Sunday, March 15, 2009

Stuck in my mind's eye

I thought I'd share with you some photographs I've been looking at lately, and thinking about when out photographing. The first three are from flickr, the rest from surfing around. There's a definite vertical theme to most of them, other than that, just stuff that has stuck in my mind's eye. Please click on the thumbnails to get a larger view. Enjoy.

Bryan Formhals

Ben Roberts

Joni Karanka


Jeff Ladd

Lee Friedlander

Lee Friedlander

Saturday, March 14, 2009

"Tel Aviv at 100" featured on "Israelity"


My Tel Aviv project has just been featured on Israelity, a blog dedicated to looking at everything that goes on in Israel other than the conflict w the Palestinians. Do stop by and take a look.

Thursday, March 12, 2009

More Street


I've been looking over all the street photography on flickr, and there's some good stuff there. I'm definitely very late to that party, nevertheless I'm getting the street bug once more. Here are a few more from my last binge:






I also ran into a street artist who calls himself Klone whose work I've seen all over Tel Aviv recently, and he's been documenting his work on flickr for some time. Take a look, here.
A couple of photographers worth looking at are Ben Roberts and Dr Karanka. There are also tribute groups for both Eggleston and Friedlander, as well as myriad street photography groups, here, here, and here. Check them out, especially if you need a change of pace from "fine art" photography, as I did.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Street Work on Flickr


Inspired by the folks over at la pura vida gallery, I joined flickr and uploaded a bunch of my street photography that I shot a couple of years ago. Stop by and tell me what you think. It's quite different from what I'm doing now, but one can see the continuity. I'll write more at length soon about the similarities and differences between using an 8x10 and a 35mm rangefinder for city work.

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Lares penatesque, or what I've lived by.

Beginners

How they are provided for upon the earth, (appearing at intervals,)
How dear and dreadful they are to the earth,
How they inure themselves as much as to any-what a
paradox appears their age,
How people respond to them, yet know them not,
How there is something relentless in their fate all times,
How all times mischoose the objects of their adulation and
reward,
And how the same inexorable price must still be paid for the
same great purchase.

Walt Whitman, Inscriptions, L.G.


"Writing is about discovering things
hitherto unseen. Otherwise there’s no
point to the process."

W.G. Sebald, from Maxims collected by his students.

"All Real Knowledge is accumulated in ignorance of what it will lead to."

Guy Davenport, On Reading

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Tech Notes: On Waterfalls, Hiking, and Choosing a Format.



I made the move to 8x10 from 4x5 a couple of years ago, and had to change my idea of what photographing is in order to do so. My experience may be helpful to you too. At the time, I read a post by Michael Smith on photo.net about hiking and LF cameras, where he basically explained why you need not mix the two (he now uses 8x20 almost exclusively, but did 8x10 work in cities and countryside for decades). I can't find the original posting anymore, but the gist was that photography, and visual art in general, are not concerned w the subject matter depicted, but rather w the way it is depicted. It isn't the fact that you're photographing, say, a waterfall (that takes a half hour to get to on foot) which will make a photograph succesful, but rather how the waterfall (or whatever is in front of you) is seen. If this is true, there's really no need to go out of your way to find "interesting" subject matter, but rather one should be able to make an interesting photograph out of anything. I was already moving in this general direction in my thinking about photography when I found Michael's writings on pnet, but he definitely gave me the final push I needed in that direction. How does this relate to the decision, say, between 8x10 and 5x7? Simple, really, work backwards from the desired result to the means necessary for achieving it, rather than letting the means dictate the result. If you want 8x10 contact prints, get an 8x10 and work within its limitations/possibilities. If you want larger or smaller prints, ditto. First figure out what you want to see as the final result of all your hard work, then find the means to it. And given that you don't need to hike to that waterfall (something I did many times) in order to make a great photograph, the weight of the gear (within reason) shouldn't be the deciding factor.