Around the Web on a Monday: Arthur Mole, the SmartFlex, and the Canon R1

Nine photography-related items, and one about audio (but it's worth the watch if you watch movies or TV shows at home or on devices). 

—I'm sorry that some readers don't have access, but I can't help but mention an absolutely wonderful interactive feature at the NYT about Art Kane's "Harlem 1958" photograph I wrote about here. A perfect use of the potential of that kind of presentation. It turns out that of all the identifiable people in that picture, only Sonny Rollins is still alive. Presumably some of the anonymous local kids who put themselves into the picture are still around, too.

—You'll either be interested in this or you won't be, but even so, it's fun to read about the SmartFlex, a new camera being brought to market by two friends through Kickstarter. Their backers have really put up their money, we can say that.

—Another link to the Times (sorry again, but as you know it's the World's Best Photography Magazine—or would be, if there were an index somewhere). The title and subtitle give you a pretty good idea of the subject and thesis: "As A.I. Becomes Harder to Detect, Photography Is Having a Renaissance: Despite—or, perhaps, because of—the rise in artificially made images, photography is suddenly in the spotlight, in galleries in New York and beyond." The article itself is maybe a little disappointing—it's basically about galleries trying to make money from photography as a solution to the recent decline in the art market—they're hoping photography will be the gateway drug to collecting, quote unquote—and a lot of the artists mentioned are the old warhorses we admittedly love but who have been talked about a thousand times already. Still, it's an interesting article, and hopeful and positive.

Poor Walt Disney initially got painted out of this nice historical press photo. What is he, chopped liver?

—Oh boy, yet another one. I really am sorry. This is from a feature called "Found in the Files." I've seen other "Found in the Files" articles, but there doesn't seem to be a guide page with a link to all of them, if indeed there are a lot more of them. This article talks about a marvelous snap of Walt Disney conferring with Igor Stravinsky, the only living composer whose music was featured in Fantasia. (A salty Stravinsky found the musical performance in the movie "execrable," ouch.) Apparently Walt was painted out because somebody only wanted to show Igor. Jeff Roth, the caretaker of "The Morgue," as the paper's clippings and photos archive is called, made the find, and restored Walt to his proper seat. And the unknown photographer got his or her original composition restored.

—Did you know Canon has a new flagship pro camera? I think the fact that I've missed that altogether might mean that I'm not covering cameras as well as I used to, or as well as I should. But yes, the Canon R1 is a reality. Click on "90-Second Intro" at that link for a short list of its dazzling features. You should definitely buy it if a.) you need such a thing, b.) you can depreciate it, and c.) the work you use it for will pay for it many times over. The reason I whiffed on it is that it was announced on July 17th but had an indeterminate shipping date at first—I believe it started shipping on or around November 11th, which isn't so long ago. The R5 Mark II is probably a better choice for most photographers reading this site. The prices still seem eye-wateringly high to me, but, if they don't to you, congratulations to you on your financial success in life! Cost is relative.

—In what I think might be a first, Moose belatedly posted a mini-portfolio of his own work in a comment to the "Minimal Realism" post. I like "Petaled" and "Brass" best, but take a look and see what you like.

—Tom May at y!entertainment says, "I plan to stream these 3 movies about photography over the holidays, and you should too." The three movies are Lee (which we've already discussed), Camera, and Civil War. Of the last-mentioned, May says, "As you might expect from mass-market Hollywood fare, it's not especially realistic in its portrayal of photojournalists. In general, these characters seem largely motivated by personal ambition and ego, and fairly unconcerned with the wider impact their images will have on the world. This cartoonish depiction is, in my experience, the reverse of how real-life photojournalists actually think and operate." The link will tell you where to find all three.

Photo by Arthur Mole with John Thomas. It took 100 officers and 9,000 enlisted men from the Marine barracks at Paris Island, acting as "pixels," to create this image of the Marine Corps' Eagle, Globe and Anchor emblem.

—You've seen the pictures, but do you know the names? Arthur Mole and his invaluable assistant John Thomas were the authors of a specific genre of extravagantly staged pictures from the early 1900s, examples of which you've probably seen. "Starting in the early days of World War I, Mole was commissioned to create spectacular images where thousands of people, properly arranged and photographed from a high vantage point, created a unified image of various patriotic symbols and emblems ... The logistics of Mole’s photographs are staggering and took at times more than a week of elaborate planning for a single photograph. Shot with an 11x14 inch view camera high atop a towering platform, Mole’s partner John Thomas would direct the positioning of upwards of 25,000 people into the exact shape desired." The 2015 book Arthur Mole: Living Photographs is out of print. The work itself probably has the permanent status of a curiosity, because how many do you really need to see? And how much depth and nourishment do any of them really provide, apart from your initial amazement at the circus-act fact of their existence? Google "Arthur Mole" for more.

—Adam Isler sent me a link to this amazing video about a young YouTuber who built a camera that can see around walls. Along the way, the presenter/inventor provides a nice simple explanation of how cameras work. This will be of especial interest if you have the engineer gene. By the way, I think it's perfectly valid to watch something like this as pure entertainment. After all, I can't play football at the professional level either, but I enjoy watching it*.

Audio
—Finally, as promised, a little extra bonus link—do you ever find it hard to understand the words spoken by actors when you're watching a movie or TV show at home or on one of your devices? Vox, one of my favorite channels, has created a beautifully produced short informational feature about the reasons why that's so, and why it's hard to do much about it. It brings up an idea I'd never thought of before: that it might be a good idea to know whether there's a public movie theater near you with a state-of-the-art sound system. You might agree with one of the 25,872 commenters, @grahamvandyke, who said, "This is actually a massive relief, because I started believing I had developed hearing and concentration problems from not being able to understand quite literally half of all dialogue in most media."

