The Online Photographer

Hammertime

Photographers are fond of saying that painters don't argue about brushes (not entirely true) and that carpenters don't argue about hammers. But what if they did?

Mike
(Thanks to numerous tipsters)

P.S. Seems like something I might have written.

P.P.S. There really is such a thing as a Stiletto hammer (pictured above).

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Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Mel: "So if all you have is a camera, does the world look like a photograph?

Mike replies: Now that you mention it, it kinda does.

Featured Comment by HD: "Carpenters do argue about hammers. Metal versus wood versus fiberglass handles. California framers versus Bluegrass. Old ones versus new ones. Size, weight, angle for different purposes. Smooth versus serrated. Who has the best nail puller. How to replace the handle. Which one has the best feel. Which one hurts your elbow less. Which ones are good at first but then start to sting. But carpenters don't have blogs and review websites about hammers. I think. I didn't Google for hammerreview.com (and now I'll have to go register that domain!). But I did spend years framing houses, and running framing crews, and we argued about hammers all the time. More appropriately: discussed. On the other hand, it's the rare hammer that costs more than $100, and your co-workers have the other ones, so they're easy to try out and figure out what you like. With the caveat that you don't use my Bluegrass serrated face hammer as a nail-puller, in which case you'll never borrow my hammer again.

"P.S. We argued about nails, nail coatings, nailguns, air hoses, compressors, saws, saw blades, extension cords, wood, plywood, who has the best wood, framing techniques, architects, design choices, owners, neighbors, contractors, roof framing methods, breaktime, and where to eat lunch too."

Beautiful Italia

David Hoptman, Sorano

When David Hoptman first advertised his Tuscan Light Workshops on TOP, he was living in Tuscany. Although he doesn't live there any more, he'll be leading a workshop back to his old haunts in Tuscany in May, which he considers the ideal time of year to visit the region.

I don't know David personally, but he's been a professional photographer for more than 30 years and has taught photography at the University Lorenzo De Medici in Florence. He's an experienced workshop instructor, but, moreover, he lived in Tuscany for years, and says "I know the area like the back of my iPhone." Down to which local restaurants are the best. That's what you want, a tourguide who really knows the ground. He's still got a few more places left for this year's workshop—here's the web page, from which you can download the brochure.

And if you think I'm jealous, yes, I would love to throw my responsibilities to the winds and take off for a week of shooting in Tuscany with such an expert tourguide. Yes, indeed. Something that will have to await my retirement, I guess. (Retirement? What's that?) Sigh.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Bradley Hsi: "We went to David's workshop in 2010, what an enjoyable experience. Good food, good wine and most of all good learning experience!"

Featured Comment by Ilkka Valkila: "The Tuscan Light ads here years ago are very much responsible for me falling in love with Tuscany. Of course I had seen lots of great photos from the area before, but only then I started dreaming of actually traveling there. Unfortunately I have not been able to participate in the workshop, but I have traveled there twice on my own so far and intend to go back when I have the chance. Maybe some day even the workshop fits my schedule."

Congratulations to Chuck

I got my copy of LensWork in the mail the other day, as usual—the March/April issue—and was pleased to open it to find a familiar name. Well, actually several of the names were familiar—Nick Brandt is in this issue. But Chuck Kimmerle, who is at least intermittently a TOP reader and occasionally a commenter, has a featured portfolio, from his work done in Zion National Park.

He's been in LensWork before, but I figured congratulations are in order anyway. It's pretty prestigious to be featured in LensWork. Even just once.

The next issue is the magazine's one-hundredth. That's quite an accomplishment too, also deserving of congratulations.

I wonder how the iPad version of LensWork looks on the new display? Seems to me that might be a very good way to look at it.

Mike

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A Print for Free

We're having a print sale on Sunday. You may have heard. (One reader wrote to say he's sick of hearing. Buck up, little soldier—TOP has to grind its grain, after all. That's how we keep coming to you for nothing. Begrudge us not our loaf of bread.)

On the eve of Peter Turnley's first print sale on TOP, a year and a half ago, both of us—Peter in New York, I in Wisconsin—went to bed worried. What if the sale was a bust? You never know. It would have been bitterly disappointing to sell only 40 prints—or, worse, 20, or ten.

The next day was...well, Peter described it as "really, one of the most exhilarating days of my life." Hundreds of orders came pouring in, and the sale was a resounding success. Ctein's first sale sold more in terms of numbers, but Peter's became our #1 sale in terms of earnings.

It's exciting to be a part of something like that (success is fun).

This time around, we're not so anxious—but that's allowed some other thoughts and considerations to come to the fore. You've heard me say this so many times that expressions about broken records might be coming to mind, but it's been gratifying to hear so many people tell us that our sales are the very first time they've ever bought an original photograph. One newly married couple comes to mind—I think they bought one of Charlie Cramer's beautiful prints. They said it was their first joint purchase of art as a couple. They hoped it wouldn't be their last. (That's an older married couple, in the picture. No word on whether it was their cat.)

So Peter and I got to thinking (and talking). Recently, on an unrelated matter, I sent a couple of prints to a supporter of the site and included a note that said "one to keep, one to give away!" Wouldn't it be nice if we could make it easy for you to give one of these Paris prints to one of your friends?

We can't do one-for-one—the prints just cost too much to produce. They're printed by Voya Mitrovic in Paris on premium gelatin-silver fiber-based paper; washed and flattened; signed both by Voya and Peter; Peter then flies them to New York, where they're boxed and shipped. And it all has to be done quickly. It's a lot of work.

But Peter still wants to be able to provide a print for you for free.

So here's what we're doing on Sunday. Anyone who buys three or more prints from the sale can have one more for nothing. No extra cost. Free.

Of course you can keep that last print for your own collection if you want to—we're not telling you what to do with your own property. But if you want to, we figured maybe this would make it easier for you to give one of these prints as a gift to someone important to you, maybe one of your non-photographer friends who you think might appreciate it. Or someone you know who might never see the sale here on TOP. Or maybe someone who would never consider buying original artwork for themselves, for whatever reason. Or someone you know who really wants one but can't afford $395 for one print.

This is one of the nice things about the Internet. If you think about it, what's Kickstarter? It's a way for ordinary people to become philanthropists. Oren Grad called it "micro-scale philanthropy." And that's exactly what it is. For $20 or $10 or even $1, you can contribute to causes and projects you believe in—meaningfully (believe me, it meant a lot to Carl Weese to get his summer project funded by so many generous people the other day. And 60% of his contributors arrived via TOP, so thanks for that). TOP sales, along with many other similar sources of art around the 'net, are ways for people to buy original artwork on a "micro" scale. We run these sales to make money, but doing something good along the way is a nice side-effect.

Well, anyway, I don't know how to end this. But Peter just made the final decision—he's in Cuba, and communication hasn't been easy—and I'm happy that we're actually going to do it.

Please tune in on Sunday afternoon, or Monday morning, for the sale announcement.

Mike

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Just Shoot, Shoot, Shoot: An Interview with David Burnett, Part II

Interview by John Camp

(Part I is here)

John Camp: David, on your days off, do you walk around with a camera under your arm?

David Burnett: About four years ago I needed a carry around camera, and ended up asking the Ricoh people to try out one of their R4 point-and-shoots. Great little camera, and I have progressed through several of them, and currently have a CX4 on my belt, for the last year. I make little movies (1280p) and make lots of pictures that I would never otherwise make. I'm a little lazy, like a lot of photographers. I don't always have a "real" camera on my shoulder. My bad. But the fact that I have a little ten-megapixel camera with me all the time, is way better than having the greatest camera in the world sitting at home on a desk instead of on my shoulder (apologies to Chase Jarvis). And now of course, camera phones seem about to take over the world. And there is the Lytron (I have not seen it yet.)  The assault of gear will only increase in the future, I believe. So finding something that works for you, and lets you feel confident in what you can do with it, is the key.

