The Online Photographer

It's Complicated! (Please Read)

Master printmaker Ctein with his life's work,
much of which will go on sale here on Friday

It's only four days until our fantabulous Black Friday Ctein Dye Transfer Master Print Sale. It'll start at noon Pacific Standard Time on Friday, November 29, and run for exactly one week. This is the only print sale we've ever had for multiple pictures—many of 'em—and there is a severely limited supply of prints of each picture, so it's going to be complicated to try to get you happily matched up with a picture you want.

ALL THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION IS FOR FRIDAY, when the sale starts. It doesn't start until then. This is just so you can familiarize yourself with what going to happen then.

Bonuses
First, all the prints—you can view them here—are $650 regardless of rarity and size, plus a $39 shipping and handling charge for each order regardless of the number of prints you buy (that's higher than usual, but Ctein will be packing these extremely well). There is no limit on the number of prints you can order. There are bonus incentives for multiple-print purchases: digital prints (here's the most complete list) or even an extra dye transfer print of your choice (subject to availability). We'll give you the details later.

Layaways are available!
You'll be able to pay for prints by personal check (which we'd prefer) or PayPal (necessary for buyers who don't have a US bank account or wish to use credit cards). You will also be able to purchase prints on layaway, paying $50/month for 13 months for each print you want to buy (plus a bump for shipping and handling in the last payment). Here are the layaway terms.

What you'll do
Here's how it's going to work (the final and official instructions will be in the live Sales posting here on the 29th):

1.) There will be a request link on TOP and on the print listings page on Ctein's website. Use either of those to send Ctein an email. If neither link works for you (they fail for about 1% of viewers for unknown reasons) email ctein@pobox.com and put "My print requests"—exactly those words—in the subject line.

2.) The email should contain ONLY the following information:

• How many prints you want to buy (e.g. "I would like to buy three prints.")
• The titles of the prints you want, including alternative selections, if any. You can rank them by preference as you like, or not. If the photograph is available in more than one print size (if they are, that's indicated on the inventory page), make sure you state which size you want. If there's only one size, just give the title.

That's it. Don't include your mailing address, payment information, any special shipping requests, bonus prints you'd like, anything else at this point. All that will be taken care of when Ctein confirms your selection and directs you to place your order.

3.) Ctein will send you an acknowledgment of your email within an hour of receipt (unless he's asleep—remember he's on Pacific Standard Time and won't be on the computer from roughly 1:00 a.m. until 10:00 a.m.). If you don't get an acknowledgment, send your request again.

4.) Within 24 hours of your request, Ctein will confirm which print(s) you can buy. In all likelihood it will be a lot less than 24 hours, and if none of your choices are available, Ctein will let you know that very quickly (unless he gets totally slammed with orders in the first hours, in which case there will be a notice posted on TOP letting you all know there will be delays). With your confirmation, Ctein will send a link to the order page. You will place your actual order there, following the instructions posted.

Ctein will make an effort to match up people's choices and alternatives with print availability to maximize happiness (and sales), but there will be—of necessity!—a very strong "first come, first served" component.

The earlier you get your request in, the more likely you are to get what you want.

(Did Mike emphasize that enough?  :-) 

Ctein will be updating the webpage showing which prints are still available as orders are confirmed, but as you can appreciate, there's going to be a substantial lag, because there will always be print requests that haven't been processed yet. That's why it's a good idea to provide alternates to your first choices, if you have any. By the time you place your order, the inventory will have changed. Especially overnight (his night, not yours).

We'll tell you all this again on Friday. This is just a heads up.

Meanwhile, between now and Friday, you can check out the prints and make up your wish list in advance. Please do not send it to Ctein before the start of the sale.

Questions
Any questions? Please post them in the comments and we will endeavor to answer them promptly.

—Mike and Ctein

Original contents copyright 2019 by Michael C. Johnston and Ctein. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Fall TOP Print Sale Coming Soon! (Press Release)

Don't forget that our only print sale for the Fall of this year and the last TOP print sale of 2019 will start ONE WEEK FROM TOMORROW on November 29th!

There's an important catch, so read my comments down below the press release.

Here's the press release:

Download "Upcoming Dye Transfer Print Sale" press release

You can help us out (please?) by posting this at other sites and forums you visit and participate in. Feel free to use any or all of it.

Here's the text:

November 20, 2019—for immediate release—

Expert West Coast Photographic Printmaker to Liquidate His Entire Inventory of Rare and Prized Color Prints

San Francisco area photographer and master printmaker Ctein is offering his entire lifetime archive of rare traditional dye transfer prints for sale. The sale will take place on The Online Photographer website (https://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/) starting at noon Pacific Standard Time on November 29th, the Friday after Thanksgiving, and continue for seven days only.

Ctein (his only name—pronounced "kuh-TINE") is selling full-sized 16x20-inch dye transfers for only $650 per print on a first-come, first-served basis. More than 250 images will be offered. Interested readers can view these in advance at http://ctein.com/2019TOPDyeSale.htm.

Ctein, among the best-known and most accomplished of the dye transfer printers, worked in the medium for 40 years until he closed his darkroom in 2013. Now, connoisseurs can own a beautiful, genuine dye transfer print for their own collections.

Dye transfer, widely acknowledged to be the Rolls-Royce of traditional color printing methods back in the era of film photography, was extremely difficult to master and expensive and time-consuming to practice. Dye transfer prints have a distinctive beauty and purity of color. They have a greater color gamut and deeper maximum black than even inkjet prints, and were among the most permanent of all color processes.

Such prints were always rare and always expensive, and master printers in the medium have always been few and far between. By 1994, when Kodak finally discontinued making the materials, most of the active dye transfer printers in the US could fit in a single living room. Now a scant handful are left.

For more information, please contact Ctein at ctein@pobox.com or Mike Johnston of The Online Photographer at mcjohnston@mac.com.

As you already know if you've been following along, this year's print sale isn't for any one picture. Ctein will be offering for sale his entire remaining inventory of superbly made dye transfer prints. May of the pictures are sold out, and some exist in the inventory in only one remaining copy—what remains, and in what number, depends on how many were originally made and how many have been sold over the years. Rarity doesn't necessarily imply popularity, because Ctein made more prints of the more popular pictures over the years.

So here's the key: decide in advance what you might want, and order it promptly! That's the best way to insure you'll get the print of your choice.

The ordering process is necessarily more complicated than usual, but we'll explain all that. For now, the important thing is to determine what you want so you're prepared to move quickly when the time comes.

Even if you don't want a print, this is a perfect example of an exercise in delectation recommended by so many experts, from Thomas Hoving, the famous Director of the Metropolitan Museum, to, well, me. An exercise in delectation is just an exercising of your own taste. Hoving would walk into an unfamiliar room in a museum, scan the paintings on the wall, and decide immediately which pictures he wanted to spend time with. I've always felt that deciding "what I would buy if I could buy only one" is an effective form of the same exercise. Cumulatively, such exercises are an excellent way to refine and clarify our own taste (which is always changing and never static, too).

