It took 16 hours to backup my photos. My hard drive enclosure glows like an alcohol fire. That is all.
31 July 2010
16:08:32
It took 16 hours to backup my photos. My hard drive enclosure glows like an alcohol fire. That is all.
30 July 2010
27 July 2010
"Missing Link"
$200 Million Ansel Adams Negatives Found at Garage Sale
Many questions, but foremost in my mind is: How did someone as obsessive as Ansel Adams lose something like this?
UPDATED 28Jul10, 0947: Oops.
Alleged Adams negatives, bought at garage sale, in dispute
The "balloon boy" of photography. It's always easy to turn against the party making the outrageous claim, but this one seems a bit more authenticated than most. Like I said earlier, I find it hard to believe that Ansel (see, we're on a first-name basis) would misplace negatives. But who knows? Maybe he was too emotionally overwhelmed to rummage through the ashes of his studio.
I take issue with a couple of paragraphs from the WaPo article:
"Adams is renowned for his timeless black-and-white photographs of the American West, which were produced with darkroom techniques that heightened shadows and contrasts to create mood-filled landscape portraits."
Um. Well. Yes. And Abraham Lincoln is remembered for his conflict-resolution skills.
"His photographs today are widely reproduced on calendars, on posters and in coffee-table books, while his prints are coveted by collectors."
Right. You know, Ansel Adams, that guy who took the photo that's hanging in your cubicle.
Art photographers tend to roll their eyes at the mention of Ansel's name, and I think that's a damned shame. I don't particularly enjoy his work (certain exceptions to that, see below) but what I do would not be possible without him. He was the Beatles of photography.
And, like the Beatles, he is now more a brand than a memory, the collective property of those who have only a tangential knowledge of photography, yet present themselves as seeped in the culture of art. That's why we snooty art types roll our eyes--when people say they love Ansel Adams, it usually means they love the coffee table book they bought at the Barnes & Noble bargain table.
But, here is an excerpt from The Negative. I bought it at the used book store, and a scrawled inscription in the front, dated from 1988, reads: "Dear Mom, Happy Mother's Day! Just a little extra help for you when you take my picture. Love, Peter." Anyway, here is what Adams says about Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico:
I came across this extraordinary scene when returning to Santa Fe from an excursion to the Chama Valley. The sun was edging a fast-moving bank of clouds in the west. I set up the 8x10 camera as fast as I could while visualizing the image. I had to exchange the front and back elements of my Cooke lens, attaching the 23-inch element in front, with a glass G filter (#15) behind the shutter. I focused and composed the image rapidly at full aperture, but I knew that because of the focus-shift of the single lens component, I had to advance the focus about 3/32 of an inch when I used f/32 . . . Then, to my dismay, I could not find my exposure meter! I remembered that the luminance of the moon at that position was about 250 c/ft^2, placing this luminance on Zone VII, I could calculate that 60 c/ft^2 would fall on Zone V. With a film of ASA 64, the exposure would be 1/60 of a second at f/8. Allowing a 3x exposure factor for the filter, the basic exposure was 1/20 of a second at f/8, or about one second at f/32 . . .
Like it or not, the man was a genius. As Stephen King said about Larry Niven, "we proceed down a path marked by his ideas."
Still, I am a miserly SOB, and I would not have bought The Negative if not for the child's Mother's Day inscription. It's not hard to imagine that Peter was signing a book bought for him by his father, and that his mother had hinted that she could use volume two of the Adams trilogy. The Negative is not exactly an impulse buy. In 1988, film was still very much alive, but the idea that mom would need the Zone System to take pictures of her small child is either very ironic, or very inspiring.
If she was indeed dragging out the 8x10 to photograph Peter, I'd call that inspiring. If she was like most normal people, and used a point-and-shoot from K-Mart, I think the irony is that our casual photography wouldn't have grown if the ground hadn't first been broken by Ansel Adams.
Many questions, but foremost in my mind is: How did someone as obsessive as Ansel Adams lose something like this?
UPDATED 28Jul10, 0947: Oops.
Alleged Adams negatives, bought at garage sale, in dispute
The "balloon boy" of photography. It's always easy to turn against the party making the outrageous claim, but this one seems a bit more authenticated than most. Like I said earlier, I find it hard to believe that Ansel (see, we're on a first-name basis) would misplace negatives. But who knows? Maybe he was too emotionally overwhelmed to rummage through the ashes of his studio.
I take issue with a couple of paragraphs from the WaPo article:
"Adams is renowned for his timeless black-and-white photographs of the American West, which were produced with darkroom techniques that heightened shadows and contrasts to create mood-filled landscape portraits."
Um. Well. Yes. And Abraham Lincoln is remembered for his conflict-resolution skills.
"His photographs today are widely reproduced on calendars, on posters and in coffee-table books, while his prints are coveted by collectors."
Right. You know, Ansel Adams, that guy who took the photo that's hanging in your cubicle.
Art photographers tend to roll their eyes at the mention of Ansel's name, and I think that's a damned shame. I don't particularly enjoy his work (certain exceptions to that, see below) but what I do would not be possible without him. He was the Beatles of photography.
