|
|
|
January 1st, 2008
10:54 pm - new
A new year, and with it a realization that I haven't been here in a very long time. Too many online places, too many real world things happening. not enough time. Something had to give.
Since last time, a changed work situation; another company, doing essentially the same thing but working from a local office instead of telecommuting; a lot less Chicago travel at least for a while, now that my big project there has wrapped up (although I'll be back in February for a few days); a lot more Bay Area travel, in fact I maintain a second desk there. Maybe some southern California time soon, I'm just waiting for the phone call from the client. In any case, it's so nice to be free of that dysfunctional place, away from that mega-corporation, and back to a smaller and more innovative and more energetic place, certainly a lot more fun.
And of course, the gallery. Now, these past several weeks and ongoing, the emphasis is on seeking out other talented artists, showing their work, which means spending less time on creating my own. A whole new way of looking at things. I'm beginning to understand some of the things my various gallery-owning friends have hinted at in the past.
These changes seem to offer some opportunities for exploring new paths, variations of philosophies. For now, a chance to observe and consider.
|
October 17th, 2006
05:45 pm - over time
A quote in todays Chicago Sun-Times, in an exhibit review by art critic Kevin Nance:
"the most common trajectory.... is from documentary realism toward greater or lesser degrees of abstraction, mystery, poetry, symbolism, and magic. Photographers, it seems, tend to get bored with life as it is; they want to show how it might be, or ought to be - or, even better, to reveal the depth beneath its conventional surfaces, the strangeness that was there all along but invisible."
He's talking about work currently at the Art Institute by Avedon, Karsh, Penn, Cartier-Bresson, and more... earlier and later work by each, at least two decades apart, to show their "evolution."
Yeah. The part about depth, especially.... yeah.
|
September 21st, 2006
03:56 pm - punk
From Portland, with an hour to go til my next flight:
There's an article in the Arts section of todays New York Times on hard-core punk, about a recent documentary. Strange reading, because I've met all but two of the guys quoted in the article, or actually a pair of articles. Knew one of those guys very well, and have written/published about three of them myself, but haven't seen any of them since 1982.
The article makes an interesting point, calls hard core a response in part to the dilution of the earlier first wave (actually at least two or three but with overlap) of punk and post-punk. True enough. Most of us just left when the world discovered our music, and the hard core kids instead kept going by appropriating one very narrow niche and taking it to extremes. I was gone by the time their thing really took off, although I did cover the earliest days for one of the 'zines. Too negative for me, too many angry young men pissed off at the system but not willing or able to propose alternatives to actually change anything.
Funny, this sudden interest in hard core. Probably because it's a very well defined, not particularly complex sub-genre, easy to write about in catchy and easy to quote one-liners. Last month I did an interview for NPR on punk, and they kept coming back with hard core questions even though I kept talking about the broader implications of the entire early scene. They want me to return for a follow up interview next month, so apparently I haven't completely confused them yet.
|
September 20th, 2006
10:49 pm - can't escape technology
So yesterday morning I'm out on a field meeting, walking through seven foot tall cattails in the middle of a marsh on the way to take a look at endangered dragonfly habitat. There's a guy from U.S. Fish and Wildlife service behind me, and a guy from the landowner, a county agency, leading the way.
The county guys cell phone rings. Less than a minute after he takes that call, the federal guys cell phone rings. So I'm standing in the marsh watching this... and my cell phone rings. It's our mayor, 2,000 miles away, asking whether a particular day and time works for a meeting.
All three of us, in less than two minutes. What are the odds?
|
August 15th, 2006
09:52 pm - Route 66
Got clear of St. Louis a little later than planned, partially because of work related things and partially because of two traffic jams. In Litchfield IL, jumped off the interstate for lunch at a diner on historic Rt. 66, apparently it's been in that location since 1929. Kind of cute, and the original family still runs it. Too much food, but they are quite friendly. One look at my old Leica and they took turns asking me questions and offering helpful hints on things to see. Unfortunately they seem to be about the only ones in town who get the historical significance thing, Litchfield seems to be pinning it's future on a couple of industrial parks and the usual tacky/ugly fast food row.
I'd done that stretch of old 66 previously, so jumped back on the highway for a while. One of the gentlemen at the restaurant had recommended the Chenoa business district as worth seeing though, and I'd never been off the highway there before. So, needing to slow down a bit anyway to miss the back end of Chicago rush hour, I went exploring.