Here's the link again to see the pictures: http://ctein.com/2019TOPDyeSale.htm.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2019 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Al DaValle: "Hi Mike, I'm honestly not tying to be a smartass here but I thought Ctein's last sale (I purchased a print) was his last. I think I recall him using up the very last of his dye transfer chemicals etc. Did I dream that up? Miss something? Did he happen upon a new cache of material?

"P.S. I'm not expecting you to publish this on your site...just a question.  :-)  "

Mike replies: No problem Al, you can ask away. The last sale was his "closing the darkroom" sale, meaning that it was the last time anyone could buy specific images made to order. On that occasion he had enough raw materials left for approximately 160 full-size prints, if memory serves, and—again if memory serves—those sold out in six hours and two minutes. All those prints were made new, to order, and afterward he dismantled his darkroom.

The prints in the coming sale are from his archive of stock prints which he maintained for many years. When receiving an order for a print he would make several extras, and store the extras against possible future orders. A number of those still exist, and those are what are being offered in this upcoming sale.

There are two big problems with this sale: each of the images is available in very limited numbers, between one and five. It's quite possible that there could be more orders for a given image than there are prints, so not everyone will automatically get their first choice. Second—this is just from the production end—spotting dye prints is very labor-and time-intensive, and his normal practice was to archive the print unspotted, and spot each one prior to shipping when it was sold. But to offer all these at once, obviously they all need to be spotted. So he's been working for months to spot all the prints so they'll be ready to go out!

But none of the archive prints are being made to order—they can't be. There are no more materials and there is no more darkroom and many of the matrices have been sold. What you got last time was one of the last 160 prints he ever made. These are archived prints from stock, made over a period of many years prior to the closing of the darkroom.

Print Sale Update

Ctein reports that the Leigh Perry prints of "Car Park" have arrived safely back from Australia, signed by Leigh. All foreign orders have shipped and the domestic orders will all be shipped by the end of the week. People should get a tracking number from the USPS when their order ships. If anyone hasn't gotten one by tomorrow, Friday, they should email Ctein (ctein@pobox.com). It will only take a few days for domestic orders to arrive once they are shipped, but international orders can take as long as a month (mostly due to holdups in imports and customs stations).

Ctein adds: "A few enthusiastic TOPpers have misunderstood the timing of the upcoming huge dye transfer sale. Folks cannot place orders or reserve prints until noon on Black Friday, when the sale starts. The reason I put up an inventory page is so you can make decisions on what you're interested in ahead of time and ask questions about particular prints, if you have any."

Mike

Original contents copyright 2019 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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TOP's Upcoming Dye Transfer Print Sale—Wait, What, How? Why?!

Written by Ctein

It's not normal to announce a TOP print sale this far in advance, but Mike and I have been planning this one since the beginning of the year. It's time for the big reveal.

Ctein's Thanksgiving Dye Transfer Inventory Print Offer
Starting on Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving in the USA) and running for one week, Mike and I will be having a unique and massive dye transfer TOP sale. Every dye transfer print I have remaining in my inventory, regardless of size and rarity, will be on sale for $650. That's only modestly higher than my "closing the darkroom" sale price five years ago and it's a third to a tenth of my current studio and gallery prices. [And it's very inexpensive for large dye transfers, even twenty years ago. —Mike the Ed.]

We are putting out the word early, because this is going to be different, more complex, and bigger than any previous sale.

Does this mean I've started printing dye transfer again? No, absolutely not. The darkroom is gone forever, and I've sold off all my remaining supplies to other master dye transfer printmakers (of whom there are only a handful left in the world). Even if I changed my mind and acquired supplies, I've sold half of the matrix sets and work prints*. I couldn't print those pictures again even if I did still have a darkroom.

However, not being able to make new prints doesn't mean I don't have prints. In fact, I have a substantial inventory from throughout my career as a fine-art photographer and master dye transfer printmaker. Dye transfer printing, one of the most difficult photographic printing methods in the history of the medium, was sufficiently time-consuming, especially nailing the first print right, that when I did make one that satisfied me I'd make four or five additional prints at the same time. Although still a complex process, those duplicate prints were relatively quick to make (emphasis on "relatively"). Whenever a particular picture got close to selling out, I'd schedule a reprinting session and make a new set of inventory prints.

Consequently, at any given time I would have three prints of a particular photograph in inventory. That was the average then. Now, some of my portfolio photographs are completely sold out. Some, there's only one print remaining. Others, a half dozen.

Altogether, though, there are a lot of prints—and all of them are going up for sale.

Okay, why? In large part because I'm a huge fan of these sales and have been ever since Mike came up with the idea back when he was editor of Photo Techniques magazine. The idea of being able to get these rare prints into your home for a fraction of what you would normally have to pay really appeals to me. I like the idea of people owning my work, and the more people the better. I'd rather sell a lot of prints for less money than fewer prints at higher prices.

You may well feel differently, and that wouldn't be nonsensical of you. This is the way I am; feel free to have different mileage.

How it's going to go
All right, then, how is the sale going to work? Differently from previous sales, definitely differently.

To begin with, you can start thinking about what you'd like to buy right now. I've built a webpage that shows everything in my inventory. Space program photographs, volcano photographs, astronomical photographs, subtle colors in nature or garish colors by the hand of Man—everything.

For another, there will be three different ways you can buy these. The first two will be familiar: you can pay with personal check drawn on US funds or via PayPal.

The third way? You can buy prints on layaway. I do layaways, but it's never before applied to a TOP sale. This time it will. That will help people in a tight budget who may well never have a chance to buy a dye transfer from me again. You can see my layaway terms on my website.

There will be one minor difference. For this sale the layaway period will be 13 months, because then it works out to an even $50 per print per month. Plus a little extra in the last month to cover shipping and handling.

Limits
Each picture only exists in a limited number of copies, all of which will be noted on the inventory page by the time the sale begins, updated every day of the sale. However, there is no limit to the number of prints you can buy (subject to this availability), regardless of how you're going to pay. If you wanted to buy three prints, you could pay $1,950 (+S&H) direct or $150/month for 13 months.

There will be incentives for multiple-print purchases. Buy three prints and you can select any digital print from my website as a free bonus. Buy six prints and you can select two digital prints. Buy a dozen and you get four free digital prints.

Fairness to all
Toughest question: what happens if more people want a particular photograph than I have prints of? Because that's going to happen. Here's where it gets interesting.

