The Online Photographer

[Shout]

I mentioned my friend "Bobby B" (an occasional nickname he acquired from Maya Rudoph's impression of Whitney Houston on SNL), in the "Items" post, as the person who alerted me to the long-lost minimalist masterpiece "November." He's Bob Burnett, Creative Director of GVI, a production company based in Washington, D.C.

Bob and his crews just finished doing all the videos for the MacArthur Foundation's Awards for Creative & Effective Institutions that were just announced. Seems appropriate to give him a shout—Bob is a fount of the intriguing, the arcane, and the out-of-the-way, and not infrequently enriches TOP quietly from behind the scenes.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Do You Want to Be Famous? Here's How

Written by Mike Johnston

If you want to be a famous photographer, concentrate on your hits.

Think about it. A great many great photographers can be distilled down to just one great photograph. Even if they've taken thousands of wonderful photographs in their lives and careers.

A great many more great photographers can be distilled down to a small number of great photographs that are all hits.

Almost no photographer is widely known by more than maybe a dozen photographs. (If you don't believe me, pick any photographer who is legitimately a famous name but whose work you're not intimately familiar with. Think of as many of his or her pictures as you can and jot them down. How many do you come up with?)

Finally, almost any great photographer can have his or her entire life's work synopsized effectively in less than a hundred pictures.

It's all about the hits. That's what will distinguish you from the great mass of your fellow practitioners. That's what will make or break your name recognition. A picture that stands for you in the minds of others will give people a "handle" by which to know you. It's almost like photographers aren't famous, their best pictures are.

•     •     •

If I name a photographer, and you think of one photograph you identify most strongly with that name, chances are good that you, I, and other people will all be thinking of the same photograph. Let's try it. Steve McCurry. Rineke Dijkstra. Alec Soth. Think of one picture you identify most with each of those names. What three pictures come to your mind? Don't say it in a comment, just think of them. I'll put up the three pictures I'm thinking about tomorrow and you can see if we were thinking about the same ones.

(Of course, this won't work for photographers you haven't heard of. Guess that means they're not famous...to you.)

•     •     •

Can you think of a photographer you believe is famous, who doesn't have a picture that's a particular hit? I know too many photographers to do this, but maybe you can. (Eliot Porter comes to mind for me. There are always exceptions to every rule.)

•     •     •

On of the things that strikes me as funny about the digital revolution is that everybody gasses on about how digital allows them to take so many more exposures...and then that's exactly what they do. They come back from vacation bragging that they took 4,500 shots, or report that they took 85,000 exposures in the last calendar year. They put multiple variants of the same shot up on flickr. They upload hundreds and hundreds, even thousands, of photographs to their websites.

No, no, no. That ain't the way to do it. Nobody ever got famous by taking lots of pictures. The only reason to take lots of pictures is to get better ones, not to just have more of them. The reason to take 4,500 pictures is because it might help you get a few that are really great instead of a few that are pretty good. If all you're getting is solid B+ shots, it doesn't matter if you get 50 of them or 500.

Well, not if your aim is to be famous.

•     •     •

Getting a hit is problematic. You gotta get off your ass and get out of the house, work hard, and produce lots of work to score a true hit. Most photographers just plain don't put in the time.

Promoting and publicizing your best picture or pictures is important, but, for the most part, I don't think you can decide what your hits are. It's not a matter of willing a photograph to be popular and recognizable. You can't force people to fall in love with something.

On the other hand, if you get a hit, it's good to have the presence of mind to recognize what you have and promote it. How? You can make a poster out of it. You can put it on the cover of your book. You can make promo cards and send them around to galleries. You can offer it for sale as a fine print.

You can be the picture's PR agent, in a sense.

My early big hit, such as it is. Of course, I'm not famous...as a photographer.

Of course, none of that will matter much unless it's a picture people actually really like and respond to.

If some people do, though, others can be brought along. (Think of all those photographs you know where you think, "why is this famous? What's so good about it?" Those are pictures other people consider hits that just don't grab you, is all.)

•     •     •

I know famous photographers get sick of their famous hits. I heard recently that Paul Caponigro got so sick of printing "Running White Deer" that he declared a moratorium on making new prints of it. Did Ansel get sick of printing more than 800 prints of "Moonrise"? (Or did he just keep thinking, "I'm minting money, I'm minting money..."?)

One of my school classmates, Sarah Huntington, had a big hit in school, with a picture of two white cows on a country road on a foggy day. It was gorgeous. Everybody knew it was a hit. (And cows became Sarah's "property." I once showed a picture of a cow, and another classmate said, "You can't do cows! Cows are Sarah's." Still makes me smile.) So guess what? I exchanged emails with Sarah recently, and that picture is still selling for her, more than 25 years later. (I'll see if I can get a JPEG of it for you.)

•     •     •

Of course, not everybody has to be famous. Not everybody wants to be famous. But if you do, mind your hits. Keep on the lookout for them. Groom them. Nourish them. Help them along in the world. Nothing else matters as much, if fame is your aim.

©2013 by Michael C. Johnston, all rights reserved

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Mark: "Yes, one or two exceptional shots will get you fame, however, I don’t think they will necessarily get you lasting fame. To take an example from another artistic field there are plenty of one hit wonders in the music world. If you look back at them after a decade or so a lot of people will not have a clue as to their identity, or possibly even recognise the song. To persist as a famous entity the musicians generally have to accompany those stellar hits with a wider body of work. It is not so important that this work is the same stellar level, but it has to be a consistent good output. The same can be said for photographers, while they are famous for their iconic images, they need to back those up with a good and consistent body of work. You are right though, unless you are a photographer or interested in photography you are much more likely to know the photographs than you are to know the photographer. Music wins out on that front!"

Mike replies: You're absolutely right Mark—"To persist as a famous entity [you] generally have to accompany those stellar hits with a wider body of work." True. But the hits are often what let the rest of the work live, and they're what get attention for work that wouldn't necessarily earn attention without the fame. Think of all the lower-level work by the Rolling Stones, for example, that never would have made it to the radio if they were a no-name band coming up in, say, the '80s. Work perpetuates fame, but fame perpetuates work, too.

[A different] Mark: "It is a really nice picture!"

bill vann: "Okay, I am not proclaiming to be great. But this post struck a chord.

"I have a severe spinal cord injury (SCI), barely able to shoot anymore, chronic, intractable, severe central pain syndrome (CPS) and nerve damage. TMI, but bear with me.

"Shrink says take something you love and work it...daily, as part of my therapy.

"Photography and music are my only enduring passions.I can no longer play classical guitar or piano, never will. But some days I can manage my NEX-7. And I have 40+ years' archive of photography.

"So I decide to post on an SCI support board a daily picture thread. Hopefully something new, and on days I can't manage (most), I rework or post something from my vast archives.

"Note I suck; well, not really, but after 40 years I am humbled at how much is, eh, trite, okay, nice, whatever, and how few 'winners' there really are.

"I committed to a one-year project and often physically cannot do anything, and at almost the one year mark I have posted about 50 pics and the forum humors me with my dog and odd, weird, he-took-too-many-drugs-today pics.

"I recall a quote from Ansel Adams about edit, edit, edit, then edit. Heck if I did that I might only have 25 seminal pics. And how would I justify all those cameras from my Burke and James to my Leicas and 'Blads.

"But fortunately it was a job and a passion and I never expected to be great.

"I loved this blog, really did.  Would invite folks to look, but my dark side is interwoven and it is not pretty.

"Mike you add much to my life (except when I totally disagree with you and you become an idiot for a day or so, LOL).

"Thanks. Hope you are feeling well.

"Kindly, b"

Joe Lipka: "As Cherie Hiser has said: 10,000 negatives 1,000 prints 100 good ones 10 great ones 1 is all they remember."

Ed Hawco: "Sometimes your hits can get away from you. In 1992, when I was a student, I went to the washroom next to the student darkroom before heading in for a few hours of developing and printing. I had a few frames of Tri-X left on a roll so I took a few shots of a line of urinals against the wall. Twelve years later I scanned a work print and put it on my photo blog. It is now the most copied, most stolen, and most viewed photograph I've ever taken.

Ed Hawco, Urinals, Visual Arts building, Concordia University, Montreal

"Do a Google image search on 'urinals' and you'll find it in dozens of places, often modified. It seems to be the 'go-to' image for people writing blog posts about men's room etiquette. An iPhone app developer used it (without permission) in its publicity for a pee-related app (don't ask).

"It's completely out of my control because it's been copied up to SmugMug and other sharing sites multiple times, always without permission or attribution. On a positive note, I was able to get a few of the people who used it in blog posts to give attribution and to link back to the original source, and I even got a couple of commercial sites to pay me a small fee for usage. The best news is that an advertising company in New Zealand paid me a handsome fee to use it on Billboards in and around Aukland (they came to me; I didn't have to go after them).

