The Online Photographer

Overexposed

One of the first weirdnesses I noticed after I was hired as a magazine editor is that certain very talented photographers "hide their light under a bushel"—that is, they stay private and reticent—and others push relentlessly and aggressively to publicize themselves. It creates an unnatural imbalance. I figured early on that if a photographer had the means to hire a PR firm to help market their work, they didn't need my help.

Another weirdness is that the culture tends to pay attention to people who have already gotten lots of attention, and persistently continues to ignore people who have already long been ignored. That seems counterintuitive to me. Seems much more logical that you'd say "enough, already" to the people who've already been showered with recognition, and seek out people who've unfairly been overlooked.

Take At Zenith. It's a reprint of a 1979 book that featured 15 pictures by William Eggleston of...well, clouds. White clouds on blue skies. It was originally issued in an edition of 20, a number which was probably just right for the market.

Now, don't get me wrong. I like Eggleston. I know a lot about his art-historical importance, I "get" his way of seeing, and I both appreciate and enjoy his work. I have two books of his work (both still in print—William Eggleston's Guide which is a must-have for any decent photobook library, even for people who don't like the photographer; and For Now, which is a stellar example of photobookmaking through and through). I love both and prize both and revisit both regularly. I've owned two or three other books of his that I've gotten rid of (I regularly cull my collection, de-accessioning things that don't hold up for me). I greatly enjoyed seeing the show of Eggleston's work at the AIC in the company of the affable and erudite Ken Tanaka. And, finally, I do think it's really great that some photographers are so exhaustively illuminated that we can really get to know them. They sort of stand in for all the others we don't get to know so well.

So it's not that I'm anti-Eggleston. I just think...well, do we really need a $55 reprint of a book of 15 color snapshots of clouds? If we just take it as a reprint, there are a hundred photobooks that need reprinting far more. If not a thousand. And if we consider photography as a living culture, surely there are a hundred photographers (if not a thousand) that are ten times more deserving of a $55 book.

I'm not criticizing any particular player here. It's possible you could read this as a criticism of Steidl's publishing program, and it's not my place to criticize my betters, as it would be toweringly churlish to complain about a publisher that has given us so many riches.

It's just that I'd prefer to see one book of an unknown photographer's first-rate work rather than the umpteenth book by a well-known "star" featuring third-rate work.

Steidl's impulse seems to be comprehensiveness—he wants to see, and show us, everything. I guess I just have a different impulse is all. I like to see only the best. I like selections. Edited sets. Curated shows. And in fact, peering too closely into any artist's junk drawer (we all have large agglomerations of "second best" and "not good enough" stuff lying around or reposing on old hard drives) actually dilutes the artist in my mind. It's not only that I like to see someone's best work, it's that I'd prefer to see only the best. And then move on.

YMMV. At any rate, I'm perfectly happy with a sampling of Eggleston's best. I don't need to see fifteen throwaway pictures of clouds, never mind pay $55 for the privilege. Enough is enough; let's relax our focus, and let a few more people into the club.

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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Kenneth Tanaka: "I saw this on Steidl's list of upcoming books some time ago and also scratched my head. I admit that I was already skeptical when bought the 3-volume Chromes set early this year, although it turned out to be a wonderful, lush set of 'new' works. (It was also a good investment, as it's now only available from secondary sources at 100%+ appreciation.) Nevertheless, the guy has definitely had more than his 15 minutes.

"I would speculate that Eggleston continues to be so popular to publishers like Steidl because he sells out reliably and quickly. Buoyed by the major retrospective show you mentioned, and by many other shows and news exposures, William Eggleston is money in the bank. Underexposed and/or under-appreciated photographers are all risk. I suspect Mike will have a greater appreciation for that in the coming year.  ;-)"

[Ed. Note: Ken had second thoughts about this comment, and posted an emendation in the Comments Section. An excerpt of that further comment follows.]

"...Gerhard Steidl is one of the few publisher-printers willing and able to follow an artist to the very end even when the late-career tailings may seem trivial at the time. Thank goodness for such a devoted publisher! I am occasionally asked to research photographers for exhibition, a task that often begins on the Internet but ultimately takes me deep into the library. I can tell you that the number of photographers who have had good career-long publication coverage beyond exhibition catalogs is relatively small. [...] I did not want to seem petty and critical of Steidl's publishing of this small Eggleston book. I actually loudly applaud his commitment, usually with my hands slapping my wallet, to certain artists, particularly living artists."

Bill Pierce: "'It's just that I'd prefer to see one book of an unknown photographer's first-rate work rather than the umpteenth book by a well-known "star" featuring third-rate work.' Same problem with museum shows. Everybody seems to be playing it safe."

Florian Freimoser: "I think there are many different things involved here. It is most certainly the case that a publisher will sell many more copies of a bad book by a famous photographer than of an excellent book by an unknown photographer. This also means, that more people rather buy a mediocre book by a famous person than a good book by an unknown person. I would assume that people often do not want to decide themselves what to consider good and therefore rely on criteria such as fame and success."

Open Mike: Connotation

Miller often woke up early to get the fire going in the old logging camp's ancient stone fire pit, and Pat awoke under the trees to the crisp fall cold and the smell of bacon sizzling in the skillet.

•     •     •

Henry, slumped in his tattered armchair, smelled of Old Spice cologne, stale cigar smoke, and the slouching ruin of youthful dreams.

•     •     •

Her beauty was perfect but too unspoiled, too childlike, and he couldn't bring himself to feel toward her anything resembling lust. Even her breath smelled sweet.

•     •     •

Stephen King has a passage in his book about writing in which he briefly describes a rabbit sitting on a red-and-white checked tablecloth. Then he claims, simply, that what he just did, and what all writers do, is conjuring. He put a picture in your head of something that doesn't exist.

I can't remember what other comments he makes about this. (It's annoying having all my books put away—I'd go find and reread that passage otherwise, and could talk about it a bit more intelligently.) But part of what he's depending on in conjuring that rabbit-on-the-table image in your head is that you—the reader—know what a rabbit looks like and have seen a red-and-white checked tablecloth. He's conjuring, all right, but he's also depending on shared experience. 

All of those three short passages at the top of this post also conjure in the common literary way. But all three depend for their richness on your own personal experience—especially, you'll notice, in the realm of smell. Obviously you can't put down smell on a page. Any of those passages might seem vivid to you, but probably only if you've smelled a.) bacon cooking, especially outdoors; b.) the way old smokers smell; or c.) a young person's "good breath." All the words are doing is reminding you of something you might already know.

A tear to your eye
I think many photographs function in the same way. The connection might be tenuous and what it connects to might be fugitive, even subconscious. And it might be quite specific to one person; that is, a particular picture of a crumbling wall might remind you of your visit to your mother's childhood home in another country, which might remind you of your now-deceased mother, and in that way a photograph of a detail of a wall is capable of bringing a tear to your eye. And if other people look at you, mystified, when you show them that picture, you say something like "there's just something about it."

Of course, possibly other connotations are not like that; possibly they're dull and obvious. Or, possibly they're so universal that they're just trite and clichéd.

