visions of lovliness

"Christmas Eggs" - 24 December 2011

There is something about technical difficulties of a chosen format, and the manner in which they are solved. We often seem to go in the direction that is the most difficult solution, rather than the other way around.

For many large format photographers, because of the size of the "sensor" aka film, the challenge is to get enough DoF to have anything outside a very small area in focus. So we use camera movements to achieve something approaching complete focus within the image. If something is OoF, then we've failed. (Unless there was a conscious decision to limit focus severely, or there are elements in the composition from very near to very far that are very tall.)

On the other hand, for small sensor photographers using devices such as Point & Shoot or 4/3 or even 35mm, the challenge is to get an area that is OoF, since it's easy to get everything in focus. Instead we use fast lenses to achieve razor thin DoF, praising gorgeous bokeh in the blurred portions of the image.

I don't know what this says, other than that we seem to be technical contrarians. We're in search of something that not every technician can achieve.

no easy way out

To those who believe there are easy fixes to life's problems, I offer these photos of a project that has been put aside for months, maybe even years. No big deal. Nothing some money and a little time can't solve.

Just jack it up, the optomists suggested. It's been sinking for ten years. What's to keep it from sinking again? Which is why we end up with this bathtub sized slab of concrete:

"Just jack it up!"

the contrarian

When I can't, that's when I want to. When I can, that's when I want to procrastinate.

insurance regs to the rescue

 

Once again, I've been busted for entering and carrying a camera around "private" property. The question that I am asked most frequently: "Who are you with?" I find it increasingly difficult to not look around me, throw up my hands, and give my questioner a look of incomprehension, wondering if their senses are fully functional. Instead, I answer in the manner I know is expected. My response might not be what they expect, since I am always alone. This curious assumption, that an individual with a camera could not possibly be simply an individual with a camera, leaves me wondering. What are the expectations for picture taking? Does it (the picture taking) always have some ulterior profit seeking motivation involved?

The next question tends to be, "What are you doing?" An explanation of the aesthetics of New Topographics and its relationship to the ManMadeWilderness in twenty-five words or less is not what they are looking for. Nor would they expect me to ask what they are doing to the land we are standing on. Even the slightest objection to their authority is not usually necessary to hear the rationale for exclusion, the inevitable "If/when you fall down and break your head open, you're going to sue for damages."

It is interesting that the camera - the cause for the exploration of the private property - is not a contested item.  It is mere bodily presence that constitutes offence. Land owners don't object to photographs of whatever they are doing to the land. They are concerned that trespassers will injure themselves and come after them (the owners) for damages. We have become a nation of litigious land owners looking out for our individual rights to exploit that land however we desire. The guy who got there first(?) or has the biggest pile of cash gets to control access. We've reached the point that there are no common areas, other than park lands owned by the State, and small tracts along roadways and around water features that are owned jointly by neighborhood associations, all courtesy of our common law heritage of land tenureship.

 

wow

What happened to me? No more still photography, basically. The GD Canon 7D has taken over my sensibilities, and Final Cut Studio the rest of my waking hours.

Here's the product of the latest marathon.

Who's Afraid of 50? from Man Made Wilderness on Vimeo.

A party last night, and in less than 24 hours it's online. It's been a long time since I stayed up til 5am working on a project, but this morning seemed to be the time to do it. Maybe there was something in the food last night that kept me awake. Or maybe it was the enchantment of cinema...

Update on Sunday, October 17, 2010 at 08:39PM by KMW

A new version available already, to fix some duplication that was missed in the early hours this morning.

confusion reigns

click 'er for bigger

Better? Nahhh... Different... A whole lot of buttons and batteries. But I don't really want to write about camera technology. Of the thirty or forty exposures I took late this afternoon a week ago, trying to find what my 3 pints to the wind brain could comprehend, this one - at about the end of the series - is probably the best. Not too bad for being drunk. I don't usually combine drinking and photography, and I don't think I would recommend it, even to myself. But having a camera at hand was an interesting way to burn off some alchohol before I needed to drive home.

which way to go?

for my father-in-law; brother-in-law; nephew

Video or no video? In many respects, it's a bunch of horse shit. Why bother record hours of material that is either a lot of blathering, or in many instances can be shown with a series of single images?

