Not Exactly The Steerage

As a follow up to this, here's a snapshot from last night's subway ride.

One solution to the traditional tourist problem of shoes that hurt is to stuff a napkin into the heel of your shoe. Then just go with it. No one will notice.

Unseen: The New Elliott Erwitt Book

Here's that new Elliott Erwitt book: Unseen.

It looks like it will be shipping in December.

What Would Elliott Erwitt Win?

This year's Lucie Awards will give a lifetime achievement award to this Blog's main inspiration, Elliott Erwitt. That is as it should be. I learned two things I wasn't aware of, however, in the blurb about Erwitt:

"In the ’80s Erwitt produced seventeen comedy and satire television programs for HOME BOX OFFICE. From the ’90s to the present he continues to lead a remarkably varied professional life encompassing many disparate aspects of photography. While actively working for magazine, industrial and advertising clients Erwitt devotes all his spare time toward creating books and exhibitions of his work destined for galleries and museums. To date he is the author of over 20 photography books and is preparing a new one titled “UNSEEN” for fall of 2007."

So, now I have to go and track down all those HBO shows, and patiently await his new book....

Why Photography?

So here's the thing: if I were a painter, it might occur to me to have two white shoes, two black shoes, a play between the idea of legs and chair legs, a confusion of space and directionality and depth and flatness, and so on.

But that fifth shoe stepping into a little pool of light -- that's photography. That's why using some kind of device to observe the real world is interesting.

(This was yesterday, at a get-together for art historians. The black shoes? Studying photo history. The white shoes? Interested in early photographic processes.)

Looking at Looking

I mentioned Kohei Yoshiyuki's "The Park" photographs last week. Today the New York Times has a serious look at them titled Sex in the Park, and Its Sneaky Spectator.

The exhibition, and the article, do a nice job of bringing up the issues of voyeurism and observational recording that seem inherent in photography.

Karen Irvine, curator of the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, said Mr. Yoshiyuki’s work is important because “it addresses photography’s unique capacity for observation and implication.” She locates his work in the tradition of artists who modified their cameras with decoy lenses and right-angle viewfinders to gain access to private moments. Weegee, for example, rigged his camera to capture couples kissing in darkened New York movie theaters. Walker Evans covertly photographed fellow passengers on New York subways.

A long while back I wrote about my own experience at a photo workshop photographing photographers as they took photographs.

I Wonder What They Edited Out

Over on my other blog, I've posted on watching a documentary about Annie Leibovitz. Go and read it. I wanted to note here, however, a more specific and pithy criticism of the assumption that Leibovitz is our greatest living portraitist.

In the midst of endless praise for Leibovitz' work, for balance Vicki Goldberg is allowed to take a shot. While various other fawn over the Rolling Stone Magazine "concept" pictures -- Whoopi Goldberg in a milk bath, the Blues Brothers with their faces painted blue -- Goldberg says:

"These are supposed to be 'story pictures' -- but the story is one sentence long."

That's my favorite one-line critique ever.

Inside, Looking Out, Part Three

So, as the fall season starts, I'm left to ask: where is photography at this very moment? The answer: it's very fragmented.

The classics roll on ... though it will be very interesting to see if the "blue chip" photographers continue selling in the auctions for record prices or not. The galleries roll on ... but there's no sense of any particular new movement, style or group arising. The museums roll on ... about the same as always.

Yet you can't help but notice, out of the corner of your eye, that more people are shooting more photographs than ever, and that cameras have become omnipresent. There must be change in the works ... but where is it?

Inside, Looking Out, Part Two

Lisette Model and Her Successors at Aperture Gallery (547 West 27th Street in Chelsea) was a good show. More exciting to me, however, was getting a look around the rest of the building.

Aperture is on the 4th floor, and it's a very beautiful space. Take the elevator to the 5th and 6th floors, however, and go see the "Alcove" -- a tiny hallway transformed into an installation space -- and the various studios and galleries throughout the building. On a quiet day, it's a very good experience. The floor creaks under your feet, but around each corner is a new and unexpected space.

Inside, Looking Out

Tuesday's trip to the Chelsea galleries included several highlights, but the real surprise for me was the Chris Marker exhibition at Peter Blum Gallery (526 West 29th Street).

"Chris Marker: Staring Back is an exhibition of almost 200 photographs taken over the course of six decades by the enigmatic and influential French filmmaker. This show, organized by Bill Horrigan at the Wexner Center for the Arts, is the first exhibition of Marker’s photographs, and consists of images selected by the artist himself from his own archive, including black-and-white portraits of individuals that Marker has encountered during the course of his world travels.

Divided into four sections, Staring Back is organized around the idea of the faces Marker has seen in his travels, and of the faces that have in turn witnessed his observant gaze –“I stare” and “They stare,” as Marker puts it. Central to the exhibition are his depictions of political demonstrations from Algerian independence protests in 1962, to the Pentagon march in 1967, to May 1968 in Paris, and continuing to 2006 in a stunning series devoted to the sustained demonstrations by French young people against punitive employment legislation. Interspersed throughout the exhibition are photographic traces of his inimitable films, including La Jetée, Letter from Siberia, The Six Face of Pentagon, Cuba Si!, Le fond de l’air est rouge, Sans Soleil, and The Case of the Grinning Cat, among others. Although some of the portraits depict well-known individuals (such as Simone Signoret and Akira Kurosawa), most are of unidentified citizens to whom Marker and his camera were drawn in the course of his global progress through Asia, South America, Scandinavia, Africa, Russia, and elsewhere. The exhibition also includes a selection of photographs of animals."