It's not real easy to find. Chenoa is a few exits north of Bloomington-Normal, closer to Pontiac. Old Rt. 66 parallels I-55, running a little to the east of the interstate, and then the old business district is yet a little more east of 66. As with most of these towns, the business district is along the railroad. In this case, it's nearly deserted. Beautiful old brick buildings, plenty of character, half the storefronts either empty or just not open. There were a few cars going by, but very few people out on the streets. Everything was clean and tidy, just not very busy. After driving around for a few minutes and taking photos, I saw a sign on one store that said "coffee" and another one that said "open." Caffeine break.
Inside Minnie Marie's Coffee House, it was spotless, and the coffee was pretty good. When I mentioned to the proprietor that I think Chenoa is a cute town (if not a very busy one), she was gracious but seemed a little surprised, as if she doesn't hear that very often. Various questions followed, I ended up explaining the whole concept of New Urbanism (some fairly sophisticated places are spending a great deal of money to recreate walkable main street core districts) and eventually I had received the pocket history of the town, or at least the past 15 years worth. Apparently a lot of the main street businesses closed after a Wal-Mart opened nearby... a fairly typical small town story. A few hung on until just recently. The coffee house is relatively new, and so far caters mostly to locals. It's a shame more people don't know about this place, it's actually a fascinating few blocks, well worth a half-hour detour off the interstate maybe a mile away. The few natives I met were quite friendly, and I'm assured that the food is good too. Can't help but wonder what a handful of bright, creative, and dedicated artists could do in a town like this... assuming anyone knew they were there?
Next stop was Dwight, maybe another 20 miles or so to the north. Much more vibrant, larger, maybe partially due to the Amtrak stop, and maybe also the closer proximity to Chicago. From there I was back on I-294 an hour later, and in the north suburbs in less than an hour and a half.
|
August 14th, 2006
08:16 pm - water
Things are going pretty well out on the project site. The river banks I saw when they were bare mud 11 years ago are now covered by a thriving floodplain forest of 30-foot tall cottonwoods and willows. The cicadas are deafening, and the river... on average about 35-feet wide and four feet deep now, at low water... looks great. Dragonflies skim over the water, cricket frogs leap along the banks. The whole thing looks and feels like a southern swamp in the 88-degree heat, which is what passes for a cold front here in August. It was rendered surreal by the occasional airplane going right over us at treetop height, including an F-111, a C-130, and a 707.
Four of us went into St. Louis for dinner on the Delmar Loop, just returned. Tomorrow I'm back on the road, the rest of the crew stays a few more days.
|
August 13th, 2006
08:55 pm - sprawl
Shiloh, Illinois (about 20 or 30 miles east of St. Louis)
OK, I'm having a little trouble with this.
I'm sitting in a brand new hotel, at the edge of a huge shopping mall, just off the interstate. Just walked over to Target to get some things for tomorrow. The store is, straight line, maybe 100 meters from the hotel. There's no sidewalk in between. You've got to either drive, or walk in the street, or walk in freshly laid sod so soft it's a potential ankle breaker. There's no surface stormwater retention, just a huge parking lot with drainageways leading to sewer covers. That means the retention is either underground (and limited in capacity) or that it just goes straight into the system. The shops are all national chains, and the place is, besides being total car culture, pretty sterile.
And I'm wondering if I helped it come about.
I'm here to do some aquatic sampling tomorrow at the nearby airport, for which I did much of the environmental permitting about 10 years ago. The work there is actually pretty innovative (ignore my obvious bias); a civilian runway is connected to an existing air force facility by a taxiway, sharing maintainance facilities and providing peak-time overflow for both entities. Thus the footprint is much smaller and more cost effective than it would have been if the airport had been built anywhere else from scratch. These joint-use concepts have been done before in Europe, but it's a first for the U.S. There were some other design features; changing runway spacing reduced wetland impacts, as did raising the tower height to improve sightlines, which meant cutting fewer trees. Then we did 200 acres of wetland restoration as mitigation, which is coming along nicely, and relocated two channelized streams with meanders included in the new design... what we're monitoring tomorrow, and also coming along nicely so far.
What we (there were dozens of people involved in this, most of them now scattered around the country) were able to control on site, we did better than it might have been done if left to chance. There are a few things we would do differently if we could do it over... total predictability is impossible, learning is good, and adaptive management is a buzzword these days anyway. But in general, it worked.
It's what we weren't able to control... the stuff on private land, off-site... induced development, it's called in planning jargon... that frustrates me. The fucking sheep never learn. I know how it might have happened, too. Imagine the developer playing off the three surrounding municipalities against each other. Give us these concessions (stormwater, setbacks, all the usual stuff) or we go over there instead. It happens all the time. If they all said no... but they didn't. They wanted the tax revenue too badly, and the planning commission is just a bunch of ordinary people giving a few hours a month to the community, they aren't experts in urban planning.