"But here's the thing; I'm not particularly upset over the fact that this photo of mine is in such wide circulation without attribution. I've made a bit of money from it, so that part's taken care of. But mostly it's because if I ever do reach a point where I'm 'known' for a photograph, I don't want it to be for a picture of urinals!"

Mike replies: Interesting, because that's a hit. That's how it works. It's just not what you wanted to be a hit! And you normally don't want to be anonymous behind your hits, although in this case you don't mind.

I suppose there are musicians, too, who are dismayed by the songs of theirs that become hits even though they know they have much better and more serious work, although I can't think of any examples.

'Record Shots'

I'm feeling the need to change the subject this morning, but before we do, I thought I might mention one more thing. As I was reading more about Shaw-Pellegrin yesterday, it occurred to me that maybe the contest organizers need to make it more clear exactly what it is they're rewarding...good photographs, or good journalism?

There does seem to be a disconnect between the two, frequently. I've found the same thing in my infrequent attempts at "photo essays": there are some pictures you get along the way that are good pictures; and then there are some pictures that are needed in order to tell the story accurately, but that aren't good pictures. No matter how good you are, nobody can tell a story in pictures honestly in which every picture is as good as the best one.

It's always seemed to me that this is a very major tension in photography...almost all photography. You can make it look good, or you can make it true to the subject, but, very often, you can't do both at the same time.

I even have a name for those aesthetically drab 'n' dispiriting but accurate and informative frames: "record shots." And I've always conceived that about half my shooting consists of record shots, meant to record a memory: I was here. I did this. I was with this person. I saw this. That sort of thing. Sometimes the record shots do turn out to be good photographs too, and I love it when that happens. But it's relatively rare.

Despite my fealty in principle to the ideal of honesty in photographs, I almost always fall on the side of good pictures. Those are the ones that move me, that I care about.

Of course, I'm not trying to be a journalist, nor am I charged with being one. I'm just an amateur, doing what I want to do. That's the way I like it. Saves me from having to worry too much about this sort of thing.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

MM: "'Maybe the contest organizers need to make it more clear exactly what it is they're rewarding...good photographs, or good journalism?'

"Very interesting observation. I see corollaries in the fields I work with: publication design (readability and larger type vs. smaller type that is treated more as a graphic element than as the main point of the publication); interior architecture (day-to-day livability vs. the kind of visual drama that photographs well); signage design (practicality, prominence, and clarity vs. the kind of subtle/spare/elegant stylishness that looks beautiful on a wall); and website design (fast-loading, structurally simple pages vs. stylish but complex and slower-loading pages). We won't get started on vehicles—or industrial design of things like cameras—but in all of these cases one can see how prominent industry awards may reward something other than what many end-users might assume the awards would be 'about.'

"As you note, there is no consistently 'right' approach, not even within a single individual (a guy may care what his car looks like but not his apartment, while his spouse may feel the opposite). But there's no doubt that awards usually reward one kind of excellence in a way that many end-users actually may not care too much about. Online commentary and discussions like this can help the public figure out which kind of excellence the award is honoring—and how that relates to what each individual thinks is important."

Michel Hardy-Vallée: "Whenever I read about photo-reportage controversies like the current one, I can't help but go back to the famous 2009 Paris Match award-winning (then award-losing, as soon as they revealed the hoax in the acceptance speech) faux-cumentary essay 'Mention Rien' ('graded nil') on the poverty and precarity of French students.

"The premise is simple: by respecting all the codes of 'concerned' photojournalism, the two students convincingly submitted to a major news contest a reportage that was 100% staged. The captions under the portraits describe the situation of students having to forage to eat, share cramped spaces, work many odd jobs, prostitute themselves, or live in dire conditions, in order to be able to continue their studies.

"They won the prize because photojournalism is essentially constructed on a trust contract: the only guarantee for the veracity of the images is ultimately the photographer's word (Ctein addressed that below). But there's a Borgesian paradox as well: you cannot distinguish a staged image from a non-staged one just by looking at it.

"In other words, they destroyed the idea that photos have essentially any intrinsic truth-value, and showed that whatever truth-value they have must be governed by a practice of interpretation (which obviously can be fooled).

"It is nevertheless an interesting, and I would say touching work, even when you are well aware of the forgery. On the one hand, these guys know their aesthetics, and if you're sensitive to that kind of style, you can only admire their eye. On the other hand, student poverty is a reality, and most people experience dire straits during the course of their studies, especially if they happen to fall outside of the ideal life style enshrined in official policies: students living at home or benefitting from parental support, allowing them to work little and spend time on their studies.

"Student loans are calculated on a purported parental contribution, not on an actual one, so if your parents are rich bastards, the government considers they support you and won't provide loans.

"The set of imaginary characters the two fauxtographers have devised is a fine collection of problem cases, and the verisimilitude is polished: their troubles are not too extreme, despite being beyond what anyone would consider an ideal situation, and their distress is at the same time counterbalanced by a will to get by and not linger pathetically on their misery.

"It's a great work of fiction. And unlike the case at hand, there has been no sidestepping of all the ethical and ideological issues their action involved. These are people who wanted to wreck the system, but at the same time they reinforced the power of storytelling beyond its truth-value. They took full credit for the controversy, and never attempted to have their cake and eat it too."

robert e: "'...What it is they're rewarding...good photographs, or good journalism?'

"Apparently more the former. After some reading and listening on WPP's website it's pretty clear that the priority is to find 'dramatic,' 'powerful,' 'beautiful,' 'poetic' images and series that 'reach out and grab' and 'pull you in.' This seems consistent with the stated purpose of the contest, which is to promote the 'inspirational role of photojournalism.'

"The jury chair statements are here.

"I think the Nature prize winner is a perfect example of great photographs being great journalism, and even good science. But that, I suppose, is not very surprising given what nature photography entails vs. documenting human news.

"On a meta level, the most disturbing winner for me—even more so than Pellegrin's infamous staged shot, though there are important similarities—is Xiaoqun Zheng's second prize in the Nature category. This series simply and shockingly takes familiar tropes from photojournalism about incarcerated humans and applies it to animals in zoos. It of course raises questions about our treatment of both humans and animals, but to my mind it also raises questions about the practice and conventions of the craft, and about what it is we're looking at, looking for, and honoring with contests like these.

"I also found interesting the Nature jury chair's account of demanding the Raw file of an eventual winning image to verify that its striking colors were not the result of post processing, and his comment about 'documentary' pretensions."

Links to the Shaw-Pellegrin Controversy

If you haven't been following the Shaw-Pellegrin controversy, this might help you understand today's Ctein column better:

The original critique is here. (The BagNews links are still quite slow—still probably getting plenty of traffic.) The introduction includes descriptions of the contests the picture won.

Executive summary: Michael Shaw of BagNews was approached by the subject of a contest-winning photojournalistic photograph who felt the picture of him probably violated journalistic ethics. The picture was by Italian photographer Paolo Pellegrin of Magnum, from the series about gun violence in an area of Rochester, NY called "The Crescent" (also the title of Pellegrin's photoessay). Pellegrin had used a local photo student as a guide. The photo student introduced him to a friend, also a student, who was a gun owner, and Pellegrin posed the friend in a setting of his (Pellegrin's) choosing, holding his gun. The problem is that the picture was not taken anywhere near The Crescent, the gun owner is not in any way involved in gun violence, and Pellegrin allegedly miscaptioned and misrepresented the picture (and some of the caption material was plagiarized). Shaw et al. researched and wrote about the issue.

Paolo Pellegrin's response is here.

TOP's first article about it is here.

BagNews' followup article is here.

TOP's followup is here.

Ctein's appraisal of Shaw's ethics is just below.

I've indented the TOP links because, although they're pertinent to our readers, TOP is not a player in the controversy—we're just following along and commenting like everyone else.

The issue has been widely reported and commented on elsewhere, at places like A Photo Editor, Poynter, PDN, etc., etc. (as Ctein is wont to say, Google is your friend). Many sites, commenters, etc. have opined that Michael Shaw was negligent in not contacting Paolo Pellegrin prior to publishing his critique, in order to get Paolo's "side of the story" before proceeding. That's what Ctein addresses this morning. Read on!

Mike the Ed.

UPDATE: Got this comment from veteran pj Ken Jarecke: "Mike, I've been a fan of Paolo's, so I didn't want to write this. That said, here's my two cents. Ken."

Best take I've read on the subject so far. And Ken's post drew some particularly incisive and interesting comments, too. —MJ

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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What a Journalist Is Obliged to Do

This week's column by Ctein

I am observing an unpleasant amount of "shoot the messenger" conversation going on around the subject of Paolo Pellegrin's professional lapses in his "Crescent, Rochester" series. What it mostly seems to boil down to is the idea that Michael Shaw was in some way obligated to provide Pellegrin with a forum to rebut his (Shaw's) article.

