A "Guest Post" ported over from my other blog site. In response to art history nonsense.

 

June 08, 2024

HENRY WHITE'S GUEST POST ON FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHY.

 

Henry White agreed to take over for me on random Saturdays 

so I could go helicopter bungee jumping over the volcano near Grindavik

and get my mind into a mellow place. 

Having seen first hand that everything in the art world of photography has already been done, seen, critiqued, lionized, demonized, exploited or discarded I switched from making beautiful color photographs of flowers (all large dye transfers printed by Bob) to making austere and oppressive grayscale images of buildings, roadways, shop windows and rubbish along the sides of roads. Once I "unmastered" myself from the constraints of logic, good taste, humanism, and sincere, authentic interest in subjects imprisoned by my cameras I was freed to engage in abstractly chaotic street photography and New Documentarianism to my heart's content. 

Following in one of my mentor's footsteps I endeavored to find the best coffee in my home town and used the proximity to the various coffee shops as a formalist boundary structure to contain my work within a geographical box. Within a construct of minimalization of scope I would move my pursuit of pure, ordered photography to a pursuit of strict visual chaos larded with purposeful bad timing and a general ignoring of compositional structure. By eliminating the merchant class fixation with color from the work I was able to pull out one more parameter of interest in order to keep the viewers off kilter so they could approach my new work with the trepidation of one who walks blindfolded through a mine field. Hoping to find some "treasure" at the end of their short or long journey.

Recent physics papers have hinted that every structure in the universe is possessed of its own consciousness and I used that as a jumping off point to decry our prejudicial myopia about the relative value of subjects based on academic constructs of beauty and cultural relevance. To my eye every piece of gravel, every discarded condom and every tortured human standing next to an ironic sign has absolutely equal value and represents a mirror for my own möbius strip existence. I also drop the names, Kant, Neitzsche, Hume, and Cher as often as I can when writing about my work. It makes everything so much more Lucida for my newly found collectors...

I approached many galleries and all the doors were welded shut. Me on the outside and the likes of Leroi Neiman and George Bush firmly and comfortably seated inside. That is.....Until a famous museum curator chanced to see my Plate #324 and, after scraping it off his windshield, declared that the work showed me to have an incisive and "once in a generation" ability to decode the emptiness and mental depravity of early 21st century post corporate existence. I was giddy.

He encouraged me not to make large and luminous prints but to work on flattening my  black and white palettes into a porridge of unrelenting gray tones and presenting them in books not printed via a quad tone, tri-tone or even duotone processes but in strictly constrained, half tone grayscale. And he further encouraged me to make all the images in every one of my five hundred almost identical (but slightly different) books smaller and less "engorged with duplicitous decoration of size" but more universally accessible, by printing them smaller. 

With his manifesto and some prints in hand my newly befriended curator showed up drunk at a Steven Meisel Party in Kuai, played scrabble with spider monkeys and met an unattractive heiress who took pity on my work, examples of which the curator wore on his lounge kimono, and put me up for both a Guggenheim grant and also a MacArthur Genius award. I was able then to purchase a fine art Range Rover and finally buy health insurance. But the phone has never stopped ringing and Anna Devere Smith refuses to give up stopping by my house without an invitation. You'd think she and David Remnick would have better things to do with their time.

I am just about to enter my newest artistic phase by getting one of those 8x10 cameras with the accordion mid-sections,  which makes even the drollest, least well executed images an instant candidate for yet another tranche of great art that the unwashed masses will struggle, and struggle mightily to understand. At some point the most pretentious of them will give up and just pretend to understand the new work --- and some will even profess to like it.  In spite of all I do to make my work intellectually inaccessible...

anyone who questions the value of empty, banal chaos on cheap paper will be set upon by the art cognoscenti, and their thugs, and be drummed out of the gallery circuit only to find tentative solace in their new friendships with the huddled masses of failed and desperate artists who are still struggling to monetize their Instagram accounts. 

I won't care because I will have already sold out all the limited editions of "The Thick Opaque Visual Gravy of American Society -- a portfolio" and will have secured my place forever in the history of fine art photography. I will then turn to cinematic comedy and attempt to garner, from the French, a coveted, Jerry Lewis Medal of the Highest Arts from the curators at the Pompidou Centre. The tie-in being my use of my stand up comedy routine, translated into French, as captions for "The Thick Gravy....." 

Oh Dear. Must run. Crucial to have drinks with a whole new generation of online magazine editors. Gotta keep the gallery ball rolling.... 