Longtime TOP readers will remember my matrix-set sale, five or so years ago. Here's the link if you want to refresh your memory. We had a similar although smaller problem then. Typically there was one matrix set for a particular photograph. Instead a first-come first-served I asked people to list up to three alternatives to their preferred choices. No one was obligated to—it was not a demand. I took all the orders and optimized the selections to give as many people as possible one of their choices. It was a pretty hairy analysis, but 98% of our buyers got what they requested.

I'm going to do something similar with this sale. Not quite the same, because that's infeasible with a sale of this magnitude. My plan to cut this up into manageable pieces is to ask buyers to list several alternatives they'd be happy with (assuming there are any: again, no one is obliged to do this). Each day I will optimize among the orders I got for that day, confirm the orders with the prospective buyers and arrange for payment. I'll also update the webpage showing the offerings in real time, so fewer people will be frustrated by ordering something that's already unavailable (fingers crossed for luck).

I won't be giving any preference to the time of ordering within a single day, but I'll complete one day's optimization and allocate those prints before going onto the next day's orders. Hence, there is a daily aspect of first-come first-served, and ordering on an earlier day will improve your chances of getting what you want.

Uncharted waters
Well, there you have it— that's my plan so far. I may have to alter it on the fly as we get closer to the sale. Everything could sell out in the first 24 hours. It might happen—the 160 prints I offered in the "closing the darkroom" sale sold out in a matter of hours [six hours and two minutes to be precise —Mike the Ed. again].

Will it? We'll see. I've never done a sale quite like this before. TOP has never done a sale quite like this before. I think I've planned it out well, but we will be in uncharted waters. It will be an adventure.

It's going to be glorious.

Ctein

*If you want one of those, check out the How to Order Prints page and the Matrix and Work Print Sets page.

Original contents copyright 2019 by Ctein. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Print Sale Ends Soon

Our current TOP Print Offer, "Car Park" by reader Leigh Perry from Australia, ends today at noon Pacific Time, only a few hours from now. Last chance! [UPDATE: Sale ended at 12 noon Pacific Time on August 20th. Thanks to everyone who participated! —Ed.].

I'd like to thank Leigh and Ctein, as well as those who have ordered prints so far. This is one of my favorites. It has the clean, enigmatic graphism and color sophistication of a modernist painting. To my eye it morphs between a distant view of a seascape and the gritty close-in reality of what it is. It's definitely evocative of the horizon; the picture implies a lot more than it contains, and I like that. A brilliant photograph, and a fine, sardonic joke. The print is elegant. I'm pleased to be able to make this available to you, at least during this brief opportunity.

We have one more print sale scheduled in 2019.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2019 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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A Play on Seascapes

Leigh Perry, Car Park

Here's the commentary posted when we first published this week's print sale picture, way back in 2011. The first sentence by Mike, the rest by Leigh:

Leigh, of Sydney, Australia, shot his minimalist masterpiece with an Ebony 45SU 4x5-inch view camera on Fuji Astia, his favorite transparency film, under "glorious fluorescent lighting."

"The commenters who speculated that my photograph was a joke were right," writes Leigh. "It was conceived as a pun on the minimal seascapes I had taken before it. The idea gradually formed itself while I stood for a couple of minutes each day waiting for my car to come out of a car stacker. I eventually became aware that the carpark contained all the elements that would have attracted me to a composition on the coast in the early morning.

"The photograph is typical and atypical of my work in equal measure. I've always been obsessed with symmetry (as a kid, if I stubbed a toe, I'd have to do the same on the other foot!), and this reveals itself in my compositions. You'll see from my other portfolios on my website a consistent obsession with geometric layers splitting the frame into halves or thirds. I can't ascribe any credit to [Andreas] Gursky, although I am a fan of the Düsseldorf School. [Hiroshi] Sugimoto, however, was an influence on the seascapes of mine that morphed into this.

"Although most of my subject matter involves landscape, particularly on the coast, I don't particularly consider myself a landscape photographer. I just shoot what is to hand here in Sydney."

When I asked him to share a bit more about who he is for us, he wrote, "I have worked as a software engineer in Sydney for over 30 years. I find that software creation shares some of the same features as the other obsessions of my life—music and photography. Each of these involves aspects of science and art—both sides of the brain—although some people might be surprised to hear that software does too."

[UPDATE: Sale ended at 12 noon Pacific Time on August 20th. Thanks to everyone who participated! —Ed.]

Mike

Original contents copyright 2019 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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Chas: "While I’ve frequently been tempted to comment on this site—long time lurker, as they say—I’m moved to do so, having viewed Leigh’s seascapes (through the link provided). Simply beautiful! Although I too gravitate towards symmetry, it’s the wonderful, soft pastel colours and the abstract elements (if you will) that knocked my socks off! Nothing but admiration here."

Reader Print Offer: Leigh Perry

Leigh Perry, Car Park

I'm very, very happy to bring you this as our Summer Reader Print Sale. For a mere $195, inexpensive for fine art by any measure these days, we're offering this wonderfully subtle signed print by TOP reader Leigh Perry from Australia.

[UPDATE: Sale ended at 12 noon Pacific Time on August 20th. Thanks to everyone who participated! —Ed.]

Leigh's picture made an indelible impression on me when I first saw it and I've never forgotten it since. It's become one of my favorite "abstract" photographs ever, by anyone; it's also among the top handful of my favorite finds on TOP in its soon-to-be 14-year history. Part of the reason for this sale is selfish: I just wanted a print of it for myself.  :-)

The colors are lovely. Ctein worked with Leigh on the print; I wasn't part of that process. They got it just right as far as I can see. I wouldn't change a thing.

The irony, of course, is that the photograph isn't abstract at all—it's a straight photograph of the wall and floor of a car park (parking lot) that just happened to have those two wonderful echoing marks arranged as if by an artist's hand. That it's also our second straight (!!) sale of pictures of concrete just makes me laugh, that's all. (It just worked out that way. Please don't think this is going to be the policy for all print sales from now on!)

I suppose you'll either like this or you won't. I think it's elegant and evocative and subtle, sere and plain and exquisite. I love it. I'd rather have this on my wall than a Sugimoto (not to detract anything from his accomplishment). 

Here's how it works
You probably already know how our sales work. We take orders for five days, then close the orders, and then the prints are made at one time to fulfill the orders that we've already received and that are already paid for. This way we can keep the prices low for you but still reward the photographer with a nice return.

Let's see, any more details? The image size is right around 15x19 inches (38x48 cm) on 17x22" paper. The shipping price is the same to anywhere in the world. Damaged or missing prints will be replaced at our expense, and you have a complete guarantee—if you don't like it once you see it, we'll send you a 100% refund (minus shipping).

More about Leigh, and the print, in days to come.

Note: Unless you need to take your time for some reason, please don't wait to order—the pictures have to go to Leigh in Australia for signatures, and PayPal mandates that we start shipping to customers within 30 days. That's kinda tight. It will be much easier for us if we have a significant number of orders to ship out to him in the first batch. If you order early you'll be doing us a big favor. Many thanks!