He was not. Not even if one considers the original piece to be straight reporting, and I don't think it's even close to that: You can call it analysis, commentary, opinion, or editorial, whatever you want*, but it is not a simple news article whether or not it includes newsy facts. In any case, that does not matter. The reason it is customary for reporters to contact the subject of an article is to make sure they haven't gotten any facts wrong. It is not because the subject is entitled to a forum in their article, and it is in no way about giving them free rein to spin their version.

Yes, it may be considered a courtesy to contact them, but it is done out of prudence, to "cover one's ass." And, sometimes, it is not done out of prudence, if you have reason to think the subject of your article will attempt a preemptive counterstrike. When a piece is not pure reporting, as Shaw's isn't, it's frequently not even customary. In no circumstance is it obligatory.

By the rules of the business he's in, Shaw did nothing wrong. Had he managed to get his facts wrong by failing to contact Pellegrin, then Pellegrin would be entitled to cry foul. He didn't. He accurately described three main points:

1. The caption was, in fact, incorrect and misleading about the subject. By journalistic standards, it was a minor bit of sloppiness, regardless of how the subject of the photo feels about it—honestly, this isn't about him. But it was, nonetheless, wrong.

2. More seriously, the location is falsified in a way that is materially important. That's a much more substantial lapse. That Pellegrin doesn't acknowledge that is troublesome. His response boils down to, "Well, I didn't explicitly say the photo was made in the Crescent, and besides I don't actually remember where it was made, and besides, who knows what the Crescent really means anyway?" That's a huge load of bullshit. It would be lame coming from a politician. It's unacceptable from anyone who practices journalism. And here again, Shaw's article is factually correct.

3. The real damning bit is the plagiarism. There's been a lot of obfuscation written about this—who really submitted it, was the material meant for publication or not, etc., etc. I quote Pellegrin: "The background text, which traditionally would be for internal uses, and not for the public, is something I gathered from various sources in Rochester and from the internet, including the New York Times."

Okay, so it is Pellegrin's text, and Shaw is factually correct about that also. Pellegrin's copy is almost word-for-word identical to the New York Times. The most that Pellegrin might be able to do (and he doesn't) is show that he pulled all the material from third-party sources, and even then he's still saddled with the problem of having presented someone else's writing as his own.

That is a major no-no, and he knows it. Not just in the field of journalism, though it's especially bad there. You don't do that. Not ever. Not for internal use or for publication. It is plagiarism, plain and simple.

As for Pellegrin's very weak defense that the text wasn't meant for publication, and that he expected editors to rewrite it before using it, that doesn't negate the plagiarism charge. The kindest word I can use for that is "disingenuous." If Pellegrin expected the editors to rewrite his material, that only means he expected to not get caught out in his plagiarism.

Editors and reporters usually rewrite that kind of copy before running it, as matters of space and style if nothing else. But the rules and custom of the business are that if someone sends you a press kit (defining that in the loosest terms), it's for publication and it only contains material that the sender owns and has permission to submit for republication. Unless Pellegrin demonstrates that the material was a.) clearly labeled "not for publication" and b.) clearly labeled as attributable to other sources, he's in the wrong. This is not even close to a judgment call.

From the perspective of professional journalism, Pellegrin's defense is a complete fail. It may very well play well to a lay public, appealing to emotions and inapplicable concepts of what constitutes "fair play" and muddying the discussion with diversionary tactics. Politically it's a sound approach; it's worked for many a candidate running for office. It is neither correct nor appropriate for a journalist.

The best thing Pellegrin could do in this circumstance, professionally, would be to fall on his sword and hope he would only suffer minor paper cuts (likely that is all that would happen). That he took the approach he did is disturbing.

As for Shaw, he got it right. There were several places where he could have easily gotten facts wrong. I think he made some educated guesswork and supposition (e.g., who actually inserted the text that accompanied the photograph), and that is risky. As I said at the beginning, that is why one frequently contacts the subject. But Shaw, in fact, got it right, and when the prose finally hits the page that is all that counts.

©2013 by Ctein, all rights reserved

[*Shaw himself said he's a media critic, meaning he'd call it a critique, presumably. —Ed.]

Ctein's weekly column appears on TOP on Wednesdays.

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Stan B.: "The man's a brilliant photographer, one who has repeatedly put himself on the line and gone the extra mile. He got lazy on this one, cut corners. Fortunately, someone was awake and called him on it; and that's a good thing, both for his profession and for us. Ultimately, it's also good for Mr. Pellegrin—a major wake-up call to remain true to his chosen, professional code of conduct."

Sarge: "Coming from someone who calls himself 'a lousy critic,' this column is a fine piece of disambiguation. Op-Ed should be in another section. I think the category 'Legal and social issues' under which Ctein's column is filed, is TOP's equivalent of an Op-Ed section. Or should there be a separate, categorical Op-Ed section to warn off Moose [who, in a comment, objected to the subject of this column —Ed.] and like-minded readers?"

The Editor replies: This is a blog. We post about all sorts of topics. I am a bit perplexed that Moose reads this site and thinks this controversy has less to do with photography than a post about technique might; that would definitely not be my ordering of priorities. However, that doesn't even matter. If anyone doesn't like a particular post, he or she may simply choose to not read it. There is no penalty for skipping. There will be no test.

TOP is a buffet: help yourself to what appeals to you, pass on what doesn't.

Mark Alan Miller: "My biggest problem is not just that Pellegrin fudged the location and plagiarized his caption, it's that he, a photojournalist, did not report on what he found in the Crescent, as assigned, but instead went elsewhere to find what he wanted, a white gun fan who could be made look like a scary nut case. Have him grab his gun and drape himself in cartridges and get him to pose in a seedy-looking location (really just a garage), with a bit of dramatic lighting to push the message across. A little creative captioning later and the Crescent had an ex-Marine sniper who looked liable to break out in comic book, whoop-ass vigilantism at the least provocation. Am I reading too much meaning into it? The dude in his patriotic T-shirt with shotgun at the ready is a walking action movie/video game stereotype. Pellegrin knows it as well as we do. My problem with Pellegrin is that he created this image from the ground up. This ex-Marine sniper is not to be found on the streets of the Crescent. Actor, role, set, props, none of these are what Pellegrin purported them to be. He didn't just report badly, he passed off creative writing as journalism. And plagiarized part of it."

Brett: "The biggest failing for me, a journalist by training, is that Pellegrin didn't seem to even know where he was when he took that staged photo of the student/former Marine with the gun. If he didn't even understand the story, how could he report it accurately? His follow-up explanation that he was trying to reflect gun culture elsewhere in the city didn't ring true to me. That wasn't reflected in the caption.

"I think this exposes one big flaw when photojournalists parachute into an area and try to understand it. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they don't. Given the ubiquity of cell phone cameras and the like, it's no wonder that we're seeing more grass-roots photojournalism from people who actually live in a given place. Sometimes they have their own agendas, it's true, but by and large I think they will be able to more accurately report their surroundings than could a person like Pellegrin, no matter how talented and dedicated."

Zero Dark and Dirty

Did you watch the Oscars on Sunday? My Yahoo! home page led with an account of the Best Actress winner stumbling on the steps up to the podium, complete with picture. Really? That's the most interesting thing that happened all night? That's how you lead your news coverage—somebody embarrassed themselves? That would seem to damn us (or Yahoo's audience, at least) as mean, petty, and puerile. I'm not a priss or anything, but to single out that event as the most significant moment of the evening is spiteful. Very low-grade as outrages go, admittedly, but pitiful nonetheless. Sigh.

If you'd like something with a bit more substance, I came across this excellent article by Glenn Greenwald at The Guardian, in which he explains why he thinks Zero Dark Thirty got so thoroughly snubbed. Interesting.

This pertains to our recent discussions about how movies shape public opinion, and their relationship to honesty and veracity about things like history and politics.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Ed Richards: "I teach national security law in my day job. Zero Dark Thirty is controversial in the field. It follows in the path of the TV show 24 in the illusion that torture is effective. From what I have heard from expert at the FBI, there is no support for the idea that torture works. They feel that we might have gotten valuable info had we not used torture. But the hard question is whether this is art that should be judged on it own. I do not think so, in that its power is precisely that pretends to tell us about a real event. Torture was a check off for upping rating and appealing to the teenage boy market, not an integral part of the real story."

latent_image: "I'm still grinding my teeth over Argo. Even President Carter recently stated that the operation was 90% Canadian, yet the Oscar went to a chest-thumper of a movie that makes the CIA look like the major player.

"I remember that era well. During the summer of 1979, I attended a U.S. university that had a sizeable Iranian student population. If the CIA had been reading the posters I casually read all through that summer on student bulletin boards, maybe they would have made sure Americans were sent home earlier the way Canadian Ambassador Ken Taylor arranged for 850 Canadians to leave Iran in January 1979. During that summer I kept telling my wife that something was going to pop in Iran. It certainly seems that American diplomats were caught flat-footed. I don't think it was the CIA's finest hour, but I'm no expert in such matters. However, I'm more than willing to believe President Carter. He should know."