JC: Where do you get most of your information on such things?

DB: I read Shutterbug (my favorite), Pop Photo, American Photo (usually), PDN (rarely), and Digital Photo Pro (to see how the advanced-tech-half lives...). And online, I am swamped by all the good stuff. You need a fast internet line and at least an hour at a clip. It can really become the kind of surfing that the term was invented to describe. From one great site to another, and in an hour, you’re on overload.

JC: You’ve had a traveling show of photographs of Bob Marley. Are you an artist, or a reporter? Or both?

DB: I still think what I see as an artificial boundary between journalism and art is one that really ought to be more diffuse, transparent. I suppose art is art only if you premeditate what you're doing. So they say. But I think there is something inherent in the photographic process, the seeing, the understanding, which has every bit as strong an element of connection as anything in the art world. I have always thought the process a bit skewed in favor of those who decide. So perhaps we have to decide for ourselves. I remain a reporter, but, dare I say it, with an artistic eye.

Bob Marley by David Burnett

The Marley work [Soul Rebel: An Intimate Portrait of Bob Marley in Jamaica and Beyond from Insight Editions] was of course done as reportage for TIME magazine on the 'new, undiscovered music known as Reggae....' I don't for a minute feel obliged to try to justify it as art, but in the reactions I see from viewers, and the way the pictures draw people to them...I leave that judgment to the viewers. What I suppose is true, is that I think the most important work I have done is the black-and-white from the 1970s and early 1980s. It is classic reportage, and while I love what I am doing now, I see it with different eyes.

JC: Speaking of that, how important is a well-developed artistic eye in news photos, as opposed, say, to the ability (or the bravery) to stand in and get the shot? What do you need most—balls, or eyes?

DB: There are a number of really wonderful people working in the news business these days. People whose pictures you can usually spot before you read the credit line. What is very different is that today you can see some of those images just minutes after they are taken. I don't really think that makes much of a difference in how we see or interpret them, but it is very cool to see the pictures from the first quarter of a football game while they are still playing the second quarter. Speed aside, what I find most striking is the ability of some photographers to distill something special out of what might not seem to be a very special situations. (Damon Winter of the New York Times and David Guttenfelder of AP both come to mind.)

What we do know is that we live in a world where a camera, far from being the shield for the press that it once was, is now often seen as a target in conflict situations. Rather than be safeguarded, we become the target. That creates a new world of unease and mystery for those working in places where just being a photographer puts you at risk. It requires an extra sense of self, and smarts, to be able to not only make the pictures, but safely get them, and oneself, out. I have decided to leave the really dicey stuff to the  younger photographers—there are plenty of talented ones—concentrating now instead on more easily accessible subjects.

JC: What do you think about the use of Photoshop to "enhance" news photos? Is there any place for Photoshop in that process? What about in feature or soft photos? Of course, you can't use Photoshop to move things around in news photos, but what about the idea of, say, altering contrast, or dynamic range, or colors so that they "look more like what the photographer experienced"? What about "soft" set-ups, like shooting people who are dramatizing events and are obviously attracted to your cameras...in other words, news-based performances?

DB: In all the years of darkroom work, there came to be a number of accepted printing techniques (burning, dodging) that were invented primarily because of the technical inability of the camera to get what the photographer "saw." And now, in a world which questions the veracity of everything, the ability we have to alter the look of a picture in seconds, using software, adds even great question marks. Yet, there are times when the most simple of techniques can make a picture approachable, and perhaps believable. Raw files are just that, and they need to be moved to the next step to actually become that final product for publication.

In the end, when  you analyze the characteristics of Tri-X, Kodachrome, and every digital camera made now, each had its way of interpreting a scene. I think the real challenge we face is to try to create something which stays close to the real scene, which is a representation of what happened, and which avoids making the photograph just about the photographer. That is, of course unless the photographer is an "artist" and the photo is just the jumping off point where they add their own vision. We live in grey areas, but I think it's important to at least maintain a feeling of honesty about our work. Feature work, where you are going past an impression of an event, and entering the area where you are allowed to express your own view, as long as it is obvious in the photo, or it's explained in a caption, I think there is nothing wrong with interpretation. Just don’t confuse the two.

JC: In relationship to the previous question, do you see or feel a difference, sometimes, between the truth of a particular situation, and the actuality of what can be photographed? Have you ever been to a crisis spot or been on a political assignment where you have the feeling that what you’re shooting really isn't what's happening? What do you do about that? Is it your job to worry about that, or do you shoot what's in front of you and let other people worry about it?

DB: Much of what we do in politics really has nothing to do with how things operate. I like to paraphrase a Russian friend who used to describe his job, in the Soviet Union in the 1990s, as, 'We pretend to work, they pretend to pay us....' In much of political photography, the campaigns (for example) pretend to have an event, and we pretend to cover it. In the end you have to accept certain restrictions simply because for the majority of photographers, there simply isn’t time or access to see what is doing inside the campaign. So in a way, we agree that having a chance to see a speech, or a campaign event is where the public face of the campaign and candidate will be shown, and if that is what they want to show us, then that is what we can shoot. And all bets are off.  Campaigns which try to restrict and control the press find one thing for sure: Those photographers will do anything they can to get beyond those restrictions, and in the end I can't imagine a candidate being better off by having a whole team of angry photographers trying to make a picture.

Control is a funny thing; it is often used as a tool by the security people to limit what we do, while in the end, the security people should be forced to live by the standards that the campaign wants, not the other way around. There are times when you know what you are trying to show isn't the real deal, but it's as close to the real deal as you can get. We all make compromises in our work. Because of access, time, transport, distance issues. All anyone can do, is to press their effort to the maximum, and afterwards decide if it was good enough.  Of course in most cases, it's never good enough…and the  desire to keep pushing forward is what makes for the best photographers.

JC: You do workshops as well as shoot on assignment. How critical are these for the development of a photographer? What kind of education does a top photographer need?

DB: I have done a number of workshops, and I have to admit that in most cases, I think I get at least as much out of them as my students. What I get, usually, is being exposed to infectious enthusiasm. People for whom the need and desire to photograph is paramount to all others. Those are the kind of people I find invigorating and inspiring.

If they are able to take some little thing away from me, or be inspired in some small way, that's great, but so much of what we do requires a genuine commitment of time, energy, and effort. Most of the photographers I know who have been successful are self-taught, in the main. They assisted established photographers. They learned on the job. They paid attention when there were things to notice. Nothing—especially in the era of digital when you can set up a shot, take it, and look immediately to see if you were successful or not—surpasses getting out there and shooting. One of my mentors, Philip Jones Griffiths, the great Welsh photographer, explained it all in a nutshell to me early on during my stay in Vietnam. I was fixated on trying to produce a story for TIME, and spending all my days trying to figure out where to go, what to do. Philip just punched through, reminding me that "Vietnam isn't about a bunch of so-called stories for TIME magazine. What you need to do is put 50 rolls of film in your rucksack, fly to Danang, and don't come back to Saigon until you've shot every roll."

What he was essentially telling me to do was simple. Put yourself in a real time, real life situation (it can be around the corner from home, it doesn't need to be half way around the world) and just shoot, shoot, shoot. That's how you make yourself a better photographer.

