Happy Halloween

The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends and the other begins?
– Edgar Allan Poe

One need not be a chamber to be haunted;
One need not be a house;
The brain has corridors surpassing
Material place.
– Emily Dickinson

Where there is no imagination there is no Horror.
– Arthur Conan Doyle, Sr.

Wear Good Shoes

I came across this 1 year old posting from Alec Soth on the Magnum Photos Blog. In it he asks his associates at Magnum what their advice would be to young photographers. Some great advice. A few of my favorites are below. To see the full post go here.

From the photographer Abbas, pure poetry and truth: Get a good pair of walking shoes and…fall in love

From Alex Webb: Photograph because you love doing it, because you absolutely have to do it, because the chief reward is going to be the process of doing it. Other rewards; recognition, financial remuneration, come to so few and are so fleeting.

From Bruce Gilden: “Photograph who you are!”

And this mini-seminar from Chris Steele-Perkins:

1) Never think photography is easy. It’s like poetry in that it’s easy enough to make a few rhymes, but that’s not a good poem.
2) Study photography, see what people have achieved, but learn from it, don’t try photographically to be one of those people
3) Photograph things you really care about, things that really interest you, not things you feel you ought to do.
4) Photograph them in the way you feel is right, not they way you think you ought to
5) Be open to criticism, it can be really helpful, but stick to you core values
6) Study and theory is useful but you learn most by doing. Take photographs, lots of them, be depressed by them, take more, hone your skills and get out there in the world and interact.

Thank you so very much Mr. Soth for sharing this with everyone.

The Interpreted World

I am rediscovering the beauty of black and white imagery. It started with my Up series and it is continuing with my street shooting. I have re-thought my Streetwork09 series a bit. I want to explore the streets in black and white and I want to add an element of the surreal. Now the surreal has always been a part of street photography but my surreal will be just a little bit uncomfortable, a little bit puzzling. The inspiration for this and the title (both of this post and the eventual complete series) comes from a Rilke poem. It is the first poem of the Duino Elegies which I have posted on this blog previously. The inspirational line is:

Ah Who then can we make use of?

Not angels, not men

And already the knowing creatures are aware

that we are not at home

in our interpreted world

Like I said yesterday, a few words are enough to get you going on a creative trip. Being prolific is just a matter of not inhibiting your creative impulses. Follow your creativity to wherever it may lead. I started the Streetwork09 series as a color project but have been inspired to explore black and white. I am going from a small 35mm rangefinder camera to a medium format SLR. Why? Just to see where it may lead.

Any takers?

On Being Prolific

Last week was “Photo Week”. First of all it was time again for Photo Expo at Jacob Javits Center. This is something I look forward to every year. Alas, it was a bit disappointing this year. Some big names were missing including Adobe and Hasselblad. Not that I am a big fan of Hasselblad’s newest cameras, but the last time a major manufacture did not appear at Photo Expo (Contax) it meant the company was just about to go out of business. Hmm… come to think of it I did not see Mamiya there either. Not a good year for the photo manufacturers.

Last week I was also invited to talk to the Associate members of the Soho Photo cooperative. I did a presentation on my work process and why I made the choices that I have. Then we had the chance to look at some recent work by members and give feedback. One of the main points I had to make over and over was the need to constantly shoot. Practice, practice, practice. To be a Master anything takes 10,000 hours of practice (at least according to Malcolm Gladwell). To be a Master photographer takes at least 10,000 rolls of film (or to convert to digital – 36,000 frames). This goes hand in hand with being prolific or at least assists in being prolific. While you are shooting ideas are going through  your head or as you process images or sequence images new ways of looking at the world emerge. I have an “idea” book where I write down new things to photograph or new connections between things or new ways of looking at things. Lots of times I write down fragments of poems or songs or writings that I think can be converted to visual truths. The more ideas you have the easier it is to be prolific.

That reminds me of a story about Harry Callahan who once said to a student, “the only difference between you and me is that I have taken many more bad pictures… of course I have taken many more good pictures too”! What he is saying is that you have to keep working on your craft day in and day out and yeah you’ll take a lot of bad pictures (I certainly do) but you will also make many good pictures too. Maybe even art.