Would this sprawl have happened without the airport? Eventually. Probably not as quickly. Maybe not in this exact place, but somewhere in the region. Probably with the same mistakes. Still, we should know better than this. As gas prices skyrocket, these idiots build more places that can be used only by car. They have mass transit here, the almost-new metrolink is just a few miles to the south. And like sheep, they all drive. They pour more concrete and asphalt, so the rain can only run off into the sewers, maybe overtaxing treatment plants, maybe adding to already flood-prone rivers.
We think this is normal, the only way to live. But we've been doing this car-culture experiment for only 50 years or so, not long at all, less than an average human lifetime. Someday it's all going to come crashing down. They'll laugh at us someday... what were those idiots thinking? Did they really believe they could go on like that forever?
I go back north after tomorrow, and probably don't need to come back here for anothe rtwo years. My botany team stays til the end of the week, then they leave too. The people who live here... they reap both the good and the bad.
|
August 11th, 2006
09:56 pm - summer of the cicada
This morning as I was walking to the train, a bird dashed into the tree just in front of me, missed what it was after, and a cicada tumbled onto the sidewalk not two feet in front of me. The bird started to go after it, saw me and had second thoughts.
Cicadas are the oddest looking critters. Huge bulbous heads, big eyes, tapering to a tiny body, pointed at the back, with stubby clear wings. This one was mottled olive green and black... pretty and ugly at the same time.
The sound of cicadas is everywhere this summer of course, at least around Chicago. It's a constant sound, pleasant in a funny sort of way, becoming part of the accepted background after a while. These guys come up on various cycles, I haven't bothered to research which variety is up this year, but there sure are a lot of them.
* * *
In the meantime, the silliness around the airport thing has gone absurd. I've heard so many misinterpretations of security policy today, bizarre minglings of British and U.S. steps. Really, it's not difficult, if people would just LISTEN and THINK.
* * *
I'm spending my evening spare time devouring books this trip, already all the way through one tonight and started on a second. I'm on a history and foreign policy kick at the moment, and reading about decades-old events in the context given by time makes the current hysteria seem all the sillier. Probably people in the past were at least as quick to jump to undisciplined and poorly thought out conclusions. But it still seems so pointless to have to listen to it today. A longer-term, bigger picture view explains much, especially if one questions assumptions and administration propaganda.
|
July 31st, 2006
12:18 pm - silver
Maybe it's appropriate that it's one of those sun-shining-through-the-fog days on the north coast.
I've seen a run of "the sky is falling" posts from photographers recently... camera phones will replace pros, there's no work out there, talent doesn't matter anymore, etc.
Funny, I sure see a lot of bought and paid for photos in magazines and other publications every week. Somebody is doing all that work. Hell, I don't even market my photography anymore (it's supposed to be for fun now) and I'm still approached by the occasional magazine asking to buy images, just sold one last month to a major business publication.
The folks doing all the sales probably don't mind all the sniveling. It presumably becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, the whiners start to believe their own words, which means that much less effective competition. Some people are doing just fine, others never will.
Today I saw a guy applying this same negative mentality to his former engineering profession... he'd been laid off because of outsourcing to India, allegedly. Yet I've just seen the numbers, most of the larger U.S. engineering firms grew last year. Some of them grew quite a bit.
Does the economy suck? Sure. Without delving into the numbers, I suspect this administration is spinning the reports... they're spinning a lot of other things, why not this too? For example, recently we're reading inflation numbers which, if you look at the fine print, exclude energy costs. Anybody paying their own bills knows things aren't quite as rosy as Bush would have us believe. Yet most are finding ways to get by.
But then, some people made money in the great depression.
|
July 28th, 2006
10:57 am - words
Today's quote:
"Admiration and resentment have always attached themselves to the powerful, the successful, the visible." ... Jedediah Purdy, 2003
|
July 25th, 2006
07:09 pm - up, up and... oh, never mind
I often smile while watching, say, James Bond or Lara Croft board an airplane to embark on the next portion of their globe-trotting adventure. Fast-forward, and a moment later they have arrived at the destination, looking cool, suave, and ready to save the world.
Of course, anyone who actually flies very much knows that travel is actually boredom punctuated by brief intervals of activity, and that fast-forward buttons exist only on things like DVD players. We fly because it's faster than the alternatives, but an airplane is basically a sky bus with the exit door locked most of the time. Getting off at the end of even a cross-country domestic flight leaves one feeling slightly rumpled, and that's on a good day. Any delays in one of those glass and steel greenhouses that pass for modern terminals, and suddenly a shower starts to creep way up the priority list. A trans-pacific flight is basically an 18-hour jail sentance.
