The Online Photographer

Editioning Moral Dilemma

I've got a moral dilemma for you, compliments of a reader called Paris. (This also harkens back to my March post "On Scarcity and Rarity," when I was pretty much smacked down by a bunch of readers in the know.)

The situation: You're an art photographer. You love the work, but have struggled to make a living. For much of your life you've gone more or less hand to mouth, living in modest apartments, driving old econocars or taking the bus, never quite covered on the health insurance front, etc. Recently your star has risen and you've come into some modest prosperity and things are easier for you, although you're still several neighborhoods away from easy street, considering you live in New York City, not the cheapest place to live.

The trouble is that you did what has become far and away your best-known body of work in the middle of your twenties; you're now 57. There were a lot of pictures in that set, but at the time you limited each one to an edition of ten. Why ten? It was a number you decided arbitrarily one boozy summer night in the kitchen when you were 25, when your gallerist said you had to set a limit or she wouldn't show the work. You kept one of each for yourself.

As the years went by, the value of these early pictures has done nothing but go up. Your newer work does okay too, just not nearly as well as the early work you're famous for. You're not starving. But it's getting pretty frustrating watching other peoples' prints of your early work sell for dazzling sums on the resale market. Finally, a few years ago, you got an offer you couldn't refuse: an august arts institution offered one million dollars for your entire set of personal prints of that early work. You accepted. Invested, after taxes, that million is now earning an annuity of about $15,000 a year in perpetuity, a nice augmentation of your income.

You now own no prints of any of the pictures in the set of work you're famous for, and you're constrained against making any more by the original edition limit.

Then, one bright day, something amazing happens. A print of just one of your early pictures—your copy of which you sold to the museum just a few years ago as part of the million-dollar deal that seemed so good at the time—sets the all-time auction record for a photograph. Let's pick a random number out of a hat and say it sold for, oh, I don't know, $3,890,500. You didn't own the print, though, so you don't see a penny of that.

Then, a few weeks later, the losing bidder contacts you—and offers to pay you $3 million for a print of that same picture. Yes, he understands the edition was limited to 10 and that it's sold out. He swears up and down that the sale will be totally secret and the picture will be for his private enjoyment only. It will never be exhibited; no one will ever know it exists. You have a darkroom in the pantry, where you do your current work. You have the negative in a binder in the closet. All you have to do is make the print, sign it, and write "A/P" (artist's proof) on it, and that's it. Three and a half million dollars. Invested, another $50,000 a year for you.

The dilemma: would you do it?

Mike
(Thanks to Paris)

P.S. This moral dilemma is fictional. Any resemblance to actual individuals living or dead is coincidental and the actions of imaginary actors in the scenario have been invented out of thin air. We're just saying "what if." We are alleging nothing. We are implying nothing. We know nothing. Geddit? Goddit? Good.

Send this post to a friend

Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Meet Herman

I wish I'd known about this the other day, when I linked to Herman Krieger's work with his new folder. (I forgot to link to the folder itself, too. I notice the price on these has come down nicely since they were introduced.)

But better late than never—reader Andy Hanna (thanks Andy) alerted me to this nice video about Herman from Oregon Art Beat at Oregon Public Broadcasting. And it turns out it's a perfect video for a Saturday morning, so maybe all's for the best.

Cyclists will be interested, too.

Mike

Send this post to a friend

Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Jeff: "Thanks; fun indeed for a Saturday. You got your wish to see him work. I like the wall system he uses to display and sequence photos."

Featured Comment by Peter Mellis: "Just watched the very pleasant video about Herman. His philosophy appears to be pretty close to mine; shoot for yourself and if other people like any/some/all of it, that's nice too. Good to see someone shooting film and working in a pretty nice darkroom. Got to go; the rapture is due here in about four hours and I still have some cigars and single malt left."

Judgment Day

So, here we are. It's the Day of Atonement, here at last, here at last.

I don't mind so much, except I was hoping it would be more...probative. Which of the following pertains?

• It's Judgment Day. If you're still here when it's over, that means God spared you, i.e., he likes you.

• It's the Rapture. That means that all the good Christians get whisked up, and all the people remaining on Earth have been left behind. I.e., if you're still here on Sunday it means God doesn't like you.

I wish this were more clear. I have a feeling I'm still going to be confused when this is all over.

And if, on Sunday, I'm still here and all the Christians are still here, what does that mean? I think it will mean the Rapture happened and He didn't take any of our raggedy sinning behinds off to heaven.

Possibly that's the wrong conclusion, but it seems logical.

Mike

P.S. Don't forget Ctein's Webinar is this afternoon at 4:00 (CDT). I can't watch it because it conflicts with the Preakness. Assuming, naturally, that 4:00 CDT is still pre-Armageddon.

Send this post to a friend

Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Chuck Albertson: "I'm packing a couple extra rolls of film in my bag today, just in case."

Featured Comment by Ben: "Of course it's the end of days...my brother-in-law is getting married!!!"

Featured Comment by Geoff Wittig: "This all happened before, in the 1840s to be specific, when a charismatic lay preacher, William Miller, began spreading the word that the Second Coming was to be October 22, 1844. One can only imagine his followers' disappointment when the world did not, in fact, end. Miller kept moving the goalposts further down the field with new predicted Raptures, until he and his followers became the object of widespread derision. There's a great Simpsons episode that mercilessly mocks the entire event.

"Miller came from the 'burned over district,' the area of rural central/western New York State that was repeatedly swept by religious fervor from the mid 1700s through the end of the 19th century. This area gave birth to Mormonism, to John Humphrey Noyes' bizarre utopian cult (utopian for him at least; he pushed polygamy and had scores of 'wives') and all kinds of squirrely religious movements. I've lived here all my life, and there's still an undercurrent of religious mania through the local culture. This new version of 'Rapturemania' is just the latest in a long line of holy hucksterism."

Featured Comment by Robert P: "Apparently Camping is my sister's landlord. She didn't even ask him for a cheap deal on rent for after today—I reckon she missed a trick there...."

The Sigma SD-1 Is (Gulp) HOW Much?

In case you've forgotten, we're still in the waiting period for Sigma's new überkamera the SD-1 (Sigma is notorious for rather long waits between announcement and availability). But this morning I got a press release from Sigma saying the camera will ship in "early June," which is of course right around the corner.

The SD-1 will allegedly have the best image quality ever achieved in any DSLR. Even the Pentax 645D...

...With which it will compete in price. The press release, y'see, also announces the U.S. retail price of the SD-1: $9,700, which will make it more expensive than the Leica M9 or Nikon D3x. It will become the most expensive APS-C DSLR by quite a distance.

My take is that the SD-1 is going to be the most interesting DSLR released in ages. Alas, I probably won't get to try one, but I shall be monitoring the gala proceedings with a sharp eye.

Mike
(Thanks to Jim K.)

UPDATE: Turns out that big number might have been a bit of a red herring, if this page is to be believed. Either that, or the price drops have started already.

Or has it got you thinking that the kits look like bargains??

Send this post to a friend

Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Counterfeit Memory

In the Learn Something New Every Day category, a reader who goes by the handle "extrasalt" recently spoke to an engineer at SanDisk, who dropped an astonishing fact in his lap: at any given time, approximately a third of the SanDisk memory cards (made by Toshiba) being used out there in the world are counterfeit. As in, not SanDisk memory cards at all—some other kind of cards dressed up as lookalikes.

Thirty percent, was the number quoted. A third, more or less.

SanDisk is all I use. All I've ever used, actually. I think!

Apparently, to make certain you're getting bonafide SanDisk memory, it's important to get your cards from an approved vendor such as B&H Photo. (TOP is a B&H affiliate.) Unless, of course, you're the type who's delighted at being able to buy a Luis Vuitton bag for $19 or a Rolex for $30. They're not the only approved vendor, of course, but B&H sells nothing but authentic SanDisk memory, guaranteed genuine.

Worth knowing, I thought. Wonder how many reviews and tests there are out there on the 'net of name-brand products that actually aren't?

Mike

Send this post to a friend

Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Peter: "Some more info on the entire phenomenon is here, for those interested in the nitty-gritty."

