Red Skies at Night

July 5, 2011

The Elliott Erwitt Show and Thoughts on Humor in Photography

Filed under: articles, exhibits, inspiration, photographers, photography, photos, reviews — Tags: , , — Eric Jeschke @ 10:26 pm

Street Performers, NYC

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I recently had a chance to visit New York City. I’m not certain, but I think the last time I was in NYC for any length of time was in the late 1980′s. I had heard various things about NYC being “cleaned up” in the last couple of decades, but nevertheless I was struck by the remarkable change the city had undergone. In short, it felt like a different city. The trains were clean and efficient; it felt reasonably safe to walk around at night (although I was only in Manhattan and Brooklyn) and I was only once approached by a panhandler. In my previous visit I felt like I was forever walking a phalanx of beggars. Perhaps my visit was a bit charmed, but it really felt like a different place.

The food and the sights and the street scenes were all classically NYC interesting, but the main thing that I want to write about today was a trip to the International Center for Photography to see the Elliott Erwitt exhibit, which runs until sometime in August. I was interested in seeing the show from the moment I read about it, and when I realized that we would be in the area I put it on my “must do” list for the NYC visit.

The show is a retrospective of Erwitt’s life’s work (he was born in 1928) and features a self-curated selection of large prints, several books, and other miscellanea. The 100 B&W prints are printed in various sizes. With the current trend towards huge prints, many of them are unfortunately printed much too large–I can only guess at the sizes of these, but some of them must border on 40 to 50 inches on a side. In my opinion, these larger prints suffered badly in some cases from huge, blotchy grain that distracted from the subject matter even viewed at respectable distances for prints of this size. I am guessing he was mostly a Leica 35mm shooter, and a 35mm frame can only be blown up so large before it begins falling apart. The smaller prints (15-30 inches/side) fared much better, retaining gorgeous tonalities and transitions, and allowing the viewer to move in closer for a more intimate encounter with the subject matter.

The exhibit showed off the Magnum photographer’s incredible photographic versatility and featured examples of street, documentary, photojournalist and portrait work. A few of the photographs are iconic: portraits of Marilyn Monroe, close-ups from the volatile Kruschev-Nixon meetings, humorous dog-human juxtapositions–I recognized many that I wouldn’t have put a name to beforehand. My favorites were the street and documentary prints, which often illustrated Erwitt’s sense of humor. This quote from the exhibit sums those up nicely:

“Above all, Erwitt is noted for his offbeat sense of humor, a rarity in photography. Throughout his work, Erwitt combines gentle whimsy with ironic observation of everyday life. Often his works involve visual puns that make the viewer look twice; such clever comedy requires that every picture be organized with great elegance and precision.”

Perhaps these resonated with me the most because they are precisely closest to what I would say is my own style, which I have described to others for a while now as often humorous or whimsical in nature (although not always so subtle). I can only agree that humor is a rarity in “serious” photography (no pun intended); it must be done with “elegance and precision” in order to keep the viewer from immediately dismissing it into the genre of the snapshot and vernacular. I don’t know all the reasons for this, but it is the same in any branch of art: most art is serious, and the goal of many artists is to make you think, make you angry, make you uncomfortable–anything but to make you smile or laugh. Yet humor and laughter are staples of our human emotions as well; why shouldn’t art evoke them? It’s taken me many years of photography to begin to see my own style emerge, and I feel like that is something I’m finally beginning to get a handle on. While Erwitt’s style is different, he’s one of the few very successful photographers in which I can see an affinity for humor, and it’s refreshing and strangely familiar to see it.

Despite some minor flaws in the presentation, all in all I feel the Erwitt retrospective is a very interesting and worthwhile show. If you will be in the NYC area before the end of the summer, I highly recommend stopping by the ICP on 6th ave midtown and checking it out.

February 21, 2011

Dewitt Jones Seminar

Filed under: inspiration, photographers, workshops — Tags: — Eric Jeschke @ 9:56 am

Dewitt Jones Seminar

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I attended a short one-day seminar by Dewitt Jones last Saturday. For those not familiar, he is a photographer whose work dates back to the 80s and maybe earlier. He was a freelance photographer for National Geographic for many years, did a stint in advertising, and then switched to teaching and writing. These days he also does a fair bit of book writing and corporate speaking (inspirational key note addresses, etc.). He may be best known for his column from Outdoor Photographer magazine that has been running for many years. I can remember subscribing to that magazine back in the film days of the late 80s and early 90s and avidly reading his column. He was one of the refreshing few who didn’t dwell on the technical side, but talked more about creativity and vision.  He’s a part-time resident of Hawai’i, living on Molokai and running a few workshops there during the winter and spring months.

