The Online Photographer

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

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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....

Schroedinger's Cameraman

From Chicago Public Radio's "This American Life."

(In case you can't see this, the direct link is here.)

Mike
(I can't remember who sent me this, but thanks!)

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Featured Comment by Yunfat: "Funny. But James Nachtwey has told of an opposite effect as well: 

If there comes a time when I'm the only one who can make a difference, then I'll suspend being a journalist and help people. I have intervened in lynch mobs several times over the years and managed to save people. And there was a time I tried to save a man in Indonesia.

People from a mosque in Jakarta were offended that a Christian church had a bingo parlor next to the mosque. They saw bingo as a form of gambling, which was against their religious beliefs. So they attacked the bingo parlor and began to kill the Christian guards. As I asked people in the street what was going on, one of the guards came running up an alleyway, chased by a mob. I tried to stop the mob from killing the guy. Three times they actually stopped. Once, a man was about to cut the guard's throat. At that point, I got on my hands and knees and begged him not to do it. And he didn't do it. He actually put down his knife and stood the guard up. But then the mob turned on me and became very threatening. People were in my face, pushing me back. While they were pushing me back, they finished the guard off. I thought that if one of them struck me, they'd probably take me out as well. I resumed taking pictures of the guard, and that didn't seem to bother the mob. They allowed me to photograph it. But they wouldn't allow me to stop it.

—James Nachtwey

...although I have to say anyone else who did what he did would probably end up dead. I firmly believe that cameras can lend the appearance of being an impartial arbiter, but I certainly won't be putting myself in front of a murderous mob anytime soon."

Featured Comment by Ctein: "Okay, as one of those really small kids most likely to get picked on in elementary school, I say from experience that blaming this on the camera game is bullsh*t. Kids in elementary schools don't make it a habit to break up fights. They are not budding young Good Samaritans. They're less civilized and less socially conscious than your average adult in such a situation. Which is setting the bar awfully low. The camera game at most provided safe psychological rationalization for them not getting involved, but that's all."

Featured Comment by J Ho: "Being one who grew up during the first generation of 'extreme sports,' I witnessed hundreds of instances where human behavior radically changed once a camera was introduced into a situation—especially when the camera was being wielded by a 'professional' (something I happened to be at the time).

"Once the possibility of someone's heroic/insane/justplainstupid exploits being recorded (not to mention maybe being published in a magazine/video) for others to witness, individual (and group) behavior became far less 'risk-averse' and far more aggressive.

"It was as predictable as the sun rising: 'pro' shows up with some cool cameras and the injuries would commence. In fact, some photographers would refuse to even begin shooting until the skater/bmxer took a big enough chance to make it worth 'wasting' film (Velvia) or video (High-8).

"The term of art was 'dying for the camera.'

"A month or two later the photo/video would be published, and the stunt portrayed would come to be considered 'normal' or a 'baseline' for the next series of actions—ever more risky, ever more 'camera worthy.' Ultimately, we had people jumping out of helicopters hovering above ramps and vaulting 50-foot gaps between ten story buildings; at the time, we thought that kind of stuff was the ultimate, although it seems rather quaint in retrospect."

Blog Notes: Bear With Us Please

I've been experiencing some technical problems with the website lately. This may result in a higher than usual number of errors surviving in posts for longer than they should. Also, some readers have been having trouble leaving comments. We are working on the problems. I'm sorry for any inconvenience and I hope you will bear with us.

Mike

Featured Comment by Roger Bradbury: "There's a bear with you? I'd be very careful, then. Remember, when photographing bears it is not necessary to run faster than the bear, just faster than your assistant."

Roy DeCarava

The saga of the Africans in the Americas—black history—is one of the great stories of the Western world, central to what the United States has been, and what it is now, and one of our most complex and enduring dramas. That story's greatest visual poet in the 20th century was Roy DeCarava, who has just passed, at the age of 89. He was in my opinion one of America's greatest photographers.

He was a black radical to his essence, often bitter out of proportion to his own success and importance, but in his art he was infinitely generous, almost tender, quietly creating an extended lyrical portrait of a people he felt were being ignored and undocumented.

Photography can't show the universal except in the specific, and he found his subject in life in Harlem, often centering around music. His pictures are free of cant and advocacy; they aren't political, they aren't pressed into the service of a message. He gives to his subjects what he always wanted for himself and his work: respect, regard, acceptance.