Featured Comment by Hugh Crawford: "But isn't all photography 'counterfeit memory'? But a mere technological prosthesis for the production of mnemonic simulacra which once produced are distributed and re-assimilated into the collective memory of the culture? Oh wait, you mean those things that store a bunch of ones and zeros as charges in floating-gate transistors right? Whipsawing from Cindy Sherman bridging pop and high culture to techno-geekery is making my head spin faster than Linda Blair's."

Featured Comment by David Aspinall: "I bought two supposedly SanDisk cards from a well-known auction site, and, having spent a big part of my life working with litho printing, I thought immediately there was something wrong with the colours (very subtle but obviously scanned from the original). I scanned the card labels and sent them to SanDisk, who confirmed that the number sequence was wrong and that they were counterfeit. I contacted the U.K. seller who said it must have been his supplier but when pushed gave me a refund and said keep the cards. Lesson: only buy from authorised dealers."

Foto Retro and Futuro

Two contrasting yet oddly complementary bodies of work I've come across recently, both of them I think quite excellent, each in its own way:

Herman Krieger, Todd

Retro: Our friend Herman Krieger has posted a set of documentary pictures that were all taken on film with the delightful new Fuji GF670, a camera that's as retro as you please (folders haven't been common since maybe the 1950s, nor au courant since a couple of decades before that). The set is called "Junction City Junction" (Junction City, Oregon, is 15 miles north of Eugene). I find Herman's documentary photography poignant: the settings are usually plebeian but the people look honest and friendly. I feel Herman's presence in his pictures: people seem to face him openly and with good humor. I'd love to see him work. He clearly has a knack.

Italy by Josh and Beth

Futuro: Meanwhile, a project that's been getting some viral mindshare in recent days is Joshua Brown's book Italy. Talk about up to the minute: it was shot on an iPhone, processed with an app (Camera+), and published as a Blurb Book. You can see the whole book at Blurb (looks best in Full Screen). Seems a model of about the best you can do creating a photographic memento of a vacation. (Josh has many sites; for one, he does weddings.)

The two projects seem opposite in many ways: one shot with a camera that's obsolescent even for a film camera, the other with one that's newfangled even for a digital; one documentary, yet with something of the plainspokenness of the hobbyist photographer, the other romanticized, yet with something of the slickness of the professional. One taken at home and the other on vacation. One about strangers, the other, family. Yet together they probably illustrate, more than anything, that good work has more in common than not, and that a project's success has little to do with the medium that's chosen to create it.

Mike
(Thanks to Richard Parkin and others)

Send this post to a friend

Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Okay, Okay

Yesterday's post came off a little...angry. Not intended. It's nice that somebody thinks a fading C-print is worth nearly four million dollars—it should come under the category of "You've come a long way, baby." It's been only two-thirds of a century, give or take, since Ansel Adams was selling prints for $25 and Imogen Cunningham was asking $10.

And as for Cindy Sherman—why not? The salient point is merely that her picture was the latest more-or-less arbitrary object of contention amongst at least two of the Masters of the Universe. There were other such pictures before hers—more or less arbitrarily chosen also—and there will be others to come. The source of my irritability—if that's how it struck you—is merely this. You know how some of your friends will declare their political position as being some quixotic little tributary of mainstream politics? You know, brother Bill is a libertarian, Aunt Gracie is a millenniallist, that sort of thing (every vote she casts is to encourage strife in the Middle East because the Bible said Palestine has to drown in blood three cubits deep before the Lamb can return, and she'll tell you all about it in the car, when you can't get away and the gesture of clapping your hands over your ears would not go unnoticed)—well, I'm an egalitarian. You do not want to wind me up and trip the go button on that subject with me. It's not the idea of someone spending $4 million on a Cindy Sherman C-print that galls me—it's the idea of someone having $4 million to spend on a C-print that I find appalling. Wealth disparity that extreme is merely a symptom of a broken social system, one in dire need of readjustment. But for the record, all such examples of conspicious consumption get my goat equally—$70 million mansions, $400,000 cars, $80,000 parties.

I'll keep the comments to this post hidden, because we definitely don't want to waste our time today getting hot and bothered about politics (if my own allegiance agitates you, just remember that I'm not in charge of anything, and I don't get to say). I just felt I maybe owed you an explanation for yesterday's apparent dyspepsia.

Mike

WTF No. 1,289

If you'll briefly go back to this week's "Book o' the Week" post, take a quick look at the cover of Photographers A-Z...then answer this question, "which of the pictures on the cover is the world's most valuable photograph?"

Give up? You wouldn't be alone.

It's the one in the upper right. Correct. A print of Cindy Sherman's 1981 picture Untitled sold a week ago last Wednesday at Christie's for $3,890,500 (all that money, and you don't even get a title), making it the most valuable photograph ever. That is, ever in the history of humankind's tenure on planet Earth.

Absurd? Of course. Cindy Sherman, if you don't know the name, earned her bones in the '80s for a series of theatrical, posed self-portraits showing herself in various guises, which supposedly played on the interstitching and the disjointure of appearance with identity. Sort of a heady apotheosis of what any demure high school sophomore girl in Photo 101 class does when she makes a self-portrait of herself in heels, makeup, and teased hair with a little bare shoulder showing.

If you were harboring any vestige of the notion that monetary value in the art market and inherent worth of any kind have any congruence at all, this should put the coffin-lid on that. It's a good picture, and it's a significant picture. It's certainly not a million-dollar picture, in any but a fatally distorted marketplace. Like the one we have.

So what happened here? No idea; I can only surmise that two guys who are much richer than social justice needs anyone to be got into a pissing match with each other and bid well past the point of sober good sense, each egging the other on. (The buyer was presumably bidding with someone else's money. Do I need an "allegedly" with that? Am I going to get in trouble?)

As to the picture...if I were to make a list of the world's 100 most significant photographs—no, 200—this wouldn't be on it. I don't know if any Cindy Sherman would be on it, but then, that's not really the question, because this isn't even the best Cindy Sherman. Amend the foregoing: not 200; 500.

This is a significant sale in one sense: it proves once and for all, if proof were needed, that auction prices for photographs are completely decoupled from any sane notion of artistic worth or significance. Color-coupler prints, a.k.a. Type C, i.e. the same thing you get from your roll of color film at any Walgreen's—aren't even stable.

I can tell you one thing. If I were Cindy, I'd get back into the darkroom and knock out a few more copies of that one poste haste. WTF, indeed.

Mike

Send this post to a friend

Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Driver8: "If someone paid almost $4 million for a Cindy Sherman print, who cares? Should we have a Czar of Arts who determines what art has value and what doesn't? In the Soviet Union, the Committee on Arts Affairs determined what art was fit for public consumption and what wasn't. Is that the alternative we want? Forget it. I love the free art market. It's quirky, unpredictable, and makes no sense to us rational beings. Most artists toil all their lives, make no headway, and cannot fathom why their work is underappreciated. A small handful get 'lucky,' hit the jackpot, and are famous eternally. That's art—that's life. And personally, I kind of like Cindy Sherman."

Mike replies: Just because I wouldn't have it any other way doesn't mean I have to give up my right to ridicule.

Featured Comment by Michael Bearman: "Mike, I'm not sure you're right. Haven't you ever paid more than something was worth just because you liked it and you could? The price is simply relative to the wealth of the purchaser; social justice ain't the American way is it? I just hope they really, really, really, like the print and actually look at it rather than put it into a temperature and humidity controlled bank vault for eternity; but I think that might be in vain."

Featured Comment by Jack: "The buyer is an art 'advisor' to wealthy collectors? Surely it makes financial sense to bump the value of any Sherman photos that they already have in their collection. This sort of thing goes on in financial markets and even ebay all the time. Why should the art world be immune from manipulation? Same game, different toys."

Featured Comment by Hugh Crawford: "Not as wacky as this price.

"My friend Jamie Livingston of '6,697 Polaroids, dated in sequence' fame used to live in the same loft building as Cindy Sherman, and I kept thinking 'that woman I keep seeing in the hall looks really familiar but I can't place her at all.'"

iPad View Cameras, Pathetic Print Papers, and Boxes!

By Ctein

Once again, some shorter items to entertain, educate, and amuse.

The future comes quickly these days
Remember my column a few months back about how one might make an iPad-sized digital view camera? No? You can refresh your memory here.