A one-day seminar/workshop is just enough to give you some inspiration, and I enjoyed his presentation and Q&A. He showed a lot of his work, beginning with the early N.G. stuff and progressing through his ad work up to the present.  His most interesting stuff (to me) was when he switched to teaching and writing for making his living.  It looks (and sounds) as though that’s when be began to experiment a lot more.  He got in to polaroids, and infrared, and all manner of digital, including small sensor work.  He finished with a section on the iphone.  He’s a big fan, and makes lots of images with it.  He’s a dynamic speaker with a well-polished presentation (perhaps just a bit too polished).  He interspersed the slide shows with Q&A sessions, and he comes off as truly loving the times we are living in for image making.  All in all I have to agree, since I also don’t put bread on the table by selling images either!

We finished the day with a critique session, and for my image he took at look at Self-Portrait, Kalapana, which the gallery owner had kindly printed for me at 16×16 in (40.64 cm square).  The print was nicely done–I hadn’t seen it before it went up on the easel.  He liked the print and had some nice things to say about it.  Perhaps the most interesting thing for me was that he liked the “playful” style of the the photograph.  To me, that sums up my style pretty accurately.  I feel that I have a playful eye and that is what I try to get across in most of my photographs.  Photography can be so vernacular that “serious” photographers often try to steer away from a playful style, yet there have been some that embraced the approach and did it well and successfully, such as William Wegman.

Great fun to spend a day having a conversion about photography.

 

February 5, 2011

On Leaving a Photographic Legacy

Filed under: archiving, articles, photographers, photography, photos — Tags: , — Eric Jeschke @ 12:36 pm

There from Here

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Regular readers may be wondering what happened to my series on a Linux-based photography workflow. I haven’t forgotten it. I was interrupted by a business trip to Japan and some out-of-town visitors. I have a couple of articles almost done on that and those will be coming up soon.

Meanwhile I leave you with another column I wrote for the local photography club newsletter.

======= =======
The 1/250 Second Banana

Dear Readers,

Do you have an interest in your photographic legacy? I am referring to your body of photographic work and your association with it after you move on from this world.

It’s an interesting question to think about. For some, it is all about the journey, and not about the legacy; they could care less what happens to their photographs after they are gone. For others, it may be important to keep the photographs available and even documented/organized so that their children, grandchildren or interested family historians can have interesting material to sift through. For some photography is enough of their life’s work that they would like broader recognition of some kind. Many artists are not appreciated so much in their time, but only after they pass on. Some may already have a body of prominent work, and have historical or financial considerations to consider. Finally, even the most mundane photographs may be of great interest to anthropologists and historians of the future, to understand what life was like in our times. Imagine a researcher 1000 years from now recovering and decoding digital images or negatives from a carefully preserved and documented time capsule.

If you are interested in a photographic legacy for any of these reasons, it is well worth your while to think about what you can do now to aid those will come after. If you follow photography news on the internet you will no doubt by now have heard of Vivian Maier, a slightly eccentric french-american nanny that spent most of her life in Chicago and amassed decades worth of mid-to-late century street photography shots, mostly taken with a Rollei TLR. She did not make any concerted effort to organize or show her photography, and consequently almost no one knew of her work. After her death, several boxes of hers that were in storage were auctioned off at a business that routinely sells abandoned items. The boxes contained a few prints, a number of developed rolls of negatives, and even more rolls of undeveloped film. They were purchased by a young Chicago-area businessman named John Maloof who had an interest in real-estate: rummaging through the boxes, he recognized some of the locations in some of the prints and thought that there might be some historical interest. Although not a photographer himself, after spending some time examining the prints and negatives, they began to capture his imagination. Vivian clearly had a very good eye for street photography. He began to scan some of the negatives and prints and post some of them on the Flickr street photography groups, asking if there was anything interesting about the work. Due to the overwhelmingly positive feedback and interest he received, he began to educate himself about photography, street photography and Vivian Maier. Who was this interesting and reclusive woman? Well, long story short, due to his efforts there is now significant public interest in her work, and a show of her work is now on display at the Chicago Cultural Center through April 3rd. Maloof and his associates have raised money to make a book and a film about her life. It seems certain that she will be ultimately be recognized somewhere in the pantheon of important street photographers of the 20th century.