Like many black and white photographer artists, Mr. DeCarava* created his own tonal palette for his photographs. He chose to print with extremely low contrast and so dark that details often barely emerged from blackness, in what I have always felt was a sort of visual allegory for his feelings about race, pushing both effects past what many observers could accept. So much so that both book publishers and now online sources have chosen to "fix" his intentions for his work by making his pictures more conventionally contrasty, and lightened. The Times' Lens blog has failed in this respect—their presentation of his pictures yesterday accompanying his obituary misrepresents the work. 

Peter Galassi's retrospective, an indisputably great book and one of the finest volumes in my collection (it completely captures me every single time I look through it), treads the edge of this tendency with perfect adroitness, adding just a little of the air of lightness and just a little extra contrast, preserving the feel of Mr. DeCarava's prints while making them easier both to look at and to see.

Roy DeCarava, from Budd Mishkin's NY1 interview

I've long felt that photography—indeed, all art—is partly a matter of personal chemistry, in the same mysterious way that romantic chemistry works. Some work speaks to you and touches you in ways that are visceral and emotional, not just formal and intellectual. Some work matters in ways that obliterates all the noise and haste of rank and disputation and competing claims, and of dense artspeak. I just love Roy DeCarava's work, just love it, and often return to it. It's made me happy that he reached contentment in his old age; he always knew the significance of the great monolith of his life's accomplishment. Tonight I'll put on some of the of the music he loved (Ben Webster's Soulville, maybe, and, naturally, Coltrane) and look through one of my treasured books of his, sending this artist all praise and humble thanks.

Mike

*My policy has long been to refer to everyone by their first names here, under the premise—overly hopeful though it may be—that we are all not only equals but friends in our shared passion for photographs and photography. (A few older, established photographers and éminences grise have indeed objected.) But for some reason I cannot do that with Mr. DeCarava, especially now—he always demanded respect, and was prickly about even its cursory forms. I don't think he would appreciate my calling him by his given name at any time, and especially on this occasion.

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ADDENDUM: Janne Moren has discovered that James Pomerantz has posted Christopher Knight's 1996 L.A. Times review of Roy DeCarava's Retrospective show online.

Featured Comment by Aaron: "Terry Gross of Fresh Air replayed a great interview with Roy DeCarava today: well worth the listen on npr.org."

Mastery in Digital Photography

The digital revolution—mostly an enabling phenomenon—has had a few downsides for me. It disrupted my personal photography, by bringing to an unplanned end twenty or so years of work in 35mm B&W. (I wish I'd been more aware that that was what was happening when it happened.) It disrupted my camera hobby, because I used to like to buy cameras and lenses (used), try them for a while, maybe write about them, and then resell them for more or less what I purchased them for. The product cycles in digital are too quick for that—by the time cameras show up on the used market, nobody's interested in reading about them any more, and the risk of substantial loss while "holding" them even for a short time can be unacceptably large. 

Fortunately, TOP is now popular enough that I'm again getting cameras from manufacturers for launch announcements and for review, not to mention loans (and even gifts!) from readers, so the pipeline is full again. Or full enough.

For me, the biggest problem of digital is not the cameras. It's that mastery itself has become more fugitive. Where computer photography is concerned, everything has a time-stamp, a sell-by date. No matter what it is, everything seems to march past on a steady progression from cutting edge to mainstream to obsolescent to unsupported. As soon as you're used to something and begin to master it, it changes. It hardly matters what it is: sensor, file type, color characteristics, image editor, calibration issues, printer models, even papers and inks. 

Mastery of the old methods wasn't easy, lord knows. It required what my friend Nick called "the room-sized accessory," a.k.a. the darkroom, and a lot of time and practice, which in turn worked best if they were directed by knowledge, testing, and experimentation. More time spent and knowledge gained usually equaled improved or enhanced mastery. But many photographers spent a relatively short time mastering their craft and a very long time simply practicing it.

With digital, by contrast, you have to keep up: you have to invest substantial time and effort just to stay in the same place, and hard-won mastery can be obliterated by a change in one or another aspect of the process.

I mastered my first printer, for instance. Of course, now you can't buy paper or inks for it. Landfill.

I calibrated my first DSLR to a fare-thee-well. Of course it no longer works, and the company that made it left the camera business.

I mastered Photoshop...

...7, I think it was. (Or was it 5?) Photoshop hasn't stood still. Soon, I'll have to learn CS 4. Or 5. I'm several generations behind now, which won't be tenable for much longer.

