The Online Photographer

Open Mike: Vinyl Nostalgia

Here and there, the cyberchatter has been registering the news: Panasonic finally pulled the plug on its venerable Technics SL-1200 turntable, which has been around since striped bellbottoms and jewfros* were popular.

Some reports are treating the event as if it were significant. It isn't, really. The old Technics, a true dinosaur surviving from the Cretaceous Period, a.k.a. the early '70s, is just an old, outmoded product that stayed alive way past its natural retirement date. The only reason it survived as long as it did was that it's been the default choice for wedding DJs (some SL-1200s come complete with DJ travel cases) and scratchers, both of whom like the fact that direct-drive turntables get up to speed quickly. Hi-fi aficionados left direct-drives behind for belt-drives several geological eras ago. (I've owned several direct-drive turntables, including one gorgeous and expensive one, and they're good in every conceivable way a turntable can be good except one: they don't sound great.)

New vinyl section at local Best Buy. I'd buy the Smiffs.

Vinyl resurges...to 4%
Actually, although it's still only a small fraction of the music market (and will never again be anything more than that), vinyl sales have been rising for several years in a row—I recently came across a whole big display of vinyl records at my local Best Buy (see above), and Amazon has a dedicated vinyl record portal.

And there are lots and lots of great turntables available at every price point, from the Music Hall MMF 2.2 ($449, a lively if somewhat rough-edged cartridge, I believe made by Goldring, included) to the Rega P3-24 and P5, to the Clearaudio Concept and the current darling of the high-end press, the made-in-the-USA VPI Classic. Or try the Sotas, made somewhere in the vasty reaches of Chicagoland, as featured on the TV show "House." Sota makes an unsuspended budget model called the Comet as well as a number of higher-level models with suspensions such as the Sapphire.

Sota Sapphire. Note lack of arm—at this level, you
choose your own cartridge and arm.

(By the way, if you're wondering how to suspend an unsuspended TT like the MMF 2.2 or the Regas, here's what you do. Go to the plumbing section of your local hardware mart and look for 1 1/2" pipe end caps in the plumbing section—the ones I found are made by Fernco and are called "Qwik Caps"—and then get some standard racquetballs. The racquetballs fit nicely in the depressions in the end caps. Multiply by four, and presto—a Q&D turntable suspension. Of course, a solid support underneath everything helps a lot. Believe it or not, there are custom "isolation bases" audiophiles pay hundreds of dollars for that are based around...you guessed it, plain old racquetballs.)

Personally, I like the MMF-2.2 as an entry-level model (I owned one and liked it), and I currently use the Rega P3-24 with a PSU, modified with a Groovetracer subplatter.

Another thing the mainstream press gets all wrong is the constant repetition of the old saw about how all you have to do to get great records is to head out to flea markets and garage sales where you'll find thousands of collectible records going begging. That might have been true twenty years ago, but not any more. If you're lucky enough to find a few records you actually want at a yard sale or a Goodwill, chances are they'll have dog-eared and water-damaged covers and surfaces trashed by too many playings under heavy, bad, dirty "needles." Nope—the appeal of records these days is to buy new ones, which are essentially lovingly made, remastered, deluxe replicas of great masterpieces. On the bad side, they're expensive as hell—$25 to $50 each. On the good side, they're made to a breathtakingly high standard all but unknown back in the days when vinyl supposedly ruled. Check out Music Direct, The Elusive Disc, or Acoustic Sounds to see what's available.

Currently on heavy rotation chez TOP. It's a 10-incher, with four cuts. Part of a small custom pressing for a special order from Japan; I got one of the leftovers on closeout for $12. Bought a handful of 10-inchers at that price and am making my way through them slowly.

I think vinyl records have captured as much as 4% of the current music market...and I probably spin vinyl records 4% of the time. (The rest of the time I listen to the computer through a USB DAC. What I don't have is a CD player. There's no need; if I want to listen to a CD I just pop it into the computer and copy it to the hard drive, and listen to it from there.)

One of the things I like about vinyl these days is that I tend to leave the same record on the 'table until I've played it many times and have gotten to know it thoroughly (which I obviously couldn't do if the TT was my only source). No reason to do anything like that with computer music, much of which I tend to listen to once or twice and then...er, well, lose. It's not lost literally, it's just that I forget about it and it goes into extended hibernation somewhere on the hard drive.

If I had my latest return to vinyl to do over again, I probably wouldn't bother—it's involved and expensive, even if I do find happiness in it. In any event, there's really no need to mourn for the old Technics. If you have one, you can continue to enjoy it, and if you happen across someone preaching on the internet about the deep meaning of its demise, haul out the old salt lick. Vinyl has reached equalibrium in its little niche (just as film will one day, I'm convinced) and will continue to survive just fine.

Mike

"Open Mike" is a series of off-topic posts that appears only—but not always—on Sundays.

P.S. I was going to include a list of favorite records I've bought recently, but only about a third of the list I came up with are still readily available. Vinyl tends to come and go, which is only appealing in that I'm not a serious collector. If one were, new vinyl would be a dangerous thing to get obsessive about. On the other hand, if anybody knows where I can get a copy of Howe Gelb's "'Sno Angel Like You"....

* 20 Badass Jewfros.

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Featured Comment by Jeff: "Still going strong with my Sota Sapphire (with Cosmos arm board) and Wheaton Tri-Planar arm (now known without the Wheaton). I bought the table at a shop near Wheaton, Maryland more than 25 years ago and the arm was personally set up on my table by Herb Papier, the late Tri-Planar founder. Several Lyra cartridges later and the music sounds as wonderful as ever. Maybe even better with the quality of some new vinyl, remastered recordings and the improved cartridges."

Mike replies: I met Herb Papier a time or three. Never could afford one of his tonearms; still can't. As with cameras, though, I envy those who got good stuff and stuck with it. A few years back I knew a guy who was still using Marantz Model 9's he'd bought new. Price those on Ebay! A suitable occasion for that most overused of words: awesome.

Featured Comment by Rene Hermanides: "Tip of the day: The DVD It's a Vinyl World After All by Michael Fremer. A lot of information about vinyl manufacturing, cleaning, collecting etc, but also a report of a mastering session at Blue Note. Gives a nice overview of the 'vinyl world.' "

Featured Comment by paul logins: "Wow. That's a surprise. Didn't know those giant black frisbies in my attic have music on them. Will have to check this out.  :-)"

Featured Comment by max: "On the relevance of the 1200s, there is one displayed at the London Museum of Science and Technology, as one of the defining tech objects of our times."

