Contact Sheets: The Americans, Jim Marshall—Proof

As an amateur photographer whose photographic experience extends over several decades, I've done my time in many honest-to-goodness analog/wet darkrooms—including the several years I worked as a professional printer. I don't miss it. Sure it's a magical experience, pure, closer to what "real" photography is all about, but for me photography has always been about the other side of the equation. I prefer to shoot. Spending time in the darkroom was a necessary evil that I thankfully do not have to endure anymore. But there is one thing I miss about the darkroom, contact sheets. Without a doubt, the only thing I liked to do in the darkroom was make contact sheets. I LOVE contact sheets, but then again...

all photographers love contact sheets.

I don't think I'm going out on limb or taking a huge risk when I make that statement. It might be less true now, but I'm certain that even photographers with little or no analog experience appreciate the value of the contact sheet. Besides the fact that it used to be an important part of the photographic process, and that it's a great photographic learning tool, it is absolutely pure photographic joy, a treat. So when photographers have the opportunity to peruse a contact sheet, they will seldom pass it up.

Therefore, it's been a blast over the last several years to see the release of photo books that include contact sheets of important or iconic images. The one that had most of the photogs I know drooling is Robert Frank's Americans: Looking In. This book is a real feast for photographers. It has over 80 pages of contact sheets from Frank's epic journey around the U.S. It's such a wonderful pleasure to peer into these treasures and to see how Frank went about creating the images that eventually became what is arguably the most important photographic work ever created.

Likewise, back in 2004 Chronicle Books released a book of iconic images + contact sheets, Jim Marshall: Proof. Proof is a cool book with some very cool images. It's also much less of a beast of to wrangle with than the Frank book, which is just a bit too big to deal with comfortably. Instead, Proof has a nice open feel. It's 12" x 10" and less than an inch thick. The Frank book is 11" x 9" and just over two inches thick.



Most of the images in Proof are portraits of celebrities from the sixties and the seventies--with a good percentage of those images being shots of musicians. If you were cognizant from the sixties to the nineties and mildly interested in popular music (rock and roll) and current events, then you'll recognize the images and the individuals. There's the famous shot of Bob Dylan rolling a car tire down a New York street with a stick and iconic images of Johnny Cash (with the often replicated 'camera flip-off'), Janis Joplin, Cream, Jimi Hendrix, Woody Allen, Allen Ginsberg. There's even a more recent shot of Ben Harper and Laura Dern that is really nice. And of course, you get the contact sheet from the roll that produced the image.

The contact sheets allow you to see Marshall's M.O. It's a blast to see how he worked with his subjects to get the final shot, especially the non-portrait shots where he seems to be floating around an event and recognizing photo ops. This is the real value of this book for photographers, especially those interested in portraiture. It's not hard to see and imagine how Marshall interacted with this subjects to get what he needed. He adds a short blurb of information and storytelling to each image that bring the shoot to life. All the blurbs are informative and some are pretty funny, such as when he told the Allman Brothers band that he wanted a "laughing" shot for the cover of the album 'Live at Filmore East', and that if he didn't get it, no one would get any coke.

Photography is a learning experience that never ends. If you've ever shot on the street or made an attempt at portraiture then you already know how fluid events and sittings can be—despite your best effort to control everything. Other than mentoring with an experienced photographer, the next best thing just might be perusing the contact sheets of an experienced photographer.

Book Proof!

The 'proof' of my next Blurb book arrived last weekend. On the whole, I'm pleased. I like the book size, the cover, and the fonts, but it's going to need another iteration. I need to do adjustments to several of the images, a few for tone and a few for size.

The tones are close, much closer than with World Away. I chalked that up to using the printer profile to check the adjustments. (I did not use the profile with World Away.) I should clarify that the new book is a mix of black and white and color images, with the majority of the black and white images having heavier shadow and mid tones. The printer that Blurb uses really struggles on these types of images; it has a tendency to add contrast and weight to the tones.