I learned ACR when it appeared as a plugin to Photoshop. Of course, a friend who keeps up with technical issues says that ACR is not a good raw converter for the camera I've been thinking about buying next. He's recommending a third-party converter that has a "steep learning curve." Great.

And on it goes.

I'm guessing none of this is unfamiliar to you. A change in one link of the chain changes other links; and something or other is always changing. And if it hasn't changed yet, you know it will. Maybe not soon, but probably sooner rather than later. You have to keep up. To put it overly simplistically, it's the difference between running, and running on a treadmill.

This isn't necessarily worse, just different. But I would say that, for me, this is the biggest difference between the practice of photography now and what photography was like when I built my first darkroom in a bathroom under the basement stairs.

A little gain, a little give.

Mike

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Featured Comment by gene lowinger: "While the digital age is always moving forward in a way analog film and chemicals did not, I find it a wonderful challenge. Practicing the craft of getting things right with my current software is as fulfilling as getting it right in my wet darkroom. And it keeps changing, so I have to constantly be upgrading my skills. This massages my aging brain cells and keeps my thinking tack sharp. I've found over the years that if I let version upgrades go by with the idea that I'll pick up another upgrade down the line, the more space there is between upgrades the harder the transition is. I don't buy the upgrades to keep software developers afloat. I buy them to keep my brain afloat!"

Featured Comment by Rodger Kingston: "The digital revolution in photography that we are swept up in today is very much akin to the first several decades after 1839, when photography was first invented. Then, as now, constant improvements in both equipment and light sensitive materials proceeded one another in a headlong race that makes ours today seem tame indeed.

"From Daguerreotypes to Ambrotypes to Tintypes; from Calotypes and paper negatives to albumen on glass, then wet collodion negatives; from salted paper prints to albumen prints; all  were cumbersome processes that required taking the darkroom into the field and coating the plates immediately prior to exposure, then developing them before they dried.

"All of this (and countless more subtle refinements) took place in the nearly half century between 1839 and the late 1880s, when the first dry plate negatives and pre-sensitized printing papers were introduced, thus ushering in the modern age of photography that has ended so recently.

"The point of all this history is that some of the finest photographs in the entire history of the medium were made in these early years, when "operators" (as photographers were first called) had not only to master their cumbersome and ever-changing equipment and materials, but also had to invent the practice and profession of photography itself.

"Over my many years as both photographer and collector, I have often wished I could have experienced the excitement and sheer adventures of those amazing first decades of our medium. Well, now I am doing just that.

"This digital revolution we are all a part of is almost exactly the same as those first heady decades: the infancy of a whole new means of human expression and endeavor, with the same sorts of challenges that faced Fox Talbot and Daguerre, Roger Fenton, Frances Frith, and all the other early masters.

"They didn't complain about how slow their collodion on glass negatives were, or how inadequate their bulky cameras and crude lenses were; they worked to improve them, and more important, learned to make great photographs despite (or perhaps because of) the limitations under which they were forced to work.

"I love digital photography, and I come from a long career as a film photographer and Cibachrome printer. And if I have to struggle sometimes to keep up with the latest equipment and software, I know that I am simply walking hand-in-hand with Mathew Brady and Julia Margaret Cameron and all the others who brought photography into being."

OT: Cliff Lee

Cliff Lee, Cliff Lee, Cliff Lee.

Mike

*In case you're wondering what's up with this post...well, it's all Cliff Lee.

Settling Down (Redux)

Somewhat to his surprise, Ctein found he had nothing to add to the comments to his "Settling Down...or Not" post of the other day. He felt peoples' comments were covering all the angles and he didn't have a lot more to add. With due humility, however, I'd like to register a few of my own thoughts. I'm just chiming in. Consider this just another comment to Ctein's thread.

I say "with due humility" because where this topic is concerned, I'm really just like most readers. I have a history with cameras; I have tastes and preferences and needs; I have a particular budget, and a fairly stable ongoing relationship to money (which in my case is that I'm fortunate enough to be able to afford decent cameras but not wealthy enough that the choice is easy or trivial); and I suffer from certain bugbears that conspire to keep me from being totally satisfied.

A few random thoughts, in no particular order:

• It's worthwhile highlighting at the outset that disaffection with cameras is usually a consequence of not working hard enough on your photographic projects. People who are deeply involved in working tend to adapt to their equipment, learn their equipment thoroughly, and learn to work around whatever flaws and idiosyncrasies the equipment presents to them—sometimes, they even learn to love their camera's particular foibles. The best "cure" for equipment angst, therefore, is to get to work, or work harder.