Mike
(Thanks to Leigh and Ctein)

Original contents copyright 2019 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Bandbox: "It looks like a color field painting with a couple of scuff marks."

K4kafka: "Like Mark Rothko, on a happy day...."

Mike Potter (partial comment): "That photo really doesn't speak to me. At all."

Peter Gilbert: "That's what I call Wabi-sabi at its best. Great shot."

 

Feedback

In the last print sale we worked with a new lab for the first time, Mike and Janine Zaikowski's Profiles in Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania. Now that the sale is over, Mike and Janine would like to know what buyers thought...

"...By the way, may we ask what kind of feedback you got from the people who ordered a print? Negative as well as (hopefully!) positive; any constructive criticism either about the print quality, the presentation, or the shipping would be appreciated. (There’s always room for improvement!)"

Anyone willing to comment? If you'd like to do so privately rather than in public, send it to me by email and I'll pass it along. My email address can be found under "Contact" in the right-hand sidebar.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2019 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Inkphot: "My print arrived in a timely manner (I live in Australia).The packaging was protective to the correct degree,no complaints about any administrative matters. I love the choice of paper, it really is such a wonderful fit for the image and the print quality is excellent. The picture is now framed and sits on my wall where I get to enjoy it daily. My one disappointment is that I didn't bite the bullet and go with the larger size. Although tempted by previous print sales, this is the first time I have succumbed. I feel it may not be the last occasion. I was very tempted by the Peter Turnley sale and also that wonderful print of the woman holding an umbrella (by Gordon Lewis?)."

Rob Giffin: "We have the large print. I was going to buy the smaller print but my wife loved the photograph very much and said we should get the large print. I am so happy that we did as she suggested. The print is beautiful. Mike was correct the jpeg did not reveal the subtle colors in the photograph. The colors in the print are very delicate and beautifully printed. The paper choice used for the print is really perfect for this photograph. We had it matted and framed right away. We could not wait to hang it in our home."

Josset Legh of Pigeon Island: The Story of 'The Goodbye Kiss'

Written by Chester Williams

The island of St. Lucia, all 238 square miles of it, has had a very interesting history.

The French were the island's first European settlers. They signed a treaty with the native Caribs in 1660. England took control of the island from 1663 to 1667. In ensuing years, England was at war with France fourteen times, and rule of the island changed frequently (it was ruled seven times each by the French and British). In 1814, the British took definitive control of the island. Because it switched so often between British and French control, St. Lucia was also known as the "Helen of the West Indies."

Located just offshore in the north of the island is one of St Lucia's most historical sites. An island until 1972, when it was joined to the mainland, Pigeon Island itself has had a very colorful past. Artifacts from the island's original people, the Arawaks and the Caribs, dating back to around 1000 A.D., have been found on the island. In the late 1550s, the French pirate François Le Clerc (known as Jambe de Bois due to his wooden leg) set up a camp on Pigeon Island, from where he attacked passing Spanish ships. Pigeon Island was later heavily fortified by Admiral Rodney between 1772 and 1782. Remnants of these fortifications heavily dot the island. In addition, in 1909 a whaling station was established at Pigeon Island. Legislation to control whaling in 1952 put an end to this operation

Into this strange, sometimes brutal tropical world, entered a most unlikely visitor who would eventually make Pigeon island her home. Agnes Pennington Legh, known simply as "Josset," was a soprano chorister and player with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company at the Savoy Hotel for the Second London Repertory Season, April 1908 to March 1909. She was described as a big-boned woman, eccentric in ways that only the Brits know how to be, with her wrinkly face, blondish hair, invariably dressed in a sunsuit, one of those strapless things with a little skirt and pants.

Her marriage to her first husband was cut short when he died as the result of wounds suffered in World War I. She visited the island colony of St. Lucia in 1937 with Dorothy D'Oyly Carte, daughter of the 2nd Earl of Cranbrook, and took up residence on the forty-acre rock called Pigeon Island, signing a 99-year lease for the property.

Josset, as she preferred to be called, quickly established herself as the "Eve" of the island. She then married Anthony Snowball and was jokingly nicknamed "Ma Snowball," a name perfectly suited to her physical attributes.

Her second marriage to Mr. Snowball ended in divorce and Josset turned all her love and attention to her island.

Life was perfect for the transplanted Australian. Her previous existence was completely different from what she created for herself on this tropical paradise. Gone were the lavish balls, dancing with impeccably dressed men and sipping the most expensive brandies with her friend Dorothy, whose husband owned the Savoy Hotel in the UK. What she had traded that life for was a tranquil location, with endless sunshine, genial banter and innocent mischief, and baskets full to overflowing with home-cooked goodies, bottles of spiced rum, creme ponche, and sorrel (fermented petals from a local plant). Josset used to run what was known at the time by the grand name of "The Club," a little house built of crooked sticks with a thatched roof, near the southern beach on Pigeon Island.

Her perfect world came to an unceremonious end soon after U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt visited the island on December 8th, 1940. The island was to be used as a Communications Station to support the Naval Air Station that being built on the mainland opposite Pigeon Island. A squadron of 18 PBY-5 Catalina amphibious aircraft was stationed there, used for patrolling the Caribbean and hunting for German submarines.

Like Eve before her, Josset was unceremonially kicked out of her beloved paradise. Her third love affair had apparently ended in tragedy.

But in 1946, with World War II ended, the American Base was deactivated, and Josset was allowed to return. She resumed her carefree life there for another 25 years. Yachts carried parties of family, friends and visitors across to spend Sundays drinking, laughing, swimming, and basking in the beauty and nature of that little island.

In 1971, a decision was made to join her island to the mainland of St. Lucia by the construction of a causeway.

But Josset was not daunted by the modern invasion of her domain. She maintained her day-to-day activities even when there was an influx of motorcars to her island rather than the customary yacht.

Nothing but old age could make Josset give up what she must have loved more than anything else in life—her island in the sun. On her first visit back to England since leaving after the war, in 1978, at the age of 90, Josset Legh died. Her ashes are commemorated by a headstone in St. Mary the Virgin's Church in Avington, Hampshire.

The ruins of Josset's house.
Photo by J. Makali Bruton, April 26, 2015, courtesy of HMdb.org

In 1980, most of her house was destroyed by the last major hurricane to hit the island. "The Goodbye Kiss" was taken in that house that Josett built for herself on her Pigeon Island. Amidst the crumbling structure, roofless and devoid of any human presence, was a wall, still upright with pale pastel remnants of colour. And on that wall was the simple image.

To me it represents an exchange of love between Josset and the only true and longest-lasting love of her life. It is a fitting symbol of an extraordinary love affair that lasted for over 40 years, between a woman and her glorious tropical island.

