Quick Quotes: Timothy Allen

It can be a trap of the photographer to think that his or her best pictures were the ones that were hardest to get.


Timothy Allen

Timothy Allen should certainly know about this, given that he photographs around the world for Human Planet.

We often think that if we could just go to this or that exotic location we would come back with exceptional images that people would fawn over. In fact, most people don't care where a photograph was taken or how easy or hard it was to get there. They only care if it resonates with them.

This quote gets me thinking about the fact that the strongest and most well crafted images are probably the ones that are of 'ordinary things' and 'ordinary places' that, nonetheless, carry strong emotional content.

Looking All Around

A few days ago, I visited the Andre Kertesz exhibit entitled "On Reading" at The Carnegie Museum Of Art in Pittsburgh. It was a wonderful exhibit of Kertesz photographs, with the theme being people reading.

One of the ideas that caught my attention (besides that Kertesz had a wry sort of humor based on photos like this and this) was that life goes by without our realizing what is around us that is interesting to see. On that note, as I left the museum I found myself really looking all around me to see what was there. That is when I found this....which I took with my cell phone.

Reflections
Copyright Howard Grill

"Digital Analogue" - A Short Film

This is a neat short film I ran across. I hesitate to say that it is 'about' antique cameras, because it really is more of a work of art than a film 'about' anything. It was constructed from over 6000 still images of analogue cameras, and the intriguing soundtrack is made entirely from sounds generated by these 'antique' cameras.

Enjoy "Digital Analogue" by ftjelly!

B&W Magazine Award

I am quite proud to have been awarded a "Bronze Award" in this years B&W Magazine Single Image Issue! I have posted the image before, though the submission to B&W obviously required a conversion to black and white.

"Stairwell"
Copyright Howard Grill

In addition, friend (though we have never actually met....one of the wonders of the internet) and fellow photography blogger Andy Ilachinski had not one, but two images published in that same issue! Check out his thought provoking and exceedingly well written blog here. It is a regular on my reading list.

Quick Quotes: David DuChemin

"Remember that technical perfection rarely moves the soul."

David DuChemin

A quote today from David DuChemin's new Lightroom book (which I have reviewed in a prior post). Not that DuChemin is eschewing technical excellence....in fact just the opposite is true. The quote, when taken in context, refers to the fact that technical excellence alone is not enough to allow an image to elicit a meaningful response.

Fallen Leaf

This is the first image that I have processed since reading David DuChemin's Lightroom book that I reviewed in my last post. In doing so, I took a lot of his suggestions to heart. For example, in this image I first asked myself what drew my eye to the scene and used that information to help direct me through the image processing.

Leaf And Wooden Door
Copyright Howard Grill

Here, I was drawn to the way the wood of the door as well as the metal of the rusted hinge had an old and deep wrinkled texture that was similar to that of the leaf. In addition, I liked the way the yellow of the old paint on the door echoed the yellow in the leaf and the way the orange of the rusted hinge echoed the red of the leaf. Finally, I was intrigued that the green paint of the door symbolized the color of the leaf before its turning color and that the yellow paint was coming from underneath the green paint. Lots of echoing and symbolism going on here.

So, based on those thoughts, I knew that I wanted to emphasis the texture of the wood, leaf, and rusted metal in post-processing. I also wanted the colors saturated, though not so much that they appeared unnatural and, since the main point for the viewer's eye to be drawn towards was the leaf, I wanted the saturation of the paint to be somewhat less than that of the leaf.

I also used these thoughts to guide my cropping. Given that I wanted to display the leaf in the setting of the old door and for viewers to compare the inanimate to the living, I left enough of the door in the image so that it became a recognizable portion of it and not simply a backdrop onto which the leaf could be displayed.

Going through these thought processes are quite helpful in directing one's self down a specific route or two as opposed to the endless possibilities that exist when first opening a RAW file.

15 Composition Tips

A short post today with a link to some inspirational thoughts about composition.

Here are 15 great tips for photographic composition by photographer Alain Briot that are definitely worth reading.

Coincidence?

I was born in the late 1950's and thus, not too surprisingly, my musical taste leans towards 60's-80's rock. I also tend to go through phases where I really enjoy listening to a particular artist or group.

Lately, I have been going through an Emerson, Lake, and Palmer phase. For those who might be reading this that are too young to have heard of them, they are generally considered one of the earliest 'progressive rock' supergroups. If you haven't heard of them you really owe it to yourself to have a listen. Try "Lucky Man" for a more conventional 'over the radio' song, but if you really want to try something different give "Tarkus" a try.

