The Online Photographer

TOP Camera of the Year 2009

Introduction: In acknowledgment of the old adage "different strokes for different folks," I invited a number of our 2009 contributors to make their own picks for the Camera of the Year. Several of our regulars demurred (Ctein and Carl say they don't keep up with the camera market, and Eamon's been sick—get well soon, EH), but the following people responded. I didn't tell anyone what to pick or what to write; I just let the chips fall where they may. What follows is what we came up with. —Mike the Ed.

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Vlatko Juric-Kokic (a.k.a. Erlik): The Olympus E-P2
During the last couple of years or so I have become more and more interested in...well, not in street photography as such, but in having a camera with me as often as possible. I started by carrying my DSLR with me. That was fun for the first several times. Afterwards, it became cumbersome. I was delighted when Olympus introduced what was then the smallest DSLR, the E-400, but, somehow, it didn't click. The successors were nice but the same thing happened. The Olympus E-620 was much more to my liking and I was sorry to return it after playing with it for a while.

And then, Micro 4/3 appeared. But the first time I saw and handled the Panasonic G1, I immediately bounced off it—I didn't like its DSLR styling a bit. Furthermore, it's a small camera and I cannot hold it properly with its DSLR-like grip. Okay, not for me—let's move on. The Olympus E-P1 was a different matter. I like the styling a lot and, as a longtime Olympus user, I am familiar with the logic behind the menus and adjustments. My initial dislike for its lack of a viewfinder turned into acceptance. The E-P1 was enough of a camera for me to carry around. Still, E-P1 is not the camera of the year for me. No.

Habit is a curious thing. Ever since my (brief) film days long ago, I have been in love with viewfinders, with an ability to see what you'll get without the distractions from which the LCD on the back of a camera suffers. E-P1, however useful and usable as a carry-around camera, doesn't have a viewfinder. But its successor, the Olympus E-P2, does, and a very good viewfinder at that.

The viewfinder wouldn't be enough for me to like the E-P2. I like the fact I can carry it around without problems. I also like the fact that it doesn't become the center of attention and even less a cause for consternation in people in the street like big black DSLRs often are. On the other hand, I also like the fact that you can put almost any lens ever produced on the E-P2, should the occasion need it: from the big 4/3 tele-lenses to tiny cine primes. While the way it behaves is closer to compacts than to fast DSLRs, with proper adjustments and camera handling it becomes almost transparent in your hands. That's why the Olympus E-P2 is the Camera of the Year for me.

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John Camp: The Panasonic GH1
My candidate for camera of the year 2009 is the Panasonic GH1, introduced in March 2009, the second camera of the Panasonic Micro 4/3 system. The GH1 is more expensive than the G1, introduced in 2008, and is essentially identical physically—the only changes are those necessary to implement video.

The GH1 is my candidate for two reasons: the quality of the camera itself and its functionality, and the uses to which I put cameras.

My photographic background has been in photojournalism, and some scholarly work in archaeology. I value ruggedness, light weight, emulsion or sensor speed, flexibility, and a final product that produces slightly better quality than newspapers, scholarly magazines, or mass-market magazines really need. I don't need super-quality prints or files. An emphasis on getting something, rather than on perfection, involves trade-offs. If the quality level I need, on a scale of 1 to 10, is a 6, and a Nikon D3x is a 9+, and the Panasonic is a 7, I take the Panasonic—because it's half the weight and has all the quality I can use.

Cost is also an issue: I have more faith in a good camera with several backups than a superb camera with no backups.

In Iraq, two years ago, I took a Nikon D3 with four lenses, a laptop, and a satellite phone. I also carried a helmet, thirty pounds of body armor, water and munchies. I was only there for a month, but by the time I left I would have killed for a GH1 system.

The GH1 actually has more functionality than the D3, though the high-ISO quality is not as good. It has what I find to be an extremely useful flexible LCD; a decent built-in viewfinder; decent lenses; and very light weight. It has video, with continuous autofocus with its kit lens.

Full-frame DSLRs are now literally as big and heavy as some of the Speed Graphic cameras that were displaced by Leicas in the forties and fifties, and I think the DSLRs will be displaced by Micro 4/3-like systems for the same reasons, having to do with "good enough" quality and ease of use.

Thom Hogan, on his website, has recently listed sale volumes for cameras last year. In the interchangeable-lens category, Panasonic had suddenly jumped to third place, behind Canon and Nikon, taking 8.5% of the interchangeable lens market in the year and a half since its first model appeared.

I think they are the cameras of the future for many working photographers.

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Ken Tanaka: The Leica M9
Casting an indisputable nomination for "Camera of the Year" is a fool’s errand. We’re being drenched in a monsoon of fabulous cameras.

That caveat aside, however, I must nominate the Leica M9 as Camera of the Year for 2009.

The M9 finally delivers the "digital M" that enthusiasts have dreamt of for many years. While Leica’s first digital rangefinder, the M8, satisfied part of that dream in 2006, it always seemed like more of a proof-of-concept than a final product. It was a good prototype but was obviously rushed to market and suffered from design and manufacturing deficiencies. Leica eventually remedied many of these issues when it introduced the M8.2 two years later. But as good as the M8.2 was, it was still version 0.9 of the digital M.

On September 9, 2009 (09/09/09), amidst great fanfare, Leica introduced the the M9, definitely the 1.0 version of the digital M. The M9 is an excellent embodiment of the product concept featuring meaningful advancements beyond the M8.2, he most significant of which is the camera's new full-frame sensor. Finally all those glorious M lenses can produce their designed focal length coverages on a digital camera!

But the quality of the M9 is only part of the motivation behind my choice. Every M9 actually represents a trophy won by Leica's engineers after many battles against the "can’t" mentality of it managements. It wasn't long ago that Leica's management (du jour) proclaimed that a digital rangefinder couldn't be made. After Epson's R-D1 proved that false (2004) and Leica introduced the M8 in 2006, the next management team moaned that they couldn't make a full-frame rangefinder, and that such cameras would always require external infrared filters. Having since jettisoned that management, the Leica engineers persevered to ultimately overcome both of those final "can't" barriers to deliver today's excellent M9.

Certainly the M9's limited functional range and high price will always restrict its appeal. But it's truly a marvelous picture-taking machine that represents tremendous long-odds accomplishments by the devoted core of a small German camera company shouldering a heavy heritage. If that doesn't merit recognition today I don't know what does.

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Gordon Lewis: The Pentax K-x
I was fortunate enough to attend the press reception in New York where Pentax announced the launch of the K-x. To be honest, I was only moderately impressed. I doubted that the idea of red, white or blue camera bodies would catch on. The specs looked nice, but what about image quality? It felt pretty good in my hands, but it was no K-7. To my mind the only people who would be interested would be folks stepping up from a point-and-shoot or an older film camera. For this audience the price was right: around $650 with a darned good 18–55mm kit zoom.

Apparently the product managers at Pentax were smarter than I thought. The K-x has been selling like hotcakes—red, white, blue or black hotcakes at that. If you combine all four variations you discover that the K-x has become one of Amazon's top sellers in the DSLR category. And why not? Camera reviewers have been uniformly positive about its image quality and low-light abilities. Some Pentax owners have even gone so far as to suggest that Pentax should introduce a revised K-7 with a K-x sensor. Combine all this with the fact that Pentax K-x kits with a body, 18–55mm zoom, and 50–200mm zoom are now selling for $639 at B&H Photo, and you understand why the K-x is a solid contender for Camera of the Year. It put Pentax back in the game and gave it name recognition among the people where it matters most: the young and the uninitiated; the photographers who could not care less about Pentax's history, but who may very well help Pentax make history.