Rob: "When I saw Zero Dark Thirty, I was filled with mixed emotions. It is, indeed, an excellent piece of filmmaking, but it is also a fundamentally dishonest portrayal of role that torture played in finding Bin Laden. The actual depictions of torture are disgusting, but one cannot come away from the film without wondering whether the torture may have been justified, in the sense that the ends justified the means.

"It appears that the director, Kathryn Bigelow, was fed a biased account of events by her CIA informants, who want their version of history to be the commonly accepted one and who also want justification for their own actions. Did Bigelow know that she was being used, or did she not care, because the story was such great material for her film? And just as importantly, why are her CIA informants not in prison for leaking highly classified information, as Bradley Manning is for doing exactly the same thing? We would do well to ponder this quotation from George Orwell: 'Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.' ZDT is a demonstration of how the past can be controlled."

Items

Ozzie Sweet: To my various interlocutors who are anxious for me to treat of Ozzie Sweet: I regret to say that, until I was introduced to him by a kind correspendent several weeks ago, I had never heard of him. That is mere ignorance, and mea culpa; any photographer eulogized in the Times is obviously a gentleman of renown. I apologize that Yr. Hmbl. Host cannot be a commentator on his life or passing, but for some things you must turn elsewhere.

Sony A58 top view

New Sonys: Just out are two new Sony digital cameras, one an SLT (the A58), and one a member of the NEX family (the NEX-3n). Both are more toward the entry-level end of their respective ranges.

The 2014 Mazda 6: Back at the Milwaukee Auto Show yesterday (for four hours of solitary happy wandering and poking about), I tried to support my comment about the Mazda 6 being a particularly good-looking new modern sedan (translation into English: saloon). I photographed it from all angles (the battery in the Dragoon was depleted, so I took the OM-D), and discovered something odd: it doesn't photograph well.

I'm sure many of the professionals in the audience are aware of the fundamental mystery of models...namely, that the camera "loves" some people and is not so kind to others. Well, the same is true of cars, apparently. I compared my visual impression of the Mazda 6 to my photographs of it again and again, and there's no doubt: it looks better in the sheet metal than it does in pictures. I tried, but all of my attempts fell short (and some fell flat). See it for yourself when you can; it's a standout.

The color, by the way, is "Blue Reflex," and it's also lovely. And also not quite reproduced here accurately, but that's my fault.

Local news: Not only has "Color Rush: 75 Years of Color Photography in America" opened at the Milwaukee Art Museum, but I learned recently that MAM has moved quickly in replacing departing photo curator Lisa Hostetler, whose major show "Street Seen" was such a success. (The excellent book, Street Seen: The Psychological Gesture in American Photography, 1940-1959, which we wrote about a time or two, is out of print but still available.) "Color Rush" is in part her parting gift. (I'll be touring the show in March with a most excellent guide. Also, a book is upcoming from Aperture. It's available for preorder now, for an April availability date, and can be purchased now at the museum.)

Our new curator is Lisa Sutcliffe, who joins us from SFMoMA. Local photo people are of course using the inevitable shorthand "old Lisa" and "new Lisa," like that television show about the Christines, but in fact both are young. Lisa H., whose departure was described as "a kick in the stomach" by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, is the new McEvoy Family Curator for Photography at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C.

We welcome Lisa S. and wish her well, and are hopeful her tenure here will have as much vitality as her predecessor's.

Minimalist masterpiece: I'm in the middle of streaming the surviving hour+ of Dennis Johnson's 1959 minimalist composition "November," lost for many decades and resurrected recently by the yeoman efforts of Kyle Gann and others. A tip from my friend Bobby B Bobby B of course. It's at Irritable Hedgehog. Have a listen if you're interested in Ur-minimalism, and read the fascinating tale.

More anon,

Mike

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Karl: "From a Coastal Homes magazine interview with Ozzie Sweet: 'Ozzie Sweet is the Babe Ruth of Photographers,' said Chuck Solomon of Sports Illustrated. 'Ozzie is the DiMaggio of his craft; he makes it look easy when in fact, there were none like him,' said Marty Appel, baseball author, historian and TV producer. And I agree. He was the best photo illustrator I've ever seen. I first noticed his work on the cover of Reader's Digest if I remember correctly; a shot of kids on a toboggan in mid-air flying over a hill with expressions out of Norman Rockwell. He was my benchmark for how good photo illustration could be when done really well."

Followup: Twofer! ...And We're Back On Topic

One thing I will say for BMW...it's a popular subject. Yesterday's post about BMW brought in far more traffic than normal for a Sunday.

I did go to the car show, and got a pleasant surprise. As I rounded the doorway into the Classic Two-Seater Sports Car room, this is what I saw:

Whoa, what?

A bonus for Mikey, that's what. Turns out an enterprising local photographer had piggybacked on the Auto Show to stage an exhibit of his work. He's a retired commercial professional from West Allis named Tom Ferderbar.

Photographer Tom Ferderbar

Here's Tom. We had a nice chat. He knew the late Arnie Gore, a local pro who was a good friend of my father's. He was showing two sets of work in the Two-Seater room: black and white from Yosemite National Park, and color from a project shot along the old Route 66. And he kinda liked the GX1, too.

One of Tom's Yosemite pictures next to a 1991 Lotus Elan.

The color work was done on 6x6 and with Canon DSLRs, and the black and white was all 8x10" Tri-X. The giant prints—I forgot to write down the size, although you can get an idea from the snapshot above—are digital prints made from scans. Tom told me that buyers sometimes ask for silver gelatin enlarger prints, but he can't make them this big, and he says he thinks the digital prints are better anyway. The main advantage, he said, being that he can burn and dodge much more precisely.

I was too polite to ask him if he'd sold any. His prices were right stiff, too.

As you might even have guessed, Tom studied with Ansel Adams—he took a workshop with Ansel in the 1960s (I think it was). The week-long workshop included a private dinner for two students at a time at the Adams home with Ansel and his wife Virginia. Cost for the week? $100.

•     •     •

The nice thing about going to the Auto Show on the weekend is that you get to meet some of the owners of the gorgeous old cars being displayed. In Tom's room I got to talk to the owner of a perfect 1959 Corvette, as well as a guy who had owned his restored 1957 Ford Thunderbird since new. That's pretty unusual. I also talked to the owner of a Bugatti Type 57 that must have been the rarest car on display at the whole show. He had just gotten it back after a five-year engine rebuild. I didn't even want to know what that cost. I must have been well into six figures.

Best of show: A used Fiberglas-bodied Superformance Cobra on display at Harry's Toys. Harry's is my favorite exhibit year after year, no question. Harry has been dealing in cool fun fine used cars since he was 16. In his day he's sold more Excaliburs than anyone alive. He sells mostly used cars skimmed from his sizeable wholesale business, but he also just took on a brand of Canadian three-wheeler that must have been the strangest vehicle at the whole show. He likes telling the story of one customer from Switzerland who has bought 35 cars from him! If I were a rich guy, I'd trade one used car for another every two years at Harry's for the rest of my life, like clockwork.

Oddities: #1: This might sound strange, but the muscle cars of today are Mercedes-Benzes. In some of their cars there are so many engine choices that they'll offer a 400+ HP bi-turbocharged V8 and then a more powerful option above that. They have a station wagon that will pin a Viper's ears back, and I'm not joking.

#2: I was looking forward to sitting in a Golf R, my current dream car, but, strangely, the VW display did not include a Golf R. Or a GTI. Or a Golf. That's right, no Golfs of any flavor in the VW area. That's just strange.

Hot tip: If you happen to be in the market for a mainstream sedan, make sure you see the new 2013 Mazda 6, a Camry/Accord competitor that's new this year (they've only been on sale for four weeks as I write this). The car looks good in pictures, but in person it's gorgeous. Especially in an as-yet-unidentified smokey blue color. Even the cockpit design is superb. Coming from a company that has been notably styling-challenged in the past few years (remember the cat-car?), that's like a mope who's batting .119 suddenly stroking a game-winning grand slam.

It's really an unusally pretty car for its segment. And it starts at $20k.

Fiat Abarths are nicer than I thought they'd be, too, but who are those cars for? I can't picture men buying them, and I can't picture women buying them. And I think those are the only choices.

It's my birthday today, so I'm going back to the Auto Show this afternoon. Playing hookey two days in a row...what a slug! But the nice thing about going to the Auto Show on a weekday is that there aren't nearly as many people, and you can get better pictures of the cars. Today I'm shouldering the Big Dragoon...gotta get some snaps of that Cobra. Who knows if I'll ever see one again.

Mike

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Christian: "I am in love with that first B&W photo with the tree and the waterfall. I can't even see it that well in your picture, Mike, but I am quite smitten. When I grow up I would love to make pictures of that caliber."