29th Street and Southish

I had friends in from out of town today, so I returned to Chelsea to complete the round trip of all the galleries.

The Lisette Model Trifecta

Lisette Model. It's apparently her time.

The Talk:
Confounding Expectations: Photography in Context: Lisette Model and Her Successors:
September 26, 2007 7:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.

The Exhibition:
Lisette Model and Her Successors:
September 7–November 1, 2007

The Book:
Lisette Model

Outside Looking In

One more thing on the gallery shows in Chelsea: New York wins over Los Angeles in the category of "the gallery opening experience."

There are great shows in Los Angeles, and the museum experience there is often a match for New York's offerings. But the basic idea of a night of gallery receptions works better in New York. Stroll from one to the next, drink the free beer and wine, bump into unexpected shows because the gallery is on the way to the one you planned to see. It just flows better with no cars involved and with the street life New York does so well....

Another Chelsea Note

Part of the fun of going to Chelsea exhibitions, of course, is everything else that's there: the restaurants, bars and general feel of the place. That's always a good time. On a Saturday night, almost everyone looks as if they're having a great time.

I did note, however, that for those living in Chelsea, dog ownership is now apparently mandatory.

In Chelsea on a Saturday

Took a trip to the Chelsea galleries. An honest appraisal: most of what I saw was weak, bad, or a retread. But not everything, and I get as much out of seeing things I don't like as those I do. Sometimes more. What I do recommend:

Kohei Yoshiyuki: The Park

"For these photos, taken in Tokyo’s Shinjuku, Yoyogi, and Aoyama parks during the 1970s, Mr. Yoshiyuki used a 35mm camera, infrared film, and flash to document the people who gathered there at night for clandestine trysts, as well as the many spectators lurking in the bushes who watched—and sometimes participated in—these couplings."

That continues at Yossi Milo Gallery (525 West 25th Street) until October 20th.

Jeon Joonho

"Jeon has created his first multi-channel work for this New York debut. The 527 West 23rd Street space features a 5 channel video installation; each of the 5 computer animations exist on their own, yet, when presented together take a different shape both literally and figuratively. In one, an anime character is left crying after a brief encounter in a hotel room, the score resembling the music played in a Hitchcock film just before the climactic moment. Another shows a line drawing of General MacArthur, notorious leader of the United Nations Command Force, repeating the same phrase ("I shall return")."

The highlight for me was the ice skating toy soldiers of "Hyper Realism (Statue of Brother). The show continues through October 13th.

I also enjoyed and recommend both shows at Yancey Richardson Gallery (535 West 22nd), but should note I'm not an untirely unbiased observer. The photographs of Laura Letinsky illustrate an interesting point for me, as well: some photographs work differently at web-presentation size than at full size on the wall. The gentle dashes of color in the large white and grey expanses of these images need to be seen at full scale.

As well, I recommend Candida Hofer's work at Sonnabend (536 West 22nd Street), but I've seen this work a number of times already in other venues . If you haven't, though, definitely take a look.

Of course, since we were just there as a quick trip, we left about half of the galleries undone. Next trip.

New York Times on Joe O'Donnell

The most interesting photo caption I've seen in a long time: "Joe O’Donnell didn’t snap this photo of John F. Kennedy Jr."

Known for Famous Photos, Not All of Them His

"Joe O’Donnell’s glowing legacy outlived him by less than a week. The man recalled by some as “The Presidential Photographer” with a knack for having a camera to his eye at just the right moment, became instead someone described as a fraud who hijacked some of the 20th century’s most famous images and claimed them as his own."

This Weekend: The Chelsea Galleries

Tonight I'm going to the galleries in Chelsea. Since coming to New York, that's been one of my favorite experiences. We'll see how it goes.

Photographers to Know: Environmental Portraiture

How do we integrate portrait subject and background? What's the connection between a representation of a person and the environment we see them in? Does the evidence surrounding a person reveal anything?

Three photographers to know in the field of environmental portraiture:

Arnold Newman

Yousuf Karsh

Annie Leibovitz

Back and Forth

The dialogue between photography and the world of fashion is a fascinating one. Michael Kors show at New York Fashion Week, for example, referenced the work of photographer Slim Aarons.

An article on Aaron's life is here, and David Patrick Columbia's visit with Aarons is worth checking out as well.

Dressed in Verse, Ace?

Since Monday's visit to Click Chic I've been asking a question that I more-or-less always ask: What is sophistication?

I ask because certain "seams" are painfully obvious to me -- in both the fashion photography I saw in that show and in most of the visuals I saw during New York Fashion week -- and I think you can learn as much by what doesn't work as from what does.

Here's what I'm saying: reference without depth is unsophisticated. A fashion photograph that calls to mind Helmut Newton's work, or Guy Bourdin's -- work that now forms a sort of fashion-photography canon, for better or worse -- cannot simply reference the older work and call it a day. A reference without some change of perspective is just bad copywork.

Putting up something derivative seems to me to imply a low opinion of the audience. It says "I know the reference, I'm copying the reference, but you wouldn't know it." Or perhaps it says "what do you mean, now go further?"

In any case, ironically, it's an attempt to be sophisticated that falls flat if the audience is, in fact, not stupid. I think real sophistication takes the opposite tack -- assuming an audience that knows, that wants to know, and that gets the joke.