I'd leave you with words of encouragement like: "If I can do this so can you!" But the truth is that the actual work is secondary to your personal relationship with the gatekeepers. You'll probably never be invited into the inner sanctum. Thank goodness my day job consists of working for a large U.S.  intelligence agency. I was able to use black mail and threats about national security to secure my place in the art pantheon. I might also suggest having access to a large and liquid trust fund. That seemed to work well for Stephen...

Plate #324. "The Ghost of Blueberry Pancakes and compound interest. 

Plate #1023 "Receding Industrial Wall."

We have sixty five hundred versions of "Wall receding toward Abilene" but

I'm still not sure which one to use on the magazine cover....

Industrial Strength Birkenstock Sandals. A SW USA artist standard for year round art creation.

As one reader recently commented about my friend, Kirk:  "I liked his earlier, funnier stuff better." 

C'est la vie.

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." -Leonardo da Vinci

"Sunlight is poetry, and studio lighting is geometry." - Irving Penn

I didn't want to get out of bed this morning. I heard the heater working in the distance and right where I was the covers were warm and enveloping. I injured my shoulder last week. In my lazy, rational mind I tried to figure out how to make that into an excuse to not go. To not get up. To skip the morning swim. Maybe drag myself out of bed at 9 and make coffee. Scrounge through the refrigerator to see if anyone put something sybaritic in there for breakfast. Search the work table for a forgotten croissant...

This hesitation happens from time to time. The lure of embracing entropy can feel like settling into a warm bath. 

But as on most days I threw back the blankets, pulled on a pair of pants, look around for the green sweatshirt of the day and stuck my feet into a waiting pair of sandals. From that point on I was attached to my schedule. Pad down the long hallway to the kitchen, grind fresh coffee, boil water, grab a handful of almonds to chew on. Check to see if there is any half and half in the refrigerator. Make coffee. Luxuriate in the bright glow of caffeine and growing consciousness. Toss almonds into my mouth three at a time. Sip hot coffee. Pry the lid of the laptop open and check the news, the overnight markets, the latest camera propaganda. Rinse my now empty cup and put it beside the kitchen sink. 

Head to the bathroom. Brush my teeth. Pop the first L-Arginine supplement of the day. Grab my swimsuit and a fresh towel from the rack in my bathroom. And the pivotal action of the day, drop by the office on my way to swim practice in order to select the "camera of the day." 

Today's selection is the new (to me) Leica SL2 with the Voigtlander 50mm APO lens. The rig is set up to shoot high contrast black and white but I know it's always okay to change my mind and switch to color, or DNG or whatever. The initial selection is just a starting point. 

Today I swam with Matt. He's switched on from the minute he hits the water. If there is short interval designated on swim sets he makes it even shorter. He doesn't believe in resting between sets. A "recovery" swim between hard, anaerobic sets for him is a fast 300 yards with hand paddles. I follow him through the whole workout going ten seconds behind him on the intervals and working hard to catch him. I swam with him on Tuesday and we repeated five x one hundred yard swims on one minute, twenty seconds. I haven't repeated hundreds on such a short interval in years but it seemed like the thing to do. In all we nailed down 3300 yards. Today we approached the sets with the same unwavering diligence. And it was fun --- but now I'm sore. We matched the yardage from Tuesday but with more diversity of strokes. More butterfly weaved into the mix. More breast stroke sets bookended by freestyle. Having someone to chase as we circle swim makes it easier to go faster. Harder. Easier, mentally, to keep from falling behind. 

I've got the studio set up for a series of portraits. Neutral gray background. Two big LED panels blasting through a 4x6 foot diffusion panel. And, for a change, my camera is handheld. After the portrait session I'll grab the camera, download the files, reload the battery and SD card and head out for my afternoon walk. It seems so repetitive to write all this down but the reality is that every day's hike has its own flavors, its own mysteries and its own rewards. The walks may be on the same routes but every day there's something new to see or there's something different in my own engagement. 

How do I know when it's time for a walk? When I feel sleepy and as though I need a nap I know it's time to get outside and move. 

Even though all Leica SL2 camera bodies should feel identical they never do. Even though they are inanimate objects each one I've handled has its own feel. There's little I can put into words but each one has its own energy and its own little nuances that make them all feel different. Today I'm getting used to the new arrival. The familiar lens is like a neutralizing element. And it's all fun to be aware of the tiny differences in the camera bodies even if it's nothing more than my imagination...