Tom Kwas: "FYI, for the years I worked in Milwaukee, Tom had the premier advertising studio in town; and was a genuinely nice guy. Everyone wanted to work there, and they always had the best facilities and equipment. He was blessed, if I can use that term, with owning that studio during what would be the golden years of advertising photography in this market area. He was of the perfect age, such that when he decided to retire, the business market in general was already on the wane, and many of the local businesses that had national and international markets, had already sold themselves to larger concerns not located in this area, and moved their advertising and marketing departments out of this area to their home offices.

"He probably owned his studio when Milwaukee was still the 13th–15th largest metro area in the country, until by the early '90s, it had shrunk to the 38th largest market area. Perfect timing! No studio now exist in this market area that was like his. End of an era...."

Open Mike: The Meaning of BMW

By Mike Johnston

I learned to drive stick shift in a BMW...on a test drive.

In high school I read car magazines obsessively in study hall, where I encountered David E. Davis's famous review of the BMW 2002, an article that helped put the German carmaker on the map*. Much later I actually got to visit the legendary editor at his home, to inspect a Mexican view camera he had on display in his living room; but that's another story.

Followup: Pellegrin Kerfuffle

Yesterday, I linked to a BagNews post about the accuracy of an award-winning photo by Magnum's Paolo Pellegrin. Since then, Paolo has responded (weakly, in my estimation) and a number of sites have leapt to his defense.

This morning, BagNews responds to the criticisms. An excerpt:

[A] notable effect from yesterday’s critique was the counter-critique that BagNews "failed to contact" Mr. Pellegrin in advance or "give him the chance to reply." I welcome the chance to speak to that, and to clarify a fundamental misperception people make about the role and practice of BagNews relative to news photography.

What is essential to understand about our role is that we are critics, not reporters. That may be confusing to some because there are not a lot of  practicing visual news or, especially, news photo critics around. But our role and what we do—deemed essential by esteemed colleagues from visual media to academia—is no different from what art critics or television critics or theater critics or film critics do.

I like that point. But then, I'm sort of a critic too, so I sympathize.

Black eyes, or needed checks and balances?
If you don't mind me going all meta now:

To my way of thinking, there's a whole 'nuther can o' worms waiting to be opened here: are prizewinning photographs more often revealed to have been fudged to some degree simply because winning a contest puts the spotlight of scrutiny on them? To what degree are the offending practices simply standard practices that are only revealed on special occasions when outside parties have a reason to look into them?

Since yesterday I've been included in a large private conversation (initiated by Michael Shaw of BagNews) between more than forty photo media professionals regarding the kerfuffle. Several participants in that conversation have questioned whether there should be press photo awards at all. After all, it brings unwelcome as well as welcome attention to a photographer's work, and occasionally (when a winner is disgraced) gives the whole profession a black eye.

True, it does seem to happen with depressing regularity: a photo wins a prize, the photo thereby receives extra scrutiny, and the methods or the ethics of the photographer are exposed and called into question; people then discuss the matter—what the photographer's transgressions were, exactly, and whether he or she overstepped the proper boundaries of journalism.

Funny, but, to me—and I'm an outsider, remember—this is a good reason to have press photo contests. It's really their second best and second most desirable function (the first being to call added attention to especially outstanding work, of course). I'm starting to think contests do a whole lot of good precisely because then the winners are submitted to this higher level of scrutiny. The rest of us then get a "snapshot" read on the current state of photojournalistic practice—we get to see how a small sampling of work holds up under the microscope. And we find out which lines are getting blurred, which boundaries getting pushed, and we get to discuss what we think of it—whether we think it's significant or not, a transgression or not, etc. That's exactly what we're doing now, here, and what the broader photo community is doing.

That's valuable. It's a bit like the function of the press itself in relation to society, only in microcosm, related only to photojournalism itself.

Certainly, when it's agreed that a prizewinner has cheated, it sends a message to the rest of the profession: there are standards; others, down the road, might be watching; don't fudge. Mr. Pellegrin got caught fudging, is all (in this one instance). In a story about gun violence in an area called the Crescent, he posed a friend of one of his photo student guide's with a gun in a setting of his own choosing many miles from the Crescent, miscaptioned it, and called it reportage. Not quite.

If there were never any controversies, then I'd say maybe we could do away with contests. Otherwise, it seems to me we still need them. More glory to those who pass muster.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
A book of interest today:

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Speed: "The argument is that contests are bad because they sometimes expose cheaters. The corollary would be that reporting the news is bad because it sometimes exposes cheaters, crooks, liars, philanderers and thieves."

Mike replies: That's my thought, but see Jim Richardson's comment under the first post for a different take on contests.

Burt: "This is a tricky subject, no doubt. I actually started thinking about what good or bad was being done with the World Press Photo awards when they were posted on the NY Times Lens blog several days ago. I was immediately struck by the processed nature of a lot of the photos, and it honestly made me wonder if these journalists were in it to report on a story or to win an award.

"Cut to the other day and the flap over the Pellegrin photo, and the situation has only gotten stickier. Looking beyond the argument between BagNews and Pellegrin, I wonder if the question you present here isn't the most important of all. Do these awards themselves cause photographers to act unethically in hopes of winning an award?  Certainly not all the photographers involved are compromised, but some must have questionable motives. Any time you start to see the level of word mincing/semantics being picked apart in the BagNews/Pellegrin situation I think one knows in their heart that something is amiss, even if you can explain your way out of it with Bill Clinton-esque wording.

"As for the awards themselves—do they instigate this ethically questionable behavior, or do they bring about a beneficial level of scrutiny that would actually help prevent this type of thing? Of course the answer isn't clear, and I'm sure it's a bit of both. Perhaps those who give the awards should consider a method for selecting candidates' work that would reduce the desire for photojournalists to go out an behave unethically? Maybe individuals/magazines etc. shouldn't be able to submit their own work for consideration? Perhaps those giving the awards should be responsible, or submissions should be generated by a group of impartial, non-involved photographers. I'm not sure, but there's got to be a better way, no?"

Bob Keefer: "As a career journalist—writer, not photographer—what I think this tawdry episode illustrates is the sad arrogance of many members of the national media. The process works like this: Decide what the story is, usually based on reading other, more-local journalists' work. Fly in. Do a few interviews and take a few photos, all to illustrate the story you've already mapped out in advance. Fly home and enter contests."

Stuff

I have an organizer coming today. She's actually appeared on the A&E show "Hoarders." (She says I'm not a hoarder and my house "isn't bad." It's possible she's being nice to me.)

Regarding stuff, I can recommend the book Stuff (see below). But I especially recommend this recent post on Eolake Stobblehouse Thoughts. Carlin really was the Master: funny enough but very true.

Eolake is also enamored of the Paperwhite, and I keep waffling over it. I want one. My problem is that my first-gen Kindle is still fine...(re the "Featured Comment" in the D7100 post).

Mike

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
A book of interest today:

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No featured comments yet—please check back soon!

When Reality Isn't Enough

Photo by World Press Photo contest winner Paolo Pellegrin of Magnum.

When I was in photography school, I made a small portfolio called Ocean City, Maryland. It consisted of 12 or 15 pictures (I don't recall now) taken in Ocean City.

Except, one wasn't. One was a photograph of a cabin cruiser under power, taken from above. The picture was very simple: the boat was in the middle of the frame, its wake behind it, and the background was entirely water. It might have been taken in Ocean City—who could tell but me?—but as it happened, it wasn't. It was taken from a bridge in Washington, D.C. of a boat on the Potomac River.

I wrote an essay on this "lie," which was probably the earliest formulation of my conviction that a photograph is like a statement by the photographer, and the truth of the statement is on the photographer—just as with written or spoken statements, he or she can be honest, or not. There was nothing at all inherently duplicitous about that photograph of the boat; but by putting it in a portfolio called Ocean City, Maryland, and not specifying that it wasn't taken there, it became the equivalent of a false statement.

I was surprised by how divided the response was to my essay. Some of my classmates thought my conclusions were obvious; a few hadn't ever thought about it before but were convinced by my argument; and others thought it didn't matter. It "could have been" taken in Ocean City...what did it matter if it wasn't?

I also noticed that some people easily generalized the issue, and others wanted to concentrate on the specific instance.

There are two issues there, it seems to me. The first is that photographs can have content that the photographer isn't aware of. I used the boat to stand for "a generic boat"—it looked like every other medium-sized cabin cruiser of the era to me, and I'm sure it did to 98% of the people who looked at the picture. But of course it wasn't generic. It was a specific boat, of a specific make and model, which had a specific individual owner, specific people on board at the time, etc. It's far-fetched to imagine that someone might need the specific information in the picture, but not difficult to imagine the possibility. To name a trivial scenario: imagine that that boat had subsequently been sold, and the seller told the buyer it had only ever been used in the Potomac River and had never been operated in salt water, and the new owner of boat saw the picture and was able to recognize the boat as the one he bought. He might then think the seller had lied to him...because he had found a picture of the boat taken in Ocean City, which is on the Atlantic Ocean. Granted, it's very unlikely that this would happen. But it's possible. And it shows a general truth: photographs can have content that the photographer might not "mean," or even know is in the photograph.