Well, reader Jim Hayes sent me a link to this wonderful news article, "A Smart-Phone Camera that Offers More than Megapixels: Pelican Imaging's 'array camera' will mean thinner devices and new imaging tricks."

Isn't that great? It's a different end-purpose, but it's exactly the same core concept: using an array of miniaturized cameras to achieve the same result you'd get out of a single much bulkier one.

I wouldn't count on it, but this might even end up mattering to thee and me. If the camera modules aren't too expensive or power-hungry (reasonable assumptions) and if the software is scalable to more individual cameras (who knows?), a pocketable "view camera" becomes a lot more plausible. You could put 1000 microcameras on the back of a smart phone case. So it's not a tablet-sized 8 x 10 view camera); it's "only" a pocketable 4x5 view camera equivalent. I could live with that. And I think you could keep the selling price under a grand, even for relatively modest numbers of units.

I won't get my hopes up. But I am going to be paying attention.

Paper? Still unsatisfactory
Just about a year ago I wrote "They're Selling Us Crap Paper," about the time that Hahnemuhle took over responsibility from Harman for Gloss FB Al paper (and retitled it Gloss Baryta).

For a while, it looked like the situation had gotten better; not really acceptable, but hardly worse than anyone else. But, my last several boxes had 65% of the sheets unusable. That drove me to get in touch with Hahnemuhle, in the person of Holly Sechan, the incredibly helpful and forthcoming Customer Service Manager of Hahnemuhle USA. She promptly forwarded my complaints and sample sheets to the mill, which is going to see what they can do to straighten out the mess. She has queued up an order so that as soon as new paper incorporating the fixes is available I will get it. Every step of the way she's gotten an A+.

The good news is that the mill readily agrees there's a problem. That's over half the battle. Still, it's likely to be a couple of months to fix the problem, and meanwhile I can't rely on this paper. I've switched to Ilford Gold Fibre Silk, which I do not like quite as much but is a close second. I prefer a paper that is a little glossier and has less surface texture, something that looks as close to darkroom air-dried F surface as possible. I'm not sensitive to base color or whiteness, but I really detest textured papers. For example, Epson's Exhibition Fiber is a no-go for me, and I could never live with the Canson Platine Fibre Rag paper that Charlie Cramer uses, lovely as his work looks on it. Gold Fibre Silk looks like the next-best option.

My absolute favorite supply company
Do you know about Uline? They sell shipping supplies—boxes, tubes, folders, envelopes, stiffeners, padding, tape, you name it. If you ship more than a handful of packages of a particular size, you should really be buying your supplies from them.

They don't sell onesies and twosies. Depending on the price and size of the item, a bundle or case lot may contain anywhere from 10 to 100 items. Most of you are thinking that you don't ship anywhere near that much, so why bother?

Three reasons. The first is that they're fabulously cheap. Ten boxes from them cost about the same as two or three boxes at your local packaging store (odds are said store gets their goods from Uline). Example: I just bought 26 double-walled Kraft mailing tubes with metal end caps, 24x4" for $4 apiece (all the prices I give include the sales tax and delivery charges). Being exactly the size and weight I need, I'm also saving several dollars on shipping over what I found at my local store. Another example: flat folding mailers for shipping 11x14" prints run a little over a buck, for 17x22" prints it's $2.70. Even sturdily packed with cardboard sheeting (which Uline also sells), they're cheap and light.

Second, they deliver to your door and they'll bill. Stuff arrives within a couple of days of your ordering, but you don't pay until the end of the month.

Third, the variety is amazing; they have ways of packaging items for shipping that you probably never imagined. If you need to ship over- or odd-sized or especially fragile items, you are far more likely to find the most cost-effective packaging method at Uline than at your local store. Unnecessarily large or heavy packaging costs you more and is more expensive to ship.

Uline will save you lots of money and time spent making up packages.

Ctein

This regular weekly column by Ctein (the name is pronounced "kuh-TINE," and yes, it's his whole name) appears on TOP on Wednesdays.

Send this post to a friend

Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Chad Thompson: "Here at the gallery we use Uline for about everything shipping/packaging related. The tea shop next door, same thing. The only beef I have with them is that everyone in the office that's ever contacted them gets a catalog sent to them. Currently we receive four catalogs about every three months. Which wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that when someone here calls to tell them we only need one catalog Uline puts that person on the mailing list too. Other than that they're great."

Ctein replies: Heh, I know what you mean. A new one seems to come every two months...plus they include one with any shipment I get, even though I'm already on the mailing list. (Readers should understand we're not talking 16-side flimsies—these are 500-page tomes with slick color printing that weigh over a pound.) I keep thinking this has to be a waste of money for them. On the other hand, my entire knowledge about the business of paper-goods selling comes from watching "The Office." So what do I know? Maybe this is really a profit-effective strategy.

Restoring Photos Seminar

If photo restoration interests you and you've got a couple of hours and ten bucks to spare this coming Saturday, you might want to visit RetouchPRO.

Our very own Ctein will be presenting a live-over-the-web 2-hour seminar on photo restoration. You'll get to watch Ctein as he restores damaged color photographs. He'll answer your questions about his technique as he works, and more general questions at the end.

(This event is organized and run by RetouchPRO, not TOP or Ctein; if you've got questions about it, please review the information on their website and direct your questions to them.)

Mike

Send this post to a friend

Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Where Do You Stand on Retro?

So—the long-awaited and much-discussed Fuji X100 is beginning to fall, like the occasional droplets of a coming rain, into users' hands, even though it's currently sold out at B&H Photo and at Amazon. And all sorts of reviews are hitting the web, the best of which is probably the "Conclusion" section of dpreview's (I like their new expanded conclusions, since that's all I read anyway). Image quality—the rubber-meets-road aspect of all new and as-yet little-known cameras, but especially fixed-lens ones—looks very promising. But the more pressing question remains to be answered: Do you like the way it looks?

I have a real love/hate affair with retro. For the most part, I love classicism—the idea that there is an undying essential, proper and right style underlying all temporal and temporary iterations of an ideal. And I like old things—I'm not a neomaniac. And I like the process of refinement that happens with designs that are evolved slowly and thoughtfully over time—you can see the results of that in things like acoustic guitars and small wooden sailboats, or hand woodworking tools. I even buy a magazine called New Old House (it appears to be a bi-annual, which is about as infrequently as a magazine can come out and still be called a magazine), which features new houses purposefully made to look like old ones.

Retro sometimes actually works. Well enough. The not-so-mini Mini.

So why do I hate retro? You really only have to look at this to know instantly. (It's an Excalibur limo, for those of you momentarily too shocked to think straight. Shades of Liberace.) Retro always has at least a whiff—and all too often, more—of tastelessness about it; an ugly underlayment of the contemporary showing through or, worse, an essential misunderstanding of the target style betraying itself in the attempt. However much you like it, it has to be conceded that retro style not easy to pull off. Much as we might admire old originals, cars don't have fenders any more, houses aren't built by carpenters on site from scratch these days, and Elvis is dead.

Done right, or right enough (and the dividing line there is often razor thin), I love it. I fell for the X100 at first glimmer and time hasn't dimmed my admiration, even though I haven't held one in my hand yet (I live in the sticks, remember), and even though I have a photo-friend who felt the opposite at first and whose negative opinion appears to be hardening as time passes. The X100 is channeling the aesthetic of the compact rangefinder 35's of the '60s and '70s—cameras like the Minolta 7sII, Olympus SP35, Olympus RD, and Canon QL 17 G-III, with some flavor notes of M3 thrown in too. I think it does it well enough to convince. What about you?

(And check out the "Category" for this post. Little joke there.)

Mike
(Photos: Fujifilm, Mini Cooper)

Send this post to a friend

Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Ctein adds: And further inflaming the datageek wars, DxO has their RAW benchmarks for the X100. I'm hoping that by the time a review unit gets to me, we're a coupla generations down the firmware. I'll always withhold judgement until I can test something myself, but dpreview's extraordinary shopping list of interface problems is daunting. Like most of the other commenters, 80% of what's on their list won't apply to me... and the other 20% are real killers.

Featured Comment by Jeff Hohner: "Love retro when it's done right. You're right, the line is fine. Design will always be about function and fashion. I enjoy nods to past fashions. They highlight history and the conversation culture has with itself over time.