• The converse of this is that sometimes people focus on equipment shortcomings as a way of avoiding getting to grips with photographic problems or activities they don't really want to get to grips with. "I can't start building a portfolio until I find the right camera." "I can't start doing portraits for pay until I can afford a good camera." Et cetera. They use the perceived shortcomings of the camera as a means of procrastination, in effect.

• The notion of "value" is highly mutable. It depends on many things, including your relationship to money, how much money you have or don't have, how much use you get out of a product, how much you can earn with the product, even how much pleasure you get from shopping for it, buying it, or owning it.  

• The notion of "clarity" is very helpful. That is, if you get clear about what you're really doing and why, you're likely to be much happier. (A warning, though: what you're really doing might not be "being a photographer." I gave a lecture a long time ago in which I was describing the photography scene in Washington, D.C., where I lived, and I presented a diagram that looked something like this:

Where green was professional or commercial photography, orange was editorial photography or photojournalism, and blue was art photography and academic photography. A hand immediately shot up from the back of the room: "And what kind of photographer are you?" Without thinking, I replied, "I'm a writer." What can I say? Clarity.)

• Empiricism helps. Actually looking at things for yourself will clear away a lot of the fanaticism, obfuscation, and cant* that clouds public discussion of cameras and technical issues. Of course, this is concomitant to the degree to which you've achieved the aforementioned clarity about what you're doing; it doesn't help to "see for yourself" if you don't know what you own standards or goals are.

All that said, my personal experience with digital cameras echoes what Ed Hawco said, in the featured comment to Ctein's post: two of the four digital cameras I've purchased ended up totaled. That is, they broke, and would have cost more to fix than they would have been worth once fixed. Their value went from a lot to zero, and I had to throw them away (well, one of them—the other I haven't been able to bring myself to actually add to the landfill).

So, thus far, anyway, I'd have to say that for me, settling down isn't an option, because digital cameras are akin to electronic appliances like computer peripherals, with finite lives. Other considerations don't enter in. They're not able to, given my track record so far.

Of course, that's just "so far." Things could change as digital photography matures. (As Ctein pointed out.)

Mike

*And fanboyism, and flaming, and put-downs, and....

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10 Recently Rediscovered Photographs

Florence Nightingale, taken 1858, rediscovered 2006

From Listverse, subtitled "ultimate top 10 lists," comes this list of ten recently rediscovered photographs—some of which, but by no means all, we have noted in passing here on TOP. A most excellent list, even if future rediscoveries might eventually render it less than the ultimate.

Mike
(Thanks to Paul VanAudenhove)

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Random Excellence: Conrad Tan

 Photo: Conrad Tan

Conrad Tan has posted a number of outstanding bird photographs over on FredMiranda.com, all taken with The new Canon 7D with the EF 400mm ƒ/5.6 lens evidently used for most if not all of them. Most of the pictures are described as being "mid to heavy crop."

Mike

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The Leaping Wolf

José Luis Rodriguez has won the the 2009 Veolia Environment Wildlife Photographer of the Year award with this nighttime photograph of an Iberian wolf leaping a rustic gate. Rodriguez reportedly planned his shot carefully and worked out his technique over many years.

The 45-year-old competition is run by BBC Wildlife Magazine and London's Natural History Museum. The winning photograph was one of more than 43,000 entries.

The picture was shot with a Hasselblad 503CW and an 80mm ƒ/2.8 Zeiss Planar lens on Fujichrome film.

You can read more about it and see other winners at BBC News. Congratulations to José!

Mike
(Thanks to Ted Johnson)

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One Very Disappointed Electric Car Owner

Photo by skagman, a.k.a. John Nuttall

There are only about 700 Tesla roadsters on the world's roads so far, making the new all-electric car one of the rarest as well as one of the most sought-after cars on the planet. Maybe the driver of the Prius who slammed into the back of this one in Denmark was thinking, "Wow! That's a Tesla!"

Not any more, it isn't. The Prius smashed the electric car all the way underneath the Volkswagen Tuareg that had been in front of it. So now the formerly lucky Danish Tesla owner gets to find out how long the waiting time is for a second Tesla.

At least it did okay on crash safety. No major injuries were reported.

The picture reminds me of the work of Swiss photographer Arnold Odermatt.

(Alternate title for this post: Honey, Did I Leave the Tuareg on the Roof Again?)

