February 12, 2010
Hudson river from Beacon Waterfront.
In September of last year I moved out of New York City where I had been living for about 13 years.
After some personal turmoil and a financial reckoning which included four months on the dole, it was time for a change. Beacon, NY is a small city of about 15,000 residents sixty miles north of NYC along the Hudson River. The city is currently best known for the Dia Art Museum which houses contemporary artwork in a former Nabisco box factory. And Pete Seeger who actually lives up the road in Fishkill.
I moved into town without knowing a soul. I also moved into town as fall took hold and quickly moved into winter. Today is the 12th of February, deep in the heart of winter. Two days ago a blizzard covered the town in nearly a foot of snow which now lays on top of the ground which has been frozen solid since December. In the morning I’ll take the train into the city for my job and will glide down a Hudson river which is encased in a layer of ice which is groaning and cracking under the weight of the snow.
Since moving to Beacon my photography has radically changed.
After living in an incredibly dense urban area, I’ve found myself spending a great deal of time alone. That time has been spend exploring the several parks maintained by Scenic Hudson that surround the city and breaking into decaying factories. The human figure has largely disappeared from my photographs. Although I work in the city I’ve been uninterested in my former bread and butter of street photography. Instead I’ve been deeply moved by the environment of winter in the Hudson Valley.
Perhaps its a natural change. After thirteen years of living in the most urbanized region in the country its only natural that I would seek out the pleasure of solitude. I suspect this will change with the arrival of spring but for now I’ve deeply enjoyed having winter to myself.
The dock extending into the Hudson River at Beacon
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February 11, 2010
- Muse Hotel, Midtown Manhattan
Its been several months since I’ve posted to this blog. My original intent was to focus on my practice of film based photography as I had been almost exclusively shooting film for about 3 years at that point. There was even a time when I was renting a darkroom and spend many hours each week slaving over an aromatic series of trays, doing prints the old fashioned way.
As of December the 27th of 2009 I purchased a Pentax K-x 12.4 megapixel camera after a late night bender involving half a bottle of reasonably priced red wine, a stack of receipts, and an excel chart. Quite simply, I can’t afford to continue shooting film at the rate that I enjoy shooting. At my average rate of shooting, the very reasonably priced Pentax will pay for itself in savings over film before the end of March.
This was a rational economic decision for an entirely irrational pursuit.
I think the new direction for this blog will be more focused on work in progress and my own thoughts on the practice of photography and submission to the creative impulse.
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August 13, 2009
Rev. Billy demonstrates outside of AIG headquarters. April, 2009
This is a photograph of Rev. Billy Talen, a local activist, personality, and grassroots organizer who has earned global exile from the Starbucks company. Here we see him with a megaphone protesting the government bailout of AIG across the street from AIG headquarters in NYC to a crowd of curious AIG employees out on their smoke break. Other than the dozen or so fellow protesters and a few unemployed photographers such as myself this protest attracted no crowds and was only picked up by grassroots media groups such as IndyMedia which are largely ignored by the general public.
One would ask, why did he and a few other fellow travelers bother to come out on a chilly early spring day to stand outside of a building on Wall street and voice their opinion?
Why Bother? And why did I bother taking his picture?
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July 12, 2009
This weekend I’m going to take a Cambo 4×5 out for a test drive. This is the first time I’ve touched a large format camera and I’m hoping that using a polaroid back and referring to largeformatphotography.info as well as Horenstein’s celebrated B&W 102 text, Beyond Basic Black and White Photography will be enough to get me a few usable photos.
I’m excited as I can now switch back and forth between the three major formats, 35mm, medium format, and large format. I tend to take Mr. Natural’s approach to photography in that I like to use the right tool for the job. There are however often grey areas where the right tool is not immediately appearent. I recently shot the NYC Pride Parade with a Hasselblad. Most would have used a 35mm to capture a rapidly moving street parade and afterparty but my personal approach is to focus on individuals so I feel that using the medium format allows me to work in my preferred 6×6 format as I’m okay with taking my time with each shot. My reasoning for using the Hasselblad has nothing to do with the image “quality” (although the lens has the best “look and feel” out of any lens I’ve ever used) or the ability to print BIG (if I wanted that I wouldn’t be developing with rodinal now would I?), its based on purely qualitative feelings. The trouble is the advent of the 15+ megapixell full frame sensor has spawned the dread “quality” wars.
The quality wars ask if the new Canon or Nikon top of the line cameras can compete with medium format. The conventional wisdom that a 35mm sized sensor could never meet or exceed the quality of a medium format sensor. More area is more area and more area means higher quality. Yet the numbers thrown around by manufacturers often present a confusing series of contradictions. If Nikon and Canon have more megapixels and reported higher dynamic range than the medium format backs offered by Leaf or PhaseOne does that mean those stuck up pro photographers are a bunch of dummies for investing $20,000 in a digital back when they can get similar peformance from a $2600 35mm body? Are those snotty film people finally going to sit down to a steaming dish of crow? Will those 4×5 people loose their claim to “ultimate image quality”. And yeah, if the numbers say that 35mm is better, why hasn’t Leaf and PhaseOne started waving the white flag? Why are we even shooting film if the quality of digital equals or surpasses it?
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June 29, 2009
New York Times columnist Sonia Zjawinski has suffered the swift and sure wrath of the internet by suggesting that photo sharing website Flickr could be used for interior decorating. In her initial column, she suggested that you could easily search for thematic photographs on flickr, download the photos that you felt best met your decorating whim, and then print and frame them as you so desired.