I'll give you another example. I was photographing once in the Brandywine River Valley, and I got accosted by a homeowner who accused me of taking pictures of his truck, which was parked about 60 feet from me next to the trailer home he had come barrelling out of. I wasn't; I hadn't even really noticed his truck. I was taking pictures of...well, a shadow cast by a wrought-iron railing. The confrontation, however, made me very curious: why had he wanted me to not take a picture of his truck? Was it stolen? Was the repo man out to get it? Had he told his ex-wife he'd sold it? I didn't find out. (He was hostile, and a little drunk, and had no desire to talk to me.) But imagine that I had taken a picture of his truck beside his trailer home. The photograph then becomes evidence that, yes, the truck in the picture was probably sitting next to the trailer home in the picture. What significance that might have had was unknown to me, but his actions indicated that it indeed had some sort of significance.

The second issue is that photographs are evidence of true things in the world—not proof, but evidence—and making them into false statements when it's not clear to others that that's what you're doing essentially falsifies their inherent evidentiary value. (That no one cares might be true, but doesn't change the fact.)

Anyway, all of this is very long-winded preamble to a link I thought was fascinating. As seems to happen regularly now, a controversy has erupted about a prizewinning photo, and there's an excellent discussion of it at Bag News Notes. The article is by Michael Shaw and is called "When Reality Isn’t Dramatic Enough: Misrepresentation in a World Press and Picture of the Year Winning Photo." It begins:

What happens when a World Press Photo and Picture of the Year International award-winning photograph doesn't show what it purports to show? Not through a mistake of interpretation or subjective opinion, but when the facts show the photo wasn't taken where it was claimed to be taken and when the subject of the photo isn't who the photographer says he is. What happens when a city is represented through photographs bearing photographer-written descriptions almost wholly plagiarized from a 10-year-old New York Times article?  Does it make it worse when the photos and the series in question, "The Crescent, Rochester USA 2012," have won multiple awards and the photographer is Magnum's Paolo Pellegrin?

A fascinating article...at least to me! The issue is virtually the same, but with much higher-level players, and considerably higher stakes.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Jim: "And here is the photographer's response."

Geoff Wittig: "As someone who lives near Rochester and whose son attended RIT, I found this post more than a little discouraging. Yes, Rochester has some substantial drug/crime problems in some neighborhoods, as do all midsized and large American cities. It's no better or worse in this regard than Buffalo or Cleveland. And it has nothing at all to do with Kodak's demise; Rochester's most crime-ridden neighborhoods were no better when Kodak was riding high. Adding some manufactured visual drama is simply beyond the pale.

"The grotesque violation of any standard of journalistic integrity is the obvious issue. The last few decades have witnessed a corrosive decline in confidence in many of our institutions, in many cases for good reason. Since journalism including photography is a vital check on other institutional powers such as government and corporations, this kind of self-inflicted wound is especially greivous. We already live in an era where true/false seem to be malleable constructs. This just adds fuel to the fire."

Dave: "An argument could be made your choices for your portfolio are more an 'artistic license' than the fraud discussed in the article. As an artist, you created a work to describe Ocean City Maryland and used a photo taken elsewhere to demonstrate a facet of that location. Boats, after all, are a major cultural element of Ocean City. Art is what the creator and viewer agree it is. Journalism, however requires an objective standard of credibility clearly lacking in the WPP winner."

Another phil: "I think the problems with misrepresentation (which his photo appears to be), is that it casts a shadow on all photojournalism, and people can then view photographers with suspicion. My rule-of-thumb is, the more accurate the description, the more accurate the photo has to be—if someone titles a photo 'Blackingstone Rock, Dartmoor, taken from the southwest,' I expect to be able to go there and see it myself, whereas if it is just titled 'Rock' my expectations are different."

Dennis A. Mook: "Thirty-eight years ago, and for several years, I was a forensic police detective. Part of my duties was to photograph the scenes of crimes, from minor incidents to homicides. When on the witness stand and under oath, the first question from the prosecutor to me was, 'Are these photographs a true and accurate representation of the scene as you found it?' This was in the days before Photoshop but, nonetheless, photographs could be altered in several ways. For example, we always photographed with a 'normal' lens to keep perspective correct, developed and printed our own photographs so as to keep the representation as close to how we found it, and never altered the photographs in any way. The photograph could not speak for itself, but only represent reality and truth when corroborated by the photographer. That was always necessary as a photograph could never be entered into evidence without the maker swearing under oath that it was both true and accurate. However, the irony lies in the fact that the courts would only accept black and white photographs, as color was too inflammatory and would bias the jury. So, I always added to my verification the words 'except for the lack of color.' We also noted if we used a strobe to light the scene. Looking back now, if color photography would have preceded black and white, monochrome would never have been admitted into evidence, as it is a far cry from reality as we found it.

"Today, the same standards are required. The image cannot represent the truth unless sworn to by the individual who made it. Should this be a requirement in non-judicial uses of photographs? I don't know but it would take the 'truth and accuracy' issue to a higher level."

Update: Smith and Chamlee Print Shipments

I'm happy to report that Michael and Paula and their assistant have been making great progress on the fulfillment of our most recent print offer. All of the prints have now been made and mounted. All the prints ordered with frames have been framed and shipped; all the rest will be packed by the end of the day today. Michael and Paula had a previous engagement this week and next at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia, so they're away now, but the unframed prints will be shipped starting next Thursday after their return. The shipping will take a few days.

So if you're waiting, it won't be long now.

If you're interested, here's the breakdown of the numbers of prints sold (you can review the pictures here):

Tuscany: 66
Cacti: 74
Ice: 57
Swamp: 42

This is great progress, considering the sale only ended on the first of this month. The three of them have been working hard. I'll post a further update once everything has been shipped.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Hans-Georg Daun: "My framed print of 'Tucson Mountains, Arizona' (the cacti image) arrived three days ago. Packaging was excellent with lots of padding, so everything arrived in perfect order. Matting and framing are of a very high quality. The image itself is exquisite and seems to have a life of its own, changing with lighting conditions and viewing distance, hovering between abstract and representational. Many thanks to Mike for organizing the print sale and to Paula and Michael for making it possible to own such a great piece of art for such an extremely reasonable price."

Kick Me!

You might remember the Kickstarter project we plugged a while back for Harold Feinstein's retrospective project.

Well, the campaign was a success, the book was published, and it's on my desk as I write. Harold is a humanist—a "people person"—and the book is a fine, honest collection of black-and-white pictures in mid-century style and in the humanist tradition. I don't think there's a bad shot in the book, and every page brings something good to look at. You can see a few pictures from the book at the web page.

Although a man of many accomplishments, this is Harold's first retrospective.

And get a load of those endorsements. Some real heavy hitters speaking up for Harold! Those are what book blurbs should be. Wow. Check out A. D. Coleman's comment—he said it better than I have.

The Paris picture of Peter's that we published on Valentine's Day put me in mind of this nice blog post by Harold Feinstein. It gives us the measure of the man.

Start me up
Here are a few other Kickstarter campaigns that have come to my attention recently:

• Bill Schwab of Dearborn, Michigan, has almost reached his ambitious goal of $30,000 to help continue his dream of creating a photo retreat on the 10 acres of land he owns in the northwoods of Michigan.

• Waqas Farid started photographing customers at the "dollar store" his father had operated in urban New Jersey for twenty years, as the store faltered in the poor economy. Then, after relocating to Qatar, he realized he could do a parallel project at his uncle's convenience store in rural Pakistan. Waqas needs to reach his goal of $5,000 to fully realize his project, mainly to fund another trip to Pakistan—and he has dreams beyond that as well.

My email has been down all morning following a power outage, but I'll have a couple of illustrations by Waqas to add to this post as soon as I'm back up and running.

• We're too late to help plug this one, but maybe you might want to know about it anyway: "Doctor Popular," a 'zine fanatic, was successful in his Kickstarter campaign to help publish his own 'zine.

• Bruce Wodder, with his colleagues Peter Bosco and Douglas Underdahl, is making a film about the American photographer George Tice. George, if you don't know the name, is an art photographer with many books under his belt who was partly responsible for both the view camera and platinum printing revivals in the 1970s.

This is a film I want to see.

Mike
(Thanks to Doug Howk, Richard Sintchak, and Justin Watt)

Ed. Note: As a point of policy, I don't allow people to propose their own pictures for the "Random Excellence" feature or propose their own Kickstarter projects for a mention on TOP. I get more than 100 emails a week asking me to help promote peoples' work, projects, or products, and we publish an average of 18 posts a week. That should make it easy to understand why we can't help everybody, no matter how deserving the work might be.