A Last Note on Fashion

One of the things I find very odd about Fashion Week: it sounds like it would be great fun to be a runway shooter, perched at the key viewpoint, firing away and then quickly filing all the images for distribution to the world. Strangely, though, every runway shot I've seen this season looks more-or-less identical. And by coincidence I've spoken recently to two people who do exactly that kind of shooting -- and gotten the impression that the goal is in fact to provide that generic set of shots.... That's why the check gets cut. Still, it brings up an interesting question: what would a unique eye do with the runway situation?

I've seen some interesting "behind the scenes" coverage from Martin Fuchs and there have been books like Runway Madness. Yet I've never noticed any alternative take on the basic premise: a dress is paraded down a runway, seated people on each side. Click.

Are there no other ways to shoot this?

From the "Ah Well" File

I'm told my Hunter Continuing Education photography class won't run this time. Not enough enrollment. (I'm not sure why they moved it from Friday to Thursday, since it was enrolling enough on Fridays. That end-of-the-week feeling was something I enjoyed about the class, and I assume that others looked at it the same way -- a creative outlet early Friday evening seems fun.)

Maybe it's time to re-write and restructure that class anyway -- my initial idea was that there was already a basic "how do I use my camera" class, so it became a class about creating your first project portfolio: learn control of your photography technique, find a topic, and create a portfolio of images on that topic. Have fun while doing it.

Perhaps, however, the nature of things has changed. DSLR cameras have become omnipresent, almost, and online sites have become the main place where people present their photos. So, maybe something else makes more sense. What would the Art Students League be like if it started today? Or any of the camera clubs that started in the first half of the twentieth century?

I'll have some time to think about that, I suppose.

A Tiny Clarification

Just wanted to clarify my comments on fashion design and fashion photography: I'm for both.

Still, I think commercial work, advertising and that sort of thing is not -- despite a lot of claims made to the contrary, some by very fine thinkers -- the art of our time. I've studied the history of advertising and where photography fits into it, and taught classes where I've looked deeply at persuasion and the use of art, and I just don't agree that future art historians will feel fashion ads and political commercials mark the height of our era's art. They'll be studied as significant, as saying a lot about us, and as often pushing technique and style forward. Still, I don't think that type of work will be seen as the best of our time.

There's a fine line, of course, especially with the best work in those fields. Elliott Erwitt's portfolio mixes both "pure" street photography -- where a situation was found by chance and prepared luck -- with his advertising work, including images that are set up. That's fine.

Yet I'm adamant that there's a distinction -- that fashion designers can be brilliant, important and worth admiring, but that they don't address the same concerns as art. As well, while I like and admire fashion photographers -- and I think there's no reason someone can't be one of our best artists and shoot fashion too -- I don't think the boundaries and goals of the field allow exploration of the concerns of art.

Sometimes the point is to sell shoes.

Last Call for Photo Class

Starting Thursday -- as in tomorrow -- I'll be teaching Seriously Fun Photography at Hunter College Continuing Education. As long as enough people sign up, of course. So if you had plans to do so, now would be the time....

Artlessly Artful

As Inigo Montoya said: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

While I'm fascinated, as a relatively new New Yorker, by Fashion Week and all that it entails, I am also amused by the conceit that it is Art.*

Fashion is great. It's part of our visual culture, and as a competitive and ever-churning field, it produces something worth watching. Some of its practitioners are fantastic. But please stop calling designers Artists. It's a different thing, with different concerns. Celebrate Fashion for what it is, but stop pretending or -- worse yet -- sincerely thinking it's art. Saying that only means you are insincere, or ill-informed.

And if you are going to have a show that is about the works of fashion shooters as works of art in their own right, be prepared for laughter if what you really show, weighed objectively, is just pretty / decent fashion shooting. It makes you look like you don't know what art is, and you probably do.

*(This is relatively rarely expressed by those succeeding in fashion -- and all-too-often expressed by those watching from the sidelines. Still, it is heard constantly, so it becomes fair game for critique, no?)

Say No More, Say No More

There is one place, of course, that people photograph themselves even more than in museums: at gallery openings.

I went to School of Visual Arts to see Click Chic: The Fine Art of Fashion Photography. I was entertained.

Above: cell phone picture of Fashion TV interview crew at work.

And More on the Rule of Thirds

The above image of a man photographing a museum label was a quick snapshot taken with my pocket camera. Still, I tend to compose using the Rule of Thirds.

Saturday in MoMA

To follow Friday's visit to the Met, we spent Saturday at MoMA and ICP. The cliché of people shuffling past the art with a thoughtful expression or puzzled look is gone. Now, everyone photographs the art and each other with the art.

Above: Man Photographing Label, Museum of Modern Art, September 8, 2007.

The Rule of Thirds

On Friday night, we stopped by the Met for a gallery talk on David's The Death of Socrates. Great lecture. Of interest to photographers: this painting serves as a perfect example of composition using the "rule of thirds."

The basic idea photographers can learn from this: rather than automatically placing the subject dead center of the frame, explore what happens when you place the main subject -- in this case, Socrates face -- at one a point 1/3 from the top of the frame, or 1/3 from the side of the frame, or at the "node" 1/3 from each.

While life will rarely unfold in front of you in perfect composition, thinking of the photographic rectangle of film or digital cameras as divided into three parts is a powerful strategy. For many images, setting up a 2/3 versus 1/3 arrangement creates a much more dynamic composition.