But what has any of this to do with photography? Well, I recently was rounding out my ELP collection and ordered the album entitled "Works Volume 1". Ok, it isn't their most renowned music but I was completing my collection by purchasing albums I was missing. At any rate, I bought the CD (for essentially the same price as an i-Tunes download why not have an uncompressed hard copy as well?) and looked at the album insert. I was very surprised to find in the pamphlet this photograph of Keith Emerson taken by David Montgomery in the 1970's (the reproduction is somewhat poor as I had to scan an image that was already reproduced for the insert).

Photo Of Keith Emerson From Works Volume 1 Album
Copyright David Montgomery

The first thing that ran through my mind was 'Whoa, I've seen that before!'. To me it looked like essentially the same image as the iconic photograph of Igor Stravinsky taken by Harold Newman in the mid 1940's. For those not familiar with that photo, I have copied it below.

Copyright Harold Newman

I thought the similarity was clear. I would be curious as to whether Montgomery thought that the Newman image was so well known that people would realize that it was a copy of the idea and that it was almost a 'spoof' on the image or if it was a situation where Newman's image was not well known at the time. Not that it makes much difference at this point, I suppose. It is just that I was taken aback by the similarity between the two photos. Coincidence? I doubt it. Spoof....I don't know!

Daniel Stainer

Every so often you run across someone who seems to be similar to yourself. And so it is with Daniel Stainer. I ran across his blog entitled "Illuminations" and noticed that we share many of the same philosophies and tend to photograph in many similar ways.

I actually e-mailed him and, as it turns out, we only live about an hour or so from each other and had briefly met under non-photographic circumstances eight or nine years ago, though I hadn't initially recalled that. So we decided to go out photographing together and had a great outing at a place called Frew's Mill. The light wasn't all that great by the time we got there, but we still enjoyed the experience of photographing nonetheless. Below is one of Daniel's moody images taken when the lighting was more conducive to making photographs.

Frew's Mill
Copyright Daniel Stainer

So check out his blog and his image gallery as well. There are some inspirational images and writing to be seen and read!

Chris Friel

Having recently acquired a Canon tilt-shift lens, I have been avidly trying to learn how to best use it. This includes using the shift mechanism to avoid converging lines for architectural photography as well as using the tilt mechanism for altering the plane of focus to allow front to back sharpness while making landscape images.

But I was also interested in other creative ways in which to use the lens. And that is when I ran across Chris Friel's work.Chris uses the tilt-shift mechanism to create images with selective planes of focus. Rather than utilize tilt to try to bring everything into sharp focus, he often uses it to make most of the image, save a small area, out of focus. In addition to the use of tilt-shift lenses, much of his work is abstract and involves hand holding long exposures (sometimes in conjunction with tilt-shift lenses). His photographs are very powerful, pulling the viewer in and really making them think about the image.

Copyright Chris Friel
Taken With 24mm Tilt-Shift Lens

Copyright Chris Friel
Long Exposure With Camera Movement

Chris's Flickr stream can be found here. His formal website can be found here. Spend some time...these are remarkable images.

iPhone Photography Revisited

Back in December, I had written a post about photographing with an iPhone (which I don't personally own). That post revolved around an iPhone app for sharing images and a live feed of iPhone images submitted from folks around the world to Chase Jarvis' website called "The Best Camera" (as in the one you have with you).

Now iPhone photography has been taken one step further. I am talking about fine art iPhone photography! Seriously. Turns out you can do some pretty amazing stuff with the iPhone in conjunction with some image editing apps without ever having the photo leave the phone.

Think I'm kidding or exagerating? Check out this area of Dan Burkholder's website. The images are pretty amazing! He even has iPhone photography workshops and has an article about his iPhone photographs in this month's PhotoTechnique.

Tree And Pond In Fall
Copyright Dan Burkholder
iPhone Image With Post-Processing

I had always thought that cell phone photography was for 'the masses' and could not be used for 'serious art'. However, I have to say that with the changes in technology it is quite possible that this is no longer the case (not that I am about to go out and sell off my Canon 5D MK II). Though I have never seen any of Dan's iPhone prints myself, I do have a friend who has seen them and she was quite impressed with their quality (as a separate issue from their 'artistry' which, in my mind and hers, is clearly superb). But then again, what else would one expect from Dan Burkholder?

As an aside, some may have noticed that there has been a lack of images on the blog recently. That is because it has been taking me some time to set up my new computer system, load software, deal with driver bugs etc. But I hope to be back to making images in the very near future. Thanks for joining me here.

Chris Jordan: Running The Numbers

Seattle photographer Chris Jordan's work is so different, so intriguing, so filled with message that it really is important to see for yourself. Rather than try to describe it I will let you read what he has said in his own words:

"Running the Numbers looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 32,000 breast augmentation surgeries in the U.S. every month.