Random Excellence: Ethan Russell

Ethan Russell, Keith Richards "Patience Please" 1972

I always enjoy discovering photographers I hadn't known about before. After I posted a picture of John Lennon I found on Google a few weeks ago, it took some while and the help of several readers to identify the photographer as Ethan Russell, who I'd never heard of. Turns out he's also the photographer who took this famous shot of Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones. Although superficially in the nature of a joke shot, the picture retains its sense of menace after all these years, and highlights the cultural divide that has continued to distort the American polity (at least) ever since. Ethan Russell is one of two new-to-me photographers I've discovered recently.

Coincidentally, Keith Richards' new autobiography, which one review called "this autumn's best entertainment," is the #1 bestselling book on Amazon right now. Although I haven't read it (I'm reading Mark Twain's—but watch out, that is one huge, heavy book), the reviews report that a lifelong affection for heroin hasn't adversely affected Keith's memory. Here's the U.K. link.

Prints of this picture can be purchased for $1,000–$9,910, depending on size.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Chuck Albertson: "I was reading Keef's autobio on a flight home from NYC last night, and was laughing so much I was afraid the crew were going to divert to Minot and have me taken away. At Amazon's price, you should buy two and give a copy to a friend."

Featured Comment by Rob Atkins [reacting to Chuck's comment]: "I was on a flight home to Vancouver from Dallas on Wednesday night. The Richard's autobiography was definitely the hit of flight 887. I thought I had wandered into a book club meeting."

(OT) (Music Notes)

You can hear Brian Eno's not-yet-released new album Small Craft on a Milk Sea, a collaboration with Leo Abrahams and Jon Hopkins, in its entirety, for free, streamed on NPR. The album is selling out in Japan and is slated for release on Nov. 2 in the U.S. and Nov. 15th in the U.K. It's already made the Top 100 in the U.S. just on pre-orders.

Mike
(Thanks to Bob 'n' Kim)

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Quote o' the Day

"I have five pebbles, not too different in size and weight, yet a randomness about them. If I drop them on the carpet they will scatter. Now we could run an experiment and we would find that we cannot put these pebbles in shapes that would be as elegant and as nicely related and with as great a variety as every time they fall. It is better than anything we could do. I have great respect for the way I find things. Every time something falls I look. I cannot believe the relationships. The intricacy. You hear a noise and you say 'What is that?' Respect for the affirmation of the unexpected."

—Frederick Sommer

-

(from Mike Chisholm)

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Stochastic Photography

By Ctein

I am normally the most deliberate of photographers. As I've mentioned in previous columns my standard modus operandi is to contemplate a scene, think about the photograph I want to make, make that one photograph, and move on. As I've also mentioned, I don't think that's inherently the right way to make photographs (I don't think there is an inherently right way). It's just what works for me.

Except when something else works better. Last summer I started indulging in what my friend David Dyer-Bennet (DDB) has dubbed "stochastic photography." A refined and elegant term for a style that he says some folks sneeringly referred to as "spray and pray." The results of been extremely gratifying; I've made several portfolio-worthy photographs that I couldn't have had I pursued my usual deliberate manner.

This two-step technique may be summarized quite simply:

A) Make a whole lot of photographs, trusting to luck that you have captured some invisible "decisive moment."

B) Chimp and pixel-peep like mad.

1/200th sec, ƒ/4, ISO 800 and be there. My first attempt at stochastic photography proved successful beyond anything I imagined. I had an intuition there was an interesting photograph hidden in the subject matter or I wouldn't have even made the photographs, but I had no idea it would come out looking like this. It has inspired and encouraged me to do more of this. Above is the full frame, below is an enlargement of a portion so that you can see the intricate and complex structures that capture the eye and make this an engrossing print.

This kind of subject matter really is easier to work with in digital than film. For one thing, there is the Polaroid effect—being able to immediately see the unseen components of the subject (in this case, the rapid and complex patterns invisible to the naked eye) and see if the camera settings you've chosen are really adequate to the task. Frequently they're not. DDB and I have both reached the same conclusion; this is the kind of subject matter where trying to get away with a marginal aperture or shutter speed simply does not work. A little bit of blur is not acceptable; if it's not sharp, it doesn't work.

Equally helpful is the ability to just burn electrons with little penalty and make a dozen photographs in a short span of the same subject, give 'em a quick chimp to be sure they're not hopeless, and trust that luck has favored you when you go through them carefully.

1/1600th sec. This one's still in progress, not close to being a finished print. But the lacework water, again unexpected and invisible to the unaided eye, entrances me; when I get it printed the way I want I shall be a most happy camper.

So far my subject matter has been limited to rapidly moving water, but I imagine any complex, quickly-changing phenomenon could be of interest. Fire is an obvious candidate, but I haven't had a chance to try. Might work. Might not. Ah well, it will certainly be worth experimentation; if it turns out I don't like the results it's only wasted electrons, and there are plenty more where they came from.

Ctein

Ctein's regular weekly column appears on TOP on Thursdays, usually in the morning.

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What Your Camera Brand Says About You

Gordon Lewis's snarky guide to camera brands is so far the most popular post in the history of his young Shutterfinger blog. So what if you just have a mirrorless digital camera and don't currently even own a DSLR? And own seven (count 'em) film cameras but aren't even shooting film? On second thought, maybe I'd better not ask.

Mike

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100 Years Ago

George Clapper sent me this charming advertisement from The Saturday Evening Post, April 30th, 1910.

Mike
(Thanks to George)

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Featured Comment by Bill Poole: "For what it's worth, this ad came out six years before Saint Ansel received his first camera from his dad: a Brownie. Give a kid a camera...."

Judge Defends Choice

Nick Galvin, archive manager of Magnum London and one of the judges of the BJP's International Photography Awards, answers the critics of this year's choice in the single image category.

I have to say I've simply been amazed at the sheer number of contest announcements I get. I pass almost none of them along, but a week doesn't go by that I don't get at least one PR announcement for a contest of some sort, somewhere. Some weeks, more than one.

If you like contests, I might suggest subscribing to Red Dog News. My impression is that Tim Anderson covers some of the better ones—both calls for entry and announcements of winners.

Dean Sewell, Cockatoo Is. Ferry, the 2010 Moran Photographic Prize winner

In Australia, the AU$80,000 Moran Prize, said to be the richest photographic prize in the world, has gone to the same photographer two years in a row. The prize is awarded by a single judge, and allegedly there have been "some murmurings about the winner and the judge knowing each other pretty well," according to Joseph Feil on his Snapshots blog. You can see the contest finalists here.

(I think this is the reason why many contest rules disqualify past winners. I just read somewhere recently that Saul Bellow felt vaguely sad every year when the Nobel Prize for Literature was about to be announced, because he had already won it once and thus wasn't eligible to win it again.)