Streetwork09

It seems that I always start my Streetwork projects in the Fall. That is my favorite time of year. While I have not stopped photographing in the streets of New York (and a bit in Barcelona, Spain) I have not had a comprehensive idea for what I am shooting (Aside from my Up series – in  progress). The idea jelled in my mind this morning when I was reading the In-Public bios of photographers. By the way if you are a fan of street photography you really should visit In-Public. I was reading the Bio/Statement of Bryn Campbell, a master street photographer. He says:

The equation is a simple one: streets = people. And it is people’s behaviour that most interests me: actions, reactions and interactions; emotions, body language, eccentricities, humour – and those rare moments of visual surrealism that can make one’s day.

I agree that this is the crux of the art of street photography. But I want to subvert that a little. I want to focus my photography on the environments, the man made objects and displays created by people.  As a  grad student in Archeology for a little bit I quickly came to realize that individuals are not history. Objects are history. What people leave behind; that’s what counts when you want someone in the future to know about you or your culture. After all a lot of people could tell you what the Pyramid of Cheops looks like but not many can tell you who it was built for (King Khufu) or what he looked like.

OMG!

Wow! No sooner do I post my latest blog entry than I get this e-mail from the Impossible Project. Well it seems like Polaroid is getting back into the act by re-launching their One Step camera.

More exciting for me was the fact that The Impossible Project already has working samples of their film and it’s black and white. Color film will follow later in 2010!

It’s like Christmas in October!

The announcement from The Impossible Project is below.

BREAKING NEWS

14.10.2009 / Vienna

THE IMPOSSIBLE PROJECT

INSPIRES POLAROID^® TO

RELAUNCH INSTANT CAMERAS

Dear Supporter of The Impossible Project,

the pleasure is all ours to herewith inform you about the latest and likewise groundbreaking news regarding our quest to keep Instant Photography alive by re-inventing a new analog integral film for vintage Polaroid cameras.

Already holding the first working hand-coated samples in our trembling hands, we are pleased to herewith announce an epoch making cooperation between Polaroid (who can no longer resist the stir we are making) and The Impossible Project:

The new licensee of the Polaroid Brand – The Summit Global Group – will re-launch the legendary Polaroid One Step Camera and is therefore commissioning The Impossible Project to develop and produce a limited edition of Polaroid branded Instant Films in the middle of 2010.

We are proud and excited that our ambitions and all the relentless work we have already invested are now becoming the foundation for Polaroid’s comeback as a producer of Instant Cameras.

Large-scale production and worldwide sale of The Impossible Project’s new integral film materials under its own brand will already start in the beginning of 2010 – with a brand new and astonishing black and white Instant Film and the first colour films to follow in the course of the year.

At this point we would like to thank every single one of your for all your overwhelming support so far- THANK YOU! It’s fair to say that we wouldn’t be where we are now if it was not for all your help.

For further developments, upcoming news and detailed updates please stay tuned to www.the-impossible-project.com

Autumnal Polaroids

I went to Adorama to stock up on the last of the Polaroid 600 films and to my sadness they were out of stock! Luckily Polapremium still has a supply but it’s expensive at $21.00 a pack. None the less I bought ten boxes and these will have to do until The Impossible Project comes through with their promised film.

Yesterday I promised you some Autumnal polaroids. Autumn is my favorite time of year, It is colorful and cool and the kids start getting excited about the Holidays. Halloween is first up and my kids already have the witches and black cats and scary skeletons decorating our house. The pumpkin by the door will soon be carved and the seeds roasted and salted. Yummy. Autumn is also the time I gain weight!

Expiration

October 9, 2009 is the expiration date for the last batch of Polaroid film. From now on we can no longer buy fresh Polaroid film! A sad day indeed. Which reminds me, I have to run out to Adorama and pickup some more boxes of Polaroid 600 before they sell out. That will have to keep me until The Impossible Project starts rolling out their promised version of instant film in Early 2010.

A channel 4 news video about this sad topic can be found here.