The New Fall Looks -- in Cameras

A while back I noted Canon's new cameras:

Canon EOS 40D 10.1MP Digital SLR Camera (Body Only)

Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III 21.1MP Digital SLR Camera (Body Only)


Nikon has since announced new cameras also, including:

Nikon D300 DX 12.3MP Digital SLR Camera (Body Only)


And Sony has followed as well:

Sony Alpha A700 12.24MP Digital SLR Camera (Body Only)

All are amazingly capable, and all are moving toward incredible resolution, great high ISO performance, and other capabilities that surpass what was once possible with film. At the same time other aspects of photography -- from image storage to printing to software -- advance.

Is a sort of photography renaissance moving forward -- or have our ideas been surpassed by our tools?

The Return of Photo Chick

Episode Two of Photo Chick is now online at youtube.com.

Gotta Catch 'Em All

I'm always amazed at how many people photograph in museums, and at how they do it.

In the Guggenheim, of course, people want photographs of the building. A good number, though, want photographs of themselves standing near the art. Do they make photo albums, and later flip through them while saying "...and here I am with the Kandinsky..." or do they collect them like sports trading cards?

My paintings: let me show you them.

And So Fashion Week Begins

Every so often I run around the reservoir in Central Park. It's a pleasant loop. There was good weather today, so after I finished two short editing projects and put one of them in the hands of a bicycle messenger and the other in my stack of materials for tomorrow, I went for the run.

On the back stretch, by the West side of the park, I looked up to admire the trees and the usual collection of people. And then I noticed a large umbrella, black outside and silver inside, and a man holding a medium-format camera at waist level. Flash. As I ran on, I saw a model holding one of those poses photographers get out of posing books. Flash.

"No," I thought, "you've got to move her hip forward. You're doing it wrong."

And then I remembered why I hate that sort of thing: even if you're doing it right, you're doing it wrong.

Reflex Redux

The first Labor Day celebration took place in Union Square, and by coincidence we went to Union Square -- on Labor Day.

We stopped into Trader Joe's for a few groceries, and the woman at the check out counter noticed I had a magazine in my hand. I explained I was planning to use it in a photo class to talk about the use of lighting in contemporary fashion photography.

It turned out she was a photographer, and had just finished a year at the school at International Center of Photography. We talked a bit, and it wasn't until about 15 minutes after I left that I realized why she seemed so familiar.

I'm 99% certain she was the woman from this post.

The Great Picture

The Great Picture -- now in the Guinness Book of World Records under "World’s Biggest Camera" and "World’s Biggest Photograph" -- is finally going on exhibition.

The image, created by Jerry Burchfield, Mark Chamberlain, Jacques Garnier, Rob Johnson, Douglas McCulloh, and Clayton Spada, will show at Pasadena's Art Center College of Design in the South Campus Wind Tunnel, Pasadena, California September 6 through 29, 2007.

There is an opening reception and performance set for Thursday, September 6, 6 - 9 p.m. and an artists’ lecture set for Thursday, September 20, 7 - 9 p.m.

The Great Picture is a history-making gelatin silver photographic image three stories high by eleven stories wide. The $65,000 photograph was made using a shuttered Southern California F-18 jet aircraft hangar transformed into a gigantic camera obscura—the largest camera ever made.

More information is here.

New Fall Gig

As I've mentioned on Actualities I've started teaching a video editing class at Bronx Community College. It's been great so far, and I'm looking forward to an enjoyable term.

It's also made me realize I haven't shot enough photographs in The Bronx. While I have visited Stickball Boulevard, I haven't seen most of the borough. I'll see if I can remedy that soon....

And Water is Wet

Enjoyed the Guggenheim's show The Shapes of Space.

Still, I want to be perfectly clear so that future generations don't think we were all fooled: Pipilotti Rist is boring. I know many of my generation and a number of institutions have been fooled, and once fooled can't go back on their investment. It's clear though: her work is boring.

The museum's didactic text claims:

"The work simulates a dimly lit interior cluttered with found objects—retro furnishings, piles of books and magazines, assorted bric-a-brac—seemingly in casual disarray, but in fact carefully arranged by the artist. Videos from hidden projectors are cast onto the surfaces of various static objects, animating them in uncanny ways: on a side table, the artist presses her face against a windowpane; a lamp is lit by a close-up view of the open mouth of a woman standing in the snow; liquor bottles atop a 1950s-era bar glow with tiny films of an athlete and a landscape."

It is worth noting that the way the work simulates a dimly lit interior cluttered with found objects is by being a dimly lit interior with found objects. It is also worth noting that the "hidden" projectors are not. And that the ways of animating the static objects are canny. Also, the piece is not good. Just to be clear.

Ah well, mine is a minority opinion. Next thing you know they'll be showing Tracey Emin in major museums.

Fashion Photography

And while we're on the subject of fashion photography, here's a portfolio I think you may enjoy:

Rodney Smith

As Fall Approaches

It seems half of New York has left the city for one last attempt at Summer vacation.

So on Saturday, we went out and took advantage of the things our neighborhood offers: a good brunch, a walk through the Guggenheim, and coffee and sachertorte at Cafe Sabarsky. The weather keeps hinting about Fall, Fashion Week approaches, and you can sense a transition ahead.

Above: A woman making a self portrait at the Guggenheim, September 1, 2007.

Fashionesque

With New York Fashion Week approaching, here are three photography blogs that take a more-or-less documentary approach to fashion on the street. I think what I admire is that these sites depict the stylized in an unstyled manner: point the camera at the subject, let the interest emerge from that.