I know a number of great photographers who started in the military, and used what their resources were to maximize their learning and understanding of photography.

JC: When I contacted you about this interview, you were in Dubai. How does working as you do affect your private life? Is it hard to stay married? Is it hard to raise kids? Have you ever had a dog? Have you ever thought about moving to the countryside, where you could draw water and chop wood? Or is it the Upper West Side for you?

DB: My wife and daughter have been very understanding. I hate being away, but I understand that for me, that's where the work, the stories are. We have a house in the 'burbs, and there is plenty of wood to chop if I had a proper ax or, don't tempt me, a chainsaw. But both of us have travelled significantly in our careers, and we understand what it takes. I try not to be away longer than two weeks (three for the Olympics every four years) as readjustment is just too great. My daughter moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting, and so we are away from each other. When I talk with her, I am reminded of how my life was when I lived in Vietnam, phoning home a couple of times a month (it was expensive) and trying to stay in touch with actual handwritten letters. The loss of letters in today's world is one of the great losses we are experiencing, though we shan't know the full extent of it for another twenty or thirty years when we'll wish we had those letters never written. I love New York, but am happy to be away from it. I really like small towns, with welcoming barbecue restaurants. In so many ways our private lives and work lives are one and the same. They meld together, and we share so much of it.

JC: Tell me one last thing about leading your kind of life that's important, and that might be important for photographers reading this.

DB: The one thing I think I would advise young photographers, in particular, is that in most cases no one can be as hard on you as you will be on yourself. Do not settle for easy. Do not settle for that first image. Craft it, work it, and make something more out of it. And finally, don't forget that the biggest joy in photography is making pictures of those things in your own life. It doesn't need to be a St. Patrick's Day Parade with thousands of revelers to be important. Your friends, your family, your own life—that should be the first subject you work on. It's a given your family will be tired of being photographed, but don't give up. In another couple of decades, those are the pictures you will be glad to have.

JC: Thank you, David.

DB: My pleasure.

-

Once again, here's David's website. Big thanks to David Burnett and John Camp.

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Featured Comment by Albano: "A great video interview, where he praises the Holga a lot."

Kindle Fire

Amazon's Deal of the Day today is a refurbished Kindle Fire for only $139. I have an earlier Kindle (B&W only, which kinda fits), but the full-color Fire should be better for things like photography magazines and instructional books, for a lot less than the price of a current iPad. I've never seen one—just passing the news along.

Mike

ADDENDUM by Ctein: The Kindle Fire and the Nook Color are excellent alternatives to the iPad if the following apply to you:

1. You don't need (or possibly don't even want) the larger screen.
2. You don't need the superior color rendition of the iPad.
3. You are comfortable doing a very small amount of software hacking to turn it into a full-fledged Android device. It's not difficult; it's about the equivalent of upgrading the power supply or video card in your component PC. You just need to follow some written instructions that aren't rocket science. If you're comfortable doing that level of tech, you can do the software upgrade. If you're purely the "I'm just an end-user" sort, that's another story.

I think both of these are great bargains for people who meet these criteria. Paula was very seriously considering getting one of them before she got my old iPad. —Ctein

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Featured Comment by Dwight: "I have one. I actually think it's preferable to the iPad. iPads are a bit too large to take everywhere and they are too big to use in bed. The Kindle does everything I would ever use a tablet for. The B&W Kindle is slightly better if you only want to read. The color one is better if you want to surf the web and do the things a tablet would do."

Featured Comment by Mike Plews: "Santa brought one of these to Mrs. Plews this year and it is a sweet little gadget. $139 is a steal for a Fire."

The Elusive Missing Issue

In the post Les Pères Spirituels, below, I mentioned an issue of 35mm Photography magazine in which both Edouard Boubat and the Turnley brothers appeared. It turns out that that was the first issue of that magazine that our friend Jim Hughes edited, after a happy eight year stint at Camera 35. It was dated Winter 1976.

It's also a bit of a problem for Jim, because it's the only issue of the magazine he doesn't have. I know this is a bit of a long shot, lo these 36 years later, but—anyone have a copy of that issue they'd be willing to part with? Or know where one can be had?

If you do, leave a comment or contact me by email, and I'll pass the intelligence along to JH. Thanks.

Mike

UPDATE: Found! By reader Doug Chadwick. It was part of a lot of six issues on Ebay. I bought the lot so I can have a few sample issues of the magazine for my own library (I don't collect magazines, even the ones my own articles appeared in, but I have a motley of samples of different ones going back to the 1930s). I'll pass the Turnley/Boubat issue along to Jim after I sneak a peek at it.

Good find, Doug!

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The 2012 iPad, Part I: A Distinct Step Upwards

By Ctein

This is the latest in what will obviously be an indefinite series of reviews of new versions of the iPad as they come out. Apparently I'm hooked on upgrading. I'm okay with that.

I recommend readers look at my previous two reviews to understand where I'm coming from with this device: Why I Needed an iPad and Why I'm Getting an iPad 2. This is not a general purpose review. I'm reviewing the features that I care about and/or I think will matter to other photographers. There are an unlimited number of other reviews out there, so feel free to browse to your heart's content.

I didn't recommend the iPad 2 as an upgrade from the original iPad (even though I upgraded), nor did I see that it brought much to the table for people who weren't interested in the iPad originally. The 2012 iPad is a different beast. I think it's a worthwhile upgrade from an older iPad, with some distinctly interesting new features.

The first is one that is near and dear to my heart and obvious to me, yet invisible to you. I'm dictating this column on the iPad. The new iPad offers voice transcription so long as you are connected to the net (via either Wi-Fi or cellular) and it works extraordinarily well, considering that there is almost no way to customize vocabulary or user settings.

In fact, even though I make extensive use of specialized vocabulary, it may prove to be a more efficient way for me to write than using Dragon Dictate on my MacBook Pro. Dragon is prone to all sorts of idiosyncratic errors, including orthography (not following the normal conventions for when to spell out numbers or write them as numbers, issues with punctuation and capitalization, etc.) I spend an inordinate amount of time cleaning up Dragon's mistakes. Apple's Dictation feature seems to get all this stuff perfectly. Plus, the recognition accuracy is truly extraordinary, the best I've ever seen.

The second big win for me is that the new iPad can function as a personal Wi-Fi hotspot for up to five other devices. Currently, Verizon supports that in their contract, while AT&T doesn't. I imagine AT&T will come on board, but I wasn't willing to wait, so I bought the Verizon model this time around. I don't use a lot of cellular data. Previously, I used the cheapest AT&T plan that provided 250 MB a month. A couple of times a year, when I would travel, I would kick up to the next highest (2GB) tier in AT&T. So I used to spend about $200 a year for connectivity. Verizon offers a $20 a month data plan that gets me a gigabyte per month, but it's going to save me money. A lot of the times when I travel I have to pay for Wi-Fi at a hotel for my MacBook Pro. I will not have to do that in the future, so I expect I'll save something on the order of $75 a year, along with getting about twice as much data on the iPad as I was getting the old way.

Now, about the display, which I know you've been wondering when I would get to. I did not order a new iPad in advance for the simple reason that while more pixels are nice (and the new iPad has plenty more), I'm a lot more concerned with pixel quality than with quantity. I bought my original iPad (see my first column) because I could use it as a near-studio-quality monitor in the field. If the new iPad compromised tone or color quality in any way it was likely to be a fail for me, no matter how attractive it seemed otherwise.