Yesterday was not a good day. We've been hearing the warnings of long delays this overcrowded air travel summer; yesterday it became reality. After a long mechanical delay, a switch to a new and fully functional plane, a very late arrival in San Francisco, an all too brief attempt at sleep in the Hyatt Regency at the expense of United Airlines, and finally a very efficient and pleasant 6:00 am flight to do the final hour and a few minutes home... at last.
So yesterday was a very long day, especially considering I worked for a few hours before attempting to board that flight. Usually my travel goes remarkably smoothly, experience teaches one to avoid certain times of day at certain airports, and frequent flying confers numerous advantages which make it possible to almost do that O. J. Simpson sprint through a major airport. Electronic check-in and no checked baggage avoids the long lines, some airports have priority security lines for frequent fliers, packing efficiently and projecting as a businessman avoids bag inspections, group 1 boarding reduces stress, then at the other end no checked baggage to wait for and an express shuttle to the rental car lot.
But it's still several hours trapped in a long metal tube with wings and not enough legroom. And that's on a good day.
|
July 22nd, 2006
12:09 pm - old and new
Went to see the Effigies play last night, a band I've seen too many times to count and known since 1979 or 1980, whenever they formed... I did photos of their first ever EP (remember vinyl?) for Autumn Records, for advertising, back in the old days.
There were four bands, and we missed the first. The second band... I wish I'd missed them. OK, back when I wrote music reviews for one of the 'zines in 1981-82, I usually tried to just not review what I didn't like, focus on the positive instead. So let's not mention them by name. Lets just say that the first band, called the Phenoms, I heard did a pretty good set. The second (nameless) band... I turned my back on them for most of the set, which was way too long. No stage presence, in fact I've met inanimate objects with more personality, more energy, and that was a lot of the problem. They also pretty much sounded the same on every song in the set. Couldn't even do a decent cover of "Alternative Ulster." They bored me. They *really* bored me. Can you tell?
Just when I was beginning to wonder if this had been a good idea, a band called "Dummy" set up and played their set, and the first song was... wow. Fresh, different, catchy. These guys have been around a while even though I'd not heard them play before last night. It's both funny and sad when the geezer bands have more energy, more stamina, more passion than the 20-somethings in that previous band. I enjoyed a lot of what Dummy played, almost all of it was at least alright and the best stuff was very good. The $5 CD is so far not living up to the live event, partially because of mixing but also a statement about how much the stage presence matters.
Effigies... they still remember how, of course. They were good in 1980, the premier Chicago punk band then and now. This was one of the better sets I've seen from them, maybe just because it was a litle different than what I've seen/heard from them before, they managed to put a fresh spin on old classics plus put some interesting new material out there. I'm kind of biased on these guys, but hey... I think they're good. Had an interesting talk about photography and other things with John Kezdy after the set, he's a very good photographer in his spare time around being an attorney and being in a band, and I'm not just saying that because we both shoot with rangefinders.
Coming out of the club onto the Wicked Park and Bucktown streets after the show was a little sad, though. Drunk yuppies everywhere, spilling out of the numerous other clubs in the neighborhood, walking out in the street, screaming for cabs, generally acting like materialistic, narcissistic assholes.
Hey, like the song says... we'll be here tomorrow.
|
July 12th, 2006
07:27 pm - pathfinding
Most of today was spent out on one of my project sites, flagging access routes and work limits for habitat restoration work associated with a major infrastructure project. This is in federal endangered species habitat, so it needs to be done carefully, and I was having difficulty explaining what I needed from 2,000 miles away to the engineers on site, so it seemed more practical to just go out there and do it.
The early part was mostly awareness of the various nuisance factors, as I cut through the vines blocking entry from the nearby roadside. It wasn't hot today by midwestern summer standards, only upper 70s, but it was very humid after a few days of heavy rain. There weren't all that many mosquitos, but there were a few. The site is difficult to move through.
A second to explain that: This 200 something acre preserve has remnant good quality habitat areas, mostly sedge meadow and fen associated with cool seeps and springs. But it also has a long history of human abuse including 1880s mining. Much of the site, once very open, is now a thicket of buckthorn and honeysuckle with scattered large cottonwoods. It's very difficult to walk through the thicket, even see very far through it. I worked on this site in 1988, and remember all too well how long it took to move around. I'm probably one of only a few people who knows this place well. Parts of it have been cleared now, but not the part I'm currently looking at.
The second level was an appreciation of what the guys we usually pay to do this work have to endure. I'm out there for a day, getting complete respect from the guys on the construction side 200 meters away because I'm wearing one of those white management hardhats. There are people doing these manual labor things five days a week though, with not a lot of choice about what they do.