"But I also believe 'form follows function'—more or less. (Not the strict Modernist formulation of that, everything stripped down to its essentials; there's always room for a little decoration in design, call it style.) As you said, objects, if designed conscientiously, evolve to approach ideal forms. So retro can also serve function, when it returns a tried and true design.

"To wit: the sublime X100.

"I am ecstatic to see camera design return to this form: compact body, dedicated control dials, optical viewfinder. For my kind of photography, this is the most useful tool, the tiny aluminum pencil sharpener (another triumph of design) of cameras. (I still shoot primarily with '60s rangefinders, so perhaps I'm biased. The X100 will be the first large sensor digital camera I will have ever purchased.)

"About the looks of the X100, I don't think it's actually all that. It's still too button-busy for me. And what's that screen for on the back? Looking down on it from the top, however, just makes me want to throw it around my neck and start taking pictures."

Featured Comment by Paul W. Luscher: "I guess my problem with retro is that it's phony, and appears to be an admission that we can't make things as nice anymore. My feeling is that if you wanna go retro, buy real retro. Get an M3 or M4 and learn how to use it, rather than getting a faux-M...."

Featured Comment by Andrew Roos: "The X100 looks...Gorgeous from the front. Gorgeous from the top. Gorgeous from the sides. Cheap and nasty from the back."

Featured Comment by Peter Rees: "I often still take pictures with my beloved 'old' Nikon 35Ti—there's a retro design that justifies itself through the sheer functionality of its gorgeous analogue interface, or what we used to call dials. As for the X100, I don't like it—too many unnecessary curves. Visually, it feels indecisive, perhaps reflecting the haste with which it (and its infamous 'infirmware') were brought to market."

Featured Comment by Ken Tanaka: "If a camera's styling is driven by, and works well with, the camera's functional design it's sublime whether 'retro' or 'futuristic.'  But as accurately noted earlier, this is a rarity.

"If a camera's design is driven by styling it's destined to become a short-lived failure.

"I've not touched an X100 and have no plans to buy one.  Early reports, however, suggest that it's an average APS-C camera hampered by a fixed lens and an version 0.9 operating system.  I think it might be closer to an example of the latter case than the former.

"Ctein's column last week featured the obviously debatable headline 'No One Cares How Hard You Worked.'  But this topic could be headlined 'No One Gives a Damn How Pretty Your Camera Is' with no debate."

Featured Comment by charlie: "Great design transcends time, genre and category."

Mike adds: I'm not sure I necessarily believe in the "form follows function" mantra. Seems to me it often leads to some pretty dispiriting forms. Concrete shell buildings with metal-truss roofs in the exurbs, for instance. Perfect examples of form following function, but bleh. Here's an instance of function being subservient to form. Here's an example of what happened when they realized life would be easier for the mechanics if they just shucked the pretty skin and went with a form-follows-function approach.

Beauty can be its own reward.

Featured Comment by mark lacey: "Well I'm 52 and just bought my first Rolleiflex, a 3.5 E3, and I can tell you I look pretty bloody retro wandering around with that. Might even have to get a tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows!"

Mike replies: ...And a briar walking stick. With a tripod thread mounted in the top.

Featured Comment by Tom M: "$1,600 for a fashion accessory? For that amount of money, I think I would rather buy a $500 canon G12, and two pairs of $400 boots, and have $300 left over for the latest fashion accessory, the iPhone 5, coming out this summer. Ha ha!"

Featured Comment by Shaun Kelly: ""I shot severe weather for over a decade with a pair of Koni Omega Rapids—big, bright viewfinders, leaf shutters, built like tanks. I carried a old Nikkormat and a pair of Spotmatics with fastish primes as backups and for the time crunched/low light shots.

"I went to digital with a Nikon D40x and have not regretted it, but had been looking to upgrade for the last few years. I never did upgrade—I don't need autofocus and half the other bells and whistles, and while sensors improved, it seemed incremental...I coudn't afford the first FX cameras, though I nearly got a D700, but fell into the 'wait 6 months and something better will arrive' trap, and now I'm waiting for a D800, maybe. I can wait; the D40x still takes nice images. The micro 4/3rds with EVF's caught my eye, but I couldn't choose one, so I waited there, too.

"On the other hand, I pre-ordered the X100 months ago and got mine from the second batch of US shipments—easy decision. The OVF is great. The lens is fast and sharp, the leaf shutter is a leaf shutter. I can make good images with it, the controls feel right, the camera feels right in my hand. I really like it.

"Sure, I'd love it if they'd written the firmware right, and I hope the uproar makes them fix it, but it didn't stop me from getting some great storm pictures already. I expect I'll get a lot more storm images with it, and probably a lot of decent indoor low light people shots as well. Plus, as opposed my other cameras I have it with me right now."

Book o' the Week: 'Photographers A-Z'

Photographers A-Z
By Hans-Michael Koetzle

Published by Taschen, April 2011
12.8 x 10.2 x 1.7 inches, 444 pages

-

Reviewed by Geoff Wittig

Two idiosyncratic German publishers stand out in the photo book world. Steidl reflects its founder's passion for photography, exemplified by a range of beautifully produced books for connoisseurs, such as Mike's favorite Bruce Davidson opus, Outside Inside. A recent article on Gerhard Steidl in the New York Times reflected on his almost monastic lifestyle, devoted to his art. The other publisher is Taschen, at first glance the "anti-Steidl." Active members of the L.A. "glitterati," founder Benedikt Taschen and partner/wife Angelika seem to go out of their way to be provocative, with a goodly number of fetish- and sexually-themed titles. If the reflective Outside Inside exemplifies Steidl, Helmut Newton's brash and campy Sumo (the big one) may characterize Taschen. But giant expensive tomes like Sumo are matched by many more affordable titles. Taschen has published a range of very reasonably priced large monographs on photography icons from August Sander to Edward Weston to Paul Outerbridge. They also have released a range of modestly-sized and very inexpensive small softcover monographs. And $10.19 for a hardcover Atget, Paris? Hard to beat for pounds (or kilos) of book per dollar. Reproduction quality has varied from just okay to pretty good. More recent titles include Sebastião Salgado's beautiful book Africa [now out of print —Ed.], with reproductions that are very good indeed.

This is a long-winded preface to Taschen's recent encyclopedic survey of photographers past and present. Photographers A–Z (here's the U.K. link) is a large, heavy volume that provides brief but pithy coverage of literally hundreds of individuals. The author's explicitly stated criterion for inclusion is "those whose contribution to the culture of the photographic image is beyond question, whose work is internationally recognized, presented and discussed–even if controversial." Koetzle acknowledges a preponderance of Americans and Europeans, but there is also extensive representation of Asian and Latin American photographers.

The book's design is clean, slick, pure modernism (rather than post-modern). Most entries get a single page, with a select few extending across the gutter to a second. Each begins with a terse but spot-on summary of the photographer's work. For example, Annie Leibovitz is introduced with "Staged portraits of American celebrities from the worlds of (pop) culture, politics, and high society. Star photographer of the 1980s and 90s in two respects." This is followed by a dense chronological survey of the subject's career and important projects. Next is a telling quote from a photography critic, ranging from the well-known (Vicki Goldberg, A.D. Coleman) to the obscure. Finally there is a list of important exhibitions, followed by (Hallelujah!) a selected bibliography for each photographer, including monographs and projects as well as relevant anthologies containing the artist's work.

A sample spread (pages 46–47) from Taschen's Photographers A–Z.

The photo reproductions included with each entry are not full-bleed large images. Instead, as with Errata Editions, you get reproductions of the covers and 2-page spreads of photo books. These provide you a sample of the photographer's work in book form. And this photo reproduction format spells out this volume's mission. It deliberately treats photo books as the primary location for significant and accessible photography. If you want large, high-quality, beautifully reproduced examples of each artist's work, you will not find them here—but this volume will tell you exactly where they can be found in book form.

Irresistable
This book is an irresistible browse. You can page through the entries and in just a few minutes reacquaint yourself with a dozen great photographers you're already familiar with, and find a bunch of great leads for books to seek out at the library or Amazon. Better yet, you'll get a tantalizing look at great talents you've never heard of, but may find well worth looking into. For me the biggest delight was being reminded of many wonderful photographers who had fallen off my radar screen, but whose work I love. Now I know where to find more of their best images in print.

