the story about Danish photographer Klavs Bo Christensen's pictures of Haiti that were disqualified from the Danish Picture of the Year contest has "made it around the world," so they've published an English translation of the original article to make the facts more accessible to a wider audience. Of particular interest, the rules of the contest to begin with. Also specified is that the "before" pictures are "the original RAW file converted to JPEG using the Default setting i [sic] Adobe Camera Raw."

Our discussion of the matter on TOP took place in the posts Danish PJ Accused of Excessive Photoshopping and Dinosaur-Planet Pictures last week.

Mike

Send this post to a friend

Featured Comment by Eolake: "The phrase "Tilbage på Vesterbro sidder Klavs Bo Christensen og aergrer sig" is surprisingly hard to translate accurately. 'Aergrer sig" is a verb which is quite useful, but I don't know a good English word for it. It means sort of an angry, sullen regret, thinking 'oh, I really wish that had gone different' or 'I really wish I'd done that different.' It's regret, but mixed with anger. Like if you'd decided not to go to a concert, and now all your friends tell you it was the best one ever.

"It's perhaps not always as intense as I make it sound, and I think it wasn't meant that intense in the article."

One Big Happy

By Rick Detorie. (Click to see larger.)

Mike
(Thanks to Paul Van Audenhove)

Dinosaur-Planet Pictures

It appears from the response to the previous post that photographers have strong feelings on the subject of image manipulation. I knew that, or should have known that, from past experience. It still catches me by surprise, each time.

First of all, I wasn't really taking a position myself in the original post, at least not until I wrote my little addendum—I was just passing the news along with a link, like I do dozens of times a month. I meant neither to condemn nor condone the actions of the Danish Press Photography Union in the original post—and in fact, I couldn't even report their concerns very well, since I don't read Danish (or understand spoken Danish) and I'm not willing to base close textual analysis on auto-translator gobbledegook.

That post drew more than 60 comments, some of them long, within eight hours. Most of those, you can read. It also drew some extremely insecure, ranting diatribes (well, actually only three), which I did not post. A couple of those attacked me, as if I stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Danish contest judges and all of us speak with one common voice in persecution of the poor disqualified photojournalist, never mind our lack of a common language!

For the record, I regret to report that I wasn't consulted. In fact, I only first heard of the whole issue yesterday.

One hysterical screed attacked me as a "film purist." Now, how is that supposed to work, given that I've barely exposed any film at all this decade? I'm a digital photographer, folks, for better or worse. Not that that matters in the current discussion; it's entirely beside the point, as most of you are capable of discerning. This isn't a matter of film vs. digital, as it's not a question of whether Photoshop is good or bad. It's just a question of how different kinds of photographers ought to make their pictures look—not how they get them to look like that.

But since you asked, and since it's my blog...
First, my usual qualifying round: It's not for me to tell any individual photographer how to enjoy photography. If you like the wretched excess of the overhyped, overcooked style, go for it—it's your hobby; you own it. They're your pictures.

In point of fact, however, I do applaud the Danish Press Photography Union judges. When journalism is at issue, you have to draw a line somewhere, and Hr. Christensen (Eolake, who's a Dane, tells me that "Hr." is Danish for "Mr.") blundered across that line in no uncertain terms. This wasn't a toe-on-the-chalk, double-angle-replay judgment call; this was the receiver vaulting the bench and climbing into the stands to catch the pass. Out of bounds is out of bounds.

As for HDR-to-XS, etc., I don't care to look at that stuff, it's true, but that preference has nothing to do with a) how Timmy did worse things yesterday or b) whether Johnny started it, or c) the fact that Mom's being unfair because there is no clear technical path to 100% dependable, purely mechanical neutrality; my problem is the pictures. My problem is merely that the pictures don't look like Earth.

Take this, for example. Earth never looked like this. At least, not during the time I've been alive, and probably not for the past several million years. What the Wretched-Excess Style does remind me of are those fanciful illustrations (some of them cartoons) showing what things supposedly looked like in the time of the dinosaurs. You know the pictures I'm talking about? Lurid hues to signify exoticism, bizarrely-colored plant life, pasturing Stegasaurii in bright Amazon-lizard stripes and fades, festive volcanos spewing oranges and reds in the distance, all under a pink or yellow or violet sky. All very saturated with color, and wonder.