I’ll post a couple of Autumn Polaroids tomorrow.

The New Americans

There are two seminal photo books on America. The first is (of course) Robert Frank’s The Americans. This is the book that has inspired hundreds of photographers including Paul Graham two travel the roads of America and photograph it. I too have also contemplated doing something similar but have been held back by the fear of pale imitation. The second photo book is Richard Avedon’s In The American West. Published in 1985 it was, like Robert Frank’s book very controversial. Avedon travelled the west for several years with a team of assistants; making highly stylized portraits of the people who caught his eye. From what I have read about the making of these pictures, Avedon seem to have chosen people on the margins of society and then he deleted the society itself by posing them in front of a white background.

Now it maybe a stretch to compare David Lynch’s fabulous new web project to the work of Frank and Avedon, but if it is, it is not too much of a stretch. David Lynch in his Interview Project has created the 21st century update to Avedon and Frank. He and his team of videographers drove 20,000 miles around the country interviewing people they would meet on the street. I have only listened to a few but already I have met a 24 year old woman who can’t be  in any one place for too long, a stoic senior citizen waiting for his trailer to be repaired so he can move further into the desert, and a young man with a Christ complex.

While the interviews are fascinating the videos themselves, visually speaking, do not grab the eye or the heart the way a Robert Frank or Richard Avedon photograph does. But this is the way of the future for documentary photography. I am just waiting for someone to meld both the storytelling capabilities of video with the beauty and the essence  of a well seen still photograph.

Now I know many people are going to point out great movies and videos (including many of Mr. Lynch’s films!) and to a point you maybe correct. But what I am talking about is the essence of a photograph; a thin slice of the space time continuum. The new imagery would capture a thicker slice of that continuum but it would still only be a contained instant, the sun rising, a smile appearing, a flower blowing in the breeze, a human being living, a life setting.

© Richard Avedon

Of Prizes, Einstein and Digital Photography

My two favorite topics are photography and physics as readers of this blog can infer. So it was with great interest that I read recently of the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Physics to Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith, the inventors of the CCD. A CCD is the sensor found in, among other things, digital cameras. At this point I should just say camera. Film cameras are now the exception not the norm. I still love and shoot daily with my Leica M7.

The CCD was invented in 1969 and only a few years later, in 1975 the first prototype was created at Kodak by Steve Sasson. On the  prototype Sasson:

“shoehorned in a portable digital cassette instrumentation recorder.  Add to that 16 nickel cadmium batteries, a highly temperamental new type of CCD imaging area array, an a/d converter implementation stolen from a digital voltmeter application, several dozen digital and analog circuits all wired together on approximately half a dozen circuit boards.”

It also took 23 seconds to record a crude 100 line black and white images on to cassette tape (remember those!).

1975 Prototype for a digital camera

What does Einstein have to do with any of this?

I am so glad you asked! The CCD invented by Boyle and Smith used a silicon plate with millions of light sensitive photocells. The CCD accumulated light induced charges over it’s surface and these charges were read out at the edge of the light sensitive area. In essence this process makes use of the photoelectric effect theorized by none other than Albert Einstein (probably while relaxing on the beach). Einstein postulated that light was actually made of discrete packets called photons. This helped explain a certain phenomenon.

If a light shines on a sheet of metal, it will dislodge electrons from the metal. If the light is of low intensity (that is, low brightness) and low energy (say red light), then a few electrons of low energy will be ejected from the metal. By increasing the brightness of the light, we would classically expect the electrons ejected to more energetic. However, this does not occur. Instead, what happens is that some electrons are ejected but they are still of low energy.

Now if we increase the energy of the light, say to blue light, then we find that the ejected electrons are now high in energy. In turn, low intensity blue light will eject a few high energy electrons and high intensity blue light will eject many high energy electrons.

The relevant observation for photography (notice I did not say digital. It is a given.) is that the energy (or color) of the light determines the energy of the ejected electrons. The intensity of the light does not effect the energy of the electrons (color), but the number of ejected electrons. Boyle and Smith took advantage of this phenomenon in creating the CCD.

For this Einstein won the Nobel Prize in 1921.