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.

American West

Posted on Posted in lost horizon, on photographers, overnight notes, The Biz, the fora, Theory: figurative

when trivia becomes the reason for the gathering. Weekenders, devoted members of the Snobby Hobby discuss work turning to the meaningless, quickly.

It may not mean anything, yet it fills the time of those without much effort.

Let’s get to the work… they can’t. What they can say about their work is how it was done. Even after decades, the conversation is at how-to.

speaking from rumor. once heard becomes the word.

The why-for of considering their campfire stories. Do they propose a mode of looking without understanding who, what it excludes. What, the how and the who they condone (or condemn) matters, perhaps, even more as the world of profession recedes into the past. There are amateurs and then again others. The nature of a field mixed without common ground is my interest.

Richard Avedon

Baldwin and Avedon. Nothing Personal [ https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/13/richard-avedon-and-james-baldwins-joint-examination-of-american-identity ] was my preferred book. Baldwin’s writing was my prompt. Many years later, I see Avedon as a masterful photographer. A maker of cliches rather than a perpetuator of them. His story is that of many commercial photographers, although he was able to move from the commerce to collection with help from the Amon Carter.

 Philip Gefter’s book, “What Becomes a Legend Most,” argues for Avedon’s place as one of the 20th century’s most consequential photographers.

Laura Wilson documented the project’s gestation and birth in her book “Avedon at Work: In the American West.” Published in 2003. She learned the most necessary “craft” of photography — dealing with the world. The following video at the Amon Carter hits several key points in her method.

Modernage

Founded by Ralph Baum in the 1950′s, New York’s Modernage Photographics pioneered many of the most advanced darkroom techniques in the last half of the 20th Century. A master photographer and technician, Baum was to champion the notion that the art of the photographic print was equally important to the creation of the photographic negative that served as its inspiration. Name Drop: Josef Cernovics; Michael J. Masucci 

1985 Amon Carter shows Avedon In the American West

Deborah Bright (spe exposure) publishes Mother Nature and Marlboro Men… about landscape photography and western spaces

Click to access Bright-Marlboro_LAndscape.pdf