It's important to remind ourselves, from time to time, that the connotations aren't in the picture, in the same way that the smell of cooking bacon is not there in the words.

Questions
Sure enough. I find myself reading old literature from time to time, and it's obvious to me that quite often the writers are depending on shared experience to fill in the details, unmindful that I'd be reading their words two centuries since they wrote and that I don't know what some of their references refer to. See if you can read Turgenev or Washington Irving and not sometimes come across examples. (It will certainly happen a lot in the near future, when people read about characters putting a record on, or needing a wristwatch to tell the time, or waiting for a magazine to arrive in the mail so they can get the latest news, or saving up for a calculator, or Congress working together harmoniously for the good of the country.)

I'm sure some people who read this will be searching anxiously here for a directive, but I don't have one. I just think that thinking about connotations, personal or universal, might expand how we understand looking at pictures, or perhaps how we expect other people to look at ours. "How do I feel about this," "What makes me feel that way," and "Are other people likely to feel the same way" are questions worth asking—even if we never quite uncover the answers.

Mike

'Open Mike' is when Grandpa wanders off every weekend. We go find him and bring him back home for the work week.

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

David Miller: "I recall the incomparable Isaac Asimov describing a speaker discussing one of his (Asimov's) stories, unaware that the author was in the audience. After the presentation Asimov approached the speaker and thanked him for the presentation, but pointed out that the speaker had, in fact, misinterpreted the story. The immediate response was, 'My dear Mr. Asimov, what makes you think that, merely because you wrote the story, you know what it is about?'"

Richard Tugwell: "David Miller's featured anecdote about Asimov is even more relevant for photography—maybe that was his point—because often with candid or street photography we have no idea what it's about. The viewer is entitled to interpret it in any way they want and may get closer to 'the truth' than the photographer."

Kenneth Tanaka: "'All the words are doing is reminding you of something you might already know.' That's essentially what most scenic landscape photographs are about, too. Without recalling a viewer's fuller sensory experience of, say, a mountain environment, a picture of mountains is, at best, decorative and dull."

dogman: "Growing up, the Holy Trinity of American writers was Faulkner, Steinbeck and Hemingway. I read a lot of them all and loved each of them at the time. As I have aged, I have come to love the works of Hemingway more than the other two, especially his short stories. Why? He wrote in vignettes, without resolution in most cases, and he required the reader to think and fill in the spaces between his words. I guess Hemingway was making the reader do the conjuring. In any event, it works for me. So do the lyrics of songwriter/singer Dave Alvin. Like Hemingway, his stories require the listener to resolve the unsaid. A good example of this is the song 'Plastic Rose.'

"I would like my photos to have that effect. I don't want to be the teacher who explains the subject. I would like to be the storyteller who makes the viewer conjure his own story and meaning for the image. A noble goal, surely impossible to achieve.

"I don't know if it is true or not but I've read Hemingway once made a bet that he could write a short story composed of less than 10 words. He won the bet. I may not have the correct wording but I think it went, 'For sale: New pair of baby shoes. Never worn.'"

Steve Caddy: "Regarding dogman's 9-word Hemingway example: Wow. If you've had the experience of losing a child at birth, you'll appreciate acutely just how powerful that particular piece of conjuring is. A tear to the eye indeed."

Jock Elliott adds: "Hemingway wrote like a camera. Take it from an old English major. He would describe a scene, the actions of the characters, their dialog, but he never, that I recall, described their thoughts or internal state. He left that for the reader to infer from his external snapshot of the scene."

John Camp: "There are a number of common techniques used in fiction, and being specific about the settings is one of the most effective—but perhaps decreasingly so. For example, people spoke on wired telephones (and from phone booths) from the late 1800s until ten years ago. All of a sudden, cell phones arrived, and that changes the way fiction works—you really have to jump through your butt to come up with reasons people can't talk to each other. In my first novel, in a sort of ticking clock situation, two cops rush to a phone booth...and neither has a quarter. Now, there wouldn't even be a phone booth. In 1989, in the first novel that I completed that was actually published (I had a couple flat tires before that), a wrote about a computer expert going into his study: 'Most of my time is spent in the studio or the study, which is dominated by three walls of books and a bunch of personal computers. There's an IBM-AT that's been collecting dust lately, one of the IBM PS/2s, a Mac II, and my personal favorite, a full-bore Amiga 2000. A Lee Data dumb terminal is stuffed under a book table next to an early vintage Mac. A few old-timers from Commodore, Radio Shack and Apple sit in boxes in a corner with power cores wrapped around their disk drives....' You don't have to go back to Washington Irving to make references that will mystify people; 1989 will do it quite nicely."

Dave Hickey Is Not Quite Disappearing

The critic Dave Hickey has announced his sort-of retirement:

I'm retiring because my time is up. Last summer I wrote catalogue pieces on Ken Price and John Chamberlain. They were both my friends and my essays turned out to be inadvertent obituaries. I take this as a sign. Also, most writing about art these days is so bad that my secular readership has disappeared. Nobody but professionals and grad students even look at it. So no more e-mails from civilians, no more notes from John Updike or Steve Martin, no more crazy hipsters from Berkeley knocking on my door. Also, the art world has turned nasty for some reason and my gentility has come out of the closet. I cry when people scream at me, unless we’re just haggling about prices.*

Dave, if you don't know him, is a maddening but highly readable and also very entertaining art critic. The theme of his books, in the words of Laurie Fendrich, is that the art world, by abandoning beauty, has "descended into the hell of boredom."He once described the art world as "this massive civil service of PhDs and MFAs administering a monolithic system of interlocking patronage (which in its constituents resembles nothing so much as France in the early nineteenth century). During which powerful corporate, governmental, and academic constituencies vied ruthlessly for power and tax-free dollars, each with its own self-perpetuating agenda and none with any vested interest in the subversive potential of visual pleasure."

His new book is just out.

Dave Hickey. Photo by Jeff Scheid.

Hickey has gained more attention lately than he's gotten in years by simply announcing his departure, leading many to speculate that it's a Duchampian strategic move. In his case, of course, what matters is not his intentions but our attention. So bravo to retirement.

Mike
(Thanks to Walt)

*The quote is from an interview by James Wolcott at Vanity Fair called "Surfing Into the Sunset."

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.

TOP's links!

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
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calvin amari: "I haven't seen the new book yet as it is still hard to come by. His book Air Guitar, however, displays an iconoclastic and hyperactive brilliance—hardly the typical output of an 'art critic.' The Invisible Dragon, Hickey's book about beauty, is first rate but somewhat less of a wild ride due to its pointed focus."

Will Frostmill: "Hmm. Does he have a blog? I wonder if his 'secular readership' has disappeared because they are reading other people's writing on the internet."

Book Review: 'With Trees' by Dav Thomas

With Trees: Photography by Dav Thomas. Triplekite Publishing, July 2013

Luxury Edition (limited to 30 copies) £125 [sold out]
Special Edition (limited to 50 copies) £75
Standard Edition £40

Available from the publisher

Reviewed by Geoff Wittig

Trees are a subject of endless fascination for landscape photographers (and painters, for that matter). Much like people, from a distance they can seem to blend into a homogenous mass, yet up close each manifests its own distinct personality. Compared to, say, elusive wildlife or the constantly changing expressions on a human face, trees would seem at first blush to be an easy subject. They don't run away, and they patiently stand still for their portrait. Anyone who has tried it knows better, of course. The organic chaos of a forest can be remarkably difficult to wrestle into a meaningful or beautiful composition.