With a great story like this, it is easy to overlook the fact that her boxes of photographs could very easily have ended up in a landfill. Plastic and paper being what they are, it is unlikely that she would have any legacy, however minor, but for a very lucky break. If she had taken any steps in thinking about her photographic legacy she might have improved the odds greatly, and perhaps received at least some recognition during her lifetime. There are two important lessons here: one is to try and show your work to people, and the other is to try to insure that your photographs are safely protected, organized and documented. Accomplish both and you greatly increase the chances that you may receive some recognition for your work in this life, and perhaps more importantly, that someone else with an interest in your work may find it after you are gone, possibly resulting in posthumous recognition or at least making it of use to others.

Although digital images may seem ephemeral, being only bits on some kind of storage media, they also offer a very compelling way to safeguard your work because they can be duplicated without loss of quality. By copying your files to multiple media, and storing them in multiple locations (for example, a cool, dry room in your home, a safe-deposit box at the bank, and a secure location on the internet), you greatly reduce the chances of a catastrophic loss of your work. Mold, theft, fire, hurricane, etc. will not deprive you of your work. If you shoot film, or produce hand-altered prints, I highly recommend scanning your work to afford the same kinds of protection. Be sure to check the locally-accessible media periodically, and transfer to newer, safer formats when possible. This does not have to be onerous; once or twice a year might be sufficient.

When storing your work, consider carefully the importance of widely used and understood image file formats like TIFF and JPEG. Proprietary RAW formats come and go, and due to the short-sighted and protective nature of camera companies some of these formats have even contained encrypted parts. Due to the huge number of JPEG images out there it is very likely that someone 200 years from now will have a way to view one. Whether we can say the same for the unique RAW format of a Canon DSLR camera that sold from 2003-2004 is highly questionable.

Finally, consider the ways in which you can make your work visible/accessible to others. Not only is this helpful in receiving possibly useful feedback, but you greatly increase the chances the someone will recognize or remember that you have a body of photographic work, and when you pass away, it may receive increased scrutiny. Shows, magazines and other short-lived exhibitions are good for creating interest, but they tend to pass quickly. Nevertheless they increase the likelihood of someone taking further interest in your work. Consider longer term exposure: is there a place where you can donate a piece of work that will hang for a long time? Making a book and giving a few copies to interested family or friends is also good. Putting your work online in a web site is yet another way (and there is a synergy here with having an off-site copy of your work). For a web site it is important to remember that just creating a web site is not enough to drive interest (if you build it they will not necessarily come); usually one needs to engage in activities that drive traffic and eyeballs to the work (e.g. blogging, marketing, etc.). Still, just having the work internet accessible means that someone could discover it more easily, and that could be significant.

Time to wrap up. I hope that I have made the point that no matter what kind of photographer you are, there is a case for a photographic legacy, and that it is worthwhile thinking about it. Perhaps your decision is not to leave a legacy, and that is a reasonable choice, if consciously made. Perhaps that was Vivian’s decision. Yet I think that was not her decision. The fact that she carted these boxes of things around from employer to employer, and finally into storage tells me that they were very important to her, and that she was thinking a little bit about her photographic legacy. But Vivian Maier got lucky that John Maloof found her work just in time. Even back then she could have been more careful.

Till next time,

Eric Jeschke

ps. for more information on Vivian Maier, visit her article on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivian_Maier) and follow the links at the bottom.

January 15, 2010

Finding Winter Inspiration

Filed under: inspiration, life, noted, photographers, photos, process — Tags: , — Eric Jeschke @ 1:39 pm

Watching for Whales

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“The job of a photographer is not to produce decoration for other people’s walls and homes; it’s a real voyage of discovery, and I think it’s an authentic way to go through life, it’s a way of discovering things, finding things, experiencing things
…
it’s just a wonderful way, in a sense, to go through life as opposed to just trying to produce and create photographs; it’s not completely about that.” — Michael Kenna

I’m in Tokyo on business, but I came, hoping as usual, to do some photography on the side.  Unfortunately I am not inspired, being somewhat wrapped up in work.  In the evening, I ran across this video by Michael Kenna, via Green Tea Gallery, and courtesy of a blog post comment by Wouter Brandsma, who it seems is also seeking some muse in this dreary winter.

The video is well worth watching, and has the wonderful quote above about photography as a life process.  Highly recommended.