I had lunch with my favorite advertising agency, creative director yesterday. We've worked on projects together for about 30 years. We meet for lunch once a month or once quarter to trade family stories and the share our separate experiences as they relate to the industries of marketing, public relations and ad work. We're both becoming aware that everything is become more and more granular. The idea of one advertising agency that rules every facet of a client's marketing, from influencer management through television production is being sliced into smaller and smaller channels. A.I. is nipping around the edges of many creative projects. Automating simple ad copy, replacing the role of traditional stock photography; even seeping into video production. 

Clients feel more and more inclined to shop around for specific resources and many find having legions of influencers is profoundly cost effective and.....just plain effective. But each granulation of the overall marketing of a client comes for the agency as a loss of control, a loss of a segment, and a loss of billing. Budgets are being cut everywhere in the processes. Purse strings are tightening for the same reason as in other industries. We are in a period of process evolution. No one is sure what works and what doesn't and this is all coupled with the ambiguity, uncertainty and wholesale change of our political and social landscape. It should be an interesting year to pay attention to how interwoven both processing and fear really are. I've got a ringside seat but the closer to the game you sit the less comfortable everything is. 

That's why the walks are important. They allow for a distancing from the anxiety provoking flurry of change. And they are a chance to play, unencumbered, with the more joyful process of making or taking photographs. 

Swim. Walk. Pay attention to the important stuff. That's all I've got on my mind today. 

Today's choice. But with a different strap.

I just noticed this morning that the progressive haze of the backlit on the blue table makes it look like the sky. What a nice background for a simple cup of coffee...

It all starts here. Every morning. An hour of detachment from worry and news.

An hour of revving up your internal engine and blowing out the carbon. 

Proof each day that you are still alive and vital. 

 

"Cameras, like rattlesnakes, should always travel in pairs..." Working on it.

 

Black SL2 in X-Ray mode.

The used Leica SL2 I ordered last week came today. It was a day early. I bought it from the guys at Leica Store Miami. I get absolutely no preferential treatment or pricing from mentioning them here but I think it is appropriate that I do because they sent a perfectly packed box with an inner-boxed camera inside that looked (seriously) brand new. No tripod plate scratches. No wear. No tear. Perfectly clean. It arrived in the same condition as the one I bought brand new, back in 2020. For the low price I paid I think the whole package (camera, packing, shipping, etc.) is worth calling out in a positive way.

I sat in a comfortable chair and went through all the menu items so I could configure this camera to the exact same settings as the first SL2. I'm using both cameras this week for a personal project. I'll have a 35mm lens on one body and an 85mm lens on the other body so it will be nice to have the colors, resolutions and handling all match as I switch back and forth between them. 

There doesn't seem to be a logical reason for the big price drop on SL2 cameras lately but I guess Leica has been able to deliver a plentiful supply of SL3 and SL3-S cameras into the ready hands of their brand enthusiasts and I guess most people are happy to buy and use their cameras one at a time. Serial relationships. One in and one out. I think people working professionally have a different mindset. One that fixates on always having a back up for any contingency on paid jobs. Or multiple back-ups...

I have been backing up my SL2 with an SL, and more recently the SL2 and SL2-S have been the tag team of choice. It will be nice to have a pair of SL2s for the work that requires their unique features and looks. And the SL2-S will be there for the times when high ISO/no noise work is on the table. 

I am re-emerging from the ridiculous idea I had of retiring from work-a-day photography. My significant other is out of town a couple days a week taking care of family and frankly I got bored. When clients came calling after the first of the year I was ready to hop back into the mix. Sure, I could travel around by myself and play tourist with camera but would hate to do so while leaving B. behind. And, what I found out when I was taking it (too) easy is that I really love the challenge of doing photographs well. At least the kind I like. 

We're being a bit pickier this year though. No jobs starting before 10 a.m.--- in order to preserve the sanctity of the morning swim practices. No dumb jobs that anyone could do. No jobs that have anemic budgets. Just looking for the whip cream and cherries at this point. 

Now heading out the door for a nice walk in the hot weather (80° Fahrenheit) we're having. A good time to break in the new camera. 

First thing I did was grab an SCL-6 battery for the new camera. Got a 50mm lens on the front and my walking shoes on. Let's go!

A few interior photographs done for a client after a couple days of successful environmental portrait sessions.

 

Back in 1981 I started working for Early American Life Magazine and spent three or four years packing my old pick-up truck with 2000 watt Norman Strobe boxes, heavy duty flash heads, yards and yards of heavy extension cords, A Calumet 4x5 inch view camera, three view camera lenses, 30 four by five inch film holders, a huge tripod, light stands and all the other support gear needed to make large format, architectural images on transparency film,  and make it work inside houses and buildings, as well as for exteriors. It was quite a load. 

