 This vacation was a long time in coming. Not just because it was the first airplane travel vacation since 2019 but because we had long talked about taking the kids to New York but wanted to wait until we were living back in the US. Why travel to get to know the US when you are living in Asia? Or the Middle East? Or Europe? The plan was a simple one. Spend seven days visiting the typical tourist locations throughout NYC. Don't overdue it. Just be sure we are seeing interesting things everyday. Enjoy wonderful food and forget that you are blowing a hole in your budget and enjoy. The photography plan was a bit more complicated in that I wanted to take both digital and film photographs of the place. As any reader of my website knows, I have plenty of cameras, in fact it is a bit of an obsession with me. So the selection process of what cameras to take it complicated....it has more to do with what I want to photography than anything else. I tried to look up the experiences of other photographers looking to take film photographs of NYC but found no useful sources. So I decided to write up a quick lessons learned section for those who come after me. As people say, this is my experience and your mileage may vary... Cameras: I wanted to try a bit of street photography and who wouldn't. It is NYC and screams to be photographed in all its charm. I opted for my Leica M10 for digital shots and so I went with a Leica M6 for film. The kept the lenses I was forced to carry to a minimum. I also wanted some larger frame photographs of a few of the sites...something I could print big in the darkroom. I opted for my Hasselblad 500 CM. The Rolleiflex needs some CLA work done....it works well but why risk it. Being that I selected Leica equipment I automatically limited my lens length as all I have is 15mm, 28mm, 35mm and 50mm (my 90mm is showing its age with the new film of today). So how was this? I ended up doing just fine with this. There was only two occasions I was left wishing for a longer lens...not worth carrying for just two shots. But, and this is a big but, you must be happy with the wider shots of the city skyline (see top photograph). I also took a film point and shoot, something I could carry around at night with a small flash to catch some candid moments with the family at dinner. I never took it out of the bag! My iPhone did a great job and handled the night shots wonderfully. In fact, this is the first trip where my iPhone carried a bit of the photography load. Film: I kept it simple and stuck with HP5. Not just that, but I made a decision to shoot it at the same Exposure Index (EI). I kept it at box 400 EI this was as I develop I can do them all at the same time. I took both 35mm and 120 HP5 to keep everything consistent. Now that I am back I am thrilled I did. There were a few occasions I would have liked to push the film a bit but this was only a handful of pictures and I did not want to lose the chance to continue photographing as I exited the darker buildings. This did leave me with only digital in some spots, such as subway shots. If this is important for you to capture on film, I suggest dedicating a morning to running around the subway lines with a film camera set at 1600 or 3200 EI. Tripod: I took a small desk top one from Manfrotto but never used it. Most places won't allow you to shoot with a tripod anyway. Bag: I purchased a messenger type bag from (Retrospective 30) from ThinkTank. This was small enough for me to carry into all the museums and big enough for me to carry all my gear. If you have not looked at there bags have a gander....their quality is amazing! Shot List: I always make a shot list but this time I kept it simple. Normally I walk into a vacation with 10-15 shots I want to take. For NYC I wanted to be flexible and relaxed so I picked the following:
Lessons Learned:
In short, NYC is film photographers paradise. I will share some of the film photographs once processed and printed. Go out and enjoy!!!!
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If a picture says 1000 words, several pictures can say much, much more. Photographs that follow a theme, sometimes called a series, have always impressed me but they do present a new challenge. Here is a series I made after a trip to a railroad museum. All were shot on a Rolleiflex f2.8 on HP5 film over two rolls.