Mike

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Settling Down...or Not, as the Case May Be

By Ctein

My columns two and three back talked about a couple of logical fallacies that insinuate themselves into discussions of digital camera buying as more-or-less inevitabilities. Namely, that people would be looking for a camera that would last a lifetime (theirs, not the camera's) and that frequent upgrading of digital cameras followed from the way people used film. As I explained, those might hold for some people, but they didn't represent the historical norm and so they certainly weren't obligatory.

As a number of astute readers pointed out, those were entirely descriptive columns; they didn't discuss why and how it might be desirable to follow or ignore a particular course of action.

I meant to do that. Really. I wanted you all to think about what you need, not to react to pronouncements from me. Best way to let that happen? Don't pronounce.

This column, I'll be a bit more prescriptive, via retrospect.

I started out with Polaroid. As I've often said, it's what made me a serious photographer, and I rapidly moved through three model of camera and got into color, high-speed, and infrared film. After a few years of semi-professional Polaroid use, I got a 35mm camera. Worked exclusively in B&W for a year or so, then tried my hand at color printing. Loved it. Hated the films. Color print quality sucked in the late '60s. Felt I absolutely had to move to larger format, and so I did, acquiring a Pentax 67 only a few years after I started in 35mm.

I lucked out. The Pentax 67 proved to be my life's camera, despite the fact that I incorrectly expected to make a career as a photojournalist and to become enamored of view camera-type photography. Neither proved true, but the Pentax was still the right camera. I toyed with the idea of a 'Blad for a short time, but I had no serious interest.

Thing is, I didn't know enough at the time to be sure of making the right choice; I was too new at all of this. It was impossible to make a fully informed decision. As I said, I lucked out.

Digital cameras present some of the same problems. Despite the technology having over a 35 year history (leastwise, I've been working with it longer than that), equipment that we would consider remotely modern didn't start appearing until the 1990s, and most of us have a much shorter time of hands-on experience with it than that. And, by "us" I don't just mean end-users; I'm including the camera designers and manufacturers in that group. Collectively we're not a lot different from what I was in college—not inexperienced but far from having the mature knowledge that lets us know what we really want to be doing with a semi-novel medium.

We are mostly still figuring it out. Until we do, it's not going to be too surprising to see lots of manufacturers and people rapidly changing gear. That's just the way it works when, collectively, we're noobs.

Ctein

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Featured Comment by Ed Hawco: "Speaking only in terms of the obsolescence of equipment, I still think there is a difference between how we outgrow digital and how we outgrew film cameras. The main difference is that back in the day when we felt we had outgrown that K1000 or whatever, the camera itself remained a perfectly good instrument. We'd sell it and move on to something else because our interests changed, not because the technology was obsolete. In the meantime, whoever we sold the equipment to could continue using it happily.

"With digital, we're more inclined to change equipment because the equipment has become obsolete. If we do manage to sell the old stuff, it's because some sap doesn't know it's a piece of hardware near the end of its life, or maybe they just want a cheap camera that they don't mind losing.

"The point being that in the old days the equipment was still good and usable when we were done with it, whereas nowadays cameras lose their value after only a few years, and then they become landfill.

"But like you say, we're still figuring this thing out."

Featured Comment by Oleg Volk: "Equipment upgrades are warranted when the cost of lost opportunities exceeds the upgrade cost. For example, I can get 95% sharp portrait images with 5D2 and USM 100mm macro vs. 10–15% with 10D and non-USM 100mm macro—upgrading is a pretty self-evident course of action. Keeping up with the industry demands is also necessary—stock photo sites or freelance clients won't take 3MP images as they need higher pixel count for print and even some web uses.

"P.S.: I put up a few photos of Ctein at work."

Jane Bown

John Lennon by Jane Bown

The whole United Kingdom seems to be embarked on a low-key but extended love-fest for Jane Bown, the modest* longtime newspaper photographer who has come to rank with Newman, Karsh and Nadar as one of the medium's greatest portraitists.

Rather urgently recommended is the Observer's Oct. 22 online portfolio, called "The Complete Jane Bown, A Lifetime in Photographs," which is the best online presentation of her work yet. Or that I've seen, anyway. Plan to spend some good time with this one if you're into portraiture (the two pictures here were pulled from that presentation). 

 

Henri Cartier-Bresson by Jane Bown

There's also an excellent article by Robin McKie called "The Eyes Have It," from Oct. 18th, with a 6 minute 37 second audiovisual presentation. 

I can't help mentioning...

Notice the opening frame of the video. This is a photographer who has undeniably scaled the heights of accomplishment in our medium, who for nearly 40 years has photographed with a simple, all-manual SLR, a prime lens or two, and natural light taken as she finds it. Should give pause to any of us who fret about equipment too much (I don't except myself).