There are some older books out there with a similar mission. Abrams' PHOTO:BOX featured one or two images from each of 200 famous photographers. Phaidon's Centurywas more explicitly a survey of the 20th century in photography, but covers some of the same ground, with a very well-chosen selection of images. Finally, Phaidon's The Photo Book is the closest equivalent, with "500 pages on 500 photographers," each represented by a single iconic good-quality reproduction. Taschen's new book has a rather more eclectic mix, with a wider selection of Asian and Latin American photographers. In customary Taschen style, there's also a larger representation of nude and erotic subjects—Araki gets two pages, Walker Evans only one. Overall it's a fascinating selection of styles and eras. And for the lover of photo books, the bibliography entries are priceless. Just be forewarned that this feature may end up costing you far more than the purchase price!

Here's the link again.

Geoff-

Send this post to a friend

Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Is The Ford Mustang...Fat? (Open Mike)

Ford Mustang. I believe this is a 2012.

I got to drive a 2011 Ford Mustang GT a few days ago. It's distinguished by a superb all-new 412-hp V8 engine, and it's an experience. A flatbelly in a FWD riceburner tried to jump us at a stoplight and the V8 let out a big BLAP-BLAP-BLAP-BLAP-BLAP roar and slapped him down—as if to say, "I eat Evo for breakfast, sucker." (We needed the soundtrack from Ferris Bueller's Day Off intoning, "Oh, Yeah.") I suspect half the attraction of a V8 like the GT's is the awesome noise it makes.

I've never owned a V8 car. I don't know for sure, but as I cast through my mental filing cabinet I don't think I've ever driven a V8 car before, except for one—my father's beige Buick Electra 225, the "Big Beige," which, near as I can figure, would have been either a 1972, '73, or '74 [picture]. Known as "land yachts," the deuce-and-a-quarters (which, fittingly, more or less coincided with peak oil production in the U.S.) were fully as big as the most ridiculous SUVs, just shaped differently—longer, wider, flatter.

My idea of a great car at the time was a BMW 2002Tii [picture] of sainted memory—my dad and I test-drove it, and that brief experience probably made more of an impression on me than any car has before or since. Dad had owned a dark blue Mustang fastback [picture] in 1965, but he got rid of it, mainly because he got it stuck (or perhaps I should say "it got him stuck") in the woods when he was trying to leave a salt lick out for the deer in the ravine opposite our house, and because he hated bucket seats (also one of the reasons he didn't like the little BMW).

As of 2011, the Mustangs are a different breed of horse*. Both the V8 and the V6 engines are all-new, and both new engines are superlative for their cost—the V6 especially. The V6 is the first engine in the world to put out 300+ horsepower and score a highway mileage rating of more than 30 mpg in the car it comes in. Like the original Taurus SHO, it makes the current V6 Mustang a car you'd buy just for its engine.

Of course, I approach the whole world aesthetically...and I just can't help thinking that the car I drove is just...well...a little...fat. Its bulging snout contributes to its aggressive look, for sure, but there's also just a whole lot of car in that car. Amusingly, and suspiciously, Ford doesn't specify curb weight in the car specs on its website, but other sites peg it at a portly 3,605 lbs. That's only half a ton less than my father's early '70s land yacht—and half a ton more than his '65 Mustang Fastback. (The '72 2002Tii scales in at a mere 2,262 lbs.)

Coach McCarthy

Of course, maybe the Mustang is right in step. We Americans seem to be getting more portly, too. Take our Coach for instance. We love Mike McCarthy here in 'Sconsin. He's a fine guy, smart and unpretentious, down to earth but obviously very successful. And I'm the last person to criticize anyone for the way they happen to look. But let's be honest: he's not...er...dainty, is he? Coach is the fireplug type. So let's just put it this way, before I stray too far into political incorrectness: if the 2011 Mustang GT were a person, it would be a Mike McCarthy. Doncha think? I'm just sayin'.

It's probably impossible for the Mustang to go back in time entirely to the original's 2400–2800 curb-weight range. But my impression is that the ol' Bullet could sure stand to lose a few. Like most of the guys who drive 'em, probably. Can't exclude myself from that club, unfortunately.

But to get back to the kind of car I like best—a present-day, more extreme counterpart of the early '70s 2002—take a look at this video, especially the marvelous little snippet at about 2:18 (start it a few seconds earlier if you're only going to watch the snip)—if you're a car pilot, seeing that is guaranteed to make you feel better. I've watched it about eighteen times. Yowza.

Mike

*Did you know that the only difference between a "pony" and a "horse" is size? That's all. You might say the Pony Car has become a Horse Car.

(P.S. The usual apologies if anyone can't see the video. It's called "Caterham R500 vs Ducati by autocar.co.uk" if you'd like to search for it elsewhere.)

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

Send this post to a friend

Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Leslie Ashe:

"Your comments about the BMW 2002tii reminded me of my days photographing rally cars in Ireland and U.K. Above is a picture of what was probably the ultimate in this machine—a fully lightened 2002tii on the Donegal International Rally 1975 driven by German Rally ace Achim Warmbold. It was a right-hand corner and the tail is just drifting out. An impressive sight and sound. Pentax Spotmatic 1000 (200mm lens) on Tri-X rated at 800 ISO. No auto metering or focusing in those days!"

Featured Comment by Christian: "It's seemed to me that every generation of Mustang gets chubbier aesthetically."

Mike replies: Yes, an endemic, pan-manufacturer problem with car models. The Honda Civic is now bigger than the early Accords, for instance.

Featured Comment by Joe: "In the mid-'60s, my father was president of the local chapter of the Jaycees, and the group decided to raffle a car to raise money. Through the local Ford dealer, somehow, they got a hold of one of the very first Mustangs, just before they were officially released to the public—so this must have been spring or summer 1964, just as I was about to enter fifth grade. And one weekend afternoon just before the car was given to the raffle winner, my father took me for a spin in the thing, top down, through the mountain roads around our town. I'm not really a car guy, and I have only a few vivid memories of that drive, but I can tell you I've never stopped finding those early Mustangs beautiful and wonderful machines."

Does Equipment Matter?

Wow, yesterday was a hard day. It's funny how much of life with a dog is based on mutual understandings—you don't realize how much until all your normal routines are interrupted. I'm sure things will get better as we ease into a routine, but we're in the adjustment phase now. Lulu was up all night on Thursday night, so I got no sleep either. Yesterday was one of the rare times I wished I had a laptop—I ended up sitting with her in the kitchen (where she's confined) most of the day, between trips outside and changing the ice packs. No computer for the dog nurse.

And of course there's no rest for the weary. The PA system at the high school down the street started blaring at 8 a.m. this morning—track meet—thanks for that—and an early bird neighbor decided that 8:45 was plenty late enough for anyone to sleep, so he might as well fire up his chainsaw.

I like my neighborhood, but the noise pollution can be surprisingly bad. A few weeks ago, someone decided that it was a good idea to gun his car down our street at one o'clock in the morning and sound a long blast on the horn. That happened three nights in a row. Just when I was beginning to reconsider my stance on automatic weaponry, it stopped. Knock wood.

A little logic
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I notice—and have noticed, consistently—that people seem to have a hard time understanding the logical distinctions between various statements about the importance of equipment. The exchange usually goes like this:

Me: Good equipment doesn't guarantee good results.

Typical responses: "I hate it when people say equipment doesn't matter." "Sometimes particular jobs require certain kinds of equipment." "Better equipment can improve your results in some cases."

The problem is that all three of those responses are, well, non-responsive. Equipment does matter, in all kinds of ways. And, yes, for various kinds of pictures you do need the correct equipment—sometimes because it's nice to have, sometimes because it's necessary. And, certainly, I've seen many cases over the years when otherwise good work was let down by poor equipment or technique. But that's not what I said. I said good equipment doesn't guarantee good results, and that statement is not logically inconsistent with any of the three classes of responses listed above.

Cravings
I sometimes wonder how many people have a favorite kind of equipment or a favorite material not in terms of what they like to use, but in terms of what they like to look at. Does that describe you?

I know people who love large format so much that they just aren't really moved by other kinds of photographs. I definitely know people who love and crave color in photographs.