From the Archives, Dept.: See also a cautionary column I wrote in B&WP magazine a while back concerning contests. (Ironically, the column happened to be written concurrently with a contest the magazine itself was running for its readers, so the editor found it necessary to include a sidebar defending the magazine's own practices. Coincidence, I assure you....)

Mike
(Thanks to David Nicol and Joseph Feil)

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How to Judge a Photo Contest

I've had to oversee a number of photo contests in my time, but there was only one where I got to set the rules and parameters myself. In that one, we had several judges, but my decree was that each judge got to pick his or her own first-place winner, with no interference from any of the other judges. Each judge picked a radically different picture—in fact, radically different kinds of pictures—but even after the passage of well over ten years, I still think all the prizes went to very good photographs. And, because each co-winner was chosen by a single judge who bore sole responsibility for the decision, the judges' defenses of their choices were articulate, positive, and impassioned.

I still think that's the best way to run a photo contest. Committees might not always make bad decisions—sometimes what you want is caution and consensus—but committee decision-making doesn't suit the exercise of aesthetic judgment. Time and time again, I've watched as committees of judges wrangled and disputed over their preferences. Strong advocacy is often counterbalanced by strong negativity. Everyone has to make concessions. What ends up happening is that a compromise is reached that everyone can live with...but unfortunately it's also often a choice with which no one is 100% happy.

It's different with juried shows. There, the jurors tend to become political, and to reach accommodations with each other—"I'll let yours in if you let mine in." That's a function of having more slots available. But I'll bet if any four of the people who write for TOP had to agree on just one picture to single out for a prize, we'd have a lot of trouble.

Here's an exercise in delectation. Let's say you're a contest judge with a prize of, say, $2,500 to bestow on some lucky photographer. And whatever you choose will be seen by thousands of people who wouldn't otherwise see it. You alone are charged with finding, from any source, a single photograph that you think is remarkable enough to deserve such special distinction.

What would you choose? Anything come to mind?

I'm not sure I'd know where to start.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Joe: "I was a judge several times in two different national photo competitions—coming to a consensus to pick three to five winners each time—and I came to the opposite conclusion from you, Mike. I found that it was bracing to have my choices challenged and have to defend them. And I found it really valuable having to articulate my disagreement with another judge's choices.

"At the very end of one competition, when we were down to the very last few candidates, another judge and I were baffled by the third judge's choice, and we spent quite a bit of time debating our stances. I probably learned more about my own prejudices and preferences in a half hour that day than in the year that came before.

"I've developed a better appreciation of photography through those experiences—I would hope all the judges felt the same way.

"But actually your complaint was more about the results of the judging process, right?

"I do think the results of those competitions were better for the discussions we all had. Each time I've judged, 90% of the rejects were easy and quick, and we always ended up with a small group of excellent photos from which the winners were chosen. Though picking the winners was always hard, that's a testament to the high quality of the finalists. I was really glad to have others to compare notes with, and bounce ideas off. I've judged where I could have tossed a coin to select three winners from six or seven final contenders, because they were all so fine. A little discussion was very helpful in that case."

IPA Single Image Award 'Surreal and Disturbing'

Michelle Sank, Man Asleep on the Golden Mile, Durban, South Africa

Congratulations to Michelle Sank, who has won the Single Image Category in the British Journal of Photography's International Photography Awards, with this shot of a man sleeping on the grass...

...Wait, what?

This shot? Really? Maybe I should go skim that article again...let's see...powerful shot...surreal and disturbing...picked out from 338 other entries...microcosm of South Africa...wins a Sigma DP2s...right, 'kay, guess that's right then.

I'd like to humbly suggest we stage our own contest. The TOP Post-Exposure Reconceptualization Processor Award for the person who can come up with the invented caption that manages to make this nondescript picture interesting. I'll kick things off with two attempts of my own:

"M'bato Ngyui of South Africa demonstrates his celebrated divining technique. He presses his left ear to the ground for several hours and then advises villages where to dig their wells. He is paid in bread."

"The Monstunto Corporation, reacting to charges that it cares little for the welfare of farmers, has responded by developing a genetically modified turf that is comfortable for unemployed homeless farmers to sleep on. It drains well when wet and is said to be 'delightfully spongy.' "

(Note also the comments under the original article....)

Mike
(Thanks to Hilton)

UPDATE: I contacted Diane Smyth, the BJP Deputy Editor who wrote the article. She confirmed that the article was not a spoof and that the shot really is the winner (I wasn't 100% sure).

UPDATE #2: As a further indictment of the choice, the prize-winning image is entirely uncharacteristic of the work of Michelle Sank, who is a portraitist with a very definite style (usually full body or three-quarter-length, head-on color environmental portraits of one or two people, usually using light fill flash, sometimes a little foreground-heavy)—and one who very distinctly works in terms of groupings of pictures organized around sociological concerns. (I.e., not in single images.)

Here's a characteristic Michelle Sank shot from her website:

It's from a set called "Into the Arms of Babes." In describing the project she is characterically blunt about her intent: "England has the highest rate of teenage pregnancies in Europe and this statistic is of growing concern. In this project I am exploring the current phenomenon of teenage mothers, and in some cases, teenage parents. Essentially these parents feel like children themselves, and it is this vulnerability that I am trying to convey. I am also interested in showing the relationship and bonding that exists between young parent and child as well as revealing the dynamics that are apparent between the mother, her partner and the extended family."

And finally, we need to retain a sense of perspective here: saying a picture isn't a standout single image worthy of an award isn't the same thing as saying the picture is totally worthless or that it doesn't have any meaning for anybody. The prizewinner here just isn't special. Fail. I think "period," although I sort of admire those with sufficient confidence to disagree.

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Caption by John Krumm: "A contestant participates in the annual 'worm whispering' derby. Earthworms are most active at night and can be lured to the surface with the proper call."

Caption by Judith W.: "After 37 years of her nagging him to tie his shoelaces, Samir suddenly realized what a smart woman his mother actually was."

Caption by Ned: "Trapped coal miners encouraged by voice from above."

Featured Comment by Ed Hawco: "Nice capture! ;-)"

Featured Comment by David S.: "The comments on this post remind me of the reaction when William Eggleston had his first exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art: 'It's a picture of a tricycle!  My kid could have taken it!'

"Your first mistake is to confuse technique with meaning. Perhaps you would have preferred a nice HDR photo of a sunset?

"Art is not about technique. The fact that it's a photograph most of you would never have even bothered taking doesn't invalidate it. It just means the photographer saw something you were incapable of seeing.

"Photography is not a 'difficult' medium. All photographs are, by definition, 'easy' to make—you just push a button. The value of the medium lies in the photographer's calling a moment in time to our attention—a moment we might otherwise have missed—and saying 'this is important.' It takes something simple and fleeting and turns it into something emblematic.