The Sartorialist

stpiduko

HEL Looks

On to Fall

I've lagged in posting this week. I'm shifting gears as the Fall approaches. New gig, old gigs, and some new projects approaching.

Details soon...

Txt Me L8r Ends Today

Sunday is the last day for the Spin 3: Txt Me L8r exhibition at Houston Center for Photography. (See the Flickr site for images.)

If you attended the party or the show, I'd love to see any snaps.

The Sunny F16 Rule

I have a great light meter. And the meters inside a modern digital SLR are usually spot on, if used correctly. Still, in the same way it's valuable for a musician to have perfect pitch, it's probably good for a photographer to have some sense of light. So, how can you develop that?

Well, it's a bright, sunny day, I've got my trusty Zorki 6 and a Metro card. There's no meter in the Zorki rangefinder -- so I can carry a meter or I can make my best guess as to the right exposure....

Today I'll guess. That's a great way to train your eyes -- but you'll need a good Rule of Thumb to work from: The Sunny F16 Rule. On a typical day, your exposure can be calculated in the following manner:

Shutter Speed:
What film speed or ISO setting are you using? To start the calculation, set that as your shutter speed.

Aperture:
shadows sharp: F16.
soft-edged shadows: F11
barely-there shadows: F8
very overcast: F5.6

Since I have 400 speed film in my Zorki, I'll start with my shutter speed at 1/400th of a second. Then, I'll look at the shadows I see and decide: sharp, soft, or very soft? F16, F11, or F8. If the clouds roll in and I notice it's darker, then F5.6.

So, I might start at 1/400th of a second and F16, but if I see the light level lower a bit switch to F11. If I see the shadows have faded, then F8. Easy, and great training for your eyes.*

*(Of course, while I want to make things simple for this post, in the real world there is a tiny bit more complication: I like to slightly overexpose black and white negative film. Like many, I find a 1/2 stop of overexposure makes a better negative, generally, even though I would avoid overexposure in digital whenever possible. So, to do that I would make a little adjustment to my calculation: my 1/400th shutter speed would change to about 1/250th. That's very convenient, since the Zorki doesn't have a 1/400th setting anyway, so I'll switch to 1/250th at F16 for the bright sun.

Then, since I find 1/250th isn't quite fast enough for walking along street shooting -- Garry Winogrand used 1/1000th when possible on the street -- I would switch to the Zorki's fastest shutter speed of 1/500th and make the corresponding change to my aperture.

So, I would shoot at 1/500th and F11 in sharp shadows, 1/500th and F8 when the light drops a little and I see soft shadows, and 1/500th and F5.6 when the light drops further. If the clouds roll, then I'd be at 1/500th and F4.)

Photography Books for Summer

Today -- a hot and steamy August Saturday -- I pulled down two books from my bookshelf:

Elliott Erwitt: On the Beach

On The Beach: Chance Portraits From Two Shores

Seriously Fun Photography

Starting Thursday, September 13th I will once again be teaching my Seriously Fun Photography class at Hunter College Continuing Education.

Sure, the name could use some work. It's accurate, though. We meet for six sessions. The first half is spent exploring photography technique and ways of working, all with an eye for gaining control over your images. The second half involves creating a portfolio-based project. It's a good time for everyone. Usually we add a field trip to some photo shows, as well.

Build on the basics and master the skills and ideas advanced photographers use in a fun, low-pressure class. Open to anyone able to shoot a photo and import it into a computer (and welcoming advanced students as well), in this class we'll use the digital camera as a fast way to learn the essentials of photography. We'll learn-by-doing, exploring professional techniques while creating a portfolio project (on any topic of your choice) to show your advanced skills. If you've always been interested in photography, but have put off becoming great at it, this is your chance.

THU 5:30:PM - 7:30:PM, Location: 68th St Cam C100N
09/13 - 10/18 Sessions: 6

This Thursday

I'll be showing in the SPIN 3 Txt Me L8r exhibition August 24 - August 26, 2007 at Houston Center For Photography.

Co-curated by HCP and Aurora Picture Show, Txt Me L8r explores the potential for distributed creativity through the use of cell phone technology. Combining crowdsourcing with networked communication, Txt Me L8r invites artists and the general public alike to adapt new technologies for spontaneous, geographically-dispersed collaboration.

Today

So, where are we on this 168th anniversary of the beginning of photography as a part of our culture? Well, today Canon announced two cameras:

Canon EOS 40D 10.1MP Digital SLR Camera (Body Only)

Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III 21.1MP Digital SLR Camera (Body Only)

It's likely there will be Nikon and Sony announcements soon as well. More powerful, more capable cameras than any photographers might have dreamed of a few decades ago.

So are the pictures better?

New York Portraits Turns One

I started this blog one year ago on the anniversary of the announcement of the invention of photography. It's been a very interesting year, but as always I prefer to look ahead. What trends are likely to be important in the next 365 days? Here are a few guesses:

1. The move to the Web. It feels like this has already happened, of course, with so much of photography being shown on the Web, but I get the sense we're really only at the end of Phase One. Newspapers and magazines are struggling with the costs of printing on paper and distributing on big trucks -- and as they move toward the point where the primary target is the Web, photographers will be key. Advanced amateurs using online photo services have found easy ways to put up all of their cat photos and vacation pics -- leaving professionals, who have some hesitation since they might sell their images for other uses before giving them away online, to try to figure out ways to bring high quality work to the Web.