I know people who say they love the look of Leica lenses, but I proved to myself long ago that I can fool those people. It's evil, I know, but if you show a Leicaphile a picture made with a fine lens of another marque and tell them it was shot with a Leica lens, more often than not they won't be able to tell the difference. Might as well keep 'em happy, then.

A Tri-X 400 picture. And it was taken with a Leica lens!!**

I will, obviously, look at anything. I'm equipment-agnostic and material-agnostic (and digital-vs.-analog agnostic, too). But if I search my brain, I think what I like best—the look I crave—is Tri-X 400*. (Maybe some evil person could fool me there, too.) I haven't shot any in years, but it's the look I crave. If I had to look at nothing but pictures made with Tri-X 400 for the rest of my life, I could live with that***.

Mike the Dog Nurse

*Tri-X 320 is a completely different film, and should have been given a different name.

**No it wasn't.

***I really need to get a new scanner so I can post some of my Tri-X work online. I am good and properly jinxed when it comes to flatbed scanners—starting in about 2001 I bought three, each of which cost more than the last, and each of which broke in short order. (If you look closely at the picture above, you can see the banding problem that was the downfall of scanner #1.) I then decided I really, really needed a dependable scanner even if I had to pay a lot for it, so I bought an Epson V-700. It lasted all of four months before it stopped working. It's still sitting here, mocking me. I know there are lucky people out there in the world who own scanners that actually work, but fate seems determined that I shall not be one of them.

Send this post to a friend

Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Richard Howe: "I think you can make a stronger statement than 'good equipment doesn't guarantee good results,' namely: nothing guarantees good results. I've made lots of bad pictures with my Leica lenses (and a few good ones, I hope) and some good pictures with my (now antique) Olympus C2000 point & shoot (vintage 1999). The only thing that really seems to help is experience, plus something good to take a picture of, and a little luck too, of course. A friend of mine used to say to me (in another context), 'if you want a guarantee, buy a refrigerator.' I think that about sums it for me."

Featured Comment by Benjamin R. George: "I think the problem here is that making any statement about the relationship between equipment and results amounts to walking in on a very long (and, for the most part, very stupid) internet debate, and as soon as you enter the room, people will try to assign you to a side and then argue with you by arguing against that side's alleged platform.

"Everybody's read some hyperbolic claim about how equipment never matters. Everybody's read some other claim about how if you aren't willing to spend in excess of $5k you just aren't serious about photography. Anytime somebody says something about equipment mattering or not mattering, some portion of the audience will inevitably hear one of these extremes, even if the actual claim being made is a lot more subtle, and has no direct logical connection to either."

Featured Comment by Lynn: "The equipment between my ears produces my best photos, but I do admit it suffers from down time, inexplicable random errors, reliability issues, and can be easily distracted by dogs, children, and refrigerators. I find giving it regular exercise tends to produce better results. Oh, and it does tend to gravitate towards Tri-X and Kodachrome 25 looks, because those were the factory settings it grew up with."

Featured Comment by Paul Amyes: "For a while I taught photography. The thing that I hated was the whole issue of equipment. You had a class of 20 young people who wanted you to hand them a shopping list of exotica for their parents to buy them. They were visibly upset with the college requirement 'a 35mm SLR with with 50mm lens such as the Pentax K1000.' Honestly it was like being in front of a lynch mob baying for blood. They all felt that their creativity was being stiffled by the lack of equipment."

Featured Comment by John H. Maw: "I have found that new equipment often gets in the way of good shooting. It takes time for the equipment to become transparent to the process. In other words I work much better with stuff that I have had for some time and that I can use almost without thinking."

The Three Biggest Mistakes Amateur Photographers Make

I don't usually take to the bully pulpit to either disagree with or amplify something Ctein has written—his column, his topic, his bailiwick—but it seems to me that the insight in his most recent column could be extended to two more common mistakes. Just my opinion, of course.

First
So, first, there's Ctein's (or Bob Nadler's) "nobody cares how hard you worked." Or didn't work. What he's saying by that is that sometimes you can make really outstanding photographs by working very, very hard at it—and sometimes, you can work really hard and have it come out a total bust anyway.

That's not to say you should never work hard. All it means is that it's not the extent of your effort that will determine the success of the result—it's still the success of the photograph itself that matters.

This always makes me think of an ace salesman I once knew whose nickname was "Gun" (because he always hit what he aimed at). I asked him once how much effort he would put into making a sale, and he said "however much it takes." He then told me tales of a $50,000 sale that fell into his lap and required no effort from him at all, and spending eight hours over three days to make a $275 sale. His theory was that the effort evened out—the important thing to him was to decide what the customer was going to buy and then score that sale, whatever it took.

How much effort should you give it? As much as it takes. If you go back to my three pictures in the "Open Mike: Worry" post last Sunday, one of them required a great deal of work to get. Can you tell which?

If it's a big mistake to think that lots of effort must necessarily be rewarded (in the Comments, Soeren Engelbrecht provided a good example of a picture attempt where elaborate effort did not pay off), it's also a mistake to think that something you didn't work on can't be worth anything. One of my all-time favorite pictures was one I don't remember taking—a literally thoughtless snapshot.

Edward Weston worked really hard on Pepper No. 30...

...And most of J.-H. Lartigue's most famous pictures were
snapshots he took as a teenager.

In the end I think I agree most with Ed, who, in the Comments, said, "What Bob Nadler should have said is that no one cares about how much effort you put into a shot if the picture in the end sucks big time. No work, no blood, sweat and tears...can compensate for lack of picture quality. But if the shot is great and you can see the work involved you can appreciate both the trouble and the end result."

So that's one.

Second
The second big mistake is the belief that some sort of special camera, or process, or material is automatically going to result in better pictures. It just doesn't work that way. I've certainly written about this before, but the best way to ratiocinate your way to the correct conclusion is to reflect that there have been spectacularly successful pictures taken with the very worst cameras ever made—toy cameras with plastic lenses, for instance—and there have certainly been plentiful numbers of resoundingly unsuccessful pictures made with the very best equipment money can buy.

When I edited Photo Techniques, I used to refer to this as the "magic solution" syndrome, because of the unfortunate prevalence of people who believed their pictures were special because of what developer they used. (Today, amateurs tend to prize exaggerated color, sharpness, and high resolution, which is why a great deal of pictures are ruined by being too colorful, too sharp, and/or too detailed—certainly more than the opposite.)

What matters is how appropriately the tools and materials are used, and how appropriate they are to the picture. A bad picture isn't made better because you took it with the lens you saved up for for eight months, or because you just learned a new sharpening technique you're enamored of, or because you used the same paper developer Edward Weston did*.

TR Smith's picture in Tuesday's post strikes me as a particularly successful picture, but he also told me his work earned an honorable mention in the SoHo Photo Krappy Kamera Competition. In other words, I'm guessing it wasn't the value of the camera he used that made that picture good.

Third
Moving along—the third most common mistake, I believe, is when people think the best picture they got in a promising situation has to be a good one. I've seen this time and again with photographers of different ages, different levels of experience, and several eras now. They were convinced they they had encountered something visually promising. They knew were on the trail. They had an idea of what they wanted. They felt the possibilities. They could even visualize it. They knew they had an opportunity. There was a picture there.

But they didn't get it. For whatever reason, they missed the shot.

It's a bitter pill to swallow, and some people just can't face it. But you have to learn to accept it. Just because you filled up a whole card and had high hopes doesn't necessarily mean there has to be a great shot in there somewhere. Maybe there isn't. Maybe you just missed it. Happens to the best of them.

•     •     •

The unifying theme in all three of these things is that you have to learn to look at the end result and let go of everything you know about what did or didn't go into it. Which is which is for each photographer to decide for themselves, but a photograph either works or it doesn't—never salvage. You can't make pot gold out of pork rinds. Don't bother trying to salvage an almost-had-something-there situation, or an I-took-so-many-shots-there-must-be-a-good-one-in-here-somewhere scenario, or a but-I-worked-so-hard-for-it-it-must-be-good result. It never works. Sometimes the photography gods smile, and sometimes they don't. That's what makes it so interesting.

Mike

*That was one of my favorite quotes from my days at the magazine. I had rejected a portfolio and the photographer, in a high state of dismay, blurted out, "But you don't understand—those prints were developed in Amidol!" Still makes me chuckle.

