Category: the camera

See. Stop. Click

Posted on Posted in creativity, minimum daily requirement, Pacific Coast Highway, the arc, the camera

We walk around, make our way to or from something. If we look with easy eyes, arrangements, occasions, even sounds prompt attention. Further inspection, reaction. Most of us, for most of the time are more involved with something else to see what is seeable. People drive thousands of miles without seeing what they drive past so they can do what they think is expected; do what the great-one did.

Three instances of misses, and the effort of making them. These are all part of the infinite roll. They aren’t edited; not even change of exposure. They remain direct phonecaptures.

I notice something — not a snake. has a shiny part. So, I make an exposure. This assures that the angle, first surface of the render is made.

walking closer, make another exposure.. it will need post to succeed. As it is, it fails.

Inside, a mirror and shop display. It must be something. Feels like it, because of the light patterns. As I adjust my position things arrange themselves. Three tries. I’m tempted to move the mirror; even the bench. I don’t. This isn’t a studio shot. If it were, I’d feather the lights. Make changes to the surface of the mirror. Dulling spray applied locally.

Three it didn’t work. If it had been on film no chance of getting that image — film that could have done it would be cinema film.

Outside; windows with words. Breaking the scene into one word pulled apart. It fails. The bush that would do the main “obscuring” isn’t dense enough. This could be retouched. Not certain this is worth the effort, given the format of the file — too low pixel density. Is it worth the return with the Phase Back?

We can see before we can walk. We can walk before we read. Everything leads us toward understanding.

If you think it might be something, make it into that something. If you can’t; if it just doesn’t work, make the effort anyway, otherwise, you won’t know, and if you don’t know, you don’t learn. The main learning isn’t about the how of things. It is the other part of things.

Contemplating Format

Posted on Posted in film, the camera

Why Large Format?

Simple enough question. Asked often enough that there are a string of readymade answers.

  • forces me to slow down and become a better photographer
  • largeformat is a state of mind
  • i never choose easy things
  • for the image quality // lack of grain, more detail..
  • because anyone can take a photo with a …

Is it contemplative or contemptuous? how big to make it meaningful? Are they defenders or defensive? Maybe just format phonies riding EZ Bake answers to a very slow pace.

contemplation isn’t an emulsion

In the days of silver, training began with the view camera, progressing to the 35 & 120 rollfilm cameras. In this century, learning photography begins with a cellphone, or DSLR. Within the Fine Art Schools, those stand alone places not sharing a quad, courtyard, bookstore with a business or engineering school, photography often includes a darkroom section. If the school maintains a studio interest, then it will teach the view camera. The studio is the natural habitat of the view camera. Photography was born indoors, looking out a window.

size is mobility; flexibility; durability

Paint in Tubes

“Without colors in tubes, there would be no Cézanne, no Monet, no Pissarro, and no Impressionism.”

Renoir

The French impressionists worked directly, often without sketches. They favored bright color and strong texture. The range of color and immediacy of work would not have happened using the Renaissance mode of paint making; grind small amounts, putting excess into a ‘skin’ sealed by ‘spike.’ This method meant that the act of painting was slowed. Mix paint color by color. Even though industrial chemists had perfected more colors, they weren’t used widely, certainly not in the field.

John Rand provided the solution that set painting free. More colors that could be stored; even carried into the field for use by artists ready to explore topics beyond their studio window. Painting now is done using brighter colors, intermixed in the field; entire paintings being done using the entire surface and an enriched palette. Painting was changed when the painters used, and improved upon, the tools available.

Film in Rolls

Dickson, an employee of Edison, split 70mm film in two providing the movie industry more film for longer running scenes; and more takes. We got more accomplished directors and scripts. Stills got the 35 mm camera.

Oskar Barnack revising the exposure device from motion pictures into the 35mm still camera; first called the Ur-Leica. 1934, Kodak produces preloaded 35mm cassettes. Photography has its paint in tubes. We are now portable. Catching up to painters, once again.

Are we there yet?

Is there a Hierarchy of Formats which replace the Hierarchy of Genres? I hope not. There are certainly those who hold that big film deserves more respect. These are those with the belief that difficulty is the measure, maybe the only measure, of art, or at least valuable photographs. This isn’t a typical viewpoint of photographers trained in an art school. It seems the standard of those self trained “seekers of the light,” “adherents to long standing traditions.”

The format isn’t the Forum, where there is a persistent hierarchy of skill: harder is better; with the belief that the process is the hardest part. And the tradition they blindly follow has a source author who wrote:
“ Take my word for it, technique is not the difficult thing in art. Any reasonably capable youth can readily master all of the technical problems in existence in a few short months, but it requires many a long weary year to learn to see.” 1909