Even though history invariably reduces its characters to dust and ashes, the legend of Josset lives on in the memories of thousands of living people today, occupying a very special corner in their hearts. Josset Legh is the name that is most intimately tied to the history of Pigeon Island.

Chester

Original contents copyright 2019 by Chester Williams. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Scott: "Chester (may I call you that?), this is a lovely story! I cried here at the breakfast table at the end of it. I wasn't expecting any story at all behind this particular photo and then you gave me a love story between a woman and an island and its people! Thank you so much for giving us this gift."

Tim Wilson: "Thanks for providing the backstory for the photograph! I plan to keep a copy of the text with my copy of the photograph." Looking forward to its arrival!"

Mike replies: There will be a printed copy of this post in your package, too.

AlexV: "Chester, I have read elsewhere that photos should stand alone, without any commentary that may influence a viewer's interaction with the image. That is a valid approach to some pictures, but your tale is an eloquent counter argument. The photo is striking as it is, yet the backstory makes it all the more poignant. Thank you for sharing it."

Meet Chester Williams

Our Spring 2019 print sale is a little unusual in that Chester Williams, the photographer, is a TOP reader I didn't know at all before he submitted his picture to one of our "group shows," the so-called Baker's Dozens. I don't know if there's any such thing as a "typical" TOP reader...to paraphrase Garrison Keillor, all TOP readers are strong, good-looking and above average! But he was just a regular reader whose name I didn't recognize.

So I asked him if he'd write about himself by way of introduction. Here's what he sent me:

"I was born on the tiny Caribbean island of St Lucia. My early years were spent enjoying the outdoors, thanks to my father, the late Boswell Williams [a former Governor-General of the Commonwealth Realm of St. Lucia, the sovereign island nation's highest political office—see the postage stamp. —Ed.]. My dad bought me my first camera at nine, and this resulted in a profound love, not only for my island, but for nature in general. My brother and I spent hours shooting, developing and contact printing the 120-size (6x6cm) frames, as enlargers were not available on the island.

"After graduating from junior college on the island, I was set to follow a career in banking, and was employed at the Royal Bank of Canada. Three years later, my parents, afraid that their son would not amount to much, shipped me off to pursue a degree in business from Arizona State University. Upon graduation, I got married, moved to Los Angles, and began working downtown for a major bank. Always having a camera, and shooting extensively, especially at Venice Beach, I went on a week-long camping trip to Yosemite National Park and was emotionally awakened to the possibilities of pursuing photography as a side career. Many of the images I shot there were bought by my fellow staff members after they saw them displayed on my cubicle walls.

"Fast forward to a few years later, the early 1990s. By now having a two-year-old daughter, I was eager to have her raised in the islands. My wife and I accomplished that in 1991 by moving back to St Lucia. In 1992, while working a 9–5 job, I decided to pursue photography full-time after winning two Gold medals at a prestigious art completion on the island. My phone began to ring. In total, I eventually won six Gold medals before I retired from competing.

"Over the years, I did commercial work, calendars, weddings, aerial photography, etc., for a paycheck, but my passion was always landscape and nature photography, which I did on weekends. I was fortunate to have my work printed in such publications as Hello magazine, Bride magazine, and several others over the years, but that came to an end after health issues forced me to cut back on my commercial work.

"More recently, I have been actively involved in sharing my work online and have had several images chosen for inclusion in prestigious Facebook group galleries such as Pure Street Photography. I've been involved in many art exhibitions over the years and regularly sell my work both as loose prints and as framed pieces."

One possible disadvantage of having print sales by "regular readers" is something Chester told me that I didn't foresee...he said he's been very worried about this sale, anxious it might "not sell any" and that he would disappoint you (and me). I told him that's not the way it is...we do this for fun and enthusiasm, not because it's always a good way to make money (sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't). If one person loves and treasures a print they get from us, or if someone buys original artwork who never has before, or if a couple of people have a nice experience giving and getting a photograph as a gift, then that's good enough for me.

So big thanks to Chester for allowing us to yank him into the spotlight.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2019 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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Reader Print Sale: Chester Williams

[UPDATE Tuesday, May 21, 2 p.m. Eastern Time: Sale has ended. Thanks to all of you who ordered! Hope the rest of you enjoyed the posts.]

Chester Williams, The Goodbye Kiss

Our fine print sale for this Spring is literally a picture of...concrete. Yet it manages to convey emotional content too. It's called "The Goodbye Kiss," and I'm guessing you can see why! It's sort of a local folk landmark on the Caribbean island nation of St. Lucia, in the Atlantic Ocean.

Chester Williams is a TOP reader who submitted this to our Baker's Dozen feature (a portfolio of readers' pictures) called "It Must Be Color." Chester, who lives in St. Lucia, is a retired professional photographer who loves to enter photo contests and has won many honors over the years.

"The Goodbye Kiss" an example of pareidolia, a fancy word for the skill our brains have of detecting human faces in random information. We are highly sensitized to faces and tend to be inclined to see them. We can see a face in a curved line and two dots, a chimney flanked by two windows, or in the clouds or whorls of wood grain. We know this is accidental, but we can read feelings and tenderness in the touching gesture. We are suggestible, and the figuration suggests—in the way that art often does. Only in this case it's natural, not intentional.

How our sales work
Our sales are a little different than most. We take orders first, for a strictly limited time, in this case five days. Then we close the orders and the printmaker can go to work fulfilling the order. I started doing it this way back in the '90s at Photo Techniques magazine, when the prints would be made in darkrooms. It makes it possible to offer prints at low prices for the buyer while still allowing the photographer a nice payday.

The sale ends next Tuesday at 2 p.m. New York time, 11 a.m. California time. That's 7 p.m. in London and 4 a.m. Wednesday in Sydney.

To order
You can buy either of two sizes—large or small. The full-sized print is 13.3x20" on 17x22" paper, for $220. The small prints are 8x12" with a 1-inch border for $110. Shipping cost is $15 to anywhere in the World, for either size.

I had a bit of trouble arranging this sale, because the bookkeeper I had lined up decided she didn't want the job after all. Then Ctein offered to help, and that saved the day. So he'll be taking orders and doing the bookkeeping (and thanks for that—Yr. Hmbl. Ed. doesn't have the gene) but he won't be making the prints. The prints will be made by Mike and Janine Zaikowski of Profiles Fine Art Printmaking Studio in Philadelphia. (They also printed "Precipitation" by Gordon Lewis, for those of you who have those.) They will not be signed, as shipping from Philly to St. Lucia is slow.

Tomorrow I'll ask Chester to introduce himself, and then on the weekend I'll pass along the backstory about the subject of the picture—there's a lot to it, and it's a fascinating and touching tale.

One final note: There's a reason why Chester submitted this picture to a juried show called "It Must Be Color." As I mentioned earlier, the print is lovely—the colors in it are shimmery, subtle, and pleasing. The JPEG doesn't quite do the colors justice.