"Art is not about pretty pictures.  It is first and foremost about the human condition.

"The photograph is about murder. It's about latent violence, and the brutal, animal nature of human existence. Dostoyevsky would have loved it. Weegee would have loved it. It demands the viewer's active participation in parsing out its meaning and its narrative. The picture might as well have been taken 50,000 years ago—a photograph of a man and his most basic tool, a blunt instrument of violence."  

Featured Comment by Nick: "P.S. It's a loaf of bread, not a brick."

Featured Comment by Daniel: "What a crock of sh*t! I know many have commented already, but here's my local take on this image, considering I'm based in Durban and a photographer. This gentleman is most likely not poor; it's actually very common to see people taking a quick nap on the grass during the day. It doesn't mean they have no-where to sleep, they are just having a siesta.

"Seriously gobsmacked...."

Featured Comment by Andrew: "I live in Durban and often photograph on the Golden Mile. To suggest that this photograph is 'a microcosm of South Africa' is ludicrous. South Africa is a complex multi-cultural society historically burdened with extremes of wealth and poverty. This image represents none of that. He is not the epitome of 'poor' in South African terms—he has servicable clothes and a loaf of bread. If you want 'poor' then photograph the AIDS orphens living at rubbish dumps, but for God's sake give them a loaf of bread, they desperately need it. There is no sense of place, juxtaposition of cultures or fortunes or personal story. It's a sad reflection on the BJP."

Featured Comment by Mike Chisholm: "Mike, I'm not immediately impressed by this image myself, but aren't you—as a professional contrarian—even a little bothered by the strength and unanimity of the negative response to it?

"Think back to the reactions to f64, New Topographics, John Gossage, Paul Graham, Alec Soth...almost always 'Why, these aren't proper photographs! They're so banal!!'

"For sure, I'm not saying this is an outstanding photograph—it looks very ill-considered to my 56-year-old eyes—but it is very typical of what some thoughtful young photographers are producing, perhaps in reaction to what us oldies hold dear about our photographs.

"I think it's wise to try to stay open to the 'Hendrix Moment' ('Coltrane Moment,' if you prefer)—when something new arrives that trashes certain expectations of a previous generation. This may or may not be such a moment.

"I hope not, personally, but I'm reserving judgement until I understand what is really going on. I don't know about you, but my instinct is always to head in the other direction to the baying of the Flickr crowd...."

Mike replies: Mike, I'm secure enough to accept being part of the reactionary crowd if that's to be my role here. I feel I'm reasonably open to exploring how photographs work, and to engaging with work that doesn't immediately appeal to me.

Still, I'm a middle aged white man, for better or worse. Heck, I don't like piercings or tattoos either for that matter. That marks me as part of my generation and social class, but the fact remains that I am indeed part of my generation and social class. So, so be it. That's not going to make me pretend to like tattoos.

Back to the picture: sometimes bad is good, but, to quote a song of our generation, sometimes bad is bad.

Featured Comment by Stan B.: "I've finally gotten off the initial 'high' this photo first inspired. Michelle Sank (you wouldn't know it from this photo) is a very gifted portraitist. And while I can see some of the things this photo almost has going for it (e.g., the shape of the shirt, the disembodied hand, the muted color palette, the contrasting patches of grass, and the extraterrestrial loaf of bread)—it's still an 'almost' shot, one ascended from two of photography's laziest beginner genres, the sleeping student on the lawn, and the down-and-out guy. Do we really need yet another picture of a down-and-out person of color—even if supposedly operating within the realm of 'Fine Art?'

"I hope Ms. Sank uses the money to produce more of the fine photography she is so capable of...the kind that may not win her this prize, but that does both her and her subject matter justice."

Featured Comment by Lynn Burdekin: " 'Man Asleep on the Golden Mile.' I beg to differ. He is obviously just loafing."

Featured Comment by Craig Lee: "In the end, any contest comes down to the opinion of the judge/judges. Theirs is the only one that really matters.

"I myself was recently in a local photography competition where the 'Best in Show' was generally regarded as a snapshot by most of the visitors to the gallery. When I mention being in this particular contest and show to other area photographers, the first question I get is 'What did you think about the winner?' The next few minutes are descriptions of the photograph that are very similar to most of the reactions in this thread to this particular image.

"My response is that it was just one person's opinion and not something that I'll loose sleep over. There were many beautiful photographs in the contest's show that I would never have seen before, and I've met several local photographers that I would not have know before. Besides, the judge had to know what he was doing since I placed third in one of the categories.  ;-)

"A judge's opinion just doesn't raise my blood pressure all that much. Different images will speak to different people in different ways. I am constantly surprised when someone likes a photograph of mine which I thought was a reject. They see something that I captured, yet didn't notice myself. That is something that, to me at least, makes photography a most surprising art form."

Mike replies: That last paragraph is a great insight. A classmate of mine, Pam West, found a shot of mine on my contact sheets and convinced me to print it. I had ignored it completely. Yet if I end up printing a 'best of' portfolio of my own 35mm work in my new darkroom, that picture will make the cut.

Very interesting. Very mysterious.

Recent Books of Interest: 4

A gorgeous 40-inch high print of Lisette Model's Running
Legs, New York, 1940 made a powerful impression in
the first room of the "Street Seen" show.

...And speaking, as we were, of street photography...sometimes I crash and burn. There are things I want to do, and that I absolutely should do, that I just don't. For whatever reason.

This is one. I really should have written a review of this show, which originated in my backyard at the Milwaukee Art Museum (and was a treat—I'd never seen real Lisette Models, for starters, and they're much better than I thought they'd be). And I certainly should have mentioned this book before now.

I even began an interview with the curator, Lisa Hostetler. But she was busy, I was busy, and I failed to persist. Say what you will about its felicities, the piecework demands of running a daily blog do tend to obstruct the kind of concentration and commitment needed to write more thoughtful pieces of greater length.

Marvin Newman, Untitled (Women’s Legs), 1951

Maybe one problem is that I fear I'll fail to do justice to such a complex subject. This book is a largely original thesis: it looks at a certain subset of mid-20th-century photography in the context of culture, relating what was emerging in expressive photography at the time to other currents in the arts, including abstract expressionism (the book reproduces a few paintings, which is unusual), Beat poetry, film noir, and "New Journalism." The photographers in the exhibition, in alphabetical order, are Margaret Bourke-White, Alexey Brodovitch, Rudy Burckhardt, Capa, Cartier-Bresson, Ted Croner, Don Donaghy, Evans, Louis Faurer, Frank, Sid Grossman, John Gutmann, Dave Heath, Klein, Saul Leiter, Leon Levinstein, Levitt, Roger Mayne, Model, Marvin Newman, Frank Paulin, Smith, David Vestal, and Weegee. The work is abstract, elliptical, adventurous—personal impressions, many related to interpretations of direct experience.