And, like the Beatles, he is now more a brand than a memory, the collective property of those who have only a tangential knowledge of photography, yet present themselves as seeped in the culture of art. That's why we snooty art types roll our eyes--when people say they love Ansel Adams, it usually means they love the coffee table book they bought at the Barnes & Noble bargain table.
But, here is an excerpt from The Negative. I bought it at the used book store, and a scrawled inscription in the front, dated from 1988, reads: "Dear Mom, Happy Mother's Day! Just a little extra help for you when you take my picture. Love, Peter." Anyway, here is what Adams says about Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico:
I came across this extraordinary scene when returning to Santa Fe from an excursion to the Chama Valley. The sun was edging a fast-moving bank of clouds in the west. I set up the 8x10 camera as fast as I could while visualizing the image. I had to exchange the front and back elements of my Cooke lens, attaching the 23-inch element in front, with a glass G filter (#15) behind the shutter. I focused and composed the image rapidly at full aperture, but I knew that because of the focus-shift of the single lens component, I had to advance the focus about 3/32 of an inch when I used f/32 . . . Then, to my dismay, I could not find my exposure meter! I remembered that the luminance of the moon at that position was about 250 c/ft^2, placing this luminance on Zone VII, I could calculate that 60 c/ft^2 would fall on Zone V. With a film of ASA 64, the exposure would be 1/60 of a second at f/8. Allowing a 3x exposure factor for the filter, the basic exposure was 1/20 of a second at f/8, or about one second at f/32 . . .
Like it or not, the man was a genius. As Stephen King said about Larry Niven, "we proceed down a path marked by his ideas."
Still, I am a miserly SOB, and I would not have bought The Negative if not for the child's Mother's Day inscription. It's not hard to imagine that Peter was signing a book bought for him by his father, and that his mother had hinted that she could use volume two of the Adams trilogy. The Negative is not exactly an impulse buy. In 1988, film was still very much alive, but the idea that mom would need the Zone System to take pictures of her small child is either very ironic, or very inspiring.
If she was indeed dragging out the 8x10 to photograph Peter, I'd call that inspiring. If she was like most normal people, and used a point-and-shoot from K-Mart, I think the irony is that our casual photography wouldn't have grown if the ground hadn't first been broken by Ansel Adams.
22 July 2010
19 July 2010
It's Wedding Season.
No Bag Limit
Last night I shot a wedding with Benjamin Porter. About ten minutes into the 20-minute ceremony, the rain began. It didn't stop for two hours.
It was a nightmare for the couple. For me, it was solid gold. Like Sam Abell says, bad weather means good photos.
Everyone handled it well, especially the bride and groom, who called off the formal portraits for fear that we'd all get killed by lightning. Having the sense to forfeit some once-in-a-lifetime--and very expensive--photography to keep everyone alive bodes well for the marriage.
It's rare to shoot wedding photos that find a place in the DarkTopo. I can't bring myself to be one of those photographers that blogs about each wedding, and about how honored and humbled they are to be part of Bride and Groom's BIG DAY, and how the newly-weds are most special couple ever, at least until it's time to impress a new client.
The point of DarkTopo is to tell the truth. So, three truths: I am honored and humbled to shoot most weddings, some couples are very special, and some clients do need impressing. I'd never let the last truth interfere with the first two.
More truth: The divorce rate is 50%. The "BIG DAY" is a brutal, hellish experience for pretty much everyone involved. Flowers wilt, honeymoons end, and we're all left to nurture the soil of our relationships for ourselves. The lucky, wise and hard-working succeed, everyone else fails.
And that's how it should be. Marriage and wedding photography were meant to be difficult: If it were easy, everyone would do it.
The High Lonesome Hill
Last month I rolled out to the woods to shoot a wedding with Larry White.
Larry's the one on the right. On the left is Mariah, who we both knew from way back in the day when we all inhaled the same darkroom chemicals for four years. Unlike Larry and I, Mariah shows no lasting effects. Here's an older picture, from what now seems like a lifetime ago:
Mariah's documentary work with a senior bowling league was some of the best photography I've ever seen. I still tell my students about it. She's also among the most matter-of-fact people I've ever known, which is about the best quality to have in a darkroom colleague. In the dark, it's best if your friends don't pull punches.
One night, I was standing in the hall with a dripping wet print, and Mariah came through the revolving door.
"What's wrong?"
"This guy's shirt," I said. "I can't make it black."
"It shouldn't be black."
". . . Oh."
And then she went back in, completely unaware that she had just blown my fixer-addled mind. It was the first time I'd ever understood the Zone System in any practical way.
Five years later, here's her wedding band:
So it's a surreal thing, watching people go through it. Some are more graceful than others. The most graceful are those who keep a grip on who they are underneath the costumes and rose petals, and they are also the easiest to photograph. Point a camera at a bride, and everything--the large-bore lens, the blinding flash, the white-knuckle grip--says, "OMG! You're wearing a wedding dress!"