This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs. Employing themes such as the near versus the far, and the one versus the many, I hope to raise some questions about the roles and responsibilities we each play as individuals in a collective that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming.

~chris jordan, Seattle, 2008 "

He subsequently continued this style of photography with another project entitled "Running The Numbers II"

I think this work is illuminating and worth looking at and thinking about. After all, isn't the best kind of photography the kind that makes you think?

Here is a link to Jordan's website. Because of the way the site is constructed, I can't give a direct link to the project pages.....so once on the home page just click on the Running The Numbers projects and have a look for yourself!

Black And White Vision

I have always enjoyed black and white photography and the way that lines, shapes, and tones play such an important role in the image. Though I had a black and white darkroom when I was a kid, I hadn't done much black and white imaging recently because of the difficulty in making good B&W inkjet prints. Several years back, folks were setting up for black and white inkjet printing using third party inks with dedicated black and white print drivers etc. Many reported excellent results, others, well, not so much. Lately I have been experimenting with black and white printing again, as my Epson 7900 gives really superb black and white output.

One of the photography sites/communities which I enjoy perusing because of the extremely high quality imagery that can be found there is Fotoblur; and there is a good amount of black and white photography on the site.

As I was looking at some of the images by various photographers, I was struck again by how important tonality and simple graphic lines are to a black and white image; even more so, I believe, than for color images. In addition, somehow the 'magic' of black and white seems to be able to transform a scene into 'art' that would otherwise be bland in color. And part of the skill of making black and white images is the ability to visualize this transformation; to see, if you will, in black and white. I saw many beautiful images perusing Fotoblur yesterday, but the one that really drove home to me the ability of black and white to make 'art' out of what we might ordinarily walk by and not even glance at was this photograph by Linda Wride:

"Cubes"
Copyright Linda Wride

Check out the rest of Linda's compelling imagery here. She also has a website that features her botanicals.

The Best Camera

Perhaps you are familiar with Chase Jarvis and his iPhone app for taking and sharing images, as well as his book The Best Camera Is The One That's With You: iPhone Photography by Chase Jarvis (Voices That Matter). I personally wasn't until I heard Ibarionex Perello's interview with him on The Candid Frame.

What I find far more interesting (since, for one thing, I don't own an iPhone) is Chase's website The Best Camera, where one can see a live feed of images being posted from people using his application. The volume of images is amazing....and even more amazing is the creativity behind a very large percentage of them. I have to admit, I don't think I am 'into' the phenomena myself, but it is interesting to watch it all happen.

I Love Rock 'N Roll

I love rock and roll......do you? Well, if you love photography AND rock music then you owe it yourself to do two things:

1) Go over to The Candid Frame and listen to Ibarionex Perello's interview with Lynn Goldsmith, who is a premier "Rock Photographer" (though she is a wonderful photographer of many other subjects as well). The interview can be found here, though you will need to scroll down to the Oct 11 post to get it.

2) Buy Lynn's book, which Ibarionex discusses in the podcast, called PhotoDiary. The book is chock full of very entertaining stories about photography and rock personalities as well as great shots of your favorite musicians. And the best part.....I got the book for under $5 (yes, that's a 5 with no zero after it) shipping included. What a deal...and you can get a similar one at Abe's Books here.

ENJOY!

Spending Time

In my last post entitled "Compliments", I wrote about people's responses to viewing photographs. Andy Ilachinski made a wonderful and insightful comment to that post. Because I really enjoyed Andy's words and since people don't always read the comments section, I thought I would put his response up as a post on and of itself.

Andy noted that:

Perhaps an even deeper revelation that underlies a wonderful comment like "It made me think" (or feel, or ...) is that it simply compelled them to *stop* (literally and figuratively), pause, reflect, consider, ponder, immerse,...spend *time* with your image. The only thing that is truly precious to *anyone* in life is time itself; the time we give to others, and to the focus of our attention. And the greatest gift any viewer can give an artist of any kind (IMHO), is the time they give to merely look at your work. If asked to *articulate" *why* they spend time, I'm sure we'll hear all sorts of responses, as appropriate for different people with different predilections and verbal/self-reflective capacity. But, fundamentally, what brings joy to my own ears (from someone viewing my images), is something that - loosely translated - means "I wanted to spend some time with your picture." That always brings a smile to my soul.

Andy Ilachinski

As usual, Andy has hit the proverbial nail right on the head!

Andy also wrote a very insightful post on his blog about how people view photographs based on his experience working in a co-op art gallery that is definitely well worth reading.