On a typical job my art director would fly in from Harrisburg, PA. I'd pick her up at the Austin airport in my giant light blue Chevrolet truck and we'd head off to our various locations for the better part of a week at a time. On a typical job I might shoot eight to ten set-ups a day on the big camera along with some detail shots on medium format film. I'd bracket each exposure in half stops over a plus and minus two stop range. I'd come home with somewhere close to 200 sheets of 4x5 inch sheet film that I'd take to the lab in tranches...just in case something went wrong in the processing. When the film came back I would edit the results down to two good exposures per set up, divid those into two batches and send each batch separately, via Fedex, to my client back in Pennsylvania. You never really wanted to throw the dice and send the whole take at once because, even then, things went astray occasionally. 

I continued to do large format architecture photos, as a side gig to my mainstream portrait, work all through the 1980s and early 1990s. We used the big camera and big film to do brochures for medical centers (including lifestyle shots on large format), hotels, resorts, law offices, and new buildings for architects and construction companies. Eventually I got more and more event and portrait work and that, at the time, was a lot more fun so some of the original momentum of my architecture work wore off and I moved the business in a different direction. I also met a local photographer who had much more passion for photographing inanimate objects/buildings that I ever would and as a result he was also better at it than me. I more or less surrendered my little corner of that discipline to him.

Last Fall I was making portraits in various locations around a spanking new office in a swanky new high rise in downtown and having a lot of fun. Light came in from walls of floor to ceiling windows that wrapped around the client's entire floor. The portrait project went well and a week or so later I got a call from the same client asking me if I could do an interior architecture shoot of their new space. Since I knew them to be a nearly perfect client I was happy to accept. 

The entire job was done with a Leica SL2-S camera and I chose it because it has a ridiculously wide dynamic range and its high ISO performance means it can provide very, very clean shadow areas when used at lower ISOs. I made use of the built in perspective control feature for every frame. The finishing touch was getting the raw files into Lightroom to open the shadows and tame any highlights that needed taming. One or two images were made by taking a light and dark version of the same shot and blending them in post production. It worked very well. 

We did fifteen different set-ups over the course of a couple hours, all with one camera, two lenses and a decent tripod. So much different from the film days....

I'll gladly go back to making interior shots if clients want them. I'd forgotten how much fun it can be. I just hope all the potential clients have brand new spaces and have spent good money on interior design because that's the real secret (if there is one) of great architectural photography. 

The images chosen by the client have had the skies adjusted. But just a little bit...

Early morning encounter with pour over mechanism.

 

Just a quick review of the Sigma 45mm lens as a choice for square format imaging. The lens can be highly detailed or it can be slightly soft depending on how you use it. If you want high sharpness and satisfying bite from this exactly "normal" focal length it's all yours if you follow this formula: Set the lens for f5.6 or f8. Stand two meters (six feet-ish) or more from your main subject. Use a shutter speed of 1/250th or faster. Hold your camera still and push the shutter. Presto! High sharpness, nice contrast, lots and lots of detail. 

If you want a different effect use the lens at it's widest open aperture, focusing on things that are somewhere between the closest focusing point and about five feet, and choose a shutter speed that you think should be adequate. This might be a suggested starting point for portrait photography. I don't know anymore because I have the lens permanently fixed at f5.6. It's just so damned happy there. 

The lens in question is small, light, beautifully made and actually is so perfectly crafted that I sometimes  think it outshines my favorite Leica cameras for industrial design and realization. 

People don't really understand this lens as well as I think they should so you are in luck. There are plenty in the used market and mostly can be had for somewhere around $250, in great condition. 

I used to have two of them. The vagaries of buying bundled stuff. I gave one to a friend. He loves it as well. 

These lenses work best if you put them on a nice camera, head out the door and spend some time looking around and making photographs. Left in a camera bag which is itself left in the house? Not so much. What did you shoot today?

the most boring book I have ever read about Robert Frank. Whose work I like very much.

Shame on the Museum of Modern Art. Too much academi-speek.

My coffee cup from the LBJ library. A lonely double "A" battery. 

In my "reading corner." 

Make em big. Check out the bricks!

All the above are make with the Sigma 45mm f2.8 Contemporary lens. 

Camera used was the venerable Leica SL2.

All conceived as, and shot as, Jpegs. Square Jpegs. 

Working the square for fun and entertainment. The square is, without a doubt, the "GOAT" of all aspect ratios. 3:2? Not a chance.

 Through the bank window at 4th Street and Colorado. Nice to see fresh flowers in the windows. 