I like the book size; although, several of the images are too big, so I'll need to scale those down. I used a variety of page templates, because I just couldn't get a feel for what the Blurb software was going to do around the crop lines, so seeing now what I need to see, I'll have to change the layout.

Anyway, I decided to take a breather and give it a week before I jumped back into it.

Blow-Up Magazine

What can you get for $9 these days? Well, here's an instance where nine bucks guarantees you 26 different takes on the world around you from 26 different photographers. This latest edition of Blow-Up magazine (named for the 75 member Flickr group) is heavily influenced by the street shooting element within the San Francisco-based group. Kudos for this edition's production goes to group member and local photographer, Brad Evans, who compiled the photographs from the group pool and did the layout.

The images that Brad chose--while not indicative of the group as a whole--are definitely indicative of the stronger and more interesting street shooting contingent within the group and of an identifiable San Francisco-styled approach to the genre.

These are all very strong images, so don't get this expecting your typical Flickr artsy/calendar-worthy photography (although, I''d buy this if it was a calendar (note: please don't make this a calendar!)). As good photography should, these are images that resist and challenge. These are images that look back at you and stare you down in an unrelenting fashion. That ain't a bad entertainment value. After all, we could all use a good stare down.

If you want this edition, you should buy it soon. These PoD magazines are limited run and can sell out quickly, especially since the publisher, MagCloud is offering a special St. Patrick's day discount.

Eskanzi's Wonderland

I finally got my hands on this book, Wonderland by Jason Eskenazi. The book is one of those titles that has been sporadically popping up in my little world over the last several years. It seems I would hear it mentioned in a positive light (which would pique my interest), and then I wouldn't hear about it for a while. I would forget about the book, and then it would pop up again as a positive mention in an online discussion forum, blog, or in a magazine. The persistence of a thing seems to always be a very good sign, and Wonderland is no exception. This book has instantly become my favorite photo book.

First of all the book is actually called Wonderland: A Fairy Tale of the Soviet Monolith. It's a small book, and it has a handmade feel to it. The front and back covers are made of a thick cardboard and the binding is exposed, which allows it to lay flat. That's a good thing, because most of the photos cross over the gutter and utilize both pages. With this binding, you don't lose a goodly percentage of the image, because it doesn't disappear into the crease, and believe me you'll want to see every inch of these photographs. The printing is very good, and the photographs are just incredible. The compositions are tight and every image is strong. This is classic documentary and street-style photography. They remind me quite a bit of Koudelka, because like Koudelka, the photographer seems to immerse himself in the mix of the environment and the subjects. He is so up close and involved that he is seemingly invisible.

The photographer is Jason Eskanazi a New Yorker (and MOMA security guard) who felt compelled to leave his job to travel and photograph the former Soviet Union after the fall of communism. He became intrigued with the concept of a nation suddenly coming to grips with the downfall of communism after almost a century. Eskanazi summed what he was trying to photograph as a nation dealing with the "difficulty of losing what you always thought would be there."

What Eskanazi came away with is an incredibly beautiful collection of some of the strongest images I have seen in a long time. The images are striking in their strength and sensitivity. The compositions are charged and dynamic. I put the images in this book on par with the best of Koudelka. The great lesson that Eskanazi came away with was "the realization that the people I was encountering had a nostalgia for tragedy." That realization is very much a part of the beauty of Wonderland. The sense of that is in every single image.

Finally...Book Sent for a Proof

Well it took a while, but my next photo book is off to Blurb for a proof. I should see the book in about a week. The book is set up as a hard cover, which allows more options when ordering. For this initial proof, I ordered a soft cover—mainly to check the quality of the printing. However, I'm still wrangling with the concept of cover flaps, and right now the flaps are blank. So while I wait for the proof to arrive, I'm playing around with some ideas, including adding a very serious-looking selfy. I don't mind the blank flaps. Looking at the online preview of the book, the blank flaps kind of lend a cleaner/indie look.