Well, it’s officially the weekend here, and I’m off to a new part of Tokyo for me.  Let’s see if I can find my photographic pulse again!

January 4, 2010

Turn of the Year Thoughts

Filed under: books, business, cameras, exhibits, framing, inspiration, life, linux, photographers, photos, POD, printing, process, products, scanning, small cameras, tools, web, workflow, workshops — Eric Jeschke @ 12:05 am

Dreamscape

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As we pass from one year/decade into the next it seems natural to reflect on the year left behind and the year ahead.  I certainly have been doing my fair share of that, especially since the last week of the year has had a few vacation days attached and I’ve had calmer days to let thoughts wander and reorganize themselves. I’ve noticed that a lot of bloggers are sharing their thoughts, so I will too.  But I’ll try not to ramble too much!

2009 was a typical year of photography for me in that I didn’t have enough time for it.  The pressing needs of husband, father and provider came first, as they should, and everything else was catch as catch can.  Nevertheless, there were some interesting developments for me.

On the picturing side, opportunities were largely made around weekends, holidays, vacation days, business trips to other cities and the occasional outing with the local photo club. I continue my trend away from nature photography (present picture excepted!) toward more candid, portrait, “street” and still life picturing. I produced my second book (thanks again, SoFoBoMo!) and along the way found a very interesting new process for making the book that saved me a ton of computer face time. This led to a further exploration of the technique for producing folios. And although I didn’t make massive headway on it, I have spent a lot more time thinking about sets and series of images, themes and more intentional picturing, and it is beginning to have an impact on my work that is leading me in good directions, artistically.

On the equipment side, I found myself largely making the switch from serious compacts with 1/1.8 sensors to the m4/3 format with a much larger sensor.  This really only happened after I acquired a 20mm pancake lens, which made the larger camera small enough to meet my carry along cut-off weight/size.  The new sensor and lens made for some different picturing possibilities than I had been making, and I found myself returning to familiar 50mm SLR type photography, albeit not with a Pentax MX, but a tiny computer with a lens attached. And it wasn’t nearly as bad as it sounds.  New equipment can be an enabler of sorts, and I certainly enjoyed exploring with the new gear.  I also managed to scan a fair number of old slides and via the learning process established a powerful and consistent scanning workflow.

On the technical/photo processing side, I continue to use the Linux and Mac environments for photo developing and organization.  I discovered a couple of really great apps for the Linux environment for developing (jpeg/raw) and photo viewing and organizing. On the Mac side I’ve been playing with DNG profiles, raw conversion, LightRoom 3beta and of course printing (I still print from Photoshop).  I got a new wide-gamut monitor with a profiling device and finally moved away from manufacturer’s canned profiles to my own.  I haven’t blogged about too many of these things yet (mostly because I don’t find technical posts as interesting as other aspects of photography), but I may talk about some of these developments in the weeks ahead.

On the inspiration side, I visited the Yousef Karsh exhibit at the Art Institute in Chicago, entered two local photo/art show call-for-entries and got pieces accepted, attended a critique, sat on the board of another photo contest, attended several art show openings, and attended about half of the photo shoots and meetings of the local photography club.  I tried to read a couple of books on the creative process, but got bored. I read a (probably) unhealthy number of photographers blog posts and browsed a lot of online work. I posted a lot of photos and a few words now and then on my own blog and enjoyed some very pleasant exchanges with other bloggers (you know who you are!). I had a print swap with another blogger (Thanks, Kjell!).  I participated in a small invitation-only online photography critique group (which I liked a lot), until the owner decided to shut it down. Oh, and I sold exactly one photo on the internet. :-)

Wow, looking back it sounds like I accomplished a lot, but somehow I always want more photography!

Looking ahead, here’s what I see for 2010 in Eric’s photographic journey:

Picturing: I want to really put a concerted effort into themed work.  I’ll probably still be posting a fair bit of come-what-may, but there is going to be more intentional picturing making.  This could be bad, if it makes me feel forced, but I’m going to try to do it in clever ways that don’t get me into that corner.  And I’m going to schedule some days for pure photography.  I’m also planning to dabble in a little video (courtesy of the GH1), but nothing too serious.  Expect some more “formal” portraits. I’ll make another book.  I’d like to produce at least one good folio on interesting paper.

