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27 Feb 2012

Discipline and the Fifty

A New York Minute

FOTOfusion recently wrapped up at the Palm Beach Photographic Centre. This annual event brings world class photographers to town to lecture and teach workshops. I had a chance to attend a few lectures including one by Ralph Gibson. The hour was spent surveying his work from beginning to present accompanied by comments on thought and process. I have always admired Gibson’s work and consider him one of the photographic masters of my generation. Unlike today’s digital photomontage masters or even Jerry Uelsmann with his multiple negative composites, Gibson manages to embody a surreal quality to his images merely by what he includes, or excludes from the frame. The brilliance of his mastery of this art became more evident to me after spending an hour with him. Little did I know that he started out as a street photographer! His street work predating the 1970 book, The Somnambulist, is inspired and his path to future work is evident.

Another thing I learned about Ralph Gibson is that like Henri Cartier-Bresson, he uses a Leica M series with a 50mm lens. Is there a magic to this focal length that these two, and other masters have discovered? As long as I have been a photographer the so called “normal” lens has been the one least used in many a photographer’s lens arsenal…unless it were a macro. Some pros don’t even own one. Most street photographers favor something wider: a 35mm or 28mm (or DX equivalent). The logic being that the photographer is part of the action rather than a distant observer. For today’s street shooters a 50mm lens carries somewhat of a stigma as producing images that are not really “street.” Worse, on a DX crop-sensor DSLR, the 50mm becomes a 75mm lens which is a short telephoto, totally unacceptable for street photography. Or does it?

The beauty of a 50mm lens is that it produces the same perspective as the human eye. Mount a fifty on a DSLR and look through the camera with both eyes open and the objects seen through both eyes are about the same size regardless of whether the camera is full frame or crop sensor. The spatial relationship of objects in the frame is the same regardless of the size of the camera’s sensor and approximates that of our natural vision. In order to qualify as a telephoto, a lens would compress those spatial relationships just like a wide angle lens expands them. Even on a DX camera body a 50mm is a “normal” lens, it’s just that the camera sensor is not big enough to accommodate the entire image the lens produces. That certainly does not make it a telephoto.

There is something to be said for discipline in our artistic endeavors. By not having to concern ourselves with process we can concentrate on the task at hand: the challenge our tools present us in expressing our vision. I remember a trip I took to Brazil some fifteen years ago. I did not want to risk taking my work cameras so I took an old camera body and several lenses ranging from 28mm to 200mm. I spent the whole trip changing lenses rather than trying to make photos through any one of them. Too many choices! Artists have always found ways of imposing limitations to challenge their artistic vision. Painters may select a certain canvas size or a limited color palette, or work with knives instead of brushes. Plastic cameras like the Diana are still popular and create a certain look through their limited capabilities. The photographic masters mentioned above and others I suspect, like Elliot Erwitt and Robert Frank, have discovered a certain magic in a 50mm normal lens and learned to respect the limitations of a singular way of seeing.

RalphGibson1-w-


TOP: New York Minute, NYC 2011 – taken with 50mm f1.8

ABOVE: Ralph Gibson – West Palm Beach 2011

KC – DISCIPLINE

 

16 Nov 2011

Blackout

The Great Blackout

Last Wednesday marked the 46th anniversary of the Great Northeast Blackout that darkened New York City overnight on November 9, 1965, 5:28pm

I was there. I graduated high school the year before and was working in the city at a graphics studio while attending Pratt Institute in Brooklyn three nights a week. What a different life I would have had if there had not been a war in Vietnam and a draft.

The power went out just about quitting time. The offices I worked in were on the 13th floor but they called it 14th. You know how that goes. I commuted 40 minutes into the city every day on what was then, the New York, New Haven & Hartford railroad. The trains ran on electricity so I had no plans to try to get home. A few co-workers lived uptown and decided to walk down the stairs and try to find a taxi home. That was the same thought that thousands of other office workers had so an hour or two later the men were back. Thankfully they brought sandwiches.

We had no lanterns or candles so being resourceful, we decided to try lighting the end of a grease pencil china marker. A few of those provided some light and as we later learned noxious fumes as well. I had only been doing photography for two years or so and the fact that I was able to get printable negatives of what was essentially, pure darkness, surprises me even today. The camera used was my first “good” camera; a Miranda F with 50mm f1.8 lens.

There was and has been much discussion after the event about “what we learned” and what could be done to prevent such a thing happening again. I am sure that systems and procedures were revised immediately after the failure that left 30 million people in the dark. In this computer age we have far more sophisticated systems in place to prevent such catastrophes. Yet there are more people and we all are more dependent on the services that electricity provides. With the capabilities of computers also come the vulnerabilities. The wars of the future will likely be fought on computer networks, not battlefields.

Hopefully today will be a better day at work than yesterday. Our DSL line was on and off all day.