Send this post to a friend

Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by David: "Mike—I'm not sure whether it’s a 4th mistake or fits into one of your 3, but I suggest a mistake we amateurs make (let me re-phrase—'what I do too frequently') is the emotional connection to an image. Because we have a strong emotional connection with the subject especially at the time of making the photograph, we create a strong attachment that can overshadow the external 'value' of the image. Not sure if I'm making myself clear, because obviously many (all?) effective images do result from the photographer's strong emotional response to the subject—the trick for me is keeping the emotion and the image separate when trying to judge the photograph’s effectiveness."

Mike replies: David, I'm not sure how much we're really at odds, but I have to disagree with you there. I think the best hope any of us has is to make pictures we really have an emotional attachment (one might say "response") to. In fact, I think the idea that we're somehow beholden to conform to exogenous tastes and make our pictures appeal to a large anonymous public is a very good way to get off track. Some of the best artists—photographers included—follow their own muse, and then hope the world catches on to them. Art and music history are littered with people who were not well understood at first but were later considered geniuses. Also, art history is definitely littered with examples of people who were celebrated as geniuses in their own time precisely because they were astute at judging mass taste and current trends—but whom history has forgotten, or nearly so. I suspect the best chance we have is to be as true to ourselves as possible. "Emotional connection" as you put it is not so much a mistake as it is a clue.

Featured Comment by Chris: "On the pitfalls of emotional attachments to our own images, I think I agree with David's Featured Comment—that is, provided the emotion is connected not to the resulting picture (in which case, I think Mike is on the right track) but rather to our memory of the event, or what we felt when making the picture, or anything else that doesn't show up in the final image. I think this is something Winogrand is often credited with talking about—his method was evidently to wait long enough between taking the photo and developing/reviewing it that he could evaluate the picture (including his emotional reaction to it) without getting sidetracked by emotions that don't reside in the photo. Ultimately, I still choose the photos I have the deepest emotional attachment to for my portfolio over the crowd-pleasers, but only after I am reasonably sure that the emotion really relates to the picture, and isn't just in my head."

Featured [partial] Comment by TR Smith: "Mike, you mention my photo included in Tuesday's 'Street Photos' Comments and I thought I'd confirm your hunch—it was taken with a Holga. I love shooting and developing film, but digital has so many conveniences it can be hard to resist. I just took delivery of a new Fuji X100.... [The rest of Tim's comment consists of his impressions of the X100, which you can read in the Comments section. —Ed.]

Lulu Update

Going back to last Sunday's Open Mike post, Lulu made it through her surgery fine today—the veterinary surgeon said the operation went very well and she's optimistic that Lulu will heal quickly.

Lulu's pretty zapped, and has a giant thick bandage on her left hind leg from top to bottom. But she was allowed half rations for dinner (and a cup of water) and downed everything, albeit with somewhat less than her usual gusto. I've come home armed with bottles of pills and pages of instructions for her recuperation. The vet says tonight will be her worst night.

I'm tired out, and I didn't even have anything done to me....

Mike

P.S. Grateful appreciation once again for all the kind words, thoughts, and deeds.

No One Cares How Hard You Worked

By Ctein

Take a look at the photograph below. It's one I'm really proud of, and I love it. Do you love it, too? Great!

The Apollo-Saturn 1 launch combination that comprised the U.S. part of the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz mission

Not so much? Well then you aren't my friend anymore, he said petulantly.

Just kidding. Still, the next couple of paragraphs are specifically targeted at you less-admiring folks.

Making that photograph was a significant challenge. Frankly, I couldn't have done it without medium format color negative film. Back in 1975, there was no other way to record that kind of detail and most especially that kind of subject luminance range. From density readings off the negatives, I estimate there is way over 10 stops, probably 12 stops of range from the white rocket to the most tenuous wisps of the floodlight beams at the corners of the photograph. I wanted to get it all. Well, I  nailed it, just barely squeezing that range of tone and detail into what the film would accept.

Only problem was I had no idea how I was going to print it. I knew that when I made the photograph. I just figured that at least if I had it on film there was some chance that I might figure out how to print it. Keep in mind that this was before I had started making dye transfer prints; I was strictly a chromogenic printer. I hadn't even yet mastered contrast control masking, although I'd heard of it; all I really knew from was dodging and burning-in.

It took me three years and innumerable tests to figure out how to print that photograph. Eventually I learned how to make an exotic contrast control mask that pulled in the highlight and shadow range without destroying the contrast and tonal separation there, so that it would print decently. Learning dye transfer was a big help; it could portray and render a much longer tonal range than a conventional print.

So, this was a photograph I made on faith with all my technical skill with the camera, assuming I would learn enough later to be able to print it. And after dozens of months of study and work, I was there. For decades, this stood as the most difficult photograph I ever printed.

Now, here's my question for those of you who didn't like the photograph all that much: Do you like it better now? I mean as a photograph, as art, not as a lesson in technique?

Yup, that's what I thought.

When I showed this photograph to Bob Nadler, of Camera 35 fame, the better part of 30 years ago, I started telling him everything I gone through to make that wonderful print. He cut me short, saying "Nobody cares how hard you worked."

I've never forgotten that. It's a really, really important lesson that all photographers should take to heart. If someone already likes your photograph, how hard you worked doesn't matter. If they don't, telling them how hard you worked is not going to change their mind.

Ctein

Follow-up: The free PDF of my book Post Exposure that I put up at my website a few weeks back (vis "Something Old and Something New") had some font garbage in it on the copyright page that caused a few readers grief. I've now put up a repaired version (fingers firmly crossed). Enjoy!

Ctein's weekly column appears every Wednesday on TOP.

Send this post to a friend

Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

On Street Photography

Photo by bongo

As I so often am, I've been impressed by the quality of the responses to the "Street Models" post—in fact I've held off uploading some newer posts because I didn't want to kill the conversation too early.

I thought I'd present four of the comments to highlight them a little more than if I merely added them to the bottom of the post. (I've edited them somewhat, too, as I would if they were editorial submissions.) They're only loosely responsive to each other, and they don't add up to a single argument, but I thought the points the four commenters were making were thoughtful and intriguing—as were the things many other commenters had to say, too. As I usually do with comments, I've used the blog "handles" the commenters themselves chose to use, which in some cases might be their real names. Thanks to bongo, Jeff Hohner, TR Smith, and Steve Jacob.

Opinions about street photography are varied and sometimes volatile; it's a bit of a hot topic. People have strong beliefs about their own ethics and practices, which is no doubt as it should be. Read accordingly. —Ed.

bongo: Once you ask someone for permission, or pay them, they are posing—they are doing the thing they do when they are in front of a camera. It's not street photography in the traditional sense. It's like taking pictures at the zoo and calling it wildlife photography.

Photo by Jeff Hohner

Jeff Hohner: I agree with bongo (and probably others). Street photography proper is a very specific thing. It should not be confused with "street shooting," the topic of Kirk Tuck's article. Kirk's tips are good but most don't apply to those wishing to practice traditional "Street." For that form, candid shooting is essential, as bongo explained.

While I try to respect the "social contract" Kirk mentions, I shoot first, and address the subject's reaction, if any, later.

I shoot in my home town. I shoot with standard and wide lenses to capture scenes of people, not portraits of them. I try to capture something that's happening, an event that involves one or more people. Their surroundings provide context to the document and richer compositional elements to the photograph.

My goal is to make strong photographs that capture people being themselves in the here and now, so that future people will have pictures of our era to enjoy the way we enjoy looking at photos from past eras. Street photography is a form of documentary photography (with all its issues and more) that takes as its subject society and human nature. Widens it right out. As such, it's one of the grandest, most open-ended projects possible and one of the most baffling to people. "How can taking pictures of things so ordinary be important, and important enough to risk offending people?"

Usually, though, I find people get it. On the rare occassion when a nod of acknowledgement or smile of gratitude doesn't reassure a cranky subject, a quick explanation usually does. I tell people I'm taking pictures of the street, of life in the city, and they readily understand that they're part of that, in the middle of it, along with me and my camera.

Sorry to go on, but I feel strongly about the importance of street photography especially at this point in history. There's a chance that the shape of things will change dramatically in the next 50 years because of people's reluctance to address global climate change. Pictures of how we lived in the early years of this century will become even more important if so.