I'm purposely writing much shorter blog posts. One of my peers is writing incredibly long and complex posts. I thought I'd try to balance out the photographic side of the internet. 

I went out for a walk because: It's a healthy thing to do. My computer needed a break. Fresh air and temperatures in the high 70s are a nice gift from nature after a couple of cold spells. My interest in televised sports starts and stops with a bit of attention paid to the swimming finals of the Olympic Games. Once every four years. My Leica SL2 needed to have its shutter exercised. I'm getting more involved with the Sigma 45mm lens. I could, at the end of a fine walk, stop at Whole Foods and pick up a fresh pecan pie. We could have the pecan pie as dessert for our Sunday family dinner. We all like pie. 

Playing sports is good for your heart and mind. Watching sports on TV is bad for your overall health. Period. 

Swim, walk, bike, run, climb, etc. Be active. Not passive. Live longer. Be happier. Spend less on healthcare. Be richer.

Batteries? Lenses? Flashes? Cameras? Something you always wanted? Stock up now because tariffs are heading our way.

Zany man bucks trend, goes on shopping spree...

 I'm not going to get into the politics of economics and why the new president is enacting tariffs against our most valued trading partners but I will say that this rush to tariffs is going to have unexpected consequences everywhere, for everyone. Today I'm looking at it from the perspective of a consumer who likes to buy products from manufacturers in Japan, Germany and various other countries. Straight from the horse's mouth we know that tariffs are going to be enacted against the E.U. as well as our Asian trading partners, and it's just a matter of time before retail customers here see prices jumping up by 25% and more. Without commensurate increases in average incomes.

You thought Leicas were expensive before? Wait till tariffs add a couple thousand more dollars to the final bill you might pay! And then extrapolate that across lenses, batteries, filters, tripods, and, well, the whole infrastructure of your profession or hobby. 

I bought another (used) SL2 last as a hedge against my own desire to buy something new like an SL3-S. I'm not ready to buy an SL3-S right now. Don't need one yet. Might never need one. But I do like to have cameras that travel in pairs and I figured that people would be rushing to upgrade from their SL2 cameras, trading in older models for the latest. Two SL2 cameras satisfies my buying need in the moment while saving me about $3,500. If I waited too long and missed the pre-tariff window I felt sure that used prices on used Leicas would rise once new cameras got hit hard with inevitable price increases. The older, but still great performing, SLs, SL2s, and SL2-Ss, available used, would suddenly seem like great bargains compared to the prices of newly imported cameras and the market run on the older ones would proceed with vigor.  I paid $1995 for a very, very clean SL2, in the box with all accessories and a warranty. I can only imagine that when the USA government passed (at a minimum) a 25% tariff on German consumer goods (Leica included....) bumping the price on an SL3 from around $7000 to around to $8,750 many people in the market for a well made, new German camera will have hit their limit and walk away. One can only rationalize so much...

But it's not just Leica users who will feel the pain. There are really NO mass market camera makers in the USA and that means just about any camera brand you are interested in will be similarly affected. Add 25% to the top of the line Sony or Nikon cameras and see what happens to sales numbers. Suddenly cameras won't be quite as hard to find on the dealers' shelves but equally suddenly many previous potential customers might find themselves priced right out of the market for a new camera. Or at least the aspirational camera they had really hoped to acquire. 

This all happened last time there was a tariff on camera products here in the USA. Prices of used gear, stuff not subject to the new tariffs, went up a lot. Great, recent, used products became much more scarce. Some consumer demands went unmet. 

After swim practice today I was reading economic news from around the word and it seems that my thoughts just above are not in any way outlying conjecture. After breakfast I walked out to the office and promptly ordered one more SCL-6 battery (useable in all SL models as well as the Q2 and Q3 cameras) from a favorite retail camera dealer. The battery is currently about $200. I think it's expensive at that price but I'll think it's really expensive at $250 and, I know I'll want one or need one for upcoming projects. A handful of more powerful batteries goes a long way to lightening the load out for solo projects versus hauling extra less powerful batteries. And newer batteries are going to last longer than the old ones floating around the studio. 

If I were in the market for a car I definitely wouldn't wait until the tariffs kick in to go shopping. Sure, you might be able to stomach an American brand but if you have a specific German or Japanese model in mind you might find yourself gulping at the pricing after the financial shit hits the fan. 

Of course the best position to be in is not to need or want anything, product-wise. If you don't have to or want to spend the money I guess you are ahead of the curve. Until you consider inflation.....

A little stockpiling can be a good thing. Especially if you know that the combination of returning inflation and tariffs are heading your way. The dollar is strong right now...stock up.