Well, quite the opposite! The new iPad display is better in every respect. Not only does it offer twice the resolution, which certainly is wonderful to behold, it renders exactly 100% of sRGB color space, in comparison with 70% on the old iPad. Apple has also tweaked the contrast, so the contrast curve is also now a perfect match for standard sRGB; previously it was too high. It's also slightly warmer than the old iPad's display, which was a little bit cooler than standard D65. Consequently, right out of the box, the new iPad display looks fabulous. After running it through a custom profiling in Air Display with ColorMunki, it looks even better. I am a very happy camper.

And, yes, all those extra pixels are really, really nice when reading the morning paper.

There are significant downsides to the display. The power consumption is way up on this model of the iPad, which means the standard 10W charger takes considerably longer to bring the unit to a full charge. Think something like six and half hours. With the old iPad, giving it a one-hour "quickie" over lunch would get you through the rest of the work day. No more of that (sigh). The additional power consumption also means that the unit charges extremely slowly or not at all if you are using it while it's plugged into the charger. Finally, run life is now most dependent upon screen brightness rather than CPU usage. At maximum brightness, the runtime is barely six hours. It still remains 10 hours or more at more normal brightness levels, but this is of concern if you're trying to work in extremely bright light or outdoors.

There are also some important, possibly unexpected, implications for photographers. I'll cover those next week, along with my review of the new iPad's camera.

Ctein

(Continued in Part II)

Ctein's iColumn—sorry, column—appears on TOP on Wednesdays.

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How Come Nikon Beats Canon So Badly?

I got a press release yesterday from DxOMark that says the new Nikon D800 is "now the best camera ever tested by DxOMark in terms of image quality."

"Incredibly," the press release goes on to say, "the Nikon D800 even surpasses the best medium-format cameras, which are priced more than 10 times higher!...'The new sensor featured in the D800 achieves the best dynamic range and the highest color sensitivity ever measured, taking the lead on the DxOMark scale with 95 points,' explained Dr. Frédéric Guichard, DxO Labs' Chief Scientific Officer. 'This camera illustrates the consistent improvement that digital camera manufacturers have been able to achieve in the last few years, mimicking Moore's law that has ruled the silicon industry for decades now.'"

It's been a long time since I paid a visit to DxOMark, but I'm going to make a small and not very venturesome bet: I'm guessing Nikon users like the site a lot more than Canon fans do.

Of the top ten cameras in overall score on DxOMark, four are Nikons (and two are Pentaxes). But Canon doesn't have a single camera in the top 10. Canon's highest placed camera comes in at #13. In the top 20, Nikon has eight cameras; Canon, just two. (Sony has five.) Nikon's little entry-level DSLR, the D5100, comes in just above the vaunted (but outgoing) Canon 5D Mark II (evidently the Mark III hasn't been tested yet).

As a side note, my most-used camera limps in at #124. (Breaks into patriotic song.)

Makes me wonder, though, why Nikon beats Canon so badly in DxOMark scores. Note that I did not put that in the form of a rhetorical question—if I were to ask, I already know the answers I'd get: Canon users will say it's because DxOMark sucks and/or has a biased testing procedure; Nikon users will say it's because Nikon's better. I still wonder what the real reason is, though. It's not like Canon can't make sensors. Some people like "the Canon Look" better.

Courtesy DxO Labs

Surprising, in any case, that the D800 is such a strong outlier. Here's the full report.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Bernard Scharp: "But when is DxO going to test some film stock? Who cares about these sensors that get replaced every two months? They still haven't tested Tri-X or Acros, and those are older than DxO!"

Ever-helpful Ctein replies: Here ya go Bernard, fresh from the labs: Tri-X: Low light performance: ISO 400. Noise: high, at all ISOs. Exposure Range: 13 stops, but with poor linearity. Color bit depth: 1. Resolution: 3500 lines. Happy, now? [vbg]

Random Snap

I thought fans of a certain TV show might get a smile out of what I found in the course of my local motorized meanderings a few days ago. It's an iPhone snap (didn't have a camera with me).

Now to get a photo of the sign on the highway that says "Bong Recreation Area." (Seriously.)

Mike

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Les Pères Spirituels

Peter Turnley with Robert and Pierrette Doisneau.
(Their daughter took the picture.)

I was talking to Peter Turnley about our upcoming print sale of a selection of his Paris pictures, which starts next Sunday, and something came up I thought you might be interested in.

Like most top-level photojournalists, Peter's always felt a debt of gratitude to his professional journalistic associates—his editors at Newsweek, the people at Corbis, gallerist Agathe Gaillard, Pierre Gassmann of Picto, and mentors such as Howard Chapnick of Blackstar. But besides those important people, there are what the French call les pères spirituels—"spiritual fathers," although the term might just as easily apply to brothers or sisters or mothers. It implies seeking out a different kind of support—and a desire to belong to a deliberate tradition encompassing more than just oneself.

John Morris, a dean of photojournalists and Peter's great good friend

Starting when he was young, as a new immigrant to Paris, Peter made a deliberate effort to get to know the great photographers of the city. He found the great French master Robert Doisneau by simply looking him up in the phone book. "I didn't have any agenda," he says. "I just wanted to meet him, to be in the orbit of this guy's spirit." He ended up working as Doisneau's assistant.

One lesson Peter remembers is that Doisneau could put his hands on any of his negatives from the previous thirty years within thirty seconds, and he never went to bed before he had developed, contact printed, and captioned every roll of film he'd taken that day. (Peter thinks he would have loved the digital age.) What this meticulous organization did was to allow Doisneau's entire life's work "to breathe, to live, almost like a living organism." Work that you can't find, that you can't share, might as well be lost.

Willy Ronis with one of his most famous pictures

Other encounters were more serendipitous. In 1975, his twin brother David—also a top photojournalist, now teaching at the University of Michigan—called from New York and told him to be on the lookout for an up-and-coming photographer named Josef Koudelka. Peter had never heard the name before.

Not long after that, he was in the Jardin de Luxembourg sitting on a bench with his girlfriend and a man walked by, and Peter noticed him surreptitiously taking their picture, so he jumped up and ran after him—"Did you just take our picture?" The man seemed nervous and claimed to be a tourist, but Peter had noticed his two beautifully brassed Leicas, which were hardly tourist cameras. It was Koudelka.

Josef Koudelka

Koudelka keeps things simple. Some time later, as the two shared a meal at the offices of Magnum Paris, Josef told Peter something he always remembered. He said, "My idea of a good life is I wake up in the morning, I go out and walk, and I make three films [i.e., shoot three rolls —Ed.] a day."

"It does sound like a good life," Peter says. (Does to me too.)

With Édouard Boubat

Peter's a very intense guy—that might be an understatement—and as you hear him talk about these people you can hear his enthusiasm take wing. The man who became his best friend among these pères spirituels was Édouard Boubat. They met because Jim Hughes (who also writes for TOP from time to time) had published both their work in the same issue of 35mm Photography. The two became close friends—they met several times a week whenever Peter was in Paris, for many years. (Boubat died in 1999.)

As with many of the great photographers he knew, they seldom talked about photography. The topics of discussion always had to do with world affairs, an engagement with the issues of the day, with...well, life. These days it seems like photography consists of an endless roundel of keeping up with cameras and software. It's important to remind ourselves, at least now and then, that a lot of what's important about photography isn't about photography at all.

Agathe Gaillard

I guess the point here is that it's important to know where you come from, and whose work yours builds on. Peter used his many-decades project of Paris pictures to decompress from high-stress photojournalistic assignments, but it wasn't just that. He was eager to belong—belong to the grand tradition of the great photographers of Paris. Knowing many of them personally was a big part of that enthusiasm.