Dav Thomas is a landscape photographer and former graphic designer in England, and With Trees is his extended visual meditation on the subject. It's a beautiful book on multiple levels. It comes slipcased [only the Special and Luxury Editions have the slipcase —Ed.] with a subtle tree design imprinted on the case with varnish, visible only at an angle. The typography is very nice, using a clean but subtle slab-serif digital typeface for text and captions, with a more ornate ligatured italic for pull quotes. The photographic reproductions are as good as it gets these days, which means very good indeed. The colors range from vivid to subtle pastels. Most images are printed with decent margins; some are full-bleed on the right hand leaf, and a few are unfortunately printed across the gutter, though they seem to suffer less for it than photos in most books. A welcome inclusion is a set of technical notes on the photographs themselves, printed on a separate sheet, with thumbnails accompanied by the camera, lens and film (or sensor) used. The majority of the photographs were taken using a large format Chamonix camera, more often on print than transparency film, but some were captured with a Sony A900 and one with an i-Phone!

With Trees has an elegant foreword by David Ward, the well known and very accomplished British landscape photographer. Thomas provides a brief introduction and some comments, but overall the images stand on their own, and they are stronger for it. They explore the visual beauty of trees across all seasons and varying light, from subtle monochromes in fog to the rich colors of autumn, without ever crossing the border into garishness. Thomas consistently succeeds in organizing the complexity of a forest into coherent pictures that convey a particular moment or mood. From the portrait of a gnarled ancient oak to delicately hoar-frosted branches against a bright sky, the photographs are consistently lovely. They're a celebration of the quiet beauty to be found in the forests and nameless copses we drive past without noticing. I’m most reminded of Robert Glenn Ketchum’s work in his book The Hudson River and the Highlands, which is high praise indeed. With Trees leaves me itching to go out and take some forest photographs of my own. It's hard to ask for more from a landscape photography monograph.

There are a number of other books exploring somewhat similar ground. Sean Kernan’s Among Trees is still available. It's black and white rather than color, but conveys a similar moody and atmospheric vibe, and also presents a distilled personal vision. It's not in the same league in terms of reproduction quality or book arts, however. Ansel Adams: Trees contains a selection of familiar images with Little, Brown's customary elegant typography and beautiful photo reproductions. Lewis Blackwell's The Life and Love of Trees is also quite nice, but includes the work of multiple photographers rather than a single vision.

Geoff

©2013 by Geoffrey Wittig, all rights reserved

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Featured Comments from:

Eric Brody: "Don't forget John Sexton's lovely book Listen to the Trees as well."

V. Roma: "For those interested in tree photography, check out Benjamin Swett's New York City of Trees published earlier this year."

(Update, 4 pm)

Zowie, I get ALL the fun today. How great to get to look through so many fine pictures. Thanks for all the submissions so far. I think I might have found two for the book already!

Keep 'em coming. Thanks to all. (I think I am going to have an enjoyable week.)

[UPDATE to the Update,  Friday at 9 a.m.: I just hope as many people buy the book as are submitting pictures for it....

Eight submissions so far with the wrong subject line. But people are being very nice about it when I point it out.

Generally, I'm getting too many simple landscapes and simple seascapes. "Quiet" is just an adjective to describe the color—it doesn't have to be a quiet picture, or a simple one, necessarily. Just anything in which the colors work together but don't scream at you. But again, many thanks for all the submissions—some very nice work going by. It's also nice to see so many names of readers who are seldom or never commenters.]

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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Call For Work

As I mentioned two weeks ago, I'm looking for pictures for TOP's first book, which has the working title "Quiet Color." (A working title, if you don't know the term, is a tentative title which might or might not become the final title. For example, the working title of the Beatles' last release, "Let It Be," was "Get Back.")

We're looking for recent or little-known art photographs with naturalistic or subdued color. Film work is okay but digital is preferred.

If you'd like to submit your own work, you can send me one, two, or three small JPEGs (say, 500 to 1000 pixels wide) in an email. (My email address is m c johns t on at mac dot co m. It's in the right hand sidebar under "Resources > Contact" if you lose track of this post. Note that my last name is "Johnston," not "Johnson.")

Alternately, you can just send me direct links to one, two, or three pictures. Please send direct links to specific pictures—I'm very unlikely to follow involved instructions such as "Go to this site. Click on 'recent work.' Go to number 26. Scroll right to the third image," etc. Generally, please just make it easy for me. I'm going to be looking at lots of work, and don't want to be frustrated or waste lots of time digging down to the visuals.

Note well!
All emails must have the subject line "quietcolorsuggestion." No quotation marks, no spaces, no punctuation:

quietcolorsuggestion

One "s." No "u" in "color." Just like that, nothing less, nothing more. If yours doesn't, it simply won't be seen, because it won't go into the right mailbox in my email program. (Don't think I'm being crabby here. I'll get lots of email with the wrong subject line.)

You can also suggest other peoples' work. In that case, don't send JPEGs, just send links. Again, links to specific pictures are best. You don't need to be acquainted with the photographers personally. The pictures must have an identified or identifiable author; anonymous shots on random flotsam websites won't help. Also, just suggesting names ("Check out Joe Blow's work") is unlikely to help. I won't be scouting through new websites for this project.

I have 11 tentative inclusions for the book so far and we need 19 more.

Not a contest...
Payment for the selections will be five copies of the finished book, valued at between $150 and $250, depending on the final price of the book which hasn't been determined yet. Also, you'll have the opportunity to order more copies at cost if you have any need for them (as gifts, for instance, or for publicity). If that's not sufficient recompense for you, I understand, but better not submit. Pictures will be handled very respectfully: they'll appear in the book on a single page with a blank facing page, no bleeds. A short biography of each photographer will appear at the end of the book. Part of our plans for our publishing program call for donating copies of our books to various schools, galleries, museums and libraries that are important in the photo world, so that might be considered an added bonus for contributors.

This is not a contest, so this process might not be very satisfying! (Just a warning.) You won't receive any acknowledgement of your submission and I will not comment on your work even if you request it. On the other hand, if your suggestion isn't picked, there is absolutely no need to take that as any kind of negative judgement of the work itself—it simply means it wasn't quite right for this project. Karsh's portrait of Winston Churchill wouldn't be right for this project, so it's possible for a photograph to be at the pinnacle of photographic greatness and still not be chosen. Don't sweat it and please don't take it personally.

You can send your suggestions any time between now and October 7th, which is our deadline for selecting the prospects. A little earlier in that time frame might give your suggestions a little better chance, but don't feel the need to rush—you can consider your submissions calmly and at leisure. This weekend or the first part of next week is fine. Late submissions (i.e., closer to Oct. 7th) will still be considered but it's likely that all the choices will have been made by then.

Looking forward to your suggestions! And thanks very much for your 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.