I opted for an odd number of pictures, and selected some that would hint at the subject without being too obvious. I have a wonderful picture of the train engine, but for a theme to tell its story, you can't have a single image that tells 90% of the story. The first picture, I call 555 due to the car number that was painted, and bled down the side of the car. The composition was the trick for this show as I wanted both wheels and still include the 555 in the image. The fact that neither numbers or wheels are in the center of the image helps balance out the composition. In the Darkroom I opted for Ilford Fiber Based paper and a medium selenium toning after and archival wash (the same process for all three). It was temperature dried for about 85% and then air dried for the remainder. Finally dry mounted and framed. It is a powerful image of industrialization and its capitulation to time. As we move to the digital age, the massive machines that pulled us into the modern age are now left to rot in the shade of the new vehicles of modernization. The second image is of the connection between two railcars, I loved the heavy iron, the deep blacks and the power that the image shows. Almost as if the rail cars are holding on to each other for this, their final journey into oblivion. Perhaps too obvious of a personification! The third and final is of the bogies (the wheels of a train are called bogies). Here I loved the silver reflection of the light and the deep black of the iron. All of this broken up by the white paint. Still, in the middle of its final trip to oblivion, the trains are still magnificent. The texture of these images is massive and there is almost a 3D effect of them which is a testament to the lens quality of the Rolleiflex. The images are printed on 8x10 giving it a nice mix of size and intimacy with the viewer.  Of all my purchases in cameras, lenses, darkroom equipment and film, nothing brings me the joy of a great photography book. I have collected well over 70 books, some are good, others are absolutely mesmerizing. One of my favorite pastimes is getting up early on a Sunday morning, making a hot cup of coffee and sitting back to look over one of the books in my collection.
For a few dollars you get untold hours of enjoyment, you are transported to amazing places and meet some of the most interesting people. But most importantly, I cannot lift a great photography book and not feel inspired to pick up my camera and make something. Several years ago, I discovered the work of Lartigue and bought a few of his books. Henri Lartigue was a master photographer, but unlike most of the photographers that inspire me, Lartigue was an amateur and was only discovered late in life, thanks largely to Richard Avedon. After reading the book, "Lartigue The Boy and the Belle Époque" by Louise Baring (Thames & Hudson), I developed a deeper interest in his work and began hunting some more of his books. I was eager to try to get one of his first published books which came out in 1970 and is one of the few written by him, in his own contemporary (at least for the 1970's) words. The book is titled "Diary of a Century Jacques Henri Lartigue" and you see some of his favorite works. The problem was that I could not find this book for anything less than USD 300. This surprised me as it is not a really sought after book but it got me looking at all photography books and I began to notice the prices of them have skyrocketed of late. When I began looking at books I recently purchased, what used to go for USD 50 or 70 is now twice that. The older the books the higher the price, almost irrespective of their quality or condition. After much searching I found a copy of my Diary book for USD 100 and purchased it right away. The condition was better than I had thought so I am thrilled with the purchase but saddened that my ability to acquire more books has been so reduced. What I can tell you is that there are still good bargains to be had, but you need to search much more than just a few months ago. When you find one, look at the seller's other items as there are some hidden treasures out there...just really hard to find.  My purpose built darkroom in Houston. George Eastman, a business man, not an artist, not a scientist but a true capitalist is the person who transformed photography. Sure we can look at Louis Daguerre or Henry Fox Talbot as the scientist and hobbyists that were the fathers of photography to see an influence. But if these two men were the fathers, Eastman was the neighborhood bully that transformed photography into what it is today.