Ted Croner, New York, 1947

The catalog is a beautiful book: the layout is near-ideal, the reproduction quality extremely good, the essay excellent. I really like the picture choices: just enough familiar chestnuts to ground the less familiar work, and many pictures, including some gems, that I have nowhere else in my library. And many by some quite little-known photographers.

Recommended for anyone with a bent to American photo history, photographs of cities, or who is interested in the antecedents of the art photography of the 'sixties and 'seventies; strongly recommended to anyone with any commitment to street photography.

U.S. Link: Street Seen: The Psychological Gesture in American Photography, 1940-1959

U.K. link

Mike

P.S. The blurb write-ups stress that the book covers only six photographers, but that's not really the case. The texts concentrate on Croner, Faurer, Model, Frank (and H. C.-B., evidently not counted among the six), Klein, and Leiter, but the reproductions do a pretty good job of covering all the photographers and of representing the entire show.

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Featured Comment by JackM: "Glad Mike finally got to this one.

"Lisa is a gem, and this book has gotten her even more attention as a star of photography curating. The exhibit was extremely well done, and should have gone on tour. Alas, the economy made that more difficult, but the book travels very well.

"If you care at all about street photography this will inspire you to shoot even more."

The First Informal Semi-Official TOP Milwaukee Meet-Up

I'm having a little get-together in Brookfield, about 20 minutes west of Milwaukee, on Sunday, November 7th, from 4:30 to 7:00 or so, and you're invited. This is nuthin' special, just a gathering—no program, no slide show, no speech, no super-secret prototype cameras passed around surreptitiously under the table (unless Pentax wants to send me a 645D for the day). Just me and a few other photo-dawgs at a table in the corner. On the good side, there's no charge—all you have to pay for is your own food and drink, and you don't need a reservation, ticket, or anything of that sort. Just bring yourself. Families and friends also welcome.

You can just show up on the day if it works out that way for you, but it would be nice if we could give the restaurant a rough idea of what to expect—so if you think you're, say, 80% likely to come, please drop me an email. No obligation.

Only two rules: no gifts, and you're not allowed to buy my dinner! It's not a great spot to look at fine prints or books, but bring cool toys, iPads, etc. if you want to. Again, no obligation.

The meet-up is at Yokoso Japanese Restaurant, located at Goerke's (rhymes with "turkeys") Corner in Brookfield. It's right off the expressway so it's easy to get to. The address is 20101 W. Bluemound Road, Brookfield, Wisconsin 53045, phone (262) 782-8880, email [email protected]. Directions are here. It's my favorite restaurant. My son is a part-time waiter there, and might even be on duty that night.

Click to enlarge

Yokoso does have many cooked entrees if you have an aversion to raw fish. The chefs are skilled and the fare is excellent. You can see the menu here.

We've never done this before, and I realize 99% of the people who read TOP aren't local, but I thought we'd give it a try and see how it goes. If all goes well, it's possible we could do the same thing in other cities at some point in the future. Hope you'll come if you can!

Mike

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Stocking-stuffer?

I've been passing along Amazon's Deals of the Day when they have anything to do with photography. Today's Gold Box special is the Panasonic LumixDMC-F2 for only $69. That's ~$20 cheaper than it was yesterday or than it will be tomorrow. The 10-megapixel F2 is the entry level camera in Panasonic's 2010 point-and-shoot range.

Disclaimer: I've never seen or used this camera, so this isn't a recommendation. (Just passing the news along.)

Mike

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More on 'Street Photography Now'

I think I should repeat at the top of the blog a comment I myself wrote to the "Recent Books of Interest: 2" post about Street Photography Now:

Lest we get carried away here, I might point out that the photographers in the book didn't do anything wrong, and Thames & Hudson is a very good publisher generally, who have done a large number of excellent books. So we need to watch the width of the brush with which we are doing our tarring.

I've now heard from several of the principals involved with the book, among them Johanna Neurath, Design Director at Thames & Hudson. Johanna commissioned and worked on Street Photography Now, which she characterizes as "a 5 years labour of love!" Among rather a lot else, she says:

There is an extensive list of resources at the back of the book which includes websites and books, exhibition catalogues etc. etc. So I really can't understand or accept the accusations of plagiarism that some are making.

I can however, well understand and accept the accusations of discourteous behaviour, which as I said above has already been addressed in private. And again not an excuse but a fact that most of our energies and much collaboration went into making sure the featured photographers were happy with the way they were presented in the book. With nearly 50 featured photographers, hundreds perhaps thousands of e-mails and meetings approving picture edits and layouts as well as the quotes and text, often under great time constraints, before a happy consensus was reached.

The fact that a minor controversy exists about one dimension of the publishing project doesn't necessarily mean that taking sides on that one little issue should polarize peoples' opinion about the entire enterprise. I hope people realize that when I made the final comment in my original post, I was speaking as a web-writer whose work gets ripped off continually; maybe I've never have mentioned this, but a small but significant chunk of my time is taken up by the tiresome business of attempting to muzzle some of the more egregious content thieves who simply steal my work without even a nod to fairness or ethical conduct.

...But that's me, is the point here. It's a personal reaction because of who I am and what I do with my time. It doesn't have to govern your response to the book.

I should also repeat my belief that this is not an issue of copyright and not a legal matter at all. It's merely a question of what constitutes standard journalistic practice.

In any event, I'll ask Johanna to send me a review copy, and if she does, I'll give it a full and, to the best of my ability, fair review. Seems like the least I can do, to compensate for my part in stirring this particular pot; because one of the core principles of this little corner of the web is to champion the work and the interests of photographers.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Steve Rosenblum: "I was composing this comment when this new post appeared. Personally, I am glad that it did. I have always been a person who tries to reserve judgment until I have had an opportunity to review the primary data at the root of a controversy. Yesterday, after reading your initial post, I went to my local Borders and read through Street Photography Now myself. After doing so, I purchased the book.

"I agree with many of the TOP commentators here that the editor made a mistake in not directly attributing the work of Michael David Murphy in compiling and presenting the interview material that was 'borrowed' by them to make this book. I prefer to not get tied up in the arguments about whether this behavior represents plagiarism or copyright infringement. I am old-school about this sort of thing, and disapprove of this kind of behavior. I would say that it is certainly 'discourteous,' as Ms. Neurath states, but also pretty tone deaf for people/company that lives and dies by selling intellectual and creative property.

"However, my reaction to the book itself is that:

1. It is clearly a true labor of love. Those words occurred to me before Ms. Neurath mentioned them here; it is quite obviously so. It is also obvious that this project had to have taken years to accomplish as well as likely thousands of miles of travel and a few bajillion emails and letters with the included photographers.