TOP's links!

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

Richard Tugwell: "Will the book format be square, landscape or portrait?"

Mike replies: Square, actually. But the pictures can be of most aspect ratios except panoramic, which would run too small.

This might be a good opportunity to discuss a few of our principles. Basically, I love photo books. They're just one of my favorite things. I'm a very visual person, I've planted my flag in this life in the general area of photography, and I've been an enthusiastic part of the audience for photographers for pretty much my whole life (I guess I liked children's books illustrated with drawings first, actually, but photography came along soon enough after). And, like many first-world consumers, I'm something of a connoisseur of consumer objects.

I even make it a point to spend time with my photo books on a regular basis. It's part of my recreation to look through one every day or two. I've seen thousands upon thousands of photo books of every description, over a period of many years.

Everything I'm planning for TOP's books will embody what I like best in photo books. The reason the book will be square is that I like squarish books, and the reason I like squarish books is because they don't discrimate between photographs based on aspect ratio. We've all seen books of 35mm photography, for example, that are obllong—much wider than they are tall. Those are fine for horizontal 35mm pictures, but they short-shrift the verticals, which end up not fitting the page and running quite a bit smaller. The point of a squarish book is that it can be designed to not favor horizontals over verticals or vice versa. Even square photos can be made to "balance" with pictures of more rectangular aspect ratio by just making them a little smaller on the page.

Everything I like regarding photography books are things that simply make it easier for me to see and appreciate pictures, and comfortably contemplate them at length if I want to. That's all. I don't like overly "creative" book design, I don't like full bleeds (I especially don't like multiple bleeds on the same page), I don't like pictures crossing the gutter, I don't like books that are too big to comfortably hold in your lap...but really, every single preference I have is very simply motivated by my desire to see and appreciate photographs in a pleasant and relaxed way.

Our books might not win any awards for being different, but they'll definitely give precedence to the work.

Corrective Action

This week's column by Ctein

Gentle readers, this is another one of those odd 'n' ends columns in which I revisit topics of previous discussion. This time, it's mostly about correcting errors in what I've written previously.

Yes, it does happen! I'm not infallible. Shocked, you are shocked. I'm sure.

Super Focus glasses
Back in this column, I talked about how unusually scratch-prone the SuperFocus flexible lenses seemed to be.

Nuh-uh; user error. It took a bit of work to figure that out. My lenses continued to acquire fine scratches. It was starting to really bug me. I was being super-careful cleaning them, never wiping them when they were dry, and patting them dry after washing them instead of rubbing them. The only time they ever got wiped was with a microfiber cloth after washing and pat-drying, and that was a circular motion. The scratches were vertical. It didn't make sense.

I finally caught a clue. All the scratches were on the rear, exposed surface of the flexible lens; there were almost none on the front surface that was between the flexible lens and the hard plastic lens. It couldn't be a result of my washing technique; both sides of the lenses got washed.

I thought. Then I thought some more. Finally I figured it out.

Those slip-on sunglasses I'd been using? I'd been sloppy, just jamming them over the glasses while I was wearing them. Sometimes I wouldn't get the angle right and I'd have to reseat them. Well, when I wasn't getting the angle right, the edge of the sunglass plastic was scraping against the inner surface of the eye glasses. Very lightly, but still...

Given that there are almost no scratches on the front side of the flexible lenses, I'm now entirely convinced the scratches I've been getting are mostly due to my mishandling of the glasses, and that the flexible lenses are not unduly soft (although they are likely a bit more scratch-prone than the hard plastic lenses).

Mysterious ink loss in my Epson printer
In this column, I described how I got several partially-filled ink cartridges from Epson.

Nuh-uh; a mechanical problem in my 3880 printer. I figured that out because when I installed the third photo-black ink cartridge, I weighed it before putting it in the printer to make sure it was a full one. Two weeks after I put it in it was almost empty, although the indicator (which matched well with my usage) said it was over 80% full. When I pulled the cartridge from the printer, I heard a momentary hissing noise, like a partial vacuum had been released. I didn't hear that noise when pulling any of the other ink cartridges. Apparently a check valve in a line somewhere wasn't quite doing its job and there was a small amount of ongoing suction on the black ink line.

Epson sent me a new printer and I'm not seeing any anomalous ink consumption. You can all stop worrying about accidentally getting saddled with half-full ink cartridges. I know you'd been losing sleep over that.

Lastly, something new...

The going out of darkroom sale
Having finally shut down my darkroom, I have large items I'd like to get rid of locally, to avoid the hassles of shipping.

• Beseler 45 V-XL enlarger with wall bracket and film carriers for everything from 110 format through 4x5. Light corrosion on the unpainted parts (as you'd expect after 20 years) but it works perfectly.
• Beseler Dichro 45S color head with several replacement bulbs and 6x7 and 4x5 mixing chambers.
• Beseler 810 cold light head for the 45 V-XL chassis, along with glass and glassless carriers for same and the standard 240mm Rodagon lens.
• Durst RCP20 tabletop processor, for prints up to 8" wide (by whatever length), that I've regeared for RA-4 color and B&W RC paper processing. (Plus, a bonus spare unit for replacement parts.)

I'm not looking for top (used) dollar, just a reasonable price and minimum hassles. Make me a plausible offer for any or all of this and I'm not likely to haggle. Obviously, you can (and should) come by to inspect the stuff before tendering an offer.

If you're nearby (I'm in Daly City, CA) and interested, contact me at ctein@pobox.com. Or, if you know of someone still doing darkroom work who might be interested, feel free to pass this information on to them. Serious inquiries only, please.

Ctein

©2013 by Ctein, all rights reserved

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Carrie Mae Weems Wins 2013 Genius Award

Photographer and visual artist Carrie Mae Weems is among the winners of the 2013 MacArthur Fellowships, the so-called "genius grant" that now awards recipients $625,000 free of conditions.

An art-insider friend who shall remain nameless comments, "Not exactly a [surprise] winner. She [that is, her name, as a contender —Ed.] has been in very heavy circulation for a long time."

Congratulations Carrie Mae!

Mike
(Thanks to Bob and Walt)

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Averaged Faces of Various Nationalities

In a fascinating but anecdotal (and probably ultimately pointless) experiment, psychologists at the University of Glasgow in Scotland averaged the faces of young women from around the globe to create "averaged" faces of various nations.

Note that "averaged" is not at all the same thing as "average," a distinction that many websites are witlessly confusing. Markers of beauty include telltales of youth, clear complexion, facial symmetry, and lack of outlier (unusual) features—and the averaging process heightens the last three of these aspects (and the selection of source photos obviously favors the first). So the "averaged" faces tend to look universally "more attractive" than average (real) faces. This phenomenon is well known.

The researchers did not reveal either how many photographs were averaged together to get each result or how the participants were selected*.

(I'm going to assume that we're seeing a photographic artifact and that the average Romanian is not magenta.)

Another general marker of attractiveness is how close you are genetically to the type. Several commentators claim that heterosexually-oriented males can discover the main component of their own genetic heritage based on which face they find most attractive! An untested claim, but I admit I find something mysteriously alluring in the English composite (I'm Scots-English by extraction). They didn't include Scotland, which seems odd given the source of the experiment. Those from Down Under are also out of luck.