Then, level three was more of a frontier pathfinder mentality, thinking of how I'm covering a few hundred meters for one day but people did this for weeks and months to explore the wilderness. I'm using flagging tape instead of blazing trees, but same idea. This is where the mind began to become a little quieter.
As a side note, what I'd done is stop and get some basic garden loppers on the way down. it made for slow going clearing the path as I went, but it made the flagging easy to see, let me get a better look at the ground, and will speed the actual work when it happens. Today, I was covering about 150 meters for each hour. Not fast.
Level 4 was a sort of zen state, where the weather and the bugs no longer mattered, where time no longer mattered, where I heard the nearby traffic and the heavy cranes lifting formed concrete not far away, but let them pass through without distraction. I got some thinking done during this time too, without really trying too hard.
I've got a better idea now of what needs to happen, how we're going to get people in there. Once we can see a little better, when all those non-native shrubs are gone, then I need to walk a hydrologist and an engineer through and get a design pulled together to modify things, to divert stormwater which is causing a lot of the site disturbance, to allow the groundwater and seepage to function the way they should. In the morning I get to run this past various agency folks and my client, but finally things are ready to move forward. There's been to much planning the past few months, too much talking, here and in other parts of my life. It will be nice to have some action.
|
June 30th, 2006
04:20 pm - the myth of corporate efficiency
Let's start with mergers and acquisitions. What they really do, usually, is feed some CEO's ego. But bigger isn't always better. Some time ago I read about a study that looked back at what had happened post-acquisition to a bunch of big companies... and mostly it wasn't good. Some companies no longer existed. Others had simply underperformed relative to the competition. Having been through one of these several years back, it's not hard to understand why: acquisition = short term redundancy = inefficiency = resulting job cuts = poor morale while everyone waits to learn where the axe will fall. Not to mention that merging often very different corporate cultures, strategic visions, and ways of doing business takes time, typically several years. Often, the post-acquisition entity is as much an accumulation of accidents as of design.
My current issue is with banks. I'm probably going to close a Chicago account soon, because dealing with this particular mega-post-acquisition entity (anyone who lives there knows who I'm talking about) is like hanging around with the gang that can't shoot straight. After a decade and a half of few or no problems, suddenly I've been in there three months in a row straightening out various issues... only to find that different issues have been created. The latest one is strike three, basically they're chewing up too much of my time straightening out things that should just work seamlessly.
Then, today, I try to use my ATM card at the local branch of my California bank, and it won't work. Turns out the parent company in Redding, which acquired the local company several years ago, decided to "upgrade" their ATM system, issued new cards, and the old ones stopped working on something like a weeks notice. Fine, except that I was in Seattle when all this happened, and am just back and half done opening a stack of accumulated mail. Today, it's a minor annoyance, largely patched over by the responsiveness of local desk staff. If it had happened while I was 500 miles from home on vacation... I would have been more than a little annoyed. Let me guess... someone goofed and didn't get them in the mail in time, so we had a week instead of a month to adapt.
Small companies don't get off the hook, either. One of the quirks of Humboldt County life is that some things... real estate, property taxes, insurance, and assorted smaller items... are less expensive than in the city. Other things... gasoline, certain specialty items... are more expensive. Finding what one needs in stock can also be iffy. This varies a lot depending on product line, almost like some types of businesses get it, and others don't.
So this morning I needed some CD mailers, something I use a lot of. Normally I get them in Eureka or while on travel in major markets, but today I was in Fortuna, a much smaller and not particularly sophisticated place of about 13,000 population and with two office supply stores. Turns out... neither had what I wanted. Instead, both had mailers for 3.5 inch diskettes, and these oversize things obviously intended for ancient 5.25 inch floppies (remember those?) and relabeled as catch-all anything-fits-in-here.
At the second shop, the clerk got defensive when I asked for CD mailers... her own computer doesn't take CDs (as if I care... what's that got to do with me?), and I should buy locally (I do, if they have what I need at a fair price), and their prices are the best anyway (not true... not even close to true). When I called her bluff on the price thing, she fell back on the standard "well it costs more to get things shipped here." Probably true, the biggest double-trucks can't get through the tight curves on Rt 101, 199, or 299, the rail line has been closed for years, and for some unknown reason hardly anyone ships through our excellent and underused Humboldt Bay port. But until today, I'd really not had a reason to think through the rest of the argument. Now that she's given me a reason: overhead is much lower here. So are wages, as a direct result of the lower cost of living. So even if shipping is more, her rationale doesn't fly in the face of a cumulative examination of the cost of doing business.