As a photographer, one question continues to come up. Were the changes ushered in by Eastman good for photography? Let me explain. "You press the button; We do the rest" was the slogan that Eastman used to explain the amazing transformation that he brought to photography. Imagine that prior to his industrialization of the dry plate process, photography was all wet plate, forcing the photographer to adapt tot he limitations of their tools, keeping them close to their darkroom (a wet plate dries in 10-15 minutes and must be exposed before it does). It was cumbersome and dirty. Eastman changed that by finding a repeatable way to make consistent dry plates that could be sold. This then took him to the advent of the film backed emulsion simplifying the process further. So you could buy a camera, preloaded with film, shoot a bunch of pictures and then mail the camera back to be processed, printed and refilled with more film. But this simplicity, democratized a process so that anyone with the spare income could take pictures of their very own. The problem is that photographers were attempting to define this as an art form, and as all of us know, art should be hard, artists should be few and talented. By reducing photography to the push of a button, eliminated any hope of these early photographers to define their art in the same way painting, sculptures and music composition was defined. Today, with the advent of Digital Photography (also a legacy Kodak the company that Eastman founded) we have been ushered into a new era where the photographic process has been simplified even further. Has this impacted the quality of art which is produced? Well now we get into the subjective discussion, but in my view it has impacted the quality of art a great deal. It has improved it. And this is what makes my perspective of film and digital photography different than most I have seen. Film photographers like myself, typically bemuse the artificial quality, speed over substance and convenience over art. I see something very different. What I see is a tool, usually a cell phone these days, that is converting everyone into an artist. This tool allows us to tap into our imagination and create new photographs. Is everyone who wields a smart phone with a camera an artist? No, but they have the tools to leverage their imagination to make new work and some of this work challenges the way we see the world and this, at its very core, is art. Does every photograph matter? No, but they never did. Are we dumbing down the artistic medium of photography? No. If you think making art with a camera phone is easy, try it yourself. We are just giving everyone the opportunity to create and this is an essential part of art. Create, something individual, challenge the way we see ourselves and the world around us.  Photo by Johnny Briggs on Unsplash Oh how this picture (wonderfully taken by the way) creates such discussions. The repurposing of old things for new applications is seldom without controversy, but few have seen such emotional reactions. I myself, hate to see wonderful old cameras to be converted in such a way. As a collector of sorts, I would rather see this camera being used for its intended purpose. On the other hand, I have cameras who are beyond repair and will never see film through them again. Is it not ok to alter these to find a second life? Or would this create increased desire and a threat to other, functioning cameras. I tripped into one such discussion yesterday. I will not name names, to protect the guilty, hey I might even be one of the guilty parties! Here is the story within a story.  Here is my wonderful Nikon F. She is an amazing beast of a camera that is much loved part of my useable collection of cameras. I decided to take it out of a spin the other day and loaded batteries in it. I al always keep my cameras without batteries to protect them. When I loaded the batteries in it, I began to try to remember if it had been converted to the 1.5v battery standard of today (as compared to the 1.3v of the no discontinued mercury based batteries). I tested it, and indeed found that it had not been converted. Not only was it giving me odd readings, the needle was jumping all over the place.
So a quick search on YouTube and I. found one of my favorite repair channels had a video dedicated to this upgrade. You can find it HERE. It seemed like something I could try, so I. ordered the diode and waited. A week later the diode shows up and an empty Saturday comes along. I followed the instructions, using some carefully bought camera CLA tools (what I mean to say I did not go in with a hammer and some dull screwdrivers). I encountered an unexpected set back when one of the terminals was very poorly soldered (I believe this is where the jumpy needle came from) but was fixed after a few minutes planning. End result was a diode properly put in, heat shrink wrapped, the resistor cleaned and everything put back in order. I took the camera out and it tested PERFECTLY to my hand held light meter. It stopped dancing around and I have a consistent, accurate reading and the camera looks perfect. So far, so good. Then I post my "success story" on Facebook and got a VERY different perspective of what I have done. A fellow Nikon F appreciator took issue with what I did. Now I want to be clear here, his position is a valid one, which is what I want to discuss, not really his tone or method to convey his thoughts which I found a bit heavy handed. But here is is for you to judge. "I would never modify internally a vintage camera. WeinCells work well. You aren't using your F for business and yes, WeinCells are more expensive on the long run. But philological integrity is priceless." So far so good. A different view. No harm, no foul. The same person then takes another issue with my photo... "Sad to say your Apollo also sports a fancy shutter release, apart from the exposure meter power supply disaster." "And no, you are not going to sell her at a premium on eBay" Then another writes: "Annnnnnd collectors value on that item is now ZERO." So, I appreciate those who wish to collect cameras in pristine condition. And if someone wants to pay a premium for this go for it. I myself believe that cameras should be used and shot not kept as perfect replicas. Most seemed to agree with my view. I was not very nice in my reply...I regret that. Should not reply back to posts I disagree with until 24 hours pass.  Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters We were all there a few months ago. Back when we thought this Covid-19 threat would lock us up for about a month or so and then life would continue on. We all thought about the opportunity this would give us to learn something new, or to tackle something that we have been wanting to for some time. Many of us failed miserably, demanding things of ourselves while we were in the middle of a global pandemic might have been a bit ambitious....