That's what the Wretched Excess, overcooked, dial-at-11, "HDR" (not that there's anything wrong with that) style looks like to me: another planet—or this one during the Pleistocene, in the minds of illustrators with full palettes of bright paints.

I look at Earth a lot more than I look at pictures, and I happen to think pictures taken on Earth should sorta look like Earth. But "that's just me" as they say. If you happen to disagree—if you're into a different look, up to and including the dinosaur-planet look—then knock yourself out. That's the nice thing about this hobby—everybody gets to do it their own way. I don't have anything to say about that one way or t'other. Other peoples' pictures aren't my pictures, and I'm not a Danish contest judge—all of which is probably just as well.

Mike

Send this post to a friend

T.O.P. is shareware!

Featured Comment by David Comdico: "The fact that one has to argue that the photo reproduced above has taken liberties with reality in its reproduction goes to show just how far the limits of credulity have been stretched. I'm not sure if it is the inevitable result of technology's trajectory or if rigor has simply gone out of fashion.

"Take for example, the straw man that has been made of the raw file. Because a raw file must be rendered via 'some' curve does not mean that any given 'interpretation' of that raw file is equal. Such an argument is patently silly.

"Digital photography has not suddenly superseded reasonable verisimilitude—and anyone who shoots film, or has a preference for it, is by definition not a Luddite. End stop.

"Journalistic standards are, like any standard, subject to the dictum of contemporary taste and preferences (even downright biases) but it doesn't follow that standards are useless or 'untrue' as truth itself is subject to the same preconditions. And given the current environment, where propaganda has become synonymous with reportage, we need these standards more than ever."

Featured Comment by Chris: "While this won't be the first time it's pointed out here, I think it bears repeating that 'looks like Earth' is not a meaningful single reference standard. Pictures, and the world too, look different to different people. Very different. Enough so that we frequently cannot even agree what we are all looking at in the first place.

"This shouldn't be that hard to appreciate, but perhaps because I am a teacher (of visual anthropology, among other subjects) it stands out particularly starkly. Students in general tend to think that the way they saw a picture, or a film, is both the correct way, and the same way everyone else did. (This is after all the great claim of photography—its objectivity.) When they subsequently describe what they saw in writing, and I get 40 essays which all seem to be about completely different materials, yet all couched in the same perfect assurance that there was nothing else to be seen... Well it is a dramatic illustration of the point. The same thing happens every day in photo critiques: people see the same photo, but can't agree what they're looking at.

"This is a bigger issue than can easily be dismissed by the common-sense approach of 'I know realism when I see it' (even though that will probably take most of us pretty far). Frankly I think the question of exactly what different people see in the 'same' material is quite an interesting one.

"In the raw/processed examples from the Danish contest, the raw pictures look unrealistically flat to me. the processed ones look, well, heavily processed. To me, the most interesting thing which could come out of looking at the two would be a refinement of terms for explaining exactly what's wrong, and how, with the pictures for photojournalistic use (any such discussion of course has to take ends into account), and doing so with some degree of precision. To say 'I know it when I see it' may be a practical solution that works for oneself much of the time, but it doesn't help much in communicating what 'it' is to others."

Mike replies: Just for the record, I never said, and I hope never implied, that the flat, unprocessed pictures presented in the article are some sort of standard to be aimed for. Naturally, those files needed processing to be presentable. Perhaps just not as much as they received.

Your larger point, Chris, is a valid one, and as a more subtle topic would be a fruitful one for discussion. But what I meant to imply, rhetorically, by using the phrase "looks like Earth" is that a very basic standard has been breached here, one that doesn't require subtlety to perceive. You can argue relativism all you want, but when something is extreme, genuine disagreement tends to be eviscerated. Show of hands—how many people think the picture in this post is likely an accurate and objective portrayal of the scene, with no subjective interpretation superadded? I don't think we'll see one hand raised, unless someone is just trying to be contentious.