Jenna B., age 13. An excellent student athlete, her school's colors are red and black

In action: her father says she's been "shooting like crazy" since Christmas

The shot she was taking in the picture above this one

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Geoff Wittig: The Panasonic GF1
Camera of the year? To me it seems fairly obvious. Sure, the Nikon D3x pushed the envelope with best-yet resolution and image quality. The Canon 7D brought pro-caliber frame rates and build quality to the enthusiast D-SLR. The Nikon D3S goes further than ever into high ISO "available darkness." But these cameras merely offer a little more of what we already had.

The Panasonic GF1 is a different kind of camera altogether, one that changes the game. It provides 95% of what most DSLR users will ever need, in a far smaller and more compact package.

Smart commentators and writers have been opining for several years now that digital technology offers the possibility of starting from a clean sheet of paper, escaping the design staightjacket imposed by the traditional pentaprism/ pentamirror layout. This appears to be the first camera to fully exploit the opportunity.

I shoot almost exclusively with a Canon "1" series DSLR and a bunch of L lenses; but I'm sorely tempted to pick up a GF1 and a couple of tiny lenses to have with me all the time. "The best camera is the one you have with you"; and for most things, this tiny interchangeable-lens model is good enough.

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Mike Johnston: The Sony A850
I know some people will find my choice curious, given that I recently bought a Panasonic GF1. So first let me say that no, I'm not disappointed with my GF1!

I've been using a Sony A850 for about a month now, courtesy of B&H Photo. When B&H approached me and asked if I'd like to test any camera they had in stock—which effectively means just about any new camera that exists—I didn't need any time to decide.

The Sony A850 should be thought of as a medium-format digital camera in a conventional SLR form-factor body. It's perfectly adequate as an all-around SLR, but there's one area in which it excels. Above, I'm holding a 20 x 30" test print made from one of my A900 test shots by Ctein on his wide-format printer (bigger than I can make at home). I think the quality is about what I might expect from a 35mm color negative enlarged to 6x9". Ctein says he thinks it looks better than a 20x30 print from 6x7 cm film. I just can't see a 30"-wide print needing to look better, for almost any conceivable application. This is where the A900 and its cheaper brother, the A850,  really come into their own. If you want or need to make really big prints, even occasionally, and you don't want to spend a fortune for the capability, then this is the axe for you.

I love using this camera, which feels well-sorted, well-balanced, and well set up to me. The body-integral IS and the generous viewfinder are the camera's best physical features; the lack of lenses in the lineup the most serious problem. (Just make sure you can get the lenses you need before buying.) The latter is counterbalanced by the A850's impressive affordability. For $2,000, you can't buy a camera from anyone that will do what this one will. It's the Camera of the Year in my eyes.

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Edward Taylor: The Panasonic GF1
My vote for Camera of the Year 2009 goes to the Panasonic GF1. This camera represents a new format that supports small size and interchangeable lenses. Because of its relatively large sensor, it produces high quality images. The GF1 is also a responsive camera with good ergonomics, quick focusing and almost no shutter lag. The combination of decent high ISO performance and a very nice ƒ/1.7 lens allows for low light photography. It also has a built-in flash and an optional viewfinder. The way the camera handles is what sets it apart from the other large-sensor compacts. I have cameras that are quicker and produce better images than the GF1, including a Canon 5D Mark II and a Canon 1Ds Mark III, but most of my photos are taken with the GF1, which I always have with me. I no longer feel that the small size of my carry-around camera compromises my images to any significant degree. The GF1 could be improved with an articulating viewfinder, in-body image stabilization, 1080P video and a few other things, but it is my favorite camera just the way it is.

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Oren Grad: The Fujifilm GF670 / Voigtlaender Bessa III
It feels a little silly to herald the Voigtländer Bessa III as the best new film camera of 2009. Aside from toy cameras or custom-made view cameras based on well-established designs, I can’t think of another. "Best one of one!" sounds more like parody than praise.

And, truth be told, this Cosina-built camera isn’t especially innovative either. Folding roll-film cameras were ubiquitous through the middle of the last century. But there have been modern incarnations as well, in the Fuji GS645 and the Plaubel Makina 6x7 cameras of the 1970s and '80s. Arguably the Mamiya 6 deserves a mention too, because its collapsing lens mount made it handy to stow in small cases designed for 35mm SLRs.

But groundbreaking or not, the GF670 / Bessa III is a really nice camera. Despite the folding design, it has all the modern conveniences you'd expect in a late-model AE rangefinder camera save for a wind lever (it's knob-only) and a self-timer. The camera weighs only 1000g, which is lightweight for the format and less than a mid-range DSLR with a small prime lens. Format can be changed between 6x6 and 6x7 cm, with a film-plane mask and parallax-compensating finder frames that auto-switch to match the format selection. The 80mm focal length of the fixed lens is well chosen, too—it's dead normal for 6x6 and a handy semi-wide for 6x7.

As always with folding cameras, handling may or may not be your cup of tea. The folding mechanism requires a bit of care, and some users will find that there's not quite enough room for the right-hand grip with the sideways-opening bed folded out. As if in compensation, though, early user reports point to three great strengths: the lens is first-rate; the combined viewfinder/rangefinder is wonderfully bright and crisp; and the electronically-controlled leaf shutter is virtually silent. And although the GF670 is not cheap, it's still comparatively a good value—its street price of around $2250 in the US and ¥218,000 in Japan is actually considerably less than that of its only real competitor, the Mamiya 7II with 80mm lens.

Put it all together and you’ve got something worth celebrating—a class-unto-itself Camera of the Year.

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Post Clarification by Mike: Seems there might be a little confusion about this post. This is not the "TOP Ten Cameras" list, which last year was a countdown (with #2 left blank) and which this year I've been procrastinating hard on. This is the "Camera of the Year" post, which last year was just one camera. Different species of post, although perhaps those are the kinds of distinctions that matter more to those who put the posts together than to the those who read them. Sorry for any inadvertent mild confusion.

Cat Clarification by Bob the father of Jenna: Seems a few readers are onto the cat photo not being the exact photo as seen in my shot of Jenna in action—which is true. As a clarification, Jenna's cat photo was from the cat photo session. Jenna followed the cat around the house for a long time taking countless shots. Regardless of the exact ear position the shot demonstrates that the K-x is an excellent camera in the hands of a 13-year-old in her first week of shooting with a DSLR. By the way, the cat is not drugged. The cat’s name is Pudgie. He always looks like that and never runs from people. Pudgie can open a bread box and eat a loaf of bread if not properly supervised.

Paul Mobley Portrait Workshop

Paul Mobley, the photographer of the famous American Farmer, contacted me wanting to advertise an upcoming portrait workshop. But because it's coming up so soon and there are only a limited number of slots left, we figured an ad might outlast its utility. So, as a compromise, we traded—one of his prints for my new collection, for this notice.

American Farmer was #6 on Amazon's list of the Ten Best Art/Photography books of 2008. You can see small page spreads of the whole book by going to the official book website and clicking on "Look Inside." The project "...started as a personal project photographing farmers from his home state of Michigan. It grew into a body of work that has led [Paul] on a three-year, nearly 100,000-mile journey capturing farmers from Alaska to Maine."