Well I signed up for a photography class on story telling through photography. The principal behind the class was to reduce the dependence on a single image to carry the entire story, and allow the story to unfold through a series of photographs. The class was on-line, and held each Friday night. I was able to get my work done then join the class, or if I missed it, it would be recorded and I could catch up later. Lesson 1: The first project was to shoot 18-24 images of a typical day for us in quarantine. I decided to use my iPhone for this one, as the idea was to capture your daily routine from beginning to end. The iPhone is always with me, and lets be honest, the camera it comes with these days is really amazing. But the lesson behind the project was to show us that 18-24 images is SO MANY PICTURES! You would think that in a digital age, it would be easy to snap 18-24 images of your day, but consider that the images would be seen by the entire class, so the message had to be clear, the subject obvious and the composition pleasing. With some careful thought and planning, you can tell an intricate story with five or six images. Any real work, beyond this is really an intricate project. Lesson 2: The second lesson was to study some great documentary photographers, starting with the Farm Security Administration. I knew of their work especially that of Dorothea Lange and saw many of their images before but then we were introduced to Jacob Riis work, and I had never seen it before. Photographs of the New York slums really reached out beyond their dusty history and really hit home. We were introduced then to Bernd & Hilla Becher, as a way to balance out documentary photographer created to drive social change (as in the FSA and Riis) and move towards a documentary project for the sake of art. This is a German Couple that went around Europe and the US for decades shooting pictures of industrial plants. The created an amazing collection of beautiful images of massive plants and water tanks. We then went on to see the work of Diego Levy, a photojournalist who created a project around B&W images of scenes where damage has occurred, often with blood. His wide angle, close up shots with flash are reminiscent of Weegee. The real lesson here is that different photographers can approach a story from different angles but if a body of work is going to continue dozens of images it requires significant dedication. The photographers listed above all tackled long term projects and created art but it required time and sacrifice. Lesson 3: We then moved on to Larry Sultan, another long term project but this time in amazing color. This was a radical departure to what we had seen before. Here he is shooting the retirement of his parents and their life in a very colorful, plastic world. The other documentary images were all in B&W and this one really hit us with its use of color. A documentary does not have to fit into a stereotype. It can reach out and grab the viewer and shake them up. This is not necessary, but if wielded correctly, a camera can impact not just through the message (such as FSA) but also through the medium. Lesson 4: We went back over the photographers and we were asked to start listing single words that described them. We began to focus our attention on details and quickly began to notice patterns. These patterns of the images are what collectively make up the photographer's chosen style. The wonderful lesson is that your style can change from one project to the next, but within the project ideally it should stay similar. There must be something beyond subject matter that pulls the images together. If not, you wind up with a group of images that more closely resembles a collage. Lesson 5: This one is an amazing insight. After studying all the great work, and the sacrifice made by the great photographers we looked at, we were introduced to dozens of contemporary photographers building stories through images using Instagram. The lesson here is that a documentary story can be as simple as a single roll of film loaded into a camera for a trip to the zoo. The only thing it must have is a clear binding element. This can be a timeline, as in taking. a picture just as you are leaving your house, and a final image just as you return. But whatever you choose to do, either a massive project, or a simple story, photography can be a powerful tool used in different ways to transmit a story. Consider, as a little project, to capture a few images of your kids playing. From when the start to pick out the toys, to the end when the run out of the room leaving the toys on the floor (all kids do it). This can be a simple ten minute project shot on your iPhone. Or you can decide to shoot it from the toy's vantage point, requiring more complex angles. Or you can take it from your Childs. This can be a simple series or a complicated project requiring days of planning and coordination.  