Also, kudos to those bloggers and forumers who substituted their own face or the face of a friend for one of the composites as a joke. The first one of those I saw was lol funny.

The source for most of this is FaceResearch.org, but you have to sign up and log in.

As I say, probably pointless...but still kinda fun.

Mike
(Thanks to Jeffrey Goggin)

*Possibly because some or even many of the pictures were sourced from dating/mating/marriage websites? Just a guess.

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Patrick Dodds: "'Several commentators claim that heterosexually-oriented males can discover the main component of their own genetic heritage based on which face they find most attractive!' So apparently I'm Peruvian—who knew?!"

robin: "Peru looks exactly like my sister. Who is not from Peru. And is married (to forestall the next question)."

Mike replies: Is her husband named Patrick, by any chance?

struan:

"Been done before. Bad science then. Bad science now. Bah humbug."

Slotshot: "This work is based on that of Dave Perrett and during my undergrad degree, oh so many years ago, I was lucky enough to see him give a talk about this research which fascinated and inspired me. At that time the averaged = attractive research had just been published and what struck me most at the time is that the most attractive were the 'almost average,' that pre-programed tendency (if you believe in that sort of thing) to seek out someone who's quite like you but just a little bit different. A genius's life's work."

Random Excellence: Cig Harvey

Emie in the Truck, Rockport, Maine, 2008. Photo by Cig Harvey

So I spent a good part of yesterday on an extended web-surfing odyssey looking at the work of a great many contemporary portraitists to see if their subjects are typically smiling or not. (Fascinating how such a seemingly trivial, offhand post can lead to such an involved discussion.) And the evidence is overwhelming: among important portrait photographers in almost any genre (art photography, editorial photography, etc.), smiling subjects are very much the exception rather than the rule. The average seems to be maybe one smile for every ten portraits, at least on the basis of what I saw yesterday. So it's not an historical thing at all: most serious portraits (again, no pun intended) are unsmiling ones.

I was going to put together a post consisting of twelve example portraits by a dozen contemporary portrait photographers as a demonstration of this, but halfway through I thought, "what's the use? It won't prove anything to anyone." You could just as easily pick twelve smiling portraits. Neither proves anything. So I gave that up.

But along the way (the guiding motto of the Web being: one thing leads to another), I discovered Cig Harvey, a name I'd never encountered before.

Have a look.

Those in love with bright colors will love her.

She has a book out, too.

Mike

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TOP Books Update

...And a bit more in another ongoing saga, that of our own publications: I am feeling a bit like Don Quixote. And also like I'm walking in shin-deep mud: everything is going too slowly, and coming to a dead stop seems a danger at every step.

But I'm meeting with our newly-recruited Production Manager this afternoon; he has a preliminary idea about a book designer; we have book specs and a detailed cost estimate from the printer, and image specs, sort of; we're still wrangling with the whole e-commerce page and fulfillment issue (which is making my head hurt); I think I've decided on a name for the company, although I'm still trying to decide whether to hire an attorney to register the trademark or do it myself, using a smidge of the large swath of free time I spend lolling about in the sunshine sipping vegetarian, alcohol-free mint juleps*; and...

...We have a plan for the first book, including a working title and a concept.

One thing I'm not short of is ideas for possible projects. I finally realized while I was fixing my coffee this morning that I'm thinking of these books sort of like elaborated blog posts, just with more carefully considered and somewhat longer essays and more pictures, in a more durable and more respectable form. There's really little limit to the creativity that could be applied to the projects, once we get experienced enough at the actual production for it to go smoothly. I hope we make it that far.

The first project will be pretty limited. We're going to print only 500 copies. That will probably sell out quickly (especially because many people will be mindful of the possibility that it might end up being not only our first book but maybe our only one—such being the nature of startups). Later projects might be printed in larger numbers, but we have to get a handle gradually on what the market (that would be you) wants.

And finally, on the good side: our books are going to be affordable. Maybe not cheap, as in dirt-, but nothing highfalutin' or onepercenty: just a well-made product for an honest price, accessible to most anyone who might want one. That bit's important to me.

I'll continue to keep you posted.

Mike

*I do not actually have large swaths of free time to spend lolling about in the sunshine sipping vegetarian, alcohol-free mint juleps.

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Marco Maroccolo: "Have you thought about creating a system of pre-orders? in this way you can have a partial idea of ​​the amount of books to be printed...."

Mike replies: I'm definitely not going to do that. The reason is that I want to make sure I have a satisfactory product to deliver before I take anyone's money for anything. We won't sell any books before we have books printed and ready to go.

James Sinks (partial comment): "Just an opinion from a potential customer: I find words in photobooks to be a waste of space about 90% of the time. I rarely make it all the way through an introduction unless it's a just-the-facts-ma'am sketch and I find almost everything 'artistic' written by photographers to be cringe-inducingly bad."

V. Roma responds to James: "To offer a balancing opinion, I am one who does enjoy words in photobooks. I don't think the selection of photos or, to any significant extent, the cost of production of a photobook is ever dictated or limited by the text portion. The way I see it, it's there if you want to read it and easy enough to skip if you don't."

Mike replies: I plan to write the texts myself, and that's one of the reasons I want to do books—I'd like at least a few of my words to have a chance of lasting. All I've ever written is ephemera, from magazine and newspaper articles to blog posts. All topical and timely—and all easily, quickly, and quite naturally forgotten.

One part of the plan, though: the text will always appear at the end of the books, after the pictures. I've always disliked the way that introductions seem to implicitly be telling you what to think of the pictures before you look at them for yourself. And with the text at the end, it will be even easier to ignore, if that what one wants to do. (This is even true with the introductions of many classic books of fiction: they really should appear at the end, after you've had a chance to read the book and make up your own mind about it. Then they can tell you what other people think, and what they think you should think. I never read "introductions" first.

More in the 'Here Far Away' Saga

[UPDATE Wednesday: Book Depository now appears to be out of stock (? That situation appears to be changeable too), but check Amazon.de (Germany). As of now, the German edition is not in stock but listed as shipping within 5 to 9 days, but Amazon.de has the original English version in stock ("auf Lager"). Just search for "here far away" from the front page, or for the book's ISBN, 1907893261. —Mike (thanks to Christoph and Sebastian)]

I don't have any inside info at all this time, but it's possible Amazon U.S. might not be getting copies of Here Far Away after all. The book has been too popular in Britain and I guess is going to sell out the much larger second printing in Europe, even without providing Amazon U.S. with stock.

This will involve a great many cancelled orders, including many from TOP readers. All I can tell you is that the publisher told me the book would be coming to the U.S. and Amazon would have stock. Amazon U.S. has been cancelling outstanding orders this morning. I'm doing my best to provide accurate information about this title, but it's been very hard to come by all along.

Best bet now is The Book Depository.

So, to those of you who've been lucky enough to get your hands on a copy: what do you think?

Mike

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Godfrey: "I obtained my copy from The Book Depository a week ago. Absolutely stunning book. I showed it to a few friends, eight of whom immediately ordered a copy. This book is a rare gem. It was worth the hassle and wait in obtaining it."