Paul's workshop is limited to 14 people and still has a few places left. It will take place from March 14th to March 20th, 2010, in Sante Fe, New Mexico, USA, presented under the auspices of the Santa Fe Workshops. Although the concentration is on portraits of any kind, and establishing a connection with subjects, it might be an especially good opportunity for anyone with an ambition to do corporate, editorial, and advertising portraiture—Paul has a distinguished roster of clients.

More information here.

And, in a semi-related question—do people want to know what prints I'm adding to my collection, and what I think of them? I was thinking I could eventually do a recurring type of post called "Added to the Collection" or something like that, giving details about the picture, the photographer, how I found them, how I acquired the print, the quality of the print, and so forth. And of course showing the picture, as well. Would that be something that might interest you, or would it just be tiresome?

Mike

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Random Excellence: 'NewYorkEd' (Edward Rabroziss)

A forumer called "NewYorkEd" has put up a nifty mini-portfolio on the dpreview forums called "Shutterbugs," of people using cameras in New York's Times Square. Clayton Jones, who sent this along, called it "a bunch of excellent NYC street shots of people taking pictures," and says, "some are quite humorous, and it's an interesting and intense look at modern culture and its relationship with photography. Lots of food for thought here."

I agree—and fun to look at, too. The only thing I can add to what Clayton said is that—well, I don't know if you've ever tried this kind of thing, but it's not as easy as NewYorkEd makes it look! He shot these with a now-discontinued Canon digicam.

If NewYorkEd wants to leave a comment with his real name or any other thoughts, I'll add it to this post.

Mike
(Thanks to Clayton Jones)

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Featured Comment from NewYorkEd: "I'd like to thank you Mike and Clayton Jones for the nice article posting and comments. My name Edward Rabroziss. I live here in Manhattan, and Times Square is my favorite place for photographing people. This article posting on The Online Photographer was a nice surprise for me. Thanks again."

So, What About Kodak?

By Ctein

A recent column generated a number of speculative and Monday-morning-quarterback comments about Kodak and the changeover to digital. I'd like to reset the record.

Mind you, I am not saying Kodak has successfully made the transition; I think there is still a real possibility the company will go under. But the assumptions that people have been making that it's from lack of trying, lack of foresight, or an unwillingness to commit aren't supported by Kodak's history. Over the past quarter-century, Kodak has made 3.5 major attempts to grab a commanding position in the world of digital photography. All of them have failed and those failures do reflect on Kodak (certainly on their bottom line!). But it's sure not because Kodak didn't see the world of change that they were facing. For general background on that change, read my column, "The Shape of Things That Came." On to the specifics of Kodak:

In the early 1980s, Kodak started demonstrating computer-assisted photofinishing. These were hybrid systems that involved film scanning, computer data massaging, and image writing back to traditional photographic paper. They developed and successfully incorporated these technologies into successive generations of equipment. Unfortunately, that all happened behind the scenes, so it didn't establish a market position for them. Their first real effort to grab digital name and brand recognition was the introduction of Kodak Digital Media in the mid-1980s. Unfortunately, they didn't know how to market against the real 500-pound gorillas in that arena, 3M, Sony, and Teac, the companies with existing name recognition for magnetic storage media of all sorts. Kodak was put in the unfamiliar position of being the small and new kid on the block. Their marketing simply didn't know how to deal with it.

The second attempt, in the early 1990s, was PhotoCD. The science was brilliant, the technology was good, and they understood the marketplace. Not only could they provide superior image quality in a convenient, portable form, but the "jeans" won out over the "suits" and they released PhotoCD as an open standard. Smart move!

Not-so-smart moves: the "standard" evolved over several years, and you had no assurance that later generations of Photo CD equipment would color manage early PhotoCD files correctly. That was the lesser problem. The bigger one was they screwed the economics. Kodak promised the photofinishing labs that they could develop the film and produce PhotoCDs for substantially less than a dollar a frame, making the cost per roll competitive with what one-hour labs were charging back then. That promise was never met—not even close. It was so unfulfilled the Kodak later denied making such a claim, but I heard it with my own ears, said at a PhotoCD developers' conference by a qualified Kodak executive to a group of highly skeptical lab owners.

Then there was the economic disaster that was the PhotoCD home player. They sent me one to critique (not to review) and I told them exactly how and why it was going to bomb*. By analogy: suppose you decided to manufacture an economy automobile and you decided it ought to be under $15,000? Suppose the car you built to sell for under $15,000 could only go 40 mph? In order to meet their desired market price, Kodak so badly compromised the performance and features of the home players that they were genuinely tedious to use. PhotoCD never took off in the general world, although it got huge institutional use (which is why Kodak maintained it for as long as they did).

Third big effort: Quality digital cameras. Remember that Kodak used to own that market! They produced the absolute best professional digital cameras in the world, and people lined up to pay $15,000–$30,000 for them. Kodak was the Leica+Hasselblad of that world.

Then the perfect wave I referred to in my earlier column broke, and digital camera price/performance ratios started plummeting, far faster than most sane people would've predicted. Kodak pretty quickly realized they were in big trouble that way; they could no longer maintain those kind of prices to support what were undeniably superior cameras. So they tried their last big gamble: The DCS 14n. It was supposed to be the best DSLR out there by far, at a price/performance ratio that would leave other manufacturers gasping. Only two small problems: first they announced vaporproduct, to try to steal the thunder from Canon announcing their quality DSLR. But, Canon could deliver, while Kodak's camera was still months away. Professional photographers are even worse about deferred gratification than consumers.

And the ultimate killer: Kodak made a fatal development blunder and outsourced the sensor for the camera, to get it cheaply and quickly enough to meet their price point. Unfortunately, that sensor wasn't anywhere close to Kodak's usual quality. It was a horrible mistake from a company whose reputation had been built on the superiority of their sensors. When the DCS 14n finally reached the real world, it had only slightly better resolution than the Canon camera, despite having many more pixels, and the overall image quality was substantially worse. That was the end of Kodak's premier position in the professional camera market.

So, lots of attempts and lots of failures (I haven't even included lesser initiatives, like the Premier system or Kodak's thermal transfer printers). Some of those failures should have been seen in advance; some of them could only be seen with hindsight. But the bottom line doesn't really care why you failed, only that you did.

Make no mistake, though, these failures are not because Kodak has had a lack of will or long-term perspective on what photography is all about. To the extent that the school of hard knocks serves as any kind of a teacher for large corporations (and I don't know that it does), don't write Kodak off. They've had a hell of a lot of education beaten into their skulls over the past quarter-century.

Ctein

*David Alan Jay, then the Editor of Photo Techniques, did the same, long before Ctein joined the staff of that magazine. —MJ

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Featured Comment by MBS: "Thank you for this posting. It is both interesting and good to hear.

"I think that in this, as with so many things, there is an element of evolutionary BVSR (blind variation, selective retention). And the BS part (interestingly) of that more or less insures that it is not possible to know for certain ahead of time what adaptations will still be breathing when the fat amoeba sings. An organism can be mutating like mad and yet still not make it within its local environment (of course, the greater population within photography is, in fact, finding adaptations that work, as one would expect in a robust and complex system). As much as we as individuals (and corporate entities, too) like to pat ourselves on the back over how well we were able to 'see' and meet the future, I think there is more randomness to the selection process than we are comfortable admitting. Kodak certainly has some smart people working for them, but that may not be enough. Still, the opera ain't over: the amoeba has yet to take the stage."

Featured Comment by Eamon Hickey: "My sense of this is similar to Ctein's and to those expressed by Josh in the comments.

