I thought we might take a closer look at the picture of Don Budge I posted the other day. I think it's interesting.
The begin with, I never saw it before I posted it, so it's not something that was previously familiar to me. Wikipedia captions it "Don Budge at White City Stadium, Sydney in December 1937," and Wikimedia Commons calls it "American tennis player Don Budge at the White City Tennis Club in Sydney, Australia." Both say the photographer is unknown and that it's in the public domain. A reverse image search doesn't shed any light, other than to indicate that it only appears on the Web in a few places. The source is a 35mm copy negative from a nitrate original (films in that era were flammable, so original negatives were often copied later on "safety film") in the Hood Collection at the State Library of New South Wales, Australia, which gives the title as simply "Tennis, White City," and the date as Dec. 16th, 1937.
The unknown photographer had quite a lot of problems, some of them fundamental. If you were to name the four most basic things to get right in a photograph, three of them would probably be focus, exposure, and framing. Right away, it's obvious that the central subject is not in focus. Hard to tell where the plane of best focus might be, but it's closer to the crowd on the right than to the tennis player. Then, it's not quite properly exposed: although there's still adequate highlight detail, the picture's a little overexposed and the highest values are blocked. This might have been exacerbated slightly by making the copy, as optical copies tended to add a little contrast as well as lose a little detail and gain a little grain; but the original was overexposed, I can tell you. Third, the photographer appears to have been caught off guard by the height of Budge's follow-through, and managed to clip the top of the racquet, while at the same time leaving too much foreground. So the photographer got all three of these basics wrong. On the good side, he didn't get any of them so wrong that it ruined the picture altogether, so congratulations on that.
Since I know how to play tennis, I can tell you that Budge has just struck a topspin backhand. That allows me to venture a guess: a very short time earlier, he might well have been crouched down, knees bent and racquet back, ready to hit the ball. That position would make the aim of the camera more logical. But if that's correct, then we can surmise the fourth photographic basic the photographer messed up on: timing! He might well have been trying to catch the moment of the stroke or the moment of contact with the ball, but was a little slow, a little late.
Backhand compliments
But there are a lot of good things about the picture as well. First of all, the subject: it's a picture of one of the greatest tennis players of his era, in his prime, in action. A year later, Don Budge would win the Grand Slam (in the only year he played all four of the grand slam events, by the way!) and turn pro. In 1942, he would injure his shoulder while in the military, and his game would never quite recover. He played his last match in 1961, and died in 2000. So—this is obvious but important—no one can ever take a picture of Don Budge in his prime and in action ever again. That's one function of authentic photographs. Whatever was recorded at the time is as much as posterity will ever have. As time passes, uniqueness compounds, and historical value makes pictures precious that might not be otherwise. Why else would an old copy negative be preserved in a public library archive when the photographer got the framing, focus, exposure and timing all not quite right?
Secondly, the composition is actually quite exquisite. First of all, there's the uncoiled gesture of the player's body, the way he has straightened up and relaxed in his follow-through, the expression of concentration on his face and the intensity of his eyes locked on the ball, the angle of his torso stretched and leaning to the direction of the ball's flight. From the extra ball still held in his tossing hand, we can tell it's his service game. And Budge's body, light against the dark background, plays off the gesture of the body of the ballboy behind him, who is holding his own arm in counterpoint to Budge's, in similarly light clothing, the two of them bookended by sitting linesmen in darker street clothes.
Then of course there's the picture's wonderful punctum: both feet off the ground. If you grant me my guess that the photographer missed the intended moment, then she captured another one. Decisively, we'll say. The feet off the ground are what gives us the effort and the grace of the stroke that the still picture implies. You might even say it's what truly makes it an action shot.
The beauty of chance
Would the picture be better without all those "mistakes"? I actually think not. The problems contribute to an innate sense of dynamism, and impart a feeling of life and motion caught on the fly. Early on in my fascination with photography, I "got" that photographs array along a continuum between the approximate and the perfected, depending on how much control the subject allows the photographer. Action shots like Lartigue's exuberant boyhood photographs, war photographs like Capa's D-Day pictures (Coleman claims he was scared, although I can't see how that diminishes the pictures), or the accidents of demotic snapshots all convey a sense of immediacy and authenticity, amplifying the sense that the picture shows reality recorded, whereas the cool perfection of, say, studio advertising photographs, in which every little thing is controlled, try to give us a glimpse of the ideal from outside of Plato's Cave. But idealized forms and rigid perfection can start to feel fussy and fastidious with familiarity. Not for nothing did "perfectible" forms of photography and video start to mimic the imperfections of recorded-from-life genres, as when fashion photographs started mimicking the look of street photography or television shows started being shot with hand-held cameras with lots of camera motion.