Why Didn't People Smile in Old Portraits?

This article at The Atlantic will explain it. Short version: they thought it made them look like idiots. Mark Twain: "A photograph is a most important document, and there is nothing more damning to go down to posterity than a silly, foolish smile caught and fixed forever."

Sure enough, I can't think of a single photograph of him with a smile on his face. Not even while he was engaged in a certain enjoyable and relaxing pastime which I am not allowed to talk about.

There's another great quote in the article (the one that starts, "By the 17th century...), but I'm not going to steal all their thunder.

Mike
(Thanks to Jeffrey Goggin)

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Richard Tugwell: "This is why."

Mick Ryan: "I'm inclined to ask why people must always be smiling in modern day portraits. It's actually kind of weird."

Steve Jacob: "I think it's no coincidence that the phrase 'say cheese' came about. It is indeed very cheesy most of the time. After all, the 'smile' is the standard tactic of salesmen, ad-men and politicians, and to me it has a whiff (or is that a stink) of insincerity about it.

"Quite apart from bad teeth, bags under the eyes and wrinkles—all of which are heavily accentuated—when people are asked to smile without genuine amusement, it shows. Far from making people look 'friendly and approachable,' a contrived smile will make you look smug, shifty, gormless, or fake. Only a few people I know have a genuinely attractive smile in photographs. Smiles are not a major feature of famous portrait artists that I know. It's certainly not something that Jane Bown or Annie Leibovitz did often. So from the fine art point of view, I don't see that anything has changed much."

Mike replies: Funny, I used to be a portraitist, and almost none of my portraits were of people smiling more than simply looking pleasant, except in groups. And you're right, when I think of great portraits it seems to me that toothsome smiles are actually quite rare.

I'm trying to think of great contemporary portraitists and names aren't springing to my mind. But I found this: Best Portraits from TIME 2012, and out of 43 portraits really only Mitt Romney is smiling, although the expressions of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi and possibly the first one of Warren Buffet could be argued to constitute "smiles" as well, although neither show teeth. (Some of Gabi Douglas's friends are smiling, although she isn't and she's the subject of the pictures.)

It would be interesting to put together a gallery of excellent contemporary portraits and see how smiles figure in them. Maybe this isn't an historical phenomenon at all, but merely a characteristic of serious portraiture. No pun intended.

Slobodan Blagojevic: "My American contacts on LinkedIn vs. European ones. Yes, I cherry-picked for emphasis, and yes, there are opposite examples on both sides, but the gist remains:

Team USA

Team Europe

"To paraphrase a joke about Germans, smiling is no laughing matter for Europeans, apparently."

Ivor: "Long exposure notwithstanding, this gentleman manages what I find to be quite a sincere smile in his 1850 Daguerreotype portrait:

"An explanation for the seriousness in most early photographic portraits, that I prefer, was given in a presentation by an archivist at Kodak. He speculated that, in the era before Mr. Eastman introduced mass market cameras, subjects would have been aware that the portrait would, in all likelihood, be the sole record of their likeness. I don’t recall the archivist’s name but I do remember that he complained that decades of looking at portraits of now deceased and mostly unidentified people had become deeply disturbing to him. Perhaps he would have found the portraits less distressing if more of the subjects had looked a little happier."

Mike replies: That portrait is purported to be a Daguerreotype from the 1850s, from the Daguerreian Society's Julian Wolff Collection. But I couldn't verify it. The identification and date should be taken therefore with a grain of salt; it could be a later tintype. His clothing might be the best means of settling on a likely date. I'm no expert on that...although, curiously, I just ran across a remaindered book at the bookstore about 1800s clothing fashions as seen in old Daguerreotypes.

That sense of dread at looking at dead, forgotten people in old photographs is the subject of Michael Lesy's 1973 cult classic Wisconsin Death Trip.

struan: "Darwin's book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals makes it plain that actual smiles and laughter were interpreted in the early photographic era in much the same way they are today. The photographs in the book (by Rejlander, of all people) also show that photography of fleeting expressions was perfectly possible at the time. It seems clear that they are absent from most photographic portraits because they were perceived as inappropriate for formal portraiture.

"When not trying to project an impression of authority or respectability, smiles did crop up. This collection of Victorian theatre portraits has both the confident, welcoming smiles of the man-as-best-friend, and the light smile and downward eyes of the woman-trying-to-be-pleasant. Neither would be out of place in contemporary portraiture, even if not favoured by current art standards.

"You also find smiles in drawings and sketches, but not in finished portraits. Holbein, Ingres, and John Singer Sargent are canonical examples. Finally, children have long been pictured smiling. I am particularly fond of portraiture by painters and photographers depicting their own families and children. One favourite which breaks so many rules and yet works wonderfully is 'Little Suzanne' by Carl Larsson."

[Anonymous]: "We Europeans do smile...

richardpeters: "I like Dave Sailer's very apt reference to 'rictus.' A smile, to be taken as genuine or infectious, has to be a smile 'in the moment' with some evident cause or mood—however tenuous—that we can empathise with. Otherwise we start to feel as creeped-out and unsafe as with the Joker from Batman. Inappropriately-fixed smiling starts out puzzling; eventually, we can't help reading it as either idiocy, or some obsessive and malign travesty on genuine feeling. Not at all convivial, anyway.

"Here's an ancient mask from Mothia, Sicily: part of what little the Romans failed to obliterate of the culture of Carthage. Arresting, deliciously creepy, no?

Open Mike: Prayer of Gratitude

"Sight is the soul's perfect delight."

—Unknown

I know what you're thinking—where does an avowed agnostic get off claiming to offer a prayer?

But hey, I'm not doctrinaire. I never assume I have to be right. Aristotle wasn't right about everything. Einstein wasn't either. Newton spent the back half of his life as an alchemist, for pete's sake. The guy who invented the ultra-logical empiricist Sherlock Holmes—the ur-Spock—believed passionately in fairies. (No kidding.) So who am I? I pray. I am reverent. (I even go to church. I like church. They welcome agnostics—I always ask.)

But I digress.

I was coming home the other night when a fast-moving thunderhead passed by. Its passing revealed the setting sun, which lit up the receding mountain of clouds with brilliant yellow-orange light even as it painted the western horizon pink. I was looking at both sides of the sky sitting at a long stoplight at the crest of a gentle rise. I wish I could have stayed there longer. The cars behind me might have objected.

A few nights later it rained, and as I was walking the dog I came across the crest of a hill. It was late dusk, almost twilight. The trees and streets were wet and the air had that earthy smell of fresh rain, but the sky had cleared. The hill was so steep that the streetlight at the bottom of it was almost at my eye level. It spilled a pool of yellow light on the leaves of a tree, a sprinkle of yellow and green amidst the blue gloom. Far behind me, I heard a train horn from a distant crossing.

A few days after that, a cold front moved in, and the sky turned into a theater of the what must have been the most varied and dramatic clouds I've ever seen. Huge, hard-edged cumulus clouds; stormclouds heavy with rain; crepuscular rays from the sun. The wind moving everything around and rearranging the sets constantly. I drove around just looking at the skies. It was an atmospheric supergala. Driving home later, the western horizon was a band of roiled gold underneath a solid wall of dark purple.