Salmon Blogged

Tichy

I picked up a book of the work of the controversial outsider artist photographer, Miroslav Tichy. He is the voyeuristic, peeping-tom, recluse photographer; a Czech who dressed in rags, lived a life of solitude, and secretly took thousands of pics of women in his village using cameras he made from toys and other junk (such as tin cans and toilet paper rolls). His work is fairly recently discovered and obviously very "low-fi".

Book: Miroslav Tichy (Fototorst) (Russian Edition)


Photo: Miroslav Tichy

The work is interesting, especially if viewed within the scope of 'outsider artists'. Most artists fitting the description have no formal training (Tichy did) and usually have a sort of mental illness or obsessive compulsive nature that results in a certain type of prolific repetitive creative outpouring. Some are considered savants, some are or have been institutionalized.

Run some searches on 'outsider artists', 'miroslav tichy, or check out wikipee for a list of notable outsider artists.

I assume the book is pretty much indicative of Tichy's work. The photos are not everyone's cup. They are at times beautiful, ugly, quaint, original, inspirational, creepy, cutting edge, and just plain weird.

If you're interested, the Fototorst book can be had fairly cheaply. It contains both english and russian text. But if you are interested, definitely read what you can about the man. There's plenty online and in the book.

Chips, Salsa, and Beer

Deadline Come and Gone!

Bummer. I'm still working on my photo books, and here's the thing, I haven't even started one of them, yet. I thought I could get two done by the end of January, but I've been bogging down on the first one of the two. This is a lot tougher than I thought it would be. My first book just fell together for me. I hadn't planned that one to be thematically based. I really just wanted a sample book to carry with me when I shot. It ended up becoming something else, something finite and manageable like a narrative. I can't seem to articulate this next book. I have the images, the theme, and a working title but man it all seems to unravel as I put it together. I'll get there.

Days Gone By

A copy of the IPO.

The Last One

The Process

​

Rest in Peace, Al Kaplan

The photographer, photo-blogger, and lovable online gadfly has left us. You can spend some time with Al by reading his blog, The Price of Silver Rest in peace, Al.

Happy Thanksgiving ....er, New Year!

This time of the year, this day, is a time for reflection on the year past. For a lot of us it becomes the real Thanksgiving day, because not only do we reflect on what has occurred over the last 365 days, but we also give thanks for those things that did (or didn’t) transpire. So I will take this time to give a few selected (non-comprehensive) photographic-related “Thank You” shout outs to some of the positive stuff from the year 2009.

First and foremost is Flickr. I give thanks that the big social-photo site is still there uniting people socially around photography. I dove rather heavily into Flickr in both 2008 and 2009, and I finally ran smack up against its limitations about the middle of this year. After repeated sour experiences on the social end of Flickr, I came to the welcoming and refreshing realization that this was not what I wanted for my photography. I still use Flickr. I’m still a “pro”. I still peruse the uploads of those on my contact list, and I still venture out looking for new contacts. I’m still an admin on a couple of groups, but I’ve pulled back considerably with regard to the meat of what Flickr is all about, group postings, social networking and contact management. I uploaded six photos yesterday, but my plan for 2010 is to not broadcast uploads. I plan to be more selective with what I show. So, thank you Flickr for the experience and for helping me realize how much I value my photography.

SFMOMA. I became a member this year, finally. It’s been one of the best investments I’ve made in a long time. Thank you, SFMOMA for the great exhibits this year, especially Robert Frank’s Americans and the William Kentridge exhibit. What a great summer.

Thank you, Castro Theatre for showing Godard’s Made In USA and thank you Roxie Theatre for your Film Noir series. I know you’ve always been there, but this was a return for me to the art-house cinema of my youth.

Thank you Panasonic and Olympus for your µ4/3 products. What an incredible development and what fun if has been to get truly excited about digital photography. A couple of months ago I attended a gathering of local rangefinder photographers. At the table were several panasonic µ4/3 cameras and twice as many lens mount adapters. I was able to affix Leica M mount and LTM lenses, Nikon lenses and Olympus lenses to my G1. I hope someday everyone gets to see a GF-1 with a Noctilux attached. What a blast it is to meld the old with the new.

