First try: Open Air Sudio

The first attempt with the open air studio turned out disastrously. The sample photos here were heavily "fixed" with different applications.

The concept: a tent or shade like structure assembled with PVC plumbing tubes and mosquito screen + a big white paper background.

The lesson: we need more punchy, contrasty light and even illumination. Actually the top image is one of the bad lighting. The one below (Ben and I) is good in terms of light because we stepped out of the shade but stupid as a portrait. The one below of Deborah was taken on the previous afternoon under different light conditions and looks somewhat better.

People of Barcelona

I have a few pictures from our recent Barcelona trip. This selection is images of random folks on the street. Not many and not spectacular ones but the experience convinced me to travel with a packet camera. I take many more photos and more casually than with a large and noisy and not-at-all-unnoticeable digital SLR. My dream travel camera would be a very small, fixed focal length (=fast and sharp) lens equipped camera with sophisticated all-auto features (with controls). Unfortunately there is no such thing as of yet. This time I used a Fuji F200 EXR. All the selected pictures are here.

[PS: there is hope. Today I read about this thrilling Olympus E-P1 camera that may soon fulfil my travel photo needs.]

If you go to New York....

....don't miss Avedon's fashion photographs at the ICP. His fashion photos never cease to fascinate me even after seeing them for the 50th time.

The Hungarian Bicyclist

When I was a Photographer

When I was a photographer, I shot several rolls of film a week. I loaded it myself into cassettes from 50 foot spools. I developed it in the kitchen with a thermometer and a water cooler, and I hung it in the shower to dry. I cut it up into 5-frame strips and sleeved it in plastic. I made contact sheets and picked the ones I wanted to print. Those I printed, on my Beseler enlarger, I washed in the bathtub and hung from wires in the bathroom to dry. I studied them, learned from them, and went out to do some more.

When I was a photographer, I had that rarest of opportunities: a steady supply of subjects who trusted me. I was one of them, and I had a calling from somewhere beyond to document what they were doing. It hit me when I had just moved to Westborough, out on 495, and I took my guitar to the Thursday night open mike at the Old Vienna Coffeehouse across the rotary from my place. I have not felt a compulsion like it since.

I was working every day, 9 to 5, but at night I could not stop making pictures. The links below are for slideshows of my folk portfolio that I have finally finished putting on flickr. I’ve met and photographed lots of singers and players known and unknown since then, but 1992-95 were the watershed years for me.

People still play and sing all over Massachusetts, some of these same people in fact, but this was somehow when a special time for music and a special time for me crossed paths. I make a digital image now and then these days, but back then, that was when I was a photographer.

Links:

Coffehouse B&W prints

Coffehouse color snapshots

Random 90's folk collection

Folk Studio Series

A Forest, 4 Elinchrom Rangers, a smoke machine, a Phase One camera, Drew Gardner, and, oh yes, a nude riding a water buffalo!

And no PhotoShop!  British photographer, Drew Gardner, might be the most insanely creative commercial photographer in the world. His upcoming DVD is featured on the Strobist site. Check out the "Humor" and "People" galleries on his website (click on the title). You'll probably end up following every link. Here are some seriously crazy ideas for portrait photography. (I must admit a certain predilection for over the top, roll-playing photos.)

Ghosts

My wife Julie's lifelong friend the artist Linda Bond is married to Rick who went to grade school with Tony who is married to Vita who is the director of the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research center at Boston University, and that is how Julie and I came to be present at the inaugural event of the Martin Luther King Jr. Leadership lecture series Friday evening. The event also marked the re-opening of The Martin Luther King Jr. room at the Mugar library, where Dr. Kings early papers are sorted and cataloged. Vita and Tony were at Linda and Rick’s place New Years day, and Vita was wowed by a portrait of Obama that Linda had done, and she offered Linda the chance to do some murals for the giant shades on the new King room. Linda in short order produced three scenes from Dr. King’s life; the Montgomery bus boycott, his time in Birmingham jail, and his 1963 speech for the March on Washington.

The featured speaker for the inaugural lecture was none other than Dr. Kings older sister Christine King-Farris, age 83, who proved at the podium to be as feisty as her legendary younger brother. She was introduced by the well-known activist and poet Nikki Giovanni, who now teaches at University of Virginia, and who poured some fire and brimstone of her own on the audience of some 800 people gathered in BU’s Metcalf hall.

In the MLK library room, I had fun getting pictures of other photographers trying to get pictures of the two dignitaries Giovanni and King-Farris, together. Linda's murals are silk-screened on to the window shades and are luminous in the daylight. Her original drawing of Obama hangs in the room as well.

Between the reception in the King library room and the lecture in Metcalf hall there many older people with first hand memories of the civil rights movement. Over their shoulders were ghosts, now perhaps ready to rest. I knew they were there, but I could not capture them on the 5D sensor.

Polish Photographer Andrzej Dragan

Here is some interesting, edgy, moody portrait work by Polish photographer, Andrzej Dragan. His work seems to be getting a lot of play in Europe. I quite enjoyed the quotes on the home page. The site is Flash based and you can really zoom into the images. This is one of the most benign of his portraits. I came across his work while looking up the use of digital techniques to paint and sculpt with light.

