Kodachrome Flat, Grosvenor Arch, and a Great New Book

In the announcement of the demise of Kodachrome the other day, reader Luc Novovitch asked about Kodachrome Basin State Park in Utah. Our old friend Dan Westergren, Senior Photo Editor at National Geographic Traveler, has written a nice blog piece about the history of the name. The area, which encompasses the famous Grosvenor Arch pictured at right, was discovered, photographically at least, by an expedition led by National Geographic writer Jack Breed in 1949, who originally dubbed it "Kodachrome Flat" because it was so spectacularly photogenic. There's an ironic twist to this Grosvenor Arch picture, though! Nature photographers especially might be interested in checking out the link.

Meanwhile, Steve McCurry, whom Kodak has selected for the honor of shooting the ceremonial last roll of Kodachrome film later this year, has a new book out, and it's a beaut. Called The Unguarded Moment, it's a major retrospective of McCurry's best and favorite work shot over three decades. As you might expect, it includes pictures from all over the world, mostly Asia and the subcontinent. (Here's the U.K. link to the book.)

McCurry is an elite travel/location photographer at the very top of his game. Fortunately for us his work is thoroughly represented and readily experienced in books. The Unguarded Moment, which might be his masterpiece, consists of horizontal pictures set vertically on the page, so the book is in effect bound at the top rather than the side, like Stuart Klipper's The Antarctic. It features the same oversized format as Looking East, McCurry's book of portraits and one of our favorites from 2006. In fact the new book makes a perfect matched set with Looking East, "landscape format" pictures to the earlier book's "portrait format" ones but bound so they can stand side-by-side together on a shelf. It has the same lush, gorgeous, deep-hued reproduction quality that suits the pictures so beautifully (looking at reproduction like this is almost a sensual experience). It's a very fine set of pictures—street and slice-of-life scenes spiced here and there with the direct, soulful portaits that have long been McCurry's signature. Highly recommendable to anyone who likes exotic locations, masterful candid street photography, or just superbly reproduced color photography in general. If you don't want to buy it, see if your library has it. Just a very satisfying and enjoyable book, another standout from this photographer.

To wander back on topic, Steve McCurry estimates that he's shot some 800,000 pictures on Kodachrome, including his most famous one.

Mike

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Comments

[Rana]

I've seen that arch (currently labeled as Grosvenor Arch), and the nearby Kodachrome Basin. Beautiful country.

(This is not a great shot - I was still getting used to my just-bought camera - but it gives some sense of the country there.)

[Robert P]

Would be nice to shoot the last roll of Kodachrome that gets developed....... I wonder if Dwayne's will auction that honour off ?

[Derek Stanton]

That McCurry book really is quite wonderful. I hate the binding orientation, but the images and reproductions are gorgeous.

[Robert Noble]

Just two more famous old guys have to die before I do and I get to shoot the last run of Super-XX....

[Karl Knize]

I loved it and hated it for being a stop too slow for me on the average. Then PKL came along
and I shot a boodle of it. It was a different animal in many ways, but I loved it for what it was not... I liked the grain, the acutance,
the muted colors that still had the Kodachrome feel. Ah well... I can hear it now "But I have a plug-in for this that looks the same! And look how much more control you have!"

[V.I. Voltz]

I wonder if Steve McCurry is a fan of Australian band The Church http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Church_(band) their 1981 single 'The Unguarded Moment' from the album 'Of Skins and Heart' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of_Skins_and_Heart is a rather fine track.

Voltz

[Zoltan]

Not that it really matters, but does anyone know what gear he used for the 'Afghan Girl'?

This is purely out of useless academic interest, as I'm fully aware that it was not the gear that made this photograph so good (almost any camera with a half decent short telephoto lens would have been good tools).

The Nikon F3, FM and FM2 models have been suggested, and someone cited Nikon as saying the lens was a 105mm f/2.5. Can anyone confirm this?

Also, given that the photo was captured by available light inside a tent, and on slow transparency film to boot, I guess the shutter speed must have been slow. And I've been wondering how he steadied the camera (he surely hadn't set up a tripod, had he?).

[Markus Spring]

Having received this book just last week, I just want to state that for me it is a wonderful teacher about the essentials of photographic images.
Having brooded too much and too long about noise and sharpness in my own images, this book again showed me that the substance can be way beyond those nitty-gritty details. McCurry captured the vibes of the moment, and though especially the older images in the book are way beyond what is regarded as acceptable by the fine art photographers/printers, an abundance of substance is transported here.
Thanks for the recommendation.