The Great Blackout

David Bowie from the album “Heroes” – Blackout

09 Nov 2011

Robots

Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, Atlanta 2002


welcome to the age of robots. You may not have noticed, but they’re here. Everywhere. I am not referring to the ones that build automobiles in factories or the ones that Roomba® in your home. I am referring to the ones that technology has so gracefully and gradually slipped into our lives that we haven’t even noticed. Like a 1950’s sci-fi movie, had they come from another galaxy they would have already conquered the earth. But who would have thought they would have no arms or legs and fit inside a pocket?


I have a stupid phone. Although it probably does things that I don’t use it for, it fits in my pocket and makes telephone calls very easily. If my phone were smarter I would probably teach it to reply to “am I loved?” and “am I needed?” Judging from the compulsive behavior exhibited by people at malls and airports, that seems to be the primary function of these devices. Don’t start lobbing rotten tomatoes at me. I too can be compulsive when I have uploaded an especially good photo to Flickrpoosted to social mediaeed to. But when I leave the house the Internet and email stay behind and I treasure the separation from connectivity. That is especially true if I am on a pleasure trip. I am really not important or needed enough to have to be available at all times. Man, am I happy about that~! There are times when I feel like grabbing the phone out of the hand of some boorish idiot in front of me in the checkout line and smashing it to the floor. Sorry, this wasn’t meant to be a device bashing post. Let’s get back to the robots.


When I saw the commercial for the iPhone 4s it struck me that this was more than a phone or even a pocket-sized computer. With the advanced capabilities of voice recognition it has become a personal assistant. How cool is that? And she fits in a pocket and goes with you everywhere. If I were twenty or thirty years younger I would be so into mobile technology. Just the ability to carry my whole commercial photography portfolio as a multimedia presentation on a tablet the size of a magazine would close the deal for me. And it surfs the web and does email too…and more!


There is certainly the seed for a science fiction movie here. Some Blofield-like maniac bent on ruling civilization could devise a way to take over smart phones the world over and control people’s minds…or their bank accounts! I have reached a point in life where I accept almost anything as being possible but don’t believe it unless I see it. So I advise you, it is not too early to start thinking about robot insurance.


Old Glory Insurance

 

posted by Greg Allikas, November 9, 2011

17 Oct 2011

Anthropology 101

Bus #4

As I have been posting these older photographs, several things have become evident. I have noticed, particularly with the bus series, that these people do not exist downtown any more. For one thing, this particular bus stop is gone. It was the main stop back then. Either the middle class has made the upwardly mobile move and are now disguised as young professionals, or the whole demographic of West Palm Beach city proper has changed. Government offices and toney restaurants have replaced the Woolworths and Kresge five-and-dimes. The last of the downtown department stores, Burdines, has not only long ago left downtown, but the shopping landscape altogether. The ubiquitous Starbucks is frequented by yuppies (do they even call them that anymore?) reading the daily news on their iPads. Has West Palm Beach finally grown up, or has the world just changed? Or both? There is certainly no longer any need for pensioners to go downtown. There are plenty of dollar stores taking over strip malls in the outlying areas.

While we may think of ourselves as street photographers and street photography not as journalism, we are social documentarians. Anthropologists. Takers of a visual census of our time. We may not know that in the present, but it becomes evident in our photography as it acquires the rich patina of time. One of the characteristics that identifies street photography (for me) is that we do not have the responsibility of journalism. We are not required to be compassionate, or responsible or to fulfill any mandate to tell a story. Yet in the end, our work may end up being all of these things.

Don't Get Married

TOP: Bus #4, West Palm Beach 1980

ABOVE: Don’t Get Married, West Palm Beach 1980

05 Oct 2011

Opposites

501 Fern Street

Light/shadow, bold/subtle, hot/cold, yin and yang, order versus chaos. Contrary forces that can complement each other or be locked in a struggle. Within a work of art that struggle can create bold movement and interest. Within an artist it can yield completely different groups of work and eternal, internal conflict.

Since my earliest days of art I have been attracted to hard lines and their interrelationships. In high school and before, I would create small, graphic paintings using lines and letters. Perhaps it was a natural predilection for order that drove that vision or maybe, it was the other way around. Years of doing commercial photography only strengthened the ethic of tight compositions with everything in its place. No converging parallels allowed there!

With street photography my nature wants to control the frame and I have to make a conscious effort not to. I have to work fast and instinctively to avoid “lining everything up” and obsessing over the relationship of objects in the frame to the edges of the frame. Develop a seemingly random approach to avoid being precise.

Are there other opposites artists work to overcome…a tendency they possess that they must consciously work to keep in control? Should they? Can an artist produce multiple bodies of work of different discipline without corrupting their identifiable style?

Crossing Paths


TOP: 501 Datura Street, West Palm Beach 2011

ABOVE: Crossing Paths, Blue Ridge, Georgia 2011

06 Sep 2011

Video Embed Fullwidth

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06 Sep 2011

Youtube

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06 Sep 2011

Vimeo

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22 Aug 2011

This is link

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22 Aug 2011

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