After many hours of looking at video camera specs - perfectly good time wasted, never to be recovered - it's obvious that this capability does not come cheaply. Again and again I have to remind myself that mostly I prefer to work alone, or at least have gotten used to such methodology as a still photographer. What can I do alone as a videographer?

And yet... My recent travels - 2300 miles to the center of the country and back in the new, completely safe Prius - with JVC HD video cam in tow - have revealed some of the unattainable qualities of still photography. Movement within the image is the obvious additional factor. Even within a mostly static image, the merest whisper of a breeze animates the world in a manner unlike anything still photography can achieve. It's an incredibly seductive capability which inevitably is harnessed for the creation or depiction of the real world.* Nearly nothing mainstream in the cinema or television aspires to be anything but profoundly realistic. "It isn't realistic" being our primary gauge for the value of programming.

Sound, the second part of motion capture, is the much maligned second cousin to images. During production it's a nuisance and a profound complication. But it's reality enhancing abilities - something still photography isn't necessarily in search of - are generally considered to be worth the trouble. With enough manipulation sound too becomes as abstract - and perhaps even more provocative - as images.

The confusion is palpable. Even though I went all those miles across country and back, carrying the standard 4 x 5 kit as well as the rented video cam, it wasn't until I was once again within two hours of home that I was willing to stop and get out this seemly outmoded device: a still camera. Perhaps it was the newness of the video device which seemed to make still photography superfluous. Amongst the thousands of images that provided themselves to my sliding eyes, it was only one, that has been mentally manipulated previously, that motivated me to stop. This is the problem with travel: it's always easier to keep going, stay in the rolling cocoon, than to stop and set up a recording device.

The dilemmas of audience, funding, storytelling, technology, convention and more still swirl. All I know is that I've got several hours of HD video to edit, a prospect that appears challenging and even fun.

*The cynic in me can't help but recognize that the ultimate goal to which motion picture capture aspires is Reality TeeVee, which has become ubiquitous and is ever expanding. It manages, somehow, to combine the dual impulses of photography: to document the real world, and create a spectacle of it. David Foster Wallace has written tellingly, especially in Infinite Jest, of the dominance of entertainment programming in our lives. 

Edward Burtynsky

 

The latest Burtynsky exhibit, Oil, is currently installed in the Corcoran Gallery of Art, in Washington D.C. Leaving the fam on the train for their long weekend in NYC, I walked across the city to the gallery to see this collection of phenomenal and extremely unsettling photographs, which is on display until December 13.

I'll admit to being hugely influenced by Burtynsky's work. Not all the images in the show are new, as they represent twelve years of his work from around the world, newly organized into a more potent theme than they have been grouped before. All his images represent massive consumption of resources, often showing the land from which the raw materials for the goods of our lives are extracted. Here there are two rooms of images from the oil fields in California west of Bakersfield around Belridge and Taft, and the oil sands of Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada, along with oil refineries in Houston, Texas and elsewhere.

From extraction and processing, he moves to consumption and motor culture, with mostly aerial images of highway interchanges, vast fleets of new automobiles awaiting distribution, and Las Vegas suburban sprawl stretching to the mountains at the horizon. Two fascinating landscape photos of motor culture show a motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota. One is in the center of town from an elevated perspective with thousands of motorcycles stretching to the horizon. The other is later that same day, a classic landscape of the surrounding mountains on the horizon, a beautiful evening sunset lighting the sky, the foreground filled with cars and bikes in the parking lot of a Kiss concert.

The final section is what Burtynsky terms "the end of oil." It consists of images of shattered oil fields in Azerbaijan, aircraft junkyards, the Oxford, California tire pile, massive collections of recycled oil filters and metal drums, and finally the oil tanker ship breaking operations in Bangladesh.

Much of this has been seen before in Manufactured Landscapes, but it's my first exposure to the large scale prints that Burtynsky creates for his large format photographs. The amount of detail can be overwhelming, as when I stood in the corner of one gallery and surveyed the images of the tire pile and densified oil filters and oil barrels and had to catch my breath at the sheer magnitude of the consumption. In another era, it would have been our awe at the sights of the Grand Canyon. Now our feelings of the sublime are wonder and guilt, in equal measures, at the use – and disposal – of so many natural resources.

