Cameratruck

Sometimes, you run across something that's just plain cool. The 'Cameratruck' is one of them. The photographer, Shaun Irving, drives around in a truck he bought on e-Bay for $5000 and converted into a huge camera.

He mounted an old lens taken from a submarine periscope into the side of the truck. The film is hung on the opposite inside wall of the truck, where it is exposed by light coming through the lens when a metal slide is opened. The photographer stands inside the truck (camera) to open and close the 'shutter'while the exposure is made. He then develops the film with a bucket, sponges, developer, and a garden hose.

The entire story is best explained in this pdf. Be sure to smile if you see it drive by!

Looking Easy

Several times over the years that I have been writing this blog I have noted frustration about how hard it is to make a really good photograph in contrast to how easy, particularly in this era of digital photography, most non-photographers think it is. Sure, it can be easy to point a digital camera at a scene and get reasonable sharpness and exposure.....but it is extremely difficult to get a truly stirring image.

You all know the famous photography joke. The one where the photographer goes to a friend's (who happens to be a cook) home for dinner and, when looking at the photographers photos, the friend tells him that they are gorgeous and that he must have a really excellent camera. On the way out the door he tells the host that dinner was exquisite and that she must have really excellent cookware.

So I have felt that level of frustration when work is seen by non-photographers.

But I'm over that now. How so? It all stemmed from the realization that artists of all genres make their art appear easy. For example, a great musician makes the playing of their instrument appear effortless. They make it look easy. But no one ever sees the years of relentless practice and refinement that they went through. No one can tell how many revisions a song went through or how many times it was practiced before being recorded and performed.

So, I guess I should feel good about people thinking it is easy to make good photographs!


On another topic....a few days back I wrote a post entitled "Small Prints". I happen to run across a post by Brooks Jensen on one of his blogs that discussed essentially the same topic that I really enjoyed reading. You can read that here.

Quick Quotes: Wynn Bullock Masquerading as Albert Einstein

"I now measure my growth as a photographer in terms of the degrees to which I am aware of, have developed my sense of, and have the skills to symbolize visually the four-dimensional structure of the universe. "

Wynn Bullock

I do love photography related quotes. I really enjoyed this one by Wynn Bullock because it seemed to have a little Albert Einstein (who I have quoted here before) twist to it!

By the way, here is a great link to an Einstein photo Gallery.

Small Prints

I have generally tended to make large prints of what I consider to be my best images. But, I have come to realize that there is a problem with this method of sharing one's work. For one thing, there is always going to be a limitation in the amount of available wall space in any one location. Secondly, any image that is printed large and framed needs to be a '5 star' image in order to merit that sort of treatment and stand on it's own. Finally, unless one is dealing with a rather large gallery space or display area where multiple large images are hanging, the image itself tends to 'live' in isolation.

I have come to realize that I have many photographs that do not merit this sort of large scale, isolated display but are still one's that I think deserve to be looked at, if not in isolation than as part of a series designed to give an overview of a location or topic. Somehow, an 8 x10 or 11 x 14 image that can be hand-held and appreciated without necessarily being matted, framed, and hung seems to fit the bill and allows one to appreciate this type of artwork, which is to say high quality images that fit together but may not necessarily be part of a 'best of' collection.

As an example, take this image from the workshop I attended in Provincetown, on Cape Cod. Provincetown is an interesting mix of beauty and serenity with a touch of eclectic wildness. Part of the Cape Cod and Provincetown experience is not just the ocean, but also the beauty and quirkiness of the towns themselves. One thing that I was drawn to in Provincetown, believe it or not, was the signs. So many of the signs seemed to be colorful pieces of art in and of themselves. Take this one from the Land's End Inn for example:

Land's End Inn
Copyright Howard Grill

This image would not fare well printed as a 22x28 inch framed photo. There simply isn't enough to it to have it hanging on a wall at that size. And yet it does convey a what I found to be an intriguing part of the Provincetown experience, along with the lighthouses, beaches, and sand dunes.


Of course, this idea is nothing new. Lenswork editor Brooks Jenson has long advocated special treatment for these types of photos and has, in the last year or two, made it a reality by producing the now well-known Lenswork Folio series. For those not familiar with the folio concept, who could explain it better than Brooks Jenson himself, who states the following on the Lenswork website:

"What is a folio? Think of it as a hybrid between an individual print and a book. It’s a collection of unbound prints – book-size rather than wall-size prints. Because they are unbound, they can be handled individually, are meant for viewing by hand, but can be matted and framed if you choose to. The prints in a folio are presented in an embossed and die-cut art paper enclosure, and feel more like a single collection than a random pile of prints. Like a book, they are typically monographs or thematic, and contain a number of prints that explore a photographic theme more deeply than is possible with a single “greatest hits” image."