Thank you photo book publishers. I think I invested in more photo books this year than any other, and there has been no shortage of fascinating and cherish-able offerings. Some of my favorite books this year came from Steidl. I’m thinking particularly of the expanded edition of Frank’s Americans. Eighty pages of contact sheets!

Thank you Apple computer for your iPhone and iPhone-related products. I’m thinking specifically of the iPod Touch, which I acquired when I bought my daughter a MacBook for her freshman year in college (I don’t have an iPhone). Images from the iPhone camera have been showing up everywhere and combined with the cool apps the results have been impressive. For the Touch, I’ve found several apps that have really changed my photo processes. I’m most impressed with the Digital Truth Massive Development Chart app.

Well, that’s probably enough for now. Happy New Year!!

I’ve Got a Couple of Book Projects Working

As soon as I finished my first photo book World Away, I immediately began thinking about the next book. I found the photo book process creatively invigorating. So much so, that the thought of the end result (the book) began to factor in to how and what I photographed. It helped me put some structure to what I shot.

I always shoot with some intent, beyond the immediate. There’s always a thread or two or three that I pick up and tug on as I shoot. I might put a thread down for a while, but there will always be something, a shadow, a gesture, a situation that causes me to pick it back up again and tug and play at the ideas that tug back at me. But, that process was always sort of a nebulous thing, kind of a wandering. The experience of putting together World Away reminded me that there was another level of creativity awaiting the results of my efforts. And, that did a lot for me.

When I’m going through the cycle of shooting and scanning and posting, I find it’s easy to bog down and forget about what inspires me. Sitting down and arranging images and seeing them again, anew, side-by-side with other images and noticing how they work together, against one another, provides a level of rediscovery that surpasses that initial sense of discovery I felt when I saw the image as I shot it or as I processed it.

I’m in the scanning, sizing, and layout stage right now (yes, I group all that in as one stage). So, needless to say. I’m in a good spot right now, because I’m playing with images. My plans are to finish both by the end of January 2010. I think I can meet that deadline.

Books that Don't Play Well With Others

I apologized to my host. What could I possibly have been thinking bringing Joel Peter Witkin to a party? Sure the call was to bring photo books to the upcoming holiday gathering of our loosely knit group of San Francisco Bay Area-based Flickr photographers, but why bring Joel Peter Witkin? I was doing fine with my original choice of books—a nice cohesive collection of POD (print-on-demand) samples. I had packed my recent Blurb publication, World Away, for obvious reasons (gratuitous self-promotion!). I brought along Keith Goldsstein’s (Keith15 on Flickr) DIY hardcover, For Earth Below, which I obtained when he and I swapped books. I also wedged into my sack, the second RangefinderForum book, RangefinderForum Photography—A Gathering, which is a nice collection of photos produced using Lulu that unfortunately suffers from some really bad printing. So it was a good sampling of books with an interesting theme, photo book production. Then I had to go and add Witkin’s ‘Disciple & Master’ to my satchel.

Disciple & Master is my latest acquisition. Its been on my list for a while. More accurately, it’s been in my Amazon shopping cart, and while I was doing some online Christmas shopping, Amazon, in its ever vigilant effort to keep me appraised of potential purchases, announced that the book had dropped in price. They just thought that I might like to know about this...opportunity. They were right. I bought the book. Thanks, Amazon!

Disciple & Master is an interesting book. If you are familiar with Witkin’s work, you are probably aware that the photographer’s images are as rich in subtext as they are full of shock value. This book validates the assumption that Wiktin was influenced/inspired by the photographic work of others. Disciple & Master shows many well-known Witkin images alongside the images that inspired them, and precedes the pairing with a brief explanation by Witkin. It’s a interesting concept, particularly when applied to Witkin. If ever there was a photographer who needed such a book! I was psyched. But alas, I forgot about the initial impact Witkin can have on the both the uninitiated as well as the unconverted.