Equipment: I’ll be continuing to explore the GH1 and the normal prime as my main photo machine. I may try some more iPhone photos as a kind of explicit toy-camera like effect, but I don’t expect too much here, I found the lack of any basic exposure controls somewhat frustrating.  I don’t expect any major new camera purchases (never say never!), but perhaps a new lens may show up some day.  I’ll continue my scanning of old material and hope to make some good progress on completing it.

Processing/Technical: more experimentation along the vectors I’m currently exploring as described above.  I’m currently into a fairly minimalist processing regime, and I don’t expect too much change there, although I’ve been playing with raw development a bit more and may try to settle into some custom raw processing profiles (tone curves, etc).  I want to print and frame more work this year.  I’ll be ordering a bunch of new papers and testing them out.  On the blogging side, I’m pretty happy with the outsourced WordPress blog (after years of maintaining my own web sites) and will probably stick with that.  I renewed my Flickr Pro membership for two more years, but I also signed up with SmugMug (and transferred the Flickr sets over with SmuggLr) because I’ve grown tired of Flickr stagnating; it seems that integration into Yahoo sucked all the creative life out of it, and there has been almost no new development on it.  After the dust settles I’ll be with one or the other.  I’ll probably drop my Imagekind Pro account as it hasn’t been much use for any of the uses I originally envisioned it for (and that includes a few things that SmugMug does); it also appears to be languishing after absorption by CafePress.  I may blog about a couple of these decisions if there is interest.

Inspiration: I will be entering more photo contests/shows this year.  It would be interesting to attend a workshop if I can spare the time. I’ll continue to try and attend as many openings as I can because I find viewing art of any kind inspirational, and photographs take a whole new aura in print.  I’m going to pay more attention to the cinematography in the few films I will see.  I’ll continue to blog and post work (of course!) as well as try to keep up with a reasonable core set of blogs. I’d like to do more print swaps with other photographers, if I can find any willing participants.  And I’d like to participate again in a small, private, online critique group (anyone know of any openings?)

Whew!

Well, maybe I didn’t succeed on the avoidance of rambling.  Nevertheless, a fairly decent summary of what was and what is likely, vis-a-vis Eric.  I sincerely hope that you, Dear Reader, will continue to enjoy and prosper in your photographic journey in 2010.  I look forward to another year of contact, learning, ideas and inspiration. Cheers!

December 26, 2009

Using “social media” to share/promote photography

Filed under: noted, photographers, photos, web — Tags: , — Eric Jeschke @ 12:00 pm

Bend in the Road

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I ran across two interesting posts from photographers about Facebook yesterday: Doug Plummer is embracing the use of FB and Twitter to drive traffic to his blog, while Elizabeth Fleming is breaking an addiction to FB to use precious time in more productive ways. These are not opposing viewpoints, per se, but they raised a question that has been bubbling in the back of my mind to the forefront: what is utility, if any, of the new “social media” sites in sharing or promoting your work as a photographer (“professional” or otherwise) vs. how thinly can you spread yourself?

I’ve eschewed Twitter so far because, like Elizabeth, time is so very precious right now and I can’t see the utility of multitasking online activity so frequently so as to dilute any blocks that I may manage to put together.   It took me a while to “get” Facebook, and, insofar as I get it, mostly I am using it sparingly to keep in touch with old friends, dispersed friends, family, etc. But what I am noticing about FB is that there is a very different demographic and much bigger audience there than I see on the blogosphere. What is clear is that there are an awful lot of people who “get” FB and have evolved their online lives to where that is the central focus, radiating outwards. I do not doubt that Twitter is similar.

I’m not about to start populating lots of alternative sites with my photographs and longer thoughts–the blog is perfect for that and I have concerns about rights issues that have been raised regarding FB.  What I am doing, like Doug, is starting to post links to my blog postings on FB. This is a quick operation, and essentially plants a convenient link with a thumbnail and some preview text right in the middle of a large alternative audience to that of the blogosphere. These aren’t the same sort of folks reading my posts out of a RSS reader.  I’ll see over time how it affects traffic to the site, but I know there are a lot of folks there that I can share my photography with that wouldn’t otherwise even be aware of it–they don’t have the time or inclination to check my site otherwise and by in large, I’m guessing most of them don’t even know what an RSS reader is.  This seems to be a reasonable compromise to spreading yourself too thinly by posting the same stuff to a lot of different sites.  I’m going to try to keep an objective eye on my online time as well.  If I start to feel too thinly stretched, I (like Elizabeth) may end up pulling the plug on Facebook.

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