The Cambridge Art Portrait Photo meeting in March

Despite the unfriendly, cold evening (will this winter ever end?), a good number of Cambridge Art Association members arrived to the Kathryn Schultz Gallery to discuss the subject "how to interact with your subject/model as a photographer." We had a good two and a half hour conversation, which covered a variety of topics including the 90's folk music scene (see post below), street photography, studio portraits, and the advantage of being a woman when you approach someone you really want to photograph (and more). We also discussed the ethical and legal aspects of portrtait photography, including model releases for commercial work and copy right. We also had a pile of photo books on the table among them Anders Petersen's "Cafe Lehmitz" social documentary photos from a desolate bar in the 70's in Hamburg which stirred up heated discussions.

Also, the Fuji F200EXR (and the photos taken with that camera) generated some interest. Besides the advances in pocket camera design, we exchanged various ideas of how to "sell" yet an other photographic equipment purchase to your spouse. The F200EXR has great features but the photo quality is only remarkable when we compare it to its peers. At 1600 ISO the noise is too high (we are spoiled to also use the good SLR cameras). Unfortunately at the EXR Auto setting the ISO can not be limited to 800 (where the camera beats every point-and-shoot I have ever seen). In "P" setting you can limit the ISO. (The attached photos were taken in full auto EXR mode, most at ISO1600).

Ed suggested that we do assignments -- actually taking photos (??) instead of spreading our wisdom around the table. Hm.... new idea. Since the subject of this gathering is focused on photographing people we agreed to stick to that. Mary came up with a mysterious-artsy theme: BLACK. Now, what's that? Black color? Dark photos? Low key images in the basement? Night images in the kitchen or candle light dinner table pictures (of which I already happened to have plenty.) Go ahead, Fellow Enthusiasts, be specific or leave it open to imagination. Since I have the key to the gallery the next session will be when I (!) have a stunning photo that meets the challenge....or is that abuse of power?

Gonna Take a Miracle - Musicians

"For better or worse, lowered contrast, perhaps a bit of softness, blocked shadows, and grain are entrenched as part of the visual vocabulary of available light photography... when a performer is setting the mood, underexpose a bit, go for the drama, grit and atmosphere."

Shooting performers in nightclubs or coffeehouses is a subject close to my heart, and as group member Robert Hesse expressed in an email very well (above) – in low light there is only so much you can do. The joys and frustrations of this assignment taught me the fundamentals of photography pretty quickly. In the early days of nightclub photography, you had people wielding Weegee-like Speed Graphics with flashes attached. So all was sharp, but obviously the mood aesthetic suffered somewhat. But when 400 ASA film became available in the 50’s, photographers started to see what they could do with available light. When you see pictures made in this period by William Claxton, Carole Reiff, Roy DeCarava, you will find the camera of choice to be the Rolleiflex 6x6 TLR with its 2.8 Tessar and smooth-clicking shutter that would allow decent results at 1/30th of a second or even more with pushed development. But still, the most compelling "live" pictures are usually impressionistic.... You have the softness, the motion blur, the grain. Those pictures actually make up a small percentage of the output of the well known pros of the era, whose better known pictures are made in better lit environments – photo studios, recording studios, or even the street.. (though many of the subjects seem to be utterly unfamiliar with the concept of daylight.)

When I do no-light performance shots, where there are one or two dinky spotlights, usually with a red gel over them, I just put he camera on the widest aperture, a speed of about 60-125 depending on lens length, an ASA of 1600, and I hope for the best. I can crank up exposure more in RAW, and if I get nothing, well, there wasn’t any light.

I’ve dreamed up all sorts of workarounds, like maybe a snoot-gun pointed by an assistant at the singer, but you don’t want to raise too much ruckus doing this.... You have to stay fairly inconspicuous... my rules are don’t shoot for the first one or two songs, let the show get started while you study what the singer tends to do visually, hand gestures, head tilts or whatever to watch for. Look how the light falls when he or she moves here or there. Are you on the best side? What does the background look like and could you reposition to improve it?

When you start to shoot, do some anticipating for the moves in synch with the song. Try to wait for something visual to happen… you can’t photograph a note. There may be a fabulous note coming out of the mouth, but if there is no other reinforcing expression or gesture then the picture will be of your subject with her mouth open.

Obviously, don’t shoot during quiet, slow songs.... You don’t want to be blasting away during "My Funny Valentine.." Wait for the upbeat or louder tunes… there will be more movement anyway and the sound of your cameras will be covered… and be sure to be ready at the end of every song when the singer finishes, smiles, and acknowledges the applause. When all else fails, you definitely want those.

When I look at my coffehouse pictures from the early 90's, all I seem to see now are the technical flaws. But I know that I would rather have them than not - it is a miracle that they exist at all, and i knew that when I was taking them 15 years ago. The challenges are many but the rewards are great - you can get faces in transcendent states – far out of the ordinary and far into the soul.