2. The text is illuminating and reflects deep thought and a genuine reverence and affection for the subject matter.

3. The production values of the book also reflect a similar reverence for the material. It is a lovely book as an object onto itself. As a book lover, I appreciate the choices and fights that likely went into that.

"I would wager that most TOP readers have not heard of, nor viewed the work of, most of the photographers presented in the book (unless they are true diehard devotees of international street photography). I have always loved street photography and own several iconic photographs, and I certainly did not know of all these people or their work. In this regard, I believe that the authors and publisher have done the photographers and the rest of us a real service in bringing them to our attention. Yes, you can sift through the work on Flickr and other forums devoted to street photography, but, there is still something to be said for looking at a curated collection and for seeing printed versions of the images.

"I suspect that the principals' initially tone deaf and defensive responses were triggered by the prospect of such an immense and worthwhile project disappearing without a trace because of this error in judgment. It reminds me of the reaction of any new parent to an objective bystander's observation that perhaps their newborn pride and joy is not quite as beautiful as they perceive him/her to be. An understandable, very human, reaction, though still wrong in my view. They should have just immediately apologized both publicly and privately without equivocation. They seem to be coming around now. I would suggest that they make their apologies for "discourteous behavior" public in a direct manner, since books are quite public, their market is the public, and it is the public that has reacted with offense, not just the Blog owner.

"I would ask my fellow TOP readers to consider the totality of this work, go take a look at it, and then judge the matter for themselves, as you have proposed to do. They have registered their anger, it sounds as though the book's principals are trying now to make amends, and the photographers who are the subject of this book can use the attention. In my humble opinion, it is a worthwhile and important photography book."

Featured Comment by John Camp: "Things are not always simple—it's perfectly possible for a book to 'appropriate' text and still have terrific photos and good production values. But your (Mike's) original judgment was that the text problem could be a deal-killer for you; Ctein took a severely dim view of it, and so did I. Could it be that we agreed on this because we're all writers, and we all know how hard it is to get out those simple words, and to accumulate and develop the ideas behind the words? If it had happened that several photos had been used without permission or acknowledgment, would we all agree that we could just kiss and make up? I doubt it...From a writer's point of view, it should be more than just a little embarrassment, a trivial oversight...

"But, things are not always simple, and I do love good street photography. If this collection is really good, I may buy it for the photos. But I'll still be pissed about the words."

Featured Comment by Ctein: "What John Camp said. I, too, will give the book a look, before comfortably settling into complete intransigence."

Featured Comment by James Bulloch: "I'm in general agreement with the majority thoughts in the original post: sharp and immoral practice by the publishers, the original act made even less defensible by the rather odd response by Johanna Neurath that either there were more important things to worry about, or that they were frightfully busy around publication time (depending on interpretation).

"There is however something I find a little ironic about this controversy. I don't particularly care for street photography as a genre, and thinking about why I feel that, it's because I find the basic premise rather discourteous when there are recognisable (if unknown) people as the main subject. If someone took my picture while I was on the street without direct permission, and that picture later becomes published (without any consent of mine) and adds to the renown and lustre of a photographer, I would feel aggrieved. At an extreme, I recall watching (I think on this site?...memory fails me) a 5-minute video of a well-known NYC street photographer who specialised in 'in your face' photography of passers-by. [Bruce Gilden. Our link is broken for some reason, but you can see the same video here. —Ed.] Perfectly legal, I'm sure, but also perfectly understandable if the unwilling subject had reacted rather badly (I would have, even if he was using a Leica).

"To sum up: in my opinion street photography should be a two-way street, as far as consent and attribution is concerned."

Recent Books of Interest: 3

The Digital Photography Workflow Handbook. Another one that's on my radar but that I haven't seen yet. I'm a little unclear on the availability of this title: Amazon lists the publication date as October 28th—that's next Thursday—but says the book's in stock now. My idle guess is that if you order it sometime soon you'll probably get it sometime soon. You're welcome for the precise reporting.

In any event, Juergen and Uwe's previous book, 2008's Fine Art Printing for Photographers: Exhibition Quality Prints with Inkjet Printers, was very popular with TOP readers, although I can no longer look up the sales numbers. This new title from the same team might have similar appeal.

A minor incidence
By the way, I saw an actual printed copy of the William Albert Allard book at the bookstore yesterday—previously I'd just seen the whole-book PDF from the publisher—and it's beautiful; the reproduction is first rate. In the "cons" column, a disappointing number of images (although by no means all) are run across the gutter, an infernal practice unfortunately much beloved of book designers. What the heck, I guess a lot of the images also got gutter-chopped in the magazine in the first place. Allard's pictures are, for the most part, simple enough to withstand the abuse fairly well. I don't think the mild incidence of Gutter Disease will detract much from peoples' enjoyment; the repro has such presence and depth. Quite pleasing.

As an aside, all three of my local bookstores (two new, one used) have recently compressed their photo-book displays from two bookcases to one. Probably due to vultures like moi who sell so many books over the internet. [Existential sigh.]

The same bookstore where I saw Five Decades had a copy of Street Photography Now, but the single copy was shrink-wrapped and the store was apparently entirely unstaffed, because I couldn't locate a soul capable of giving me permission to gnash it open. So I still haven't seen it. Life is a quest.

Mike

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ADDENDUM: To answer a question about jargon asked in the comments: the gutter is the seam created by the binding. In a book or magazine, a "page" is one side of a single leaf; a "spread" is two facing pages. The gutter is where the two pages in a spread meet. It originally referred to the column of white space between text blocks created by the inner margins in a book of text.

Another jargon term you might encounter is "double-truck," which usually refers to a picture that covers all or most of both halves of a spread. A double-truck photo by definition runs across the gutter.

For more, see this link under the subhead "Page Spread."

A further term that might mean something different than you think it means is "sheet," which in printing means the whole larger sheet of paper which is printed all at once and then folded down and trimmed to make the book or magazine's individual leaves. That's the source of the curious Latinate words you see such as "octavo" and "quarto" which purportedly describe the size of a book: in Olden Times, printing press sheets were more or less of similar size, so the size of your finished book depended on how many time you folded the sheets. An octavo, for instance, was one sheet on which 16 pages were printed, folded three times to make eight (in Latin, "octo") leaves. The finished, folded and trimmed sheet was referred to as a "gathering."

(This is all part of a subject still somewhat near and dear to my heart; when I was young I was all set to commence a career as a bookbinder when I was stymied by Ronald Reagan.)

It's Dangerous Being a Cameraman

Ouch! What a maple baseball bat can do to a TV camera lens.

It looks like one of those lucky basketball shots from half court where a random fan sinks a basket and wins a bucket of cash. The broken bat seems to laser in on the $90,000 TV camera lens. Pow!