And the graceful ones say: "Of course I'm wearing a wedding dress. It's my wedding."
And that's when the wedding begins to slip into DarkTopo territory, where I'm not afraid to capture things as I see them. Or, rather, things are the way I see them, and it's okay for me to capture them. Of course I know what I'm doing. I'm the photographer.
If you're going to tell the truth, you have to admit that there are moments worth capturing because they were good. These are the times you'll remember later, not because they were beautiful or true, though they may have been, but because they were good.
Those of us that spend our lives on the left side of the histogram struggle to admit it. But if you can't confess that every now and then you find a piece of real beauty in front of your lens, you're not telling the truth at all. Sometimes, it shouldn't be black.
On the other hand, sometimes it should, and nothing ever changes:
Last night I shot a wedding with Benjamin Porter. About ten minutes into the 20-minute ceremony, the rain began. It didn't stop for two hours.
It was a nightmare for the couple. For me, it was solid gold. Like Sam Abell says, bad weather means good photos.
Everyone handled it well, especially the bride and groom, who called off the formal portraits for fear that we'd all get killed by lightning. Having the sense to forfeit some once-in-a-lifetime--and very expensive--photography to keep everyone alive bodes well for the marriage.
It's rare to shoot wedding photos that find a place in the DarkTopo. I can't bring myself to be one of those photographers that blogs about each wedding, and about how honored and humbled they are to be part of Bride and Groom's BIG DAY, and how the newly-weds are most special couple ever, at least until it's time to impress a new client.
The point of DarkTopo is to tell the truth. So, three truths: I am honored and humbled to shoot most weddings, some couples are very special, and some clients do need impressing. I'd never let the last truth interfere with the first two.
More truth: The divorce rate is 50%. The "BIG DAY" is a brutal, hellish experience for pretty much everyone involved. Flowers wilt, honeymoons end, and we're all left to nurture the soil of our relationships for ourselves. The lucky, wise and hard-working succeed, everyone else fails.
And that's how it should be. Marriage and wedding photography were meant to be difficult: If it were easy, everyone would do it.
The High Lonesome Hill
Last month I rolled out to the woods to shoot a wedding with Larry White.
Larry's the one on the right. On the left is Mariah, who we both knew from way back in the day when we all inhaled the same darkroom chemicals for four years. Unlike Larry and I, Mariah shows no lasting effects. Here's an older picture, from what now seems like a lifetime ago:
Mariah's documentary work with a senior bowling league was some of the best photography I've ever seen. I still tell my students about it. She's also among the most matter-of-fact people I've ever known, which is about the best quality to have in a darkroom colleague. In the dark, it's best if your friends don't pull punches.
One night, I was standing in the hall with a dripping wet print, and Mariah came through the revolving door.
"What's wrong?"
"This guy's shirt," I said. "I can't make it black."
"It shouldn't be black."
". . . Oh."
And then she went back in, completely unaware that she had just blown my fixer-addled mind. It was the first time I'd ever understood the Zone System in any practical way.
Five years later, here's her wedding band:
So it's a surreal thing, watching people go through it. Some are more graceful than others. The most graceful are those who keep a grip on who they are underneath the costumes and rose petals, and they are also the easiest to photograph. Point a camera at a bride, and everything--the large-bore lens, the blinding flash, the white-knuckle grip--says, "OMG! You're wearing a wedding dress!"
And the graceful ones say: "Of course I'm wearing a wedding dress. It's my wedding."
And that's when the wedding begins to slip into DarkTopo territory, where I'm not afraid to capture things as I see them. Or, rather, things are the way I see them, and it's okay for me to capture them. Of course I know what I'm doing. I'm the photographer.
If you're going to tell the truth, you have to admit that there are moments worth capturing because they were good. These are the times you'll remember later, not because they were beautiful or true, though they may have been, but because they were good.
Those of us that spend our lives on the left side of the histogram struggle to admit it. But if you can't confess that every now and then you find a piece of real beauty in front of your lens, you're not telling the truth at all. Sometimes, it shouldn't be black.
On the other hand, sometimes it should, and nothing ever changes:
11 July 2010
Reception + Night on the Town
Thanks to all who came out for the Asheville: Double-Take reception last night!
^^The fabulous Lynne Harty.
After we'd discussed all the art snobbery we could think of, we decided to cast off our berets in favor of a raucous night on the town. The Bard could hardly contain himself.
^^The fabulous Lynne Harty.
After we'd discussed all the art snobbery we could think of, we decided to cast off our berets in favor of a raucous night on the town. The Bard could hardly contain himself.
09 July 2010
"Asheville: Double Take" Reception Saturday Night!!
Awesome photography, plus free food and booze, plus the chance to tell your grandchildren you met Max Cooper before all the fame and fortune went to his head!
Asheville Community Theatre
35 East Walnut Street (across from Magnolias!)
Asheville NC, 28801
5:00 - 6:30 p.m.*
*Actually, we'll be there later, but the play gets started shortly thereafter. And I'll be rolling in a little early if you want to see me without a drink in each hand and lipstick all over my collar.
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