There is a touring exhibition in Britain, and last but not least, a new retrospective book called Exposures. The book is only available in the U.K. so far—that's where this link goes—but I am awaiting its release in the U.S. with great anticipation, and will alert U.S. readers once it's available. None of her other books are in print.

Mike
(Thanks to many readers who sent one or another of these links)

*The story is that when she received her M.B.E. in 1985, Queen Elizabeth II asked her what it was she did, and Jane responded, "I'm a hack." She was later invited to photograph the Queen several times, most recently when both women were 80 years old. The Queen, who is known to be fond of photography (she has a Leica M3), asked how many films she'd taken, and then asked her if she'd like to take one more.

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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

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Graflex Graphic

I ran across the old camera ad above entirely by chance the other night while browsing through a 1945 issue of LIFE magazine on Google books. Of course old Arthur Fellig is long gone now—he died at the end of 1968—but Joe Pesci played him in the movie "Public Eye," which is as close to immortality as most photographers are likely to get.

The cameras linger still. There were so many Speed Graphics and Crown Graphics made that they're still common on Ebay. (Like this one—but note that this is not an endorsement.) Many of them work fine, too, or can be made to work fine. You can mount a modern lens if you want to, but the old 127mm and 135mm Ektars and Optars and so forth are pretty good. With just a little mechanical aptitude you can figure out for yourself how to reverse the front standard to get a little front tilt. Its primary limitation as a tripod camera—a field view camera substitute—is that the back is fixed and can't be rotated to vertical. The old press guys just rotated the camera, same way you do your SLR. Like the cat at the bottom of the picture below. Or they took a wider view and cropped to what they wanted. The negative was so big you can do that.

The ones with the top-mounted rangefinders are the latest, but why not an earlier one? There's no shame in toting a tatty Graflex—maybe the opposite. Cheryl Jacobs Nicolai, who's been much in evidence on TOP the past few days, owns and uses one that dates from the 1930s. As long as the bellows are sound—and the shutter works—you can usually get them taking pictures again.

The ad mentions two books, and you can even still get those. A little digging turned up a copy of Graphic Graflex Photography on Ebay. It was penned by the indefatigable Willard Morgan. And The Naked City is still in print—sort of. The available paperback is un-recommendable because of its poor quality reproduction. That's not poor quality in a good way, either. I'm not going to link to it. Hold out for a hardcover from the '40s, which shouldn't be too expensive if you find a later edition at a used bookstore.

The Naked City would be a good candidate for reissue, but I'd like to see it as a replica of the first rather than a remake. The hardcover from the era has a certain rough but robust charm. Paging through it, you can easily imagine why the pictures hit the more constrained and upright societal norms of the day like a bomb. It's a period piece as much as a masterpiece of photography.

Mike

"Weegee the Famous"

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Featured Comment by Dave Karp: "Pick up a Crown and take a trip into a different era. Make photos with a Kodak or Wollensak lens made in N.Y. Look through a groundglass augmented by an exquisite Kodak Ektalite fresnel. Experience a beautifully engineered and extremely well made piece of photographic machinery. Delightful."

Featured Comment by Martin Rich: 

Featured Comment by David: "For those of you visiting NYC for the Javitz show or to shop at B&H, the 'gentleman with the hat and the Speed Graphic' [left, in Martin Rich's picture above  —Ed.] is Louis Mendes. He and his camera are kind of a local fixture around town. Funny to see him mentioned thrice and photographed twice in the comments."

Featured Comment by Carl Leonardi: "One of the only cameras you could love and hate all at the same time. I really think the camera was made for people with four hands. One to change flash bulbs—one to focus—one to change the film holder—and one to hold the camera. Oops, and one to cock the shutter. Great camera when I was in the army—although I reached for the Leica most of the time."

 

 

Featured Comment by Robin Dreyer: "I've owned—and heavily used—several of these. There's good website devoted to Grapic cameras: graflex.org, where you will find geneologies, suggestions, instructions, loving essays, and a forum.

"A few notes for prospective buyers. The 'Speed' Graphic has a big clunky focal plane shutter that—if it works right—goes up to 1/1000, hence the name (that was pretty fast back in the day). This is no advantage on a tripod, so a better choice is the 'Crown' which is the same camera without the extra bulk and weight of the shutter—you just use the lens shutter.