Which means I have even less tolerance for price gouging than I did before. If a shop has what I need at a fair price, I'll buy it there. I might even pay a little extra for convenience or service. But if they can't or won't stock what I need, or try to sell it for half again what I can get it for elsewhere, then guess what. If enough of us plan ahead and buy online, or buy while on trips to San Francisco or other major markets, then eventually the shop will go out of business. Probably blaming some big-box store, or anyone or anything other than themselves.
The most extreme example I've seen was at a now long out of business photo store. I was looking for a new camera bag, found these two dust-covered things on their shelf which were exactly what I needed, but the price seemed way high. So I went home and looked in my catalog, couldn't find that model. Went into the file box of older catalogs I fortuitously hadn't gotten around to throwing out yet, and there, in a three year old catalog, was the now discontinued model I'd just seen... at *half* the price. So what exactly is the point of carrying massively overpriced inventory which doesn't sell? No wonder the place didn't last, if they were managing their cash flow that way.
With the benefit of a business school background, including too many boring economics classes to count, I can hang all sorts of theory and jargon and demand curves on this. But I've got to believe that at some level the average consumer gets it too. Sometimes it seems they get it better than the guys in the suits.
|
May 30th, 2006
01:46 pm - a little clarification
Sunday, as I was taking a break from photo-documenting the kinetic sculpture race, someone I barely know introduced me to a friend as an "erotic photographer." Which caught me a little by surprise. Do they really misunderstand?
That's not the intent, not at all. If anyone sees it that way, it says more about them than it does about me.
I document subcultures ,that's what I really do. This past weekend, it was the bizarre artist-engineer-athlete hybrid that can be found each Memorial Day weekend racing human powered artwork across 42 miles of sand, water, and pavement. Other times in the recent past, it's been various aspects of the gothic-industrial underground... admittedly, including some people who dress in provocative ways to express themselves. Before that, it was urban professionals who were competitive athletes in their spare time. The whole thing started around 1980 when in between photographing bands for a small magazine, I documented the then still relatively young punk subculture. I was already quite conscious of it, having had a couple of sociology classes and having just read a Dick Hebdige book titled "Subculture: The Meaning of Style (Methuen Press).
Even before that, I started as a photojournalist. At heart, I'll always be one even though it's been a very long time since it was a full time job. That's what we do... we document.
What I do, specifically, is go places that most people can't. I show people things that most of them will never see firsthand. Poet Jim Carroll, who fronted a band in my punk days, did much the same thing with his words and summed it up quite neatly: "you should come with me... I'm the fire's reflection... mister, I am your connection."
Punk in it's original, pure sense (before it became a pretentious fashion show inhabited by twits with mohawks) was over before most people knew it existed. Through a series of coincidences I was lucky enough to be there, and just knew that it had to be documented. The athlete series, while more mainstream, documented a culture perhaps even more closed to outsiders; to get in required not only academic and corporate credentials, but the ability to run a five minute mile, or climb hundreds or maybe thousands of feet of vertical rock, or do a hundred-mile bike ride. And so on.
I've got a couple of other ideas for projects, very unlike the ones I've done before. Probably there will be others I've not even thought of yet. But it's about people, about society, about the crazy things people do to carve out an identity on this planet which is teeming with billions of other people. It's not about conformists, and it's cetainly not about erotica.
|
May 26th, 2006
09:51 pm - doubling up
Kinetic Sculpture Race weekend... the one time each year when I consistently shoot digital. The one time when workflow speed matters enough to make it worth contending with all the other issues.
Basically, I need to shoot quantity on these weekends, and then need to have it up on the web quickly afterwards. Not so much this year, but the past few years speed has been essential. In 2004, I actually had web pages posted each night as the race progressed. Before midnight each night, the days events were uploaded.
But I've just finished packing a camera bag for tomorrow. This year I'm mostly shooting for one team instead of doing semi-official coverage for the entire race. Still, there's a bulky DSLR body in there, and three lenses, an extra battery, and three extra CF cards. Fortunately I'll never be more than 25 or 30 miles from home, and getting closer with each hour of the race, so no need to haul a laptop.
Then, hiding in one corner of the bag, my tiny little Leica and a few rolls of film... the setup that travels around the country with me, the one that produces 95 percent of my images. It fits in a jacket pocket, in fact I just recently carried it that way for most of a day.