André Kertesz taking a picture from Peter Turnley's balcony, Paris.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Andrew Molitor: "Great little piece here, this is the kind of thing I love on TOP! Also, some really good portraits here. Love the one of John Morris, a classic look and a wonderful face.

Featured Comment by Jim Richardson: "Among the luminaries mentioned I was heartened to see the name of Howard Chapnick. Few people warrant the kind of admiration I feel for Howard and all that he did for photography, shepherding young photographers, standing firm for the value of images, working to put photography squarely in the mainstream of serious culture. He made my first book happen, shaping a mass of images into a coherent documentary, and along the way treating a very young photographer with serious consideration. And he was a supremely kind and decent man. One other thing. He headed Black Star, the photo agency. So his hobby was to bet on horses that had "Star" in their name. Pretty human."

Featured Comment by John: "One of my favorite TOP posts ever. You'll likely be back to gear tomorrow, but why not make it editorial policy to once a week address themes like this? 'Wednesday: Photography Unplugged.' The community needs it.

Featured Comment by Debbie: "Wonderful post about a wonderful human being. I gave myself the gift of a workshop in Paris with Peter last May and all I can say is in addition to all of his 'Peres Spirituels' he is now forever one of mine. His delight in sharing his knowledge and his own mentors is unique and life changing. Thank you Mike and especially thank you Peter."

Help Send Carl West!

It's the twilight of the all-American drive-in theater. Photo by Carl Weese.

Our friend Carl Weese, who has written numerous posts and articles for you here on TOP, has launched a Kickstarter campaign to help him fund the final leg of his drive-in theater travels before it's too late. You probably recall that one of Carl's pictures in our Platinum Print Offer from back in 2010 was of a drive-in movie theater, and that Carl's drive-ins had, at that time, just been featured on the New York Times Lens blog.

For years, Carl's been documenting the remaining drive-in theaters in the East and Midwest, often making epic trips in his little truck that keep him away from home for weeks on end. He's made it as far west as Montana. Well, also for years, he has intended to make one giant swing out to the West Coast and through the areas of the country that are least accessible from his home in Connecticut in order to document many of the drive-ins out there. It's the last piece of the puzzle he needs to finish up the long-term project he's been working on for ten years. Before now, knowing that it's going to be a big, long, hard task, he's put off that last leg.

But now, he can't wait any longer. The reason is that theaters are being forced to make the switch to digital projection. That works fine for year-round, indoor theaters, but drive-ins are a seasonal business, often run on a shoestring. Most of the still-surviving drive-ins just won't be able to justify the huge expense of converting to digital. Many also make ends meet by showing older, classic movies that are only available on film. Drive-ins have been in decline for years, but chances are that digital is all but the death knell.

So the time has come for Carl: it's now or never. A scant few years from now, many of the surviving drive-ins all over the West Coast will have closed their gates for good. Carl does photograph abandoned, overgrown drive-ins, but he'd rather not photograph ruins. He'd rather photograph as many as he can while they're still going concerns. A big part of the eventual book is going to consist of the people who own and run the theaters (a lot of whom are, shall we say, colorful) telling their own stories. (Carl says, "There's no such thing as a boring drive-in theater owner.")

Carl is very good at traveling light and cheap (well, okay—not light), but the trip's going to cost a heap. He plans to make a giant figure-8 loop to hit not just the west coast itself, but the southwest on the way out and the central corridor on the return. The trip will keep him out on the road for six weeks. If you can, head over to Kickstarter and allow him to make his pitch—there's a short video as well as the same information in writing. (Maybe it's me, but I just like the video too.)

Take a look and see what you think. Even a small donation helps a lot. Help send Weese west!

Mike

UPDATE: I'm happy to report that Carl's project was 100% funded in a little less than 21 hours. Don't be reticent about making a contribution if you haven't already, however—the rewards will go to everyone who wants them and Carl has said that all of the money raised will be put towards the project. Congrats to Carl and thanks to everyone who helped!

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Featured Comment by Jesper Lauritsen: "The Pike print is one of my favorites in my little print collection. I just love it! Of course I am backing this Kickstarter project!"

Featured Comment by Rod Graham: "I grew up in NW Arkansas. When I was a kid we'd go to the Hwy 71 Drive-In Theater, halfway between Fayetteville and Springdale, with a big bag of popcorn made at home beforehand. Had some of my first dates there as a teenager (yes!). I'm now 61 years old and for the last twenty years that beloved piece of ground has had a Walmart Supercenter sitting on it. Yes, I'm in Carl; good hunting!"

Just Make the Damn Picture: An Interview with David Burnett, Part I

Interview by John Camp

Introduction: I'm a writer—a novelist—and a few weeks ago my publishing company sent a well-known professional photographer out to Santa Fe to take my picture for the backs of upcoming novels...which shows a bit of optimism on the publishing company's part, since the writing schedule is killing me. Anyway, I very much enjoyed the company of the photographer David Burnett, who turned out to be a widely read, deeply engaged, intellectual sort of fellow, who looks a little like a long-distance runner—and, I mention in passing, quite a good friend of the Turnley Bros., who show up here on TOP from time to time.

I was interested, of course, in the way David functioned in carrying out the assignment of shooting my photo. We'll skip the parts where I was powdered and rouged ("We'll just take a little of the dryness out of those lips") and I'll just say that he showed me something photographic that I'd never seen before: he had an assistant, and used reflectors and so on, but he also had a couple of battery-powered LED lights, a little bigger than bricks, and quite lightweight, which the assistant would sometimes use instead of the reflectors. [The subject of our friend Kirk Tuck's latest book, if I may interject —Ed.] That way, David was able to put the light anywhere he wanted it, in a matter of seconds, with the prime light, the sun, coming from any direction. David joked that he was going to buy an "assistant suit" made out of Velcro, and put Velcro on the backs of the LED lights, and then he could just arrange the assistant's arms and legs as he wanted and slap the LEDs on him…. Anyway, my first photographic thought was, "Hmm, I gotta get me some of those." (LEDs, not assistants.)

After David had gone on his way, it occurred to me that I should have asked him if I could interview him for TOP. I emailed him, and found out that he'd already moved on to Dubai. He agreed to answer some e-mailed questions; people curious about his work can take a look at his website. Here's Part I of the interview:

John Camp: I've always been curious about what particular kind of traveling assignment-oriented professionals actually do…so what have you been doing the last year or so? How much time do you spend on the road? Have you gotten rich doing this?

David Burnett: My work varies constantly, the result I suppose of some Attention Deficit Disorder, adult version, which I notice a lot of my colleagues also seem afflicted with. When you are a freelancer, you can either choose to do a story on spec…go do it, then edit and try and sell it afterwards; or, if your phone rings occasionally with one of those 'magic phone calls' which leads to a cool assignment, then that will presumably be what you end up doing. Most of us work in some kind of middle ground, trying to place the work of our own interest in the mix, and if lucky, actually find a client to finance it. In the last year or so my assignments have included the following:

• Spending nearly three weeks (just for the record, unpaid, save for travel expenses) serving as the chairman of the World Press Photo Jury in Amsterdam, nominally in charge of a dozen other jurors from as many countries, sifting through 109,000 images, and in the end naming the contest winners.

• I've done a half-dozen author book jacket photographs (a somewhat new field for me, but great fun).