The print does.

Thank you from all of us—Chester, myself, Mike and Janine, and Ctein—we hope you like it. Please do pass the word about the picture and the sale to anyone you think might like to look at it.

Mike

P.S. Oh, I really should have added that this is entirely a "by popular demand" fine print offer. A number of readers asked for it, and that's why it's happening. But I would like to do more reader's print sales in the future. The large print option was also a reader's suggestion.

Original contents copyright 2019 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Andy: "I've been waiting some time for this one. Large print ordered. So glad you decided to add the larger size."

Chester Williams replies: "@Andy...I was so worried that I would not sell any, so your message, first indication of a sale, was a Godsend! Thanks...and also to Scott, Mike, Ctein and others for their guidance, assistance and comments. Sorry if I am excited...but I am!!"

Chester Williams Print Sale Starts Next Thursday

...At 2:00 p.m. USA Eastern Time and ends at the same time on the following Tuesday. We are selling both a small and large version of the picture. The small print is 8x12 with 1" borders, and the large print works out to 13.33x20" on a 17x22" sheet. The paper we have chosen is Hahnemühle Photo Rag.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2019 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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Subtle, Shimmery Color

The day the proof prints for print sales arrive at the house are kind of red-letter days for me. I always find these days exciting and memorable.

I still don't have a firm start date for the Chester Williams print sale, but it's coming together fast and I'll alert you to the date soon. The print will be 8x12".

I did just see the proof prints for the first time (on three different papers—now I have to choose!). There's a somewhat unexpected bonus: the pareidolia is the point of the picture—as you can understand from the title "The Goodbye Kiss"—but, as printed by Mike and Janine Zaikowski of Profiles in Philadelphia, it also turns out to be a very lovely color photograph. It's got all sorts of subtle, shimmery reds and greens in it. The colors are lovely. I guess that's fitting, since Chester submitted to the "It Must Be Color" Baker's Dozen. I didn't get that at the time because I hadn't seen it at the proper size. 

Or on paper. I like it much better as a print.

More news soon.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2019 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.

(Not) everything must fade away

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Ctein Prints Have Shipped

No foolin':

All orders from our recent Ctein print sale have been shipped. If there is anyone who hasn't gotten a "your order has shipped" email from Ctein and an email from the USPS with the tracking number by today (be sure to check spam folders), they should email Ctein at ctein@pobox.com.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2019 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.

Everything must fade away

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Featured Comments from:

Ken: "I got Ctein's email Saturday though I haven't heard from the Post Office about any tracking numbers. But no matter: I received my print about a half an hour ago. Wow, very nice! Thanks to both TOP and, especially, Ctein. Once it is framed, it will have a prominent place on the wall in the living room."

The Beauty of Physical Prints

...Or, why I chose the Ctein prints I chose for the current print sale.

[UPDATE: Sale ended 2 p.m. EST Saturday, March
9th, 2019. Thanks to all who participated!]

Printmaking—a word that encompasses making photographic prints, and the prints themselves—has always been an exceedingly important part of my enjoyment of photography. I'm both a part of the audience and a maker. I like objects. I like pictures of all sorts. But I especially enjoy well-made photographic prints.

Having done it professionally for a spell in the '80s and '90s, I'm aware of some of the problems and pitfalls. Without a doubt, one of the problems is representing light—or, I should say, representing light with reference more to the experience of seeing the real light than with reference to the photographic conventions we've all come to take for granted (some of us with more sanguinity than others). Few things in my opinion are more difficult to get right than Christmas lights. I don't personally care for photographs of Christmas lights, but they're a subject that Ctein has pursued for years and clearly greatly enjoys, so I thought, why not? I thought his bereft fans hereabouts would approve of seeing samples from various themes in his work. I envisioned this as a print that people might frame but put away for 11 months of the year, and then bring out for holiday guests! But the amazing thing is how close he got to the visual impression you'd get seeing those lights. They seem to glow. And it's just not easy to print objects so they seem to be emitting light.

As far as the icefall print is concerned, I could gas on for a while about the quasi-abstract properties, the movement of the lines, the richness of detail that pulls your eye around and about inside the print, and the tension of field-flatness versus the sense of bas-relief that you get from the three-dimensional ice. But really, for me, the ice print is just about those astounding blues. It seems like there are only a few colors and yet at the same time dozens of colors, all them shifting and shimmering, playing off each other; the color seems bright and vivid yet at the same time subtle and gentle. I don't know quite how he does this. Anyway all those tensions (never mind the tension inherent in a vertical wall of ice in the first place) make the print both quiet—yet another contradiction?—but with a lot going on.

The star of the show in my humble opinion is the Canadian Northern lights photograph, taken on a cold night near Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories. Primarily, it's a spectacular display; you can almost hear the eerie "music of the spheres" as a ghostly soundtrack to the visuals. There are a couple more things I like about it. The leaning traffic sign—recognizable by its shape—and the receding line of telephone poles (you can hardly see them in the JPEG) give the scene on the ground a desolate, remote feel, intimating the inhospitable vibe of the cold nighttime landscape. Then in the middle of the picture there is just a hint of pink or reddish color, which gives the flagrant greens more depth and subtlety. Finally the stars. You can see what must be thousands of them (unlike the four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire, I'm not going to count them all). How the printer (human) and the printer (machine) managed to image such tiny pinpoints of white I'm not even going to ask. The JPEG just can't begin to resolve all this. Again, this print is something of a printmaker's virtuoso trick—taking light of such fathomless complexity and translating it into the limited range, palette, and resolution of pigment ink on paper such that it really does convey not just the visual impression but the emotional impression of real light, real sky. It's remarkable.

It's what realistic, naturalistic, representational fine printmaking is all about in photography. Love it. Isn't it a shame that just as the best-ever (or best-ever-so-far) method of color printing really comes of age, with such gorgeous materials, the making of fine prints itself is starting to go out of fashion? Even I look at 99% of the photographs I see on screens—and I love prints.

Don't forget Ctein's return visit here is going to be brief—this sale lasts only three days. It ends tomorrow. [UPDATE: Sale ended 2 p.m. EST Saturday, March 9th, 2019. Thanks to all who participated!]

All I can tell you if that if you like the pictures you will like the prints. Very enjoyable to look at, and a pleasure to see.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2019 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.

Want to help?

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

David Dyer-Bennet: "I've seen, not the print sale versions, but other versions of the aurora print, and I think the Christmas lights print (I've seen a number of Christmas lights prints and am thus not utterly certain it was exactly that image), and they are everything Mike says they are. As for the colors in the icefall print, my answer is 'that's what's there when you see it.' (I'm only moderately confident it's the waterfall I'm thinking of; but the colors are a property of ice, not a property of the particular waterfall; you'll see similar colors in many glacier and iceberg photos). And in my experience they seem reasonably compatible with modern digital color imaging (not always the case). Which makes them no less gorgeous, and the higher compositional elements of that image no less excellent."