This has just been the most beautiful, dramatic spring and summer I've ever experienced in Wisconsin. It hasn't been "beautiful" by the standards of people who just like hot weather, and who don't mind even if it doesn't rain. It's been relatively wet and relatively cold. But it's been visually just gorgeous.

Time and again this summer I've just been struck by the realization that we live in a beautiful world. And when the earth is beautiful, it's heaven.

And I'm grateful. I'm full of gratitude to be here, seeing, and for this lovely season.

Mike

"Open Mike," the editorial page of TOP—frequently off-topic—appears on Sundays, at least when yr. hmbl. proprietor is so moved.

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Moose: "'If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is "thank you," that would suffice.' —Meister Eckhart."

Luis C. Aribe: "Die Welt ist schön. (Pardon my German.)"

Mike replies: The title of a very famous photography book....

John Krumm: "Ah, you've experienced the pleasure of a colder, more blustery and varied summer, something we are very familiar with in Southeast Alaska (except this summer, for us, which was blissfully and unusually clear and warm, a trade perhaps between the North and South). One of the gifts of practicing photography is an intense appreciation of natural light and form, something I enjoy even without a camera, and your words describe it well."

A Thought About Salgado

Sebastião Salgado: a picture from Genesis. Photo courtesy Taschen Books.

It just occurred to me yesterday, when I vetted a comment from Paul Amyes claiming that the printers of Sebastião Salgado's internegatives from digital are Dominique Granier and Paul and Max Caffel, and not Voya Mitrovic, that I've been getting into trouble for more than twenty years trying to report "what Salgado uses" for his work.

The very first occasion was when I read (some time in the '90s) that Salgado carried three cameras—two Leica M cameras, one with a 35mm lens and one with a 28mm, plus one Leica SLR (an R6, I think it was) with a 60mm R Macro. I repeated this in an article, and got all sorts of blowback for it—no, said some, this is wrong, he uses other lenses; no no, he uses different cameras; no no no, that was what he used to use, but not any more; and so on. Everyone, it seemed, had read a different article or interview, and was willing to attest to some different truth.

Ever since then, I think I've reported (or published) about five times "what Salgado uses"—usually based on what the photographer had said in an interview—and each time it was a different thing, and each time there have been dissenters who knew better.

So I pretty much decided this morning—unilaterally and spontaneously—that I should make it axiomatic that none of us knows what the hell Salgado uses for anything at any given point in time...even if the photographer says so himself; because he might have moved on since he said it. The man is obviously peripatetic in his travels; maybe he's also questing and capricious in his methods, trying different things all the time and making changes frequently. I don't know. I don't know Sebastião. We are not acquainted. I've never watched him work or heard anything directly from him. All the information I've ever gotten about him is secondhand at best.

What also seems axiomatic is that a great many people love his work, respect his accomplishments, and admire his skills. Maybe that should be enough.

Mike

P.S. Meanwhile, our next print sale—Peter Turnley's, at the end of October—will include two pictures taken with the Leica M-Monochrom, transferred to a 4x5" film internegative, and printed—by Voja Mitrovic—on traditional fiber-base silver gelatin paper. So at least a few readers (buyers of one of those prints) will be able to judge for themselves what they think of that technique.

I haven't seen the prints yet myself, so I don't know yet what I think. What I do know about them is that their success or failure will largely depend on the photographer and the printer and their judgment and visual sensitivity and skill, because that, not base technique, is what makes photographs work.

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Paul Butzi: "In every photo of the man that I've seen where he has a camera, the camera was a Leica M of some sort.

"But that's immaterial. I have owned a number of Leica M cameras (and own one now, and I like it a lot). I even own a 35mm lens just like the one Salgado is reputed to use.  And I've used a 28mm just like the one he is supposed to have used.

"And before that, I used a lens exactly like the one John Sexton used in a lot of his photos, and not only that, I used the same film and the same paper and the same chemistry and processing methods as John.

"Despite this somewhat creepy similarity between Salgado's equipment and mine, and between Sexton's process and mine, the risk that someone might look at one of my photos and think 'Why, that looks like it was made by Sebastião Salgado' is essentially zero. Same thing if someone looks at my landscapes made with a 4x5 in terms of mistaking my work for Sexton's.

"The problem, I think, is that Salgado makes photographs with his brain and his understanding of the subject and his emotional responses, and Sexton likewise with his brain, understanding, and emotions, and I must limp along with my own brain, understanding, and responses. And of course since we are all different, our photographs too will be different.

"Some people apparently consider this to be a problem. Myself, I think it's an absolutely glorious state of affairs."

20x200 Returning?

The following is the entire text of a blog post made two weeks ago by Jen Bekman, self-described "Founder + CEO @ 20x200. Shopgirl @ Jen Bekman Gallery. Hey, Hot Shot! proprietress. Art for everyone evangelist. Opinionated lady":

Today also happens to be 20x200's birthday. It's been an admittedly weird year for my beloved Art for Everyone initiative, but months of insane stress + drama—tempered by generous doses of dogged persistence, irrational optimism + the unconditional support of loved ones, friends + colleagues—have resulted in me getting my baby back. There's still a lot (al lot) to do, but we're in full-on reboot mode and hope to be online again soon. Hallelujah + amen.

So it appears that 20x200 might return. The site, if you don't know of it, offered original art, in some cases by famous artists, for as little as $20. Prints at that price were limited to 200 copies, hence the name, pronounced "twenty by two hundred." The venture apparently imploded early this year. I never bought from them—the ones I wanted always sold out too fast (having had some experience in that arena, I have to say I like the idea of, say, 80x200 a lot better. This sort of business model is harder than it looks). But we're in favor of the basic idea, as you may know.

And by the way, may I just say I love this Christian Chaize project.

You can sign up here to receive alerts.

Mike
(Thanks to Oren Grad)

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DxO Film Pack for Free, and Salgado's Method

Written by Kevin Purcell

An interesting free offer that TOP readers might like to try:

Sony and DxO together are offering Film Pack 3 Essential for free download for Mac or Windows. It previously cost $79. It runs as a standalone application or a plug-in for Aperture, Lightroom, or Photoshop. It's a Nik Silver Efex Pro and Color Efex Pro competitor and does a similar job. The offer is good until October 31st.

It's not upgradable to later versions. Current version is DxO Film Pack 4, so the web page for the current version doesn't say much about the old version, and the Film Pack UI has changed too.

You give them your email address to get the activation code (you can turn down email solicitation and still download the software). The email you get contains the activation code and links the download for the software (should you need to redownload it or get both versions). For the Mac it's a 166MB download.

Visit this URL to download Film Pack 3

The PDF manual for DxO Film Pack 3 is on their support website. (Take care not to download the manual for Film Pack 4.)

It lists the supported film simulations. It looks (to me) like most of the major films from Fuji, Kodak, Polaroid, and Ilford are there.

See the text file "Download DxO Film Pack 3 Essential films" for a full list of supported film simulations extracted from the PDF.