While it's not a great photograph, it has real charm.
I could write more about that, but the hour grows late and the voracious blog must perforce be fed, lest it grow surly! More anon.
Mike
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Featured Comments from:
Moose: "So, in summary: Here's a photo that breaks all the rules, but is still at least close to great? I have questions, but first, as to some of the problems (Click on any photo for full size.): Original Topaz Photo AI Moose futzing.
"None of the following detract from the photo, but I have a curious mind: 1. The aspect ratio is almost perfect 4:3, not full 35mm frame. Masked on the original film? 2. I assume the men on the folding chairs are linesmen, paying little or no attention. The guy relaxing against the fence is a ball boy? Budge is holding a ball in his left hand. I suspect this is a demo or warm up piece of action. Perhaps even for the photographer? 3. How is Robert McNamara a linesman in Oz? He was 21 at the time, but looks much older. 4. Who did the presumed ball boy's hair?"
Mike replies:
1. All we know is that the copy negative is 35mm, not what the original negative was. I suspect the original picture was taken with a folder, which were very common in the 1930s (see certo6.com for examples), and probably was 645 format.
2. The linesmen pay attention to the line, not the players or the play. Budge is holding the ball in his hand, as I said, because it's his service game: he started with two balls in his hand and served the first one, which they're playing with. Most players no longer do it this way, but even when I was a boy it was common. This is definitely a match, because of the linesman, the ballboy, and the crowd, although they could have been warming up before the start, I suppose. Doesn't look like it to me. And, it has to be a ballboy because there's no other reason he'd be allowed on court.
3. Since it's McNamara, the picture proves that the Pentagon knows the secret to time-travel. (Reminds me of that wonderful incident when someone discovered an old tintype of a 19th-century man who strongly resembled Nick Cage. The conclusion drawn—I hope jokingly—was that the picture proved that Cage is a vampire. Someone else went so far as to prove scientifically that it was not Cage in the old picture, by comparing the lobes and folds of the ear. Like that was necessary. Totally goofy!)
4. I presume the ballboy did the ballboy's hair...remember the opening scene of Saturday Night Fever?
ChrisC: "Timing? Easy for us to say when we have cameras that shoot 12 frames per second. He was probably limited to something like 12 frames a day, assuming something like a Speed Graphic and allowing time to load the film holders in the dark room before heading out for the day. Perhaps that is an article for another day as you can probably fill in more detail."
Mike replies: If it was a folder, which is my guess, he might have had 16 frames, and perhaps an extra roll or two. And Jeff (in the Comments) is right, the film was probably ASA 125 or slower. Tri-X in rollfilm size was still 17 years away.
Michael Fewster: "As an Australian tennis fan who goes back a few years, I'd put my $ on Mike being correct in his analysis for the reasons he has given. The linesmen would have been totally drilled to watch the line and not the play. They probably would not have been so focused if this was the warm-up."
Mark: "If it's in the Hood collection then the photo is by Sam Hood, a well regarded photographer of that era. The SLNSW site says they purchased a large collection of his negatives in 1972 which were transferred to videodisc which was then digitised in 1996 and those images put on the library website. This multi-generation copying process might explain some of what appear to be technical deficiencies in the image. I wouldn't want to pass judgement on his framing, exposure, or focus until I saw a contemporary high res scan from the original film. Another website says he used a Graflex for over 40 years, but doesn't state the format."
Mike replies: Could be a press camera. It's doubtful the original film exists, if it was copied because the original was on a flammable base. Of course I don't know for sure.
jp41: "I am enjoying this post's deep dive into this vintage sports/action photo."
That looks more like a ball man in the picture. I didn't know that was a thing prior to Cosmo Kramer. :-)
Jerry: There are no ball men.
Elaine: Yeah I think he's right. I've never seen a ball man.
Kramer: Well there ought to be ball men.
Jerry: All right I'll talk to her. If you want to be a ball man go ahead, break the ball barrier.