It has been objected that Burtynsky's photographs are a gee whiz wonder at an exceptional phenomena. No doubt his production budgets are substantial, and in order to make it worth his while, he endeavors to find the biggest and most extreme example of whatever resource usage he wants to document. But the fact remains that these excessive conditions do exist, and on a global level are even more extreme than Burtynsky can document.

See the exhibit if you can, or look at his books. They are an uncomfortable reminder that nothing we do on this planet is without consequences, and when aggregated on a global scale, they become profound consequences.

All works hung on walls are by Edward Burtynsky.

some kind of motto

Seen in a car window yesterday while waiting for CLW during the weekly piano lesson. I can get behind this, despite the seeming end of my rope spinning project.

BTW, here are several more pics from yesterday's cold spell.

versatile

WARNING! HUMOR ALERT!

 

Pamela Seymour Smith Sharp

Willoughby Sharp in 2006

From the NY Times obit of Willoughby Sharp, I've learned of the death of the respected and loved conceptual artist who was a writer, educator, curator, performer, publisher, video visionary, and more. Read this article to find out about several of his infamous pieces, such as Stay, a performance with a seduction, a gunshot and a broken video feed at a crucial moment, and Full Womb, in which he tumbled in a dryer with a baby bottle for fifteen minutes.

The online version of his obituary was altered slightly from the printed copy which first caught my attention. The latter gave Mr. Sharp's profession as "Avant-Gardist." Without casting any aspersions on Willoughby, and knowing that his is a tall order to fill, I think I've finally found what I want to be when I grow up. It's taken a long time, but better late than never. Avant-Gardist. Yeah. It's going to be a stretch, but WTF it's a new year and these are the kinds of things one can decide independently.

Sorry to say I never knew Willoughby.  My sympathies to his family and friends. But at least now I know what to do with my life.

one of those places

 

click 'er for bigger

We've all got them as photographers. The place that we drive past daily or weekly, trying desperately to figure out what it is that draws our attention, but never quite figuring out how to present/photograph either. This one is behind the airport rental car service area. I've tried to photograph it before - without much success. This past Saturday I was in the vicinity once again. This time in a pouring rain, and it was obvious that what's been missing from the view of this landscape is the reason for this feature's existence: water. P&S in hand, I went out in the rain, got moderately wet, and got a picture that finally makes some sense to me.

It's another good example of having a tool along that can help with the capture, even during inhospitable weather conditions.

upon entering the zone

click 'er for bigger

The photographic zone, that is. I'm certain many have similar experiences. While working on a photographic project one becomes so intent on the work, that the rest of the world seems to fall away. It happened again for me several days ago while doing some architectural photography. It was not easy set ups, as nearly all of them were interiors with windows included. Always a difficult decision: expose for the interior and not worry about what happens with the exterior, or try to find some way to capture both? What color balance to use? How much interior/practical lighting to use?

I proceeded around the house for about four hours, then did three set ups outside. The light was perfectly clear, the sky nearly cloudless. Not exactly the light I consider "perfect" for photographing architectural subjects, but certainly what we humans consider beautiful weather for every day enjoyment of life. The photo above is one of the last I took for the day prior to departure from the location. It's only real significance is that it's part of an incredibly lovely afternoon landscape.

The drive home was on roads that I've travelled hundreds of times previously, but somehow, through the intensity of my concenration during the prior four or five hours, took on the appearance of places that I had never seen before. My ordinary life was momentarily lost to me, banished by an activity so satisfactory that it borders on pleasure.

No doubt this is the ideal state for humans. The challenge is to find what the activity is that gets you into "the zone" the most efficiently and doesn't interfere with the rights of others. Anybody else care to add what works for you?

a pause

It's going to be quiet around here for a while, but I'll be back in due time. Don't abandon me, I've not given up completely...yet.

today's solution

 

At least for now, I will take solace in the sentiments expressed by Joe Reifer in his recent decision to stop yapping online about photography and go out and do more. His earlier comments about the dearth of decent writing on the web echo thoughts I've had for years. I can spend only so much time - no, make that waste so much time - looking at shitty little online images before I feel choked and ready to dry up and blow away. I don't contribute here often enough to need to stop doing it. But it's a reaction that I can get behind. After all, I did stop consuming "news" some years ago after some unknown NPR commentator recommended that listeners stop listening. I took her word for what it was worth and turned them off. My news consumption is still miniscule in comparison to what media owners would prefer.