"The top of the line if you aren't using it handheld is the 'Super' also called the 'Super Speed' even though it doesn't have the focal plane shutter. This model is just like the Crown except it has a rotating back—nice for people using their Graphic as a view camera.

"These cameras were entirely designed for handheld use—hence the viewfinder, sports finder, rangefinder, shutter button, etc. But if you are putting it on a tripod and focusing through the glass, you don't have to care whether any of that stuff works (even thought it's all ingenious and cool).

"And the best thing of all is that they made hundreds of thousands of these and they've never really acquired collectible status, so they don't cost much and there are lots of parts around A Crown Graphic with an Ektar or Optimus lens is still the cheapest way to get into large format—this setup will easily make negatives as sharp and richly detailed as what you get from a Hasselblad. And there's no reason you can't put a nice modern view camera lens on them, either.

"Finally, these are beautifully made industrial machines intended for camera-abusing professionals. They do have limitations in the camera movements department, but they are a joy to use."

Featured Comment by K. Praslowicz: "I love that Weegee has an ad for Graflex, and a pretty much identical one for Burke & James."

Featured Comment by Greg Smith: "Hah! Used one in the army as battalion photographer. Wonderful old thing. Had a Polaroid back for it, a closet full of film, and had a lot of fun with that, too.

"But my favorite memory was finding a box full of flashbulbs the size of 100W incandescent bulbs that were absolutely packed with fine magnesium (a guess) wire gauze. Man, they were bright when you set one off. Chain of command photos of new lieutenants, basically a polite mug shot, I would be about six feet away, ƒ/200 gazillion, the Sergeant-Major snickering as he turned his head away from the explosion of light that he knew was coming, and the new lieutenant smiling naively, deer-like, just before he lost his eyebrows to ash and left a Hiroshima-like shadow on the wall behind him...I think they were bulbs for night-time scenes, like football games, designed to light one half of the field. Tremendous fun. You didn't so much trigger that flash as detonate it...."

Featured Comment by Cheryl Jacobs Nicolai: "I have and regularly use a '38 Speed Graphic and a 1950s Press King 4x5, as well as a host of old folders of various sorts. Each of them has a distinct personality and a quirk or two, which make them very rewarding to shoot. My friends are constantly bringing me old camera gear they've come across, to see if I can do anything with it. I've gotten a few strange looks on commercial shoots busting out the old gear, but the results speak for themselves."

Advice for Aspiring Photographers

By Cheryl Jacobs Nicolai

These are my thoughts, nothing more and nothing less.

I get asked all the time, during workshops, in e-mails, in private messages, what words of wisdom I would give to a new and aspiring photographer. Here's my answer.

• Style is a voice, not a prop or an action. If you can buy it, borrow it, download it, or steal it, it is not a style. Don't look outward for your style; look inward.

• Know your stuff. Luck is a nice thing, but a terrifying thing to rely on. It's like money; you only have it when you don't need it.

• Never apologize for your own sense of beauty. Nobody can tell you what you should love. Do what you do brazenly and unapologetically. You cannot build your sense of aesthetics on a consensus.

• Say no. Say it often. It may be difficult, but you owe it to yourself and your clients. Turn down jobs that don't fit you, say no to overbooking yourself. You are no good to anyone when you're stressed and anxious.

• Learn to say, "I'm a photographer" out loud with a straight face. If you can't say it and believe it, you can't expect anyone else to, either.

• You cannot specialize in everything.

• You don't have to go into business just because people tell you that you should! And you don't have to be full time and making an executive income to be successful. If you decide you want to be in business, set your limits before you begin.

• Know your style before you hang out your shingle. If you don't, your clients will dictate your style to you. That makes you nothing more than a picture taker. Changing your style later will force you to start all over again, and that's tough.

• Accept critique, but don't apply it blindly. Just because someone said it does not make it so. Critiques are opinions, nothing more. Consider the advice, consider the perspective of the advice giver, consider your style and what you want to convey in your work. Implement only what it makes sense to implement. That doesn't make you ungrateful; it makes you independent.

• Leave room for yourself to grow and evolve. It may seem like a good idea to call your business "Precious Chubby Tootsies"...but what happens when you decide you love to photograph seniors? Or boudoir?

• Remember that if your work looks like everyone else's, there's no reason for a client to book you instead of someone else. Unless you're cheaper. And nobody wants to be known as "the cheaper photographer."

• Gimmicks and merchandise will come and go, but honest photography is never outdated.