The cameraman never saw it coming. He was watching the runner, naturally.

Here's the video, such as it is.

(I also got a chuckle out of cameraman Steve Angel's quote in the NYT article. "I'm a big guy, but not a tough guy," he said. Ditto, brother.)

Estimated repair cost to the lens: $20,000, unless it's more. I'll try to think about that next time I'm moaning about what DSLR lenses cost.

I'd love to see the video being taken with the camera as the bat hits, too, which apparently was broadcast. But I can't find it anywhere. ("Exclusive property of MLB," etc., probably.) For the rest of the game, Steve reportedly zoomed all the way in and shot as best he could through the hole in the lens—and the director sometimes cut to him, too.

Mike
(Thanks to Adam McAnaney)

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Featured Comment by Mike Plews: "Thirty years ago when they let us film from the dugout at Omaha Royals games I had a foul tip part my hair. An inch lower and I'd make even less sense than I do now. Interesting, I always thought the most dangerous things at the ballpark were the free hot dogs up in the press box."

Featured Comment by JohnMFlores: "Ask and ye shall receive. At the end is a shot from the camera after the smash. Haven't found the shot from the camera as is happens yet...."

Featured Comment by Peter Cameron: "Camera being hit from the camera's view is in this clip."

Featured Comment by Mark: "Back when Russia invaded Afghanistan I was working at a local camera store. One of my good customers was a photographer for AP. During the time I knew him he had two lenses damaged like this. One was from a foul ball during a World Series. That 300mm ƒ/2.8 Nikkor cost about $1200 to repair. The other time was while he was in Afghanistan. That lens took a bullet for him and essentially saved his life. He kept that lens and did not bother to fix it."

Recent Books of Interest: 2

Street Photography Now, by Sophie Howarth and Stephen McLaren (Thames & Hudson). I haven't seen the book itself, although I'd like to. But a peculiar controversy has come up concerning it.

When Michael David Murphy, at 2point8, a street photography blog, got his copy, he says he was "surprised by how many quotes are utilized in the essays by Sophie Howarth and Stephen McLaren, and how few of the quotes are cited." So, he continues, "on a lark, I started inserting bits of the book's text into my search engine on 2point8 and (you guessed it) was surprised to find multiple passages that were copied verbatim, from this site." (Emphases his.) Specifically, he later clarifies, "Uncited sections from two interviews (originally published on 2point8) appear on pages 14 & 85 of Street Photography Now."

More regrettably, there are comments on his post from a person named Johanna, otherwise unidentified, who apparently either is, or is speaking for, the book's publisher, and from one of the book's authors, Sophie Howarth—both of whom condescendingly wave off his concerns. "...Even if Sophie and Stephen [the authors] had provided citations of sources for each and every quote," says Johanna, "we would not have included them—preferring instead to have lively and informative essays and biographies, without the interruption of academic apparatus in text...."

What? Indicating the sources of quotations is now "academic apparatus"? It's pleasantly non-academic to imply that you conducted the interview yourself, firsthand, rather than credit whoever actually did?

I got to wondering if anything in my background as a journalist, editor, writer or reader provides any basis for such a view, which I immediately leapt to judge as absurd.

And I do think of one precedent: Renaissance essayists would sometimes quote classical authors (usually inset, and in italics, and in either Latin or ancient Greek)—making the assumption, one supposes, that all of their erudite readers would have received the standard private tutelage and done the standard Continental tour and be fluent both in the dead languages used and in the works of the authors so quoted. So the Restoration essayist Thomas Browne, say, might allow Propertius or Seneca or some classical author of like ilk to stand thusly self-identified...or so I think; on checking Donald Frame's translation of Michel de Montaigne, the classical authors are identified (though it might have been Frame who did that, rather than Montaigne), and, in Francis Bacon*, most, though not all, of his quotes are preceded by "St. Bernard saith," or "Cicero saith...."

Standard journalistic practice, according to my paltry understanding, would be to insert a clause such as "as he said in an interview on 2point8...," which does not fatally interrupt the flow of the text, for me.

Bottom line: I'm not sure this lapse disqualifies the book from purchase, but for me it might. (Just depends on how I feel about it when it comes down to making the purchase decision.) As Michael says in his own conclusion, "...they copied-and-pasted passages off the Web and failed to cite their sources." Thumbs down on that.

Mike

*This is a particularly nice edition, by the way. I love the name "Peter Pauper Press."

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A Perfunctory Guide to Converting Photographic Film to Digital Prints, Part III

By Ctein

(Please read Part I and Part II before reading this one.)

Image manipulation
The most important recommendation I can make is to learn how to use Curves and use them well. Do not use crude tools like Levels or Contrast adjustments. Do not use the Brightness tool. These are the tools of amateurs. Anything you can do with those tools you can do with Curves with very little effort, and Curves gives you a measure of control over what you're doing that is completely lacking with these other tools. Through the appropriate use of Curves, you control tonal placement and color rendition. Used in a masked adjustment layer in Photoshop, Curves let you do precise, high-quality dodging and burning-in that can accentuate highlight detail and bring out and separate the shadows in ways that the crude Dodge and Burn tools in Photoshop can't come close to.

The really big win for digital printing is in highlight rendition. In the darkroom one has little control over how highlight tones are rendered; the toes and shoulders of the characteristic curves in darkroom materials are not much amenable to modification. Printers will discuss at considerable length how to combine long- and short-toed or -shouldered films and papers so as to get a desired rendition of highlight detail. In digital printing such matters become simple modifications of Curves, and the printer has much better control over exactly how tones are rendered in that part of the scale.

This becomes even more significant in color. It's not just the near-whites that involve highlights and color. Any color that is close to a primary is going to have values very close to pure white in one or more color channels. Being able to precisely control how those highlights are rendered means being able to precisely control the rendition of color in both the highlights and the near-primaries.

In fact, the fraction of my photographs that print markedly better digitally than as dye transfers are the ones where highlight rendition is especially important. Even as flexible a process as dye transfer doesn't give one very much control over those extremes. Digital printing offers meticulous control.

The big problem I have consistently seen with digital printing, regardless of the source of the image, is that it suppresses subtle gradations and tonality—"texture," if you will. Surfaces that should show subtle patterns and variations in tone and color come out a lot flatter and more two-dimensional with digital printing. Kind of like the colors in a cartoon cel—they are accurate and the edges are just fine, but everything within the lines is painted the same color (or tone, in the case of black-and-white printing). I have not yet assembled a coherent theory of what's going on, but the observations seem unequivocal.