• I traveled for five days with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on a Europe-Mideast trip, when the U.S. was trying to forge an alliance to deal with Libya. Key point: in the lottery for who-sits-where on the USAF plane, I drew a low number, and had the upside of getting a business class seat (one of eight) instead of an economy seat (there are about 25.) When you travel 14,000 or so miles in a week, that is a big plus.

• I drove a 15-year old, aging Cadillac across the country in about eight days to deliver it to a friend in need of a car. Perhaps more importantly, it gave me a chance to drive the southern route, and shoot a few cool pictures. The problem became that I would find myself just short of making something really satisfying, but then feeling I had to keep heading west. Travel can be addictive, but it's not always the tonic we hope for.

However, these kind of trips do lend themselves to certain kinds of shooting, and when, four days ago, the editor at my agency (Contact Press Images) said on an iChat call he had a book jacket request for "an old car, with a kind of run-down, West Texas look...," I was actually able to upload a half dozen images in the four minutes we were on the phone with each other. Sometimes you just have the right picture.

"He's been everywhere, but only for an hour" —American Photographer magazine (from David's website)

• In April, I went for People [magazine] to the Royal Wedding in London (Will and Kate) but didn't have the same luck I'd had at that of Will's parents in 1982. For one thing, the entrance to Westminster Abbey is street level, while St Paul's has a large length of steps, and the steps win every time, I'd say.

• Early July I was in Florida for the last of the Space Shuttle launches, and found myself on the same beach where, 42 years earlier, I'd photographed the departure of Apollo XI to the moon.

A few good pictures this time, but living in the age of TV/internet/twitter/Facebook, it all feels like it passes far too quickly. The velocity of photos and images that society has created and runs through on a daily basis means it's very difficult for a great image to stand out. It still happens, but I think we are all being deluged with imagery, and not enough time to appreciate them.

• Later in July, in Glasgow, I worked with a new group of photographer friends, where we create our own projects, and work, more or less pro bono, in trying to uncover significant social topics. The group (PhotographersForHope.org) spent a week coaching homeless newspaper vendors in the use of their new Canon point-and-shoot digicams, trying to capture some elements of the lives they lead. Those pictures, plus ones we did of them, were part of a show at the BBC Scotland headquarters, and later the Mitchell Library, giving some voice to the situation of those who experience homelessness.

• August: Bonneville Salt Flats—Speed Week. Another chance to get an amazing sunburn and pictures of fast cars. Mostly of fast cars sitting there making a lot of extremely loud noise, but occasionally of them actually going fast. I grew up nearby in Salt Lake City, and have been going there since I was first shooting pictures in high school.

• In September I was asked to join James Nachtwey in Lausanne at the International Olympic Museum, and speak about the power of the image. It was a wonderful evening, getting a chance with Jim to not only show images, but talk about them and their impact on our world.

• In October/November I made a number of drop-bys to the Occupy Wall Street encampment, and was, at the very least, pleased to see that 40 years after the street protests of the Vietnam era, there were, in this over-indulged, over-connected world, still a few people who understood the power of showing up somewhere and stating their case.

In addition I have been doing a number of speeches, workshops, and appearances at photographic get-togethers: The Atlanta Photojournalism conference, the Australian Professional Photographers Association, and just recently the Gulf Photo Plus week of workshops, exhibits and speeches in Dubai. In every corner of the globe now, there are thousands of photographers and would-be photographers who are striving to become better. It keeps us all on our toes.

This is just some of what I did last year. How many days on the road? I didn’t count them but probably somewhere between 100 and 125. It takes a whole day to actually count them! And to what end? In this age of diminished assignments in the magazine world which I worked in for 40-plus years, one doesn't get rich. Well, if you happen to get that one image of the right starlet, you can make a bundle, but otherwise, the democratization of photography, the proliferation of cameraphones, and the fact that "everyone is a photographer" has, I think, tended to diminish and cheapen what was once a world in which a minimal level of craft was required to do the job. You can still make a living, but in so many aspects of editorial and commercial photography, the world has seen a quantum shift. A few people are doing extremely well, in most cases people who have not only talent with a camera but the ability to create an aura about themselves using social media and blogs. I am constantly amazed at the number of "comments" I see on some of the popular photo blogs. Dozens, sometimes hundreds of comments from what must truly be a large population of people with true photographic interest. Proof, I suppose that the photograph isn't the only way to connect with your audience.

JC: David, unlike most online photography forums, TOP doesn't spend very much time talking about equipment. So, naturally, my next question will be about equipment. When I saw you a few weeks ago, you were shooting Canons along with a Leica M9 and a Holga, interchangeably. I've seen on your website that you also shoot a Speed Graphic from time to time. So tell me a little bit about your relationship with the equipment.

I would probably be considered a dinosaur in some quarters as I still use the Mark 0 Canon 5D (well…they really weren't Mark anything, but 0 is as good as 1) for my main digital needs. I have the whole slew of Canon glass, fast glass (the red line lenses) and a few wonderful old beloved bits of glass from my Nikon days (pre 1978)—namely my Nikon 500mm ƒ/8 mirror and a wonderful Leitz 400mm ƒ/6.8 Telyt, with EOS mounts on them. In the world where every high school kid is sporting a 400mm ƒ/2.8, showing up with a lens three stops slower does create a wonderful mutter in the assembled press pens. But I know how sharp my Telyt is, and how light it is (it breaks into two small tubes for transport), and I'll stay with what I have.

My latest acquisition, courtesy of my involvement with the newly formed group known as FacingChange.org (a group of independent photographers, gathered together to address the vast range of social and economic issues facing the country) is the wonderful new M9 Leica rangefinder body. It has given me the chance to take out my Leica glass (yes, I have three 50mm lenses!) from the cupboard they have been sequestered for the last eight or nine years, since 35mm film gave way to digital and all the ups anddowns that presents. Essentially, while I still shoot some medium and large format film, my 35mm film days are dwindling down to very few, so the addition of the M9 has given me a chance to see again the amazing quality of those Leica lenses. The Noctilux (a 1978 version) is something to behold when you can see the results virtually instantly.

My kit also consists of a Speed Graphic (actually, several of them) on which I shoot lenses in most cases older than I am, and which are all considered "fast glass" for a large format camera (ƒ/2–ƒ/2.8). I began shooting large format in "real time" situations—Presidential Campaigns, the Olympics—in 2003, as a kind of allergic reaction to the mass movement over to digital. I wanted something different from what all my pals were shooting, something that would force me to look in a slightly different way at the subject, which, if I was lucky, would yield a picture that had a little something special to it. It is a downright daunting task to force yourself to shoot with cameras that have no auto diaphragming, no auto advance, no autofocus, no auto anything...but when it works, it really is worth all the mistakes en route. And those are legion.

In almost everything I shoot these days, I try to include something taken with large format or, at the very least, with my Holga. I really do enjoy the simplicity of the Holga, and every now and then it rewards me with something sweet. They are making Holga lenses with DSLR (Nikon, Canon) mounts, but, for me, the joy in that glass is in the extreme edges of the frame, and all of that beauty is cropped on a 35mm DSLR.

In the 4x5 realm, I still have so much to learn. Every time I shoot with the Graflex cameras it is a learning experience.

So far I don't actually own a camera, shocking as this may sound, with an ISO over 100,000. I suppose that day will come. But for now, I'm entranced with the chance to again shoot à la rangefinder with the M9. It is a whole different way of shooting, looking, seeing, than a reflex camera. Instead of, essentially looking at a TV screen to compose, you are just putting your fingers up to your eyes...and squinting happily.