Posted by: Jim Arthur | Tuesday, 18 July 2023 at 03:55 PM
For some reason, this puts me in mind of a few of the paintings by Gustave Caillebote. (His most famous one, of course https://www.artic.edu/artworks/20684/paris-street-rainy-day , but also this one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Pont_de_l%27Europe#/media/File:Caillebotte-PontdeL'Europe-Geneva.jpg ). Before I knew very much about him, it struck me that he must have seen how "imperfect" photographs gave that sense of dynamism that he was looking for. (I now know that he at least followed the photographic styles of the time although according to wikipedia, there is debate as to whether he was actually copying the effect from photos he had seen.)
The connection between this and the Budge photo is the lesson (for me as an amateur, at least) that the struggle for the perfect image is a carefully walked tightrope between technical competence and the dynamism that feels real and perhaps this struggle is true for many visual arts. I think it's tempting to say that what "feels real" is all that counts. You didn't say that, but I think many people take the search for dynamism and "punctum" as an excuse for way too much fuzziness (sorry about the pun) with the technique. If I can use the Caillebote paintings again as an example, his technical mastery of the figures in the paintings is excellent. Even though, for example, he cropped the dog so that its hind leg is out of the frame, the people, especially the couple walking towards the viewer, are extremely well painted, and I don't think his paintings would work if he used a coarse, maybe "expressionist", style for example. But on the other hand, the Rainy day in Paris painting definitely wouldn't work if the figure at the right edge of the frame wasn't cropped like it is.
Posted by: Phil | Tuesday, 18 July 2023 at 04:05 PM
When I look at this photo, all I can think is that it would be a perfect candidate for a square image. Cut off the left side, and the two seated individuals frame the other two symmetrically and the those two with complementary raised arms balance each other while still emphasizing the primary subject.
I almost never crop in post, but I would have printed this square.
Posted by: Albert Smith | Tuesday, 18 July 2023 at 04:31 PM
"Coleman claims he was scared..." Anyone who was on that beach and wasn't scared was either dead or an idiot. The fact that Coleman even made the comment says a lot more about Coleman than about Capa.
Posted by: Bill Tyler | Tuesday, 18 July 2023 at 06:04 PM
These days, of course, those problems could be fixed in software, but I doubt that would increase the artistic merit of photograph.
I'm not a tennis player so let me ask: why is he holding a tennis ball in his left hand?
Posted by: Bill S. | Tuesday, 18 July 2023 at 06:26 PM
As an ancient but still active tennis player and as a photographer who began with B&W film and self processing and as an Australian who remembers the glory days of Davis Cup and USA/Australian tennis rivalry, I love this post from Mike.
It says it all. It's also a reminder in the age of AI about the essential core truth of photographs.
Posted by: Michael Fewster | Tuesday, 18 July 2023 at 06:45 PM
Wonderful Mike.
The explosive evolution of digital photographic technology is, for me, over; there's nothing more I want in cameras except less. Photographs and their study, on the other hand, are endlessly fascinating, too rare and you do that so well.
So, 2 requests: More of your own pictures please, and more of these examinations of others'.
Posted by: Stuart Hamilton | Tuesday, 18 July 2023 at 06:57 PM
I also quite like the referee on he right with the "A" framed well, and the figure on the left who fills the otherwise empty space. too bad the figure is partially cutoff, but to me it's necessary that someone be there to balance the frame.
Agree with you on the charm, and to add to modern tennis players, the thought of playing in those long pants in full sun with a racquet the size of a popsicle, oh my.
It is for sure a backhand, you can see where Budge is on the court. Nice followthrough!
Posted by: Andrew Kochanowski | Tuesday, 18 July 2023 at 08:02 PM
The on-court guy by the “A” and the sliced guy far left leaning on the barrier. The other on-court guy you mention just to the left of Don in the frame. The woman in the crowd holding her hat. There is something exquisite about how each of these is carrying themself. I love the picture.
Posted by: xf mj | Wednesday, 19 July 2023 at 01:04 AM
Good analysis. Though I would say that of course it would be better if the player was in focus and exposure was right. These small faults don’t spoil the picture but there is no reason to credit poor focus and exposure. I agree that the composition is good and would not improve if camera had been pointed slightly higher. But what really strikes me is the depth of field. You can see the player and the court side people clearly as well as most of the spectators. Today this picture would be shot with a so wide aperture lens that all that interesting background would be completely blurred. That adds a lot to this picture and doesn’t distract at all.
Posted by: Ilkka | Wednesday, 19 July 2023 at 01:32 AM
Maybe his whites are a little blocked up, but I'm happy there is detail in the stands to almost the very top of the frame! A fair trade, I think.