2. A rethinking of the value of still imagery. With video now in competition with photography, and with a surfeit of photographs posted each and every day, both photographers and viewers should be asking: why a still image? What's the value of the single image, or the portfolio, when compared to the video clip and the short video? It may be time to reconsider the potential for still images. Painting faced a crisis when Photography came along, and this changed Painting and Art entirely. It may be that online video presents the same challenge, and that the result may be equally as revolutionary.

3. A repositioning of galleries and museums. The last two years have seen a number of shows that brought Flickr photo pools into the white cube of exhibition space, and the majority of photos hung on gallery walls are now made digitally, at least in part. The interest in the vernacular will fade, however, and exhibition spaces will go on with normal business. I think the smartest ones will develop better strategies for creating their own value: it can't be done by hiding the images in the show, and it can't be done by simply making scale the difference between Web and in-person viewing. The best museums and galleries will need to be reminded that the reason for entering the building goes beyond just seeing the images -- there is the potential an experience that can't be duplicated on a laptop. So what are those experiences, and how do you expand the emphasis on those experiences?

Above: Coney Island, 2007.

Made in USSR

This is my 1965 Zorki-6 rangefinder. In response to all the cell phone photographs I've taken lately, I thought it might be time to shoot a few rolls of film....

Txt Me L8r: Say GoodBye

This is the last assignment in the Spin 3: Txt Me L8r exhibition at Houston Center for Photography. See the Flickr site for all the photos in the show.

Monday All Week

A lot going on this week -- an all-night photo shoot Monday evening included -- and I've fallen behind in posting, so a couple of quick notes. These are just my own opinions. I could be wrong.

If you see an open competition for photographers, that's great. Send in your entry, maybe you'll get in a show. Unless, of course, it says "There is a $60 handling fee for your entry."

If you start out in the morning and notice a photo in front of you but don't shoot it, for whatever reason, the rest of the day will be filled with missed photos. It will continue until you give in and take one. (There were about 15 yesterday, the photo above was taken to end that streak.)

If you hear someone say "Our dog bites" it is probably very true.

Txt Me L8r: Photograph Something Growing

This is the sixth assignment in the Spin 3: Txt Me L8r exhibition at Houston Center for Photography.

The museum sends text messages to the artists in the show, and then we respond and send in cell phone photographs. These are posted on a Flickr site and will later be projected in the museum.

Previous assignments:

assignment one
assignment two
assignment three
assignment three, part two
assignment four
assignment five

Three Bad Trends in Photography

I talk to a lot of photographers, especially those who are students (at least in some sense) and I tend to get a sense of which way the wind is blowing. Here are three trends I think are problematic:

The Search for the 2 - 2000mm Zoom Lens
There have been great improvements in zoom lenses in the last two decades, and there are now good lenses that slide from 20mm to 200mm focal lengths. They are very convenient. They are almost a match for the quality of prime lenses (lenses with a single focal length), and very usable. But the photography discussion forums are now filled with 18-200mm evangelists, and they feel that's the answer to every lens question. How can I shoot a landscape? 18-200mm. A portrait? 18-200mm. Mainly it shows a lack of understanding about the possibilities of camera and lens, but more to the point it shows that people are gaining "knowledge" about photography by comparing specifications and reading reviews rather than shooting.

Why do I think that? Imagine you walk out onto the street, hang about a bit, and then after some patience something interesting happens somewhere near you. What are the odds you are positioned in the perfect place for the shot? Very low. But a superzoom shooter is likely to think they are in the right place -- they just have to zoom in or out for the shot. So a superzoom lens is just fine in the hands of someone who is really thinking about the situation, and almost a deficit in the hands of someone expecting the lens to do the work.


Posting the Kitchen Sink
I think it's fabulous that online photo services have allowed photographers to post work online. I also think it's great that one can use these services as a form of "cloud storage" -- a backup of images on a server somewhere out in the world. A bit of confusion has come from this, however -- and more and more photographers send me links to portfolios containing hundreds or even thousands of images. Use those services, put up gigabytes of images, show all the photos from a wedding to the bride and groom, fine -- but make some distinction in what is just available and what serves as portfolio. I think you can convince me about your work in nine images. I think if you expect anyone to look at more than twenty it's a mistake. Post every image if you want, or post one everyday. But don't lose sight of what photographers have known through the entire history of the medium: a collection of twelve great photographs is a portfolio, a post of one hundred almost identical shots is a painful family album.

Online Anger
At one time being a photographer was a fairly rare gig. Later -- from the Kodak Brownie on -- it developed into a social practice and the sharing and discussion of photographs became a valuable element of the process. Now, everyone has a camera and an opinion. That's great: but since the online forums allow anonymous nicknames and little moderation, the potentially fabulous amount of knowledge we could all gain by productive critique and the sharing of ideas is held back by uninformed and angry idiots. The classy, valuable and helpful posts are always pulled down by those who feel there's only one way to do things and that their poorly-reasoned, poorly-spelled and poorly-considered comments should be presented in all-capital letters....

Post Number 117

Tomorrow (August 12th) will mark two years since we moved to New York.

Next week (August 19th) is the one-year anniversary of this blog. It will also mark the 168th anniversary of the announcement of the invention of photography.

World's Largest Photograph

My friends in California were just mentioned in Pravda.

"A three-story-tall image that was taken using a special camera made from an old California airplane hangar has qualified with the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest photograph in the world, the photographers who created it said.