There are still Leicas... and Nikons, and a lot of other mechanical beasts of burden... built 40 or more years ago, and in daily use. I'm pretty sure today's state of the art DSLRs will be taking up landfill space long before 2046. It's not only the durability issue, although there is that... just read that a Nikon D50 shutter is expected to last for 50,000 frames, which many pros do in an average year... what do you expect for 500 bucks? It's not just the rapid technological advances and resulting two-year obsolescence cycle, either. These things just are not elegant tools. They're slapped out in a hurry, a race to beat the competition, cutting-edge electronics packed into an afterthought body. Some recent mid-level designs, like the D200, are a step in the right direction, with metal frames and the ability to meter with manual focus lenses, and with viewfinders which are at least a slight improvement over the dark little tunnels on most models, at a fair price. But they still aren't at risk of winning any design awards. I'm still waiting for a compact, solid, elegant design, one that makes it easy to see what we want to take a picture of.
Then, there's the way we use them. It's possible to do stunning work with a DSLR. A few people do. But the auto-everything technology encourages laziness, it encourages not ever even learning a lot of very basic things. Earlier today, looking through about 30 photogerapher portfolios, I was reminded very strongly of that. These people varied in experience, from more than 20 years to less than one. Ironically, the only portfolio that I thought was strong belonged to a woman who has been at this for about two years. All the rest looked the same. The standard cliches: The basic studio shots, flat lighting and plain backgrounds; digital is good at this, unfortunately not all of the photographers were. The basic location shots, with contrasty lighting overwhelming the limited dynamic range of digital resulting in dense shadows and blown out highlights. The attempt at fantasy images through extensive image manipulation, more painting than photography, except without the benefit of art classes. The common thread, inconsistent exposure, auto white balance, too much Photoshop badly done, with poor color correction and over-gaudy colors; and accidental composition, almost as if the photographers were so intent on their prime subject that they forgot there was a background. Did they not see all that clutter in the background, or just not realize that it mattered?
So, the next three days will be my annual challenge, my attempt to do better. I have the advantage of fast lenses, I'm shooting with an 85mm f/1.4 for the most part, so I have the option of throwing distracting backgrounds out of focus. I'm not really all that good at digital, not like a few of my everyday pro friends who can make Photoshop do tricks. So it's a little scary that I'll be able to do better than a lot of what I saw online today, without even breathing hard. It's not that I'm that good, not when I venture outside the realm of film; it's that the others just haven't worked very hard at it.
|
May 25th, 2006
10:53 pm - they either get it or they don't
A few times in the past, I've wondered why I've been so lucky about getting inquiries mostly from relatively experienced... and sometimes very experienced and very well known... models. Sure, there are occasional inquiries from newbies, but they're usually newbies with a pretty good idea of what they want. And considering there are many thousands of clueless models for every really good one... like I said, I've been really lucky. It's way off the proportion that's out there in the general population, and that's a good thing.
Today I got an indication of what one of those reasons might be. Guess I probably already knew this, but inquiries from three models in a few hours kind of covered the range. Without going into specific detail, what I'm realizing is that the good ones, the successsful ones, recognize a good photograph when they see it. They know what they like, and it's based on some level of technical understanding as well as gut instinct and emotion. They know enough to ignore the guy who always has burned out highlights or bad composition, and if he clears that hurdle, then they look at the emotional impact of the image, and they can distinguish a flawless images that fits their own style from one that doesn't.
The others... they're confused. They can't tell a good photo (or photographer) from a mediocre one. Thus, they waste time shooting with mediocrity when that's all that's offering, and they sometimes pass up opportunities that they shouldn't.
That's why successful models go out and find the photographers they want to shoot with, and that's why the ones you've never heard of, and never will, get indecisive when faced with choices.
I think back to that workshop I sat in on at RIT many years ago, the one about visual literacy. Mostly postmodernist jargon, some of it complete crap... but the general concept is sound. It takes a little effort to learn how to see. In this case, it worth learning.
|
May 24th, 2006
12:12 pm - three
I'm so tired of seeing bad photography. So tired of seeing people who buy a digital camera and think they're an instant expert because they can see the image on the LCD (which by the way, bears little resemblance to the final product on a much larger monitor), and don't care to learn. And I'm tired of small-time pro photographers who are technically competent but have no imagination... assembly lines with a camera. These guys don't mess with me, or with anyone else who has been around a while, in fact they're mostly nice enough guys in person. But I do often hear them putting down beginners or anyone not doing things exactly their way, including people who have a lot more passion for their art and just need a little experience.
So here's the first batch of work that I do like. I was going to say there's no particular order to this, but that's not really true. I've placed a technical virtuoso first, to show what's possible. Beyond that, it's geographic. One east, one west, one in between. Maybe I'll follow up with more, and later I'll go out and look for more inspirational work. Nominations accepted.
Mostly, these guys don't really need the plug. They're well known within certain circles. Later I'll try to plug lesser known lights.