In his exhibition in the Museum of Modern Art in 1946, Henri Cartier-Bresson was told by Robert Cappa to not accept the label of a surrealist because that would be the commercial death of him. HCB took his advice but always viewed himself as a surrealist. So what is surrealism? Why was it so important not to be labeled this in 1946? Why was HCB training all in surrealism? Lets go to the experts at Tate Modern Art Museum for some answers. The word ‘surrealist’ (suggesting ‘beyond reality’) was coined by the French avant-garde poet Guillaume Apollinaire in a play written in 1903 and performed in 1917. But it was André Breton, leader of a new grouping of poets and artists in Paris, who, in his Surrealist Manifesto (1924), defined surrealism as: pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express, either verbally, in writing, or by any other manner, the real functioning of thought. Dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation. Typical Tate, always has the perfect answer that just begs for more information. For this Random Moment, lets just say that Surrealism focused on dreams and sub-conscience thought. The goal of the artist was to get out of the way and let their emotional eye take control. The single best metaphor of this was how Dali himself approached sleep. He felt sleep was a waste of time, but for his art he needed to let that dream world present itself. He would fall asleep with a key in his hand over a metal plate. As he would drift off into sleep the key would fall and hit the plate waking him and pulling him from his dream world. He would then remember his dream and paint. This "movement" (an interesting term that we should dive into on some other occasion) was started after World War I in Europe but as with many movements, it seemed to come up in many different ways at the same time. So why would this matter in 1946? Well the truth to that may come from across the ocean and the New World led by Alfred Stieglitz. Stieglitz was working to make Photography an art form in its own right and had gotten tired of pictorialism (the movement where the photographer would alter the scene, negative or photograph to make it more about art and less about science) was heralding in Straight Photography (oddly enough it is the abstract nature of straight photography that made it so facinating). Europe had been dethroned as the leading edge of photographies development and the US, specifically New York had taken over. So the world was embracing straight photography and wanted to see what was really their, indicating that there is art and beauty in the real. People were also embracing story telling through photographs, Life Magazine is a fine example of this trend, and wanted a more documentary approach to photography. To be labeled a surrealist was a through back and not what paying advertisers wanted to hear. HCB training was largely in surrealism because that is the movement prevalent at the time. As the world adapted to the new order after WWI, surrealism seemed a artistic embrace of the political changes happening. HCB, starting his artistic pursuits in painting, would have been heavily influenced by the contemporary masters of the time. This is not to say that HCB work was not surrealist, or at least has a heavy element of surrealism in it, it is just to say that HCB had to escape the label and not define himself this way. Definitions in the world of art are not precise, so we often let the artist define themselves. But the truth is that many artists are driven by financial elements and label themselves in a way that will help them financially. Nothing wrong with that, just one way that money influences art, and always has. But if we take a step back from what the artist says, and look at their work as a whole, we start to see trends which lay beneath the subject matter of a individual picture. Only with a large volume of work, can we start to interpret the artist's work. The slide show below are images by HCB, many for documentary style magazine layouts. If you look at the images individually, you see the surrealist in him emerge. He was drawn to lines, shapes and geometry which are the linking elements between the dream world and our own.  Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash "A time of intense difficulty or danger." This is how a Crisis is defined. But a crisis can mean something different to different people depending on their perspective. So I ask myself what is my perspective of the Covid-19 crisis? I have not gotten sick. My family and friends are all healthy. Some family members are scared, others are not worried or even bothered by the thought of this virus. By I had to understand how did I perceive this crisis and what did it really mean for me. So I decided upon a documentary photography assignment, to document one single day in lock down. The day had to be "typical" so I picked an average Wednesday on a average week in this very intense time. Before I show the images let me put them in a bit of context. Buenos Aires Argentina, where I am currently living, took the lock down very seriously. Everything is closed, no one can roam the streets without a permit aside from a trip to the grocery store or pharmacy. We have been in lock down 7 weeks when this documentary was made. There is no telling how long it will last with a minimum of two more weeks before a bit more freedom is considered by the government. Hidden behind my daily routine is a resentment of the limitation of my personal freedoms. Oh I understand the necessity and respect the rules but I still resent it. My individual freedoms are being sacrificed for the greater good. I thought I would be comfortable with that but I am not. Finally, I am working while on lockdown. In fact, I am working more now than before the lockdown. Reviewing emergency response plans, complex discussions with concerned customers and keeping up with coworker's mental health have all been added to the typical job's tasks.  