The hangar-turned-camera also qualified as the world's largest camera, measuring more than 44 feet (13 meters) tall and 161 feet (49 meters) long, according to The Legacy Project, which created the artwork."

Full story here.

Txt Me L8r: Photograph Your Baggage

The fifth assignment for the SPIN 3: Txt Me L8r show.

Photograph the First Body of Water You See

The fourth assignment for the SPIN 3: Txt Me L8r show.

Photograph Your Next Destination, Part 2

Another take for the SPIN 3: Txt Me L8r show.

Txt Me L8R: Photograph Your Next Destination

The third assignment for the SPIN 3: Txt Me L8r show is posted.

You Walk to the Big Park, Then Turn Left

On Friday evening, we went to the Met.

I really enjoyed Poiret: King of Fashion, but didn't get much out of Hidden in Plain Sight: Contemporary Photographs from the Collection.

Why didn't I like the photography exhibition? Well, after some thought, I believe it's because it consisted of completely literal work presented as conceptual art. The museum makes this claim for the show:

"Often deliberately understated in style, these photographs are filled with everyday epiphanies. They capture the unexpected beauty of found still lifes and modest interventions in the landscape, inviting us to look more closely at the world around us."

A while back, a friend taught me about titles and captions: if they are the least bit redundant, they're wrong. That is, if the caption says the same thing as the photograph, you don't need it. If it gives new information, or better yet deepens the meaning of the work, then it's fine. And that's the problem with this show: "Sand on Table" is a photograph of sand, on a table.

Basic Photography Notes: The Horizon Line

One of the first things that comes up in a basic photography class is the placement of a horizon line in landscape photographs.

There seems to be a basic human impulse to place the horizon line in the center of the frame, dividing the image into a top and bottom half. That sort of division, however, is usually less dynamic than a 1/3 to 2/3 split, so one of the first lessons for landscape photographers is to divide the frame into three parts and place the horizon line 1/3 from the bottom or 1/3 from the top of the frame. After a while that sort of composition becomes second nature, and becomes a basic tool for most photographers.

There are always exceptions of course. Above is a snapshot I made of the Central Park Reservoir. I've purposefully placed the horizon in the center of the frame, but the stronger element of the railing is placed 1/3 from the bottom of the frame -- making the image read as divided into that traditional 1/3 vs 2/3 split.

What Does the Weather Look Like?

My second assignment in the SPIN 3: Txt Me L8r exhibition is posted.The Flickr group for the show has images by all the participants. (Remember, these are made with cell phones.)

The image above was made on Friday after rain swept through Manhattan, revealing the Chrysler Building reflected in a puddle at Lexington and 43rd.

A Nine on the Shirl-ometer

This? This is Shirley. She's been photographed by thousands.

She's recently gone into retirement (though most say she's kept her looks after all these years) and I'm considering doing a short documentary on her career.

If you've worked with Shirley, send me an email. If you've dated Shirley, send me an anonymous email. Or just post a comment.

The Feed for Txt Me L8r Photos

The Txt Me L8r exhibition RSS Feed is available.

Txt Me L8r Exhibition

I'll be participating in the upcoming SPIN 3: Txt Me L8r exhibition at Houston Center for Photography.

There is, of course, a Flickr group for you to check out. Above, my first image in response to "Take a picture now- don't think about it!" Made with a cell phone.

On West 43rd Street

On Friday I had to attend a meeting in midtown and passed the old New York Times building on 43rd, so I took this quick snapshot of workers stripping out the lower floors. I'm not sure what the next use of the building will be, but I hope it keeps some reference to the huge flags that once hung from the flagpoles.

On the Proposed "New Rules"

Over on Actualities I have been posting about the proposed "new rules" on photography in New York.

See this post and this one also.

Epson Stylus Photo 1400 Printer

I needed a new "Super B" (13 inch by 19 inch) printer, so I bought an Epson Stylus 1400 Claria Photo Printer.

Fast, quiet, and just the right size for the space my tiny little Manhattan apartment will allow. (The Epson R2400 would have been too big.)

So far: I'm impressed. It's fast, whisper quiet, and is producing great prints. Not a bad price, either.

In Union Square

Man runs under giant American flag, Union Square, July 27, 2007.

Photo Chick, Episode One

The Photo Chick explains how to avoid flash overexposure.

A Tough Week for Volvos and Renaults

The most amazing account of a recent disaster in France is posted here.

No, not the Tour de France itself -- but the incredibly true adventures of the Reuters photographers covering the Tour....

What happened, it appears, is that while the vehicle was cruising along at about 60 kph ahead of the pack, awaiting an arrival of disks from the motorcycles, the Renault’s turbo caught fire, sending a ball of fire from the front right-hand side along the underside of the vehicle. Within seconds the car was completely engulfed in flames. Thierry Roge, driving, managed to grab his camera bag on the seat beside him and jump out. Ian, seated at our custom made desk in the back, baled out as the car slowed and immediately tried to remove as many personal bags as possible from the back door of the vehicle.

Eric Gaillards computer bag was hurled out first, Ian’s personal bag was next. But the personal bags were very big and heavy and he was only able to throw them about two meters away. Within seconds the heat was too intense to stay anywhere near the vehicle and he had to back off and as the raging fire spat large flaming pieces of burning plastic as far as the few bags he had saved. Thierry and Ian had no choice but to watch helplessly as the burning plastic sparks set their bags on fire just meters out of reach.