My eager unveiling at the party was met with hesitance, reluctance, and trepidation. Amongst the small group standing nearby, only my astute host had experienced Witkin. The others had that confused look of having seen the oddest and rarest of juxtapositions. Witkin doesn’t mix well or play well with other photo books. Back-to-back viewings of one of his books with most other books is a very odd experience. A nature or animal book was on the table, as well as a few street photography books. Setting Witkin on the coffee table amongst that collection would have been like bringing a possessed Regan MacNeil to a sweet sixteen birthday party at an ice cream parlor.

I apologized to my host for bringing Witkin into his home. We shared a laugh as I tucked Disciple and Master back into my satchel. My other contributions made the rounds and played well. But playing well has more to do with those doing the mixing than it does with those being mixed. Witkin proves (in Disciple & Master) that his images can play well.

I won’t fight the good fight on behalf of Witkin, except to encourage photographers to give him a chance and to read the fascinating text that accompanies the image pairings in Disciple & Master. We should all have such a love and reverence for the art and history of photography that Witkin has.

Photography is a personal journey. Witkin fits nicely on my shelf right next to Doisneau and Friedlander.

World Away

I finally finished my first photo book. It's called, 'World Away' and it's available from Blurb.

Is it street?

It's interesting to try and define it, but I think ultimately trying to define it is futile, because the one thing that makes the genre so interesting is its ambiguity. I think it's tough to define the genre with words. In doing so one usually distills down to defining the concepts of spontaneity and reality. It might be easier to define the genre photographically, as in "yes that is" and "no that isn't". Maybe then you can begin to deconstruct it and define it, but eventually you'll run up against the fuzzy ambiguous edges, the “could be” images, and really I think that's where things get interesting. I think the really interesting images push at those edges and cross and encroach on those "lines," which is what makes the genre so attractive.

If you want to study classic street photography [B]elements[/B] I recommend one of my favorites, Robert Doisneau. I think he captures what most of us would unequivocably define as street photography. Oddly enough a *lot* of his images are constructed or posed, designed to look "spontaneous." The elements of what a lot of folks would call street photography are all there, under his control, in his very clever compositions. At first viewing you would probably call his images "street," because they are so real and spontaneous. It can often take several close viewings to get past the artifice. Is it really street? Does it really matter? Ultimately it boils down to what Picasso said, "Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.“

Send Good Thoughts

Send good thoughts to Robert (Honus). Robert is a great guy, with a family. Life has dealt him a challenge, as it will all of us. Keep him in your thoughts.

Be well, friend.




.

How's the OOFA?

Leica Summicron 90/2 wide-open

OOFA, out-of-focus areas, how important is lens' OOFA, or bokeh? Over on RfF we're somewhat fond of "lens tests." Threads go deep and long if the subject line states "lens test" or "lens comparison." Big debates (arguments) spring up over the validity of lens tests, particularly when they seem to challenge common wisdom regarding which lens is "better," or, more to the point, if someone has spent beaucoup dollars on a particular lens, and it fares poorly when compared to less expensive lenses. In this case, something must be wrong; the test must be flawed. As any tester will tell you, "no good deed goes unpunished." If you post a lens test on RFF, you'll get the appreciation of those that know the time and effort involved, but you'll surely get your wet-rags that'll let you know where and how your test has failed. That's OK.

My favorite lens tests are not the clinical MTF curves and chart and graphs—although those are important (I guess). My favorite tests are lens comparison tests that show the two characteristics that I look for most in a lens: an understanding of the lens' contrast, and the OOFA. Poor OOFA can surprise you and make-or-break a photo. Quality OOFA, or bokeh, as it is more often referred to, reveals itself in a creamy subtle softness. Highlights, particularly points of highlights appears as perfectly smooth and round. Poorer OOFA highlights look like rings, and even poorer OOFA highlights look like football shaped rings.

Here are some recent links:

Roland (ferider) posted a 40mm lens test on RFF: HERE. Sure it's a comparison of 40mm lenses, but it is a test that shows the two factors mentioned above. If you don't know OOFA and bokeh, look at Roland's test.

Todd (Todd.Hanz) just started a W/NW thread on RFF asking for wide open shots. Check the thread out for good and bad examples OOFA and Bokeh.