"I was working for Nikon from 1991 through early 1999, and from that perch it was my observation that no company in the photography industry was savvy to the coming of digital anywhere near as early as Kodak. The efforts that Ctein outlines are ones I remember well (I quite well remember the PhotoCD, which first clued me in to the digital wave that was then still far over the horizon.)

"I'm sure that Kodak made many, many errors over that time, but, really, as Josh suggests, I think the basic problem for them was that this was too big a change happening too fast. The need for their core product plummeted drastically in less than a decade. Who could manage that crisis smoothly?

"Same for Polaroid. Great company; highly profitable for decades. Gone in less than a decade. Sure, their management made many mistakes, but they had a huge bottom line problem: their product just wasn't needed any more."

Featured Comment by Ken Tanaka: "I have to disagree with the remark from 'MBS,' 'Still, the opera ain't over: the amoeba has yet to take the stage.' Yeah, it basically is. If you're going to use life/science metaphors here, Kodak's energy source is evaporating...specifically, its capital value. While EK is riding a bit of the same wave currently moving through the equities markets it's merely a floater. It has sold enough stock to paper the planet and still has a total market cap of just over $1 billion. But its stock has traded below $8 for the past year and at this writing closed at $4.67. Kodak's latest significant desperate move was to suspend their dividends after the fall of 2008. This was something of a death knell for many investors, since EK spent most of the past century as a dividend-paying large-cap value stock.

"Kodak is now firmly categorized as a 'distressed' stock in the investment world, very few members of which have any confidence that they can pull out of their descent into oblivion. They're only barely (and mostly only internally) considered to be any part of the new world of imaging by the capital markets. Most of the investment interest in EK comes from vultures waiting for opportunities to feed on its parts.

"The 'smart people' on Kodak's payroll are utterly irrelevant in the wake of so many poor and delusional management decisions over the past 20 years. Yes, Kodak is making some good products here and there.  But they're breathing the air in their long-buried coffin.

"As 'bobdales' so succinctly observed earlier, 'Dead man walking.'  Yup."

(Prior to devoting his time to art and photography, Ken spent many years toiling in various parts of the institutional investment management world. —Ed.)

Let There Be Music

C60, the music site my friends Bob Burnett and Kim Kirkpatrick and I started in 2007 (Bob and Kim now do almost all the writing, since I'm so busy with TOP), now has music! Check out Bob's interesting and pretty 33-minute mix for today, "A Winter Morning." Both these guys are incredible dj's, and they're both really superb listeners. I'm sure there will soon be more.

Mike

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UPDATE: Some people may have had problems accessing the stream; Bob used an older mix and thinks he might not have followed all the proper uploading protocols. It's a work in progress. You can check the site from the top to see if there are newer mixes. Sorry if you had trouble.

Featured Comment by Bahi: "Played it in the early hours of the morning and absolutely loved it. I'm a Stereolab fan anyway but it was good to hear that King Crimson track again (now there's something I never expected to write on this site) and be introduced to a couple of things I hadn't heard but which I really liked. I'll get around to creating an account and leaving a note at some point but Bob, if you read this, thanks!

"Playback was a little slow to begin ('analyzing' for a minute) so I minimised the browser window and just let it do its stuff and eventually the music kicked in through the headphones I'd forgotten I was wearing and made me jump. Worth it, though.

"In other news, I'd say you TOP folks were on a roll with recent articles but you seem to be on a permaroll these days. Long may it continue, and may you find effective protection from the Phantom Comment Italiciser (PCI). He has clearly upped his game :-)"

Mike responds: In re the PCI, there doesn't seem to be a rational way for me to integrate actually looking at the comments into my workflow. I read every one, check links, not infrequently edit or correct typos and misspellings, and sometimes contact the commenter to iron out a problem, small or large, and then post each one individually; but to go back into the posts from the site and check the way they appear to you more than once in a while would actually add a lot more work to what is already a pretty heavy load. The only alternative is to turn off HTML as an option in the comments. I've resisted that so far, but I might have to if the PCI problem continues. In the meantime, a plea: you have to use a backslash when closing HTML tags, and, if anybody sees the comments go all italics or all bold, shoot me a quick email, would you? I just don't see it. Thanks.

Jobs

I was going to post the "Camera of the Year" post after Peter's essay, but then I got an email from a friend who said, "So now that you've posted the second of the Peter Turnley posts, you plan to follow up with one about the Camera of the Year for 2009? How much more crass can you possibly be?"

Followed by a smiley face. But still.

So I'm going to hold that off a little longer. In the meantime, an ironic counterpoint to Peter's essay: Eolake alerted me to the fact that the BJoP linked to a Wall Street Journal list of the best and worst jobs, and, on the list, "photojournalist" placed 189th out of 200. That's right: only 11 jobs are worse than "photojournalist."

Did Peter's life really sound all that bad to you?

Of course, not every photojournalist is Peter Turnley.

One of the factors they considered was "stress"—I'm sure with low stress being considered desirable. (The top job according to the WSJ is "actuary," and one of Eolake's commenters mentioned the old joke about that: "An actuary is somebody who used to be an accountant but couldn't stand all the excitement.") Imagine somebody popping into your office every few days and firing a few rounds off at random, and you'll get an idea of some of the stresses of being a photojournalist. So, yeah, there's that.

On the other hand, I don't know how the Wall Street Journal came up with some of its numbers. As I said on Eolake's blog, how is $69,000 considered "top level salary" for an actor? What job is that—putting on tights and a jerkin while passing out "ale" at Medieval Village, addressing everybody as "milord" and "milady"? Being the fake interviewer on infomercials about colon purging elixirs? The top actor this year (she's a she, which used to be called an actress, but now that appears to be optional) is a woman called Sandra Bullock. To show you just how up with the times I am, I have not only never seen Sandra Bullock in a single movie, but I have never even heard of any of her movies—I looked them all up on imdb.com. But despite that, I'm going to climb out on a limb and guess that she earned more than $69,000 last year.

And, obviously, in calling something a "good job," the WSJ isn't taking into account how easy or difficult it actually is to find work in those fields. It ranks "historian" as #5—but there's an old joke about that too: "The only jobs out there for old historians is training young ones." Medical Records Technician comes in at #20, but I've known people who worked in medical records, and I'd rather have people shooting at me. (A lot of medical records technicians probably have degrees in history.) 

Left fielder Willie Harris at work. Photo by Audrey C. Tiernan.

A different study I read a number of years ago used somewhat different criteria, and came up with a different list of the best and worst jobs. According to that, the best job of all was playing left field for a non-contending (U.S.) baseball team. Their reasoning: 

• The skills required for the job are very rare.
• The left fielder doesn't have much to do, because most hitters are righties and it's hard to pull the ball. (I.e., hit it to left field.)
• You only have to work half the year.
• When you do have to work, it only lasts a couple of hours. True, you have to train; into every life a little rain must fall.
• You get to be outside. But you get to come in when it rains for real.
• It's very high status. (This study considered status; "actuary" wouldn't have gotten many points on that scale, and "photojournalist" would probably have moved up quite a few notches.)
• The payscale is through the roof.
• If the team isn't contending, your mistakes won't cost your team much, so presumably your stress level is on the low side.

The people who have the two best jobs in the world in my opinion are Vanna White and Dan Castellaneta. Vanna started out turning over the letters on a word-game show called "Wheel of Fortune." For years on the show, she didn't even talk. She just walked back and forth and flipped letters. And then they made her job easier. They went to electronic screens, so technically she's not needed at all any more, but by that time people liked watching her (she is still easy on the eyes, being one of those humans who apparently do not age; she was born seven days before I was, but unfortunately I do not have a portrait of myself in the attic which shows me growing older) so now she just touches the letters, and they change.