Ctein Print Offer

Ctein, Frozen Azure Cascades, 2014

Our old friend Ctein returns with some recent prints.

(For those of you who might be new here, Ctein, pronounced "kuh-TINE," wrote more than 300 columns for TOP in the years up to 2016, when he departed for a new career as a science fiction novelist. He wore many hats, being the site's resident technical expert, computer expert, and tea and parrot aficionado among many other things.)

We're offering three beautiful inkjet prints on premium 17x22" paper for $169 each, along with a free bonus print for people who buy three or more.

You can see large JPEGs of all the prints at the order page. Best seen on calibrated screens.

 

[UPDATE: Sale ended 2 p.m. EST Saturday, March
9th, 2019. Thanks to all who participated!]

 

Ctein, Golden Honey Xmas, 2017

If you're not familiar with our print sales, we open the order period for only a short time—in this case, three days. This sale ends on Saturday at 11 a.m. California time (PST), which is 2 p.m. in New York and Montreal (EST), 7 p.m. in London, and 6 a.m. Sunday in Sydney. Then the prints that have already been ordered and paid for are made and shipped. PLEASE NOTE! We do not accept orders after the deadline. Once the sales period closes, it's too late. Packing and shipping is $28 per package to anywhere in the world, regardless of the number of prints you order, and all prints  are both self-insured by Ctein (he'll send you a replacement if it gets lost or damaged in transit) and guaranteed (you can return it for a full refund if you're not satisfied once you see what you bought).

Twenty percent of the proceeds go to The Online Photographer, so every print sold benefits this site.

Ctein, Green Auroral Drapes, 2016

These prints represent three longtime motifs in Ctein's personal photography: natural patterns, Christmas lights, and skies. The latter includes all sorts of atmospheric phenomena and celestial bodies, everything from moonbows to nighttime rocket launches to stunning photographs of full solar eclipses. I personally think this last-mentioned motif is his biggest strength. One of Ctein's famous quotes is "nobody cares how hard you worked," but people certainly do care about what results you end up with! And this may be the single most outstanding print of an aurora borealis photograph I've ever laid eyes on—it has an eerie presence and great beauty. The JPEG does not do it justice. It's frankly entrancing. As it happens he worked exceedingly hard on the print, but we don't care. What we care about is that it is an utterly stellar print (oh, you must forgive me for that).

If you order three or more prints (in any combination), you'll get a bonus print for free—it's an infrared picture from 2016 which Ctein tells me is one of the most popular pictures he's made in recent years. You can see the bonus print on the order page.

 

[UPDATE: Sale ended 2 p.m. EST Saturday, March
9th, 2019. Thanks to all who participated!]

 

Nice to have Ctein back for a visit! Hope you like TOP's first Print Offer of 2019.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2019 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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Next Print Sale Starts March 6th

Mark your calendar, tell your friends, post it on social media.  :-)

Mike

Original contents copyright 2019 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.

Here’s the situation

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Other People Have Print Sales Too

John Sexton, Geologic Conundrum, Banff National Park, Canada

Old friend John Sexton is one of only a very few photographers in the United States capable of making a living off print sales. Seriously, you could probably count such guys on your fingers and toes.

...In case anyone out there is dreaming of making a living on print sales. You'd have a better chance with that dream of making a living on the PGA Tour. On the good side, your chances are slightly better than the one about winning that lottery (AKA the "tax for people who suck at statistics").

Most of John's prints are open editions, and have standard prices. The prices for limited edition prints are higher, and vary based on edition size, the image, and so on.

John, of course, was one of Ansel Adams's assistants, along with Ted Orland, Don Worth, Alan Ross, and Chris Ranier, a very exclusive club indeed. John didn't assist Ansel for long compared to some others, but he was the master's last right-hand man (I believe), and helped prepare the last lifetime edition of Ansel's Photography Series originally published by NYGS Books: The Camera, The Negative, and The Print. I never practiced photography like old Ansel, but I sure did enjoy those books. And learn a lot from them. Like so many others, I found them inspiring. So many eyes were opened by those books. I have a complete original hardcover set, in dust jackets.

I might not practice photography like Ansel, but John does. Geologic Conundrum, Banff National Park, Canada, is his "Darkroom Edition" for 2018. It's an 11x14" print and is limited to 100 copies. The "introductory price" is $800, which is 20% less than the price of a standard open-edition print of this size, but a 60% saving over the regular price for this limited edition, which is $2,000. (Got that? It took me a while, and some help from John, to untangle it.) John says, "Thus far the response to this print has been great, and has exceeded our most optimistic expectations."

There's still a little time left to order at the "nice price," if you love the image...the price increases to $2,000, as he puts it, "at the stroke of 2019." (TOP gets nothing from any sales—I just thought you might be interested.) There's a description of how the image was taken at the link.

Mike
(Thanks to JS)

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Christopher May: "I recently had the opportunity to look at a number of Sexton prints at a friend’s house. He took workshops with John and has collected his prints. To say that John’s prints are jaw-dropping does not do them justice. Unfortunately, even with the good pricing here, they’re a bit out of reach for me. But for anyone who has the means, this is a fantastic price for a print that I guarantee will make you say, 'Wow,' when you first look at it. John’s are by far and away the best prints I’ve ever seen in person. And that includes dozens of his teacher’s most famous works. John takes everything that Ansel did in the darkroom and does it even better."

Mike replies: You know, I was going to say something similar, but then I though no, that's too over the top, people would just think I'm being provocative*. Let me just say that John's printing style is more to my liking by just a bit—where Ansel can get a little sententious with his tones at times, John is a bit gentler and can be more graceful. John and the late Ray McSavaney are my favorite LF printers, I think, although many are wonderful and there is much to appreciate in the work of people who aren't absolute favorites. There is almost no really good printer who has not made at least some truly great prints...almost by definition. But I agree with what you say. John's work is wonderful artistry.

*Moi?!

TOP Print Sale: Paris, Venice, Havana

This Cyber-Monday morning I'm happy to announce The Online Photographer's exclusive seasonal print sale for this year: three beautiful prints of recent new photographs taken by Peter Turnley in three countries.

France, 2018

Italy, 2018

Cuba, 2018

Proceed to the order page now [Sale ended 10 p.m. 11/30/2018]

Orders will be accepted from now through Friday evening at 10 p.m. Eastern U.S. time. If you're not familiar with our print sales, we do things a little differently. First, we collect paid orders for only a limited time—in this case, five days. The photographer can then make the prints to order and do everything in one large batch, knowing the prints are already sold. What that means is that we can sell fine art prints for prices way below what galleries would have to charge, but the photographer still makes money because what we lack in profit per piece we make up in volume. It's a nice model because everyone wins.