Luis Inácio Lula da Silva (right), president of Brazil in 2006, receives the book Trabalhadores ("workers") as a gift from the photographer Sebastião Salgado. Photo by Wilson Dias.

You might notice that one of the endorsements for DXO Film Pack on the current Film Pack page on the DxO website is from Sebastião Salgado. From a variety of interviews and public comments, and forum threads*, here's a reconstructed summary of Sebastião's digital > film negative > darkroom print workflow:

1. Shoot with a digital camera
2. RAW demosaic (+ exposure correction, I suspect)
3. Process with DxO Film Pack for Kodak TriX 400 or TMax 3200 film simulation.
4. Print that image to a 35mm technical film internegative (so you have a real negative whose image simulates his favorite old films without adding grain).
5. Print the internegative to silver halide paper in Parisian darkroom using his regular printer** (with dodging and burning for the Salgado look).

This workflow lets him shoot digital images that look identical to his film images and result in a silver halide archival print and an archival negative (that can be printed from in the future).

I think many photographers today have no idea about darkroom printing annotation and pro printers (see for example "Magnum and the Dying Art of Darkroom Printing" on The Literate Lens). They can add enormous value to a print.

Salgado gets the best of both worlds. He (or his assistant) doesn't have to carry 50 lbs. of film to remote locations (and through many Third World X-ray scanners) but he ends up with a negative and print as he did with film.

I don't know if any other photographers have taken this route. I'd be curious to find out. I know that Daido Moriyama (well, his assistant) uses Nik Silver Efex Pro to get his film look with the image from the compacts he shoots with, but he doesn't bother with an internegative (as far as I know).

Kevin

*Citations:

• Testimonial
• Interview
• Interview in Portuguese
• Commentary (especially on the lack of silver in modern film)
• Forum comments
• Forum comments

[**Regular TOP readers know who that is. —Ed.]

©2013 by Kevin Purcell, all rights reserved

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Jack Nelson (partial comment): "What a great marketing idea. Give the customer a free un-upgradable copy and on the download page include a link to a discounted new version. I'll bet they get a few people who would not otherwise use their product to try it out (like me) and of those I'll bet they get a few that like it and buy the discounted version 4."

Jim Bullard: "I've played with DxO as a trial program and even did a review on my blog that compared it with other B&W conversion packages. In the end I went with Nik Silver Efex Pro because my object was to produce the best conversion for my intent, not to make it look as if it had been shot on film. The Nik software can add film grain and rendition but that's not its primary intent nor is it mine."

Last Chance! Sale Ends in a Few Hours

Our current print sale ends this evening at midnight Maine (Eastern) time.

That's 11:00 in Chicago, 10:00 in Denver, and 9:00 in Beegum, Copperopolis, Prunedale, and Skidoo, California*.

(And 6:00 a.m. Saturday Sept. 21st in Paris, and 1:30 p.m. Saturday in Adelaide, Australia**.)

Just a word to visitors and new friends: we really don't continue our sales past the ending time. Orders are cut off at that time, and that's the end of it. We really mean it, so don't assume we'll make exceptions after the deadline.

Here's a link to the order page [link removed—sale ended 9/20/13] and also a link to the sale announcement page where you can find all the information you need about the sale.

We want to thank everybody who participated in this sale and/or in any of TOP's print sales! Thanks very much.

—Mike, TOP majordomo

*Real town names, not making those up.

**That sounds like an old George Carlin joke, but that's what the Internet Time Converter page said, so I'm goin' with it. If somebody wants to explain that to me that would be cool, but please type slowly.

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.

TOP's links!

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

Martin Doonan: "If you want a weird time zone, go look up Nepal.... Got my order in late Friday night (Philippines time), nearly forgot!"

Ken Lunders: "Beegum by gum! That's a new one I'll have to go see next time I'm up that way. I'm surprised you didn't mention Fiddletown, being one terminus of the famous narrow gauge Fiddletown & Copperopolis railroad."

Random Excellence: Bryan Schutmaat

Photo by Bryan Schutmaat

Reaching across genres—using photographs of objects, buildings, interiors, landscapes, and portraits—Bryan Schutmaat has attempted to show what life is like in the half-forgotten old mining towns of the American West.

You'll definitely want to see the whole set online. It's called "Grays the Mountain Sends."

Mike
(Thanks to Enrique G.)

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.

TOP's links!

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

Andre: "Several of the places Bryan Schutmaat photographed look very familiar to me. One I recognize for sure: Tonopah, Nevada. You can make out the big red letters spelling out 'Mizpah Hotel' on top of one of the buildings. I grew up about 100 miles from there, and as my dad was interested in prospecting we checked out all sorts of old mines, mills, ghost towns, and towns inexorably heading for ghost town status.

"Mr. Schutmaat's done an excellent job of capturing the mood of these places. The residents tend to be hardy and grizzled, and with the low populations and isolation often don't have a lot to do. Prior to the advent of satellite TV you often couldn't receive any TV or radio stations in those places, except at night when you'd tune in the high-power stations from Mexico or southern California. Adults made their own entertainment, playing cards, drinking, etc. Kids dreamed about getting out, to the 'big cities' like Reno or Vegas. Dilapidated buildings and decaying cars litter the edges of town.

"For the indoor scenes, throw on some 1970s country music to set the mood. Outdoors it tended to be remarkably quiet, although sound carried a long ways—if a semi was passing by on the highway, you'd often hear it when it was still a couple of miles away."

Richard Khanlian: "Wow! Lovely and wistful and sad."

Jim Skates: "As I was looking at the photographs on his site I was thinking that these seemed very familiar. I then looked at his resume and realized that he had sent his film to the lab where I work and I had sleeved his negatives. It was great to to see them in a positive way."

Mike replies: Herman Krieger is going to appreciate that last comment.

Andy Goss: "Very evocative photos. Unfortunately, I forwarded to my wife the link to his work. She noticed an evident mistake the photographer made, which greatly reduces the value of his work (to me). Except by a great cosmic chance, in two of the pictures there appears to be the same jar of peanut butter, having the same signature wave of gap in the peanut butter visible along its side. Most likely a plant in the photos. A set-up. Makes me wonder what else in the photos staged indoors is a setup. The outdoors photos especially are still wonderful, but I had enjoyed and been moved by them all, until this."

Mike replies: Sharp eye on the part of your wife. She's talking about this detail from the TV interior:

And this detail from the turkey-in-the-oven interior:

However, knowing how many photographers work, I think it's very likely that both shots were simply made in the same home, possibly where the photographer stays when he's out West or the home of one of his friends. The scenario you and she are suggesting—the photographer carting around the same jar of peanut butter to different domiciles for use as a prop—violates Occam's Razor!

(Side note to Andy: I did get your reply, but if you want to have a private conversation with me, you need to give me some way to contact you.)

Updates

I'm off to Madison for another pool lesson this morning (in a good mood!), so I won't be updating comments until later in the afternoon. Patience.

This morning I've added Updates to the "New Products in September" post and to the off-topic "Gruelandgrass Diet" post, for that minority of y'all who were interested in that subject.

L8r,

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.

TOP's links!

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