This rubbed a number of flickr users the wrong way as evidenced by this entry where the power of social networks was engaged to give Zjawinski a piece of their collective minds. The Times reacted in what I felt was a positive manner by recognizing the response to the article and then speaking to a number of legal experts on the issue of fair usage. It engaged the audience, treated their concerns as valid, and sought the input of experts on the subject to try to come to some sort of conclusion. The conclusion is essentially that you’re looking at an area greyer than a Scottish fog bank that’s spent the last two seasons locked in a basement abusing steroids and lifting weights but there are precedents that personal, non-commercial usage could in many cases fall under fair use provisions of copyright law.
Like many issues in law this all fun and games and idle intellectual speculation until someone gets sued and a judge (and perhaps jury) finds themselves required to listen to two lawyers lock horns, pick a winner, and then assign damages when appropriate.
I’ve discussed copyright and protection of your images online in the past so I’ll just put forward a few quick thoughts about this specific issue. At the center of the complaint is the feeling that Zjawinski was encouraging the public to steal. If a visitor downloads a photo from a flickr stream and prints it out for their own personal usage they’re depriving the photographer of a sale.
There are a few practical issues to consider.
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June 22, 2009
Yesterday I had my “best” day on flickr by far. 1300 views in a day when I ordinarily average somewhere below 300. A four fold increase over the course of 24 hours. There are views on individual photos as well as sets and my photostream in general (people who are “just browsing”). One might inquire why I had such a magnificent day in web statistics. The answer is simple, I gave the viewing public what they wanted.
Hooters. Tits. Boobs. Jugs. Knockers. Garbanzos. Funbags. That which brings all the boys to the yard.
Ain't she something fellas?
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Posted in Technique, Theory 2 Comments »
June 17, 2009
June is a big month of photography in New York City.
Its a month dripping with interesting things to do, happenings to attend, people to observe, and fine weather to enjoy. My personal favorite events to photograph, the Mermaid Parade in Coney Island and the Queer Pride Parade in Manhattan usually fall on the same weekend resulting in complete collapse sunday night as my sunburned flesh gives in to fatigue. This year they fall on consecutive weekends so at least I’m spared back to back days of street high energy street shooting.
While many older and perhaps more serious photographers scorn it, I enjoy flickr a great deal. After an event I like to see what other people took away from it. Even people who consider themselves snappers with point and shoot cameras can often surprise themselves. Let’s not forget the legions of avid amateurs who have high performance machines tightly gripped in their right hands and a decent amount of proficiency at Photoshop or Lightroom to boot. Thousands of cameras will converge on the same scene and all go home with gigabytes of dirt cheap memory cards filled to the brim. Even without a camera nearly everyone has a phone with a built in camera which are surprisingly good for snapshots in bright sunlight.
And they’ll post every single pixel of it into their photostreams.
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June 13, 2009
Example of dramatic use of wide angle lenses for everyday activities.
Originally I picked up the Russian made Zenitar 16mm lens for my Pentax K100D as a way to get a very wide angle lens without shelling out a great deal of money. The K100D has a 1.5 crop factor which gets you an approximate 24mm lens. As I refuse to buy digital only lenses my only other options were the Sigma 20mm which is a dissapointing 30mm with the crop factor or pick up Sigma’s 15mm Fisheye. The Zenitar is available for $175 through Kiev USA while the Sigma fisheye is $750 through B&H. There was no question which one I was going to pick up.
After reading a number of reviews I decided that the distortion would be minimized by the crop factor on the lens when used with a digital camera. I also read about a number of quality control issues which lead me to a decision not to purchase a lens through a Russian dealer. This proved to be an excellent choice on my part as the well known infinity focus problem is not the only issue that can arise from these lenses. A day after I placed my order a gentleman from Kiev USA called to let me know that the lens would be a few days late in arriving. They had inspected the lens and discovered that it was missing an element which they needed to pull off another lens. Without that element the camera would never focus. That alone was worth the $50 price differential between ordering the lens from the US dealer.
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Posted in Product Review, Technique 1 Comment »
May 19, 2009
Last night Mrs. Obama was in NYC for the ballet and for the reopening of the MET’s American wing which I have missed rather sorely in my time of unemployment. She paid the usual lipservice to the arts using a phrase we’ve all heard 1000 times before, that arts “define who we are as a people.”
In past articles in the Times there have been signals that the NEA is being taken more seriously as an organization by being moved out of the first lady’s office into the west wing. Not to demean past first ladies which include the current Secretary of State and Eleanor Roosevelt but especially with the last administration being confined to that section of the white house does paint the arts as a bit of classy frivolity. If nothing else I personally feel a little better knowing that the current administration’s chief of staff has a background in dance. There is some hope that the new director of the NEA, Rocco Landesman can breathe some revelence into the agency but I don’t suggest holding your breath.
In some ways I almost hope for a Piss Christ or Self Portrait With Bullwhip scale meltdown over the NEA. If nothing else people were talking about public funding for culture and what that should entail. Its easy to say that art defines us and is one of the few things our brief time on this earth will leave to history. What’s not easy is to ask someone to pay for something that will never pay for itself. At least not while the people who make it draw breath.
Its hard enough to justify basic scientific research which doesn’t have an immediate economic or practical application. Even if you’re reading this on the entity that came out of one of the more far fetched ideas DARPA sponsored.
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May 14, 2009
I have a nice tripod. Its not a really nice tripod but its nice enough. For $100 at Adorama its the kind of nice my budget approves of. This is aimed at an audience that either can’t afford a carbon fiber tripod with ball head or can but haven’t been able to justify spending more on their tripod than they may have spent on their camera.
As a backdrop, I’d like to discuss the following photo:
Boating, Central Park
Using the qualities of this photograph I hope to explain why you must carefully choose your equipment when shopping on the lower end of the price scale for equipment. I am the owner of two tripods, one useful and one which has proven itself absolutely useless. Read the rest of this entry »
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