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
A book of interest today:

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Richard: "I kicked in on Feinstein's book too, and love it! Also contributed to Bill Schwab's kickstarter project too (and alerted Mike to it though not sure if it was my email and/or others that helped). Hope it gets funded so I can get out there and attend a Photostock some day."

Mike replies: My usual policy when multiple readers send the same tip is to thank only the first one by name. But I'm grateful for all tips, and all tipsters...so thanks to you too.

Bill Bresler: "I just kicked in a contribution for Bill Schwab's project. Not only is he a great photographer, he's a heck of a human being. His annual Photostock, which I attended for the first time, is a great gathering of photographers of all stripes and formats. I'm a newspaper photographer for about 60 hours a week and I like to think that my personal work is art. Photostock recharged my batteries. I still feel it."

New Nikon D7100 Announced

Nikon has announced its new D7100 as its new mid-level, APS-C flagship camera. Although outwardly similar to the D7000, the new camera is said to have substantially revamped innards. Most importantly, the all-new 24-megapixel CMOS sensor has no anti-aliasing filter, joining the Pentax K-5IIs.

Shipping in mid to late March, the new camera can be preordered now. It's also available for preorder bundled with the 18–105mm VR lens. Although we think it'd also be a good match with Nikon's swell little 35mm ƒ/1.8G.

Its 51-point AF system is also new and upgraded. It offers up to 7 frames per second, has a 100% viewfinder, and sports a nifty 1.3x crop mode that extends the effective magnification of focal lengths a little more (helpful for telephoto shooting. That 35mm ƒ/1.8G, for example, becomes a 70mm-e in crop mode). Its processing is derived from the D4, and it's as water- and dust-proof as the D800/E.

So why is this big news? Only because the D7000 (now available for $300 off) has been such a highly competent and greatly appreciated working tool for so many photographers, both amateur and professional—it's been the "judicious pick" in the lineup for many Nikonians, and has legions of satisfied users. The D7100 promises to bring incremental improvements in nearly every single parameter. That's maybe not gee-whiz exciting, but it's significant all the same—especially for those who passed on upgrading to the D7000.

Mike

UPDATE: Nikon has posted a few sample images at its D7100 page.

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
A book of interest today:

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Frank: "Just what the world needs—another camera. What is the obsolescence cycle these days, three weeks?"

Mike replies: Two years and four months in this particular case. But I'm not sure the D7100 makes the D7000 "obsolescent"—I could still see choosing the D7000 on closeout now in preference to the D7100 at full price, and I'm sure many D7000 owners won't upgrade. Most peoples' normal upgrade cycle is once every two or three model replacements, so the D7100 might be most attractive to people looking to replace their 2008 D300's or D90's.

We can't really complain about development, it seems to me. The alternative is for the makers to not bring out new models, and that usually draws far more urgent complaints and causes far worse disappointment. (I'm still waiting for Sony's DSC-R2 and Epson's R-D2, for instance!)

Happy Birthday AA

It's Ansel Adams's birthday! Cheers to all you Dektol-sniffing, landscape shooting, West-Coasty, wooden-tripod-using, view-camera-lugging, spotmetering Zonies today.

Ansel had a sense of humor. Photobooth self-portrait.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
A book of interest today:

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Jim Hughes: "In December 1981, Evelyn and I received an invitation to attend a gala event in photography: a two-day celebration, in Carmel, California, of Ansel Adams' eightieth birthday, hosted by the Friends of Photography and organized by Mary and Jim Alinder. More than Two hundred of Ansel's 'oldest and dearest' friends were expected to attend. On Friday night, February 19th, 1982, we attended three different exhibitions of Ansel's photographs. Ansel, his wife Virginia, and their family drove between venues in his  white 1977 Cadillac with its 'Zone V' license plate. He announced his arrival by tooting his new computerized horn, which played 72 different songs. Ansel said he was partial to 'Marseillaise' and 'I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy.' The melodious horn had been installed as a gift by his studio staff. At each stop, the throngs awaiting him sang 'Happy Birthday Ansel.'

"On February 20th, his birthday, Ansel was feted at a black tie dinner. Soup served was his favorite, now named Ansel's Sorrel Soup. The main course, as I remember, was pheasant under glass (although it may have been squab). Either way, it was delicious. As described in Mary Street Alinder's excellent and affectionate biography, a birthday cake that was supposed to be in the shape of Half Dome, but which more resembled Devil's Dome in Wyoming (remember Close Encounters of the Third Kind?) because the pastry chef had neither been to Yosemite nor even seen Ansel's famous photograph, was brought in to great fanfare by the local high school marching band. Champagne toasts began with a presentation of the Legion of Merit by the French cultural attache and the photographer Lucien Clergue, who had flown over for the event. Toasts continued through much of the evening. John Szarkowski was seated at our table (or we were seated at his...), and I have vivid memories, as the evening wore on, of John balancing an empty champagne glass on his head as a signal to our waiter for increasingly frequent refills. It was a side of John I had never seen.

"The celebration culminated with a recital in Ansel and Virginia's home by Ansel's favorite pianist, Vladimir Ashkenazy. In his autobiography, Ansel called it an 'unforgettable experience. His interpretations of Chopin, Beethoven and Ravel were colossal.' Ansel had, after all, given instructions to Virginia and Mary that when he died, he didn't want a funeral; he wanted instead a 'small concert to be arranged for our friends.'

"Without question, it was an equally unforgettable experience for us."

A Cascade of RX1 Reviews

Reviews of the Sony RX1 have gone from a trickle to a torrent on the Web of late. The RX1, you might recall, is Sony's high-end odd duck: a high-megapixel, full-frame mirrorless pocket camera with a premium fixed Zeiss 35mm ƒ/2 lens.

Newly posted is Richard Butler's and Lars Rehm's review at dpreview, technically thorough as usual.

Then there's a long but excellent report by James Duncan Davidson from the point of view of someone who's been using the camera extensively for several months.

Old friend Michael Reichmann weighed in early with his very thorough overview, from the priceless perspective of a photographer who has used a great many high-end digital cameras.

Photographer Peter Adams puts the camera to a variety of uses and shows us the results in a series of fine illustrations.

Like to put it to your own tests? The camera can be rented from Borrowlenses. Lensrentals doesn't have it yet, but might soon. I'll just say that my own recent experience of renting a camera to try it was very successful—efficient and convenient—but turned out to be very dangerous too! So be careful. Word to the wise.

Mike
(Thanks to Eolake)

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
A book of interest today:

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Kenneth Tanaka: "I've been lucky enough to have one since January. The EVF arrived early this month (February).

"I've only read through Michael Reichmann's review and the 'Conclusions' section of the DPreview review. I've found nothing with which to notably disagree in either. Yes, the slow (think in-out-in-out-in) AF in low light is perhaps the camera's only practical wart. Honestly, I usually leave mine in MF and then just use the AEL button to auto-focus on command, just as with my bigger cameras. The manual focus works fine but is somewhat slow/finely graded.

"Just a few notes to supplement or reinforce reviews:

• For owners of the NEX-5N's fine EVF the answer to the obvious question is 'No.' Although the RX1's EVF is the same size and spec it's a slightly different design. Nuts. Sorry, you'll have to pay up.

RX1 EVF

View through RX1 EVF

Sony RX1 lens

• The barrel of the RX1's Zeiss lens features three rings. The front ring controls focus, the center ring controls macro/normal focal range, and the back ring controls lens aperture. It's that center macro ring that is guaranteed to induce vulgar incantations towards deities. It's just too darn close to the focus ring and too easy to accidentally turn and, consequently, disabling the normal focal range. The 'simple' solution would have been to make the focus ring a larger diameter or to recess the macro ring and provide a lever at the barrel's bottom. Shrug.

• The fact that a camera of this price does not come with a lens hood is annoying. The price of that 'accessory' hood is absolutely obscene. Just don't buy it. I bought mine from an eBay seller in Hong Kong for about $7. You can see that it's absolutely lovely, made of the same aluminum and with the same finish as the Sony hood. Shame on you, Sony! Bad Sony!

"So is the RX1 'worth' its price? For me it is. My own logic (should such a word be used here?) runs rather congruently with Michael Reichmann's; the price is not really nutty when compared to a Leica. But that does not make it any more practical or accessible for the majority of photographers. So I just leave 'worth' to your own personal judgement.

"I will say that Sony is indisputably leading the camera product race today, and probably for years to come. Beyond the 'sez who we can't do it?' RX1 we have the class-leading RX100, the NEX series, and the Alphas. They're the digital photo emperors today!"