I have been quite amazed, actually, that neither Canon nor Nikon has come out with their own re-creation of one of their classic rangefinder cameras. In all the advances in photo technology, it just surprises me that none of the traditional makers other than Leica (the preeminent) has seen fit to create a camera (please, no harping about the Epson...) which recreates all those great 1950s cameras.

Not to belabor the point, but I'm still looking for a snapshot of Cartier-Bresson carrying a Practica or a Nikormat. The new Fuji cameras (I just saw briefly the X-Pro1) are a step in the right direction, but in the end they try and look like a Leica, and yet deny you the real joy of a rangefinder camera, which is the rapidity of the focus, and blending those two images together in the finder. The X100 for example seems to look like a rangefinder camera, but there is still that hesitation for it to find focus. Nothing is as sure as your fingers guiding the lens and finder to the right place.

Ten-years-plus ago I had the Contax G2 set, all the glass, too. It was, no question, the camera to be slinging if you went to a cool and groovy cocktail party on the East side. But every time I tried to use it, the focus servos would buzz and buzz and buzz, finding the actual focus long after that "moment" I was in search of disappeared. I ended up trading the kit to a friend for another M6 and a Summilux 35, confident that I could focus way snappier than the G2 (and I still can, I believe). Sadly, cameramaker engineers seem to value the hotsie-totsie of fancy, rather than simply giving us something that we can use. I still like to think that all this stuff we have is just a tool or set of tools, and that in the end, you figure out what you want for a particular picture, grab what you need (or if you're lucky, figure that out ahead of time) and just make the damn picture.

[Continue to Part II]

John

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Featured Comment by Jeffrey MacMillan: "David is absurdly talented, generous and kind. Having spent a little time with him on campaigns and elsewhere he brings an level of dignity to our motley crew. Go to his website and check out the large format photos. They are so beautiful you'll cry yourself to sleep after selling your gear!!"

Featured Comment by K. Praslowicz: "Years ago, probably 2004ish, I made a comment on a web forum regarding one of David's photos I had seen in a magazine. A day or two later he sent me a private message thanking me for liking it. I always thought that that was pretty classy for a working artist with a long history of success."

Featured Comment by Miserere: "Good call, John—you can't just let someone like David B. get away without an interview :-) . I'm ashamed to say I couldn't quite place his name at first, then I went to his website and looked through his galleries...oh, he's the guy that took that Holga photograph of Al Gore...oh, he's the guy who photographed the Olympics with a Speed Graphic...oh, he's.... Yeah, I know who he is. Damn shame he isn't making a good living off his talent and just shooting whatever he wants. Then again, if he did, he wouldn't have been hired to shoot you, and we wouldn't have had the pleasure of reading this fine interview. The Universe has a way I suppose...."

Featured Comment by Roger Overall: "What a wonderful piece of writing to wake up to here in Ireland. It's great that John has taken the time to write it, and David took the time to talk. That shows consideration and understanding of the interest out there in the work and lives of great photographers. John could have kept this encounter to himself, restricting it to airings at dinner parties only. He didn't. I for one am really grateful."

Featured Comment by W. Keith McManus: "Will be passing this along to the class I am teaching at RIT [Rochester Institute of Technology —Ed.] this spring."

Sir Stirling and a Blonde

A great story of the "my best shot" variety, over on Jalopnik—U.K. shooter Neill Watson tells how he got a popular shot of racing legend Sir Stirling Moss. "What makes it a winner? The ingredients. A world famous racing driver who is a household name globally, a bright red Italian racing car, a gorgeous blonde, lingerie, sunshine and blue skies."

The article concludes with a sentiment I've seen echoed so many times. "The reason why this image has proved to be popular, apart from the obvious successful ingredients of a pretty blonde and a famous driver, is that everyone else got the standard shot and turned away. I was the only person with a camera to his eye at that instant...."

Mike
(Thanks to Tom Brenholts)

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Books of Interest: Lightroom and Laforet

Those of you interested in Lightroom 4—with the caveat that you need to be the kind of person who learns software well from books (not everyone does)—might want to check out Martin Evening's new Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 Book: The Complete Guide for Photographers. Martin has a reputation for producing the most comprehensive and complete instructional books, the corollary being that they're not the most accessible (try Scott Kelby's The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 Book for Digital Photographers, due May 18th, for that). I'm not the least bit qualified to actually review this book, because I don't use Lightroom and I'm a bit of a nitwit with software anyway, but it's a magnificent book—hefty, thoroughly organized, and copiously illustrated. I suspect most people wouldn't read this per se but will use it like a one-volume encyclopedia, looking up whatever they need to know at the time.

It's dedicated to the late Bruce Fraser, originally the author of Real World Camera Raw and Real World Image Sharpening, two of the most important and influential technical books of the digital era.

Vincent Laforet
Here's another interesting-looking book that's gotten a bit lost in the shuffle. Following the phenomenal success of Joe McNally's The Moment It Clicks, which was a big bestseller in its category, another editorial/assignment photographer of equal stature has produced a visual tour of how he works. Vincent Laforet's Visual Stories gives a good selection of his work with explanatory text and a lot of practical advice and technical details along the way.

Just as knowing a subject and teaching it are not exactly the same skills, being very good at something and writing about it engagingly are not exactly the same skills either. Publishers churn out these books at a furious pace, and in many of them you "feel the churn." To put it perhaps a little more bluntly, Vincent's pictures are better than his book. The prose is a bit leaden, and the tone of the advice is of one who is, shall we say, not entirely accustomed to giving advice to adult photo enthusiasts (I don't know about you, but I don't need to be told to leave the lenscap in the camera bag and that the purpose of a UV filter is actually to protect the front element of the lens). But, throughout, you do get a very good sense of what it's like to be "out there," constantly faced with the challenge of coming up with something new, good, and different in the context of a specific assignment. There's plenty that's practical in the discussions, including some bones thrown to the gearheads.

The book comes with a DVD that has several dozen short QuickTime movies on it. As you know, I don't generally care for videos (it means I have to turn the music off). But I have to say that, as with the book, I found these (I only watched a few) to be a bit undercooked. For instance, the pictures are only shown at the beginning and the end, whereas the time you want to see the image is when he's talking about the specific elements of it. Most of each video is "talking head," except you also see his hands coming into and back out of the frame...so, I found myself distractedly watching his hands fly about as I listened to him say a bunch of stuff that's already in the book. I think it might have been better to do the opposite—begin and end with the talking head shot and show the picture as he talks about it. Also, I see absolutely no point in showing each image starting zoomed in and then slowly zooming out on it until you (briefly) see the whole thing—it's not appropriate when the entire still image is the point of the discussion. The technical information at the end of every video is of little interest and has the feel of filler (feel the churn, baby, feel the churn).

Vincent Laforet has a superb feel for B&W. This picture, taken for the front page beat that he covered for a full two years, had to include a recognizable New York City locale—here the planetarium at the American Museum of
Natural History on Central Park West.

As for the pictures, there are, as you might expect, some great ones, and then some really great ones. You certainly get a strong sense of the vast range required of an editorial photographer. Oddly enough, considering most of his work is in color, Vincent Laforet seems to have an uncommonly good feel for black-and-white—or maybe that's because only his very best B&W shots made the book. He's very fond of anti-tilt-shift, or whatever you call that style—using a tilt-shift to limit depth of field (diorama mode?). It's a technique I don't personally care for—although you might, and he's good at it. He's particularly good with aerial photography, so Visual Stories will be of special interest to anyone who likes aerial photography or wants to try it. (I've only done it once, but I really enjoyed it, and highly recommend the experience.) There are aerial photographs throughout the book.