• It's easier to focus on buying that next piece of equipment than it is to accept that you should be able to create great work with what you've got. Buying stuff is a convenient and expensive distraction. You need a decent camera, a decent lens, and a light meter. Until you can use those tools consistently and masterfully, don't spend another dime. Spend money on equipment only when you've outgrown your current equipment and you're being limited by it. There are no magic bullets.

• Learn that people photography is about people, not about photography. Great portraits are a side effect of a strong human connection.

• Never forget why you started taking pictures in the first place. Excellent technique is a great tool, but a terrible end product. The best thing your technique can do is not call attention to itself. Never let your technique upstage your subject.

• Never compare your journey with someone else's. It's a marathon with no finish line. Someone else may start out faster than you, may seem to progress more quickly than you, but every runner has his own pace. Your journey is your journey, not a competition. You will never "arrive." No one ever does.

• Embrace frustration. It pushes you to learn and grow, broadens your horizons, and lights a fire under you when your work has gone cold. Nothing is more dangerous to an artist than complacency.

Cheryl

This is the original first post from Cheryl's blog, PhotoDino ("dino" for "dinosaur"). Republished with permission. Many thanks to Cheryl for sharing this here.  —Mike the Ed.

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Aaron Huey's Pine Ridge Pictures

Aaron Huey, The Suicide Race

There's a good but too-short interview with Aaron Huey by James Estrin over at the Lens blog.

Here's Aaron's website.

For those interested in his subject, I can recommend a book I read a few years ago, Joe Starita's The Dull Knifes of Pine Ridge: A Lakota Odyssey. Which leads in turn to a recommendation for Ian Frazier's fascinating and entertaining On the Rez and from there to Frazier's best book, the lyrical, searching Great Plains.

And in case you want to help, here's a page where you can make a donation to the Red Cloud Indian School on the Pine Ridge.

Mike
(Thanks to Jayson Merryfield)

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Gordon's Print Sale is a Wrap

I'm happy to report that Gordon Lewis has now fulfilled all the "umbrella lady" print orders from a couple of weeks ago, so if you haven't gotten your print already you should receive it soon. If you ordered one and haven't received it by, say, two weeks from now, please contact Gordon or me.

Gordon's also written up an account of the experience over at his Shutterfinger blog. My urge to write a post about print pricing has lost its edge, and anyway I've lately been suffering a case of writer's block, a strange and mysterious malady that shouldn't even exist and yet, does. At any rate, those who cannot write, can point, so do visit Shutterfinger and read Gordon's thoughts. And thanks to everybody who bought a print. TOP's next print sale is planned for mid-winter, and we're in the early stages of planning a nice one for next Spring as well.

Mike

Canon 1D Mark IV Announced

As you're probably already aware if you follow such things, Canon has announced the latest upgrade to its high-speed "photojournalist" flagship camera, the EOS 1D, moving from Mk. III status to Mk. IV.

For a brief executive summary of the changes, try Lori Grunin's article on the Crave Gadget blog at cnet news. A very brief pull: "The reputation of the EOS' AF system has taken a beating over the past couple of years, and Canon seems to have pulled out the stops to redeem itself...."

For a more in-depth but still digestibly pithy overview, look to Rob Galbraith's article.

The nutshell-nutshell version: 16 MP vs. the Mark III's 10; 1080p HD video similar to that of the new 7D; Nikon D3s-matching 2-stop boost in the highest ISO; and $5,000 vs. the Mark III's $4,000 (although remaining stocks of the Mark III are mildly discounted now). Somewhat surprisingly to me, the new Canon retains the oddball APS-H 1.3X-factor sensor size. Are Canon-shooting p-js just used to it?

The new camera is expected to ship in December. It's available for pre-order on Amazon, although Amazon warns that demand will be high and supplies from the manufacturer will be limited.

Mike

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Random Excellence: Cheryl Jacobs Nicolai

If you happen to live in Denver and have a family, you're in luck, because you have a terrific kid portraitist nearby. Cheryl Jacobs Nicolai is a commercial portraitist whose website is divided into "Short People," "Tall People," and "Eyes." A nice list of categories/priorities.

It's quite possible that we have an especial appreciation for photographers who are particularly good at the types of work we ourselves have done, but, professional admiration aside, I think it should be obvious to anyone that Cheryl has a real feel for kids. A visit to her website is a virtual lesson in "How It Oughta Be Done." If that's not enough for you, she teaches workshops, too.

So what if you don't live in Denver? You can pay her to travel, but here's a tip—if three clients hire her from any non-Denver location, she'll travel for free. 

Mike

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