For more of Andy's wisdom (and of course his marvelous photographs) check out his blog. To view his photographs scroll down the blog to the list of portfolios on the right side.

Pixel - Peeping, 70's Style

One thing leads to another. I used to watch Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In regularly as a kid. Recently, Henry Gibson, one of the show's comedians, died, which got me thinking of that time in my life. This led to my remembering a book which I had recently bought but had not yet cracked open.

In one of the late Bill Jay's Endnotes columns which he wrote for LensWork, he mentioned, and recommended, a book by Ralph Hattersley entitled "Discover Your Self Through Photography". He mentioned that it is still as relevant today as it was when it was published, though it has a good bit of 60's lingo. Somehow, having Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In on the mind led me to have a peek at the book.

Initially published in 1971, it really is a wonderful book that is filled with ideas and exercises to help expand one's creativity through photography and is definitely worth reading. I personally find the occasional smattering of 60's language and ideas a bonus that tends to bring back memories, if only for a short while (and if they were there to start with). And to top it all off, the book can be had quite cheaply and contains many images by Jerry Uelsmann (who taught with Hattersley at the same institution).

One of the paragraphs in the book made me recognize that what we now call 'pixel-peeping' is not at all something new....the pixels may be new but the peeping goes back a long way. In his introduction to an exercise called 'Creative Destruction' (an exercise involving the exploration of purposefully breaking photographic rules), Hattersley says:

"One of the fascinations of photography is that it can be a subtle and demanding craft. No matter how much sensitivity and technique you pour into a photograph, it can still absorb more. This is a great challenge, of course. But it can lead to the hang-up (there's a bit of that 60's creeping in) of being overimpressed with craftsmanship at the expense of everything else. People who fall in this trap generally turn themselves into unhappy, nit-picking old maids (yikes, I don't think anyone would publish that terminology today) who are terrified of making technical mistakes. To avoid them, they conduct endless experiments with technical trivialities or ceaselessly repeat past technical triumphs."

That sure seems to me a reminder that pixel-peeping is nothing new and that our main goal in photographing should be to instill emotion into our pictures while still secondarily maintaining a backdrop of technical excellence.

More Dreamscapes

I recently finished processing and printing the sixth image in my Dreamscapes series. I particularly like the ghostlike image behind the boy (though it may not show up that well in this small image format), which was caused by the child suddenly walking through the scene during the long exposure. I guess you can tell that it isn't a 'real' ghost because it also casts a shadow!

Dreamscapes #6
Copyright Howard Grill

In addition, another image from this series is going to appear in a "Self-Portrait"(yes, that is me at the end of the tunnel) themed show at The Silver Eye Center For Photography. The exhibit celebrates Silver Eye's 30th anniversary.

Dreamscapes #3
Copyright Howard Grill

While having any image shown at The Silver Eye is an honor, I do have to admit that this particular show is non-juried, with all members of the gallery invited to display one image. The show runs from July 8th to September 12th. Given the intriguing theme, it should be a really creative, interesting and enjoyable exhibit.

Bill Jay : 1940-2009

Bill Jay, who I have written about several times on Motivation, passed away on May 13th. I never met or knew him, but absolutely loved to read his writing and look at his photographs of people. Most recently, I finished a wonderful out of print book of his that had been recommended to me entitled "Cyanide And Spirits". Many of the essays in that book can be found on his website, where he generously made all of his writings available to anyone who sought them out.

Brooks Jensen, the editor of Lenswork, is collecting anecdotes and statements from people that knew him and is going to be compiling them. I look forward to reading about Mr. Jay from those who knew him personally. The information regarding that can be found here. More information about Mr. Jay's life can be found on Mary Virginia Swanson's website here.

The Ghosts Of Auschwitz

My last few posts about ethereal photographs and spirit photography bring me to a much more serious topic. Photographer Cole Thompson, who I have written about before, has recently had his newest body of work entitled "The Ghosts Of Auschwitz" published in B&W magazine. The same portfolio is also going to be featured in upcoming issues of Silvershotz and LensWork.

The recent article in B&W describes how, during his visit to the death camps, he had initially planned not to take photographs. However, "while thinking of the spirits of the people that still lingered there", he began making images. Neutral density filters allowed long exposures, turning the tourists that were visiting the camps into haunting, ghostlike blurs.

Having lost relatives in the Holocaust and having an uncle who still bears his concentration camp number tattooed on his forearm, I find Thompson's images intensely personal and moving. However, one need not have any personal experience with the event to have the images convey a sense of somber remembrance. They do so in a way that makes the memories of those that perished come alive. They are a unique interpretation of events that are otherwise exceedingly difficult to portray in a way that makes the viewer want to look, linger, and think.