Actually, what Vanna does for a living is clap. She claps after everything that happens. An average of 720 times per show (I looked it up, and no, I do not want the job of whoever had to count). She doesn't reveal her salary, but NEWSWEEK reported that she earns three to five million dollars a year "from all her endeavors." I should endeavor to have such endeavors.

And Dan Castellaneta? He's the voice of Homer Simpson on the animated cartoon show "The Simpsons." He gets paid millions too...for talking. Granted, he's very, very good at doing voices, but still...that is one great job! I'd pay just t0 be able to do the Homer voice.

Sandwich man by Thurston Hopkins

It's really all in the way you look at it, though. The worst job I ever had was when I briefly worked as a check-out clerk in the Express Lane at a grocery store way back in the '70s, in between exhausting stints of college. It was unrelenting, but I was so bored an eighth of my original brain cells died from atrophy. Fortunately, I only had to do the job for three weeks, until the store's regular Express Lane clerk, by the infinite grace of our dear merciful God, returned from vacation. Her name was Jean, and she considered her job ideal. She got a good wage (with time and a half on Sundays), she didn't have to do any thinking (she actually said that to me, in so many words), and she got to visit with customers, many of whom she considered friends. She loved it. She'd been doing it for thirty years. I'd hang myself with a rope.

The worst job I can imagine: sandwich man. I feel a deep pity whenever I see one of those guys. If you think about it, a sandwich man is only slightly more valuable to society than a post. A post is stronger and doesn't ever need a rest; but it cannot move, whereas a sandwich man can amble back and forth—presumably morosely, as he sinks ever deeper into a black swamp of despond. Museum guards are probably just as bored, but at least they get to look at art.

But last summer, I spoke to a kid who was walking up and down in front of our local pizza shop with two big signs hung on his shoulders. I probably said something meant to be comforting, but he ended up telling me that he thought it was just the best job. "I get to be outside all the time," he gushed, "and I don't have to actually do anything, and I get paid, and I get free pizza, too!" This last he said in a tone of voice like it was just too much for him to contain, it made him so happy. He had the world by the tail, that kid.

So it's all in how you look at it. As Paul McCann says, "Find a job you like doing and you'll never have to work."

I'll bet to some people, even being a photojournalist isn't half bad.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Kirk Tuck: "Hmmm. If I could do any job I would take a time machine back to 1985 and be an advertising photographer. Great pay, technical expertise and experience required, medium to low stress. Regular stream of work. Worst job? Advertising photographer in 2009. Stress from not working. Upside? Lots of free time. And I mean 'free' time. Aspiration? I want to be the guy who sweeps up the small denomination bills that fall on the floor at Goldman Sachs."

Featured Comment by K Brown: "I was a security guard at the art gallery in Victoria, and I can say without question, the sandwich board guy has it much better. In the museum, nothing ever changes...for months at a time. You learn to truly hate those artists you see day after day after day. Ah, the life of the sandwich board guy, how I envy him."

Featured Comment by Marty S: "I had a summer job as an art museum security guard for two consecutive summers during college and I thought it was a great job. Fortunately, it was a small museum, and often wasn't very busy. It was the former home of a wealthy art collecting couple converted into a museum after their death. They had an extensive library of art books (including several photography books) and I spent a fair amount of time just reading. Between reading many of the books and talking to the director and assistant director, I learned a fair amount about art. Definitely more interesting than wearing a sandwich board."

Featured Comment by Fmacgregor: "I feel I should jump to the defence of the actuary—I spent many a (relatively) happy summer working in an actuarial department. As far as I could tell no one, at all, understood what the actuaries did, but their word was law, and even the loudest, brashest city boys listened to them and did what they were told. It may not be glamourous, but people listened to, and respected, you. And if you had a masters degree, then your business card could have "MAFIA" at the end of it, which I think should count for something.

"How do you know you're talking to an extroverted actuary? He stares at your shoes when he talks to you...."

Featured Comment by Jim Hart: "Mike, I've had a job where I was paid to be shot at (flying right seat in OV1 Mohawks with the U.S. Army in Vietnam). It ranks as the best and worst job I've ever had. Trust me, you'd rather work in the medical record field. My most confusing job was when I was self employed; I'd only pay me what I'm worth, and I won't work for that."

Featured Comment by Carl Dahlke: "I had a job that really put me off of commercial meat for years.  I was working at a ham factory, where the hams would be dropped on the floor, kicked around, and used as footballs in the continuing ham football game before they were shrink wrapped. Once the boss came around and asked the workers to not use the hams as sports equipment for a couple of days because he had found out that a meat inspector would be coming around.

"I think the worst work is grindingly hard physical labor which I have only done a few times for short stretches (think carrying a 100 pound sack of potatoes about 15 feet from a loading dock to a potato bagging machine every 20 seconds for 8 hours).  There is nothing left of you to live life if the work is physically hard enough.

"The best job is being part of an exciting enterprise that is doing something bigger than just making money.  I worked as a database designer for a company that was sequencing the human genome and for a few years I was racing to work every day to put in 10 to 12 hours. I was helping to make scientific history happen in the company of many very smart people. Just about any job is just going to be a job after that kind of excitement."

Jeffrey Hayzlett Gets Fined

Jeffrey Hayzlett of Kodak

From Advertising Age, the entertaining story of how Kodak CMO Jeffrey Hayzlett bucked the corporate culture.

Which reminds me of a story...one of many I could tell about corporate culture at the "old" Kodak. I was in Rochester once visiting my brother and had an appointment with some curators at the George Eastman House, so I was dressed, unusually for me, in a suit. I happened to be walking past Kodak Tower when the doors opened and a crowd of executives dressed in suits spilled out onto the street. Two of them deliberately fell right in step with me. One of them said "How's it going" or "How you doing" or something like that, and I probably nodded and smiled. I wondered whether I should speed up or fall behind and give them their privacy, but they had paced themselves to me, and I thought, well, I have a right to be on the sidewalk, so I'm just going to keep walking the way I had been. As we walked, the two of them were talking animatedly about office scuttlebutt—who said what in the meeting they'd just been in, what they thought of this and that and the other thing—not gossip, just business-oriented subjects. Neither one of them said anything to me and I didn't say a word, as I would have had to interrupt. We walked like that for maybe two blocks, with the two of them chatting away with great energy.

Finally there was a pause, and one of them looked over at me. "So what department do you work in?" he asked.

"Me? Oh, I don't work for Kodak. I'm just on my way to the museum."

And that was it. I attempted a pleasantry or two, but we walked together side by side like that for three more blocks and neither one of them uttered another word—not one.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Charlie H: "Cute story. Even before the clip ended, had me thinking, well, what was the winning entry, what did they name it? Turns out it's still the Zi8. Hunh."

Mike replies: Charlie, that part of it is indeed a little weird! Maybe the Guy in Charge of Contests called the Guy in Charge of Product Names and the entrenched corporate culture won in the end after all.

Featured Comment by Dan Westergren: "The new product is called Kodak PlaySport—same specs as the Zi8 plus waterproofing."

Featured Comment by David Dyer-Bennet: "I can't think of any company that saw the competitor coming that was going to destroy their core business, and went into that field themselves and destroyed their core business themselves and out-competed the newcomers. That's why Digital Equipment Corporation doesn't own the PC market; they'd been making single-user computers for years, but they couldn't bring themselves to undercut their own prices and give up control of the processor technology. To push that digital technology into the market, Kodak would have been cutting into their bread-and-butter lines, and companies essentially never do that."

