Jill Greenberg

I just read of the remarkable discovery of a new species of monkey and it prompted me to think of Jill Greenberg's series on monkey portraits.  Here is the CNN article on the new species of monkey and here is a glimpse of some of the monkey portraits as was featured in Jill Greenberg's 2006 exhibit at Clamp Art.

Ken Pivak

My friend, Ken Pivak, has been working on a new series he calls, "Housewives". He works in collaboration with his models in order to come up with images that catapult our notions of a traditional housewife into either fantasy or an interpretation of what it might be to relish the escape, endure the drudgery, or take glory in the privilege. This concept makes me wonder, why has no one ever done this before?! Brilliant!

Before I display the images from the "Housewives" series, I am showcasing some photographs from a series Ken did as an editorial for San Francisco Chronicle about couture designers in San Francisco, all shot in famous restaurants. This series is what first grabbed my attention to his work.



Housewives Series:





Ken is also the founder of Digital 1 to 1.
Article on Digital 1 to 1, including Ken's bio click here.

Wistful Thinking

Today I looked at the work of André Kertész (in part to prepare for an upcoming post). Today I also am working on a submission for my stock agency. Today I'm in technical hell while reminded of the genius of the masters and how simplicity ruled. A sort of less is more approach as applied to process. With all the technological advances in photography comes the equal and sometimes more significant issue of frustration.

On top of that comes the issue of greater quantity since digital is more accessible, more forgiving, more prone to causing a willy nilly style of shooting. When in doubt, fire away! And bracket galore! You don't even have to know what you're doing! With all that mass and volume -- the ability to shoot thousands and thousands of images, no worry to the time developing nor the cost, the edits along with the photographers must be whittled down so that competition is sometimes based on the technical alone. This explains the phenomenon of tech geek turned photographer.

What I mean is that if you place two photographs side by side and they are identical, the one with greater resolution will win even if the image is supposed to be, say, underexposed or too contrasty. Reproduction rules even in the realm of photographs intended only for a gallery wall. With film, you could intentionally blow out your whites or block up your blacks.

I miss the darkroom and the endless hours of watching something grow before your eyes. More so, I miss the film -- how shooting it was more deliberate and even, more ceremonial. Revealing your final results was like unveiling a long awaited sculpture. Don't even get me started on the tactile enjoyment of film or that great sound of the film being wrapped around a reel -- how it was at once crisp and yet mellow. (I know, I'm romanticizing.)

As much as I love the immediacy of digital shooting, I miss the fact that quality was almost anything you wanted it to be. If you wanted grain or overexposure, no problem! If you wanted to shoot "low res" through a Coke bottle and a cardboard box or if you wanted to smear Vaseline all over your lens, it was allowed. No matter what you did, you could always chalk it up to art.

I'd like to just pick up my camera, grab a fleeting moment and know that it's going to be judged not on perfection but vision and interpretation of a scene or subject. It's as if all the requirements for technical prowess are stifling creativity. One of the very things we love about digital, the spontaneity, gets kicked in the bum and bogged down by rules and histograms and mega bytes. If you can't blow it up to the size of a billboard, be prepared to re-shoot or forget it.

But don't get me wrong. I do thoroughly appreciate digital -- I love the ease and instant gratification, even the reduced expense on materials. There are the added infinite pleasures of post-production as if Photoshop is the venue for some all-night party and it is, after all, the modern day darkroom. I don't know if I'm wistful or rebellious. I long for the elementary and I get ornery when I feel intimidated. Technical schmechnical. It's just so hard to colour within the lines.

Cropping as an after-thought ...

Full-frame versus cropping -- to be or not to be.

To "be" is to shoot full-frame. "Not to be" would suggest that if you didn't frame your shot just right when shooting, cropping it afterward is in order to SAVE the shot, hence, you didn't really get the shot you wanted.

Well, that's the purist school of thought anyway.

If given my druthers, I'd never crop. With digital, however, I not only crop like mad, I manipulate the heck out of images. We have the luxury to SAVE images that way. We have the luxury to imprint mediocrity with something splendid. Digital is uber-forgiving and I'd even go so far as to say that if you don't like the shot and you don't like the crop or the manipulation, hey -- just blend it all together with some elements from another rejected shot and you could conceivably come up with a masterpiece.

That isn't to diminish the finished product when its rendered through digital imaging, but for those who are process aficionados, there is something to be admired about capturing the final image at the very moment you expose the film.

I sound highfalutin but the truth is, I really believe that shooting full frame and the deliberate nature of it is an art unto itself. It used to be touted as the respectable way of shooting when you're talking about film. But then, everything seemed more precious with film.

Shooting full-frame is a WAY OF SEEING which means a way of arranging what appears in your viewfinder.

When you compose your shot deliberately so that every corner of the frame is considered, it cannot be denied that that is a more PURE way of taking a photograph. There is no after-thought on which to rely. Sure, I can thoroughly appreciate manipulated images and the painter's mindset that accompanies post-production imagery, but I can tell you that it is exceptionally moving when a powerful image is rendered just at the moment the shutter is clicked.

Shooting full-frame is an art. Cropping is an after-thought. A good crop can produce better art but the better photographer can produce imagery with no cropping at all. : )