Posted by: mike rosenlof | Wednesday, 19 July 2023 at 02:41 AM
It seems to me that the redundant foreground emphasises the leap of the player.
Nowadays the missing bit of the racket would be photoshopped in :( .
Posted by: Richard Parkin | Wednesday, 19 July 2023 at 04:31 AM
The photographer was probably using a slow film (Tri-X for 35mm came out in the '50s) and a wide open aperture (with narrower depth of field of course) to get a faster shutter speed for sports. If the lens wasn't linked he/she might have had to look at the scale on the lens to estimate what was in focus, and there might not have given a perfect view of what was actually going to be in the photo. Did the camera have a light meter or was it sunny 16 all the way? Who knows what developers were available in Australia then and how contrasty they were. All in all, a much better job than I could possibly have done and a nice piece of tennis history.
Posted by: Jeff | Wednesday, 19 July 2023 at 09:07 AM
All photographs, but especially news photos, are products of their cultural and technical contexts. Considering…
- the relatively primitive type of camera the photographer was using in 1937,
- the type of stone-like posed “sports” images published in news print in 1937,
- where on the court the photographer was located to make the shot,
- the version of the image that we’re seeing here..
I think it’s actually an excellent sports action image. Very memorable and unusual for its time with Budge floating in the air. Personally, I doubt it was made during a match but, rather , during warm-up.
Memorable sports / action photos of that day were true feats of skill and luck.
Posted by: Kenneth Tanaka | Wednesday, 19 July 2023 at 10:11 AM
why are the three people on the edge of the court so much cooler-looking than the actual sportsman (sorry Don)?
Posted by: Patrick Dodds | Wednesday, 19 July 2023 at 03:58 PM
The photo looks like a large format negative that has been masked and retouched, which was the standard operating procedure for newspaper photo departments back then. In my highschool photo class in the 60s the teacher showed us how to stencil and mask sheet film negatives with an airbrush and pencil.
Anyway, that's a fine excuse for including this photo of Germany Schaefer showing off the superb ergonomics of the 5x7 Press Graflex.
Note that he is using the camera while wearing a fielder's mitt. Try that with a modern camera.
Also, I would be remiss if I did not mention that Germany Schaefer is probably the only baseball player to steal first base once and second base twice on a single at bat.
As for how they did it in the old days, here are a selection of severe
weather photographs from The Brooklyn Daily Eagle morgue
Posted by: hugh crawford | Wednesday, 19 July 2023 at 09:31 PM
One more thing, I have two of the earlier version of the Grafmatic back in 5x7 called the Cut Film Magazine. They each hold 12 sheets of film in things called septums, which were changed by pulling them out into a leather compartment and moving the just exposed film to the back of the stack. It takes less than a second to do. Winding the shutter and cocking the mirror and aperture takes a couple more seconds. They are marked as having been owned by the Daily News aerial photography department so I assume they were in common use at the time. I, unfortunately, do not have a Press Graflex but I do have a 5x7 Stereo Graflex which uses the same film holders.
Posted by: hugh crawford | Wednesday, 19 July 2023 at 09:47 PM
I suspect that a news photographer at that time (who else could get that close?) would be using a press camera like a Speed Graphic, commonly 3-1/4"x4-1/4" format. And as above, a "bag-mag" or film pack, which would be even faster to use. 'Fast' film in those days was about ISO 40, so an f/4.7 lens nearly wide open, maybe 1/250sec @ f/5.6.
A fine photograph, well worth thinking about. Beautiful on many levels, even if 'imperfect'.
Posted by: Mark Sampson | Wednesday, 19 July 2023 at 11:55 PM
Its a fantastic shot. Great framing.
Posted by: Markku Salonen | Thursday, 20 July 2023 at 01:51 AM
But now, through the magic of AI, we can bring the player into focus, and fill in the top part of the frame so the racquet isn't clipped out, remove the excess foreground. But that's not all! We can also animate the shot being played and render it in glorious colour!
(NB: I'm being silly here and not for a moment suggesting anything like that should be done. It's a good shot given the limitations of the era.)
Posted by: Antony Shepherd | Thursday, 20 July 2023 at 03:08 AM
Just to second Paul Hamilton, you should do more of these critiques and your own pictures. Apart from their intrinsic interest, they spark good comments.
Posted by: Richard Parkin | Thursday, 20 July 2023 at 05:21 AM