Photo by Sandie Clarke on Unsplash A few weeks ago, the term lock down was a rather vague concept of a building being locked in to keep bad people inside. Today marks the 28th day of being locked in our house. Lock down is not about capturing evil people, it is about protecting people, both inside and out. We have stayed home with only three trips out, to restock our refrigerator. For a Photographer, staying home does not have to be a bad thing. We can take pictures of anything, from still life to macro shots. But finding the inspiration can be tough after such a long period of time. But I did indeed find some inspiration, my muse if you will. This time my muse came in the form of a red pepper. A perfectly imperfect red pepper. For those who have seen my blog before, you know that I have a long standing admiration for Edward Weston's Pepper #30 and have spoken about it many times.
But this pepper was not my muse. I had long dreamt of taking a wonderful picture of a pepper and tried so many times, digital, film, pinhole, large format, medium format and 35mm. I tried it all and failed each and every time. It was not the pepper's fault, it was mine. I was unable to reproduce what was so very clear in my mind eye. Then I saw her. A perfectly imperfect pepper. She had the personality, the curves and the magical X quality that makes an object more than an object. Again the pepper was perfect, but my limitation was still the same, my own lack of talent. But since I was in a lock down mode, with little to distract me on a long weekend, I decided to have a go. In my mind I saw an image that was different than Weston's. Copying a master teaches you a great deal but never will live up to the original and often only serves to highlight the oceanic gulf between my own abilities and theirs. My photograph, yet untaken, was a pepper that would disappear into a dark background. In my mind's eye, the pepper would melt into the background making it hard to know where the pepper began or ended. First challenge was to select a camera, I was down to two options. A Pentacon Six with extension tubes and a Mamiya C220. This would allow me to get close enough to the pepper to fill the frame and still give me the large negative needed to make a wonderful print. I ultimately decided on the Mamiya. Next was the film. I wanted something predictable, with little grain. Something with a low reciprocity failure because previous peppers had taught me that they reflect light like a mirror which would force me to use little light or wrist it being completely blown out. Weston understood this, which is why no part of his pepper is blown out. The light was carefully managed by a very long exposure and placing the pepper in a metal funnel that helped balance the light. The Pepper seems lighted from different areas, and this is the sun moving around the room lighting different parts of it. I decided on Ilford Delta 100. I knew I would shoot all 12 exposures of the pepper and I would move the pepper around to find its most photogenic side. I chose the location carefully, in front of a window but far back enough to control the light. I placed the paper on a black sheet with a bowl under the sheet. This helped keep the pepper upright, which allowing the sheet to cradle the pepper. I used an external light meter to meter the pepper and calculated the exposure setting. I opted for 1 second exposure at f/4. I would bracket my shot with one slightly higher exposure.
Over the next hour, I took 12 images of my pepper, turning it around slowly. Below is the contact print.  I selected the second pepper shot and set it up in the enlarger. I then made a test strip and opted for filter grade 2 and 5. With a 20 second exposure on grade 2 and a 15 second on grade 5 seemed to work. I printed it and put it in the developer, stop and fixer. After 2 minutes in fixer I turned on the light...I had my pepper! It was what I had imagined, a pepper that melted into the background. The negative is perfect, no dust particles or anything. I made a few tweaks to the print and had my perfect print. I printed it on FB paper in 8x10. I will now take it to a larger print. I am proud of my pepper. I ate it that night in a. wonderful salad. 
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December 2021
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