What one needs to do is investigate tools and techniques that enhance local tonality without changing the overall characteristic curve shape. A very simple one in Photoshop is to apply the unsharp masking filter to the finished image with a radius of 50–60 pixels and a percentage between 10 and 25% (I wrote about this in detail about three years back). It does an awfully good job of restoring that delicate gradation. In more difficult cases, look at a third party plug-in like ContrastMaster, which is incredibly complicated to use but will produce extraordinarily good results when you can make it behave. I don't use it all the time, but it's seriously wonderful when I do (below). There are others out there, like Pixel Vistas' PhotoLift, that seem to work well, but I haven't spent as much time with them, so I have less useful to say.

The flat photograph at the top was substantially improved by
unsharp masking (middle) but ContrastMaster (bottom)
really did the trick.

Avoid oversharpening. I'd rather be looking at a slightly soft print than one that has been sharpened to the point where white halos, "sparklies," and other distracting artifacts appear at edges. Knife-edge sharpness may be a laudable achievement, but if it doesn't add to the artistic effect and it introduces unwanted side-effects that take away from the overall aesthetic intent, then it is a bad thing. In truth, I have rarely seen a print where my first reaction was, "It needs to be sharpened up." I have seen far too many sharpened prints where the sharpening was annoying and bothersome. 

Printing
Eventually, if you're good at this, you will have an image on the screen that looks just like what you want and is ready for printing. Or so it will seem. Prints will not look the same as screen images. WYSIWYG is a myth. Don't expect it. Monitors are really WYSIALLYG (What You See Is A Little Like What You Get).

For one thing, unless a luminous display like a monitor is very carefully set up and adjusted for the working environment, it will not produce a visual impression and placement of tones that looks much like what you see in the print. Usually the monitor is too bright. That's often a necessary working condition for doing meticulous corrections, especially in the darker tones, but, still, it won't be a good match to a print.

Another important reason is that the color gamuts of the monitor and the printer cannot be made identical. Monitors render images in red, green, and blue. Printers render images in cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. Their respective color gamuts overlap but there are colors that the monitor can render easily that the printer will have great problems with, and vice versa. Sky blues are especially difficult. They often look much, much better on the monitor that in the print. To some degree, making the perfect print will always be a process of experimentation. I am very experienced at this, and I assume there will be one wasted print before I get to the finished print. On occasions I have been delighted and surprised to nail it on the first try. It's not the norm. It's also equally likely I will find that I need two test prints, or sometimes even three, before I finally managed to get all the tweaks in place.

I do not believe the third-party ink sets nor RIPping software are necessary to make superb prints, not even for black-and-white work. They may improve matters, but they are certainly not a requirement. Something that is a requirement, though, is a custom color profile for each paper that you print on. The canned profiles the printer manufacturers provide are good but not great. A custom profile, calibrated for your particular printer, will produce noticeably better results. This is something you want to do sooner rather than later. A custom profile, of necessity, alters how tones and colors get rendered. If you've gone to considerable effort to tweak your digital file to make the best possible looking print on a non-profiled printer, you're just going to have to repeat that effort once you get it profiled.

Well, there's your forty years of printing experience condensed into 3,000 words. I'm sure I didn't leave anything out.

Next time, something completely different (with a tip of the Pythonesque hat).

Ctein

Ctein's regular weekly column appears on TOP every Thursday, usually but not always in the morning.

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Recent Books of Interest: 1

Introduction: In the next few days I'm going to be covering a motley of recently encountered or recently released books, some of which I've seen, some of which I haven't. This post began as a simple listing of a few titles, and since then has been growing like the Blob that ate Brooklyn. Every day it's gotten a little bit larger, a little bit longer. So, rather than delay and delay until it's "finished" and publish it as one great big huge endless sprawling post, I thought I'd break it into pieces. That way, you actually get to see it.

And away we go. —Mike

William Albert Allard: Five Decades (Focal Point, an imprint of the National Geographic Society). (Here's the U.K. link.) Just published last week.

The work of the great Bill Allard stands in a complex relationship to National Geographic magazine, which since 1962 has published much of that work. He is at once the quintessential NG photographer, and also a standout NG photographer, and also, it must be admitted, something of an anomaly as an NG photographer, in that he is really a reportorial photojournalist and a complex formalist photographer with a distinctive, influential style. And there's a further tension: many of his essentially investigative stories have been done of notoriously picturesque subjects, a few of which (cowboys, the Amish/Hutterites etc., bullfighting) can almost be seen as fish-in-a-barrel in this era in which all subjects get covered unto saturation.

I suppose you might have noticed that many retrospectives can be the best books by the artists so treated, because they gather together far-flung work, fill in missing ligatures, reveal rarities, and make a comprehensive, unified case for that person's vision and concerns. Others are more like samplers, bringing to mind the larger, more complete, more nuanced bodies of work from which the selections are drawn. Five Decades, oddly, is both: it conjures wholer sets of pictures and presents new material in about equal measure. I had never seen the Polaroids, for instance, or the intimate pictures of women. (And I'd never seen the picture from Junior Wells' funeral.)

William Albert Allard, Minor League Spring Training, Phoenix, Arizona, 1990

Allard, son of a Swedish immigrant, Minnesota-raised, will go down as a major figure in the history of color photography, transitional to whatever period of the history of photography we're in now. He's one of the few photographers of his generation (born 1937) whose entire body of work is in color. And you just keep coming back to the one overriding salient characteristic of this retrospective: there's a photographic masterpiece on just about every single page.

I'll have more to say about this one in a bit, as the physical book is being sent to me as we speak.

Bill Allard

But it seems clear that for most of us followers of the art, this 'un will be a must-have this Christmas season.

[To be continued....]

Mike

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Featured Comment by Bill Mitchell: "Mine came yesterday. Definitely one of the Great Books of photography."

Featured Comment by JK: "Yes, a must-have, even for some of us who have had to cut way back on buying photo books due to lack of space and itinerant lifestyles. (This might be a good time to also mention William Albert Allard: The Photographic Essay [OoP but available used. —Ed.]. It’s a small book that gives a real insight into his way of working.)"

Featured Comment by Stuart Hamilton: "There are others I admire of course but Bill Allard is pretty much everything I'd like to be as a photographer. Vanishing Breed changed my life. Thank you Bill."

Tamron Lenses

Tamron SP AF 17-50mm ƒ/2.8 XR Di-II VC LD Aspherical (IF). This is the reduced-sensor version of the Tamron-built lens I've been using for the past four or five years, most recently for these shots.

B&H has announced instant rebates of up to $150 on select Tamron lenses, good through the end of the year.

Mike

Featured Comment by Sam: "The 17–50 ƒ/2.8 VC in Nikon mount is probably my most used lens these days. A great bargain for under $700 and much more useful for me (thanks to stabilization) than the far pricier Nikon 17–55mm ƒ/2.8."