Photo by TR Smith

TR Smith: I have done a great deal of candid street photography in New York City the past couple of years. I always use a wide lens, and always get close to the subject. I never ask permission because I am not interested in taking posed portraits. I want to capture people as they are when they are un-self-conscious and reacting only to their environment—not to the camera. People very seldom realize I am taking their photograph because I don’t telegraph it with my movements. Sometimes a bystander sees what is going on (I don't conceal the camera in any way), and occasionally I am asked what I'm doing. I'm generally happy to explain. I carry 4x6 prints, and a postcard of a gallery exhibit where one of my photos won first place. I often get quite enthusiastic while explaining, and almost always notice their interest fall as my enthusiasm rises—photos of ordinary people doing ordinary things just don't engage most curiosity seekers. I've had security and police question me, and they were always satisfied with the explanation. For every person who seemed upset there have been at least an equal number who wished me well. Occasionally someone sees me and jumps in front of me saying, "Take my picture! Take my picture!" More than once this has been a homeless person.

I think that "social contracts," and citations of moral and ethical restraints are a lot of hooey. I've even seen lists of so-called unspoken rules for street photographers. Your restraints are a reflection of your views, mine are mine. I am aware that the potential for misunderstanding is probably greatest when taking photographs of children, so I probably do that the least, but sometimes I can't resist.

I think of my endeavor as essentially a journalistic one, but not for any contemporary journal. My imagined audience is viewers a hundred, two hundred years from now who are looking for a sense of what it was to be here, now, where I am, where we are. From that perspective many of the most interesting images would likely come from breaking commonplace social conventions, and going where people do not often go, looking where people do not often look. In my case that consists of paying attention to things that we generally pass by without looking at closely. Things forbidden us by the quickness of the moment, and the social constraint against looking. That said, I always follow the restrictions of the law, and do not stalk my subjects. I also avoid celebrities—they're done to death. My personal ethos holds that people who peek out from behind trees with long lenses are gutless wimps, but that's OK because that long lens probably isn't likely to give them a very satisfying shot.

Photo by Steve Jacob

Steve Jacob: I agree with Jeff Hohner, but I think his level of engagement (and probably that of most TOP readers, who are an exceptionally civilised lot) is fine. You are still being respectful, however informally.

But the truth is that some photographers are pushing people way past their comfort zone and causing the rest of us problems.

Some people are simpleminded enough to think that the so called "right" to shoot in public (something of a misnomer) gives them carte blanche to shoot people whether they like it or not and to get quite obnoxious "in defence of their rights."

This is a misunderstanding of the situation and the law.

What the law implies (U.K. and U.S.) is that people cannot object on privacy grounds to having their photo taken in public, but that does not preclude them objecting on the grounds of aggressive harrassment, obstruction, or stalking, if such occurs in the taking of said photo.

In other words the behaviour of the photographer is significant and there is a "line." Because that line is hard to define it's hard to prosecute because the burden of proof is on the victim and without witnesses or proof of intent, it's hard to win. The police, knowing this, rarely intervene.

However many city administrations across the world (not just New York) are looking to draft legislation which addresses this in response to public concern, specifically with regard to stalking children. Like it or not, it is becoming a problem facilitated by digital photography (no longer have to rely on a "friend" at the drug store).

Legislation is a blunt instrument. It will mean innocent photographers will end up in court having to defend themselves and the whole practice may end up being associated with stalking, which will not be good for anyone's image.

I believe we, as a group, need to take action to distance ourselves from this type of behaviour. A public discussion will show, hopefully, that photographers are sensitive to such concerns and that most of us are nice, thoughtful, decent people (if a tad eccentric and geeky) but that what most of us are trying to do is simply make interesting images.

[posted by] Mike
(Photos used with permission)

Send this post to a friend

Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Kirk: "Kirk is right and Bongo is right. When I write I don't mean to create rigid rules that must be followed like traffic laws I mean to convey the spirit with which we should approach our subjects.

"If anyone looks at my own website they will find a collection of shots that were both direct and candid. But the spirit is the same. My only complaint about the whole debate is how darn literal many people can be. But I just chalk it up to being a poor writer. I must not have explained what I meant clearly enough.

"Tacit approval. Go with the flow. A spirit of collaboration. None of these things are at odds with the practice of street photography.

"Wonderful to have a conversation like this instead of devolving into another round of technical chat."

Featured Comment by Ryan: "While Kirk's article offered a nice set of guidelines for photogs to avoid offending any would-be subjects, these nifty sunglasses will ward off any would-be street photographers who may not necessarily subscribe to the same set of standards:

Random Excellence: Ainslie Ellis, 1970

Ainslie Ellis's contact sheet of portraits of the late Tony Ray-Jones was loaned to the National Media Museum, Bradford (U.K.), by Anna Ray-Jones, for the museum's show "The Lives of Great Photographers." According to the notice in The Independent, the exhibition pairs "portraits of the masters with some of their most famous works, alongside illuminating snippets from their notebooks."

Mike
(Thanks to readers numerous, perspicacious, and erudite)

UPDATE: Amplify that last! I logged into the comment moderation page to find more than eighty comments responding to my earlier request for help in locating the source of this. For the sake of not clogging up the comments to this post I've elected not to publish them all, but thanks to everyone.

Send this post to a friend

Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Hillary Clinton Photoshopped Out of Situation Room Photo

This is one of the stranger things I've encountered in the field of journalism where photographs and photography is concerned.

Photo: Failed Messiah

Unless this is some sort of hoax, it appears that the orthodox Jewish newspaper Di Tzeitung has published the Pete Souza photograph of the White House situation room at the time of the mission to eliminate Osama bin Laden—but removed the two women in the scene from the picture. The paper ran the picture with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Counterterrorism Director Audrey Tomason gone.

The paper reportedly observes a religious proscription against depicting women.

I won't judge that, but the strange thing here is that responsible journalists would then run the picture at all. The manipulation clearly falsifies the scene and the historical record, and just as clearly violates the White House terms of use for the photograph. Rabbi Jason Miller, writing at The Jewish Week, also says, "To my mind, this act of censorship is actually a violation of the Jewish legal principle of g'neivat da'at (deceit)"—although I can't be the judge of that either.

It seems to me that if you can't publish pictures of women, then you can't publish pictures of women; okay. But to publish an altered photograph is wrong in several ways.

Read commentary at TIME.com's Newsfeed, which has links to other sites reporting the story.

Mike

UPDATE: Di Tzeitung has issued a statement of apology to the White House and the State Department that reads in part, "Our photo editor...in his haste, did not read the 'fine print' that accompanied the picture, forbidding any changes." The statement notes that "the Jewish laws of modesty are an expression of respect for women, not the opposite." (Thanks to juan for this.)

UPDATE #2: I've received several emails from practicing orthodox Jews who either say they have not heard of this practice or that it is, in their experience, not typical of orthodox practice.

Send this post to a friend

Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Peter Klein: "The Yiddish-speaking ultra-Orthodox ('Haredi') Jewish sect for which this paper exists is very small. Most mainstream Orthodox Jews would find their interpretations of Jewish religious law quite extreme. As would more liberal Jews (such as myself) who make up the vast majority of American Jews.

"Now, to explain (though not to justify) what the paper did.... In Orthodox Judaism, one follows all 613 commandments in the Torah (the 'thou shalts' and 'thou shalt nots'). Over the centuries, a body of Oral Law evolved, via discussions among learned rabbis about how to best follow these commandments. This was later written down in the Talmud.

"The Oral Law includes a concept called 'Building fences around the Torah,' whereby in order to be sure that they always follow the original commandment, the community follows a stricter practice. This is how 'Thou shalt not seeth a kid in the milk of its mother' became the elaborate 'kosher' practice of separate dishes for meat and milk-based foods in traditional households, and a prohibition of eating one kind of food within several hours of the other.

"What Di Tzeitung did is an extreme example of the above. To be sure that they don't break a Biblical commandment about female modesty, they simply don't publish pictures of women, period. In this case, the temptation to publish a newsworthy picture that included women was too great, so they found a 'creative solution.'

"In their minds, they are simply following God's law, as interpreted by the rabbis they follow. The rest of us may roll our eyes, but that is irrelevant to them."