Never mind that.

I've come to the realization that what this coming (impending?) workshop needs to be about for me is entertainment. I refuse to lose any more sleep over it. I'm not going to become a Geographic photographer, I'm not going to become a travel photographer, I'm not going to become a photo journalist, I'm not going to become a professional photographer. I will remain an unknown weekend photographer, and I intend to enjoy my time doing so. Which does not include making myself crazy trying vainly to photograph people. I expect to be challenged in the coming week, but if it's no fun doing so, then I'll bag it.

time for photography?

 

click 'er for bigger

There does seem to be a lack of entries here for the recent past. An easy explanation - beyond having little to write about: too much other media. Naturally the primary culprit is the damn teevee. Think it's seductive? Try living with a 50 inch screen and full "surround-a-sound" and see if anything other than couch occupation gets done at night. I feel intellectually engaged by my viewing, so it's not an entirely passive activity. But it's not an activity which generates any useable output, either. Unless I make the effort to come here and comment upon the material that has been consumed. It's still a consumer enterprise, and I'm trying to limit such things. Obviously the time spent commenting has been limited.

In an interesting intersection of media, while I'm reading a copy of Richard Price's Clockers, we're also working our way through the first season of the HBO series The Wire on dvd. (Turns out, Price was one of the writers at some time during the production of the series. Not, I guess, of the material we're currently viewing.) Perhaps not co-incidentally, the similarities between the book and the series  are quite striking: they both are told from the perspectives of the two sides of the "war on drugs." On the one hand there are the Clockers - the dope peddlers - and on the other there are the Knockos - the narcs and cops who try to catch them. They are given equal billing and equal respect.

This was really supposed to be an entry about my excuses for not doing photography, because I've devoted so much time to reading and watching. Added to books and teevee are the occasional magazine, revisiting favorite recorded music with an expanded audio system, blog perusal, and general curiosity. On top of this would be some unease generated by The Wire viewing. It's so good that it makes one want to attempt something similar. Damn, I want to put on a show too! What do I know about? My life at work, in the construction industry. And what is the primary culprit for hijacked time? My life at work doing The J-O-B. It still requires attendance during the major portion of waking hours, leaving only scraps of time to be filled with this or that activity: writing teevee scripts, reading books and blogs, making still photographs; and occasionally writing a blog entry.

It's certainly not that there is a lack of material to write about. It's rather that there are so many things going on, that entries here get pushed farther down the list due to the inherent observational quality of the material. To live  a life of activity, it is necessary to do more than reflect upon the possibilities of a life.

Anybody out there got anything to add? 

excuses

 

The weather for today turned out to be exactly as predicted: 100% cloud cover, but only a 40 - 50% chance of precipitation. The leaves are finally off the trees, for the most part. In other words, perfect conditions to work on my Courthouse Project. Yet here I am, still in the basement typing. What are the excuses for today's lack of desire?

• Could it be that I stayed up too late Friday reading and "experimenting" with VueScan and ColorNeg? I'm not sure my results are even worth bothering to write about at this point. But by the time I finally went to bed, I had already nodded off several times in front of the screen.
• Could it be that I woke up too early?
• Could it be that there were planned activities for the day - CLW dancing at the Paramount; dinner out with friends; retrieving CLW from her friends - so no rest was available for the missed sleep the night before?
• Could it be that by the time we got home and I had done a bit more reading it was "too late" to get motivated to empty the van, load film holders, and get my pack together for an early departure this morning?
• Could it be that I never looked at the past exposures of Amelia and Lunenburg counties that I thought I was reshooting?
• Could it be that after referring to the sun plots that I created with this cool bit of software, it looked likely that I would end up with the same results that I already have after driving two hours one way?
• Could it be that I'm having second and third and fourth doubts about this project, even though I'm only a little more than half done and it's already two years old?
• Could it be that the idea and design of the project are from a time when I was looking to do something specific with a view camera which I didn't have much experience with?
• Could it be that I was looking for excuses to stay home today?

Looks like I found my excuses.

Instead of driving for four to five hours, I walked around the house with the Mamiya and a couple of rolls of Delta 400. I almost - but not quite - even had some fun doing it.