I have taken an interest in the folio concept because I think it allows one to share their work in a very accessible fashion and have taken some early steps to learn how to make them. I anticipate being able to produce one at some point in the next several months. I hope this will make it easier to share a broader selection of my work with a wider audience both at home and at work.

Accepting Imperfection

When it comes to most things, I tend to be a perfectionist. However, when it comes to photography, this can be a problem. I am not referring to seeking perfection in aspects of photography like composition or exposure, as I think it is wise advice not to show one's mistakes or the shots that were 'almost good if only I had done x, y, or z'. But there are times when an image does hold emotional value and yet is imperfect, but not in a way that could have been easily changed or remedied. It is this type of imperfection that I am trying to get myself to become more accepting of.

This photograph is a good example of what I am referring to. After seeing the image, I wanted to print it as a tinted monochrome with an 'antique' look. However, since the shot was at dusk (and perhaps slightly underexposed as I had planned to portray it as a low light photo) and because I wanted the sky to show a good deal of contrast, when I finished processing it a moderate amount of digital noise could be seen. In the past, this would have led me to abandon the image and it never would have seen 'the light of day'.

Sunset Sail
Copyright Howard Grill

But this photo seemed to have some interesting emotional content, at least to me. So I decided it would be a shame to abandon it simply because of some noise. I was willing to accept the noise because I liked the image, but also started to think about how I might work with the noise a bit, as opposed to fighting it. Part of the need to work with the noise was the fact that my noise reduction software didn't seem to be doing a particularly good job at noise remediation.

With this in mind, I actually added some digital noise to give the noise a more generalized presence and make it appear a bit more like film grain. Overall, even in a large print, I don't find it particularly concerning or distracting.

Interestingly, as I was driving to work today, I was listening to a Lensflare 35 podcast. One of the panelists made a statement that I found very apropos to this image and gave me further reassurance that I had made the right choice in continuing to work on it. He stated that he had learned photography from his father and that he had once asked his father if it was a problem to have film grain in the image......and his father replied that if people really noticed the grain then it was probably a boring image anyway.

What Comprises The Craft Of Photography?

I recently discovered the Lensflare 35 podcast. On Lensflare, Dave Warner interviews renowned photographers within the various photographic 'sub-specialties'. In Episode 42, he interviews nature photographer Tony Sweet, whose work I have greatly admired for a long time.

During that interview, Tony made a statement which serves as an interesting follow up to my last post, which quoted photographer Esther Parada's statement about image manipulation and also mentioned my essay "Photography and Truth". Tony said "We're at a point in photography where getting the image is only 50% of the game and the other half is making it look the way you want it to look (with software)." He went on to say that "The craft now is largely computer skills."

Those statements gave me a lot to think about. At first blush, I felt that the statements were true, but also found myself wishing that they weren't. Then I found myself thinking that 50% was too much to attribute to computer skills, as software can't make a terrible photograph into a good one.

However, the idea of making an image 'look the way we want it to' is really nothing new. Yes, we make the image look the way we want using software, but back in the wet darkroom days one made (and some still do make) the image look the way 'they wanted it to' through the 'magic' of darkroom techniques. Photographers are well aware that the scenes portrayed in Ansel Adam's prints do not exist. Well, the places do, but they didn't look the way he portrayed them, as the photographs were heavily 'manipulated' in the darkroom. Of course, that didn't make them any less beautiful.

It still takes a lot of 'heart and soul' to make an image that is worthy of bringing into the digital darkroom in order to make it look 'the way you want'. So I don't believe it is fair to say that the craft is "largely computer skills"....that may be so for a graphic designer, but not for a photographer. A very important part, yes, but largely seems just a bit too much.

So perhaps not much has really changed at all. Perhaps it has just gotten easier to 'manipulate' images but, I believe, it is still incredibly difficult to get really good, intriguing, different, and meaningful images that 'speak' to an audience!

Quick Quote: Esther Parada

"We had this belief about photography, but that's about to disappear because of the computer. I actually welcome this development; I'd like to think that more overt recognition and discussion of the manipulation which has always been inherent in photographic representation is healthy."

Esther Parada -Writing in 1993 about her work with digital photographs.

When I read this quote it really grabbed me because Parada's implications ('which has always been inherent') about the subject of manipulation are one's that I feel strongly about. As a matter of fact, I had, in this blog, written a series of posts about manipulation in fine art imaging. The series of posts, formulated into an essay, can be read on my website, here, or on the Digital Outback Photo website, where it was also published....here.