Edward Taylor: "I owned the RX1 for a short time. I really loved it. I couldn't say enough good things about it. I did not find the focusing to be a problem as is frequently reported. I thought the image quality was outstanding, as was low light performance. I liked the 35mm lens, as it is a good focal length for most of my shooting. A fixed lens also relieved my constant 'dust on the sensor' anxiety. (I am often afraid to change lenses on interchangeable lens cameras). The RX1 was like a good watch—solid, well built, and it created pride of ownership. I liked the way it handled, and it felt like a natural extension of myself. It was easy to carry, and I always had it with me.

"So, Why did I return it? The overwhelming reason was the cost. Even though I can afford it, I just felt like it was too expensive. I had a little buyer's remorse. Part of it was that digital cameras do not retain their value, and that they have a short life before a new model comes out.

"Also, I have a NEX-7 with the Zeiss 24mm ƒ/1.8. This is slightly bigger, but essentially the same camera (the 24mm is a 35mm equivalent). It doesn't have the full frame but it has a few more megapixels and a viewfinder. So, in the end, I just didn't feel like the RX1 was a good purchase.

"At $1500 this camera would be a no brainer."

[Both Ken and Ed have reviewed cameras for TOP in the past. —Ed.]

Matthew Brown: "I have its baby brother, the RX100, and I'm enjoying the heck out of it. If my wallet were deeper, I'd be getting one of these. Obviously not for everyone; it's for the Leica+35mm mindset. It suits a certain type of photographer almost perfectly. If you're not that photographer, you aren't going to be happy with it. As for waste of money or not, you can't buy a smaller camera that gives you that level of image quality, for any money. Well-heeled street photographers will go nuts over this (as I believe they are). I can personally vouch for baby-brother RX100 giving photos that beat out DSLRs from the 6–8 megapixel days, with a lens better than most DSLR lenses I could afford. It's a perfect carry-everywhere."

Getting Back In to Get Out

A weekly column by Ctein

Last week I went back into the darkroom to start preparing for the big blowout dye transfer print sale coming up in mid-April. It's been a while. Like, um, about three years since I've made a new dye transfer print, and then another year and a half to the time before that.

Not-so-coincidently, those were the last two dye transfer sales I did on TOP.

I've printed in the interim, but it's been from existing sets of matrices. (Here's an overview of the process.) Guess what? Ya fergets stuff! Normally it would take me less than half a day to get prepped and set up to start on a new set of matrices. This time I spread it over three days. As with most "manufacturing processes" there's a lot of stuff that's never written down. I have copious, detailed technical notes, but there's all the stuff I just know because I've done it often enough. All that written documentation of mine, it's like a single recipe from The Joy of Cooking. Tells me exactly what I need to know to prepare the food...doesn't teach me how to cook.

It's a little disconcerting to find myself digging through memories to answer those "just how the heck did I do that?" questions, when the "that" is something I'd been doing pretty regularly for more than 30 years. It's different from being rusty. The manual skills are all there: the body never forgets. I just have to remember what it is I want the body to do.

I'm not doing too badly. Saturday I made the first test matrices, and my starting exposure was only a stop off in exposure and about 30 CC in color balance. Not too shabby. Still, make a note to self: craft is something you have to practice regularly to stay, well, practiced at it.

Odds are that I will forget that. Again.

The flip side is that a goal of this exercise is to get myself out of the darkroom. I'm treating everything as temporary. I found a leak under the darkroom sink. If retightening the nut on the trap hadn't stopped it, I'd've stuck a pan under the trap. Maintenance matters are all being evaluated with the question, "Will this get me through the next four months?"

Perishables
Chemical supplies, as well. I'd rather not buy anything that I'll just have to find new homes for in the summer. I've still got Tanning Developer I bought 20 years ago. I just mixed up the very last 5-gallon unit of Part A, and I'm hoping it'll carry me through the preparation for the sale.

And, about twenty-year-old powdered chemistry in Kodak paper-foil pouches? It works just fine! Mileage may differ on this; the darkroom/garage level of my house stays close to a constant 60° year-round, so it's pretty easy on chemicals.

There was the partly-used cubitainer of Tanning Developer Part A in the darkroom, mixed up at least three years ago. Surprise, surprise, still good. Keep oxygen away from that stuff and it'll last an amazingly long time.

Moral? Don't toss your chemicals without testing them. You might be pleasantly surprised. (If you can't test, do toss. Better safe than sorry.)

I realized there was some equipment I could sell right away, like my APO-Rodagon D 75mm lens (above). Great for making separations at 1:1 magnification, give or take a factor of two, but that's not something I'm ever going to do again; that was only something I did for clients who sent me chromes to be printed. Ditto my Condit 4x5 precision pin register negative carrier plus punches, contact printing frames, and spare glass inserts. There are three unopened boxes of Pan Masking Film in the freezer. Heck, I'm not going to use up the opened box. I posted all of this stuff on the dye transfer e-mail list, and I'll see who bites. 

Equipment
Some stuff I haven't quite figured out how to deal with: I have two Durst RCP 20 tabletop processors: one that's been regeared for RA4 color/ RC B&W paper processing and a second one that can provide spare parts in case the first one breaks. Given the high cost of shipping these, I may not be able to get enough for them to make it worth my while selling them. We'll see.

Then there's the stuff I'm definitely not going to part with, like my Kodak Process Type 3 thermometer. The one at left just sold on eBay for $75, and that's a bargain price. Physical reference thermometers can cost a lot more than that. Each of these puppies was individually calibrated and engraved. Kodak specifies it as accurate to within one-quarter degree Fahrenheit at certain specific temperatures (like the ever-popular 68°), where the calibration machine did its thing. In between those temperatures, it was only warranted to one-half degree. But, folks at Kodak told me that most of these thermometers were a lot better than that: at their calibration points they were good to within one-tenth of a degree Fahrenheit. I don't know if I'll ever need a temperature standard in the future, but I'd be crazy to get rid of this.

That's life in the slow lane, these days, as I slouch slowly towards the demise of the darkroom.

©2013 by Ctein, all rights reserved

Ctein's regular weekly column appears on Wednesdays on TOP.

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
A book of interest today:

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

BrianW: "For those who don't already know, issue 11 of the Luminous Landscape Video Journal featured a 45-minute segment of Ctein in his darkroom, demonstrating the making of dye-transfer prints. There is also an interview with Ctein and a slideshow of some of him photographs. The issue is still available for paid download. (I have no affiliation to the Luminous Landscape, other than having been a subscriber to the LLVJ.)"

Update: Michael Nash

Remember that cool post-WWII picture I received from my friend Kim in the form of Internet flotsam the other day? It's not that; it's a famous picture by photojournalist Michael Nash that is part of the holdings of the Associated Press. I'm very pleased to report that I've reached an informal agreement in principle with the AP to offer a small, high-quality print of that picture as a TOP print offer. We'll make the print from a high-quality scan made directly from the original 1946 negative.

Potentially cool news. That is one great photograph-on-photography.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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No featured comments yet—please check back soon!

Did Anybody Bite?

So, did anyone take advantage of Nikon's big lens sale yet? If you did, whadja get?

I've been very happy with my new 28mm ƒ/1.8G on the D800. It's a fine lens, especially for a fast wide, and especially for a consumer-grade fast wide.

At the same time, it's not good enough to keep me from being desperately tempted by Nikon's stellar 35mm ƒ/1.4G, which I rented with the D800E when I first tried it. 35mm is home base for me, and I've used dozens of them over the years, and there is something really special about that lens...or, I should say, there was something really special about it on the D800E. But I just cannot afford it, no how, no way, even with the nice little discount. I already have far more than enough good lenses to do anything I want to photographically. I do not need one more. I do not deserve one more. I cannot afford one more. And I've never spent that much on a 35mm, not even on the Leica lenses I've owned (I do have a Summilux ASPH in the house, but it's borrowed, not mine).

I understand this sale only lasts for eight more days, so that's as long as I have to hold out. After that, just having missed the sale will help me greatly to resist.

If anybody can tell me anything bad about that big 35mm, that might help.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

John Camp: "You know what I'd like? I'd like you, as a known lens guru, to explain why you'd want the ƒ/1.4 instead of the ƒ/1.8. Is there anything that the ƒ/1.4 could do for you that you couldn't get with the ƒ/1.8 and a little Photoshop or Lightroom? Because I looked at the prices of the two lenses while standing in a camera store, knowing little about them, and went for the ƒ/1.8, figuring if there was a little barrel or pincushion I could fix it...Am I a bad human being?"

Mike replies: There's coverage. The ƒ/1.8 is an APS-C lens, which I think Nikon calls "DX." It's not meant to cover full frame.

As to what kind of human being you are, that's something we're going to have to let God, Jesus, and Santa Claus hash out amongst themselves!

John responds: "All right, I'm stupid. I bought the 50mm ƒ/1.8, not the 35mm."

Mike replies: Oh. Confusion, okay. Never mind.

By the way I checked with Santa et al. and they all agree you're not stupid. (Besides, you're a TOP reader, and all TOP readers are above average.)