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Tuesday, 18 July 2023

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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.

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.

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.

"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.

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?

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.

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'.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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 :( .

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.

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.

why are the three people on the edge of the court so much cooler-looking than the actual sportsman (sorry Don)?

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.
2162646403_fcbbe516d3.jpg
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

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.

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'.

Its a fantastic shot. Great framing.

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.)

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.

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