A Gift Waiting at Every Corner: Notes from a Life in Photography

By Peter Turnley

When I review my life as a photographer, I feel blessed and fortunate to have experienced so many wonderful emotions, the most significant being the sense of being alive, powerfully alive.

These beautiful experiences began with a book by the master French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, a gift from my parents while I was hospitalized with a knee injury sustained during a high school football game. It was 1971, I was 16 years old, and that year in my hometown of Fort Wayne, Indiana, I discovered photography. Cartier-Bresson’s work awakened me to the glory that existed in the common moments of daily life. Suddenly my primary mode of self-expression at the time, sports, gave way to countless forays into the inner city of my hometown with my camera. Photography expanded my world. It has always been, for me, a medium through which I can share my observations and responses to the world.

The one thing that is always clear in my mind is that the people and their stories, and the themes of life that I photograph, are always more important to me than the process of photography itself.

My formal education in photography began and ended with a two-week workshop taken during the summer before my senior year of high school. The Belgian Photographer Gabriel DeLobbe, who taught the course, encouraged me to be aware of my surroundings because "every moment you spend looking down is a moment you are denying yourself the gifts of life that are waiting to be observed." I soon found myself discovering great books of photography such as The Family Of Man by Edward Steichen, which became my bible in high school. The images of people from around the world impressed upon me the strong potential for photographers to highlight the subtle distinctions that we possess while underlining our common humanity.

Another great work, Bruce Davidson's East 100th Street, inspired my twin brother David and me to contemplate the notion of how much life could be discovered in the defined space of a single street. In Fort Wayne, in 1972, David and I discovered McClellan Street. Its residents became the subjects of a yearlong project, which also became our first-ever published work. McClellan Street was three blocks long, its residents primarily of Appalachian and Hispanic origin. The life of the street was always full of outdoor activity, which we documented using our one camera. While one of us was out shooting, the other babysat the neighborhood's children or struck up conversations with residents of the street. In 1975, the magazine 35MM Photography devoted many pages to our finished photo essay, an incredible boost for aspiring twenty-year-old photographers.

Resolution 2010

I've got a nice surprise. But first, a short digression about another kind of "print resolution."

Every few years, I take stock of my track record in living up to my New Year's resolutions, and it occurs to me that I could improve my wretched rate of success by setting my sites lower. So, the other day, I was sitting around in the living room with my son.

Me: My New Year's resolution is to clean up the living room.

Zander: Have fun with that.

Me: Actually, I was planning on enlisting your help.

Zander: Sorry, but that would interfere with my New Year's resolution, which is 'Don't clean the living room so much.'"

Maybe that's not setting my sights quite low enough.

Anyway, I actually do have one great New Year's Resolution this year: I've made the decision to start a photography collection. [Insert heralding trumpets, clouds parting, rays of sun, etc.]

I've never done it before. Although I've always wanted to try.

Of course, I don't have what's known as the big bucks, so there aren't going to be any Friedlanders or Erwitts or Koudelkas or Jim Marshalls in my collection. I'm not going to be haunting the auction houses in New York city or causing big-time photo dealers to beam and clasp their hands together in pleasure whenever I heave my deteriorating frame into view. Over the years, however, I've accrued some prints from various sources, in various ways, from here and there, hither and yon, and it occurred to me not long ago that a fair number of good ones actually fall neatly into a specific and fairly narrow category. So that determined my "principles of collection" (forgive me, I'm not going to share what they are) and "viola," as Phil Davis used to say*—I've got the core of a collection.

Another nice feature of this resolution is that it's going to require very little actual activity to fulfill. Because, y'see, I've only resolved to start a collection. Finishing stuff, that I'm not so good at. Starting stuff, well, that's my forte.

So far, aside from my already existing seed-core, I've contacted three photographers online and inquired about buying prints. As soon as I receive at least one that I like enough to add to the collection (sorry, The Collection)—then my New Year's resolution's fulfilled.

Viola.

The Ctein 2010 Dye Transfer Print Sale
And in a not-unrelated tidbit of news, that surprise I mentioned: I'm pleased and happy to report that plans are firming up for a second dye transfer print sale.

You'll recall that Ctein's first dye transfer print sale, in 2008, was a stunning success. (And here, I do mean stunning—after expecting to sell about a hundred prints, TOP readers ordered more than 700 in the few days the sale was active. We were both well and properly stunned—Ctein more so, because he had to make all the prints.) Dye transfer is one of the oldest and most difficult of traditional color printing methods, and the materials needed are no longer being manufactured. Never common, dyes are getting to be quite rare and are usually very expensive. Ctein is one of the few remaining masters of the craft, and when he offered to make modest-sized examples available for an extremely reasonable price (basically, a price that would be reasonable for an inkjet print), the response was amazing.

We had anticipated that the 2008 sale could not be repeated, because it would deplete Ctein's supply of materials to too great a degree. Well, for various reasons, he ended up the whole process a few months later with more materials than he started with, thanks largely to some former dye printers who contacted him and offered him their remaining stocks. 

So we're getting ready to do it again.

This time, however, the sale can't be open-ended. There will only be a limited number of prints available.

The announcement (with full details) will be made later this month. Stay tuned!

Mike

*Phil hated that joke.

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How Sharp Is Your Printer? How Sharp Are Your Eyes?

By Ctein

How much fine detail do you need in a photograph for it to look sharp? How much fine detail can your printer deliver? Both of these questions have been the subject of gigabytes of verbiage, most of it hearsay, untested and unfounded. It seems like everyone has an opinion; pathetically few of them are informed opinions.

A few weeks ago I stumbled upon an easy and robust test that you can run to find the answer for yourself. In this column I'll tell you how to determine how much detail your printer can make use of and how much of that fine detail you actually care about.

Understand, here, that I'm not talking about what constitutes "perfect" sharpness: the point at which adding more fine detail to a photograph makes no difference whatsoever in your perception of its sharpness. I've run those experiments, and the number is phenomenally high. You need hundreds of megapixels. Forget it. You're not making photographs (or scans) that good, and even if you were, your printer can't render detail that small. (Traditional printers should not be feeling smug; you can't do it in the darkroom, either, unless you're making contact prints from very high quality negatives.)

The question we're concerned with is what you can achieve in practice and what looks "good enough." Now, understand that "good enough" is going to depend upon subject matter, viewing distance, choice of printer and paper, and printer settings. Everyone's going to get a different answer. The nice thing about this test is that it takes all of that into account. It comes up with answers that will work for you.

Along with a printer, you'll need the following items to perform this test:

• Three to five sheets of paper.

• A copy of Photoshop or Photoshop Elements or any other program that can generate a "contact sheet" from an assortment of files.

• A folder on your computer with several dozen different image files in it, spanning the range of things that you're likely to be printing.

(Note: Do not use synthetic test target files like bar charts or checkerboards or other such things. They can produce weird and anomalous results that are not at all germane to how your photographs will print out.)

• A good magnifying loupe, good enough to be able to clearly see the dots in your inkjet prints.

Now you're ready to roll.

I'm still using the "Contact Sheet II" operation from older versions of Photoshop (figure 1). It's what I know and like, so that's the process I'm describing here. Bring up the contact sheet control panel, point it at your file folder, set the rows and columns to something like 7x7" or 8x8", set the page size to 8x10", and set the resolution to 300 ppi. Let'er rip!