All in all a reasonably informative albeit not terribly entertaining session spent looking over a top editorial photographer's shoulder.

There's also an eBook version of Visual Stories available from the publisher, but it costs more than Amazon's price for the printed one.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Bahi: "Opinion about Evening vs. Kelby for Lightroom books compares to opinion on the Mac vs. Windows for operating systems, though there are peacemakers in both areas.

"I've supplied dozens of these books to photographers while delivering Lightroom tuition and have two recommendations that come from the results of that ongoing, multi-year experiment using Kelby's and Evening's LR 2 and LR 3 books.

"First is that if you can afford it and if LR is your main image editing app, you should get both—they're different and offer complementary approaches. As you say, Mike, Evening is very thorough and a good reference.

"The second recommendation to any photographer is to not dismiss the Kelby as having too little information, based on the chatty writing style—Scott has the enviable ability to help you learn without your realising that you're learning. (A rare gift.) Even people who don't particularly like his writing style do find themselves learning quickly using his books. There are now other good LR books appearing, too, the Bampton in particular.

"For those who prefer video learning, Messrs. Reichmann and Schewe do a good turn. They're quite the Vic and Bob of workflow, those two."

Featured Comment by Eamon Hickey: "In case anyone is interested (and begging your pardon, Mike, for gauchely referring people to my own story on a different web site), I wrote a short article on Vincent Laforet's excellent aerials for Rob Galbraith's website a few years ago. It's got a lot of how-he-does-it info for folks interested in the nuts and bolts.

"It also leads off with what is still one of my favorite photographs, an aerial that Vincent shot over Central Park that is one of the most lovely and visually unexpected (yet simple when, after half a second, you grok it) images I've ever seen. For those who like pictures better than articles, you can see it at Vincent's website without my accompanying ramblings."

Pentax Introduces Superwide for 645D

Pentax has (re-)introduced the SMC-Pentax DA645 25mm ƒ/4 AL [IF] SDM AW for the medium-format 645D, a 19mm-equivalent superwide lens. The protrusion on the side, as you probably realize, is a half-opened filter drawer, showing a 40.5mm filter. Note the knurled wheel, which I assume allows you to rotate polarizers.

The new 25mm makes 15 lenses available for the 645D, although only two of them are made specifically for the camera. The new 25mm will be the widest.

The 25mm ƒ/4 incorporates many of Pentax's premium optical technologies, including two aspherical elements, superlative "Aero-Bright" antireflection coatings, weatherproofing, Supersonic-Direct-drive Motor (SDM) autofocus, a rounded diaphragm, a built-in lens hood, quick-shift (AF to manual) focus, and "Super Protect" (SP) coating on the outer element to repel dirt, dust, and grease.

The new lens will cost a nickel short of five grand in the U.S. and is expected to be available in mid-May.

Mike

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The Early Days of Digital

Photo by moaby, taken with the 1991 Kodak DCS 100 pictured

Montréaler Marc Aubry's Ma Collection de Reflex Numérique, a collection of self-portraits taken with cameras from the early days of digital. If he had owned all those cameras when they were new, they would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in the aggregate.

Made me muse a bit about how the early history of digital will be remembered historically. Museums collect "works on paper," and many of the earliest digital works on paper—prints—were fugitive; most early digital pictures were never printed; much early digital storage media were orphaned; and the cameras were superseded so quickly that they were essentially disposable. I wonder if a few people out there were functioning as digital photography's George Thomason—and curious as to exactly what they collected, and what among it will be considered valuable to posterity. All in all, considering all the potential problems, I don't envy future historians of the era just past in photography. Much of the evidence of the era is sifting out of existence as we speak.

Mike
(Thanks to BuzzFeed, via Tom Kaszuba)

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Quote o' the Day: Miriam Grossman Cohen

"He was not a Communist spy. He was not anything but a brilliant photographer, a beautiful teacher and a good guy to those who loved him."

—Miriam Grossman Cohen, widow of Sid Grossman, on her husband

-

(Thanks to Oren Grad)

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Featured Comment by Oren Grad: "For those who can't make it to New York, here's the website for the show at the Jewish Museum. Lots of good stuff, including pictures and the touring schedule for the show."

Featured [partial] Comment by Www: "There's also a fine catalog, available through Amazon as well as at the show."

Mike adds: I'm really tempted by that book. That work is underserved in publication. Anyone seen it?

Scott Kirkpatrick replies: "Mike, I have The Radical Camera and you would certainly love it. Excellent articles (a good counterpoint to Jane Livingston's The New York School) by Mason Klein, Catherine Evans, Murice Berger, Michael Lesy and Anne Wilkes Tucker. Lots of information about the lesser-known photographers who learned and exhibited at the League. Wonderful pictures. A whole tenement block watching an Elks' parade, by Jack Manning. Many from the Harlem Document, with a good discussion in the articles of the weaknesses of that work (no awareness of van der Zee or De Carava...). Lovely pictures of groups by Lucy Ashjian. Sol Prom, George Gilbert and Sol Libsohn. Multiple plates by Hine, Model, Abbot, and Grossman himself, not always familiar."

Morgan Library Appoints Its First Photography Curator

The Morgan Library and Museum in New York City just announced the appointment of the first curator of photography in its history. Joel Smith, who will begin his work at the Morgan in September, will focus his attention on building the collection and organizing related exhibitions and educational programs.

The Morgan since its earliest years has had a small collection of photographs, including a few works acquired by its founder, J. Pierpont Morgan, in the early twentieth century. Since 1924, when the Morgan became a public institution, further examples have regularly entered the collection as gifts and, less often, by purchase. The Morgan's holdings currently number several thousand photographs, ranging from the work of amateur or unknown photographers to vintage prints by major masters.

Joel Smith is currently the Peter C. Bunnell Curator of Photography at Princeton University Art Museum. Since arriving at Princeton in 2005, he has curated over a dozen exhibitions.

William M. Griswold, director of the Morgan, said that "The Morgan is committed to identifying ways to enhance its holdings of art, literature, and music. In 2006, we named our first curator of modern and contemporary drawings. Joel's appointment is a further example of our efforts to build a collection that reflects the whole history of works on paper."

Mike

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Featured Comment by Derek Stanton: "I walk past the Morgan every day on the way to the office. I'm glad to know there will be a greater effort to exhibit photography. I did, though, see an exhibition of phenomenal Irving Penn portraits there a few years ago. The Morgan is a beautiful, underappreciated space."

Time for a Poll: Photoshop 6

Got slagged yesterday for not making a bigger deal of the release of Photoshop CS6 beta. (It's a free 984 MB download from the Adobe website.) But...I wonder how many people use Photoshop any more. Seems to me most photographers have switched to Lightroom.

I'm a complete software non-expert (I was joking the other day that Michael Tapes could teach me all he knows and I still wouldn't know as much as he does). I still consider myself a Photoshop user, having not adopted Lightroom—but then, Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) has now become almost a complete image editor, one that sneaked into existence through the backdoor, so to speak—as a plugin—and I do the lion's share of my image correction in ACR now. (My guiding mantra—ACR for global, PS for local.) Given that PS is not the only available host for ACR, I wonder if I can truly say that I'm still a Photoshop user exclusively? It's a tad disingenuous.

Still and all, a poll:

[UPDATE 11/19/12: Vizu Polls closed down, so I've taken a screen shot of the poll results and substituted it for the live poll. Best I could do to preserve the post. —Ed.]

Mike

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