It's not you!

Mike

*Josh for MVP. Go Bills!

Original contents copyright 2024 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. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

hugh crawford: "All of the 'Found in the Files' pieces are written by John Otis, so clicking on his name and skipping the weddings will find them; and anything that mentions Jeff Roth (coolest job in the world or a very cool guy, hard to tell!) is a good start for similar things."

Comments

[Terry Letton]

One more reason for me not to feel bad about not watching movies

[Nico.]

I like the leatherette on the EOS R1, it looks like a ship’s deck.

In the sixties my parents & I lived in Surinam, then still a Dutch colony. One day we crossed the river by ferry. As I stood at the railing, looking out over the water, my flip-flops had melted onto the deck. My father had to come and lift me up to get back to the car. A bit of a slapstick scene, maybe that’s why I still remember it so clearly.

[robert e]

I saw that Vox video a while ago and wondered why it omits the obvious culprit and solution, which is that the filmmakers and studios could creatively rethink and remix the movie's audio from scratch for lesser sound systems but choose not to. And that's because spending that kind of time and money is unthinkable--it would subtract too much from streaming license revenues. Why rock the boat when audiences are blaming themselves and not the product? So I consider this issue a form of deliberate "enshittification" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification and expect it to continue until enough consumers wise up and demand better.

[Patrick Perez]

On the topic of recent movies about photography/photographers, this year saw the release of The Bikeriders, starring Tom Hardy and a stellar cast. I think it might be the only studio movie based on a photo essay (the titular Bikeriders, a book by Danny Lyon). Danny is portrayed in the movie by Mike Faist, who played Riff in Spielberg's West Side Story.

My wife commented on the trailer that Tom Hardy seems to be trying to channel Marlon Brando, but I think it is more accurate that his character is doing the channeling, mimicking Brando in The Wild Ones.

Patrick

[Dave]

I heard about "Camera" from Luigi Barbano's Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ktTboYdzl4

From Luigi's review, it sounds like a very good movie. Unfortunately, it's not in any theaters around my location.

Thanks for all those links to good films and books to look at.

[The old "Hitler rant" was pretty funny (linked in the "What I Did on My Winter Vacation (OT)" post.)]

[Jim Arthur]

Audio: My old plasma TV finally gave up the ghost this year so I bought a new Mini-LED QLED 4K TV (Hisense U8K) that has surprisingly nice sound. This type of TV is much thicker than an OLED so it came with a 2.1 5 speaker sound system. After living with the new TV for a few months I decided to experiment with its sound by cobbling together my first TV surround sound system using decade old components that I had stashed in various closets. I had an old Denon 5.1 surround receiver (AVR-591) that I had once used with a desktop computer for some crazy reason and an old pair of Denon mini system speakers (SC-M37) that now serve as my rear surround speakers. I shared my stereos big floorstanding Decware speakers with the surround receiver via a speaker switch so they can now also serve as my front surround speakers and as a final Frankenspeaker twist, I’m using a KEF Q150 (coaxial) flopped on its side as a center speaker. I realize this sounds like a sonic nightmare but I think it sounds nice (better) and having a center channel speaker has made a world of difference when it comes to hearing clear dialog. The move to a 4K picture has also been a real eye opener. The new TV has nice upscaling capabilities so my restored Blu-ray copy of Casablanca looks amazing.

[Moose]

"Moose belatedly posted a mini-portfolio of his own work in a comment to the "Minimal Realism" post. I like "Petaled" and "Brass" best, but take a look and see what you like."

Thanks for the promo! PS suddenly wouldn't load, and it took a lot of time and a chat with Adobe to get it back. But I couldn't stop; better late than never?

Here's a little bonus I missed:

Wired

The title is a clue. Like the others, it's a "straight" shot, only processed for noise, brightness, contrast, etc.

In this case, simply the cords to three appliances in our kitchen.

[Donald Johnson]

By the way, Lee became available for streaming on Hulu since that article was published.

[Antony Gravett]

I just wanted to mention that an app called Downie allows you -- by way of copying-and-pasting YouTube links -- to download an actual (.mp4) file of many YouTube videos (presumably not full-on movies, which I've never tried). As a Mac tutor/teacher I find this useful to watch informational clips like the "Why we all need subtitles now" one about audio. Once downloaded, you have better control of the video by way of QuickTime Player's controls ... and, of course, there are no ads.

https://software.charliemonroe.net/downie/ (just a happy customer)

[Dave Jenkins]

My reaction to the Canon R1 is "Does it really need to be that big and heavy?"

[Not THAT Ross Cameron]

Thanks for the meanderings around the web.

Interesting kickstarter project with the SmartFlex. It reminded me of another kickstarter project to re-do the 35mm SLR - the Reflex.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/reflexcamera/reflex-bringing-back-the-analogue-slr-camera#

I think I came across it via Thom Hogans film SLR website. The aim was to have an interchangeable lens mount, plus an interchangeable film back. And a few other tech goodies.

From poking around it looks like the project has died as they assumed they could use an existing production shutter mechanism, which ended up proving false, and they didn’t have the funding to design and build their own one - per this website.
https://kosmofoto.com/2021/08/reflex-slr-project-on-hold-after-three-years-of-troubled-development/

While I’m not a medium format photographer, I hope the SmartFlex is successful.