However, you have to order now. Once the sale is over, it's over. We can't take orders past the deadline.

These prints are on the European collector size 12x16 inch (roughly 30x40 cm) paper, with an image area of approximately 9.5x14 inches. As seen in these JPEGs, the prints are signed on the front outside the image area. They match the size and quality as the prints we’ve offered in our very successful previous TOP sales of Peter’s photographs; I assume some buyers will be adding to their already existing collections. Peter says, "I photograph currently using a Leica M10 camera with a Summilux 35mm ƒ/1.4 lens. The files from the M10 are among the best files I have ever seen in digital photography, and the conversions to black-and-white offer an amazing range of tone and detail in both highlights and shadows." The prints are traditional silver gelatin fiber prints made from the digital files.

We can ship both domestically and internationally. All orders will arrive before Christmas. Purchases can be made with PayPal or credit or debit card.

This offer is being made exclusively through The Online Photographer and a portion of every sale goes to benefit yer favorite blog. We know you care! And thanks.

Paris, 1991

As an added value, a FREE bonus print of Paris, 1991 (arguably Peter's most famous photograph) will be included as a gift to anyone who orders three or more prints. This print isn't available separately.

To me, Peter's personal black-and-white work shows the life of the world in a gentle, romantic spirit. There's an immediacy and an honesty to the personal connection that always seems to show through, no matter what the subject matter. It's an indelible marker of Peter's style, which at this point I feel I can always recognize. I really hope you like these latest pictures as much as I do and I hope they'll continue to enrich your visual life as you live with them.

Here, again, is how to order. [Sale ended 10 p.m. 11/30/2018]

Mike

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Paulo Bizarro: "I think it is an appropriate choice: Paris—a shot depicting love; Italy—a shot that reminds me of fashion; Cuba—a shot illustrative of music and joie de vivre."

bourquek: "Re 'The prints are traditional silver gelatin fiber prints made from the digital files.' Have you covered this before? How do you make a traditional wet print from a digital source? I can think of a couple of ways but I wonder about the particulars."

Mike replies: I don't know if we've "covered" it per se but I offered an example quite a while back (in 2011). Conventional printing paper is exposed by laser light and developed normally. Digital Silver Imaging was the company I used for my "Color Picture" print back then. That type of print is generically known a "lightjet" print after the LightJet company, which introduced the first LightJet laser printer at PMA in 1995 (it cost $200k and made prints 11x14 or smaller). LightJet printers are no longer made but there are many still in service and there are (or were) several other brands such as Chromira by ZBE and Lambda by Durst. It's a digital printing method but it offers two advantages, one being that it's true continuous tone and the other that it allows the use of fully archival traditional fiber printing papers, the same papers used for enlarger prints.

Speed: "Turnleys on '60 Minutes.'"

Mike replies: I always enjoy watching that. Remember that book I recommended a few weeks ago, Grit? David and Peter practically define the term.

Peter Wright: "You made a great choice here! I just need to work out what I can afford and my order will be in (I’m tempted to get the lot!). These pictures demonstrate that photography is both utterly simple, and extraordinarily difficult. All that is needed is a bone simple rangefinder type camera (even a film one will do, as ‘Paris, 1991’ shows), and one basic fixed focal length lens. No need for auto focus, zoom lenses, multiple fps, etc. Oh, and being at just the right place, at the right time and seeing the shot! No problem!

"I very much like Peter’s style of photography. When I took a course with him in New York a few years back, I was taken aback when he started by stating gently but firmly that we keep it simple and use just one moderate length non-zoom lens for the whole week. But in fact I got many of my all-time favorite pictures that week, even when I was entirely on my own. As you say happens on his courses, and as others have pointed out—it was the most educational week of my photographic life."

Dave Karp: "Even though I have not participated in all of your sales, I do appreciate each one of them."

(Re)Introducing Peter Turnley

We're starting our Fall print sale tomorrow morning at 6:00. It's an official TOP sale this year, and every purchase will help benefit this site, as well as, of course, the photographer. We're offering three collector prints of new work by my good friend Peter Turnley.

This might sound hard to believe if you've been reading this site for a while, but some readers will need an introduction to Peter. Much as I'd like to keep every reader forever (and do have some readers who have been with me for nearly that long), there's a lot of turnover in this biz, and I get new readers here all the time. And we haven't done anything with Peter in a while.

For those of your who don't know Peter, he's a very unusual photographer. He was at the very top of the photojournalism field for decades—Peter and his twin brother David were featured on the CBS News show "60 Minutes" (a fact he doesn't even mention in his official bio!) and, back when Newsweek was one of the top two weekly newsmagazines in the U.S., he shot many features for them, including 43 covers. He estimates he was on the scene of almost every major world conflict and major world news story for a period of more than thirty years. Apart from Newsweek, his work has been featured in Paris Match, The New York Times, Stern, Harper’s Magazine, Le Monde, Le Figaro, and many other leading magazines all over the world.

Peter Turnley, Paris, 1991

Yet he's also been an art photographer virtually from the very beginning, befriending many of older generation of French humanist photographers in his adopted city of Paris and producing lyrical work that builds on theirs. He has published seven books of his work, both personal and photojournalistic, both alone and in tandem with David: Beijing Spring, Moments of Revolution, In Times of War and Peace, Parisians, McClellan Street, French Kiss: A Love Letter to Paris, and Cuba: A Grace of Spirit. In 2016, he was honored with a major retrospective at Cuba's Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, the country's leading art museum.

Peter's picture "Paris, 1991," of the Eiffel Tower, the Seine, and the rooftops of Paris, became one of the top-selling posters of all time. Signed original fine art prints of the photograph have been highly sought after as well, and, as the result of earlier sales, many TOP readers now own fine prints of "Paris, 1991" too.

(True story—years ago, when I was talking to Peter about having our first sale of his work, I happened to be in a Crate and Barrel store in Mayfair Mall in Wisconsin. As we were talking about "Paris, 1991," I turned the corner, and there in front of me was was a huge framed poster of the very photograph we were talking about on the wall of the store.)

More than anything, though, Peter is a genuine, down-to-earth guy. He continues to work on projects and teaches workshops in Paris, New York, Havana and elsewhere, and many TOP readers who have attended his workshops can attest to his generosity and warmth as a teacher. Workshops in street photography can be extremely dynamic and challenging for amateurs and enthusiasts, and Peter's are known as some of the most exciting; readers often tell me their week with Peter expanded their outlook and improved their skills dramatically.

It's really all about the human connection for him. He values his photographs of quiet, personal moments in the lives of ordinary people all over the world as much as he values his news photographs of cataclysmic world events.

Please come back in the morning to see the new pictures for this year's exclusive TOP print sale.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2018 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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