Figure 1

After the contact sheet has been generated, print it out on an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper, using whatever printer settings you wish to evaluate. In the illustrations in this article, I was using an Epson Stylus Photo R800 printer, printing on Epson Premium Semigloss paper at the highest quality setting.

Repeat this two more times with everything the same except for changing the contact sheet resolution to 600 ppi and 1200 ppi in the Contact Sheet II control panel (figure 2). You'll now have three superficially-identical prints. You may want to mark them on the back so you can tell them apart.

Figure 2. From top to bottom, small sections of the contact sheet files generated at  300, 600, and 1200 PPI.

(If you want to refine this further, generate two intermediate-resolution prints, at 450 ppi and 900 ppi, but don't try to split it finer than that. You really won't care, and it's hard to see smaller differences even if they're real.)

Look at the fine detail in the prints with your loupe. If it's a recent-model printer being used at a high quality setting, you will likely see a difference in the amount of fine detail being rendered between the 300 ppi and the 600 ppi prints. You may or may not see a difference between the 600 and 1200 ppi prints. I did, in my tests (figure 3).

Figure 3. Enlarged sections of the prints produced by the Epson R800 printer, from top to bottom, of the 300, 600, and 1200 ppi files.

Look for the point at which the fine detail stops improving. In other words, if the 450 ppi print shows more fine detail than the 300 ppi print, but the 600 ppi print doesn't show more fine detail than the 450 ppi print, it means that your printer can't make use of more than 450 ppi of data.

Now you know what your printer's limits are. Of course, this will vary with the paper you use and the printer settings to use, so don't try to generalize. Generally, glossy papers support higher resolutions than matte papers, but you never know until you run a test.

So much for the pixel-peeping. Now you're going to find out how much of that fine detail actually matters to you. Just look at the prints. You get to decide what distance you're viewing them from, what the lighting conditions are, and how persnickety you want to be. Can you tell sharper prints from fuzzier ones? Which of those little contact sheet images look different? Higher resolution matters more for some kinds of subject matter and photographs than for others.

How many ppi do you need before it stops mattering to you? Remember there's no right answer to this exercise. I suspect you will be surprised if the answers you get. Some people will find that they're happier with much lower resolutions than they thought they would be. Other people find that they can see a lot more fine detail than they thought.

In case you're wondering, my "sweet spot" for most of my printers and the kind of prints I make, is in the 450-500 ppi range. As a rule, prints look visibly fuzzier to me if I drop to 300 ppi, but they don't look obviously sharper if I go to 600–900 ppi. But that's me. I guarantee your mileage will differ.

Of course, once everyone runs these tests, all the interminable online arguments about print and printer resolution will cease.

Right?

Ctein

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Samsung NX 10 Announced

Samsung announced its "Micro APS-C" G1 clone yesterday (this is the real announcement, which follows last year's announcement of the announcement). Seems like it has a lot of nice and well-thought-out features, including its slightly-larger-than-4/3 sensor and an AMOLED screen said to be superior to the current SOTA. You can read more about it elsewhere, as usual.

I have only one question. Is anybody really going to want a mini, mirrorless interchangeable-lens camera without the flexibility of the Micro 4/3 standard? Micro 4/3 is in its infancy—well, its toddlerhood—but already, I can put my favorite Panasonic lens on an Olympus body that has IS. And I can get just short of a zillion different kinds of adapters, allowing me to use anything from an old M-Rokkor to a Canon FD lens from way back before Canon even went autofocus. 

It seems to me that perhaps the biggest single frustration I've had in the whole digital era is the headache of finding the lenses I want for the cameras I want. (Sony! Olympus! Oy!) Micro 4/3, being a cross-manufacturer standard, promises to alleviate that problem by allowing me to pick and choose bodies for the same lenses or pick and choose lenses for the same bodies. This is already an advantage, and the situation is only going to get better.

Does anybody really want to give that up and be completely dependent on a proprietary lensmount for this kind of camera—especially from a company that has no history as a lensmaker? Especially an electronics company, most of which treat lenses as afterthoughts?

I'm not necessarily claiming they won't. Maybe the NX10 will sell like flapjacks to lumberjacks. I'm just askin'.

Mike

P.S. Coming Soon: TOP's Camera of the Year 2009. I'm workin' on it, really I am.

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Random Excellence: Ayrton

To see this one you'll have to follow the link, and don't even think of it unless you have DSL or better. (You also don't want to try this on your iPhone or netbook.)

A view of beautiful Rio that might be quite heartbreaking to hoar-rimed denizens of the Northern hemisphere right about now! (I don't know about you, but we're in the deep freezer.)

I'm not quite sure if this is a "photograph"—maybe a "web-o-graph"?

Note that you can zoom in or out and look up or down in addition to the slow pan.

Mike
(Thanks to Michael O'Donoghue)

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Featured Comment by AYRTON360: "Hello Mike THANKS a lot for your post. I really appreciate AND made me happy :-) Happy 2010 to you and to all readers. Cheers from Rio de Janeiro."

A Visual Interview with Peter Turnley

Peter Turnley is by any measure one of the most accomplished photographers of his generation. My interest in his work—and hence what you've read about him here on TOP—has centered around his personal work, in books such as Parisians and McClellan Street. The latter is a lyrical study of a hometown neighborhood he did with his twin brother David when they were teenagers, which proved to be their entry ticket into the world of big-time international photojournalism. These two sets of work, however, describe only a small part of the trajectory of Peter's involvement in photography. Things like his forty NEWSWEEK covers and a full profile on "60 Minutes" will have to stand in for the rest of his long resumé for now.

Recently, I got wind of the fact that Peter is now teaching photo workshops in various locations around the world—workshops that people like you and I can attend—and that reports from participants have been, in a word, glowing. So I approached Peter (through my friend Steve Rosenblum, who has collected some of Peter's work) and asked him about an interview.

Peter responded with grace, generosity, and energy. Over the course of several conversations and emails, we developed the idea of a sort of "visual interview," and Peter spent all of New Year's Day putting together a portfolio and a written statement just for you. Naturally, photojournalists and documentary photographers work—and think—in terms of sets of pictures that describe larger realities; the portfolio you're about to look at doesn't do any one story justice. It's not a "greatest hits," either. Rather, it's a linked sequence meant to sketch the broad range and reach of Peter's work and concerns over many years.

So get yourself a cup of coffee on this first Monday in 2010, and click past the break. You are in for a treat.

—Mike

Open Mike: Lady Day

Of the two greatest female singers of the jazz era, the langorous and mournful Billie Holiday, seen here performing in 1947, was the "moon" to the ebullient and energetic Ella Fitzgerald's "sun." Photo by William P. Gottlieb.

A very brief guide to buying Billie Holiday on record:

1933–1942 were the so-called "Columbia years," named after her main label during the period. These were the years in which she became famous as a pop chanteuse and was in full voice and flower. On disc, the period is extremely well-served by the currently going- but not gone-out-of-print budget Spanish import of the out-of-print Sony Legacy box set, which contains remastered versions of the recordings in ideal presentations, for a cheaper-than-cheap price (~$5.50 per disc). This traces the arc of her ascent. The Columbia material was traditionally known as the "good stuff" that made her reputation, and was once preferred by the public and by record collectors.