1. Steve Vaccariello, New York - Top of the food chain fashion shooter. Look past the top models and celebrities that you might recognize, look past the magazine tear sheets. Look at the flawless exposure, the unconventional but solid lighting, the exquisite composition. Think you don't need to use a light meter with your nifty new auto-DSLR? Can you do this consistently? Maybe you should think again. Actually at least some of this is shot on medium format film, but he uses the appropriate tool for each project.
2. K Leo, Chicago - The only one of these three who I know personally. Gormanesque in the sense that he uses deep shadows without detail as a compositional tool... technically breaking the rules, but this is one of those cases where you've got to understand the rules before you can successfully break them. The strength here, in my opinion, is the way he captures a sense of mystery, provokes emotion from his models. It always helps when both the photographer and the model really want to be there, come out of the shoot having had fun.
3. Reno Larson - Wildman of the west, slightly surreal images but fun. No point in me trying to explain this, better to go look. I'm guessing people either love his work or hate it. [edit: I've had to change the link, because his former personal site is apparently no longer working. No idea why. So this now goes to a 2003 e-zine article]
Is this worth doing more of? Is anyone getting anything out of this?
|
January 15th, 2006
09:52 pm - san francisco
Weekend update:
Saturday: It was raining as I drove north to Arcata, but by 8:30 am when the field trip group headed up Hwy 299 toward Willow Creek it had almost stopped. We squeezed the cars into a tiny National Forest campground and headed up the trail.
After a few minutes I realized that with two local experts present who were already very familiar with the location, and a small army of grad students who learned quickly and had strong, flexible muscles to turn rocks and logs, finding amphibians wasn't going to be a problem. The two local guys were however not able to answer anywhere near all of the constant questions, there were just too many people who wanted to know too many things. So I ended up staying mostly on the trail and handling the overflow questions... fortunately I've had a fair amount of experience with all of the critters we were finding.
Although the rain held off until after we were done, it was only about 47 degrees, cloudy, and damp at this site 30-some miles in from the coast. As long as we kept moving everyone was fine, but some folks were looking a little chilled when we got back to the cars around 1:00 pm.
After saying goodbye to everyone I headed into Willow Creek to get some lunch. Hot soup and coffee somehow tastes better after one has been out in the weather for four hours.
Then I headed east again on 299... normally the long way to where I was going, but given the uncertain condition on Rt. 101 this was safer, and not really any slower than doubling back. There was one stretch of controlled traffic where rocks were literally falling sporadically onto the road, but this caused only a minor delay. The only fresh snow was above 4,000 feet, none anywhere near the road. I made Redding a little before 3:00 and turned south on 5, flat and fast. Since the weather was now clearing, I decided to stop at the hot springs for the night, so turned back up into the inner coast range near Clear Lake. It was around 5:30 and just dark as I pulled in. The warm water felt great, as did seven hours of sleep.
Sunday: Another hour in the water, and by 10:00 am I was headed south toward the Bay Area. Normally I have a few errands accumulated by the time I make it here, and when there's time I try to get one of my backlog of photo shoots in. This time I was able to set up a shoot with ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) pyrokitten_mew who had contacted me a few weeks earlier, and she happened to be available on relatively short notice. So we shot late afternoon across the street from, and then in, the Cracktory. Some tricky light both outside and inside, but there should be some good stuff... backlight glinting off broken glass, window light, a metal-tentacled piece of art seen from several rungs up a ladder.
Time soon to get a little rest before my much too early flight.
|
January 13th, 2006
10:35 pm - the roundabout way
I'm headed out of here first thing in the morning; there are field trips, part of the amphibian conference, scheduled near Willow Creek for half the day, which puts me halfway to Redding on Hwy 299; since Rt 101 at Confusion Hill remains open/closed/open unpredictable due to landsclides, I'm just going to keep going and take 299/5/80 to the Bay Area. It means leaving a day earlier than originally planned, but there are plenty of accumulated things to do in/near San Francisco until it's time to board the plane to Chicago on Monday morning.
The meeting today was uneven in quality, with several good solid papers, some that were okay but nothing spectacular, and one that left me asking why they had bothered to do the work, since the answers were pretty self evident. Really all they were doing was spendding tax dollars to document what we should already know, instead of asking the tougher questions that really matter. Still, other papers more than made up for that.
So tomorrow we get to play in the rain and the mud for a while before I head south. There really hasn't been enough time to prep for this trip, with the last two days solid with activities. I did manage to burn some tifs onto CDs and will start doing photoshop work on the plane, should have some product to mail out to various people from the Chicago end on Tuesday or Wednesday.
|
|
|