Warning: contains graphic images of burning 300mm F2.8 lenses.

"Command Z" Followup: Camera Tossing

At the end of May, the "Command Z" exhibition I co-curated came quietly to an end. I was busy trying to finish a short film and to make it through my last term in school -- ever -- so I didn't get a chance to write much on the excellent work in that show.

For example, Ryan Gallagher organized an amazing online component of "camera toss" photographs. His post Camera Toss (The Blog): Command-Z Concludes... details what went into this, and has some incredible images you'll want to see....

Why Black and White?

I'm sometimes asked why I like black and white photography. One answer may be found in the photograph above: the tuxedo was lavender.

Slowish Versus Fastish

I've been a fan of Michael David Murphy's 2point8 site for a long while. He's just posted a note about changing the focus of his site:

"The world may not need another online photo magazine, but I’m considering turning this space into something more polished and focused - a little less bloggy - a space for great streetish photography with a critical, editorial vision."

I'll keep watching and I expect he'll do a great job of it. It brings up a point I've been thinking about for a while, however: the significance of speed.

Museums are slow, with shows staying in place for months. Pure photoblogs are fastish, generally posting a photo a day. A number of fastish sites use more of a shoot-and-dump strategy, going to a party or event and posting a gallery of 20 photos or so the next day. And some sites, especially those with multiple photographers, have moved to a pace of multiple posts each day. With RSS readers and subscription sites increasing in popularity, viewers can even more-or-less keep up with the onslaught of images and the avalanche of words about images.

I'm left wondering about each format, however, and I get the sense that there may be an issue of scale here. In almost any photography class, the issue of how large a photograph should be will arise, and after some experience most people get the sense that a number of factors can "tell us" how big to print a particular image (or about other issues of presentation). Some images should be large for best effect, some small.

I think a similar thing happens with Web presentation -- not necessarily regarding size but frequency and significance.

I'm definitely a fan of images in larger units. I love single photographs, of course, but I find more significance, sophistication and interest in small portfolios or sequences of images. Yet the Web has, so far, seemed to hold a grudge against anything but the single image. While it is easy to make a Web gallery, or focus on project or portfolio presentation (Zone Zero is based on the idea), there is something about the medium that seems to push for the single impressive image. Flickr is never used for sequenced images, after all, but posting of single images (or all the images) from a shoot. Blogs are structurally set up to facilitate posting one image at a time.

One of my students presented work in book form this term, and I remembered I love that format. Because you hold a book close, an image that is physically small reads as large and detailed. Because (often) each image is given its own page, significance is granted to it. And because all the techniques of sequencing and storytelling are allowed, a well-planned photobook is generally more than the sum of its images taken alone. During my Saturday visit to ICP, just after my student showed her newly printed book (made through Shutterfly, I believe) we stumbled onto a table of similar books made by Stephen Shore. Freed from the type of pressure a traditionally-published photobook is heir to -- I'm staring at my copy of Garry Winogrand's "The Animals" and noticing it is not physically very different from these new books -- Shore's work seemed very at home in this format. I went back and forth from his "American Surfaces" book -- very carefully printed, packaged and marketed -- to these more "casual" books. I really like them as a way of working.

So how do you give the feeling of a small book to online presentation? What speed should it be?

International Center of Photography

I met up with students from my Seriously Fun Photography course (held at Hunter College Continuing Education) for a visit to International Center of Photography. The current shows include:

Biographical Landscape:
The Photography of Stephen Shore, 1969-79

Let Your Motto Be Resistance:
African American Portraits

Amelia Earhart:
Image & Icon

Chim: Photographs by David Seymour,
Selections from George Eastman House

Well worth the trip, as always.

Above: a view of 43rd Street as ICP students conduct a photo shoot.

Easton, New Hampshire

A casual snapshot from last Sunday. (Photo by Caroline Barber.)

July 15, 2007

New Hampshire, July 15, 2007.

Littleton Part Two

Another image from Littleton, New Hampshire, on July 13, 2007.

Littleton

Littleton, New Hampshire, July 13, 2007

John Szarkowski, 1925-2007

The New York Times:

John Szarkowski, Curator of Photography, Dies at 81.

I met him once in Los Angeles, very briefly, when he was speaking about his show on Ansel Adams. After moving to New York, I also saw the show at MoMA on his own photographic work. I remember feeling he might walk through the gallery at any point, and that it would seem perfectly natural.

BRB

I've been awfully quiet on this blog lately, though I've been posting regularly over at Actualities. I've gotten to the end of my list of excuses and have started shooting again, however, so I'll be posting again soon.

YouTube Update Update

The videos I cut for the New York Institute of Photography roll ever upward:

Project Redeye: Halloween Challenge has 2,084,974 views and is currently the 23rd most-watched "arts and animation" video of all time on youtube.

Project Redeye: Holiday Challenge has 24,084 views.

About NYIP has 5,615 views.

For better or worse, new vids are coming soon....

Nightline Online

Nightline:

Video.

Article.

Or Monday

It appears the Nightline segment is moved to Monday night.

On "Nightline" Tonight

I believe I'll be in the last segment of the ABC show Nightline tonight. I'm hoping I seem like a normal person in it, and that I don't regret participating after it airs....

We'll see.

Blogging HotDocs

Over on Actualities I'll be blogging my trip to the Hot Docs Canadian International Film Festival.

First Views of Command Z

My friend in California went to the "Command Z" show, and took a few photographs....

Please Select an Artist