In 1939, mainly because Columbia refused to record the harrowing "Strange Fruit," Billie freelanced for Milt Gabler at Commodore Records, mainly in two sessions, one in 1939 and one in 1944. Although not the best single-disk introduction to Holiday—it's a transitional period musically—the Commodore sessions are essential for any collector, as this was the formative period of her mature style—and it contains some of her signature tunes, "I Cover the Waterfront," "I'll Be Seeing You," "Embraceable You," a lovely rendition of "On the Sunny Side of the Street," and of course the 1939 "Strange Fruit." However, no one but the most fanatic completist needs all the alternate takes that are available, none of which are really very different from the master takes (although I confess to marginally preferring a couple of the alternates). The single disk with just the 16 "master takes" is the one to have. You can also get "The Commodore Master Takes" by searching that phrase on iTunes.

In 1942-44 she began using heroin and recording for Gabler at Decca. This was probably the happiest period of her professional life because Decca treated her like the 1940s version of a superstar, getting the best songs for her to sing and pulling out the stops when it came to orchestral accompaniment. Holiday reveled in the treatment she received at Decca and the respect she was accorded. However, although well served on The Complete Decca Recordings, this period didn't cover much ground and is probably the least essential major Holiday for the modern listener to own. It still belongs in a more complete collection of her best, though.

Although her Decca period didn't wind down until 1950, her career was permanently (and some think fatally) interrupted in 1947 when she was arrested and jailed for the better part of a year on drug charges. Worse, upon her release from prison she was permanently denied a cabaret card, meaning she could no longer perform in establishments that served alcohol—which of course meant most of them. Her drug use, legal problems, money woes, and personal problems escalated and intensified in the late '40s and throughout the '50s until her death, and she became a sort of postwar Michael Jackson, notorious with the public (and getting much more attention from the white press for her troubles than she ever got for her singing) as an aging former star providing a lurid spectacle as she went down in flames.

Light and shade
From a creative standpoint, however, the best was still to come. In 1952, Norman Granz signed her to Mercury, the parent company of Verve. In the seven years before she died in 1959, she recorded nearly 100 songs for Verve, now known as her late or Verve period. The standard line is that this period is a triumph of experience, judgment, and musical intelligence over declining vocal ability, but the fact is that her work during this time is very uneven. A good number are excruciatingly awful ("unlistenable recordings made when she could barely find the energy to enunciate or keep in tune," writes Gary Giddins). But the best of Billie Holiday's Verve recordings are one of the glories of recorded music. In recent years the reputation of her Columbia period and her Verve period have flip-flopped; most Billie Holiday lovers now admire and prefer the later period over the earlier.

And most, although not all, of the best songs from this period are present on the Verve compilation All or Nothing at All. It comprises all of Songs for Distingué Lovers and Body and Soul, plus six or seven more high points plucked from other records of the period. In toto it's a great work of art and both a pleasurable and a moving listening experience, whether dipped into, selected and excerpted, or listened to straight through.

Notorious
Also, importantly, for me at least, it contains none of the songs from Lady in Satin. The controversial Lady in Satin is really a case study in misguided pop cultural assumptions, and encapsulates down into the present day the misunderstanding that always existed between Billie Holiday and the broader American public. Very regrettably, Lady in Satin has gotten the reputation as her "best" record, for two reasons. First, Billie herself said at the end of her life that it was her favorite. But to interpret this, you need to consider the context—Billie always considered recording with a full string band to be a mark of respect to her, and the treatment she got while making this record at the very end of her short life must have felt like a return to the treatment she got during her salad days at Decca—it was her last star turn, a reprise of her former glory. And the album was released in June, 1958, and she died in July of 1959—so she never had a chance to get any perspective on it. And second, it's beloved of myopic "audiophiles" as the best-sounding Billie Holiday record, due only to the recording of the strings, ignoring her voice, which makes no sense at all. For this reason, Lady in Satin is often purchased by neophytes as "the best," and their one and only representative Billie Holiday record.

That is just so...wrong. Her voice on this record is ragged and hoarse, her range—always limited—even more truncated, making the contrast with the Nelson-Riddlesque Ray Ellis string arrangements almost bizarre in its cognitive dissonance. Personally, I have no objection to the completist owning this record, and no quarrel with the Lady Day aficionado who finds great pathos and meaning in her performances here, as some do. But the ruin of her once sweetly expressive voice is shocking, and as a listening experience the record is a travesty because of the hokey, sappy, horrible strings-all-over-the-place soundscape. However jazz fans might feel about it, it should not be anybody's only Billie Holiday record. I don't even own it.

If you love Billie Holiday, or jazz—or music—suggest that your friends get All or Nothing at All as their one-and-only Billie Holiday record, and make sure they don't think that having Lady in Satin as their sole sample disk means that they've got any idea what Billie Holiday was all about. It's the biggest anomaly in her entire extensive catalog.

Look for the "Originals" strip on the left to be sure you're getting the proper songs in the proper order

To round out a great Billie Holiday collection on record, the other essential from the Verve years is the great Lady Sings the Blues, a perfect record and one of the high points of music on record for me.

Happily, the record was reissued on CD by Verve in 2007 with its proper songs in proper sequence. With Wynton Kelly on piano, Kenny Burrell on guitar, Aaron Bell on bass, Leonard Browne on drums, Charlie Shavers on trumpet, Paul Quinchette on tenor sax, and Anthony Sciacca on clarinet on the first eight songs, and Bobby Tucker on piano, Barney Kessel on guitar, Red Callender on bass, Chico Hamilton on drums, Willie Smith on alto saxaphone, and Sweets Edison on trumpet on the last four. By sure not to be fooled by the PolyGram pastiche with the same cover, or by other pretenders! The album has been "issued" in many forms over the years, some of them horribly mangled.

Having All or Nothing at All and the proper version of Lady Sings the Blues is a way to neatly possess almost all of the very best, and none of the worst, of late-period Billie Holiday, who was only 44 years old when she left this Earth but had lived a very full life as an artist.

Mike

(Originally published in 2007 on CD Reviews by C60 Crew.)

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Featured Comment by Cheryl Jacobs Nicolai: "Mike, did you know that in addition to my day job as a photographer, I'm also a singer? One of my favorite gigs is at a cabaret, where I get to do my favorite songs from Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, Etta James and Jones, even reaching back to Bessie Smith et al. The audience at the cabaret is very diverse, which means I get to expose college students to music most of them have never heard. It feels a bit like preaching the gospel."

Jim Richardson's Twelve Days of Christmas

Photo: National Geographic

Jim Richardson's frame no. 10,525

Things are going to be a bit quiet on TOP this weekend while I work away on some stuff for next week. First full week of the New Year and all.

In the meantime, our friend Jim Richardson is holding a party over at his place. The picture above stands alone as a spectacular landscape—it was taken in the Scottish Hebrides. Its significance is that it forms the opening spread of Jim's feature "Edge of the World" in the January 2010 issue of National Geographic magazine.

Jim writes, "My story on the Hebrides is just out. I'm blogging over at Working Photographer about the process by which each of the pictures in the layout came into being. There will be twelve posts, one for each of the eleven pictures and a final homage to the pictures that didn't make it. These will run one a day."

The series started with this picture on the 31st. Very interesting insight as to how a magazine feature gets put together. Have a look—and don't forget to check back in the days ahead.

Mike

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UPDATE: Don't miss Jim's extended comment in the comments section. —MJ

Happy New Year

Oz does it up: Sydney's spectacular New Year's Eve fireworks
are considered the best in the world

Well, it just turned midnight in sleepy ol' Wisconsin, and I just wanted to wish all our friends around the world a prosperous and peaceful 2010. I hope it's a good year for you and your family.

And for your photography, too.

Sincerely,

Mike
(Thanks to Bob Rapp for the link)